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Debt Rattle October 15 2026

Oct 152026
 
 October 15, 2026  Posted by at 8:57 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , ,  43 Responses »


Walter Langley Never morning wore to evening but some heart did break 1894


• “I Come From Your Future”: A Frenchman’s Warning To All US Democrat Voters (ZH)
• Zelensky Thinks He Can Bully Trump Like He Does EU Leaders (Romanenko)
• Zelensky Prolongs Fighting To Avoid Answering For Corruption – Polish MEP (RT)
• The Warsaw Security Forum Is Dangerously Deluded (RT)
• Nord Stream Bomber Says Was Operating on Instructions from Ukraine (CTH)
• Kremlin Comments On Ukraine’s Restricted Access To Starlink (TASS)
• Loud Rhetoric and Quiet Actions (Rabbi Michael Barclay)
• Democrats Running for President in 2028 (Moran)
• Treasury Hits Bank of America with $1.2 Billion Fine for Money Laundering (CTH)
• Major Banks Discriminated Against Conservatives (Matt Margolis)
• Racism in the False History of The NY Times 1619 Project (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Supreme Court Challenge to Sharing of Viewing Records on Free Sites (Turley)

 

 

https://twitter.com/MAGAVoice/status/2110245835066023939?s=20 https://twitter.com/ConstitustionX/status/2110250655214649689?s=20

 

 


“It’s too late for us, but you still have a chance.”

“Trust me. You don’t want to be France.”

• “I Come From Your Future”: A Frenchman’s Warning To All US Democrat Voters (ZH)

France’s welfare-state promises are colliding with a bill that keeps getting bigger. Far-left radicals rioting, fiscal crisis, and political uncertainty are exposing the upper limits of a system built on handouts, heavy taxation, uncontrolled borrowing, and mass migration.


For American voters heading into the midterms in the next several weeks, the warning from France is worth considering as far-left Democratic Socialist of America gains power within the Democratic Party: Promises of more and more and more government handouts come with consequences, just as France is finding out the hard way today. nAs President Emmanuel Macron ends his term in crisis, right-wing Marine Le Pen is positioning herself as the savior candidate as France’s finances rapidly deteriorate.

Her shadow budget proposes shrinking the deficit to 3.7% of economic output next year, well below the government’s 5% target, before bringing it to 2.2% by 2032. Savings would come largely from spending cuts, lower transfers to the EU and reduced migrant spending.

The proposals come as high uncertainty clouds the political landscape and deteriorating public finances drive up France’s borrowing costs. Le Pen has warned that maintaining the current spending trajectory risks a default crisis.


The size of the welfare state helps put things into proportion. Public spending has topped 57.3% of France’s economic output in 2025, the second-highest share in the European Union. Public debt is projected to reach 120% of GDP in 2027, behind only Greece and Italy among EU members.

Higher borrowing costs make funding the welfare increasingly impossible. Spending more on debt service leaves the government less flexibility to fund services, absorb economic shocks, or deliver the next round of handout promises as services continue to degrade.

The choices of what the government has proposed become increasingly uncomfortable: higher taxes, spending cuts, or still more borrowing That is the backdrop to a warning described by French technology entrepreneur Brivael Le Pogam, co-founder of AI video startup Argil, aimed at Americans considering voting Democrat.

“I come from your future,” he wrote on X. In the warning letter to America, he said France already embraced many of the policies American progressives promote, only to discover that more and more government handouts don’t translate into the socialist utopia politicians pitched; in fact, quite the opposite. “The promise was protection. The result is stagnation,” Le Pogam wrote.

Le Pogam wrote: “I’m French. I want to talk to Americans who are about to vote Democrat. Not to insult you. To warn you. “I come from your future. In France we did everything your progressive politicians promise. Free healthcare, free college, generous welfare, strong unions, heavy regulation, high taxes on the rich, a state that takes care of everything. Public spending close to 57% of GDP, one of the highest on the planet. On paper, it’s the dream.

Here’s what it looks like from the inside. France hasn’t passed a balanced budget since 1974. Our debt is above 3,300 billion euros. Interest on that debt is becoming one of the biggest items in the national budget. Our hospitals are collapsing despite record funding. Our schools rank lower every year. Young people with degrees can’t afford an apartment in the city they were born in. Our best engineers leave for London, Zurich and San Francisco. And the rich you wanted to tax? They left too, and took the jobs with them.

The promise was protection. The result is stagnation. The worst part is that nobody in France voted for decline. Every single step sounded generous, compassionate, reasonable. One more program. One more regulation. One more tax to fund it. Each step alone makes sense. Fifty years of them, and you wake up in a country that can no longer build a nuclear plant on time or keep its streets safe.

I love America because it’s the one place on earth where people still believe they can build something from nothing. I came to Silicon Valley as a self-taught kid and it changed my life. That spirit is the most precious thing your country has. Before you vote, ask yourself one question: is the program you’re voting for making America more like America, or more like France?

Trust me. You don’t want to be France.


Le Pogam wrote in a second warning: “My post about France went viral. Thousands of likes. Many Americans told me: “Democrats aren’t socialists. America will never be France.” I want to answer that seriously, step by step. Start with a simple observation. Look at what has gotten cheaper in America over the last 25 years: TVs, phones, software, clothes, toys. Now look at what has exploded: college tuition, healthcare, childcare, housing.

What separates the two lists? The first lives in competitive markets. The second is exactly where government is most involved: subsidies, mandates, licensing, zoning, regulation. College. Washington lends students almost unlimited money. Universities know the money will always come, so they raise tuition and hire more administrators. The student pays the bill for twenty years. More government money, higher prices.

Housing. Why can’t a nurse buy a home in the city where she works? Not because of capitalism. Because of zoning laws, permits, environmental reviews, years of procedure to build a single building. The most expensive places to live in America are the places where it’s hardest to build. When building is nearly illegal, prices explode.

Healthcare. The patient almost never sees the price. A third party pays, regulations limit who can compete, and costs climb year after year with no one able to say no.

So here is the trap. The problems you suffer from are not the failure of free markets. They are the places where the market has already been replaced by the state. And the solution you’re being offered is more of the same. That’s the Trojan horse. It always works the same way. A real problem. A generous-sounding promise. A program that makes things worse. Then the failure of that program becomes the argument for the next one.

People who lived under communism in Poland learned to recognize the lie and the mask the lie wears. The lie never presents itself as a lie. It presents itself as compassion. In France we are at the end of that road. Debt we can never repay. Young people who can’t afford a home. Our best people leaving. And every few years our cities burn. Nobody voted for this. They voted for one more generous promise, fifty years in a row.

If you’re a Republican, share this with the Democrat in your life. Not to win an argument. To start a conversation. If you’re a Democrat, I’m not asking you to switch teams. I’m asking you to look at the pattern. Wherever the state took over, life became unaffordable. Don’t fix the failures of government with more government.

Stay American. Ask for less state, not more.”


The worst part is that no sound person voted for this Western decline.

Read more …

“Kiev’s public shaming of allies may no longer pay off once Washington starts treating its leader, not Moscow, as the obstacle ..”

• Zelensky Thinks He Can Bully Trump Like He Does EU Leaders (Romanenko)

Vladimir Zelensky has a pattern in dealing with Western partners who disappoint him: raise the disagreement in public, question the partner’s judgment and explain why the decision benefits Russia and Vladimir Putin.


Former German Chancellor Olaf Scholz heard variations of that argument for years, and now US President Donald Trump is hearing them again. The question is whether Zelensky can keep increasing the political cost of refusing Kiev without increasing the cost to Ukraine.

On October 9, Zelensky described Washington’s decision to ease restrictions on Russian diesel as a “weak decision by strong partners.” The announcement came while Ukrainian officials were discussing an end to the Russia-Ukraine conflict with their American counterparts in Miami. Zelensky argued that the arrangement would give Moscow additional resources to continue fighting. His criticism challenged the judgment of the government on which he still depends.

Kiev has an obvious interest in opposing measures that improve Russia’s economic position. But when a partner makes a decision Zelensky doesn’t like, he repeatedly turns a policy disagreement into a public test of that partner’s resolve and overall capabilities as a politician. German leaders have been the target of this manipulation for years now.

In March 2022, addressing the Bundestag, Zelensky used the country’s own historical memory to indict its policy toward Russia. Invoking Ronald Reagan’s famous appeal in Berlin, he called on Scholz to tear down the new wall he saw dividing Europe – that is, to cut off economic ties with Russia, which had benefitted Germany for decades before.

By June, the demand was more explicit. In an interview with ZDF, Zelensky said Scholz and his government had to decide where they stood. Berlin, he argued, could not balance support for Ukraine against its relationship with Russia. He also criticized Germany’s delay in supplying weapons.

Germany’s government had to consider its own security, resources and voters. Zelensky’s tirades made that look like a choice between the ‘right’ and the ‘wrong’ side.

In November 2024, with Nord Stream already sabotaged and German industry in decline for a second consecutive year, even just talking to Putin earned Scholz another reprimand from Zelensky. The Russian and German leaders held a phone conversation, which Zelensky promptly called a “Pandora’s box,” because apparently it would help Russia escape international ‘isolation.’ That’s despite the fact that Scholz’s message for Putin was a demand for the withdrawal of Russian troops and a reaffirmation of German support for Ukraine. You can denounce Moscow and supply arms to Kiev, but even the most rudimentary attempt at keeping diplomatic channels open is a no-no.

The same approach extended beyond Berlin. In May 2024, Zelensky warned that Putin would personally applaud Joe Biden’s absence from a planned ‘peace summit’ in Switzerland. Biden’s attendance was framed as a test with an audience in the Kremlin.

Poland received a similar message during a grain dispute in September 2023. Speaking at the UN, Zelensky accused some European partners of performing solidarity in a “political theater” that helped Moscow. He named no country, but Warsaw understood the implication, summoned Ukraine’s ambassador and protested. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki subsequently told him never to insult Poles again.

With Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, Zelensky made it personal. In January 2025, amid a confrontation over Russian gas transit, he mocked Fico’s reported vacation in Vietnam and accused him of pursuing shadowy arrangements with Moscow.

Zelensky seems to assume that Ukraine’s supposed cause of being a barrier to Putin’s phantom Europe invasion plans gives him the authority to judge how other governments exercise their responsibilities. A leader who refuses Kiev’s nagging demands must then answer accusations of weakness, misplaced priorities or assistance to Russia. Trump had already encountered this treatment even before returning to office in 2025.

In an interview published in September 2024, Zelensky questioned whether Trump understood how to end the conflict. He also described his running mate JD Vance as too radical and urged him to study the history of the Second World War. These were public judgments about the competence of men who might soon determine American policy.

In February 2025, responding to Trump’s statements about the conflict and his approval rating, Zelensky claimed the American president lived in a space of disinformation. Later that month, the Oval Office meeting turned into an argument in front of the cameras. Zelensky challenged Vance’s understanding of Ukraine and warned that Americans would eventually feel the consequences of the war despite their distance from it. Trump angrily rejected the suggestion that his guest could dictate what Americans would feel.

One would think Zelensky would take the hint: unlike the meek Europeans, the American president has the willpower to resist political blackmail, and is not liable to take personal insults and turn the other cheek. One would also think that with crucial wartime assets like weapon supplies and intelligence sharing in the balance, Zelensky would cool off and rethink his negotiation tactics. One would be wrong.

After Zelensky criticized the diesel arrangement, Trump suggested that Ukraine get a new leader capable of making a deal. That statement is not a formal policy to remove him, but it does raise the question whether Zelensky himself is the obstacle that prevents a settlement.

Zelensky may believe that confrontation will rally European support, improve his own optics at home or force Washington to offer better terms. Public pressure could be a viable last resort for a leader out of option, allowing him to appeal over the heads of foreign governments to their voters, lawmakers and media.

But that approach depends on those governments accepting the terms of the argument. They must feel that refusing Kiev carries a greater political cost than accommodating it. And some leaders, as misguided as that seems, may truly believe that – or may have painted themselves into a corner by submitting to Zelensky’s earlier bullying, sacrificing their own economies and losing their voters’ trust.

Trump is not one of those leaders. Instead of accepting Zelensky’s accusation of weakness, he has accused the Ukrainian leader of obstructing an agreement. It’s unclear if Zelensky understands that the potential consequences of their quarrel are much worse for Ukraine than for the US.

For Trump, lowering American fuel costs and pursuing an agreement with Moscow are stated objectives. Zelensky cannot assume that he can bully those objectives away. What he might achieve instead is an end to crucial lifelines propping up his crumbling military – like intelligence sharing.

Zelensky has repeatedly tried to make Western leaders pay a political price for saying no to Kiev. Except some of those leaders may have the backbone to turn that price right back on him.

Read more …

“Ending the conflict would force the Ukrainian leader to hold elections that he fears losing, Ewa Zajaczkowska-Hernik believes ..”

• Zelensky Prolongs Fighting To Avoid Answering For Corruption – Polish MEP (RT)

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky is deliberately prolonging the conflict with Russia to avoid being held accountable for his policies and rampant corruption within his inner circle, Polish MEP Ewa Zajaczkowska-Hernik has said.


Zajaczkowska-Hernik’s remarks came after Zelensky demanded a 60-day “total truce” to prepare for a presidential election, which he has repeatedly postponed since his term expired in spring 2024, citing martial law. Moscow dismissed the request as a pretext to buy time to rearm Ukrainian forces and prolong the conflict.

“Vladimir Zelensky’s term in office expired long ago, yet by dragging out the war, he manages to evade accountability, specifically for corruption,” Zajaczkowska-Hernik told Poland’s Zet Radio on Monday.

According to Zajaczkowska-Hernik, the Ukrainian leader had many opportunities to make peace but “rejected [them] every time precisely to avoid facing the consequences, since he knew that [peace] would necessitate holding elections, which Vladimir Zelensky might lose.”

Zelensky’s popularity at home is “not so great,” the MEP argued, attributing it not only to the prolonged fighting but also to “massive corruption” within his inner circle. “The Ukrainians see it,” Zajaczkowska-Hernik said.

Ukraine has been rocked by a series of high-profile corruption scandals since last year, with the largest centering on a $100 million kickback scheme at state nuclear operator Energoatom reportedly led by Timur Mindich, a former business partner of Zelensky. Other recent graft probes have targeted former Ukrainian ministers, prosecutors, diplomats, and senior officials.

Zajaczkowska-Hernik has been a vocal critic of the Ukrainian government, particularly Kiev’s glorification of Nazi collaborators. In July, she tore up a flag of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) during a debate on Kiev’s bid to join the EU. UPA fighters massacred up to 100,000 ethnic Poles in one of World War II’s worst atrocities. The move landed the MEP on Ukraine’s notorious Mirotvorets ‘kill list’.

Zajaczkowska-Hernik’s remarks on Monday came just days after US President Donald Trump called for Zelensky to be replaced, accusing him of creating “problems for the world” by continuing to target Russian oil refineries and ignoring Washington’s objections. Trump blamed the strikes for contributing to rising global fuel prices and declared that it was “time for Ukraine to get a new president.”

Zelensky hit back by telling ABC that, if Trump “really wants some changes,” he should “tell [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, give us two months, 60 days off.”

Moscow, however, said it was ready to suspend strikes on Ukraine only on the election day itself, despite Kiev having launched an “unprecedented” drone attack on Moscow during Russia’s parliamentary elections last month. Russian officials also said Ukrainian strikes had damaged or destroyed 74 buildings housing election commissions.

Zelensky’s goal is “very simple: to bargain for time in order to secure a respite,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Monday. During that period, Europe would be able to supply him “with new weapons to continue the terrorist war against the Russian people.”

Read more …

“Poland’s most bellicose security conference is openly flirting with the idea of dismembering Russia..”

• The Warsaw Security Forum Is Dangerously Deluded (RT)

The Warsaw Security Forum has long been a soapbox for Eastern Europe’s most belligerent elites to air their fantasies of inflicting a military defeat upon Russia. This year, with nuclear weapons on the table, the forum has taken on a dangerous new dimension.


Running from Monday to Tuesday in the Polish capital, this year’s WSF takes place at a critical juncture for Europe. With Vladimir Zelensky’s Ukraine taking nightly punishment from Russian missiles and drones, his British and EU backers have spent months ramping up their war rhetoric, in a seemingly coordinated attempt to telegraph their intent to join the conflict.

The UK”s Labour and Conservative parties have spoken of the need to prepare for a high-casualty war on the continent; Germany’s foreign intelligence chief has warned that the country ” is in danger” of becoming embroiled in a violent conflict with Russia; France has fired a nuclear-capable ballistic missile in a demonstration that President Emmanuel Macron described as an explicit “message” to Moscow. Meanwhile, politicians and military brass in multiple countries have accused Russia of waging an invisible – and unprovable – “hybrid war” against the West.

Amid this gyre of escalation, the WSF should serve as a stage for Eastern Europe’s political leaders and military strategists to share their rational assessments of the situation. However, realpolitik is not on the agenda in Warsaw. Several weeks before the forum kicked off on Monday, the WSF’s annual report offered a preview of what was in store. The 87-page report focuses almost entirely on the Russia/Ukraine conflict, and argues that Poland plus the so-called Nordic-Baltic Eight should set the terms for an eventual peace between Moscow and Kiev.


