No full shutdown here yet, but we do have some medical things to take care of the next few days.
Davis: "Year after year, the Russians tirelessly and monotonously voice their demands. Do you think their words will ever reach the West?" John Mearsheimer, Professor at the University of Chicago: "I think the answer is no. I liked how you said: year after year. Not week after… pic.twitter.com/Vz90ZKb90w
'The war in Ukraine will be decided on the battlefield because Rubio is not ready to accept Russia's demands' — American political scientist Mearsheimer.
'The possibility of Ukraine becoming a NATO member is absolutely unacceptable for Russia. It is an existential threat. And… pic.twitter.com/Kd15vPOyig
Kash Patel has released a few more documents to John Solomon which pertain to the J6 pipe bombs.
The FBI official story says that the pipe bombs were outside of the RNC & DNC headquarters for 16 hours, but the documents Solomon obtained tell a different story.
“If something happens to me, I ask you to find out which foreign government or powerful people would go to such lengths to keep this information from coming out,” she added. “The People understand what I’m saying..”
US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has claimed that “powerful people” are trying to silence her over her renewed efforts to have the Epstein files released. She further added that she is “not suicidal,” and that if she is harmed in any way it would not be self-inflicted. Greene is backing a House resolution introduced by Republican Rep. Thomas Massie that seeks to force a full House vote that would compel the Justice Department to release all remaining files related to Jeffrey Epstein – the financier and convicted sex offender who allegedly died by suicide in a Manhattan jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. Greene, a Republican from Georgia, took to X on Saturday with a stark warning, telling followers to “find out” what really happened if she were ever found dead.
“I am not suicidal and one of the happiest, healthiest people you will meet,” she wrote, dismissing any suggestion she might take her own life after backing a petition to unseal the records. The petition requires 218 signatures to bypass committee leadership and bring the resolution directly to the floor – a step Greene says is crucial to exposing what she calls the “Epstein rape and pedophile network.” “If something happens to me, I ask you to find out which foreign government or powerful people would go to such lengths to keep this information from coming out,” she added. “The People understand what I’m saying.” According to media reports, the White House has been pressing lawmakers privately to abandon the petition, but Greene said she has no intention of backing down.
“I stand with girls and women who are sexually abused and raped. Period. Every time. At all times,” Greene wrote earlier. “This isn’t about a pissing contest between political parties or rivals. The Epstein rape and pedophile network must be exposed – and my name will remain on the discharge petition.” Earlier this month, the House Oversight Committee released 33,295 pages of Justice Department records on Epstein, including redacted court files, surveillance footage and other evidence. On Friday, House Democrats released another batch – calendars, flight logs and financial ledgers naming Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Steve Bannon – prompting Republicans to accuse them of “cherry-picking” to spotlight conservatives while withholding material that could implicate Democrats.
The survival of Western civilization is at stake in the Ukraine conflict, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has claimed. Russia has stated that the Ukraine conflict was provoked by NATO countries and that it is only defending itself, accusing the West of using Kiev to wage a “proxy war.” Speaking at the Warsaw Security Forum in the Polish capital on Monday, Tusk called for more support for Ukraine, arguing that “this is not only a matter of solidarity with the country that was attacked. It is a matter of security and the survival of Western civilization.” The Polish people should understand that “it is our war, because the war in Ukraine is part of a terrible project that surfaces from time to time: a political program aimed at subjugating peoples, depriving individuals of freedom, and introducing authoritarianism, despotism, cruelty, and the absence of human rights,” he claimed.
“If we lose this war… the consequences will touch not only our generation but also future generations in Poland, in Europe, in the US, everywhere. Let there be no illusions,” the Polish prime minster, who has taken an increasingly hardline stance on the Ukraine conflict since returning to office in late 2023, warned. In an address at the UN General Assembly last week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, “threats to use force against Russia are becoming more frequent, prompted by unproven accusations that Russia is planning to attack NATO and the EU.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin “has repeatedly debunked such provocations. Russia has not had and does not have any such intentions. However, any aggression against my country will receive a decisive response,” he said. Lavrov added that Moscow has “called on NATO capitals to… agree on legally binding security guarantees,” including those made before the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022, but its proposals “continue to be ignored.”
This is one book that I absolutely want to read. In a great interview, the Executive Vice-President of Trump Inc, Eric Trump, describes what it was like to be targeted by a fully weaponized U.S. government. Eric Trump speaks highly of the intents and purposes of Kash Patel and Dan Bongino in addition to several other members of the MAGA alliance who have assisted the family of Donald Trump in defending themselves. Eric notes the background conversations with his dad and family as Lawfare mounted their assault.
The EU plans to adjust its rules in order to push ahead with technical steps for admitting Ukraine and Moldova, thereby bypassing the Hungarian veto that has stalled formal accession talks with Kiev, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday. No negotiation cluster has been opened for Ukraine as Hungary has repeatedly vetoed the procedural steps required to launch the first one. Budapest has consistently opposed Ukraine’s EU membership bid, citing Kiev’s treatment of ethnic Hungarians and the potential economic strain Ukrainian accession would entail for the bloc. According to the FT, however, the European Commission has proposed adjusting its own rules to sidestep the veto by launching technical work in several clusters even without a formal decision to open negotiations in those areas.
A negotiation cluster is a group of related policy areas that a candidate country must negotiate as part of the accession process. Brussels on Monday backed European Council President Antonio Costa’s plan to bypass Budapest’s veto by allowing a qualified majority of member states to open negotiating clusters for Ukraine and Moldova instead of requiring unanimous approval at each stage as is the case now, Politico reported. The issue is set to be discussed at an informal European Council meeting in Copenhagen later this week. Ukraine applied for EU membership in February 2022, while Moldova submitted its application the following month. The two bids have long been informally treated as a package, though some in the bloc argue they should be considered separately.
Zelensky has claimed that splitting them would signal a rift in the EU over security guarantees for Kiev – a stance critics see as an attempt to keep Moldova tied to Ukraine’s slower-moving accession bid. Last month, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto warned that Ukraine’s accession “would be the coup de grace to the European Union,” arguing that the bloc would have to divert “practically all” its financial resources to support Kiev, while cheaper Ukrainian farm products would “destroy European agriculture.” Unlike most EU member states, Hungary has refused to supply weapons to Ukraine and has repeatedly criticized EU sanctions on Russia. Moscow says it has no objection to Ukraine joining the EU but considers Kiev’s proposed accession to NATO an unacceptable security threat.
” The Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank, said in a statement on Tuesday that it has confidence in Trump’s ability to find a path toward peace in Gaza. Partnership with the US is essential in bringing stability to the region, it added.”
The Palestinian Authority (PA) has said it welcomes US President Donald Trump’s “sincere and determined efforts” to achieve peace in Gaza, after Trump unveiled his roadmap to stop the fighting between Israel and Hamas.The 20-point plan, released by the White House during Trump’s meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, calls for an immediate ceasefire and the exchange of all hostages held by Hamas for Palestinian prisoners in Israel. It envisions turning Gaza into a “deradicalized, terror-free zone” after the withdrawal of Israeli forces, with Hamas excluded from governing the enclave. The Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank, said in a statement on Tuesday that it has confidence in Trump’s ability to find a path toward peace in Gaza. Partnership with the US is essential in bringing stability to the region, it added.
The fighting must end “through a comprehensive agreement that ensures the sufficient delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza, the release of hostages and prisoners, the establishment of mechanisms to protect the Palestinian people… prevent annexation of land, s top the displacement of Palestinians, end unilateral actions that violate international law, release withheld Palestinian tax revenues, and lead to a full Israeli withdrawal,” it said. “This would… open the path toward a just peace based on the two-state solution, with the independent and sovereign State of Palestine living side by side with the State of Israel in security, peace, and good neighborliness, in accordance with international legitimacy,” according to the PA.
Hamas has said it will study the US proposal “in good faith.” According to NBC’s sources, the group is leaning toward accepting the plan and will present its response to the Egyptian and Qatari mediators on Wednesday. However, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which is fighting along Hamas, rejected Trump’s roadmap, calling it “a recipe to blow up the region.”West Jerusalem launched its military operation in Gaza in October 2023 in response to a deadly assault on southern Israel in which Hamas killed around 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostages. Over 66,000 Palestinians have since been killed and more than 168,000 others injured in the enclave, according to the local health authorities.
The liberal order is over. Propriety has been abandoned, rules have been forgotten, and borders no longer mean what they once did. Force still exists, but peace lives only in the imagination of those who cling to old slogans. What we call the “international situation” is a spectacle without a script. The task is to describe it, and to understand it. Every year, the Valdai International Discussion Club produces a report on the state of the world system. This year’s paper – tellingly titled ‘Dr. Chaos or: How to Stop Worrying and Love the Disorder’ – asks whether the world has entered a revolutionary situation, one that would bring about a wholly new order. The answer is no. The changes are radical and often alarming, but they are not revolutionary. Why? Because the system is not unbearably unjust to any of the key players.
It is decaying, but not so intolerable that it demands overthrow. Institutions are weakening, many survive in name only, but nobody is trying to destroy them outright. Even the most disruptive US administration in recent memory – Donald Trump’s – has never attempted a fundamental overhaul. Washington simply ignores the constraints when it suits its interests. nThis is not because the global powers have grown cautious or responsible. It is because the order has become too complex to dismantle. The “top,” once embodied by the ruling great powers, can no longer exercise true hegemony. The United States is the clearest example: it lacks the money, the domestic drive, and even the will to police the world as before. Yet the “bottom,” the so-called global majority, is not demanding revolution either. Rising states see too much risk in total collapse. They would rather climb the ladder within the old framework than tear it down completely.
Here the Valdai report invokes Lenin’s definition of a revolutionary situation: the ruling class must be unable to rule as before, while the ruled must demand change. Today, the first condition exists but the second does not. Most countries prefer gradual elevation of their status without the gamble of a system-wide rupture. The shift from hegemony to multipolarity is profound, but multipolarity is not yet an order. It is an environment – fluid, confusing, and non-linear. Instability multiplies because the world is more interconnected than ever, yet also more conflict-ridden. For states, internal stability has become more important than external ambition. Governments everywhere, Russia included, now place domestic development and resilience above dreams of global domination. mWhat makes this transition unusual is that it is not driven by ideological revolutionaries.
China, the rising giant, does not try to remake the world in its image. It adapts to circumstances and tries to minimize the costs of being at the center. The transformation is objective – a consequence of economic, social, cultural, and technological shifts that unfold simultaneously but not in sync. Only an artificial intelligence, the Valdai report quips, might one day calculate the vector sum of all these forces. In the meantime, foreign policy is not withering away. On the contrary, international activity has never been greater. But its purpose has changed. States no longer dream of total victory. They seek incremental advantage – small corrections, favorable conditions for the near future, a perpetual negotiation backed by pressure.
The United States, for example, knows it cannot defend its dominance as in the past. Russia, too, will not risk its socio-economic stability for a decisive battlefield triumph. Nuclear deterrence makes full-scale war against major powers unthinkable. Israel may still act as if it can permanently alter the status quo, and Azerbaijan has restored its control over Karabakh. But these are exceptions. For most, international politics is returning to the positional confrontations of the 18th century: bloody contests, yes, but rarely total destruction. The concept of annihilating the enemy, born of the 20th century, looks unlikely to return.
During the period of Nov 2015 to April 2016, the Obama administration, through the FBI under James Comey and Andrew McCabe, was conducting a political spying operation against all Republican presidential primary candidates using the power of their offices. The intent was two-fold. (1) Tracking the candidates to identify activity; and (2) conducting opposition research to be fed to the campaign of Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton. This surveillance activity was happening in concert with Comey, McCabe and a small group inside the FBI, running a defensive operation for the issues surrounding Hillary Clinton’s prior use of private email servers -which included classified information transmission- during her tenure as Secretary of State. Documentary evidence of the Obama spying operation surfaced as an outcome of the NSA compliance officer discovering the FBI activity. The compliance officer reported the activity to National Security Agency Director, Admiral Mike Rogers. The spying operation is not an issue of FISA-702, or any FISA system or process.
However, the availability of FBI access to the NSA database is what triggered the discovery of the spy operation. That FBI access is created under the auspices of FISA, but FISA-702, or any aspect therein, was not the issue. The issue was the spying operation. FISA, and using the NSA database to conduct the electronic surveillance, was simply the tool to exploit the electronic communication (metadata) of the targets. The Obama administration was spying on their political opposition and telling the Clinton team the results of their surveillance. Put another way, the United States government was spying on political candidates for office, in order to control the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. After Director Mike Rogers was made aware of the operation, and the exploitation of the NSA database, the NSA Director blocked the FBI from access and began an investigation. That investigation culminated in Director Mike Rogers informing the regulatory body in charge of protecting the database from exploitation.
FISC SIDEBAR: With the NSA now collecting the private electronic communication of Americans, the FISA Court was assigned the responsibility of oversight; it was intended to protect the growing metadata library and ensure the 4th Amendment provisions to the constitution were maintained. The FISC oversight was intended to stop the government from reviewing the private records of Americans, the NSA database, without a warrant. Because the NSA database was used by the Obama administration, the FBI, to conduct political spying operations, the only normal compliance venue Director Mike Rogers had to reveal the spying, was to inform the FISA court (FISC). NSA Director Mike Rogers was a cabinet member working for President Obama at the time the Obama administration was exploiting the NSA database. Director Mike Rogers does not appear to have informed congressional oversight. That would have violated the chain-of-command, and the President held absolute power.
Director Rogers could have chosen to inform the congressional Gang-of-Eight of the issue. He did not. This is an issue Director Rogers would later address by moving custodial control of the NSA database to Cyber Command (a DoD agency)]. NSA Director Mike Rogers informed the FISA Court of the issue, by detailing who the people were who were searched within the database, and what the results were over the timeframe of Nov ’15 to April ’16. The compliance officer provided the audit-trail, audit logs showing who was being spied on, who was being searched (queried), how often and how many times. The audit-trail also showed who was logging in to conduct the spy operations, and what FBI authorized workstations they were using. Director Rogers informed the court he had blocked FBI access and removed part of the functionality for how the system could be exploited.
The internal investigation by the NSA compliance officer and Rogers was completed and sent to the FISA Court in October 2016, with additional information sent in March 2017. The FISA Court then responded in April 2017, where Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer outlined the events in a heavily redacted 99-page opinion. President Obama conducting political spying operations, through a politically weaponized FBI, against the Republican opposition elements is colloquially called “Spygate.” Hillary Clinton manufacturing a political dirty trick against Donald Trump, accusing him of a Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy, is called “Russiagate.” President Obama and every member of his cabinet, that was involved in the spying operations, used Clinton’s “Russiagate” to cover up Obama’s “Spygate.”
The two controversies are distinct and separate. Within the evidence trail, that documents the Obama spying operation exists: (1) the NSA audit-trail, and, more importantly, (2) the specific document where the NSA notified the FISA Court. Those have never been seen. While a redacted 99-page response from the court has been reviewed in granular detail, the missing piece of the puzzle; -the evidence that proves the operation beyond any reasonable doubt – is the NSA investigative outcome, the notification to the FISC given by NSA Director Mike Rogers to the FISA Court. The NSA report to the FISA Court is a specific, actionable, discoverable document. I have been on the hunt for that notification report for 8 years. Now you know why this position is so important.
Scott Adams calls out Democrats’ “word thinking” of framing Trump’s National Guard use as “war” when it could also be “rescuing” cities.@ScottAdamsSays “They’re trying to win debates by getting you to agree with the words they used.
Elon Musk: This is strictly my opinion. The goal of Hamas was to provoke an overreaction from Israel. They obviously did not expect to have a military victory, but they really wanted to commit the worst atrocities that they could in order to provoke the most aggressive response… pic.twitter.com/m09O7n4CpD
Some random things while reading:
1) Qatar is/was perhaps the no. 1 peace mediator in the area. Will now be Russia?!
2) The Hamas people are in Doha because the US and others told them to go there (away from Gaza).
3) So many Americans are in Qatar (huge military base) that Israel must have given the US a heads up well in advance. Can’t risk killing Americans.
4) Qatar promised to invest $1 trillion in US.
5) Neighbors, Saudi, Egypt, UAE, Turkiye etc. fear they could be next.
6) The ‘precision’ strikes didn’t hit their targets. Decision makers are still alive.
Israel has conducted a “precise strike” against the “senior leadership of Hamas,” the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced on Tuesday, shortly after multiple blasts rocked the headquarters of the Palestinian militant group in Doha, Qatar. The Israeli military said it carried out the operation in coordination with the Shin Bet security agency (ISA). The IDF did not name the exact location targeted in the strike. “The IDF and ISA conducted a precise strike targeting the senior leadership of the Hamas terrorist organization,” the IDF said in a statement. “Prior to the strike, measures were taken in order to mitigate harm to civilians, including the use of precise munitions and additional intelligence.” The announcement came after at least ten blasts reportedly rocked the Hamas headquarters in Doha.
Footage circulating online shows the building was badly damaged. According to multiple media reports citing Hamas sources, the strike targeted the group’s negotiating team, which has been discussing the latest US proposal on the cessation of the hostilities with Israel. Qatar has condemned the “cowardly Israeli attack,” describing the location affected by the strike as “residential buildings housing several members of the political bureau of the Hamas movement.” It is not immediately clear whether the attack reached its intended target, conflicting media reports citing sources within the group indicate. While some suggest that several high-profile Hamas figures were killed in the attack, others claim that the group’s leadership escaped the strike unharmed.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office insisted that the attack on Hamas in Qatar was a unilateral action and no other countries were involved in the operation. ”Today’s action against the top terrorist chieftains of Hamas was a wholly independent Israeli operation. Israel initiated it, Israel conducted it, and Israel takes full responsibility,” it said in a statement. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the Israeli attack as a “flagrant violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Qatar.” “All parties must work towards achieving a permanent ceasefire, not destroying it,” he told reporters.
President Donald Trump has criticized Israel’s airstrike on a Hamas compound in Doha, stressing that the decision to carry out the operation inside Qatar was made unilaterally by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and not by Washington. Around 15 Israeli warplanes fired at least ten munitions during the operation on Tuesday, reportedly killing several Hamas members, including the son of senior official Khalil al-Hayya. Hamas said its top leadership survived the attack, which it described as an attempt to assassinate negotiators working on a potential settlement. In a statement posted Tuesday on Truth Social, Trump said the Israeli bombing inside “a Sovereign Nation and close Ally of the United States” did not “advance Israel or America’s goals.”
“I view Qatar as a strong Ally and friend of the U.S., and feel very badly about the location of the attack,” he wrote, emphasizing that the strike was “a decision made by Prime Minister Netanyahu, it was not a decision made by me.” Trump said that as soon as he was informed about the operation, he directed US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff to warn Qatari officials, but noted the alert came “too late to stop the attack.” The president claimed that eliminating Hamas was a “worthy goal,” but expressed hope that “this unfortunate incident could serve as an opportunity for PEACE.” Trump has since spoken with Netanyahu, who told him he wanted to make peace, and with Qatari leaders, whom he thanked for their support and assured that “such a thing will not happen again on their soil.”
Qatar’s prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, denounced the strike as an act of “state terrorism” and warned that the emirate “reserves the right to respond.” He accused Netanyahu of undermining regional stability for personal gain and said the incident had derailed ongoing US-brokered mediation efforts aimed at securing a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of Israeli hostages. The White House called the strike an “unfortunate” incident. Trump said he has directed Secretary of State Marco Rubio to finalize a Defense Cooperation Agreement with Qatar, which is designated a “major non-NATO ally.”
The French government’s failure to put a lid on the country’s growing sovereign debt together with protracted political infighting could plunge the nation into a “black hole,” a financial expert has warned. France has one of the highest debts levels in the European Union, currently standing at about 113% of GDP, a ratio that is expected to climb to 125% by 2030. Its budget deficit is projected at 5.4-5.8% of GDP this year, well above the bloc’s 3% limit. Appearing on the Tocsin podcast on Monday, financier Charles Gave said that should the Fitch credit rating agency downgrade France’s rating from AA to A, it would prompt institutional investors to sell off its government bonds.
“There are a number of institutions, [such as] central banks and insurance companies, that cannot invest in something that is below AA,” he clarified. “I know that something huge is coming,” the expert warned, predicting a “black hole” caused by the “illogical” policies pursued by successive French government over the past twenty years. “We have a real collapse in the quality of our elites” reflected in the current “lamentable political state,” Gave claimed. On Monday, Prime Minister Francois Bayrou lost a confidence vote in the National Assembly, which he had called himself to secure backing for a drastic austerity plan. The measures, which included slashing public sector jobs, curbing welfare spending, as well as axing two public holidays, were vehemently opposed by the right-wing National Rally, the Socialists, and the leftist France Unbowed.
On Tuesday, President Emmanuel Macron appointed outgoing Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu as France’s new prime minister. Despite the growing budget deficit, Paris plans to increase its military spending to €64 billion in 2027, double what it spent in 2017. Macron has repeatedly invoked a supposed Russian threat as the reason for the spending hike. Russian officials have consistently dismissed such claims as “nonsense,” accusing Western leaders of fear-mongering to justify inflated military budgets and to cover up their economic failures.
“..they have a $35 trillion currency debt, they’ll move it into the crypto cloud, devalue it, and start from scratch. That’s the reality for those who are so enthusiastic about crypto.”
As expected, the French government collapsed yesterday, leaving the country in political chaos just as it needs to deal with massive economic and national security challenges. President Macron has ruled out a snap election. As is the way of markets –albeit helped by directionality from the US– French bond yields were lower on the day. However, markets and realpolitik have not communicated in recent years: is the second largest economy in Europe, and the only one with a nuclear trifecta, looking unable to deal with its fiscal deficit, and perhaps ungovernable, something that can be easily shrugged off?
Le Figaro English recently noted: ‘“Prices Have Literally Exploded”: Have French Restaurateurs Been Too Gluttonous for Their Own Good?”, noting “Empty terraces, silent dining rooms… Despite the heatwave, this summer has been a cold shower for restaurateurs. While the tourist season is in full swing, cafés, bistros and traditional inns are being shunned by the French.” Is this not perhaps tiptoeing towards ‘Let them eat cake’ territory? mNow ex-French PM Bayrou warned just before losing the vote, “Don’t become the UK”, and there the mood remains febrile regardless of Labour’s huge parliamentary majority. The anti-Labour Daily Mail notes ‘Desperate Starmer accused of the ‘mother of all stitch-ups’ and trying to ‘fix’ Labour’s deputy leadership contest by giving hopefuls just THREE DAYS to get the backing of 80 MPs’.
The pro-Labour Guardian says: ‘Revealed: how Boris Johnson traded PM contacts for global business deals’ (Guardian), including being paid £240,000 just after meeting Venezuelan President Maduro last year. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the anti-establishment Reform Party continues to sit at the top of all opinion polls. In the US, the Wall Street Journal reports that the ‘White House Prepares Report Critical of Statistics Agency’ and ‘The Renewed Bid to End Quarterly Earnings Reports’. What, no data and no quarterly higher/lower-than games? What is a capitalist to do?! Innovate and invest in physical capital? But who wants to do that when there are assets to speculate on?
Moreover, US Treasury Secretary Bessent threatened to punch FHFA Director Pulte in the face, with additional expletives. That likely burgeoned his reputation in some circles: the man who as a young trader broke the Bank of England for Soros in 1992 arguably now wants to break the international financial architecture, and in the US’ favour. While many in DM who don’t see it, those in EM do – albeit in exaggerated form.
Putin advisor Kobyakov just stated: “The US is now trying to rewrite the rules of the gold and cryptocurrency markets. Remember the size of their debt – $35 trillion. These two sectors –crypto and gold– are essentially alternatives to the traditional global currency system. Washington’s actions in this area clearly highlight one of its main goals: to urgently address the declining trust in the dollar. As in the 1930s and the 1970s, the US plans to solve its financial problems at the world’s expense, this time by pushing everyone into the “crypto cloud.” Over time, once part of the US national debt is placed into stablecoins, Washington will devalue that debt. Put simply: they have a $35 trillion currency debt, they’ll move it into the crypto cloud, devalue it, and start from scratch. That’s the reality for those who are so enthusiastic about crypto.”
White House Trade Adviser Peter Navarro has claimed that the BRICS group is unlikely to last because the members have “long hated each other.” In an interview with US President Donald Trump’s former strategist, Steve Bannon, on Monday, Navarro said none of the BRICS members could survive without selling products to the US. ”India has been at war with China for decades… and I just remembered, it was China that gave Pakistan the nuclear bomb,” Navarro told Bannon. “They have ships flying around the Indian Ocean with Chinese flags. [Indian Prime Minister Narendra] Modi, see how you kind of work that out.” He added that China is sending illegal immigrants to Russia and has claimed territory within Russia.
“China claims they own Vladivostok, the Russian port, and they are already through massive illegal immigration into Siberia, basically colonizing Siberia, which is the biggest landmass of the Russian semi-empire.” China, however, does not claim any Russian territory, and the two countries signed the Complementary Agreement on the Eastern Section of the China-Russia Boundary in 2004 as a final resolution of their border dispute. ”I don’t see how [BRICS] stays together since historically they hate each other and kill each other,” the trade adviser added. Navarro claimed that BRICS countries are dependent on the US for trade.
“The bottom line is none of these countries can survive if they don’t sell to the United States, and when they sell to the United States, their exports, they’re like vampires sucking our blood dry with their unfair trade practices.” X posts made by the trade adviser that are critical of India have been fact-checked and have received Community Notes, for which he has accused Indian “special interests” of “trying to interfere with domestic dialogues with lies about India buying Russian oil.” A day after he called Community Notes from India “crap,” Navarro added: “India has [the] largest population in the world and all it can do is manage [a] few hundred thousand X propagandists to jerk around a poll?”
President Donald Trump has urged the European Union to impose tariffs of up to 100% on imports from China and India, as part of a joint effort to pressure Moscow, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday. According to the newspaper, Trump made the demand during a recent call-in to a meeting between senior US and EU officials in Washington, where strategies for raising the economic costs of the Ukraine conflict for Russia were being discussed. One US official said Washington was “ready to go, ready to go right now, but we’re only going to do this if our European partners step up with us.” “The president came on this morning and his view is that the obvious approach here is, let’s all put on dramatic tariffs and keep the tariffs on until the Chinese agree to stop buying the oil,” the source was quoted as saying. A second official added that the US was prepared to “mirror” any tariffs imposed by Brussels on Beijing and New Delhi.
EU officials had already begun debating potential secondary sanctions against China for its energy imports from Moscow, though they stressed the talks were still at an “early stage” and dependent on US support, according to an earlier FT report. India has pushed back against external demands to reduce its reliance on Russian crude. Last month, Trump doubled tariffs on Indian goods to 50%, citing its energy ties with Moscow. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman responded by calling the move “unfair, unjustified, and unreasonable,” stressing that Indian oil policy is driven by domestic economic needs.
Beijing has also rejected Western pressure over its energy purchases, insisting it will “ensure its energy supply” in line with its national interests. Chinese officials have warned that “tariff wars have no winners.” Russia remains one of the largest suppliers of oil to both China and India since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022. President Vladimir Putin has cautioned the West against using a “colonial tone” toward Beijing and New Delhi, saying last week that efforts to punish them are aimed at slowing their economic rise. “Countries like India – almost 1.5 billion people, and China – 1.3 billion people, boast powerful economies and live by their own domestic political laws,” Putin said. “Talking to such partners in such a tone of voice is unacceptable.”
History will register that the first week of September 2025 propelled the advent of the Eurasia Century to a whole new level. That was the expectation ahead of three crucial intertwined dates: the SCO annual summit in Tianjin; the Victory Day parade in Beijing; and the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok. Yet expectations were even surpassed considering the breath and scope of what just happened. The SCO in Tianjin solidified the Chinese push for the establishment of true Global Governance – which in practice means the unceremonious burying of the “rules-based international order” that under the new US administration has metastasized into a no-rules based international chaos: essentially an ethos of “we’ll blow up the world if we are not able to control it.”
Tianjin had not only the 10 SCO full members but also 2 observers and 15 partners – with a heavy Southeast Asian presence – discussing the finer points to be observed for peaceful development. The pic of the week, if not the year or decade, was the Putin, Xi and Modi trilateral handshake: the return of the original, Primakov-coined RIC (Russia-India-China) in full force. As Professor Zhang Weiwei of Fudan University remarked in Vladivostok, the SCO is now expanding steadily in three platforms: energy; clean industries; and AI. In parallel, Central Asia is finally being seen as a “geographical blessing”, and not “a curse”. Immediately after Tianjin, the Russia-China strategic partnership also shot up to a whole new level, as President Putin was received by President Xi at the Zhongnanhai, the official residence of the Chinese head of state, for an across-the-spectrum state of the planet recap.
The next day Beijing was resplendent under blue skies overseeing the stunning military parade celebrating the 80th anniversary of the Chinese victory over Japanese invasion and the Asian chapter of Nazi-fascism. That was a confident geoeconomic superpower showing off its military progress. On the same day the Eastern Economic Forum started in Vladivostok: an unrivalled platform for discussing the surge of pan-Eurasia business. What China has proposed, actually reiterated in Tianjin, goes way beyond the concept of wangdao, referring to an enlightened, benign power, but not a Hegemon. What could be described as the trademark motto of a Pax Sinica under Xi could be summed up as Make Trade, Not War – and for the common good, or community of a shared future”, in Beijing terminology.
SCO partners, as well as BRICS partners, fully understand that China does not intend to replace Pax Americana, which always relied on the – now aptly renamed – Department of War’s gunboat “diplomacy”. Whatever hysteria fits the West may throw – manipulating Tibet, Hong Kong, Xinjiang, South China Sea, Taiwan – won’t deviate Beijing from its civilizational inclusive path.
“No mountain or ocean can distance people who have shared aspirations,” China’s President Xi Jinping said in July 2024, addressing leaders from fellow Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member states and a few other nations in Astana, Kazakhstan. It is not reaching too far, saying that this year’s 25th SCO Summit (SCO) in Tianjin, China, from 31 August to 1 September 2025, fulfilled – and more – President Xi’s vision of 2024. The summit caused a tectonic shift in the conventional world order. China’s Assistant Foreign Minister Liu Bin told a news conference in Beijing, shortly before the SCO summit, that the 2025 SCO event be “One of China’s most important head-of-state and home-court diplomatic events this year”. As the Economist says, “A New Reality is Taking hold.”
The “new reality” is not anti-US or anti-West; it is just separating the western unipolar aspirations from the newly created multi-polar, or perhaps better, multi-block, world, where countries aim at a peaceful cooperation towards a joint future with shared benefits. The SCO was established in 2001 by China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Today the SCO consists of ten member-states with headquarters in Beijing. In addition to the founding members, SCO members have increased by India, Iran, Belarus, and Pakistan. SCO members account for 23% of the world’s GDP and for 43% of the world’s population. Further attendance included high-level government officials from Myanmar, Egypt, Cambodia, Nepal, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Maldives, Turkey, as well as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Secretary-General Kao Kim Hourn, and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.
This year’s summit made clearly the SCO the guiding light for the Global South which includes the 11 BRICS countries, plus the 10 BRICS partners, added at the 16th BRICS Summit in Kazan, Russia, in October 2024. While even the UNSG, Mr. Guterres, was invited – while the UN was or still is (?) considered by the US and the West in general as the World Organization in the western camp – President Trump felt snubbed by China, “left out” from the world shifting SCO event in Tianjin. So, Trump invented a last-minute opportunity to leave his mark on the meeting by requesting President Xi literally on the eve of the SCO summit for “military talks,” a phone call between the two defense ministers (in the US now called War Minister, as the Ministry of Defense has been re-christened by Trump as War Ministry).