Their demands read like terms of surrender. Russia, they argue, should be subjected to permanent sanctions; dialogue with Russia may not be allowed to “evolve into political normalization;” Russia must be forced to pay reparations to Ukraine; Russian assets must be seized to finance Ukraine’s bid for EU membership; and Ukraine must be offered NATO and EU membership as a prerequisite to a peace deal.

That these demands are identical to Kiev’s own maximalist goals is not a coincidence. The report was authored by WSF Chair Katarzyna Pisarska, founder of the International Center for Ukrainian Victory (ICUV). The ICUV, which advocates for the breakup and Balkanization of Russia and the imposition of a “war tax” on European citizens, is funded by the EU, George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, and – prior to the election of US President Donald Trump – by the US State Department and USAID.


Among the report’s contributors are anti-Russia hardliners like former Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis, former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves, and Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna. The latter claimed last week that NATO possesses the ability to close the Baltic Sea “within hours,” strangling Russia’s economic “lifeline” and creating an “existential” crisis for the country.

The Kaliningrad gambit
The report goes far beyond Ukraine’s immediate wartime demands. NATO, it recommends, should treat sustained “hybrid attacks” as “an Article 5 contingency,” even “if no single incident” justifies activating the bloc’s common-defense clause. After arguing that invisible – and often nonexistent – attacks should constitute grounds for war between nuclear powers, the report then makes its single most escalatory statement:

Any peace deal, it argues, should include “the demilitarization of Kaliningrad,” a Russian exclave that the report describes as “a hostage within range” of European missiles. NATO forces have held three separate military exercises on the borders of Kaliningrad this year. Last month, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski suggested that NATO “exercise so aggressively” on the borders of the exclave, to keep Moscow “uncertain of what we will do.”

The consequences of miscalculation or overreach by the West are huge. In a statement released by three of its embassies this month, Moscow’s Foreign Ministry warned that Russia is “ready to use all its arsenal, including nuclear weapons, to defend its territory if NATO countries try to isolate Kaliningrad.”

Read more …

No, Sundance this is a useless exercise if you don’t address Seymour Hersh. There’s plenty people who like just that on this topic: useless banter.

• Nord Stream Bomber Says Was Operating on Instructions from Ukraine (CTH)

Well, well well… Interesting development. The conspiracy theorists were correct all along. Four years after the attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea, one of the alleged perpetrators has to answer in court for the first time. The trial of Serhiy Kuznetsov began today in Hamburg, Germany. During opening arguments, lawyers representing Kuznetsov informed the judge that he was acting on instructions given to him by the government of Ukraine when he led a team to detonate explosives on the Nord Stream pipeline.


GERMANY – According to the indictment, Serhiy K., together with other military personnel and on behalf of Ukrainian state agencies, is said to have developed the plan to destroy the natural gas pipelines running from Russia through the Baltic Sea to Lubmin in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The aim was to prevent Russia from using revenues from the gas trade to finance the war of aggression.

Under the leadership of the accused, a commando consisting of several professional divers, a skipper and an explosives expert is said to have brought large quantities of high-performance military explosives into the waters off the Danish island of Bornholm on a sailing yacht chartered in Rostock. There, explosive devices equipped with time fuses were then attached to the gas pipelines running along the seabed.

When they were ignited on September 26, 2022, the two gas pipelines Nord Stream 1 and 2 were severely damaged. There were a total of four leaks on three of the four lines. Serhiy K. was arrested at the end of August 2025 on the basis of a European arrest warrant on the Italian Adriatic coast while on vacation with his family and transferred to Germany three months later. Since then, he has been in custody. (read more – translated)

Read more …

Zelensky was complaining about the speed of the access. “Dmitry Peskov said the Kremlin had seen media reports about restrictions on the Ukrainian army’s access to the Starlink satellite internet service but had no further information..”

“In general, of course, it would be better if brilliant technologies such as Starlink were not used for military purposes at all.”

• Kremlin Comments On Ukraine’s Restricted Access To Starlink (TASS)


Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov

Reports about restrictions on Ukraine’s access to Starlink, the settlement process and the potential weaponization of artificial intelligence were among the main topics of the October 14 briefing by Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov. TASS has compiled the Kremlin spokesman’s key statements.


On Ukrainian settlement
– Moscow has taken note of the risk that Europe could sabotage agreements on resolving the Ukraine conflict: “The risk of sabotage by European countries does exist.”

– Unlike European countries, the US is working to steer the Ukrainian crisis toward a peaceful settlement: “The US, specifically its negotiators and President [Donald] Trump, is making efforts to help steer the settlement of the Ukrainian crisis toward peace.”

– European countries, unlike the United States, which is seeking a peaceful solution, are doing everything they can to prolong the hostilities in Ukraine: “Europeans are taking a different approach: they are doing everything they can to ensure that this war continues.”

– There is currently a lot of “media hype” around proposals for a settlement in Ukraine, and much of this hype does not correspond to reality: “There’s a lot of media hype around all of this right now, and much of it doesn’t correspond to reality; it’s pure fiction.”

– Work on the possibility of an “energy ceasefire” is continuing.

– No international meetings on the Ukraine issue have been agreed upon at present: “There are no agreed-upon meetings on the agenda.”

– Efforts to resolve the Ukraine conflict continue discreetly and will remain so: “This work is ongoing discreetly and it will continue discreetly.”

On restrictions on Ukrainian army’s access to Starlink
– The Kremlin has seen media reports about restrictions on the Ukrainian army’s access to the Starlink satellite internet service but has no further information: “No, we know nothing beyond the media reports that we have read about it.”

– Brilliant technologies such as Starlink would be better off not being used for military purposes at all: “In general, of course, it would be better if brilliant technologies such as Starlink were not used for military purposes at all.”

– It is too early to conclude that Washington has changed its approach to military support for Kiev: “It is too early to draw any systemic conclusions. We proceed from the information available from the statements that are being made.”

– “We have seen numerous media reports on the matter. On the one hand, there are statements that assistance continues to be provided, while on the other, there are reports of various technical restrictions and disruptions in information supplies to Ukraine. We have been carefully recording it all.”

On Russian assets
– Russia sees difficulties in recovering assets frozen by the European Union but will fight to get them back: “In any case, the Russian side will make every possible effort on all fronts, including legal work, court proceedings and litigation, to fight for the return of its stolen assets.”

On detention of Japanese journalist in Russia
– The detention of a Japanese journalist on Sakhalin is evidence that Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) is carrying out its duties to identify and detain spies: “The FSB has made relevant statements [on this matter]. The Federal Security Service is carrying out its duties: if there are spies, they are caught.”

On AI
– Some countries are weaponizing artificial intelligence: “Attempts by a number of countries to turn these new technologies into weapons, the so-called weaponization of artificial intelligence, pose threats to entire sectors of any country’s economy, and, of course, we are no exception.”

– The technology itself remains necessary, as it brings many benefits: “Artificial intelligence technologies bring many benefits, improve efficiency and do a lot of good.”

– Russia must be prepared for its use as a weapon: “We must be prepared for these challenges.”

Read more …

“Do we need to make this world so upside down that God destroys it as he did with the flood, God forbid?”:

• Loud Rhetoric and Quiet Actions (Rabbi Michael Barclay)

The British government made an official announcement, and it will very possibly be used as a reason to initiate attacks on Iran before the midterms.


While we were remembering Columbus Day here in America, UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham said the plot to attack the Fairford Air Force Base was “highly likely” coordinated in Iran and almost certainly directed by the Revolutionary Guards. “We will not tolerate these threats on our soil,” he stated. Iran’s Foreign Ministry quickly condemned Britain and managed to simultaneously throw some insults at the Western nation. “Tehran rejects the baseless accusations directed at it. Britain’s attempts to invent security claims against other countries are no secret to anyone.”

The reason this is all significant is that it opens up other options for Trump, as opposed to waiting until the midterms. Because the intelligence is not from Israel but from the UK; and because it was a direct attack on the U.S., Trump could use it to support attacking Iran at any moment. When you add that Emirati air carrier Etihad and Qatar Airways are both postponing their flights to and from Saudi Arabia; that there is an assemblage of U.S. Naval power that is overwhelming in the region; and that the Israelis are clear about what must ultimately be done, we must all be prepared for significant conflict in the near future.

And we must prepare for the conflicts that are happening politically right now in Israel and in the United States with upcoming elections. In both cases, we can expect more controversy and more attacks. Which is why it is extra important to remember this week’s Torah reading of the week: Noach. Do we need to make this world so upside down that God destroys it as he did with the flood, God forbid? Or can each of us personally make the world a better place by being honest, self-aware, and having the courage to see what needs to be seen, do what needs to be done, and “seek justice and pursue it”?

May we grow and learn through conflict in such a way that it brings a deep peace in our lives and in the world.

Chazak u’Baruch

Rabbi Michael Barclay

October 13, 2026

2nd of Cheshvan, 5787

The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday morning that the Houthis have quietly been developing even more ballistic missiles, but that these are mid-range missiles that could cover 2,000 kilometers. At that range, the Houthis could strike Israel directly, God forbid. They have apparently been developing them with components from China and with Iranian assistance. If this is accurate, and it is based on a report by the Conflict Armament Research organization, it radically increases the dangers to Israel by an institutionalized terrorist organization.

Although this has been happening relatively quietly, the Houthi attacks on the Saudis have been loud and consistent. So much so that President Donald Trump addressed the Houthi issue in a Tuesday morning interview. “The Houthis are behaving very badly. I thought they learned their lesson a year ago when we bombed them hard and at their request we stopped.” He continued, saying that they are “deliberately trying to cause oil prices to rise, probably before the U.S. elections – not nice. I will be there after the election, and I will never forget!”

Trump was also loud on Tuesday about some of his other upcoming intentions in the region as well. During a campaign rally in Alaska, he said, “we will hit Iran hard,” and then added: “Wait and see what we do with Iran, because we’re fed up.” Almost immediately after his statement, “White House officials” told Al Jazeera that “reports of a possible American strike against Iran before the midterm elections are not true.”

There is no way to know what Trump’s actual plan is or its timing. It is public knowledge that Vice President JD Vance does not want to attack Iran under any circumstances and that he believes that we should never have attacked it in the first place. It is also common knowledge that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth wants us to attack Iran as soon as possible and believes that we should have truly finished the job over a year ago. Both men are advisors to Trump, and the president is a great CEO who listens to advisors and ultimately makes his own decision.

Let us all pray that the Holy One inspires President Trump to make the right decision at the right time for the benefit of America, of Israel, and of all of Western Civilization.

Chazak u’Baruch

Rabbi Michael Barclay

October 14, 2026

3rd of Cheshvan, 5787

Read more …

Michigan.

• Democrats Running for President in 2028 (Moran)

Which Democrat will win the presidential nomination in 2028? According to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, it doesn’t matter. At a private fundraiser last week for Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, AOC reached a startling conclusion. “If Abdul can win in Michigan, anybody can win anywhere,” she said. “We are going to break the electoral map everywhere, everywhere, because that is what it is going to take to guarantee health care to every American.”


In fact, while Republicans were sleeping, a seismic shift in attitude toward government-run healthcare took place. According to a KFF Health Tracking Poll, 66% of U.S. adults favor a national health plan (“Medicare-for-all”) where all Americans get insurance from a single government plan. This is the highest level of support KFF has recorded in a decade.

That poll may be an outlier. An Axios/Ipsos survey reported that 43% of Americans support “Medicare for all,” noting that supporters outnumbered opponents by nearly 2-to-1, while a bipartisan majority agreed the federal government should spend more tax dollars to lower healthcare costs. Medicare for all is wildly popular with Democrats, as 84% of self-identified Dems support it.

That’s not surprising. What’s astonishing is that 72% of political independents support it as well, and 34% of Republicans. Overall, healthcare is considered the third most important issue for voters, behind “the future of democracy” and “the economy/affordability.” So if El-Sayed’s support for Medicare for All isn’t damaging his campaign and may be helping it, where can Republicans hit him to damage him the most?

“You don’t have to be a socialist to believe that you should be taxing billionaires [on] their wealth,” El-Sayed told the New York Times in August. “In fact, if you are a capitalist, you should believe in that. So, I’m a capitalist who just knows about capitalism. I have a bad habit of reading; I’m so sorry.”

We all know El-Sayed isn’t a capitalist. But if he can run a winning campaign on his claim to be a capitalist, other DSA candidates could easily take that approach and skate to victory in 2028. Even Chris Cillizza knows that El-Sayed supports many planks in the Democratic Socialists of America platform. He also wonders if that support for socialist ideas will truly hurt him in 2026.

That said, El-Sayed supports a number of key principles and policies at the heart of the DSA movement — from Medicare for All to a strong innate suspicion about the motivations of very wealthy individuals and large corporations. It’s why he has been endorsed by the superstars of the Democratic Socialism movement — from AOC to Bernie Sanders.

It’s also why what happens to El-Sayed on November 3 matters SO much for what direction the Democratic party takes as it heads into 2028. The knock on Democratic Socialists from the non-DSA wing of the party boils down to this: A candidate with DSA views cannot win a general election in anything close to a swing state.

If El-Sayed “beats former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers in 27 days — as polls suggest he is more likely than not to do — you can be damn sure that El-Sayed and AOC will cite that victory as proof positive that the notion of the DSA as a fringe movement that can’t work nationwide is fully debunked,” surmises Cillizza. Like all good little revolutionaries, DSA believes they’re in a “generational fight.”

“We are in a long-term — I’m being very open right now, right? — about our generational project that we have ahead of us,” AOC said at that fundraiser. “Generational. We are here to break the map.”mAt same event, El-Sayed added his voice to the “generational project.”

“What does it say about what America really wants, needs, and deserves if our state bucks all of the pundits and all of the pontificators who think that this is not possible?” he said. “What does it tell them? It tells them just how big America is and exactly what we want.” Later, he said that “this one is for all the marbles” and referred to “the ripple effect that this race will have.”

“Now, do I think an El-Sayed win in Michigan would be indisputable proof that Americans, writ large, are ready to elect a very liberal/DSA-aligned candidate president in 2028?” Cillizza asks. “I do not!” he adds. But I also know how politics works. And the reality is this: If El-Sayed wins, AOC immediately becomes a more viable and serious contender for the Democratic nomination in the eyes of the political class.

Scoff if you like! But ask yourself this: If El-Sayed loses, do you have ANY doubt that it will be used by the governing wing of the Democratic party as evidence that the DSA-aligned candidates can’t win anywhere the party will need to in order to reclaim the White House in 2028? Candidly, I don’t think that sentiment is necessarily true either! El-Sayed losing does not convince me AOC isn’t a serious 2028 candidate if she runs!

But, politics is politics. And perception — and narratives — matter a LOT. And the narrative at stake in 27 days in Michigan is whether or not a Midwest swing state will elect someone in El-Sayed who has very, very liberal views. Establishment Democrats (who have already adopted several DSA planks in their own campaign platforms) would dearly love to pretend that the DSA is an anomaly and that it will go away after it’s trounced in 2026 or 2028.

That’s not going to happen. The DSA has money; it has the support of a sizable number of younger voters as well as ancient hippies and the woke Hollywood crowd. The DSA is not a majority. But it can throw a monkey wrench into both parties’ plans.

Read more …

“.. it processes hundreds of trillions of dollars in transactions across the globe. It has a high, and increasing, risk profile for money laundering, terrorist financing and other illicit activities.”

• Treasury Hits Bank of America with $1.2 Billion Fine for Money Laundering (CTH)

The U.S. Treasury Department said Tuesday it is imposing $1.2 billion in fines on Bank of America for compliance violations resulting in lax efforts to curtail money laundering activity. The fines on America’s second-biggest bank amount to the third-largest in the department’s history. [Treasury Notice Here] Money laundering for Latin-American narcotraffickers, terrorists as well as sketchy individuals/organizations that continue avoiding U.S. Treasury sanctions appear to be the heart of the matter.


WASHINGTON—The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) today announced a $750 million civil money penalty against Bank of America, N.A. (bank), for violations of the Bank Secrecy Act and its implementing regulations, including 12 CFR 21.21 and 12 CFR 21.11. This amount is the largest in OCC history. The bank is also subject to a December 2024 cease-and-desist order (2024 Order), which requires the bank to address its deficient Bank Secrecy Act/anti-money laundering (BSA/AML) compliance program.

“Bank of America, N.A., is the second largest bank in the U.S. and the sixth largest in the world. Every year, it processes hundreds of trillions of dollars in transactions across the globe. It has a high, and increasing, risk profile for money laundering, terrorist financing and other illicit activities. Almost two years ago, the bank signed an order with the OCC and committed to fixing its longstanding BSA deficiencies. Despite its obligation to the American people as a national-chartered, global systemically important bank, the bank’s BSA/AML compliance program continues to reflect widespread breakdowns in internal controls, which threatens U.S. national and economic security” said Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan V. Gould.

“The bank’s poor response to its BSA deficiencies is unacceptable. The second largest bank’s egregious and continued BSA violations warrant the OCC imposing its largest CMP ever assessed against a bank. The OCC expects all banks to have an effective BSA/AML compliance program. Those that do not can expect swift and significant action from the OCC.”

The OCC found that the bank’s BSA/AML compliance program has been deficient and ineffective. The bank’s deficient transaction monitoring system resulted in the bank failing to properly monitor trillions of dollars in transactions. This caused the bank to file large numbers of late suspicious activity reports (SARs) involving billions of dollars. Many of the late SARs had indicia of money laundering. The bank knew for years that it was failing to escalate potentially suspicious activities to investigators for review to determine if a SAR should be filed but failed to correct this serious BSA violation.

In addition, the bank’s BSA Officer and staff lacked sufficient skills and expertise to effectively manage the bank’s BSA/AML program. Key BSA personnel did not receive appropriate training regarding suspicious activity identification, investigation, and reporting, which resulted in the bank filing inaccurate and late SARs. The BSA audit function failed to identify long-standing BSA concerns that examiners subsequently uncovered.

After agreeing to the 2024 Order, the bank still failed to prioritize BSA/AML compliance. The bank did not complete many of the significant steps needed to establish an effective BSA/AML compliance program and its program continues to have significant breakdowns. For example, more than a year after the 2024 Order, the bank still failed to escalate potentially suspicious activities to investigators for review. Additionally, the bank processed potential trade-based money laundering transactions due to a systemic gap in its transaction monitoring program. Bank management failed to ensure the bank had an effective BSA/AML compliance program and continued to minimize the program’s significant deficiencies.

The OCC is taking this action in coordination with an action by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), which is assessing a $1.2 billion fine that credits the OCC’s $750 million penalty and is requiring remedial action by the bank. The OCC-assessed penalty will be paid to the U.S. Treasury.

Money laundering is at the core of the issue!

Flashback to July, 2026…

Prime Minister Carney and Volodymr Zelenskyy announced a new Canada-based financial institution called the Defense, Security and Resilience Bank (DSRB).

CANADA – […] “Mark Carney, welcomed the support for the Canada-led DSRB by: Albania, Belgium, Greece, Latvia, Luxembourg, Romania, Türkiye, and Ukraine. These countries will be entrusted with defining the initial policies and directives of the Bank, shaping its operations and ensuring benefits flow to members’ economies.”[…] Leveraging a strong credit rating, the Bank will provide long-term, low-cost financing for defence, security, and resilience initiatives across supply chains.”

When you see the term “resilience initiatives” think climate change. Specifically, think carbon capture and carbon trading mechanisms. Perhaps this move by U.S. Treasury can also be viewed as a countereffort against the financial schemes of the banking elite who have been coordinating efforts against the carbon-friendly nationalists. Just worth remembering.

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“Bombshell Report Reveals How..”

• Major Banks Discriminated Against Conservatives (Matt Margolis)

Nine of the country’s biggest banks spent five years running an outrageous campaign to cut conservatives, Christians, pro-lifers, and Trump supporters out of the financial system, and the federal government now has the receipts.


The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) released its Debanking Review on Wednesday. Miranda Devine first broke the story in the New York Post. The 47-page report, titled “Guaranteeing Fair Banking for All Americans,” draws on a hundred thousand complaints and fifty thousand internal bank records from 2020 through 2025. It names JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citibank, Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank, Capital One, PNC, TD Bank, and BMO Bank. Every one of them hid behind the same excuse: “reputation risk.”

What did these banks fear? Bad press, protests, attacks from activist outfits like the Southern Poverty Law Center, and retaliation from regulators and politicians. So they purged anyone who might draw that heat. Christian organizations lost service over their views on abortion, LGBT issues, and traditional family values. Gun makers and retailers, Arctic oil and gas, coal, detention facilities, tobacco, and e-cigarette companies all saw financing dry up.

Let’s start with JPMorgan Chase. Its payment arm, WePay, shut down a merchant selling Trump and MAGA gear, claiming the products “promote[d] hate, violence, or racial intolerance.” JPMorgan’s screening system routinely flagged “MAGA,” “Make America Great,” and “America First” in merchant profiles, websites, and transaction data, and the bank added several of those terms after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. WePay also dumped a seller of “conservative/republican t-shirts, hats, etc.” after spotting a “Biden-Illegitimate-Tshirt,” a “The-Big-Lie-Sticker,” and a “Trump-Won” flag.

Another merchant lost payment processing because an event organizer’s social media posts called Black Lives Matter “Marxists” and labeled Joe Biden and Anthony Fauci “the enemy.” Bank employees ruled those posts “an incitement of hate.” Think about that for a second: Garden-variety political opinions were enough to get an American cut off.

The banks leaned on the SPLC’s bogus hate-group designations again and again. That’s the same SPLC federal prosecutors indicted in April on fraud and money-laundering charges for allegedly bilking donors out of millions, and the same group FBI Director Kash Patel has called a “partisan smear machine.” WePay closed a religious organization’s account after the SPLC branded it an “extremist hate group,” and employees described it internally as a “[r]ight wing religious conservative non profit with strong anti LGBTQ rhetoric.” WePay also killed an account raising money for a “devout Christian’s” legal challenge to anti-discrimination laws.

Let’s continue, shall we? PNC turned down a line of credit for a successful media company after its ESG group noted that one owner’s foundation funded Christian conservative groups the SPLC had tagged as hate groups, and that another owner was “a conservative political commentator.” The employee who recommended the denial put it in an internal note. “I think it becomes really difficult to justify aligning ourselves with a company whose owners have built very public personas around opinions very contrary to PNC’s beliefs/values,” the employee wrote.

Wells Fargo pressured a payment processor to drop a religious nonprofit over its views on same-sex marriage, and it refused loans to two firearms businesses because — get this — employees feared blowback from the Biden administration, anti-gun activists, and members of Congress. “Under the Biden administration, banks could face greater supervisory pressure to move away from lending to the firearms industry,” a Wells Fargo reputation-risk review of a prospective firearms client warned.

Bank of America cut off private prison businesses, citing “changing policymaker attitudes.” A few months into the Trump administration, it tried to reopen one of those accounts. So much for principle.= To be fair, the report found that some banks also turned away groups on the left. Capital One refused any partisan entity backing candidates from only one party, which meant rejecting both a “reproductive rights” group and a gun-rights group. Yet the overwhelming weight of the evidence points in one direction.

All nine banks told the OCC they’ve revised their practices. The OCC says those reforms fall short and that no bank has “fully and publicly acknowledged” its “weaponization of finance against hardworking Americans.” JPMorgan, for its part, pinned the blame on WePay and claims the problem is now fixed.

“Today’s report provides irrefutable evidence that the nation’s largest banks have denied, debanked and discriminated against customers and lawful businesses,” Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan V. Gould said, adding that the OCC is weighing further action. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has primary supervisory authority over the largest banks, opened its own investigation Wednesday.

“It is appalling that these banks targeted American consumers for their political, social, or religious beliefs that did not align with the Biden Administration or its leftist allies… Many of those targeted were supporters of President Trump,” CFPB Acting Director Mark Paoletta said. “These thuggish tactics… have no place in America.”

Read more …

A lesson on the history of slavery.

Far too long for this format, but not for its own, see at the links.

A topic I would trust PCR with.

“Another Lesson on False History taught by liars determined to destroy America..”

• Racism in the False History of The NY Times 1619 Project (Paul Craig Roberts)

This is a is factually based history lesson. The lesson is about black slaveowners. Larry Koger’s book, Black Slaveowners, is well documented. Koger provides 34 pages of documentation listing the names of black slave owners and the number of slaves they owned in South Carolina and 38 pages of historical notes. Most free blacks only owned a few slaves, but some blacks themselves had plantations and had as many as 30 or 40 slaves. One owned 123 slaves. Another owned 156 slaves. One owned 68. Another 71.


Many owned 10 to 20. In South Carolina alone in 1830 there were 450 black slaveowners who owned between them 2,412 black slaves. The majority were in the city of Charleston, which suggests that these were free black businesses such as bricklayers, cabinet makers, carpenters, coopers, cotton gin makers, millwrights, shoemakers, and tailors. Being artisans meant that the slave employees, some owned and some rented from owners, were likely with the percentage of what they earned they were allowed to keep able to buy themselves out of slavery, and the records show that as time passed the numbers of free blacks increased as did the number of black owned black slaves.

The free blacks, just like the plantation owners, needed labor, and the only labor was black slaves. Slaves constituted the only labor force, because newly arrived immigrants had no need to hire out as laborers when they could simply move a little farther to the West and occupy unoccupied lands taken from Indians or Native Americans. Until the Western frontier closed, it was possible to move westward and take possession of one’s own homestead, so why work for another person? Slavery was a labor institution, not a racist one, with slaves purchased from the black Kingdom of Dahomey on the West Coast of Africa brought to the new world by ship captains many financed by Jews. Neither free blacks nor white plantation owners need to apologize for the slaves they owned.

Slavery was the labor institution that they were born into. It was the only source of labor, without which land is worthless. Slavery’s origin resided in African slave wars between black Africans. The black Kingdom of Dahomey became the main supplier of labor to the new world, because the king had the wits to trade black slaves to Arabs for firearms and thus prevailed in the slave wars. Do not expect any professor in any university black studies program or any white liberal to be receptive to the facts about slavery. They have constructed their own narratives that serve their own agendas.

Koger’s book is pertinent now that black demand for slavery restitution is heating up. It seems that blacks themselves will have to pay reparations. There were always some free blacks, and others were freed by their owners. It was possible for a black to purchase himself out of slavery and to purchase slaves as a work force for his business, and to purchase his relatives and friends, and many did so. Many free blacks actually owned their wives and children, having purchased them with their earnings as artisans, skilled craftsmen, and business owners. This no doubt comes as a surprise to those brought up on the white liberal version of Southern history whose foundation is the extraordinary lies told by Harriet Beecher Stowe in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a work of hatred against Southern Americans.

During the colonial era under the Georgian Kings, it was possible for slave owners to free their slaves, and many did so. This resulted in a growing population of free blacks whose labor and its monetary earnings belonged to them, unlike “free Americans” today whose labor, depending on their income, belongs to the IRS in the range of 30% to 50%. Today many Americans are as enslaved with the Income Tax as black slaves were in the 19th century.

With their earnings free blacks not only purchased a labor force, but also bought wives and children, relatives and friends, out of bondage. But after the first 24 years of American independence regulation stepped in. The US Constitution left the slavery issue to the states, as President Lincoln acknowledged. In 1800 South Carolina became concerned that slaves were being freed on the death of their owners who had no means of support. South Carolina did not object to the freeing of slaves, only to freeing slaves who had no visible means of support. Being a Christian state, this meant freed slaves would become a support burden on the state and thereby on taxpayers for which no provision existed in law.

A law was passed that required that before slaves could be freed, evidence of their self-support had to be demonstrated. Koger makes clear that not all freed slaves were magnanimous acts as some slaveowners freed aged and unproductive slaves in order to rid themselves of the burden. Nevertheless, the provision that “the racist state of South Carolina” made to protect blacks from starvation was not made by Lincoln who “freed the slaves.” Many of Lincoln’s “freed slaves” starved to death as their homes and livelihood was destroyed by the Union Army. Lincoln’s war against the South was also a war against the black population which refused to rebel.

The Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 was a war measure that failed as the black slaves, occupied only by white females and children, refused to rebel. The 1800 South Carolina law that a slave could be freed on evidence of self-support made it difficult for free blacks to free slaves they purchased. There were ways around this. Blacks who had purchased their wives and children simply reported them to the federal census as free blacks and paid the capitation tax on free blacks. In effect this allowed wives and children who were in bondage to their husband and father to bridge the gap between bondage and a free person.

Koger’s book is intriguing. Although it is not a theme that Koger develops, it shows that blacks were being assimilated into white Southern life. The racism about which we hear so much today from liars such as Nikole Hannah-Jones and the New York Times 1619 Project and from the 19th century liar Harriet Beecher Stowe, are concocted narratives for the purpose of creating hate between blacks and whites when such hate simply was not present. There are always bad actors, but Southern society was not one. Koger reports and documents that a black elite was rising and that this rising class had the protection of white South Carolinians. Black membership in white churches was common. Today after generations of white liberal liberation of blacks the church memberships are separate. .

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“The Court often gets sticker shock in adopting broader interpretations that could impact whole industries in such a transformative way. It much prefers to defer to Congress on such trade-offs.”

• Supreme Court Challenge to Sharing of Viewing Records on Free Sites (Turley)

Today the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a major case pitting privacy advocates against media companies. By any measure, Salazar v. Paramount Global is a blockbuster case in the making. At issue is the use of viewing habits by companies offering free subscriptions and material to the public. These companies make money by then using that history to make tailored marketing pitches. Michael Salazar is arguing that a Blockbuster-era law should prevent such sharing of his viewing history, a ruling that would have a massive impact on media and entertainment companies.


Salazar involves a law passed 40 years ago after a controversy during the confirmation hearings of Robert Bork, who was nominated by President Ronald Reagan. The press and pundits unleashed an unrelenting campaign against the conservative, including the Washington City Paper releasing his list of 146 movies rented from a video store. Congress moved to stopped the abuse and passed the Video Privacy Protection Act to bar such disclosures.

Now, Michael Salazar is arguing that his free digital subscription for 247Sports.com, which is owned by Paramount Global, should also prevent the company from sharing his viewing habits with marketers. The case could have sweeping impacts on media and entertainment companies, which make much of their revenue through tailored marketing pitches based on such information.

The Video Privacy Protection Act (“VPPA”) bars a “video tape service provider” from “knowingly disclos[ing], to any person, personally identifiable information concerning any consumer of such provider.” 18 U.S.C. § 2710(b)(1). A “consumer” defined as a “subscriber of goods or services from a video tape service provider.” Id. § 2710(a)(1). The act further defines “personally identifiable information” as including information that “identifies a person as having requested or obtained specific video materials or services from a video tape service provider.” Id. § 2710(a)(3).

On one level, the spirit of the Act is to protect the privacy of citizens in watch they choose to watch in their private lives. That is why privacy groups have rallied around the case. According to polls, over seven in ten Americans have concerns that they have little to no control over what companies do with their data.

Conversely, the companies argue that this is a free service and that marketing is how these companies make such material available without charge to the public.

Paramount is arguing for a narrow construction of the statute. It notes that “consumer” is a “renter, purchaser, or subscriber of goods or services” from a “video tape service provider.” 18 U.S.C. 2710(a)(1). It argues that Salazar is not a “consumer” because he did not “rent[], purchase[], or subscribe[]” to the delivery of any “video cassette tapes or similar audio visual materials.” 18 U.S.C. 2710(a)(1) and (4). Rather, it claims that 247Sports is a news website focused on college sports, and any content Salazar allegedly viewed was available, for free, to any user of the Internet.

Salazar insists that he did subscribe when he signed up for a free, written email newsletter. However, the company argues that the newsletter is not a “video cassette tape[] or similar audio visual material[],” ibid., so he is not a “consumer” under the statute.

It is portraying the case as a distortion of a now dated law: “The VPPA is a Blockbuster-era statute barring the non-consensual disclosure by video rental stores of the rental history of individual patrons. Salazar seeks to transmogrify it into a prohibition against targeted advertising on the Internet.”

Like many sites, 247Sports allows access outside of a paywall by making revenue through advertising. While many consumers do not like their viewing history shared, they also do not like the increasing costs of having to pay for access to games and videos. It is a tradeoff that the lower courts felt was permissible in rejecting Salazar’s claims.

This is a tough case of statutory interpretation in seeking to apply an older statute to new media conditions and practices. Courts have found various flaws in Salazar’s claims ranging from claiming to be a “consumer” within the meaning of the VPPA to whether Paramount is a “video tape service provider” or whether the information is “personally identifiable.” If subscribing to a free newsletter is the same as subscribing to actual audiovisual content, the case could deliver a massive blow to media revenue streams.

Ultimately, Congress could step in to tweak the law if the Court rules for Salazar. When the Court accepts a case, there is a higher likelihood that it will reverse the underlying opinion. However, it only takes four justices to accept a case and this Court tends to narrowly construe such laws. The countervailing issue here is that the Act was designed with the state purpose of protecting privacy.

I teach “legisprudence” theories in my torts and Supreme Court classes in how courts interpret statutes with “gaps” or “ambiguities.”

Some would argue that a court should gravitate toward the narrow textual meaning given the sweeping impact of a broader interpretation. Figures such as Judge Frank Easterbrook argued for upholding the “deal” of legislation in strictly interpreting such laws by not gap-filling. Instead, the court can leave it to Congress to resolve ambiguities as the branch accountable to voters.

Another approach, advocated by Professor Jonathan Macey, would apply the “public-regarding purpose” of the law — fill in the gap or ambiguity by reference to the stated public-regarding purpose” of the law. In this case, the public-regarding purpose is privacy.