The Chinese Foreign Ministry said that Beijing rejected the proposal, reasoning “a lack of mutual understanding between the two countries”, asking a pertinent question: “Is there any sincerity in and significance of any communication like this?” Of course not. Trump just wanted to interfere in the SCO summit, showing his self-styled emperor head. But to no avail. The West was absent – the “naked emperor” as well as his European puppets, the (almost) defunct European Union, and especially the non-elected and every time more rejected European Commission (EC).
There’s a reason why the J6 Committee deleted the records of their activity, an angle missed by most. When you understand what they hid and why they did it, you then understand why current Speaker of The House Mike Johnson will not go near the subject. The J6 Committee used interfaces with the NSA database and pre-existing portals with aligned DHS Social Media databases (including Twitter, see prior “Twitter Files”), as research and evidence gathering mechanisms for their investigations. The J6 targets were identified through a collaboration between the legislative research group and the FBI. [That’s unlawful by the way – but that’s another matter]. The FBI contracted Palantir to identify the targets using facial recognition software and private sector databases.
Once identified, the targets were then searched in the NSA database for a fulsome context of identity. All subsequent electronic metadata of the targets was retrieved and utilized in prosecution; however, no one ever discovered this was the collaborative method. That has not come out yet. Ultimately, the J6 Committee hiding and deleting their files and operational techniques was due to several issues. They really didn’t have a choice given the unknowns of an incoming republican majority. First, the collaboration with the FBI is unconstitutional. Legislative officers are not law enforcement officers. There is a separation of powers issue. Second, ultimately – and most consequentially – all of the participants did not want the American public aware of the mass surveillance techniques that were carried out as part of the ’round up.’
Wait to see what the next NSA compliance audit looks like. Remember, these reports are more than a year behind the activity they highlight. This is where a complete mental reset is needed. The modern application of the fifty-year-old concept around FISA as a constitutional mechanism to search the private papers (data) of American citizens, is a fraud, a complete ruse. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, FISA, represents the method used by the intelligence apparatus of the FBI to conduct surveillance. It was purposefully designed, as a method to avoid the problems with 4th amendment protections. However, the modern application of the FISA justification has no lawful basis.
CONTEXT – Beginning in/around 2012, after the Dept of Justice National Security Division was created by President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, the use of FISA warrants were extended to include electronic searches of captured information held within the National Security Agency (NSA). This was the database into which former NSA employee Edward Snowden was creating the search engine software. The capturing of information was relatively new; technology was still being developed. Rapid scale-ups of archives and data processing was underway. Various iterations of the search tools and processes were being tested and deployed. Prior to 2010/2012 we were mostly talking about emails, phone calls and text messages. However, as more and more technology was deployed, the interfaces expanded.
Today, almost every electronic interface is captured/stored within either the NSA database, or a private sector database with connections to the NSA search portals. Arguably, all of the underlying data captures were unconstitutional, and when the captures were originally discovered there was some intense conversations about fourth amendment protections and Americans privacy. To set aside the concerns and justify the existence of electronic search measures, the American government justified existence via the FISA court process, which extended to cover the new capabilities. Currently, almost every American interfaces electronically with some system that captures their data. In the private sector that data is then assembled, attributed and used for consumer product micro-targeting, i.e., all data is commercially monetized.
Local and state governments also interface with the federal government database. As a consequence, all data eventually flows to the NSA capture points where searches of the total assembly are possible. As noted in various explanations of government collaboration with social media, DHS has access to the various databases which house information inside the private sector. The lines between govt and private sector data captures are nonexistent as both public information and private information databases can be searched through the same network. This is the baseline to understand the scope of data collection.
Summary: The justification of FISA or FISA (702) as a mechanism to protect the American people from illegal searches of the NSA database IS A FRAUD. The searching of the NSA database not only continues but has factually expanded through today. There are no established limits on search use, only false claims that are fed to the public for popular consumption. The DOJ and FBI are aware of this. The OIG is aware of this. The Intelligence Community is aware of this. The NSA is aware of this. The FISA Court is aware of this. The Supreme Court, which oversees the FISA Court, is aware of this. The Legislative Branch is aware of this. We have the evidence and receipts. More soon…
“Reducing government jobs is essential for economic recovery, and in 2025, we experienced a cut of 97,000 jobs, while the period from 2021 to 2024 saw monthly increases of 50,000 government jobs.”
Both the recent spike in inflation and the current decline in US jobs are, in a very significant way, the fault of the Federal Reserve. The Fed’s policies since 2021 reveal a nightmare “pendulum” effect: first, easy money and historic liquidity expansion fueled runaway inflation; then, rapid rate hikes hurt businesses and families as well as job creation, especially for small and medium-sized businesses and families. In 2021, the largest monetary expansion in decades caused an inflationary burst that was particularly negative for wage earners and small businesses. A massive rate hike exacerbated this negative impact.
The August jobs report exposes the Fed’s failure to balance its mandate. The Federal Reserve did not seem to read their own beige book that warned of a widespread job market weakness for months. The Federal Reserve’s Beige Book first alerted of a weak job market in April 2025 and continued to highlight the labor market challenges in May and June. The April Beige Book signalled flat economic activity and slow labor demand and highlighted weakness for new entrants such as graduates, with some regions noting slight declines in employment and business activity. However, despite the evident negative impact of high rates, the Fed decided to keep interest rates unchanged even when inflationary pressures proved to be nonexistent. Between April and July, CPI inflation and core CPI monthly figures showed no inflationary pressures from tariffs.
Only 22,000 jobs were created in August. Although the headline shows the weakest number since the pandemic recovery began, we must also consider that the figure includes a reduction in government jobs of 15,000. Reducing government jobs is essential for economic recovery, and in 2025, we experienced a cut of 97,000 jobs, while the period from 2021 to 2024 saw monthly increases of 50,000 government jobs. The unemployment rate increased to 4.3%, which is a small rise compared to Canada’s 6.9% and the euro area’s 6.2%, but it is concerning because this increase was unnecessary. The private sector—the real engine of growth—is bearing the brunt of high interest rates.
Claudio Borio of the BIS, as well as Congdon and Castaneda, have proven that the explosion of inflation from 2021 to 2023 was clearly tied to unprecedented monetary growth driven by government spending and Fed easing. The Fed’s loose policy, with ultra-low rates and trillions in asset purchases, led to a surge in the money supply far outpacing real economic activity. As Borio has shown, in high-inflation environments, there is a clear link between rapid money supply growth and price spikes. The key driver of the inflation burst came not from supply chain issues but from massive, coordinated monetary expansion and deficit monetisation.
Once inflation took hold, the Fed responded with rapid and significant rate hikes, pushing interest rates well above the estimated “neutral” rate. Studies show that for every 100-basis-point increase above the neutral rate, job growth among small and medium enterprises (SMEs) falls by 0.5 to 1.5 percentage points. SMEs, which lack the market power of large firms, are especially vulnerable: higher borrowing costs force many to freeze hiring, lay off workers, or even shut down. High rates have resulted in the loss of tens of thousands of SME jobs over the past year. The government remained unaffected by inflation and rate hikes. The Biden administration continued to increase government spending, the deficit, and public sector jobs while small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) were experiencing the dual negative effects of inflation and interest rate hikes. This was a clear case of crowding out of the private sector.
US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has proposed removing $600 million in Ukraine support from the draft Pentagon spending bill, arguing that Americans’ “hard-earned tax dollars” should not go to foreign aid. The Georgia Republican proposed cancelling the allocation of these funds in the 2026 and 2027 fiscal years to shift priorities toward the US. With Donald Trump back in the White House, the US has dramatically cut military aid to Kiev, pausing more than $1 billion in planned funds. In a video post on X on Tuesday, Greene said that her amendment would strike $600 million from the defense bill, money that she noted “goes to Ukraine.” She argued that the US had already sent “over $175 billion to this war” and that it was “enough of your hard-earned tax dollars.”
She described the measure as part of the America First agenda, saying US funds should not be used for “foreign wars” while the country faces a $37 trillion debt. The congresswoman stated that the US usually allocates $300 million annually but that “Speaker Johnson and Republicans are feeling so generous they’re wanting to give them 600 million this time. My amendment will take it out.” Greene said, adding she has “never voted to fund this war.” Greene introduced another amendment after learning that “another $100 million” had been earmarked for Kiev and said she wanted to remove all funding in case others in Congress felt “so giving.” Greene also put forward measures to cut aid for Israel, Syria, and Iraq adding that the money should be “kept back here at home.”
While previous President Joe Biden’s administration approved large-scale aid packages to Kiev, Trump has cut assistance but allowed some deliveries, such as Patriot air-defense systems. He has repeatedly expressed concern about possible misuse of US aid to Kiev, claiming that billions allocated under Biden may have been embezzled. In July, Trump said that any additional weapons delivered to Ukraine would have to be paid for by Europe’s NATO members. Ukraine’s European backers are pressing for more weapons as part of security guarantees, while Russia insists Western military aid is an obstacle to reaching a peace deal.
What will Germany look like in 2050? The outspoken deputy head of the German police union (DPolG), Manuel Ostermann, published an excerpt from his book on X about what he sees as the perils of mass immigration. His post described Arab clans dominating big cities in 2050, Sharia law, child marriage, grooming gangs, and a host of other ills. Now, the European Union has censored his post from being seen across the entire continent in a major escalation against a public official, one who is considered one of the leading voices of tens of thousands of German police officers, and a voice frequently appearing in major German news outlets, including Welt and Bild.
[..] Arab clans dominate the big cities “Imagine Germany in 2050. Arab clans dominate the big cities. Gangs fight each other in the fight for sovereignty in organized crime. People who don’t belong to the “right side” are murdered on the street. Even the police hardly dare to go to certain areas known as no-go areas anymore. Drug deaths hit an all-time high,” wrote Ostermann.
What exactly is the issue with the censors here? Clan crime is a major problem within German cities, and it is almost entirely derived from Muslim countries, including Lebanon, Turkey, and even Syria. There are similar problems in neighboring countries, including Moroccans and Chechens operating in France and the Netherlands, and warring over the country’s drug trade. Germany’s only public media networks routinely run articles and documentaries on the country’s growing clans and their power. In fact, a recent slickly produced ZDF documentary details how these clans have infiltrated the government and police forces to the point that fellow police officers cannot even trust each other.
“Kriminelle Clans in Deutschland” shows that criminal networks not only exercise control in some areas of large cities, but have also established their influence nationwide, right up to state institutions. Accumulating huge wealth illegally, they have built a tight network that includes law enforcement professionals. “It is a murderous and extremely criminal milieu that goes on there. And now on so many levels that we no longer know whether we can really stop it at all. Were raids betrayed, investigations manipulated and employees bought off by the authorities? There is even despair in certain police stations,” states the narrator.
As Germany’s foreign population grows, so does clan crime, or at least the potential for such crime. Just this year, 100 Lebanese clan members battled on the streets. Here is what Remix News wrote: “There was a bloodbath on the streets of Germany after two extended Lebanese family groups fought in a battle that reportedly involved 100 people in the city of Heiligenhaus. The two groups battled using machetes, knives, and other weapons, leading to a mass police operation that resulted in at least five serious injuries, including one that is life-threatening. Police made several arrests.”
Incredible violence, attacks on police, and corruption at the highest levels are already the case to a large degree in a number of European cities. In Marseilles, killings have hit a record high and foreign gangs dominate the city’s drug trade..In the Netherlands, even the royal family has been threatened by the power wielded by foreign criminals. Regarding the potential for drug overdose deaths, the situation could go many different ways, but drug overdose deaths in the EU are hovering near a peak. With the flood of synthetic opioids coming into Europe, the situation could worsen. Is there any guarantee that Germany can escape such developments? Certainly not. Osterman presents a valid prediction based on trend lines, and certainly, there are no grounds to censor his prediction.
Sharia law and women’s rights “In some districts, only Sharia law is recognized as valid law.“ Already, Austrian courts are recognizing Sharia law as valid so long as it does not contradict fundamental rights and higher state laws. However, this may be only a stepping-stone ruling. In Germany itself, there is a small but vocal minority of Muslims who are openly protesting in favor of a German caliphate in cities like Hamburg. However, this is not the most concerning development. Instead, in a major study conducted by the Criminological Research Institute (KFN), it showed that nearly half of young Muslims in Germany believe a theocracy is the best form of government.
In the same study, 67.9 percent of young Muslims said that the rules of the Quran were more important than the laws in Germany. This was also all reported by the state-run news network WDR. This also means there are hundreds of thousands of Muslims who do not hold these beliefs, but the sheer numbers are also extremely worrying. Nearly every single Muslim country on Earth is either ruled by classic Sharia law or has many elements of Sharia law incorporated into its legal system. Not every country is ruled by a strict standard, but many feature extremely harsh versions of such laws, including laws that openly target homosexuals and women. Within Germany itself, the situation is potentially explosive, with an alarming number of Muslims feeling alienated living in a Western democratic society. Many of them harbor ideas that can be considered more radical, including a willingness to turn to violence.
“..Democrats need to win by 2.8 points. If Florida also redistricts, that margin jumps to 3.4 points. For context, Donald Trump won the 2024 popular vote by 1.5 points.
The 2026 House elections are shaping up to be a nightmare for Democrats, and frankly, they have no one to blame but themselves for escalating a redistricting war they cannot win. While the left continues to whine about gerrymandering when it works against them, they conveniently forget their own history of creative map-drawing when it suits their purposes. Let’s start with Texas, where Republicans are poised to add up to five additional seats through redistricting. That’s five more reliable conservative votes in a chamber where control often comes down to a handful of seats. Meanwhile, California Democrats are scrambling to squeeze more seats from an already gerrymandered state. They’ve already maximized their redistricting potential in the Golden State, leaving little room for meaningful gains even if they pursue further changes.
The real story here isn’t just Texas, though. Red states across the map are flexing their redistricting muscles thanks to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s flex. Indiana, Ohio, and Missouri are all redrawing their congressional boundaries in ways that will favor Republicans. While Democrats clutch their pearls about the unfairness of it all, Republican strategists are doing exactly what they should be doing by fighting back against years of Democrats rigging maps in their favor. Here’s where the math gets brutal for Democrats. Even if California somehow manages to eke out additional seats through redistricting, Democrats would still need to win the national popular vote by at least 2.3 percentage points just to have a fighting chance at retaking the House majority. If California’s redistricting effort fails — and it could — but Ohio, Indiana, and Missouri move ahead with redistricting anyway, Democrats need to win by 2.8 points. If Florida also redistricts, that margin jumps to 3.4 points.
For context, Donald Trump won the 2024 popular vote by 1.5 points. Yes, midterm elections are extremely different from presidential elections, but that’s still a significant swing. So now we have a situation where the structural advantage Republicans are building through redistricting means Democrats need to consistently win the popular vote by two to three points nationally to be favored for House control, and that makes things tough. However, it’s not impossible. “A two-to-three-point structural advantage for the G.O.P. is meaningful, but pretty modest,” notes Nate Cohn at the New York Times. “With Democrats leading by four points in the national generic ballot polls today, the party would still be favored to win next year’s midterm election. The Republicans wouldn’t stand much of any chance at all of surviving a so-called ‘wave’ election, like in 2018, when Democrats won the House popular vote by seven points.”
But here’s the catch: They have virtually no margin for error. A few weak candidates, poorly timed retirements, or shifting demographics in key districts could easily hand control back to Republicans. And if the Democrats’ popular vote advantage turns out to be much less than four points, the new maps could give the Republicans the advantage. Democrats, for instance, might not be able to get away with their own version of the G.O.P.’s disappointing “red ripple” election in 2022 and still win. They might not win if 2026 is like the narrow Democratic victory from 2020, either. Indeed, each of the last three congressional elections was decided by three points or less in the national popular vote, with the winner prevailing by less than seven seats.
With margins this razor-thin, every redrawn district carries enormous weight. Republicans aren’t apologizing for playing hardball on redistricting, and why should they? Democrats have been rigging maps for years, and the GOP is finally fighting back. Of course, Republicans gerrymander too, but PJ Media readers already know that Democrats run the most aggressively gerrymandered states in the country.
That leaves Democrats in a bind. To flip the House, they would need a genuine wave like 2018, when they won the popular vote by seven points. Anything less, and they’ll likely remain in the minority. The problem is, Democrats are doubling down on deeply unpopular positions like open borders and soft-on-crime policies that make a wave election highly unlikely. I wouldn’t bet on Democrats pulling it off. When more voters start paying attention, their radical stances on immigration and crime will drag them down even further. The generic ballot will swing against them, and when the dust settles, Democrats will realize they didn’t just lose the redistricting fight; they handed Republicans the advantage for years to come.
Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook has been granted a reprieve after her sorority-sister judge, Jia Cobb, temporarily blocked President Donald Trump from firing her – allowing Cook to remain on the job amid allegations of mortgage fraud.Cobb granted Cook’s request to continue in her role, finding that the alleged mortgage misconduct likely didn’t amount to “cause” to fire her under the Federal Reserve Act. Cobb also found that the way Cook was fired likely violated her right to due process under the Constitution. “The best reading of the ‘for cause’ provision is that the bases for removal of a member of the Board of Governors are limited to grounds concerning a Governor’s behavior in office and whether they have been faithfully and effectively executing their statutory duties,” Cobb wrote.
The ruling means that Cook will likely be able to attend an anticipated Fed policy meeting Sept. 16-17 to vote on interest rates. The DOJ is expected to quickly appeal the ruling, leaving the final say to the US Supreme Court. Abbe Lowell, Cook’s lawyer, said in a statement that tonight’s ruling “recognizes and reaffirms” the Fed’s independence from political interference. “Allowing the president to unlawfully remove Governor Cook on unsubstantiated and vague allegations would endanger the stability of our financial system and undermine the rule of law,” said Lowell.
Judge Jia Cobb, of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority, ruled that Lisa Cook, of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority, should continue setting US monetary policy even though she doesn't know how to fill out a mortgage application pic.twitter.com/hjnxm7NAYz
Cook was fired last month after FHFA Director Bill Pulte released evidence that Cook had fraudulently listed two homes as her “primary residence” within weeks of each other in 2021 in order to secure more favorable terms on her loans. Pulte also revealed a third mortgage Cook had listed as a ‘secondary residence’ while actually renting it out. The fired ‘economist’ says that her ouster was politically motivated, while her lawyers claim that if there are any errors, they were accidental, and nobody was harmed – just nobody was harmed when NY AG Letitia James threw the kitchen sink at Trump over similar real estate malarkey.
Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has profited from contacts and influence he gained while in office, The Guardian alleged on Monday, citing a trove of leaked documents. The outlet said it had obtained about 2GB of files, including emails, letters, invoices, spreadsheets, speeches, and contracts, from the Office of Boris Johnson, the company that manages his post-government business dealings. Most of the material covers September 2022 to July 2024 but the trove also includes earlier records from his premiership.The Guardian highlighted four cases it described as questionable. A month after taking office in 2019, Johnson reportedly held a secret meeting with billionaire Peter Thiel, co-founder of US data giant Palantir Technologies, which was seeking UK contracts at the time.
In 2020, Johnson hosted a party for Conservative peer David Brownlow, who helped finance renovations of the prime minister’s residence – a gathering that may have violated the government’s own Covid-19 restrictions, the report said. After leaving office, Johnson allegedly lobbied Saudi officials he had met while in power, and billed a hedge fund six figures following a visit to Venezuela – money The Guardian claimed may have been payment for meeting the country’s leadership. The newspaper said it was the only UK outlet given access to the leaked files by Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoS), a US-based nonprofit transparency group that obtained the cache earlier this year.
The report argued disclosure was in the public interest because Johnson’s firm receives a government-funded annual stipend meant to cover his official duties as a former prime minister, not personal enrichment. Johnson resigned as prime minister and Conservative Party leader in September 2022 after a string of scandals, including breaches of Covid-19 lockdown rules and the appointment of an MP accused of sexual misconduct to a deputy whip position. During his tenure, Johnson played a significant role in scuttling early peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, opposing a proposed settlement deal and encouraging Kiev to pursue a military path instead.
Ethiopia has officially inaugurated Africa’s largest hydroelectric plant, a controversial project expected to generate up to 5.15 gigawatts of power for the landlocked nation, where nearly half the population is estimated to lack access to electricity. The inauguration of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on the Blue Nile on Tuesday went ahead despite fierce opposition from downstream Egypt and Sudan, which fear the project will disrupt vital water flows.
“To our brothers: Ethiopia built the dam to prosper, to electrify the entire region and to change the history of black people,” Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said as he addressed a crowd that included the presidents of Djibouti, Kenya, Somalia, and South Sudan. The prime ministers of Eswatini and Barbados, the chairperson of the African Union Commission, and the United Nations under-secretary-general and executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa were also in attendance. “It is absolutely not to harm its brothers,” Abiy stated. In a post on X, Ethiopian President Taye Atske Selassie hailed the GERD as “a reward of Ethiopian people’s resilience,” declaring, “Let there be eternal light!”
Addis Ababa announced the completion of the facility, among the 20 biggest in the world, in July after a 14-year construction period. It was initially scheduled to be completed within six years on a $4 billion budget, although Ethiopian authorities now put the final cost at about $5 billion. US President Donald Trump had claimed that Ethiopia built the dam “largely” with American money, but the GERD Coordination Office dismissed the allegation as false and “destructive,” stressing that the project was entirely financed by the government and local contributions. Local media reported jubilation across Africa’s second most populous country following the “historic” opening of the plant, which authorities have long hailed as a milestone for Ethiopia’s renaissance.
According to the World Bank, only about 55.4% of Ethiopia’s population had access to electricity as of 2023, compared with universal coverage in Egypt at 100%. Egypt, which relies on the Nile for about 97% of its fresh water, has accused Addis Ababa of violating international laws and has taken the dispute to the UN Security Council.
Everything that preceded the 2020 federal election was a complex system of control by a network of ideologues, federal agencies, allies in the private sector, financial stakeholders and corrupt interests all working toward a common goal. There’s no need to go through the background of how the election was manipulated and how the government and private sector, specifically social media, worked to influence the 2020 outcome because you have all seen it. Whether it was local election officials working to control outcomes, federal agencies working to support them (CISA, FBI, DHS), financial interests working to fund them (Zuckerberg et al), or social media platforms controlling the visible content and discussion (Twitter Files, Google, Facebook etc.), the objective was all the same. It was a massive one-sided operation against the free will of the American voter.
In the aftermath of the 2020 election, those same system operators, govt officials, corporate media, private sector groups and social media platforms then circled the wagons to scatter the evidence of their conduct. If you questioned anything, you were a threat. That’s the context to the dynamic that unfolded. Lawfare operatives joined forces with Democrat staffers, and allies in social media platforms all worked in concert to target the voices of anyone who would rise in opposition to the corruption that was stunningly clear in the outcome of the election process. Corporate media then labeled, isolated, ridiculed and marginalized anyone who dared to point out the obvious.
When AG Merrick Garland says this of January 6, 2021: […] “the Justice Department has conducted one of the largest, most complex, and most resource-intensive investigations in our history. We have worked to analyze massive amounts of physical and digital data. We have recovered devices, decrypted electronic messages, triangulated phones, and pored through tens of thousands of hours of video. We have also benefited from tens of thousands of tips we received from the public. Following these digital and physical footprints, we were able to identify hundreds of people.” {link} The targeting operation needs context. Do you remember on April 27, 2024, when DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz said, “more than 3.4 million search queries into the NSA database took place between Dec. 1st, 2020 and Nov. 30th, 2021, by government officials and/or contractors working on behalf of the federal government.”
The result was “more than 1 million searches of private documents and communication of Americans that were illegal and non-compliant,” and over “10,000 federal employees have access to that database.” {OIG Testimony}. Put the statement from Garland together with the statement from Horowitz, and you get an understanding of what was done. Hundreds of stakeholders in the Lawfare network joined forces with hundreds of people who became staff researchers for a weaponized Congress. Hundreds more social media background agents then poured thousands of hours into feeding private information to the DOJ, FBI, J6 Committee and all of their hired staff working on the project.
How do I know?…
…I was one of their targets.
Before telling the rest of the story, some background is needed. I am well versed in the ways of the administrative state and the corrupt systems, institutions and silos that make up our weaponized government. I can (a) see them; (b) predict their activity, and (c) know where their traps and operations are located. Traveling the deep investigative weeds of the administrative state eventually gives you a set of skills. When people ask how the outlines on this website can seem so far ahead of the sunlight that eventually falls upon the outlined corruption, this is essentially why. When you take these skills on the road, you learn to be a free-range scout, and after a long while you learn how to track the activity.
When I was outlining how the Fourth Branch of Government works, and/or Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop and the DHS system operating inside it, I wasn’t shooting from the hip. However, people will always seek to dismiss the uncomfortable truth. Sometimes you just have to wait for the evidence you know exists to surface, or for a situation to unfold that is driven by a self-fulfilling prophecy. The often uncomfy CTH predictions turn out to be the truth of the issue, because they are based on the factual evidence of the issue. That level of how the system works came in very handy when I received this subpoena from Chairman Bennie Thompson and the J6 Committee. [Warning, things could get uncomfortable if you don’t accept the scale of corruption that exists.] Pay attention to the red box on the page shown. This is essentially the probable cause that justifies the subpoena itself. I have redacted a name in the box for reasons you will see that follow.
How did the CIA and Bill Gates know about ‘Covid’ beforehand?
“Bill Gates was hosting a coronavirus pandemic simulation in New York City. His co-host is Avril Haines, the Deputy Director of the CIA. What is the CIA doing at a public health forum…?” pic.twitter.com/uC0bqU5pSz
“Kidney-heart failure…all-organ collapse. You heard it again and again. We've never seen a virus that attacks the kidneys. It wasn't the virus; it was the Remdemsvir…” pic.twitter.com/t3G15DOlwI
BANNON: What happened today in the Oval Office was historic. For the first time in U.S. history, a sitting President called out a former President by name for high treason. On global television. In front of a visiting head of state. And Obama took the bait. It’s game on. pic.twitter.com/clG2CosEDf
September 29, 2020. Trump is asked during his debate with Biden if he will commit to a free transition.
Trump's answer was called a conspiracy theory by the MSM. Not only was his answer accurate, it may have been the reason that his house was raided after he left office. pic.twitter.com/pIl2m9zNGG
“I’ve been in construction my whole life… but I go to this $2.5B Fed building and they’re tearing down marble and steel? It doesn’t make sense. We’re going to get to the bottom of it.” —@Pulte on the bizarre rebuild of the Federal Reserve HQ. pic.twitter.com/kSM8NPOBl8
FEDERAL RESERVE: What do the Fed’s 24,000 employees do all day? The one thing the Fed’s economists don’t do is vote for Republicans – not one has donated to a Republican in 25 years. pic.twitter.com/vyYe6SLNSH
CNN does mention Obama and Tulsi now -in passing-, but only to assert that this story serves one purpose only: to divert attention away from the real and infinitely BIGGER story, which is that Trump is connected to the Epstein files. And then it has five different stories about that.
“The evidence that we have found and that we have released directly point to President Obama leading the manufacturing of this intelligence assessment. There are multiple pieces of evidence and intelligence that confirm that fact.”
Barack Obama has long pretended that he had no hand in the Russia collusion hoax, but that narrative is crumbling fast. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has just declassified a trove of explosive documents that reveal the Obama administration’s direct role in fabricating the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) — the cornerstone of the bogus claim that Donald Trump was a Russian asset.nOne key piece of evidence is a 2020 House Intelligence Committee report that flatly states that there was no Russian cyber interference connected to Trump’s win. Despite that, Obama demanded a rushed intelligence assessment in the final weeks of 2016, deliberately designed to push the false claim that Vladimir Putin helped install Trump. The goal? To sabotage the incoming president before he was even sworn in.
According to the documents, Obama and his top advisers — working hand in glove with Hillary Clinton’s campaign and their loyal media allies — staged a coordinated, calculated effort to weaponize U.S. intelligence for political warfare. What began as a smear campaign has now turned into something much bigger. On Wednesday, Gabbard confirmed during a White House press briefing that her office has officially referred Obama to the Department of Justice for criminal investigation over his leading role in the conspiracy. “Do you believe that any of this new information implicates former President Obama in criminal behavior?” a reporter asked. “We have referred and will continue to refer all of these documents to the Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate the criminal implications of this,” Gabbard replied.
When asked point blank if that includes the former president himself, Gabbard didn’t flinch. “Correct,” she replied. “The evidence that we have found and that we have released directly point to President Obama leading the manufacturing of this intelligence assessment. There are multiple pieces of evidence and intelligence that confirm that fact.” A second reporter followed up, referencing Gabbard’s recent statement accusing Obama of helping to lead a coup against President Trump. “Do you believe President Obama is guilty of treason?” he asked. Gabbard stopped short of personally issuing a legal judgment but made it clear what she believes took place. “I’m leaving the criminal charges to the Department of Justice. I am not an attorney,” she said.
“But as I have said previously, when you look at the intent behind creating a fake manufactured intelligence document that directly contradicts multiple assessments that were created by the intelligence community, the expressed intent and what followed afterward can only be described as a years-long coup and a treasonous conspiracy against the American people, our republic, and an attempt to undermine President Trump’s administration.” The implications are staggering. For years, the media and Democrats insisted that Russia installed Trump; now, under the Trump administration’s own intelligence leadership, it’s Obama who stands accused of orchestrating the deception that fueled the entire narrative. On Tuesday, Obama’s office released a rare statement essentially denying Obama’s role in the scandal.
“Out of respect for the office of the presidency, our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response. But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one. These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction,” the statement read. “Nothing in the document issued last week undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but did not successfully manipulate any votes.” Obama can scoff all he wants and hide behind carefully worded denials, but the truth is catching up with him — and fast. The declassified evidence paints a damning picture: not only did Obama know about the Russia hoax, but he was also the one orchestrating it from the top.
This wasn’t some rogue effort by low-level staffers or overeager Clinton allies. This was a calculated, top-down operation to sabotage President Trump and deceive the American public using the full weight of the intelligence community. And now, for the first time, there are real consequences on the horizon.
US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Wednesday released a previously classified congressional report, which she claims debunks “Russia Hoax lies” – a coordinated effort by former President Barack Obama to distort intelligence regarding Moscow’s alleged role in the 2016 election. This marks Gabbard’s second major declassification move, following her earlier allegation of a “treasonous conspiracy” aimed at undermining Donald Trump’s presidency. The newly public document – produced by the House Intelligence Committee in 2020 under Republican leadership – challenges the analytical foundation for the conclusion that Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to help then-candidate Trump win the election.
It criticizes the CIA for failing to adhere to its own standards, citing “one scant, unclear, and unverifiable fragment of a sentence from one of the substandard reports” as the basis for its assessment that Putin favored Trump. In a post on X on Wednesday, Gabbard called the report a “bombshell,” asserting it reveals “the most egregious weaponization and politicization of intelligence in American history.” She accused Obama and his senior officials of collaborating with media allies to delegitimize Trump through what she described as a deliberate disinformation campaign. “They conspired to subvert the will of the American people,” Gabbard wrote, claiming the effort amounted to a “years-long coup” against Trump.
The report also claims Obama issued “unusual directives” to accelerate the release of the intelligence assessment before Trump’s inauguration, bypassing normal interagency coordination procedures within the intelligence community. Gabbard has argued that these actions warrant a criminal investigation and accused Obama-era officials of manufacturing a false narrative to discredit a sitting president. Trump has endorsed her findings, calling for prosecutions of Obama and top members of his administration. She also claimed that internal US intelligence assessments consistently concluded Russia lacked both the capability and intent to interfere in the 2016 election – but that these findings were deliberately suppressed. Russia has denied any involvement in US elections, and President Putin has repeatedly stated that Moscow does not favor any particular American political candidate.