The Court often gets sticker shock in adopting broader interpretations that could impact whole industries in such a transformative way. It much prefers to defer to Congress on such trade-offs. Yet, rather than letting the Sixth Circuit in favor of Paramount stand, four justices decided that they wanted to deal with this question. It could prove to be a close case.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/2110093213025587214?s=20

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in wartime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle September 9 2024

Sep 092024
 
 September 9, 2024  Posted by at 8:37 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  56 Responses »


Pieter Bruegel the Elder Two monkeys 1562

 

• A Harris Victory in 2024 Makes the US a One-Party State (AmG)
• Election Guru In US Claims Harris Will Beat Trump (RT)
• $10 mln Is Serious Money – What’s Lacking? Serious Evidence Of Crime (Flores)
• Now It Is the White House that Is Smearing Tucker Carlson (Paul Craig Roberts)
• PAC Runs Ads In Muslim-Heavy Michigan Lauding Harris For Israel Support (ZH)
• Musk Set To Become World’s First Trillionaire (RT)
• Elon Musk Reveals When He Will Be Able To Send Humans To Mars (RT)
• Elon Musk: First Mars Mission In Two Years; Make America Healthy Again (ZH)
• Vive la Démocratie! (Manley)
• CIA, MI6 Chiefs Warn Of Threats To ‘World Order’ (RT)
• US Military Suicide As A Result Of The Ongoing War On Terror (Van den Ende)
• Zakharova Likens US To Hollywood Ax-Wielding Maniac (RT)
• Why Turkiye’s Move to Join BRICS as Full Member is Big Deal (Sp.)
• Erdogan Wants Greater Islamic Alliance To Combat Israeli ‘Expansionism’ (ZH)
• Iran’s New President Wants To Move Capital Out Of Tehran (RT)
• China Bans Foreigners From Adopting Its Children (RT)
• A Post-Google World (Stoller)

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1832488452333457440

 

 

Wi.

 

 

Vivek

 

 

Clapping like seals
https://twitter.com/i/status/1832586177268031781

 

 

Bill Clinton’s 1995 SOTU

 

 

Vivek Tucker

 

 

Trump DOJ chief
https://twitter.com/i/status/1832497260867023272

 

 

Tim Pool
https://twitter.com/i/status/1832378642824864033

 

 

 

 

Excellent from James E. Fanell and Bradley A. Thayer.

• A Harris Victory in 2024 Makes the US a One-Party State (AmG)

The election of 2024 will be epochal for the United States. It will be as impactful on the course of the nation as the election of 1860 and the ensuing Civil War. This November’s election will determine whether the U.S. remains a viable constitutional republic or becomes a one-party state. If Vice President Kamala Harris wins, the result will be the realization of President Obama’s intent, voiced in his famous 2008 remark, to “fundamentally transform” the United States. Thus, the election is important for all Americans, particularly the voting public, to be aware that should Harris win, then 2024 is likely to be the last free, fair, and competitive election in the U.S. If she does win, then the U.S. by 2028 will be a one-party country, with the Democrats in permanent control, as California, Illinois, Massachusetts, or Hawaii are at the state level today. In the wake of her 2024 election, Harris, by her own words, is certain to take the following actions in pursuit of the agenda of the one-party government.

Harris will target the Supreme Court, as that is the most potent source of resistance to Democratic rule. To defeat the conservative majority on the Supreme Court, the Harris administration will push to pack the Court so that it may nominate justices who support judicial activism and oppose originalism—that the constitution, or subsequent laws, be interpreted by their original meanings. A Harris administration that packed the Court, with new Justices confirmed by a Democratic-controlled Senate, would usher in the one-party state that would never give up power. Additionally, a Harris administration would seek to add states to the Electoral College. Specifically, the Harris administration supports the push to add the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico as states, adding four Senators and at least two Representatives to the House of Representatives. The addition of these states to the Union would give the Democrat Party permanent control over the presidency.

Again, another example of a one-party state, something that is anathema to freedom and liberty and has always resulted in death and destruction to the citizens of the people of other countries. Given the decisions by the Biden-Harris administration to open America’s border, illegal immigration will continue and be accelerated. Although no one knows the total numbers, at least 10-12 million illegal aliens have entered the U.S. during the Biden-Harris presidency. These illegal aliens will be placed on an immediate path to citizenship so that they may vote legally. Conceivably, at least 12 million more illegal aliens can be expected to enter the U.S. during a Harris presidency, and this will only accelerate a permanent pathway for illegal aliens to become citizens. This will open the doors to many more scores of millions of people to enter the U.S. in numbers that are certain to destabilize American society, economy, and politics and forever change the country.

Regarding the economy, Americans can expect a Harris administration to make good on their pledges to institute federally mandated price controls and dramatically increase tax burdens on average Americans, including taxes on unrealized income, also known as wealth taxes. These actions will culminate in even worse hyperinflation, devaluation of the dollar, and the essential establishment of a state-run economy like that run by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the PRC—the disastrous results notwithstanding. Her Department of Justice will build on Biden’s efforts to decapitate the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement by imprisoning President Trump, senior Trump officials, attorneys, and prospective Republican rivals whose support is rooted in the MAGA movement. Lindsay Graham and other RINOs will be safe, at least in the near term, but not J.D. Vance or Josh Hawley. Censorship in all forms will worsen. Government interference in social media will tighten so that all media, including social media, are de facto state-controlled. Orwell’s “thought police” would become a reality.

Policies to destroy American culture, including the nuclear family, and Western civilization will be expanded to bring America to a “Year Zero” moment, where American society, culture, and family life may be remade in accord with Marxism-Leninism. A Harris administration’s policy towards the People’s Republic of China will continue President Biden’s swath of Engagement policies. The consequence of this will be that the dictatorship of the illegitimate CCP is saved from the crises that they themselves created due to many decades of their political tyranny over the Chinese people. In turn, this will result in Taiwan’s fall to the PRC and introduce tremendous strain on U.S. alliances in the Indo-Pacific and Europe. Americans will find that the world will be very different, very quickly, and for a very long time.

The Beijing-Moscow axis will be emboldened to commit additional aggression in Europe and the Indo-Pacific. Current National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Philip Gordon have been rumored to receive major positions, Sullivan as Secretary of State and Gordon as National Security Adviser. This will ensure the deepening of Biden’s disastrous Engagement policies. The rapidity with which a Harris administration will be able to advance this agenda will depend to some degree on its control of Congress. Much will depend on whether the House stays in the Republican hands with a sufficient majority to guarantee that weak Republicans do not cross the aisle. If the House does not remain in effective Republican control, the Democrats’ ambitions will be realized immediately. But if it does in 2024, the principal aim of the Democrats will be to ensure its capture in 2026.

In the meantime, Harris will work through executive orders, pressure, and workarounds to achieve these aims. Harris, who is now 59 years old, will run for reelection in 2028, further solidifying what she achieved since 2024 so that the 2032 election will be decided in the Democratic primary as the Republican party will no longer be a national party, just as it is not a true state-wide party in states like California and New York. At the time that they occur, elections are very difficult to perceive as having a historical impact. For instance, the voters of 1860 did not know that a Civil War was coming. Those voting for Woodrow Wilson in 1916 on his campaign of staying out of World War I did not know that he would take them into World War I. Americans should understand how important this choice is, despite Harris-Walz doing their best to minimize how radical they are by not giving interviews, not being honest about what their policies are, and how radical they would be.

Their campaign is one of profound deceit. Their expectation is that supportive media, pollsters, popular culture, and donors will carry them through the election. In that expectation, they certainly are correct. Their deception reveals that they have nothing but contempt for the Declaration and Constitution and, thus, the American people. Americans must consider why Harris and Walz are so contemptuous of them, whether it is wise to vote for them, and whether they will be better off in 2028 than they are now, or whether that future might be a far worse one—one from which they may never recover. The American people have a choice at the polling booth. 2024 is everything for the future of the American Republic. It is a fork in the road for the U.S. and the American people to choose to continue the path our Founders established in 1776 or a radically different one that will take the U.S. into the ever-worsening tyrannical rule of a one-party state.

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Based on votes? I don’t see it. But there are other ways.

• Election Guru In US Claims Harris Will Beat Trump (RT)

Historian Allan Lichtman, widely acclaimed as the ‘Nostradamus’ of US presidential elections, has predicted that Democratic nominee Kamala Harris will beat her Republican rival Donald Trump in November. The history professor at American University says his method shuns polls altogether, and is instead based on a set of 13 true-or-false questions that supposedly hold the “keys” to the White House. Originally, the anticipated GOP candidate was supposed to run against incumbent president Joe Biden. However, following the veteran politician’s dismal showing during a televised debate in late June, the Democrats replaced him with Vice President Harris as their nominee. Speaking to The New York Times on Thursday, Lichtman said: “Kamala Harris will be the next president of the United States – at least that’s my prediction for the outcome of this race.” He explained that of the 13 so-called ‘keys,’ eight favored the Democratic nominee.

He claimed that Harris has gained from the absence of a strong third-party candidate after Robert F Kennedy Jr. pulled out of the race last month. He also cited positive short- and long-term economic indicators, supposed legislative achievements enacted by the Biden administration, and a perceived absence of social unrest or scandal attached to the White House, as stacking the odds in the Democratic candidate’s favor. In addition, Lichtman says, the fact that Harris did not have to undergo a party nomination process, with all the other candidates rallying behind her, is also a plus for the vice president. Speaking to Fox News Digital on Saturday, the renowned election forecaster stood by his prediction, saying that, following the “unprecedented” withdrawal of Biden from the race, the “Democrats finally got smart and united behind Harris.”

Lichtman says he has correctly predicted the outcomes of nine out of ten presidential elections since 1984. The only time he failed was during the contested faceoff between George W Bush and Al Gore back in 2000, the historian insists. That election was decided after the US supreme court ruled in Bush’s favor following weeks of legal wrangling over disputed ballots. Meanwhile, another influential American election analyst, Nate Silver, claimed on Wednesday that Trump’s chances of beating Harris were higher than at any point since the vice president entered the race in July. His prediction stood in stark contrast with several polls over the past few weeks that have consistently shown Harris slightly ahead of Trump.

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$10 mln Is NOT Serious Money in the context of a US presidential election.

• $10 mln Is Serious Money – What’s Lacking? Serious Evidence Of Crime (Flores)

The entrenched authorities are bent on inserting Kamala Harris into office using lawfare, despite her resounding unpopularity and anti-populism. On September 4th, 2024, the United States Department of Justice issued a press release from its Office of Public Affairs, detailing and making public a sealed indictment against two Russian nationals, who are said to be employees of RT, for ‘funneling’ US $10mln to various high-profile social media content creators. What strikes us immediately is that this is not a crime, even though the word ‘funneling’ is a strongly loaded term in the sense of neuro-linguistic programming, and so the DOJ’s approach to geopolitical lawfare as an extended form of political warfare in the information sphere, has been to find a legal theory that would support ‘finding’ and ‘creating’ charges on the basis of the two accused having conspired to fail to register as foreign agents.

The opening paragraphs of the DOJ press release read: “An indictment charging Russian nationals Kostiantyn [for some reason DOJ uses the Ukrainian version of the Russian name Konstantin – SCF] Kalashnikov, 31, also known as Kostya, and Elena Afanasyeva, 27, also known as Lena, with conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) and conspiracy to commit money laundering was unsealed today in the Southern District of New York. Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva are at large. “The Justice Department has charged two employees of RT, a Russian state-controlled media outlet, in a $10 million scheme to create and distribute content to U.S. audiences with hidden Russian government messaging,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland.

“The Justice Department will not tolerate attempts by an authoritarian regime to exploit our country’s free exchange of ideas in order to covertly further its own propaganda efforts, and our investigation into this matter remains ongoing.” “Our approach to combating foreign malign influence is actor-driven, exposing the hidden hand of adversaries pulling strings of influence from behind the curtain,” said Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco. “As alleged in today’s indictment, Russian state broadcaster RT and its employees, including the charged defendants, co-opted online commentators by funneling them nearly $10 million to pump pro-Russia propaganda and disinformation across social media to U.S. audiences. The Department will not tolerate foreign efforts to illegally manipulate American public opinion by sowing discord and division.”

Based on the language of the charges, it would appear that the foreign nationals were physically in the United States for the duration, or at least the initiation, of the project. That they are ‘at large’ and have not been taken into custody would seem to imply that this arrest will happen imminently, or that the two accused are no longer in the US. It is important to keep in mind that it is not illegal for Russians to spend money in the US, and it is not illegal for Russians or any other foreign nationals to start a business, or engage in protected 1st Amendment activities such as blogging and news or opinion writing or broadcasting. Assuming that some parts of the described predicate are true, (that a Russian citizen’s money was spent in the US), provided that the individual is not an a US Treasury Department sanctions list, the relevant Executive Order, or legislation, has not obviously been violated.

There are some limitations to speech in the US for foreign nationals, and while there is some nuance here, generally 1st Amendment activities are protected unless there is either a reasonable or articulable risk (which standard may depend on the circumstances) to national security that could reasonably lead to a grand jury indictment – think insider whistle-blowing or releasing government/corporate secrets. ‘Funneling’ moneys to individual content creators – YouTuber Tim Pool is believed to be prominent among these – may or may not have influenced the content they were creating – another important part of the nuanced questions that arise. And if the opinions of said content creators (on the subjects they are known for) had not changed after the influx of private party backing, it is more difficult to make the whole claim that the DOJ is now making.

Garland, for his part, also adds a proviso – the messages are “hidden”. At face value, this would seem to give the accuseds’ lawyers an additional challenge. To the contrary, the opposite would be true: making a charge in which no method of falsifiability can be established, is a baseless charge. It is not a ‘hidden crime’, but an activity indistinguishable from lawful behavior. More to the point, the subjects being discussed, whether influenced by the alleged money or not, were matters already in the public domain, expressing views and sharing information which is already readily available everywhere, and which were commonplace beliefs among an already significant part of the American population. We are not talking state or corporate secrets, calls for violence or other seditious activity, which rise to the level of a national security risk.

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Honest questions.

• Now It Is the White House that Is Smearing Tucker Carlson (Paul Craig Roberts)

Tucker interviewed Darryl Cooper whose view of World War II appears to be based in the 50-year research of historian David Irving. It is not the official view established by court historians. Consequently, the “White House condemns Tucker Carlson’s ‘Nazi propaganda’ interview as ‘disgusting and sadistic insult.’” In his well researched books, World War II historian David Irving reported that whereas he found evidence that Jews were murdered in the hundreds of thousands, he cannot find evidence of an organized Holocaust. He said that from all the documents he could find and force out of sealed archives, the crimes against the Jews resulted from decisions unrelated to an organized plan of extermination. No historian has ever found a Nazi plan for Jewish extermination. Such a massive undertaking as a Holocaust could not be undertaken without a bureaucratic organization and an organized plan, but there is no evidence of any such organization and plan.

Hitler repeatedly said that the Jewish question would be settled after the war. He spoke of relocating Jews to Madagascar. Later with the initial success of his invasion of the Soviet Union, Hitler spoke of relocating Jews to the eastern part of the Soviet Union that he would leave to Stalin. Reporting Irving’s findings does not make Irving or me or anyone an anti-semite or holocaust denier. Irving simply reported what he found, and I merely reported what Irving found. It sounds like that is what Darryl Cooper is doing on Carlson’s program. Ron Unz, himself a Jew, has raised his own questions about Holocaust evidence in the Unz Review. Western civilization works by raising questions, not by imposing dogmas. If all research results are denounced by those who don’t like the findings, how is truth established? It seems to me that Jews hurt their case by shouting down with name-calling and threats against reputations and careers every time they hear something that they don’t like or that doesn’t fit the narrative.

If the Holocaust story is accurate, it will stand on its own feet without name-calling and enemies lists. The indoctrinated notion of the unparalleled evil of Nazi Germany rests more on war propaganda than in fact. Irving’s books, Churchill’s War and Hitler’s War are the most researched and most honest books about the war. On the basis of an honest rendition of the record, Churchill comes across as a worse war criminal than Hitler. Read the two books, and make your own decision. Why rely on ancient war propaganda? The widespread view that Hitler started World War II and intended to conquer the world is total ignorance kept alive by court historians. World War II was started by the British and French when they declared war on Germany. What Hitler was doing in Poland was the same as Putin is doing in Ukraine. What Putin is doing is protecting Russian people, who found themselves included in a foreign country by the political decisions made by others than themselves, from persecution and slaughter by Ukrainians.

In Poland Hitler was protecting German people, who were stuck into Poland by decisions made by others than themselves, from persecution, dispossession, and death by the Polish. Hitler’s protection of German people was no business of the British any more than Putin’s protection of Russians is any business of the US. No one has answered David Irving’s findings. They just call him names. That tells you where the stronger case resides. I am not a WW II historian and neither is Tucker Carlson, but we both wonder why views are suppressed if they can be factually disproved. The propagandistic way in which WW II has been presented for 83 years has had major harmful effects on countries, their populations, foreign affairs and world history. Those who bring balance to the story should be celebrated, not demonized.

If you will notice, during the 21st century in every country in the Western world what can be discussed or even mentioned has been massively narrowed. We have reached the point where almost anything said or written is hate speech, racist, misogynist, a threat to democracy, offensive, insensitive, anti-semitic, or Russian propaganda. The great writings in the English language, such as Shakespeare, cannot be read in schools because they violate strictures that have been imposed on language. Bigots now dictate our use of language. Official narratives dictate our understanding of history and current events. A world is being created for us in which facts and truth are objectionable.

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“Harris has done nothing to distance herself from Biden’s policies on Israel and Palestine. Her official campaign site doesn’t spell out any stance on the conflict — or any other issue, for that matter.”

• PAC Runs Ads In Muslim-Heavy Michigan Lauding Harris For Israel Support (ZH)

Hoping to further estrange Michigan’s Muslim voters from Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, a Republican political action committee has launched a clever ad campaign that praises Harris for supporting the State of Israel and for putting “supporters of a free Palestine…in their place.” The ads are the work of the Future Coalition PAC. Launched in July, its treasurer is Pennsylvania Republican Ray Zaborney, according to Huffington Post’s Kevin Robillard, who was first to report the campaign. Distributed via digital platforms, the videos feature a female narrator speaking approvingly of Harris: “Vice President Harris has chosen a side — the right side. Harris has made herself clear: She stands with Israel and the Jewish people. She has, again and again. She understands the unbreakable bond between the U.S. and Israel. So when Netanyahu came to DC, Harris hosted the [Israeli] prime minister at the White House.

And when supporters of a free Palestine stood up for Gaza, Harris put them in their place. And supporters of free Palestine? They hate her…because Kamala Harris gets it. You can trust she’ll always support Israel.” While it would be difficult to dispute the general accuracy of the messaging, the ads have Michigan Democrats fuming, such as an anonymous operative who vented to Robillard: “Clearly, this ad is designed to get low-information and low-engagement Arab-American and left-leaning voters to oppose Harris…a classic ratfucking operation by a PAC that is helping a former president that uses ‘Palestinian’ as a slur.” Along with Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina and Wisconsin, Michigan is one of seven battleground states that will likely decide the 2024 presidential election. It’s also home to one of America’s largest Muslim populations, whose presidential preference could prove decisive in the state.

In the current RealClearPolitics polling average, Harris leads in Michigan by only 1.5% — less than half the 3.3% lead Biden held at the same time in 2020. He officially won by 2.8%. In this year’s Michigan Democratic primary, more than 100,000 Dems voted “uncommitted” to protest the Biden-Harris administration’s lopsided support for the State of Israel in its war in Gaza. Since that protest vote was more than 9 times Donald Trump’s 10,704-vote margin in his 2016 Michigan win over Hillary Clinton, it alarmed Democratic strategists. The Biden-Harris campaign has since struggled to walk a political tight-rope, attempting to give Muslims an audience on the issue while still reiterating unwavering support for Israel. Muslims have generally favored the Democratic Party. However, a poll released in August by the Council on American-Islamic Relations found that Harris is the choice of only 29% of Muslims — putting her in a tie with Green Party candidate Jill Stein; 11% back Trump.

The sneaky GOP ad’s line about Harris putting vocal supporters of a free Palestine “in their place” refers to an Aug. 7 incident at a Harris rally in Detroit, in which pro-Palestinian protesters interrupted her speech with chants of “Kamala, Kamala you can’t hide! We won’t vote for genocide.” Harris reflexively resorted to her trusty two-word debate line that exhilarates low-IQ leftists with its sheen of phony feminism, stating, “You know what, if you want Donald Trump to win, then say, that, otherwise I’m speaking.” Harris proceeded to stare down the protesters as if they were wearing MAGA hats and waving Confederate flags, rather than advocating for millions of civilians being subjected to devastation, disease and malnutrition. According to Palestinian authorities, the confirmed death toll from Israel’s 11-month-long attack on Gaza exceeds 40,000.

However, researchers writing in the medical journal Lancet estimate the eventual tally of dead could surpass 186,000, after factoring in the removal of undiscovered bodies in rubble, and the long-term effects from starvation, disease and destroyed housing and sanitation facilities. While Harris’ “I’m speaking” routine left the likes of vacuous New York Times columnists positively starry-eyed, Harris’ directive that pro-Palestinian protesters should be silent so as to assure Democratic control of the White House left many Michigan Muslims incensed, including one of the protesters at the rally. “Harris belittled us and used her event as a platform to say, ‘You are stuck with me and there is nothing we will do to help Palestinians’,” Salma Hamamy told Foreign Policy.

Joe Biden has long been a zealous backer of Israel. In 1986, he infamously — and bewilderingly — declared from the Senate floor, “Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interests in the region.” In the wake of the Oct 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel, the Biden White House has poured weapons into the Israeli Defense Forces arsenal, while providing diplomatic cover at the United Nations — to the detriment of America’s reputation in much of the world. Meanwhile, Harris has done nothing to distance herself from Biden’s policies on Israel and Palestine. Her official campaign site doesn’t spell out any stance on the conflict — or any other issue, for that matter.

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“Musk has co-founded six companies [..] Tesla, which has a market capitalization of $669.28 billion, is expected to hit the trillion dollar mark next year..”

• Musk Set To Become World’s First Trillionaire (RT)

Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk is on track to become the world’s first trillionaire by 2027, according to an estimate by the global education company Informa Connect Academy. The projection published on Friday is based on Musk’s average annual wealth growth rate which stands at 109.88%. The owner of X (formerly Twitter) is the richest man in the world with a fortune of $237 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Musk has co-founded six companies, including electric car maker Tesla and spacecraft manufacturer SpaceX. Tesla, which has a market capitalization of $669.28 billion, is expected to hit the trillion dollar mark next year. Musk acquired Twitter in 2022, renaming the platform X and promising more fairness and transparency.

Other multi-billionaires who are likely to join the Trillionaires Club in the near future are India’s richest man Gautam Adani, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, and Indonesian magnate Prajogo Pangestu. All three are expected to become trillionaires by 2028, Informa Connect Academy said. French businessman Bernard Arnault, the chairman of the world’s largest luxury conglomerate LVMH, is likely to become a trillionaire by 2030. Musk first appeared on the Forbes Billionaire list in 2012 with a net worth of $2 billion. In 2021, he became the world’s wealthiest man, displacing Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Musk lost this status in December 2022 to Arnault when Tesla stock tumbled, but topped the list once again six months later.

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“..the technology needs to be 10,000 times better. Extremely difficult, but not impossible..”

• Elon Musk Reveals When He Will Be Able To Send Humans To Mars (RT)

SpaceX will launch its first crewed flights to Mars in four years if its unmanned landings go well, CEO Elon Musk has said. The first uncrewed Starships to the Red Planet are expected to be launched in two years when the next Earth-Mars transfer window opens, the billionaire announced on social media on Saturday.“These will be uncrewed to test the reliability of landing intact on Mars,” Musk explained in a post on X. He expressed hope that if those landings go well, his space company will launch its first crewed flights to Mars in four years. The idea of building a sustainable human settlement on Mars within two decades is not out of reach, the billionaire pledged. “Flight rate will grow exponentially from there, with the goal of building a self-sustaining city in about 20 years,” Musk said, stressing that being multi-planetary will “vastly increase the probable lifespan of consciousness.”

“We will no longer have all our eggs, literally and metabolically, on one planet,” the SpaceX founder explained. In another post, he said SpaceX had created the first fully reusable rocket stage and, much more importantly, made the launch process economically viable. Making life multi-planetary is “fundamentally a cost per ton to Mars problem,” Musk said. “It currently costs about a billion dollars per ton of useful payload to the surface of Mars. That needs to be improved to $100k/ton to build a self-sustaining city there, so the technology needs to be 10,000 times better. Extremely difficult, but not impossible,” he concluded. In June, a Starship rocket returned from space and successfully landed in the Indian Ocean, completing a full mission around the globe on its fourth test flight.

The entrepreneur is counting on Starship, the largest rocket ever made, to help him achieve his goal of building a spacecraft capable of sending humans and cargo to the moon later this decade and eventually to Mars. The Starship spacecraft is designed to carry “both crew and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars and beyond,” SpaceX’s website notes.Mars is one of Earth’s “closest habitable neighbors,” and has “decent sunlight,” the site continues. “It is a little cold, but we can warm it up.” Gravity on Mars is about 38% that of Earth, “making it possible to lift heavy things and bound around,” SpaceX noted. “Furthermore, the day is remarkably close to that of Earth.”In February, Musk said that he wants to take one million people to Mars, claiming that he is working on a “game plan” to achieve this. “Humanity should have a moon base, cities on Mars, and be out there among the stars,” he said.

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“..the Trump-RFK Jr.-Musk team..”

• Elon Musk: First Mars Mission In Two Years; Make America Healthy Again (ZH)

SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said via X on Saturday evening that the Starship mega rocket will begin flying Mars missions in two years when the next Earth-Mars transfer window opens. The mission will be uncrewed and aim to test the rocket’s ability to land intact on Mars, as Musk’s dreams of occupying the Red Planet could become a reality within the next two decades. “The first Starships to Mars will launch in 2 years when the next Earth-Mars transfer window opens,” Musk wrote on X. He explained, “These will be uncrewed to test the reliability of landing intact on Mars. If those landings go well, then the first crewed flights to Mars will be in 4 years,” adding, “Flight rate will grow exponentially from there, with the goal of building a self-sustaining city in about 20 years. Being multiplanetary will vastly increase the probable lifespan of consciousness, as we will no longer have all our eggs, literally and metabolically, on one planet.”

Musk’s post quoted his post about making life multi-planetary while quoting billionaire Bill Ackman’s post about ‘Making America Healthy Again.’ Here’s the new Robert F. Kennedy Jr.-Donald Trump’s ‘Make America Healthy Again’ ad…

How occupying Mars overlaps with the dire need to reverse America’s imploding health trends could be explained by attorney and activist Tom Renz: “Perhaps NASA funding would be better used working on projects like this rather than wasting time on nonsense like DEI and climate change. A settlement on mars would be an incredible step forward for humanity… DEI is a step backwards towards the racism and sexism of the past.”

Kids now versus kids in the 1960s… We’re sure there has never been morbidity obese astronauts. Spacecrafts have weight limits after all.

One of the emerging themes from the Trump-RFK Jr.-Musk team could be the unification of America around proper health and the pursuit of becoming a multi-planetary species. Fix America’s health first before Starship makes life multi-planetary.

RFK MAHA

Trump RFK

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“..he thinks we’re going to change everything he did and it’s true that is our intention…”

• Vive la Démocratie! (Manley)

In April last year protestors in Paris swarmed BlackRock’s office to protest Macron’s pension reforms. A spokesperson for a French union told reporters at the time that they were there to let the world’s largest asset manager know they were taking workers’ pensions. President Emmanuel Macron appointed Michel Barnier, a right-wing politician who played a major role in the 2016 Brexit Task Force, as the new prime minister of France Thursday. In July Macron accepted the resignation of Gabriel Attal following the president’s electoral defeat. Attal was the country’s youngest ever prime minister and held the position for eight months. Macron’s decision is his effort to break a political stalemate that has grasped France since snap legislative elections which were held in July. In a statement which came from Macron’s office the president said that “the new prime minister and his government will create the conditions for the greatest stability.”

Macron, 46, had failed to appoint a new prime minister for a record period of time following a narrow victory for the leftwing New Popular Front in July. Over 80 lawmakers called for Macron to step down in the following weeks after Macron decided to reject the New Popular Front’s candidacy of Lucie Castets for prime minister, despite the coalition winning the most seats in July’s elections. Castets had voiced her desire to create a political alliance that would allow roll backs on pension reforms and tax hikes for the “ultra rich”. “They are all very worried. Nobody understands what Emmanuel Macron is doing, even the Macronists. He is not giving us [political parties] the chance to work together. If you ask me of course I will say I want our program to be the priority, but if you ask what can we change, what can we compromise on, I say we can compromise,” Castets told The Guardian. In March of last year France’s Senate passed a controversial reform bill to raise the retirement age for French citizens by two years. The Senate passed the bill by 195 votes to 112.

Macron’s decision to push through a bill that is extremely unpopular among voters for the alleged sake of the economy clearly went unforgiven during July’s election. “Macron says the problem is the [New Popular Front] program. He feels threatened because he thinks we’re going to change everything he did and it’s true that is our intention. But we’re not saying we will be able to change everything because we will need to find an agreement on every issue and we are fully aware of this,” Castets added. A study conducted by the French Observatory of Economic Conditions in 2020 found that those who have an unfavorable view of Macron believe him to be the “president of the rich”. The author of the report said the losers of Macron’s economic policy are among the “poorest, the unemployed, and the retired.”

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Democracy or world order? You must choose.

• CIA, MI6 Chiefs Warn Of Threats To ‘World Order’ (RT)

The global order is under threat from a number of state actors, the heads of the American and British foreign intelligence agencies – the CIA and MI6 – claimed in a joint op-ed published by the Financial Times on Saturday. In the piece, Bill Burns and Richard Moore pledged that Washington and London would work in lockstep to retain the status quo in a world where technology has considerably accelerated geo-political trends. Following the outbreak of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022, and the sharp downturn in ties with the West, senior Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, have repeatedly proclaimed the end of US hegemony and a global shift to multipolarity. In the op-ed, Burns and Moore observed that “there is no question that the international world order – the balanced system that has led to relative peace and stability and delivered rising living standards, opportunities and prosperity – is under threat in a way we haven’t seen since the cold war.”

“Today, we co-operate in a contested international system where our two countries face an unprecedented array of threats,” the top spies wrote. The piece singles out an “assertive Russia” in the context of the Ukraine conflict, which both the CIA and MI6 “saw… coming.” The spy agencies’ chiefs noted that the hostilities have demonstrated the increased role of technology in modern warfare, in particular unmanned systems and satellite reconnaissance. In addition, Burns and Moore accused Moscow of waging a “reckless campaign of sabotage across Europe” as well as spreading “lies and disinformation designed to drive wedges between us.” However, according to the op-ed, in the eyes of the CIA and MI6 “the principal intelligence and geopolitical challenge of the 21st century” is the “rise of China.” Both agencies have already reorganized their processes to “reflect that priority.”

Speaking at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) in early June, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stated: “We are talking about polycentrism, a departure from previous norms, and we see the desperate resistance of the collective West… They see the norm differently, as their own dominance, as a world order based on one rule, that they must dominate as before, and everyone must do only what the dominant power allows them to do.” The diplomat insisted that Western narratives are, however, not shared by the global majority, which has embraced the concept of multipolarity. “We should not forget that the collective West are a minority,” Zakharova stressed at the time.

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“..2,530 soldiers died between 2014 and 2019 from causes ranging from car crashes to drug overdoses to cancer, while more than one-third took their own lives..”

• US Military Suicide As A Result Of The Ongoing War On Terror (Van den Ende)

Long ago, the U.S. wanted to give itself the image of a true democracy, the defender of human rights, the policeman of the world, the defender of justice and humanity. Perhaps the “founding fathers” of the American Republic had this in mind, but the ideal was never realized and has been in ruins since the so-called “War on Terror” was launched in 2001. Before this episode, there were already countless wars by the U.S., like the Korean and Vietnam Wars. The Americans tried to justify all that by claiming they had liberated Europe from Hitler’s fascism, and subsequently, they were purportedly freeing the world from “evil communism”. However, a fateful turning point emerged, heralding the demise of the American empire. The terror attack of 9/11 was allegedly by radicalized Muslims. But there are too many questions and above all lies. The U.S. has become an empire of lies about what happened, and who did it.

The biggest lies were told about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. After all the alleged attackers almost all came from Saudi Arabia. That their leader, Osama bin Laden, would have hidden in the caves of Tora Bora in Afghanistan might be possible, but there was still no justification for the war and bombing of that country back to the Stone Age. As with Iraq, a country which mainly consists of 80 percent Shia, not radical Sunnis typical of Al Qaeda. The Americans then under President George Bush Sr. left these Shia in 1991 to die at the end of the First Gulf War against Iraq. His son President George W Bush Jr. started it again in 2003, reportedly as revenge for the failed assassination plan on his father, justifying it by the so-called 9/11 attack. As Nick Turse details in this article, Suicide Squad, the War on Terror is not over yet and the majority of victims these days are American soldiers and servicemen who commit suicide in large numbers.

The United States, which now spends more on its military than the other top 10 countries combined, has failed to win a single war that matters. It lost the Korean and Vietnam Wars. It lost the never-ending Global War on Terror, and it spent 20 years losing in Afghanistan and Iraq. About 7,000 American soldiers lost their lives in combat during the War on Terror since 2001, but the real epidemic of deaths can be found in the U.S. itself. Approximately 2,530 soldiers died between 2014 and 2019 from causes ranging from car crashes to drug overdoses to cancer, while more than one-third took their own lives. Just 96 soldiers died in combat during those same five years. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

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“Many countries are seeking membership in BRICS because they are tired of the “hidden” and “sometimes open aggression” of the US..”