Barack Obama’s team is in full damage control mode after Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard declassified and released evidence that Obama and his top officials in his administration knowingly fabricated intelligence to push the false narrative that Trump was compromised by Russia—an operation designed to delegitimize his election and kneecap his ability to govern. On Tuesday, Barack Obama released a statement through a spokesman in response to the recent release of Russiagate documents implicating the former president in the effort to delegitimize Trump’s presidency. “Out of respect for the office of the presidency, our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response,” the statement read. “But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one. These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction.”
But, Gabbard isn’t backing down. In an appearance on “Rob Schmitt Tonight” on Newsmax Tuesday, she announced that her team will be releasing documents that directly contradict Barack Obama’s latest attempt to rewrite the history of the Russia collusion hoax. “We will be releasing further documents tomorrow that will refute that statement,” Gabbard said, dismissing the statement outright as part of pattern of misinformation pushed by top Democrats and their allies in the media ever since the release of what she called the “manufactured intelligence document” in January 2017. She didn’t stop there. “We will be pulling a whole host of statements that were made by the Obama administration, by Hillary Clinton, by senior Democrat officials, by their friends in the media,” she said. “They state over and over again after this January 2017 manufactured intelligence document was created that repeat the narrative.”
Gabbard laid out a damning list of examples. “The New York Times says, ‘Russian hackers acted to aid Trump in the election,’” she quoted. “Obama’s CIA Director John Brennan says, ‘There is strong consensus among us… to support the CIA claim Russian hackers aided Donald Trump’s election.’” And of course, Hillary Clinton’s infamous refrain: “I would be president if not for the Russian hackers supporting Donald Trump.” “There is a vast body of evidence and intelligence that debunks and refutes this statement you’ve just read and others coming from some of the Democrat leaders in Congress today,” Gabbard concluded. With more documents expected to drop soon, Gabbard is making it clear she intends to expose the Obama-era narrative for what it was—an orchestrated political operation designed to undercut the legitimacy of a duly elected president.
Now that the truth is starting to trickle out, the Obama crowd is sweating—and for good reason. Tulsi Gabbard’s document drops are pulling back the curtain on what looks like a coordinated effort by Obama and his top brass to sabotage a duly elected president using fake intelligence and a complicit media echo chamber. The phony Russia narrative was a deliberate attempt to delegitimize Trump before he even took the oath. And now, the evidence is catching up. No matter how hard Obama’s lackeys try to spin it, accountability is coming. And they know it.
“..Canadian Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc and Mark Carney’s chief-of-staff, Marc-André Blanchard are once again coming to DC to ride their bicycles in slow circles at the bottom of the White House driveway while staring in the windows.”
I’ll repeat it as much as needed, until it sinks in. The U.S-Canada trade deal status is simply a no-brainer. President Trump will answer questions about Canada and tariffs, he’ll put people into seats to discuss trade with the Canadian delegation, and he’ll give every outward appearance of being favorable to Prime Minister Mark Carney…. BUT… In the background, Trump is simply waiting for the USMCA timeline to trigger a renegotiation. President Donald Trump is ambivalent to the trade partnership with Canada. This moot-status reality is why there’s no substantive engagement. ‘No deal’ -until USMCA redo- is a win for President Trump. For some bizarre reason that I simply cannot fathom, almost every Canadian politician seems entirely oblivious to this reality. Instead, Canadian Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc and Mark Carney’s chief-of-staff, Marc-André Blanchard are once again coming to DC to ride their bicycles in slow circles at the bottom of the White House driveway while staring in the windows.
An article in Politico notes the Canadian premiers are now accepting the August 1st deadline will pass without any agreement, and the 35% reciprocal tariffs on non-USMCA products (meaning a lot of stuff) is going to trigger. Literally, everything from Canada that has a non-USMCA component is going to be tariffed. Think about all the stuff from China, Asia (writ large) and Europe that Canada assembles for finished goods. All of that stuff will be subject to the tariffs. That said, there’s good news coming from the recent meeting between Prime Minister Carney and the Premiers. Within their statement they use the term “developing large infrastructure projects.” That’s Canadian political codespeak for them realizing they are going to have to get back to regular energy development, raw material use/refinement and ACTUAL MANUFACTURING.
Canada is going to have to bring back their ‘dirty’ industrial jobs. For our Treehouse friends in Canada, this is very good news. The Canadian assembly economic model has to change in order to get compliant with U.S. trade rules. THAT’S TRUMP’S ENTIRE POINT! The environmentalists within Canada will not like this, but economically they will have no choice; it’s the only way to avoid a complete economic depression.
HUNTSVILLE, Ontario — “Prime Minister Mark Carney and Canada’s premiers are tempering expectations that they’ll strike a new economic and security deal with Donald Trump by the end of the month. “We would like to have the ideal deal, as fast as possible. But what can we get?” Quebec Premier François Legault said Tuesday. “You almost need to ask Donald Trump, and I’m not even sure he knows himself what he wants.” It’s a shift in tone from the premiers and Carney, who ran for election on his economic record, arguing he’d be the best person to negotiate with the president. But Canada is finding it harder than it looks. Carney met the premiers in Muskoka, cottage country north of Toronto, to update them on Canada-U.S. negotiations. As the leaders emerged from a three-hour meeting, they downplayed hopes of an Aug. 1 deal, arguing that achieving a “good deal” is more important than hitting a deadline.”
[…] As the negotiations continue, the premiers spent Tuesday carving out a strategy to offset the economic impact of Trump’s tariffs on the aluminum, steel, auto and lumber sector. They spoke about developing large infrastructure projects, breaking down trade barriers between provinces and encouraging a “buy Canadian” approach.”
Canada is going to go into a deep economic recession; there’s no way to avoid it. However, if they restart their industrial base, drop the ridiculous ‘green’ energy stuff, start exploiting their own natural resources and train an apprentice generation -just like we are trying to do- then Canada can bounce back stronger than ever. We know there are Canadian wolverines who understand this concept; we saw thousands of them in the Truckers’ vaccine strike. Make Canada Great Again, by Making Dirty Jobs Great Again, eh?
US President Donald Trump has claimed that billions of dollars in American aid given to Ukraine under his predecessor Joe Biden may have been misused. The US became Kiev’s top foreign backer under the Biden administration, allocating over $170 billion in military and financial aid, according to official data. Trump, however, has long argued the total is far higher, estimating $350 billion in “equipment and cash” and criticizing Biden for “giving away” money without returns. He reiterated the point at a Republican meeting at the White House on Tuesday, questioning whether Kiev had actually used US aid for defense needs.
“Biden gave away $350 billion worth of equipment or cash. Worse than equipment – cash… They were supposed to buy their own equipment. But I have a feeling they didn’t spend every dollar on the equipment,” Trump said. “We want to find out about that [money], someday, I guess, right?” Trump’s comments echo growing concerns over corruption in Ukraine. The country has long struggled with graft, and its Defense Ministry has faced multiple scandals since the conflict with Russia escalated in 2022. Both the US and EU have pressed for audits and stronger anti-corruption measures. In April, US National Security Adviser Michael Waltz urged tighter oversight of aid, calling Ukraine “one of the most corrupt nations in the world.”
'Not every dollar allocated to Ukraine by Biden for weapons was actually spent on them' – Trump believes that the Ukrainians partially embezzled American aid.
'I am very proud that European countries will buy our weapons, pay 100% of their price, and then distribute them… pic.twitter.com/rz3hnwQ74l
Despite calls for transparency, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky signed a law this week reducing the independence of Ukraine’s anti-corruption bodies, claiming it would streamline investigations. The legislation has triggered international scrutiny and protests across the country, with critics saying the move could be aimed at shielding Zelensky’s inner circle and concealing the embezzlement of military funds. Moscow has long argued that Western aid prolongs the fighting without changing the outcome of the conflict. Russian officials have also long accused Kiev of misusing foreign funds. UN envoy Vassily Nebenzia told RT last month that it’s “an open secret” Ukraine “stole billions of dollars out of the aid” and that Zelensky clings to power to avoid consequences.
First, he effectively shut down the independent anti-corruption bureaus. That led to major protests in the streets, the first in years. So he (they) tweaked it all a bit and he claimed they’re independent again. These guys have embezzled billions and for some reason they’re now afraid of being found out.
Western news outlets have criticized Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky for stripping an independent anti-corruption bureau of its autonomy and placing it under the control of the prosecutor general. The move, carried out on Tuesday, drew widespread concern from journalists and observers. Zelensky signed legislative amendments on the subordination of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the office of the special anti-corruption prosecutor hours after they were rushed through parliament. The changes were enacted despite vocal opposition from the agency. Established in 2015 following the 2014 armed coup in Kiev, the NABU was a cornerstone of judicial reform conditions imposed by Western governments and international financial institutions.
The agency was intended to serve as a key check on official misconduct, along with Western-funded NGOs and media outlets. The move to “neuter” the NABU, as Axios described it, comes amid escalating tensions between the bureau and the Zelensky administration. Earlier this week, Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) executed search warrants against at least 15 NABU personnel and arrested a top investigator on suspicion of ties to Russia. Zelensky defended the measures, alleging that the NABU was ineffective and compromised by Russian influence, warranting what he called a necessary purge. The clampdown drew muted statements of concern from Western officials and warnings about its potential consequences from journalists.
”It is never a good sign when governments accused of corruption raid the agencies and activists trying to hold them to account,” wrote Bloomberg columnist Marc Champion. “It’s something the country cannot afford, just as it asks taxpayers across Europe to pump tens of billions of additional euros into its defense.” Champion also pointed to “an emerging pattern,” referencing the recent criminal charges filed against anti-corruption activist Vitaly Shabunin, who was accused of fraud and draft evasion. Axios noted that the assault on the NABU’s independence came after recent improvements in US-Ukraine relations. However, the outlet cautioned that Zelensky was “playing with fire,” recalling President Donald Trump’s characterization of him as a “dictator without elections” governing under martial law.
The Wall Street Journal accused Kiev of launching an “attack on anti-corruption institutions,” emphasizing the NABU’s role in assuring Western donors that financial support would be safeguarded from embezzlement. It also extensively cited criticisms by Ukrainian anti-corruption activists. Shabunin told the newspaper that the charges against him were meant to send a message: “Those who investigate corruption in Zelensky’s office will be punished.” Another person suggested Zelensky had grown emboldened by the West’s subdued response after Kiev rejected the independent selection of a NABU detective to lead another economic crimes agency. Foreign correspondents covering Ukraine expressed dismay at the developments on social media.
Oliver Carroll of The Economist called the legislation “shocking” and accused Zelensky of allowing “hubris” to jeopardize the goodwill of the foreign public. Yaroslav Trofimov of the Wall Street Journal claimed the crackdown represented “a gift of historic proportions to Russian propaganda” and to Western skeptics of further military aid for Ukraine. Financial Times correspondent Christopher Miller emphasized that the responsibility lay squarely with Zelensky and his chief of staff, Andrey Yermak. ”Orders came from the office of the president last night and the law enforcement committee passed it early morning in such great haste that members had to join over video,” Miller wrote. “This did not just happen overnight, even if it feels that way. This is a shift months in the making.”
US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has labeled Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky “a dictator” and called for his removal, citing mass anti-corruption protests across Ukraine and accusing him of blocking peace efforts. Her comments came after Zelensky signed a controversial bill into law that places the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) and the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) under the authority of the prosecutor general. Critics argue that the legislation effectively strips the bodies of their independence. The law has sparked protests across Ukraine, with around 2,000 people rallying in Kiev and additional demonstrations reported in Lviv, Odessa, and Poltava. “Good for the Ukrainian people! Throw him out of office!” Greene wrote Wednesday on X, sharing footage from the protests. “And America must STOP funding and sending weapons!!!”
Greene, a longtime critic of US aid to Kiev, made similar comments last week while introducing an amendment to block further assistance. “Zelensky is a dictator, who, by the way, stopped elections in his country because of this war,” she told the House. “He’s jailed journalists, he’s canceled his election, controlled state media, and persecuted Christians. The American people should not be forced to continue to pay for another foreign war.”Her statements come amid mounting speculation over Zelensky’s political future. Journalist Seymour Hersh has reported that US officials are considering replacing him, possibly with former top general Valery Zaluzhny.
Senator Tommy Tuberville also called Zelensky a “dictator” last month, accusing him of trying to drag NATO into the conflict with Russia. Tuberville claimed that Zelensky refuses to hold elections because “he knew if he had an election, he’d get voted out.” Zelensky’s five-year presidential term expired in 2024, but he has refused to hold a new election, citing martial law, which has been extended every 90 days since 2022.US President Donald Trump has also questioned Zelensky’s legitimacy, calling him “a dictator without elections” in February. Russian officials have repeatedly brought up the issue of Zelensky’s legitimacy, arguing that any agreements signed by him or his administration could be legally challenged by future leaders of Ukraine.
“Western allies of Ukraine” still believe that Trump keeps seeing Russian President Vladimir Putin “as his main negotiating partner and Zelensky as the primary obstacle to a workable peace deal.”
When the US picks clients, vassals, and proxies, it needs men or women ready to trade in the interests, even the welfare and lives of their compatriots. Vladimir Zelensky is such a man. A look at the elites of EU-NATO Europe shows he is not alone. But he is an especially extreme case. It is much less than a decade ago that the former media entrepreneur and comedian – often crude instead of witty – advanced from being a pet protégé of one of Ukraine’s most corrupt oligarchs to capturing the country’s presidency. As it turned out, never to let go of it: Zelensky has used the war, which was provoked by the West and escalated in February 2022, not only to make himself an indispensable if very expensive and often obstreperous American puppet but also as a pretext to evade elections.
And yet, now signs are multiplying that his days of being indispensable may be over. For one thing, Seymour Hersh, living legend of American investigative journalism, is reporting that Zelensky is very unpopular where it matters most, in US President Donald Trump’s White House. This is not surprising: Trump’s recent turn against Russia – whatever its real substance or marital reasons – does not mean a turn in favor of Ukraine and even less so in favor of Zelensky, as attentive observers have noted. According to the Financial Times, “Western allies of Ukraine” still believe that Trump keeps seeing Russian President Vladimir Putin “as his main negotiating partner and Zelensky as the primary obstacle to a workable peace deal.”
Time to go
Zelensky has gotten his own Maidan (?) Protests are taking place across the country against the crackdown on NABU. "I’m not a sucker!" (Я ж не лох!), people shout, echoing Zelensky’s infamous phrase. pic.twitter.com/upnmNFnUNR
And according to “knowledgeable officials in Washington” who have talked to Hersh, the US leadership is ready to act on that problem by getting rid of Zelensky. And urgently: Some American officials consider removing the Ukrainian president “feet first” in case he refuses to go. Their reason, according to Hersh’s confidants: to make room for a deal with Russia. Hersh has to make do with publishing anonymous sources. It is even conceivable that the Trump administration is leaking this threat against Zelensky to pressure him. Yet even if so, that doesn’t mean the threat is empty. Judging by past US behavior, using and then discarding other countries’ leaders is always an option.
Another, also plausible, possibility is that Zelensky will be discarded to facilitate not ending, but continuing the war, so as to keep draining Russian resources. In this scenario, the US would prolong the war by handing it over to its loyally self-harming European vassals. After, that is, seeing to the installation of a new leader in Kiev, one it has under even better control than Zelensky. Just to make sure the Europeans and the Ukrainians do not start understanding each other too well and end up slipping from US control. The Ukrainian replacement candidate everyone whispers about, old Zelensky nemesis General Valery Zaluzhny – currently in de facto exile as ambassador to the UK – might well be available for both options, depending on his marching orders from Washington.
Meanwhile, as if on cue, Western mainstream media have started to notice the obvious: The Financial Times has found out that critics accuse Zelensky of an “authoritarian slide,” which is still putting it very mildly but closer to the truth than past daft hero worship. The Spectator – in fairness, a magazine with a tradition of being somewhat more realistic about Ukraine – has fired a broadside under the title “Ukraine has lost faith in Zelensky.” The Economist has detected an “outrage” in Zelensky’s moves and, more tellingly, used a picture of him making him look like a cross between a Bond villain and Saddam Hussein. Even Deutsche Welle, a German state propaganda outlet, is now reporting on massive human rights infringements under Zelensky, with the impaired systematically targeted for forced mobilization.