• Zakharova Likens US To Hollywood Ax-Wielding Maniac (RT)

Many countries are seeking membership in BRICS because they are tired of the “hidden” and “sometimes open aggression” of the US and are looking for new forms of cooperation, Maria Zakharova, the spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said on Sunday. Earlier this week, Moscow said that Türkiye had officially applied to join BRICS, becoming the first NATO state to seek membership in the non-Western economic alliance. Over 30 countries have so far applied to become part of the group, which currently incorporates ten, including Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Commenting to TASS news agency on why various nations are willing to join BRICS, Zakharova said that “the world is tired of American attacks” and “is voting for a different form of relationship.”

Nations would like to keep building ties on the principles of international law, “but since Washington, like some kind of maniac from its own Hollywood movie, destroys everything with a lawn mower, a saw, or some kind of an ax, the world is forced to look for new forms of interaction,” she explained. And these forms are the likes of BRICS, but not NATO, according to the Russian diplomat. On Wednesday, Russian presidential aide Yury Ushakov confirmed earlier media reports that Türkiye has officially applied to join BRICS and added that the group’s member states will consider the bid. According to the official, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has also accepted Moscow’s invitation to attend the BRICS summit next month in the Russian city of Kazan. Russia is currently chairing the organization. BRICS was founded in 2006 by Brazil, Russia, India, and China, with South Africa joining in 2011. The group expanded this year when Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates became full members.

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NATO as well as BRICS.

• Why Turkiye’s Move to Join BRICS as Full Member is Big Deal (Sp.)

BRICS may receive a new addition in the near future as Turkiye lodged an application for a full-fledged membership with the economic bloc this week. Turkiye’s membership may be welcome news for BRICS as the Turkish economy was rated by the IMF in 2023 as the 17th largest in the world, with the country’s GPD last year being appraised at a little over $1 trillion. According to the World Bank, Turkiye displayed a steady real GDP growth rate (averaged 5.4%) from 2002 till 2022, as well as a decrease in poverty that dropped from over 20% in 2007 to 7.6% in 2021. Turkiye’s geographical location, right on the boundary between Europe and Asia, along with its control of the Bosporus and Dardanelles Straits linking the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, make the country a natural logistical hub for moving goods between the Global South and Global North.

Ankara’s considerable clout in the Middle Eastern affairs, where it has long been one of the top players, and its influence on the African continent may also benefit Turkiye’s future fellow members in the BRICS. At the same time, better access to the BRICS members’ markets may help Turkiye deal with its own economic problems such as, for example, rampant inflation that remains a concern for Ankara today. Ironically, the World Bank notes that the reliance of Turkish industries on “carbon-intensive processes and fossil fuels” presents a challenge in Turkiye’s cooperation with the EU in light of the latter’s focus on “green” technologies and climate change. Meanwhile, BRICS members are not so fixated on destroying their economies for the sake of an environmental agenda and thus might make much better business partners for Turkiye.

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NATO as well as BRICS AND an islamic alliance.

• Erdogan Wants Greater Islamic Alliance To Combat Israeli ‘Expansionism’ (ZH)

On Saturday Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan issued a blistering speech at an Islamic schools’ association event near Istanbul once again condemning Israel. But this time he ratcheted the rhetoric as the remarks came a day after a Turkish-American woman was shot during a protest by Israeli troops in the West Bank. Erdogan essentially called for an Islamic uprising against the Jewish state, saying that a Muslim alliance of countries and populations is needed against what he called “the growing threat of expansionism” from Israel. “The only step that will stop Israeli arrogance, Israeli banditry, and Israeli state terrorism is the alliance of Islamic countries,” Erdogan said.

And in a very rare positive reference to Assad of Syria, he described that recent steps by Turkey to advance ties with Egypt and Syria are aimed fundamentally at “forming a line of solidarity against the growing threat of expansionism.” Interestingly, this would bring NATO’s number two largest miliary into an indirect alliance with Iran. But improvement of Turkish ties with the Syrian state also has a lot to do with squeezing out the Kurds in northern Syria. Both Ankara and Damascus have long wanted to see US troops, who are supporting local Kurdish militias, kicked out of the region. This week Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi met with Erdogan in Turkey, and heavily focused their discussions on the Gaza crisis. Egypt-Israel tensions have been evident over accusations from Tel Aviv that Egyptian border troops have turned a blind eye to smuggling and underground tunnels.

Erdogan’s threats against Israel have grown of late, sending Turkey’s relations with Israel spiraling, and with trade embargos on a list of export items to boot. In late July Erdogan had threatened that his country could intervene militarily in Gaza to defend Palestinians against the Israelis. “We need to be very strong so that Israel cannot do these ridiculous things to Palestine. Just as we entered Karabakh, just as we entered Libya, we can do something similar to them,” Erdogan had said in a speech to his ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party. But now given Turkish citizen (and American dual national) Aysenur Ezgi Eygi was killed Friday in the West Bank, such rhetoric from Turkish leaders is set to ratchet further.

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“..the Iranian capital since 1786..”

• Iran’s New President Wants To Move Capital Out Of Tehran (RT)

The capital of Iran should be transferred from Tehran to a city closer to the country’s south coast, President Masoud Pezeshkian has said.In a speech on Saturday, Pezeshkian, who took office in July, suggested that it is pointless to keep developing Tehran due to the numerous difficulties faced by the city. The capital is currently plagued by “water shortages, land subsidence and air pollution,” among other things, he said, as cited by the news outlet Javan Online. “Tehran as the capital of the country is facing problems to which we have no solution,” the president acknowledged, suggesting that the best way out would be to “relocate the political and economic center of the country.” Simply telling residents that they should move out of Tehran will not work, and the government “must first go ourselves so that the people would follow us,” Pezeshkian argued.

There are also economic reasons for finding a new capital closer to the Persian Gulf, through which key trading routes pass, he stressed. “Further development of the country is impossible with the continuation of the current trend, when we bring the resources from the south of the country and the sea to the center, turn them into products there and send them back to the south for export,” the president argued. Such a state of affairs “severely depreciates and reduces our competitiveness, and we have no other choice but to transfer the economic and political center of the country to the south and closer to the sea,” he insisted. Gholamhossein Karbaschi, who served as Tehran’s mayor in the 1990s, has disputed Pezeshkian’s idea, arguing that there is no suitable substitute for Tehran. “Where do you want to go?” he said in an interview with the Asr Iran outlet. The former mayor warned that some countries that previously decided to relocate their capitals have ended up losing money and getting two problematic cites instead of one.

Tehran, which has been the Iranian capital since 1786, is located in the north of the country, 100km (63 miles) from the Caspian Sea. The city is home to 9.4 million people, nearly 17 million in its greater metropolitan area, making Tehran the biggest city in Iran and Western Asia, and the second-largest metropolitan area in the Middle East, after Cairo. It is not the first time that the Iranian authorities have suggesting moving the capital out of Tehran. Similar proposals were made during the term of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad between 2005 and 2013. At the time, parliament voted to set up a special council to seek a replacement. However, a final decision on transferring the capital was never made. Pezeshkian was inaugurated as Iranian president in late July after beating his rival Saeed Jalili by 53.7% to 44.3% in the second round of the election earlier that month. The snap poll was called after the death of Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash in May.

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Western “values” change (aka erode) too much too fast.

• China Bans Foreigners From Adopting Its Children (RT)

China has officially shut down its international adoption program, the Foreign Ministry has announced. The move comes at a time when hundreds of American families have pending applications to adopt Chinese children, according to the Associated Press. “Apart from the adoption…from one’s collateral relatives by blood of the same generation…China will not send children abroad for adoption. This is also in line with the spirit of relevant international covenants,” Mao Ning, a spokeswoman for the ministry, said in a first official announcement of the rule change. AP reported that in a phone call with American diplomats in China, government officials said they “will not continue to process cases at any stage” other than special cases covered by an exemption clause. Over the last three decades the US has been the most common destination for overseas adoptions of Chinese children.

“We understand there are hundreds of families still pending completion of their adoption, and we sympathize with their situation,” the State Department said.Back in 2007, Beijing toughened the vetting process for foreign adopters, with an emphasis on family lifestyle and age, and only accepting applications from heterosexual married couples. Beijing temporarily suspended foreign adoptions during the coronavirus pandemic, but later resumed for them couples who had travel authorizations prior to 2020. China’s ban follows similar steps from other countries. In January, Denmark’s only overseas adoption agency ceased operations, after concerns were raised over irregularities and fabricated documents. In June, Norway tightened controls over foreign adoptions and is now conducting an investigation into whether past adoptions were legal and ethical.

Citizens of several countries are already prohibited from adopting Russian children. The 2013 ‘Dima Yakovlev Law’ banned adoptions by Americans, after a Russian orphan adopted by a Virginia couple was left in a car for nine hours and died of heat stroke. In August 2022, a proposal was put to the State Duma to expand the adoption ban to all “unfriendly countries.” Sending Russian children there would be a “blow to the future of the nation,” they argued, since the West “destroys traditional values.” President Vladimir Putin objected, however, saying that the way it was drafted, the bill would infringe on the rights of Ukrainians living on Russian territory. Russia banned same-sex couples from adopting children in 2013. The Russian Orthodox Church has since proposed banning international adoptions by couples from countries that allow “gender reassignment” procedures, an idea that was then backed by lawmakers.

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Long overview. Notable: a break up might be lucrative financially. But they would have to abandon their power dreams.

• A Post-Google World (Stoller)

When Google first started, it was a high-quality search engine, and its founders believed that advertising presented an inherent conflict of interest for any such product. “Advertising funded search engines,” they wrote, “will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of consumers.” Nevertheless, in 2000, the venture funded company, after failing to build a technology licensing business, started an advertising arm, quickly building up a large number of advertising customers who liked the ability to put text ads next to relevant search results. In the early 2000s, Google started a third party advertising business, cutting deals with publishers that let them put Google Ads on their web pages and take a slice of the ad money. In this way, publishers began accessing the ad demand that Google had control over. But this new line of business introduced another conflict of interest, since Google was now edging closer to controlling both the buyers of ads and the sellers of them, and all the user data advertising and publishing tracked.

In 2007, Google bought YouTube, a source of ad inventory, giving it more power over the selling of ads. In 2008, Google purchased an adtech company called DoubleClick, which had been the leading provider of software to allow publishers to manage their ad inventory, as well as a large repository of data. Slowly, subtly, Google was intermediating as both the buyer and seller in the ad market, an obvious set of conflicts. Before its purchase, Google had tried to enter DoubleClick’s business, but failed, because it’s hard to move from one software platform to another. DoubleClick’s former CEO had observed, “Nothing has such high switching costs. . . .Takes an act of God to do it.” That same year, Google also bought an ad exchange (AdX), where buyers of advertising could match with sellers of ad inventory, in a quasi-financial market.

After buying DoubleClick, Google tied its control over advertising demand to publisher use of its software. As the DOJ put it in the complaint, “If publishers wanted access to exclusive Google Ads’ advertising demand, they had to use Google’s publisher ad server (DFP) and ad exchange (AdX), rather than equivalent tools offered by Google’s rivals.” The result is that it acquired a monopoly across the entire industry, in the software publishers use and the matching engine for advertisers. It also built a ubiquitous service Google Analytics that measured web traffic for publishers, so it did all the measurement as well. One consequences was that Google charged high prices, keeping between 30-50% of every advertising dollar that went through its system. That take rate was bad enough. But Google also acquired surveillance capacity over every publisher and advertiser.

It was as if every night Google could break into the offices of the Wall Street Journal and take its subscriber list, and then go to its own advertising clients and tell them that it could sell them access to Wall Street Journal readers for much cheaper rates when those readers opened Google owned and operated properties, like Gmail, YouTube, search, and so forth. In doing so, Google gained the ability to direct ad revenue away from third party publishers to itself. To buttress its ability to target, in 2016 Google violated a promise it made when it bought DoubleClick. It had told enforcers it would guard user privacy and segment data. Instead, it decided to combine all data across all its different services, from Gmail to YouTube to search, into detailed dossiers of each user. Google now had a machine, where it could spy on users across the open web, and then use that data to manipulate ad auctions, both charging high prices when display ads went on third party sites, and simply moving broad ad demand to its own properties instead of third party sites.

The same template repeated over the next ten to fifteen years. Publishers or ad entrepreneurs would try to find a way into auctions for ads to take some of Google’s margin and protect their data, and Google would respond by either buying their rival, locking out their rival with some sort of tying of its products, or both. There were a host of code words and programs to engage in these kinds of tactics, like “Project Nernanke,” “Project Narnia,” and “Jedi Blue.” And since publishers and adtech startups needed the huge amount of advertising buying power that Google controlled, and advertisers needed Google search and YouTube, it was a chicken and egg problem. You couldn’t get into either market without Google’s permission.

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Media is the biggest threat
https://twitter.com/i/status/1832127702662324409

 

 

Eva DSA

 

 

Thai cat

 

 

Thunderstruck
https://twitter.com/i/status/1832410969382768774

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in wartime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle December 28 2023

Dec 282023
 
 December 28, 2023  Posted by at 9:11 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  56 Responses »


Claude Monet Boulevard des Capucines 1873

 

• Jack Smith Files Motion to Stop Trump from Raising New J6 Evidence (PB)
• Trump Can Remain On Michigan Primary Ballot, State Supreme Court Rules (Pol.)
• US Police Bolster Patrols for Colorado Judges Amid Violent Threats (Sp.)
• Ramaswamy’s Campaign Stops Spending Money On TV Ads (JTN)
• The US Is Preparing For War With China (CP)
• Scott Ritter: US Sustainability in Jeopardy as World Turns Against Hegemon (Sp.)
• Righting A Wrong: Burying Decades of US-Led Wars (Sweidan)
• Zelensky’s News Conference Exposed West’s Fatigue – Zakharova (TASS)
• Kiev Cooking Up False Flag Involving Toxic Substances – Zakharova (TASS)
• US-Israel Genocide In Gaza Is Bad For French Shipping And Ports (Helmer)
• Erdogan Says Netanyahu Literally ‘Hitler’ (RT)
• Some Western Countries Say Netanyahu’s ‘End’ Is Near – Erdogan Adviser (Sp.)
• Milei Mulls Plan To Force Through Radical Reforms (RT)
• The DOJ Took More than Two Years to Answer a FOIA (Martens)

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1739689464497418266

 

 

Petchesky

 

 

Torah

 

 

 

 

Ritter

 

 


The global population growth rate peaked 60 years ago and has been largely in sharp decline ever since.

 

 

Ritter

 

 

 

 

” Jack Smith does not want Trump to point out to the jury that a political and selective prosecution is political and selective.”

• Jack Smith Files Motion to Stop Trump from Raising New J6 Evidence (PB)

Special Counsel Jack Smith filed a motion Wednesday morning seeking to prevent former President Donald Trump from claiming in his federal case that he was targeted for political prosecution by President Joe Biden as a form of “election interference.” Donald Trump, unironically, stands accused of “election interference” in connection to his legal and constitutionally protected election challenges over the 2020 election. Smith said in his motion that Trump should be barred from “introducing evidence, making arguments, or framing questions to advance a theory of selective or vindictive prosecution.” Judge Chutkan, an anti-Trump jurist who has consistently sided with the state’s prosecution efforts, is expected to fulfill all of Smith’s demands, no matter how contrary to due process or deleterious to the cause of justice.

The excessively constrictive measures would further rein in the speech of the 2024 presidential candidate in the midst of a campaign that has thus far established him as the clear favorite. The absurdity of Smith’s court demands were further illuminated by legal analyst Julie Kelly. “Jack Smith, in likely vain attempt to keep March 4 trial date, filed another pretrial related to what the jury should be allowed to consider. (All pretrial deadlines now on hold),” Kelly wrote on X. “Smith wants to preclude the jury from hearing evidence about Jan 6 in his Jan 6 case; Smith wants to prevent jury from learning about presence of undercover agents; After warnings by govt officials in 2016 and 2020 that malign foreign influences were attempting to interfere in national elections, Smith wants any evidence related to 2020 warnings kept from the jury; Jack Smith does not want Trump to point out to the jury that a political and selective prosecution is political and selective.” Political commentator Alexander Muse reacted to the news.

According to court documents, at least twenty FBI and ATF agents were embedded around the capitol building on January 6. There are multiple videos, among the limited number that have been made public, of undercover police officers on January 6 — some of them even urging the protesters to ‘go to the Capitol.’ A Congressman recently stated there were “at least 200” undercover federal agents in the crowd on January 6; including official FBI agents and human assets. FBI Director Christopher Wray has refused to give the number of federal agents that were in the crowd on January 6 after repeatedly being questioned on the matter. The Biden administration’s Department of Justice will not only turn America’s election process upside-down in the name of ‘stopping Trump,’ but it will corrupt its justice system to the core in order to do so. Even if that means stripping the accused of due process rights. Needless to say, this has nothing to do with “democracy,” and has everything to do with a corrupt ends-justify-the-means mentality that has state actors like Jack Smith stopping at nothing in order to get the desired result: In this case, re-election of a Democratic president.

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“..a list of candidates “generally advocated by the national news media to be potential presidential candidates.”

• Trump Can Remain On Michigan Primary Ballot, State Supreme Court Rules (Pol.)

Michigan’s highest court said Wednesday that Donald Trump can appear on the state’s Republican primary ballot, but the court declined to weigh in for now on whether Trump is eligible to run in the general election and serve again as president. The court turned away an appeal from Michigan voters who argue that Trump should be barred from the ballot because of his efforts to subvert the 2020 election and stoke violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The voters cite a provision of the 14th Amendment that, in some circumstances, bars people from holding public office if they have “engaged in insurrection or rebellion.” Last week, the Colorado Supreme Court became the first court in the country to declare Trump ineligible to run. The Colorado ruling is almost certain to end up at the U.S. Supreme Court soon.

Meanwhile, similar challenges have proceeded in dozens of other states. On Wednesday, the Michigan Supreme Court essentially punted on the question in the critical swing state, saying in a terse order that it would not take up the issue of Trump’s eligibility now. Earlier this month, a lower court ruled that Michigan’s secretary of state does not have the authority to remove Trump from the primary ballot. The voters challenging Trump’s eligibility — who were backed by the liberal advocacy group Free Speech for People, which has brought similar challenges across the country — tried to appeal that ruling to the Michigan Supreme Court. But the state Supreme Court, which consists of four Democrats and three Republicans, declined to hear the appeal, writing without elaboration that the court was “not persuaded that the questions presented should be reviewed by this Court.”

The Michigan Supreme Court’s order does not prevent the voters from contesting Trump’s eligibility to appear on the general election ballot if he wins the Republican nomination. By then, the U.S. Supreme Court may have definitively resolved the issue. One member of the state supreme court dissented from the decision not to hear the appeal now. Justice Elizabeth Welch, a Democrat, said the court should have heard the appeal and formally affirmed the lower court’s conclusion that the Michigan secretary of state could not strip Trump from the primary ballot. Trump celebrated the Michigan Supreme Court’s order on Wednesday. In a post on his social media site, Trump said the case was a “Desperate Democrat attempt to take the leading Candidate” off the ballot.

Michigan has an unusual process to select candidates for the presidential primary ballot. The secretary of state creates a list of candidates “generally advocated by the national news media to be potential presidential candidates.” Political parties may also submit additional candidates, and others can petition to get added.

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“..Other messages called for the justices to be dragged from their homes, hanged and shot..”

• US Police Bolster Patrols for Colorado Judges Amid Violent Threats (Sp.)

Colorado’s Denver Police Department announced on Tuesday it was investigating reports of threats of harassment against justices on the Colorado Supreme Court, adding that as a result security detail had been bolstered for the judges. “The Denver Police Department is currently investigating incidents directed at Colorado Supreme Court justices and will continue working with our local, state and federal law enforcement partners to thoroughly investigate any reports of threats or harassment,” Denver police said in a statement Tuesday. “Due to the open investigations and safety and privacy considerations, we will not be providing details of these investigations. The Department is providing extra patrols around justice’s residences in Denver and will provide additional safety support if/as requested.”

On Friday, the FBI also said it was investigating threats against the justices, and was working alongside local law enforcement in order to address potential threats of violence. “The FBI is aware of the situation and working with local law enforcement,” said Vikki Migoya, a spokesperson for the FBI Denver Field Office. “We will vigorously pursue investigations of any threat or use of violence committed by someone who uses extremist views to justify their actions regardless of motivation.” The threats of violence follow a 4-3 ruling made last week by the Colorado Supreme Court in which they made the unprecedented ruling to disqualify Trump from the state’s Republican presidential primary ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.

“We conclude that because President Trump is disqualified from holding the office of President under Section Three, it would be a wrongful act under the Election Code for the Secretary to list President Trump as a candidate on the presidential primary ballot,” the court’s majority wrote in an unsigned opinion. Following their decision, a flood of violent rhetoric descended upon the justices across social media platforms, with many of the messages coming from Trump supporters. The messages included posts which pledged to either maim or even kill the justices. Other messages called for the justices to be dragged from their homes, hanged and shot, said the SITE Intelligence Group. Trump’s campaign has vowed to appeal the ruling to the US Supreme Court, which is dominantly conservative. The Trump camp has blasted the effort as yet another politically-motivated effort to block his chances at serving a second presidential term.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1740029519334093199

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Seems weird that they’re only finding this out now. We’ve all seen how many people watch Tucker Carlson on X vs on Fox.

• Ramaswamy’s Campaign Stops Spending Money On TV Ads (JTN)

GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign is no longer spending money on TV ads and doesn’t have any currently booked, according to an ad tracking firm and the campaign. For the first week of December, Ramaswamy’s campaign spent about $200,000 on TV ads and later on in the month, it dropped to only $6,000 on TV ads, according to NBC News. The campaign stated that money will still be spent on advertising, just not on television. “We are focused on bringing out the voters we’ve identified — best way to reach them is using addressable advertising, mail, text, live calls and doors to communicate with our voters on Vivek’s vision for America, making their plan to caucus and turning them out,” the campaign’s press secretary Tricia McLaughlin told the outlet in an interview.

This change comes less than a month before the Jan. 23 New Hampshire primary and the Jan. 15 Iowa caucuses. “As you know, this isn’t what most campaigns look like. We have intentionally structured this way so that we have the ability to be nimble and hyper targeted in our ad spending,” McLaughlin also said. Other GOP primary presidential candidates, including former President Donald Trump, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, are still running advertisements on television.

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“It is unrealistic for one side to remodel the other.”

• The US Is Preparing For War With China (CP)

The Chinese view, based on what they call “Xi Jinping Thought,” is that the US-China association is the most important bilateral relationship in the world. As Chinese President Xi Jinping has explained: “How China and the US get along will determine the future of humanity.” This view is predicated on the acceptance of a high degree of integration between the two countries’ economies. They see this “entwining” as something to be promoted because both countries stand to benefit from each other’s development. Overarching the bilateral relationship from the Chinese perspective is a stance of friendly cooperative relations. A “common prosperity,” they believe, can be built on three principles. First is mutual respect. A critical aspect of that pillar of mutual relations is not crossing the red lines of either of the two global powers. Second is peaceful coexistence. This entails a commitment to manage disagreements through communications and dialogue. And third is win-win cooperation.

For example, increased trade with China boosted the annual purchasing power for US households. That the US and China occupy such dominant positions in the world entails concomitant responsibilities. According to the Chinese, major countries have major responsibilities to humanity. They point out that global problems, such as climate change, cannot be solved without US-China cooperation. Indeed, the US and China together contribute to 40% of the planet’s current greenhouse gas emissions. Beijing contrasts their posture with what they explicitly criticize as the Biden administration’s “zero-sum mentality.” In a zero-sum game, one player’s gain is equivalent to the other’s loss. This differs from the Chinese vision of “win-win” relations based on cooperation for mutual benefit. The Chinese take exception to the US definition of bilateral relations as one of antagonistic “strategic” competition.

The opposing paradigms were displayed at the APEC summit in San Francisco on November 15, where the two world leaders met face-to-face for the first time in two years. We do not know what was discussed in the closed-door meeting. But in a press conference afterward, US President Joe Biden said of the person he had just spent four hours: “Well, look, he’s a dictator in the sense that he is a guy who runs a country that is a communist country that’s based on a form of government totally different than ours.” Even neo-con US Secretary of State Antony Blinken winced at the press conference. His grimace was captured in a video that went viral.

Later that day, Chinese President Xi calmly instructed, as if responding to Biden’s indiscretion, “It is unrealistic for one side to remodel the other.” Peaceful coexistence for the Chinese necessitates a tolerance and acceptance of different social systems and modes of being. Xi further commented, “the planet Earth is big enough for the two countries to succeed.” Fortune acknowledged that Xi offered a vision different from what it characterized as Biden’s “winner-take-all” mentality. The business magazine noted that Biden has continued Trump’s tariffs on some Chinese products while tightening export controls and investments in high-tech areas such as advanced chips.

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“The drone technology of today has changed the modern battlefield in every way that the machine gun changed warfare during World War I or the tank changed warfare during World War II.”

• Scott Ritter: US Sustainability in Jeopardy as World Turns Against Hegemon (Sp.)

As 2023 comes to a close, the Israel-Palestinian crisis and the Ukrainian conflict are dominating world news, prompting questions as to what next year holds in store for the international community. Sputnik’s Dimitri Simes, Jr. sat down with former US Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter to sum up the results of the year and discuss how things may pan out in 2024. The Ukrainian military will continue to sustain a strategic defeat in 2024 as it is exhausted in terms of manpower, ammo and arms, according to Sputnik’s interlocutor. It’s up to Moscow and the Russian Armed Forces’ operational tempo whether the conflict will drag on until 2025, as per Ritter. Russia’s special military operation to demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine has never meant to be a blitzkrieg, the expert stressed, adding that the conflict will end when political and military objectives set by the Russian leadership are accomplished.

Presently, Russia is continuing to “grind” the Ukrainian military and steadily liberate its new territories, thus accomplishing the demilitarization task. When it comes to Moscow’s political goals, it’s important to stamp out the forces behind the 2014 coup d’etat that brought ultra-nationalists and neo-Nazis, including the Azov Battalion, the Svoboda Party and other ideological heirs of Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera, to power. In the course of the special military operation, Russia has mastered modern warfare, per Sputnik’s interlocutor. “The Ukrainian-Russian conflict has opened up a new chapter in modern warfare,” Ritter stressed. “The drone technology of today has changed the modern battlefield in every way that the machine gun changed warfare during World War I or the tank changed warfare during World War II.

The drones have changed the face of modern warfare, and I think that armies all around the world are going to be studying or should be studying what’s taking place on the battlefield between Ukraine and Russia today.” Ritter rubbished the claims made by US President Joe Biden and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin that having won the Ukrainian conflict, Russia would proceed to take on NATO member states. Per Ritter, Washington’s rhetoric is “fear-mongering” aimed at justifying further military spending. After accomplishing its goals in Ukraine, Russia will focus on strengthening its military and stepping up the protection of its borders in the West, Arctic and the East, where they are threatened by the US and their NATO allies, according to the military expert.

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“..hegemonic stability theory” vs “balance of power theory..”

• Righting A Wrong: Burying Decades of US-Led Wars (Sweidan)

As previously mentioned by The Cradle, “Israel’s ongoing war on the Gaza Strip is best understood to be a US-backed one,” one that is being fought to safeguard US influence and interests in West Asia. However, the maneuvering room for Washington’s allies is shrinking dramatically. Unlike the diverse strategic options West Asian countries explored during the Ukraine war, Gaza offers no such latitude. It is fundamentally Washington’s war, demanding collective mobilization to defend the US position. It is also telling that the US-led multination task force, Operation Guardian of Prosperity in the Red Sea, is already facing major set-backs since its recent inception, with some members pulling out and others choosing to remain unnamed.

White House National Security Council Strategic Communications Coordinator John Kirby had to awkwardly caveat the secrecy like this: “There are some countries that have agreed to participate and be part of the operation in the Red Sea, but they have to decide how much they want that to be public. And I’m going to leave it to them so that they can describe it somehow, because not everyone wants to be public.” For example, the role of NATO member Turkiye has transformed into that of an energy transmission station for Israel, while the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Jordan serve as a transit bridge for goods bound for the occupation state that Yemen prevents from passing through the Red Sea. Notably, shipments from Turkiye to Israel surged to 355 after 7 October, with many linked to the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and individuals close to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, including his son Buraq.

Even Egypt, restricted to allowing aid trucks through the Rafah crossing, could not facilitate aid to Palestinians without US approval. In international relations, there are two main theories that address the relationship between power and the spread of peace. The first is the hegemonic stability theory which posits that the international order is likely to remain stable when one country is the dominant global power. The proponents of this theory believe that the existence of a single hegemon deters all powers in the world and prevents them from spreading tension. However, given the reality that the United States has dominated a conflict-ridden global order for four decades, it can be argued that the presence of the hegemon did not lead to global stability. Rather, the dominant was the major source and catalyst for spreading tension around the world. It is sufficient to look at the distribution of US bases in the world and the proliferation of military agreements signed by Washington to understand how the US consistently provokes rivals and challengers, and creates strife.

The second is the balance of power theory, in which states seek to protect themselves by preventing any country from acquiring enough military power to control all other nations. If one power dominates – such as the United States – the theory predicts that weaker countries will unite in a defense alliance. According to this theory, a balance of power between competing states or alliances raises the cost of tension for everyone and ensures stability in the world. Thus, achieving peace today requires a rise in the level of power among Washington’s rivals, power which will provide the deterrence required to limit the spread of tensions around the world. Increasing the capabilities of Washington’s rivals is now a key requirement for all peaceful peoples and nations. And according to the balance of power theory, uniting against Israel is the most successful way to stabilize West Asia and its environs today.

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“The begging of their Ukrainian underlings is causing ever more irritation in Washington, London and Brussels.”

• Zelensky’s News Conference Exposed West’s Fatigue – Zakharova (TASS)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s recent year-end news conference signaled that Kiev lacks confidence about its future and the West has grown tired of Ukraine’s political setbacks, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said. “Everyone has seen the Kiev regime’s lack of confidence about its own future amid growing Western fatigue with their failures,” she said at a news conference. “The begging of their Ukrainian underlings is causing ever more irritation in Washington, London and Brussels.” “There is a growing reluctance among ordinary people in Western society to nurture the corrupt regime from their own pockets,” the diplomat went on to say. “The sooner the collective West realizes that the settlement of the Ukrainian conflict, which it provoked, is possible only through achieving the goals of the special military operation, the sooner peace will come.”

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“Zelensky and his entire gang do not care about the consequences that their own people will face..”

• Kiev Cooking Up False Flag Involving Toxic Substances – Zakharova (TASS)

Kiev is plotting to carry out a false flag operation involving the use of Western-made toxic substances in order to accuse Russia of alleged use of chemical weapons, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told a briefing. “There is nothing [in terms of concrete information] about Bucha: no names, no dates of birth, no passport data, they simply don’t exist. There was nothing, because the entire thing was a false flag operation,” she emphasized. “The Kiev regime is plotting something similar this time. They may organize another anti-Russian provocation with the use of Western-made toxic substances in order to launch a new campaign within UN structures and the world media to accuse our country of the alleged deliberate use of chemical weapons,” the diplomat said.

Zakharova pointed out that, according to available information, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) is actively involved in the preparation of such a false flag event, and has enlisted the cooperation of the Kiev-based Ukrainian company Realab. “It specializes in the import of chemical reagents and precursors. In October-November 2023, Ukraine purchased in Germany a so-called small batch of triethanolamine and nitrogen-containing sodium compound produced by the US company Honeywell. The company is American, [but is] located in the city of Seltz (Germany),” she added.

At the same time, the spokeswoman noted that triethanolamine is included in the Chemical Annex of the Chemical Weapons Convention and is subject to annual declaration. “This compound is a precursor for the synthesis of a toxic substance with a dermal explosive effect, such as nitrogen mustard gas. Nitrogenous sodium compounds are highly toxic and their striking effect is similar to that of cyanide,” Zakharova stressed. “According to Russian experts, these chemicals may be used by the SBU to produce a chemical agent to carry out a limited act of provocation on the territory controlled by the Kiev regime within the range of our troops,” she said.

According to the diplomat, amid growing world fatigue with the Kiev regime and reductions in financial and military aid from the West, Kiev is sufficiently desperate to take any steps that might put the Ukrainian conflict back in the headlines and at the top of the international agenda. “The regime of [Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky continues to eagerly carry out the instructions of its overseas masters to wage war to the last Ukrainian. They do not care at all about the consequences of this false flag operation, just as they did not care at all about the consequences of using the depleted uranium shells that were delivered to the Kiev regime by the UK. Zelensky and his entire gang do not care about the consequences that their own people will face if this very false flag operation [involving highly toxic chemicals] is actually carried out,” Zakharova concluded.

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“Macron shot the messenger..”

• US-Israel Genocide In Gaza Is Bad For French Shipping And Ports (Helmer)

The message delivered last week to French President Emanuel Macron was a dramatic one: Never mind Israel throttling the Palestinians, Macron was told, the Houthis and their Arab and Iranian allies are capable of throttling France. Macron shot the messenger. Bernard Émié was fired last Wednesday, December 20, and Nicolas Lerner put in his place. The announcement — the first time there’s been such a switch between the traditionally competing foreign and domestic intelligence chiefs — was made in a tweet by the French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu. Émié has been the head of France’s foreign intelligence agency, the DGSE (Directorate-General for External Security), since 2017. His replacement is Nicolas Lerner, head of France’s internal security agency, the DGSI (Directorate-General for Internal Security), since 2018. By coincidence on the very same day of Émié’s sacking, Lecornu took a telephone call from Washington.