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has requested explanations from Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky over the crackdown on the country’s anti-corruption agencies, which has sparked nationwide protests and international backlash. The agencies were seen as key conditions for Kiev’s EU membership bid and continued Western aid. Under the legislation, passed by the Ukrainian parliament on Tuesday and signed by Zelensky hours later, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAP) were placed under the direct control of the Prosecutor General, a political appointee. The controversial law followed security raids on NABU in light of claims by Zelensky that the agency was subject to Russian influence.
Von der Leyen was in contact with Zelensky, her spokesman Guillaume Mercier told reporters on Wednesday, saying she “conveyed her strong concerns about the consequences” of the new law and requested “explanations.” The legislation “risks weakening strongly the competences and powers of anti-corruption institutions of Ukraine,” Mercier said. The EC chief has urged “respect for the rule of law” and the “fight against corruption,” he stated, adding “There cannot be a compromise.” European Council President Antonio Costa reportedly also voiced concern to Zelensky and asked for explanations. German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul wrote on X that the development “hampers Ukraine’s way towards the EU.”
The creation of NABU and SAP was one of the requirements set by the European Commission and International Monetary Fund more than a decade ago to fight high-level corruption in Ukraine. Since then, the two bodies have led far-reaching investigations, including into Zelensky’s circle. The organizations say they now have been stripped of the guarantees that allowed them to operate effectively. EU Economy Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis told the Financial Times that financial aid to Kiev is “conditional on transparency, judicial reforms [and] democratic governments.” Ukraine was ranked 105th out of 180 countries in Transparency International’s 2024 Corruption Perceptions Index.
The EU’s online content regulations are an affront to free speech, the US State Department has said in response to France’s praise for the Digital Services Act (DSA). The State Department echoed earlier criticism from US Vice President J.D. Vance, who accused EU member states of attempting to quash dissenting voices and stigmatize popular right-wing parties such as the Alternative for Germany (AfD). “In Europe, thousands are being convicted for the crime of criticizing their own governments. This Orwellian message won’t fool the United States. Censorship is not freedom,” the State Department wrote on X on Tuesday. “All the DSA protects is European leaders from their own people.”
Earlier this month, France’s mission to the UN promoted the DSA on X, stating, “In Europe, one is free to speak, not free to spread illegal content.” Passed in 2022, the DSA mandates that online platforms remove “illegal and harmful” content and combat “the spread of disinformation,” according to the European Commission. Critics in both the US and Europe have likened the regulations to the creation of a ‘ministry of truth’. Earlier this year, prosecutors in Paris launched an investigation into Elon Musk’s platform X, on suspicion that it was being used to meddle in French politics and spread hateful messages. The company dismissed the probe as “politically motivated.”
In 2024, the French authorities detained Russian-born tech entrepreneur Pavel Durov on charges that he had allowed his Telegram messaging app to be used for criminal activities. Durov, who was later released on bail, denied any wrongdoing and accused France of waging “a crusade” against free speech. He also claimed that French intelligence officials attempted to pressure him into censoring content during Romania’s 2024 presidential election. France’s foreign intelligence agency, the DGSE, confirmed that it had “reminded” Durov of his responsibility to police content, but denied allegations of election interference.
“A recent report has exposed the European commission guilty of bribing journalist to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars for favourable coverage..”
A recent report has exposed the European commission guilty of bribing journalist to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars for favourable coverage. How long can this go on? While we witness the continuation of the European Commission chief’s anti-democratic control over the project but also a host of values like freedom of speech, a Brussels Eurosceptic think tank has revealed that the project bribes journalists for favourable coverage. In a recent report, MCC claimed that the EU was secretly pumping at least 80m euros a year into both print and broadcast outlets often under the guise of fighting fake news. Yet the figure of 80m euros is wildly underestimated and in reality is likely to be three or four times this as the accountability and transparency of such payments are unsurprisingly buried in opaque accountancy practices with both the EU and media outlets themselves unwilling to be open to their readers/viewers.
Funding programmes are often presented using buzzwords like “fighting disinformation” or “promoting European integration” yet the reality is that it is a fund which is simply there to push propaganda for the project itself. The truth is that the European commission in particular is advancing with a strategy to bribe media giants more and more to promote the EU with its tainted narrative. Ironically, it is Ursula von der Leyen who often talks about “facts” being important. Her pretence that she believes in the truth and an independent press is in itself an illusion on a grand scale and perhaps the greatest example of what “fake news” itself is, on the EU circuit. Just recently, the irony of her being close to losing her job as commission president gave her the opportunity to give us all a good laugh.
“Facts matter, the truth matters”, she said recently in her speech to the EU Parliament, just before a vote of no confidence was held against her. She said – stop laughing – she was willing to engage in debate — provided it was based on “facts” and “arguments”. Yet there has never been an EU commission president who believes and benefits more in the dark art of bunging journalists and media more than Ursula. Indeed, the very media outlets who rushed to her defence when she was facing the jaws of defeat by a group of Eurosceptic MEPs recently are fake news outfits which have been receiving millions of euros of cash in brown envelopes for decades. “Von der Leyen successfully defends against no-confidence vote and attacks right-wing extremists”, thundered Der Spiegel, while Deutsche Welle (DW) reported a failure by the right: “Right-wing extremists fail with no-confidence motion against von der Leyen”.
“Right-wing extremists”? Really? Perhaps it’s worth noting that DW, to date, has received around 35m euros from the EU slush fund, according to the Hungarian think tank’s report which is compiled by Thomas Fazi, an Italian hack whose work is published on Unherd and who recently has published impressive investigations into the salami sliced power grab that the EU has been executing from member states. Ursula, of course, plays a pivotal role in that, as does corrupt media outlets like Deutsche Welle which is so spectacularly shite that its own German language service had to be shut down as no Germans would watch such gobbledygook garbage which champions the EU and Germany’s foreign policy ambitions.
This slush fund, aimed at boosting the EU’s status and relevance, has been around for quite a while but the report was revealing as it explains exactly how the European Commission goes about distributing the cash.mTraditionally, a big way the EU gets artificially positive coverage from Brussels events is via broadcasters. Outfits like DW, Euronews and most of the major state broadcasters across the EU benefit from a subsidy here, whereby the European Commission, European parliament and other institutions like the Council of Ministers provide filming, editing and studio facilities at their state of the art studios which, themselves, are a murky pit of corruption and embezzlement on a grand scale.
These “studios” provide everything for national broadcasters who have “correspondents” in Brussels. TV production, particularly on location is expensive. The EU pays for everything saving state broadcasters like DW millions in production costs which is of course paid back by coverage from the outlet not only with a positive EU spin but often simply replicating the EU narrative. It’s propaganda on a level which would make Goebbels proud as the genius of it is that the relationship which forms between the broadcasters and the EU grows each day until the point where both realise they need one another more than they have previously realised. The result is that so-called “news events” in Brussels which are so boring and would never normally see the light of day if the editors back in Berlin, Paris or Rome would have their say, get air time. And quite a bit of it.
What the report didn’t cover was the contracts themselves with the private companies which run the studios who employ scores of technical staff. Curiously perhaps, it is the same Belgian company which gets the contract every six years when the budget is completed despite EU rules making this impossible. All the Belgian firm does is simply change its name. Corruption of course has to be the heart of this. Someone in the EU commission is getting a huge commission for this of course.
Very soon if you want AI (and even if you don’t), you won’t be able to afford AC. Just this morning we warned readers that America’s largest power grid, PJM Interconnect, which serves 65 million people across 13 states and Washington, DC, and more importantly feeds Deep State Central’s Loudoun County, Virginia, also known as ‘Data Center Alley’ and which is recognized as one of the world’s largest hubs for data centers… had recently issued multiple ‘Maximum Generation’ and ‘Load Management’ alerts this summer, as the heat pushes power demand to the brink with air conditioners running at full blast across the eastern half of the U.S. But as anyone who has not lived under a rock knows, the deeper issue is that there’s simply not enough baseload juice to feed the relentless, ravenous growth of power-hungry AI server racks at new data centers.
“There is simply no new capacity to meet new loads,” said Joe Bowring to Bloomberg, president of Monitoring Analytics, which is the independent watchdog for PJM Interconnection. “The solution is to make sure that people who want to build data centers are serious enough about it to bring their own generation.” Well, there is another solution: crank up prices to the stratosphere. And that’s precisely what happened. As Bloomberg reports, business and households supplied by the largest US grid will pay $16.1 billion to ensure there is enough electricity supply to meet soaring power demand, especially that from a massive buildout in AI data centers. The payouts to generators for the year starting June 2026 topped last year’s record $14.7 billion, according to PJM Interconnection LLC, which operates the grid stretching from the Midwest to the mid-Atlantic.
That puts the capacity price per megawatt each day at a record $329.17 from $269.92. In response to the blowout payout, shares of Constellation Energy and Talen Energy surged in late trading in New York on Tuesday.As millions of Americans will very soon learn the hard way, AI data centers are driving the biggest surge in US electric demand in decades, leading to higher residential utility bills. That’s a key reason why PJM’s auction, once only tracked by power traders and plant owners but now increasingly a topic for general consumption as electricity bills are about to hit an all time high, has also become closely watched by politicians and consumer advocates.
As Bloomberg notes, this is the first auction that included both a price floor and cap, setting the range at $177.24 to $329.17, which of course was the clearing price level reached in this auction. Why even bother pretending there is an auction: just set the price at the max and be done with it. Last year’s 600% jump in capacity prices set off a political firestorm, resulting in PJM reaching a settlement with Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro to essentially cap gains for two years and make auction prices more predictable after wild swings in recent years. Despite the increase in costs across the grid, the price cap trimmed costs for consumers who saw the biggest hikes in the last auction. Exelon’s Baltimore area utility reached a $466 last time, while Dominion Energy’s Virginia territory came in at about $444.
Payouts to generators stayed at high levels due to surging demand from big data centers coming online swiftly, said Jon Gordon, policy director of non-profit clean energy advocacy Advanced Energy United. New facilities are consuming as much power as towns or small cities, coinciding with a wave of older power plants shutting down and lagging investment in new supplies and grid upgrades, he said.The per-megawatt price exceeding the 2024 auction, and well closing at an all time high, is bullish for independent power producers including NRG, Talen, Constellation and Vistra, Barclays analyst Nick Campenella had forecast. These generators have spent more than $34 billion so far this year on deals to mainly buy up power plants fueled by natural gas to feed the AI boom especially in PJM.
Stephen Colbert is at the center of a conspiracy theory. It was born last week, when news broke of CBS canceling Colbert’s late-night talk show. The network’s move wasn’t hard to understand: “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” reportedly loses $40 million a year, and Colbert is already in the final year of his contract. Viewership for all the late-night gabfests is evaporating; there’s no recovery in sight. Colbert is No. 1 in his time slot, but his show costs $100 million a year to produce and doesn’t bring in nearly enough eyeballs to attract the ad revenue to cover that. So in what universe does CBS renew Colbert and keep losing tens of millions of dollars? The conspiracy theory instantly popular among Democrats and many in the media who ought to know better, however, says Colbert is really being taken off air to please President Donald Trump.
If the Federal Communications Commission allows it, Paramount Global, owner of CBS, will soon merge with Skydance, a company owned by David Ellison, whose father is a major Trump supporter. The president doesn’t like being lampooned by Colbert; he’s happy to see his show end. Trump benefits, so Trump must be to blame—right? For those who suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome, there are no coincidences. The truth is as clear as if Trump had been caught with his arms around the president of CBS Studios at a Coldplay concert. You see, if not for Trump’s FCC leverage over the network, CBS would have been content to keep losing millions on Colbert for years to come. That’s the crackpot view, and it’s politically convenient for Democrats, who’ve done their utmost to promote it.
Sen. Adam Schiff was a guest on the show the night Colbert announced its cancellation, and along with fellow Democrat Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, he took to X that evening to plant the seeds of conspiracy. “If Paramount and CBS ended the Late Show for political reasons, the public deserves to know. And deserves better,” Schiff wrote, feeling no need to offer evidence for the insinuation. “CBS canceled Colbert’s show just THREE DAYS after Colbert called out CBS parent company Paramount for its $16M settlement with Trump—a deal that looks like bribery,” Warren posted, referring to CBS’ settlement of a lawsuit over “60 Minutes.” “Do I think this is a coincidence? NO,” Sanders chimed in. The party instantly had its line, with shouty caps to drive it home.
It worked—Bluesky and Facebook lit up with liberals saying free speech was under attack by Trump, while CNN’s Brian Stelter, even as he reported the dismal financial reality of the “unfortunately unprofitable” show, packed his story with the conspiracy narrative. Stelter devoted more than a third of his report titled “Inside CBS’ ‘agonizing decision’ to cancel Colbert’s top-rated late-night show” to speculation about how the pending sale to Skydance might have influenced CBS, with heavy emphasis on the Trump angle, which he brought elsewhere in his story, too. Stelter even added his own spin, attempting to patch up one of the conspiracy tale’s obvious holes by suggesting CBS could have kept Colbert on air by cutting costs since Colbert had produced a much cheaper show, “After Midnight With Taylor Tomlinson,” that CBS was willing to renew.
But that’s absurd—“After Midnight” is already canceled; CBS canned it when Tomlinson announced her departure to return to stand-up comedy, and while she might well love the live stage, it’s obvious that running a late-night show on the cheap means paying hosts less: too little to keep Tomlinson. How little would Colbert, currently raking in a reported $15-$20 million a year, settle for? Colbert loses viewers and advertisers even with a $100 million budget—how poorly would a Colbert show more than 40% cheaper do? Hollywood Reporter notes the average age of Colbert’s viewers is 68. According to CNBC, the average age of David Letterman’s viewers when he handed his time slot to Colbert in 2015 was 60.
All the data points in the same direction:“The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” was a long time dying. That’s true of late-night talk as a whole, too. “I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next,” Trump predicted on Truth Social. The president doesn’t have to pressure ABC to make that happen; the market will do that on its own, as it did with Colbert. Colbert had a hit when he played a parody conservative on Comedy Central. Once he stopped playing and presented his true face and politics to the country, he crashed. Donald Trump didn’t get Stephen Colbert canceled; everything Democrats like about him did. And the late-night host’s fate will also be theirs if they don’t heed this market lesson.
French President Emmanuel Macron’s approval rating has dropped below 20% for the first time since taking office, as criticism mounts over rising defense spending and cuts to social programs. Prime Minister Francois Bayrou also performed poorly in the same poll, with the two forming the most unpopular executive pair of the Fifth Republic. Macron’s approval rating has fallen to 19%, with Bayrou at just 18%, making a combined approval of 37% – the lowest in modern France, according to a new IFOP survey published on Monday. Even during the Yellow Vest protests – a major anti-government movement that began in 2018 over fuel taxes and economic inequality – the French leader’s lowest rating was 23%.
Macron’s support has dropped sharply among his 2022 voters, with only 49% still backing him – down 12 points. His approval has also declined among business leaders and executives, falling by 18 and 8 points, respectively. Bayrou, who was appointed after Michel Barnier’s government collapsed in late 2024 following months of coalition infighting and public backlash over mishandled pension reforms, is now advancing a controversial austerity plan. Last week, he introduced new tax measures on high-income earners to help close a €43.8 billion ($48 billion) budget gap. The austerity package includes a freeze on pensions and social benefits, healthcare spending caps, and the scrapping of two national holidays to increase productivity and reduce government spending.
Left-wing leader Jean-Luc Melenchon has called for Bayrou’s resignation, calling the measures “intolerable injustices.” Despite cuts in social services, defense spending continues to rise. Macron has pledged €6.5 billion more for the military over two years, citing heightened threats to European security. This comes as France’s public debt reaches €3.3 trillion – around 114% of GDP. A new French defense review has warned of a potential “major war” in Europe by 2030, identifying Russia as a leading threat. The Kremlin has denied having any intention to attack the West, and has accused NATO countries of exploiting perceptions of Russia to justify their military build-up.