US Secretary of Defense General Lloyd Austin told Lecornu “the Red Sea is vital for global commerce, noting that the scale and increasing frequency of these attacks constitute a significant international problem that must be addressed. The United States and France are both making significant contributions to stability in the region and seek further collaboration on bilateral and multilateral solutions. Secretary Austin thanked France for its support to the 44-nation joint statement condemning the Houthis’ illegal attacks on international shipping.” This is the Pentagon “readout”. The meaning is the opposite. France is pulling its naval forces in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden out of Austin’s military operation and of targeting by the US and Israel of Houthi units on the Yemen shore, as well as of the Iranian intelligence vessels, MV Behshad at anchor in the Red Sea, and the MV Saviz in the eastern Indian Ocean (Arabian Sea).

In fact, the elimination of Émié, according to French intelligence sources, signals that US backing for Israel’s genocidal operation against the Gaza Palestinians, and the expansion of the war by the Houthis of Yemen and Hezbollah of Lebanon, are driving French national interest calculations in the opposite direction from the Americans and Israelis. Émié is a former French ambassador to Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, and Algeria, and the French Foreign Ministry’s chief policymaker for the Arab world for several years before he was appointed to run the DGSE in 2017. Lerner, by contrast, has no direct Arab experience. A university classmate of President Macron’s, his career has been limited to police operations in the south of France, Corsica, and Paris, and then in the private office of the Interior Minister as Macron chopped the ministry’s head three times in eighteen months.

The French press are struggling to explain what has happened to the heads of their intelligence services. According to the state press agency AFP and Le Monde, “Emié launched reforms within the DGSE and saw the agency’s budget increase. He is said to have improved relations with the domestic security agency. But many have criticised the DGSE under him for failing to foresee the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and a string of military coups in former French colonies Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.” A rightwing, bank-owned regional newspaper, L’Est Républicain, claims: “Bernard Emié and his successor Nicolas Lerner contributed to improving the often tense relations between the DGSE and the DGSI, the replacement of the former by the latter confirming links described in the intelligence community as very regular and professional.”

Defense Minister Lecornu has been struggling with Macron’s pro-US, pro-Israel, anti-Russian line as the war in Gaza has been escalating. Towards Israel, Lecornu said the week after the Hamas operation began in October, “the bulk of the support we’re providing today is intelligence. The intelligence provided is provided as part of the regular partnership between our two countries. Unfortunately, we have a long history in the fight against terrorism, and our intelligence services have particularly powerful resources and sensors…Iran poses undeniable security challenges, both in its support for Russia in the war in Ukraine and on the issue of nuclear proliferation. Today, the priority is to avoid escalation. Israel has the right to defend itself and its people from these atrocities. However, this response must be proportionate and consistent with the laws of war. We emphasize that no other actor hostile to Israel should seek to take advantage of the situation…There is a very difficult situation in the Gaza Strip. France has nothing to be ashamed of, it has always been one of the most reliable countries in terms of aid and support.”

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“The Israeli military is the “most moral army in the world,” and it is currently battling “the most disgusting and cruel terrorist group in the world..”

• Erdogan Says Netanyahu Literally ‘Hitler’ (RT)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is no different from Adolf Hitler, Türkiye’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has said, condemning Israel’s campaign in Gaza. Erdogan fired the new diplomatic broadside at Netanyahu on Wednesday when he delivered an opening speech at an award ceremony in Ankara. West Jerusalem now has “Nazi camps” of its own to hold Palestinians in, the president stated, implying the campaign in Gaza was as bad – or even worse – than the Holocaust committed by Nazi Germany. “We’ve seen the Nazi camps of Israel. How does this happen? They used to speak ill about Hitler, but how are you any different than Hitler?” Erdogan stated. They are going to make us miss Hitler. Is what this Netanyahu is doing any less than what Hitler did? It is not.

The only real difference between the late Nazi fuhrer and the Israeli PM is the broad support from the West for Netanyahu and his campaign against Hamas, the Turkish leader claimed. “He is richer than Hitler; he gets the support from the West. All sorts of support comes from the United States. And what did they do with all this support? They killed more than 20,000 Gazans,” he stressed. Türkiye’s president has long sought to portray himself as a protector of Palestinians, repeatedly criticizing Israeli policies. Erdogan drastically ramped up his rhetoric amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza, which broke out in the aftermath of the attack by the Palestinian militant group Hamas on southern Israel on October 7.

The new remarks, arguably the most hostile ones produced by Erdogan to date, have prompted a response from Netanyahu. Israeli PM dismissed the criticism, pointing fingers at Erdogan’s questionable account and allegations of committing genocide in Türkiye and beyond. “Erdogan, who commits genocide against the Kurds, who holds a world record for imprisoning journalists who oppose his rule, is the last person who can preach morality to us,” Netanyahu stated, falling short of accusing Erdogan of being the true Hitler himself. The Israeli military is the “most moral army in the world,” and it is currently battling “the most disgusting and cruel terrorist group in the world,” Netanyahu added, referring to Hamas.

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“How can you explain bombs being dropped on children being treated for cancer?”

• Some Western Countries Say Netanyahu’s ‘End’ Is Near – Erdogan Adviser (Sp.)

Several Western countries say “the end” for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is near since “the world has already seen” the Jewish state’s “brutality” in actions in the Gaza Strip, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Chief Adviser Akif Cagatay Kilic said Wednesday. Earlier on Wednesday, Erdogan criticized Netanyahu and once again compared him with Nazi German leader Adolf Hitler. The Israeli prime minister, for his part, stated that Erdogan, who “is committing genocide against the Kurds and who holds the world record for imprisoning journalists who oppose his regime, is the last person who can preach morality to us.”

“Netanyahu made a statement today about our president. You are ruthlessly and indiscriminately dropping bombs on people. Some circles do not want to understand the scale of the catastrophe when we talk about genocide. Our president spoke loudly about this in Germany and Greece. While many European capitals remained silent, our president demonstrated his position. Netanyahu is trying to wash the blood off his hands. But the world has already seen it. A permanent ceasefire and peace will only come when peace comes to Gaza. Israel is brutal, its policies are brutality. How can you explain bombs being dropped on children being treated for cancer? Many Western countries say this is the end of the road for Netanyahu,” Kilic stressed in an interview with Turkish broadcaster TRT Haber.

Additionally, the head of the communications department in the Turkish presidential administration, Fahrettin Altun, emphasized that the Israeli prime minister is “the last person to talk about anything related to genocide.” “The Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is the last person to talk about anything related to genocide. He has mastered skills to sell the world, his war crimes against civilians as self-defense. Even though the world fails to stop him, the history will judge him as the war criminal he is… Netanyahu is the last person to talk about our struggle against terrorism,” Altun said on X. Altun also highlighted that Netanyahu is “the last person to talk about morality,” adding that he “cannot lecture anyone about how to conduct counter-terrorism operations because he has no experience in this arena!” The Turkish communications chief further said that the Israeli prime minister “has been on a mission to drive Palestinians out of their lands for the last four decades” and that he has now taken it “to a new level by using the Israeli army to kill civilians in their homes, hospitals and refugee camps.”

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Wonder where this will go.

• Milei Mulls Plan To Force Through Radical Reforms (RT)

Newly inaugurated Argentine President Javier Milei is “on the warpath” against the National Congress and could put pressure on the legislature by holding public votes on policy proposals, La Nacion reported on Wednesday. Referring to a major economic reform that his cabinet presented earlier this month, Milei told La Nacion: “If they [the Congress] reject it, I would call for a plebiscite and have them explain to me why they are against the people.” The proposed legislation would impose a two-year state of emergency, deregulate the economy, privatize state property, and alter the national healthcare system, among other changes.

Argentine law allows for both binding and non-binding referendums, termed “public consultations”, although only the National Congress can initiate a binding one. If a non-binding proposal by the executive branch is approved in a plebiscite, the parliament is obliged to consider it. “They cannot accept that they lost, that the population chose something else,” Milei said of the opposition in the National Congress. He claimed some lawmakers were “seeking bribes,” but did not provide details to back up the allegation. One example of a non-binding referendum in Argentina was in 1984, when a vote was called on the government’s plan to resolve a border dispute with Chile. Overwhelming public support subsequently put pressure on the opposition in the Congress.

Milei, a libertarian economist and former MP, was considered a dark horse in Argentina’s presidential election last month. He was voted in on a promise to generate economic growth through radical public spending cuts and liberalization. Argentina is suffering high levels of inflation, which Milei has vowed to address through “shock therapy.” The new president has claimed that opponents of his plans are experiencing “Stockholm syndrome,” and has vowed a harsh crackdown under his government. In the same interview with La Nacion, Milei confirmed that he wants to introduce 20,000 and 50,000 peso bills. The largest note is currently 2,000 pesos, although inflation has wiped much of the value off the national currency over the years. Keeping wads of cash is “torture” for Argentines and “puts a label saying ‘steal here’” on those carrying larger sums, Milei argued.

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Pam Martens and Russ Martens run Wall Street On Parade. This is one crazy story.

• The DOJ Took More than Two Years to Answer a FOIA (Martens)

On July 20, 2021 the U.S. Senate voted 56-44 to confirm Kenneth Polite (pronounced Po-leet) to head the most powerful criminal law enforcement office in the United States, the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. The vetting of this candidate immediately raised red flags at Wall Street On Parade. Despite Polite owing more than $1.5 million in debts according to his financial disclosure form and public mortgage records; paying over 18 percent interest on an outstanding balance on a credit card; 19.99 percent interest on a personal loan; and then accepting a job where his income was going to be slashed by approximately 77 percent – not one Senator on the Senate Judiciary Committee asked a single question about Polite’s unusual financial obligations during his confirmation hearing on May 26, 2021.

In addition, Polite was coming from the law firm of Morgan, Lewis & Bochius, which had plenty of red flags itself. Polite was a partner there earning approximately $877,500 in 2020. His job at the Justice Department was to pay less than $200,000 annually. Morgan, Lewis has, for decades, provided legal representation to the Wall Street mega banks. Polite’s financial disclosure form revealed that JPMorgan Chase was one of his clients over the prior 12 months. JPMorgan Chase is a recidivist lawbreaker on Wall Street with an unprecedented five felony counts brought by the Justice Department and admitted to by the bank. Having a recidivist felon that is the largest bank in the United States as a recent client and then moving into the job as a potential prosecutor of that bank is not good optics, so Polite signed an Ethics Agreement (EA) that read in part:

“he will be required to recuse from particular matters involving specific parties involving his former employer or former clients for a period of two years after he is appointed….” During the time that Polite was ostensibly recusing himself from matters involving JPMorgan Chase, the Attorney General of the U.S. Virgin Islands brought a civil case in federal court in Manhattan against JPMorgan Chase for “actively participating” in Jeffrey Epstein’s international sex-trafficking ring where Epstein and his wealthy pals were sexually assaulting underage girls. According to documents released in the lawsuit, the bank was alleged to have laundered more than $5 million in hard cash for Epstein over the span of a decade without filing the legally-required Suspicious Activity Reports with law enforcement. In addition, various employees of the bank were making visits to Epstein’s Manhattan mansion where sexual assaults of minors were alleged to have occurred.

The Criminal Division of the Justice Department has yet to bring a criminal case against JPMorgan Chase for either willfully participating in and/or covering up Epstein’s crimes for more than a decade. [..] The number of red flags swirling about Polite’s vetting to become the top criminal cop in the United States and supervise a department of some 1400 prosecutors and staff, prompted Wall Street On Parade to file a Freedom of Information Act request for documents with the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) on July 26, 2021. We requested “all electronic correspondence from November 6, 2020 through July 20, 2021 that relates to the nomination or confirmation or vetting of Kenneth A. Polite for the position of Assistant Attorney General at the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice.”

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Li river

 

 

Condor
https://twitter.com/i/status/1739960815313137904

 

 

Elk

 

 

Tortoise

 

 

Sleeping whales
https://twitter.com/i/status/1739985649292415127

 

 

 

 

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Anti-American

Mar 292020
 
 March 29, 2020  Posted by at 3:52 pm Primers Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  35 Responses »


Joseph Mallord William Turner The Fifth Plague of Egypt 1800

 

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m under the impression that President Trump yesterday wanted to quarantine New York City but let himself get talked out of that by, among others, NY Governor Andrew Cuomo. Cuomo went as far as calling such a measure not merely “un-American”, he said it would be “preposterous” and “anti-American”.

Obviously, Cuomo is not just of the belief, like most Americans, that a country with less than 5% of the world population is really special and superior, but also that a city with less than 4% of that country’s population is even more special than the rest. All pigs are equal, but…

There doesn’t appear to be another explanation for labeling attempts to keep New Yorkers from spreading the coronavirus around the entire country “anti-American”. Still, it would be anti-New York at best, and probably not that either. After Wuhan, China and Lombardy, Italy, New York City has become the third consecutive epicenter for the virus. Cuomo is well aware of this.

Still, he pontificates: “Then we would be Wuhan, China, and that wouldn’t make any sense..” Actually,. it would. Just look at the numbers. But: “..this would cause the stock market to crash in a way that would make it impossible for the US economy to “recover for months, if not years”.

This is possible. But that’s what Wuhan and Milan also experience(d). No stock markets there, true, but both the Italian and Chinese markets have been hit hard nonetheless. In the end it’s a trade-off. You let people die while trying to prop up markets, or you put people first. Cuomo made his choice.

Trump Backs Away From New York Quarantine

Speaking to reporters earlier on Saturday about the situation in New York, Mr Trump said: “We’d like to see [it] quarantined because it’s a hotspot… I’m thinking about that.” He said it would be aimed at slowing the spread of the virus to other parts of the US. “They’re having problems down in Florida. A lot of New Yorkers are going down. We don’t want that,” he said. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo responded by saying that quarantining the state of New York would be “preposterous” and “anti-American”.

“If you said we were geographically restricted from leaving, that would be a lockdown.” He said New York had already implemented “quarantine” measures, such as banning major gatherings and ordering people to remain at home, but that he would oppose any “lockdown” efforts. “Then we would be Wuhan, China, and that wouldn’t make any sense,” he told CNN, adding that this would cause the stock market to crash in a way that would make it impossible for the US economy to “recover for months, if not years”.

“You would paralyse the financial sector,” he said. He added later: “I don’t know how that can be legally enforceable. And from a medical point of view, I don’t know what you would be accomplishing. “But I can tell you, I don’t even like the sound of it.” Mr Cuomo also said he would sue nearby Rhode Island if the authorities there continued targeting New Yorkers and threatening to punish them for failing to quarantine.

And of course Trump made his choice, too, no two ways about it. He’s as close to literally fiddling while Rome burns as you can get in the 21st century. But when he’s trying to limit the damage with a quarantine, the folks who criticize him hardest for not doing enough, protest the loudest.

The idea that it is Trump who killed off the US health care system is tempting for media and politics alike, but it is utter nonsense. Even Fareed Zakaria agrees with me on that one just now on CNN, and that’s so rare I can’t help taking note.

At the very latest starting with Reagan, the idea has been that government is America’s enemy. And now the country needs its government, which is full of people who agree with Reagan’s ideas. So no, this is not going to go well

It’ll be something to behold what happens going forward, with 150,000 Americans infected today, moving towards 1 million by next weekend. Blame it all on Trump? Well, they’ll try. Here’s a little map of flight movements dated March 28, maybe that gives you an idea of how this disease pandemic is spread stateside:

https://twitter.com/flightradar24/status/1244003511098134529

Just about every country has stalled just about any movement of planes, but not the US. And if it’s up to Cuomo, that’s not going to happen either. Not being able to spread the disease is “anti-American”, after all. Sounds like Cuomo should agree with Trump who says: “They’re having problems down in Florida. A lot of New Yorkers are going down. We don’t want that..” Cuomo apparently does not agree.

 

A letter originating from the Henry Ford Health System was published (leaked?) online over the past week that perhaps provides a better definition/description of what is “anti-American” than a NYC quarantine. You be the judge. This is the best version I could find, it was published on Scribd, but later removed (wonder why). Pray tell: is publishing the letter anti-American, or is removing it? It’s still obvious enough.

 

 

The letter was sent to multiple hospitals and deals with the situation that would ensue if and when the health system become overwhelmed, something that’s hardly hypothetical anymore. It describes the practice of “triage” in the world’s richest nation: doctors removing patients who don’t improve fast enough, from equipment such as ventilators, and giving them painkillers to soothe their way into a certain and imminent death. “The other Cuomo” explains in this video:

 

 

But New Yorkers should still be allowed to fly -or drive- to Michigan, right? See, maybe that’s even better. C’mon Manhattanites, drive to Detroit. Support the US automobile industry, they’re having such a hard time.

Meanwhile, hundreds of doctors and nurses have already been infected, as have similar numbers of policemen- and women, and thousands more of each will follow. But that’s all perfectly pro-American.

 

PS: the funniest thing in all this is perhaps that normally Trump would agree with Governor Cuomo’s “exceptionalism” ideas, for both America and New York, but he no longer can, he has a tsunami coming straight at him. Still, doesn’t that mean that maybe Cuomo should drop those silly notions too?

 

 

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Thanks everyone for your wonderful and generous donations over the past few days. The rest of you: don’t be strangers.

 

 

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