French President Emmanuel Macron and First Lady Brigitte Macron launched legal proceedings against conservative podcaster Candace Owens in a Delaware court, seeking damages for what they characterize as a sustained defamation campaign targeting the French president’s wife. The 218-page complaint, filed Wednesday in Delaware’s Superior Court where Owens’ company is incorporated, encompasses 22 counts including defamation, false light invasion of privacy, and defamation by implication. The lawsuit centers on Owens’ repeated claims across multiple platforms that Brigitte Macron was born male, claims the Macrons’ legal team describes as “outlandish, defamatory, and far-fetched fictions.” The conservative commentator has disseminated these allegations through social media posts and an eight-part YouTube series titled “Becoming Brigitte,” which the plaintiffs allege has generated significant online harassment.
Tom Clare, the Macrons’ high-profile attorney, said the case is a straightforward defamation in a statement accompanying the filing. “Relying on discredited falsehoods originally presented by a self-proclaimed spiritual medium and so-called investigative journalist, Ms. Owens both promoted and expanded on those falsehoods and invented new ones,” Clare said. The legal filing indicates the Macrons’ representatives made multiple requests for retractions before pursuing litigation. In a joint statement, the presidential couple said they concluded that “referring the matter to a court of law was the only remaining avenue for remedy” after Owens allegedly “systematically reaffirmed these falsehoods.” Owens has maintained her position despite calls for retractions, declaring in a 2024 social media post that she would “stake my entire professional reputation on the fact that Brigitte Macron is in fact a man.”
The French first couple has consistently disputed these claims, citing official birth records. The lawsuit alleges the false statements have resulted in “relentless bullying on a worldwide scale” and caused “tremendous damage” to their reputations. BCC Communications, the public relations firm representing Owens, told Mediaite that the podcaster would address the lawsuit during her program Wednesday. The U.S. lawsuit follows mixed results for the Macrons in French courts addressing similar allegations. On July 11, a Paris appeals court overturned lower court convictions against two French women who had made comparable claims about the first lady’s gender identity.
The appellate ruling reversed a September 2023 decision that had ordered defendants Amandine Roy, a self-proclaimed spiritual medium, and Natacha Rey, a self-described independent journalist, to pay €8,000 in damages to Brigitte Macron and €5,000 to her brother. The women had produced a four-hour YouTube video in December 2021 promoting theories that Brigitte Macron was previously known as Jean-Michel Trogneux. The appeals court determined the defendants had acted in “good faith” despite making false claims, including allegations of “grooming a minor.” The decision eliminated their financial liability.
“Never been done before – xAI did in 19 days what everyone else needs one year to accomplish.
That is superhuman – There's only one person in the world who could do that – Elon Musk is singular in his understanding of engineering.” pic.twitter.com/oNZuH97RhJ
"Starlink Satellites will be able to broadcast direct to your mobiles. There will be no deadzone anywhere in the world for your cell phone. Your phone will still work even if there are no cell towers."
BREAKING: White House is already investigating over 27,000 documents signed by Biden’s autopen which was controlled by staffers. They say they expect to review upwards of 1 MILLION DOCUMENTS – FOX pic.twitter.com/aadSkE7ERC
— “Sudden And Unexpected” (@toobaffled) July 16, 2025
Beck
"The Great Reset" — An 80-Year Plot | Glenn Beck Chalkboard Breakdown
We’re at a crossroads, and the Trump administration might just be the last hope for a REAL Great Reset, one that doesn’t enslave you — like the one pushed by the U.N., Davos, and progressives — but one that… pic.twitter.com/1b43MhAP6h
“Russia’s layered air defense network, including the S-300, S-400, and S-500 systems, was designed with threats like ATACMS in mind. While a 100% interception rate is unrealistic, operational experience shows a high level of effectiveness..”
On Monday, July 14, US President Donald Trump announced that he had decided to supply Patriot missile systems to Kiev, with the first deliveries expected in the coming days. The key element of this move lies not just in the type of weapons, but in the logistics behind them. While the deliveries will be formally carried out by Washington, the funding will come from NATO allies. The first batteries will be transferred from Germany, which will later be compensated by new shipments from the United States. In essence, a new mechanism is taking shape: American weapons, paid for with European money. But what does this actually mean in practical terms? Is this a major escalation, a political gesture, or simply a reshuffling of existing commitments? And more importantly, how will this affect the battlefield itself?
According to Trump, Ukraine will receive 17 Patriot systems – a statement that immediately raises questions. Most importantly, it’s unclear exactly what the administration considers a “system.” If he meant 17 launchers, that would translate into just three or four full batteries, since each battery includes a radar, command post, and between four and eight launchers. This would not represent a dramatic escalation, but rather allow the Ukrainian Armed Forces to replenish and rotate previously supplied batteries.A more ambitious interpretation would assume that Trump meant 17 full batteries. That would be the single largest delivery of air defense systems to Ukraine to date – several times more than what the country currently fields. While the US has the industrial capacity and inventory to provide this quantity, such a generous transfer would be uncharacteristic of Trump’s approach.
His goal is to make a visible impact, not to set records. The more plausible scenario is that this is a European-funded replacement for earlier systems that have been damaged or expended. In parallel with the Patriot announcement, details began to emerge about long-range missiles. According to The Washington Post, the Trump administration is considering removing all restrictions on Ukraine’s use of ATACMS missiles to strike targets deep inside Russian territory. It’s worth clarifying that Ukraine already possesses such missiles. Since 2023, its forces have deployed ATACMS variants with a range of up to 190 km, and since spring of 2024, longer-range versions capable of reaching 300 km. The change lies not in the hardware itself, but in the potential shift in how it can be used.
Up until now, Washington has forbidden Kiev from using these weapons to strike internationally recognized Russian territory. According to American press reports, those limits may now be dropped. While this move would entail risks, it doesn’t represent a strategic game-changer. Russia’s layered air defense network, including the S-300, S-400, and S-500 systems, was designed with threats like ATACMS in mind. While a 100% interception rate is unrealistic, operational experience shows a high level of effectiveness. The threat is real, but hardly decisive.
Revenues from Donald Trump’s tariffs have hit record highs as of the start of this month, as the president announced more tariffs, especially on hostile countries. Tariff revenues reached a record level of $113 billion, representing a significant financial boost and hitting a new high for this year, Fox Business reported. Democrats, who prefer taxing Americans to tariffing foreigners, have bewailed the tariffs nonstop, but Trump’s optimism about the revenues seems to be justified so far. We need fewer taxes on Americans and more tariffs on belligerent nations that hate the USA. And companies that dislike the tariffs should bring operations back to America.
A June 30 press release from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) previously boasted that the majority of the tariff revenues collected this year are due to Trump‘s tariffs, with which he is leveling the international trade playing field and penalizing hostile countries. Fox News added more details on the newest numbers: The U.S. received more than $27 billion in customs duties in June, the highest figure so far this year, according to the Treasury Department’s “Customs and Certain Excise Taxes” data. Compared to last June, this year’s figures are up 301%. In January, tariff revenues hovered around $7.9 billion and more than doubled in April to $16.3 billion. Meanwhile, July is on track to continue as a revenue contributor for the federal government.
Even before the newest revenue numbers were announced, DHS was celebrating the tariffs’ success. “We are proud to help President Trump make America richer and reverse a broken trade system that resulted in millions of jobs shipped overseas and made us dependent on foreign adversaries for essential goods,” said an unnamed senior official. “This administration will always put the American first.” The U.S. slapped all the European Union countries and Mexico with 27% tariffs this month, Fox stated, and Trump imposed a particularly hefty 50% tariff on Brazil for attacking freedom of speech and undermining free elections. “Goods transshipped to evade this 50% Tariff will be subject to that higher Tariff,” Trump wrote the Brazilian president Lula before warning, “If for any reason you decide to raise your Tariffs, then, whatever number you choose to raise them by, will be added onto the 50% that we charge.”
Many countries around the world have long imposed significant tariffs on American goods while demanding no reciprocal tariffs on their goods. Trump was determined to change that rigged and unjust system. That naturally infuriated the countries that had become accustomed to taking advantage of us, and Democrats always take part in those criticizing in America, but the change was actually long overdue. Trump also aims to bring manufacturing back to America and encourage both companies and customers to prefer goods made in America. As Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick reminded anti-tariff gripers, “Remember, there’s a ZERO percent tariff on all goods made in the USA!”
Just days after the Supreme Court again made it clear that the separation of powers is sacrosanct, Indira Talwani, an Obama appointed federal judge in Massachusetts, has taken the unprecedented step of ordering the government to fund Planned Parenthood, purporting to enjoin implementation of a portion of the Big Beautiful Bill (BBB) passed by Congress. The BBB imposed a one-year ban on state Medicaid payments to health care nonprofits that offer abortions and also received more than $800,000 in federal funding in 2023. Three days after the president signed the BBB into law, Planned Parenthood sought a temporary restraining order (TRO). Without hearing from the government, complying with federal rules, or even providing an explanation, within hours after the filing, Talwani issued a TRO for at least 14 days that requires the government to spend money Congress declined to appropriate.
Four days later, the administration asked Talwani to dissolve the TRO because of its obvious infirmities. Instead, she doubled down, issuing an amended TRO that satisfied the technical requirements she had previously ignored. I work with Planned Parenthood’s very capable lead lawyers. Without the facts or the law on their side, they did the right thing. They found a far-left federal judge who has repeatedly ruled against the Trump administration and is willing to create a constitutional crisis to advance a political cause. Numerous Supreme Court decisions explain that merely because something is legal does not mean that Congress must fund it, or continue to do so. Just a few weeks ago, in Medina v. Planned Parenthood, the Supreme Court rejected Planned Parenthood’s challenge to South Carolina’s right to exclude Planned Parenthood from its Medicaid program.
For more than 40 years, the Hyde Amendment has generally prohibited federal funding for abortion, and the court has repeatedly held that the government is under no contrary obligations (e.g., Maher v. Roe and Harris v. McRae). Talwani’s order violates Article I of the Constitution, which could not be more clear: “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” Article I vests the power to authorize spending exclusively in Congress. In OPM v. Richmond (1989), the Supreme Court confirmed that the Appropriations Clause conveys a “straightforward and explicit command” that no money “can be paid out of the Treasury unless it has been appropriated by an act of Congress.”
There is no basis in the Constitution or any Supreme Court decision to support the right of a court – any court – to interfere in congressional decisions to fund, or cease funding, a private organization. To the contrary, in Rust v. Sullivan (1991), the Supreme Court held that “the Government has no constitutional duty to subsidize an activity merely because the activity is constitutionally protected.”Planned Parenthood’s main argument is the equivalent of jury nullification. Because it is the dominant provider of abortion services in the United States, limiting its ability to carry out its mission would deprive women of access to such services. Even if true, that is a political argument unsuccessfully made during the last election and during the debate over the BBB.
Planned Parenthood asserts that the BBB is an unconstitutional bill of attainder because the criteria for defunding effectively single it out. That absurd argument flies in the face of an unbroken line of cases that apply the Article I prohibition on bills of attainder only to criminal or quasi-criminal punishment. Congress often funds, or defunds, individuals and organizations. In Nixon v. Administrator of General Services (1971), the Supreme Court rejected the proposition that an individual or defined group is subject to a bill of attainder merely because Congress singles them out. Talwani did not mention bills of attainder in her amended TRO. Planned Parenthood also claims that defunding its efforts constitutes viewpoint retaliation under the First Amendment, and a violation of the equal protection clause of the Fifth Amendment.
In Rust, the Supreme Court rejected similar claims. In its papers, Planned Parenthood cites no Supreme Court case compelling Congress to appropriate spending on these grounds. Nonetheless, in her amended TRO, Talwani relied on the First and Fifth Amendments to justify issuance of the TRO. She also rejected the government’s concern that it would be harmed if it paid money to Planned Parenthood, because, she averred, the government likely would instead use the funds to pay another provider. By that logic, a mugger is only taking money that his victim would probably spend on something else. The first hearing is on Friday. If Talwani does not relent, she can expect an unpleasant rebuke from appellate courts.
Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky and his chief of staff Andrey Yermak are not “dependable” partners for the US, former Trump adviser Steve Cortes has said, pointing to transparency and corruption issues in Kiev. Cortes made the statement in a reply on X to Ukrainian journalist Diana Panchenko, who had stressed the importance of knowing “the difference between helping Ukraine and helping Zelensky.” She claimed that “Ukrainians want peace” while “Zelensky wants money and to stay in power.” “Exactly,” Cortes responded, stating that in order for the US-Ukraine partnership to work, Kiev “must become transparent and corruption-free.” “Yermak and Zelensky are not dependable, believable partners for the United States,” he said.
Cortes, who previously served as a senior adviser to President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance, has long been critical of the Ukrainian government’s internal practices. Earlier this month, he published a commentary warning of waning trust in Kiev’s leadership, singling out Yermak as a central figure in what he described as systemic corruption, calling him Ukraine’s “co-president” and accusing him of shielding officials under criminal investigation. Cortes argued that Yermak has become a nuisance in UK-Ukraine relations, noting bipartisan frustration with the aide. He specifically cited Yermak’s role in the dismissal of General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, a popular and respected military leader, while officials like Deputy Prime Minister Aleksey Chernyshov—who has faced corruption allegations—remained in office. Chernyshov, however, was ultimately sacked earlier this week amid an ongoing cabinet reshuffle.
The former adviser’s remarks echo longstanding concerns expressed by Donald Trump, who has also described Zelensky as the “primary obstacle” to peace and has repeatedly criticized the scale of US support for Ukraine and the lack of accountability for the billions of dollars sent to Kiev. In March, Trump adviser David Sacks also called for a full audit of US aid to Ukraine, claiming there had been “tons of stories” about corruption and the misuse of American weapons. He said the only remaining question was “how much” had been stolen, calling Kiev’s leadership massively corrupt.
The European Union is funding the “death” of Ukraine by paying for weapons sent to Kiev, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said. On Monday, US President Donald Trump unveiled a proposal to continue delivering American weapons to Ukraine at the expense of EU taxpayers. Kaja Kallas, the EU’s top diplomat, said that the proposal was welcome, but that Trump should not take credit for aid unless the US is willing to “share the burden.” “Was Kaja starting to figure things out?” Zakharova wrote on social media on Wednesday. “Let’s help her: it’s a bit like being told to foot the bill for a meal someone else enjoys, only for them to end up dead afterward. Am I correct?”
Moscow has consistently argued that no amount of Western military aid will make it change its core goals in the conflict. The Kremlin has described the EU’s approach as an attempt to prolong the war “to the last Ukrainian” and harm Russia, using Ukraine as a proxy. Trump has emphasized that arms sales to Ukraine are a business opportunity for the US. His administration maintains the proposal is naturally shifting responsibility for Ukraine’s future to the EU, which it says has the most to gain or lose.
”Europe wants to take the traditional defense of Europe. They should,” US Ambassador to NATO Matt Whitaker told Fox News. “The reality right now in Europe is they cannot manufacture the armaments required on the battlefield of Ukraine, or on the battlefield if there is a potential war in Europe.” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday that the EU was placing “improper pressure” on Trump to adopt a more pro-Ukrainian stance. He warned that escalating sanctions on Moscow – something Trump also threatened – would ultimately harm EU member states more than Russia.
Since early 2022, more than three years ago, my theme has been that Russian President Putin’s unwillingness or inability to bring the conflict with Ukraine to a quick end will result in an ever-widening war culminating in a major conflagration far beyond Donbas and Ukraine. It was obvious to me, but not to Putin and to my critics, that by refusing to use sufficient force to end the conflict Putin was guaranteeing the increased participation of Washington and NATO in the conflict. Over the years of the conflict I have provided numerous updates on “The Ever-widening War.”
The war has widened into an attack on Russian strategic forces and recent talk of providing Ukraine with missiles to attack Moscow. According to news reports, Europe is preparing for war with Russia. The conflict has already gone far beyond Donbas. The point of a major conflagration cannot be far off. One Russian commentator says “World War III has already begun.” Putin, and as far as I can tell, few in Russia understand the Zionist neoconservatives doctrine of American hegemony. It seems that Putin has never heard of the three decades old Wolfowitz doctrine. Putin himself admits that he has only now understood the situation that confronts Russia. As John Helmer reports:
“Putin has just admitted this in a television interview on July 14. “I thought that the contradictions with the West were primarily ideological,” he said. “It seemed logical at the time – Cold War inertia, different views of the world, values, the organization of society. But even when the ideology disappeared, when the Soviet Union ceased to exist, the same, almost routine deviation from Russia’s interests continued. And it was not because of ideas [ideology], but because of the pursuit of advantages – geopolitical, economic, strategic. The world respects only those who can protect themselves. Until we show that we are an independent and sovereign power that stands behind our interests, there will be no room for anyone to treat us as equals.”
President Trump, stopped by the Ruling Establishment from his domestic agenda, has turned to foreign affairs where he can remain in the limelight by bullying other countries to conform to his edicts. He has now given Putin 50 days to comply. To comply with what? With Zelensky’s demands? What is the agreement for which Trump demands Putin’s consent? As the conflict is between Washington and Russia, the agreement has to be made by Trump and Putin. Putin has made it clear that the agreement must deal with “the root cause” of the conflict, which is the absence of a mutual security agreement. But if Washington is set on hegemony, there can be no mutual security agreement.
Here is the real situation: Two heavily nuclear armed governments are both in denial of reality. Putin and Lavrov are governed by their illusion that the difference between Russia and the West can be resolved through words. Washington is dangerous because the Zionist neoconservative doctrine of American hegemony is institutionalized. To avoid the brewing conflagration, all Washington and the EU need to do is to agree with Russia to a mutual security treaty. Russia only wants threats off its borders. Russia has no territorial ambitions unless Russia is driven to them by security threats. Trump wants America to make money. How does America make money when US aggression cuts the West off from the majority of the world? The only reason for BRICS is Washington’s hostility to Russia, China, and Iran. The dilemma is that the US weapons industry is too powerful for peace.
“..sanctions would be imposed on Russia and its trade partners unless hostilities are halted within 50 days. No similar deadline was issued for Ukraine.”
The Kremlin urges all nations to push Kiev to reach a negotiated settlement in the Ukraine conflict and hopes US President Donald Trump is privately doing so, spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday.Earlier in the week, Trump unveiled a proposal under which NATO member states supporting Kiev would purchase American-made weapons for Ukraine’s fight against Russia. He also warned that sanctions would be imposed on Russia and its trade partners unless hostilities are halted within 50 days. No similar deadline was issued for Ukraine. ”There were a lot of remarks about [Trump’s] disappointment [with Russian President Vladimir Putin], but we want to hope that in parallel to that, pressure is being applied to the Ukrainian side,” Peskov told journalists. “It appears that the Ukrainian side takes all statements of support as signals to continue war, not as signals for peace.”
In public comments, Trump has alternated between assigning blame to Moscow and Kiev for the lack of progress toward his desired outcome in the conflict. His latest statements have focused on criticizing Russia. In May, Ukraine agreed to resume direct negotiations with Russia after the Trump administration indicated it expected such a step. However, talks stalled after the early June meeting, with Kiev declaring the process “exhausted” and indicating it had only participated to avoid appearing dismissive of Trump’s diplomatic agenda. Moscow has said it remains committed to achieving its core objectives in Ukraine but prefers a diplomatic solution if possible.
Trump’s threats were welcomed by hardliners in the US and Europe. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina issued a veiled threat of military action, writing on X that “if Putin and others are wondering what happens on day 51, I would suggest they call the Ayatollah.” Graham referenced Iran’s supreme leader, whose country was targeted last month by US and Israeli airstrikes. Officials claimed the attacks were necessary to dismantle Tehran’s nuclear infrastructure and prevent the development of a nuclear weapon, a goal that Iran denies pursuing.
Vladimir Zelensky has called on US President Donald Trump to reconsider Ukraine’s proposal to host long-range American missiles. The appeal comes in the wake of Trump’s pledge this week to provide advanced weapons systems to Kiev, with the caveat that the costs will be covered by other nations. In an interview with Newsmax on Tuesday, Zelensky appealed for even more military aid, referencing part of his “victory plan,” which he had previously presented to both President Joe Biden and Trump in the lead-up to the 2024 US presidential election. ”I remember that we had a powerful deterrence package before President Trump became president. I wanted America to sell us such a package. But it was not done,” Zelensky said.
Previous media reports have suggested that Trump may deliver additional long-range weaponry to Ukraine as part of his new initiatives. Some outlets claimed he had encouraged Zelensky to target Moscow and St. Petersburg, though the White House has refuted them. Publicly, the US president has advised against attacks on the Russian capital. Zelensky first presented his “victory plan” to the US in September 2024. According to leaked classified details of the proposal’s “deterrence package,” Kiev asked the US to station nuclear-capable Tomahawk cruise missiles in Ukraine. The Biden administration reportedly rejected the request outright. Ukrainian lobbying efforts during the 2024 US election cycle drew scrutiny, particularly following Zelensky’s visit to an arms manufacturing facility in the swing state of Pennsylvania.
He was accompanied by prominent Democrats during the trip, including Governor Josh Shapiro and Senator Bob Casey, prompting Republican officials to take aim, accusing him of implicitly supporting the rival party. Zelensky’s subsequent interactions with Trump were also marked by tensions. The planned signing of a minerals deal during his February visit to the White House – an offer of broad US access to Ukrainian natural resources that originally was part of the “victory plan” – erupted into a public dispute in the Oval Office. The agreement was ultimately signed in late April. Moscow has accused Zelensky of prolonging hostilities with Russia despite mounting Ukrainian casualties in a bid to preserve his power through martial law despite his presidential term officially ending last year.
Several NATO member states were not notified in advance that they would be asked to fund new arms deliveries to Ukraine under US President Donald Trump’s latest proposal, Reuters has reported, citing European officials. On Monday, Trump pledged to provide more US-made weapons to Kiev through a new scheme funded by European NATO members. “We’re not buying it,” Trump said during an Oval Office meeting with the bloc’s secretary-general, Mark Rutte. “We will manufacture it, and they’re going to be paying for it.” Trump noted that the plan is seen by Washington as a business opportunity. Rutte said six countries – Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, and Canada – were willing to take part in the arms procurement scheme.
However, high-ranking sources at the embassies of two of those countries told Reuters they only learned of their supposed participation when the announcement was made. “It is my clear sense that nobody has been briefed about the exact details in advance,” one European ambassador told Reuters. “And I also suspect that internally in the administration they are only now beginning to sort out what it means in practice.” Several countries have already distanced themselves from Trump’s plan. According to Politico and La Stampa, France and Italy will not be financially supporting the effort. Hungary and the Czech Republic have also declined to participate, with Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala saying Prague is focusing on other projects.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, on the other hand, has welcomed the proposal but emphasized that Washington should “share the burden,” stating that if European countries pay for the weapons, it should be considered as “European support.” Since taking office in January, Trump has renewed pressure on NATO members to increase defense spending and warned that the US may not defend allies who do not meet their obligations. Russia has repeatedly condemned Western arms supplies to Ukraine, arguing that it only prolongs the bloodshed and does not change the course of the conflict. The Kremlin maintains that foreign military aid is being used to escalate the hostilities rather than seek a diplomatic resolution.
“..the Middle East, where the actions of the US and Israel are seen as manifestations of Western hegemony, while BRICS nations and their partners are increasingly positioning themselves as defenders of multipolarity, sovereignty, and a just international order.”
Global events increasingly reflect the growing confrontation between the Western bloc, led by the United States and its allies, and the countries of the so-called “World Majority,” coalescing around BRICS. This geopolitical tension is particularly evident against the backdrop of escalating conflicts in the Middle East, where the actions of the US and Israel are seen as manifestations of Western hegemony, while BRICS nations and their partners are increasingly positioning themselves as defenders of multipolarity, sovereignty, and a just international order.
On July 7, US President Donald Trump hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House. The two leaders discussed two major issues: the upcoming negotiations with Iran and the controversial initiative to relocate Palestinians from Gaza. These topics underscored Washington and West Jerusalem’s efforts to reshape the Middle East’s security architecture – framed under the banner of offering a “better future,” yet unfolding amid growing accusations of violations of international law.= During a working dinner, Netanyahu stated that Israel and the US had been consulting with several countries allegedly willing to accept Palestinians wishing to leave Gaza. He emphasized that the proposed relocation would be “voluntary,” offering a better future to those who seek it. According to him, agreements with a number of countries were already nearing completion.
Initially, Trump refrained from making a clear statement on the matter, but later remarked that “neighboring countries have been extremely cooperative,” expressing confidence that “something good will happen.” This ambiguity may reflect either an attempt to soften the political sensitivity of the issue or a reluctance to prematurely reveal the details of a plan that has drawn considerable criticism. Previously, Trump had proposed transforming Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East” and relocating its population – an idea harshly rejected both by the residents of the enclave and by international human rights organizations, which characterized it as a form of ethnic cleansing. Behind the scenes of the dinner, indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas were ongoing, focused on securing a ceasefire and a hostage exchange.
The meeting marked the third in-person encounter between Trump and Netanyahu since the Republican leader’s return to the White House in January. Just two weeks earlier, the US had carried out strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities in support of Israeli military action. Days later, Trump helped broker a short-term ceasefire in the 12-day war between Israel and Iran – an achievement likely intended to bolster his own diplomatic credentials. During the meeting, Trump announced that his administration had scheduled formal talks with Iran. He said that Tehran had shown a willingness to negotiate following substantial military and economic pressure. US Special Envoy for the Middle East Steve Witkoff confirmed that the meeting was expected to take place “within the next week.”
Trump also indicated he was open to lifting sanctions on Iran under the right circumstances. Meanwhile, Iran’s newly elected president, Masoud Pezeshkian, expressed hope that tensions with the United States could be resolved through diplomacy. These statements suggested a potential, albeit limited, window for resetting US-Iranian relations, though both sides appeared driven primarily by tactical considerations. The political significance of the Trump-Netanyahu meeting was further underscored by protests outside the White House. Hundreds of demonstrators, waving Palestinian flags, demanded an end to US military support for Israel and called for Netanyahu’s arrest in light of the International Criminal Court’s warrant against him for alleged war crimes in Gaza.
US Rep. Greene has introduced legislation to remove military aid for Israel from the US budget. Marjorie Greene has done several things that members of the US House and Senate are trained not to do. She acknowledged Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons. Members of the US government are not supposed to acknowledge Israel’s nuclear weapons, because the Symington Amendment forbids aid to governments that enrich weapons grade uranium and produce nuclear weapons outside of International Atomic Energy Agency controls. The Israeli controlled US government avoids the Symington law by refusing to acknowledge the fact that Israel has acquired, with Washington’s assistance, nuclear weapons totally outside the IAEA controls
US Rep. Greene also points out the incongruity of Israel armed with nuclear weapons needing American military aid. This is especially the case when American men and women were killed and wounded fighting Israel’s wars against Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Hezbollah the protector of Lebanon, and then were abandoned by Washington and are living on the streets. The US military is now being urged to die for Israel in Iran. Americans have been so successfully brainwashed by the Israel Lobby that they see no difference between the interest of America and Israel. This is Netanyahu’s constant message. Israel and America are the same country.
President Trump has done a good thing for Americans by closing the border to immigrant-invaders. The Biden regime used American tax dollars to pay for the inflow of millions of non-ethnic Americans across an undefended border to transform the country into a Tower of Babel. President Trump did another good thing in eliminating the intentional discrimination against white ethnic Americans by the Biden regime’s DEI policy which refused to promote white heterosexuals until there was a specified percentage of homosexuals, lesbians, pedophiles, transgendered, and peoples of color. This Democrat liberal/leftwing policy was called “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion,” but white people were not included. So, it is impossible not to be thankful for Trump. But Trump’s subservience to Israel is dispiriting and shameful.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has warned India, China and Brazil of “consequences” if they continue to do business with Russia. Rutte’s comment came after a meeting with US Senators on Tuesday, following President Donald Trump’s announcement on providing new military aid for Ukraine and a threat to impose 100% secondary tariffs on purchasers of Russian exports, unless a peace agreement is reached within 50 days. “My encouragement to these three countries, particularly is, if you live now in Beijing, or in Delhi, or you are the President of Brazil, you might want to take a look into this, because this might hit you very hard,” Rutte told reporters.
“So I urge you to make a phone call to Vladimir Putin and convey to him that he needs to get serious about peace talks, because if not, the consequences will have a massive impact on Brazil, India, and China,” he added. Since 2022, India and China have significantly increased their oil purchases from Russia. In May, New Delhi emerged as the second-largest buyer of Russian fossil fuels, with estimated purchases totaling $4.9 billion, of which crude constituted about 72% of the total value, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. The US and India are engaged in negotiations for a trade agreement and are racing to meet an August 1 deadline set by Trump, in order to avoid reciprocal tariffs.
Rutte’s warning echoes US Senator Lindsey Graham, who in June said that he was working on a sanctions bill that he called an “economic bunker buster,” aimed at the three countries. Indian diplomats and officials have spoken with the Republican senator who sponsored the bill, which has Trump’s backing. Since he began his second term in January, Trump has issued direct threats to BRICS and imposed new duties on countries perceived to be aligned with the bloc.
🇺🇸🇨🇳🇮🇳🇧🇷 “I will SLAM secondary sanctions on you!”
NATO Secretary General Rutte plays world leader:
“If you are the President of China, the Prime Minister of India, or the President of Brazil and you’re still trading with the Russians and buying their oil and gas, know that if… pic.twitter.com/IaB8gjyezW
European Union plans to move frozen Russian sovereign assets into riskier investments would amount to expropriation, the Belgium-based settlement house Euroclear has warned.In an interview with the Financial Times published Wednesday, Euroclear Chief Executive Valerie Urbain said such a move could expose the EU’s financial system to both legal and systemic risks. Since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, the US and EU have frozen more than $300 billion in Russian state assets. In May, the EU approved a plan to channel profits from those assets to support Ukraine, while some member states have pushed for outright confiscation.
Some $213 billion of the assets are held by Euroclear. The securities depository is currently reinvesting proceeds from Russia’s maturing assets – such as coupon payments and redemptions – primarily through central banks. The G7 is using those returns to support a $50 billion loan to Ukraine. However, as profits have declined following interest rate cuts by the European Central Bank, the European Commission is reportedly considering moving the funds into higher-yield investments to boost Kiev’s funding. Urbain has warned that seeking higher returns could lead to retaliation from Moscow and compromise Euroclear’s central role in the global financial system. “If you increase the revenues, you increase the risks.” Last year, Euroclear transferred €4 billion ($4.3 billion) to Ukraine, and so far this year it has paid €1.8 billion ($1.9 billion), according to Urbain.
She said the EU may try to raise those amounts by creating a “special purpose vehicle” to channel Russian assets into higher-risk investments that could bring “more revenues.” She cautioned that such a structure would involve “a lot of risks for Euroclear and for the European markets globally.” Legally, she said, the move would constitute “expropriation of the cash from Euroclear” without relieving the institution of its liability to the Russian central bank, “a position that we cannot bear.” Moscow has repeatedly warned that seizing its funds would violate international law. Legal and political concerns – particularly over sovereign immunity and property rights – have so far prevented the EU from endorsing full confiscation.
President Donald Trump demanded on Tuesday that California Democrat Sen. Adam Schiff be “brought to justice” following allegations of mortgage fraud tied to his Maryland property. The statement came after a federal housing agency reportedly referred the matter to the Justice Department for a criminal investigation into Schiff’s real estate dealings. “I have always suspected Shifty Adam Schiff was a scam artist,” he wrote. “And now I learn that Fannie Mae’s Financial Crimes Division have concluded that Adam Schiff has engaged in a sustained pattern of possible Mortgage Fraud.” “I always knew Adam Schiff was a Crook,” Trump continued. “Mortgage Fraud is very serious, and CROOKED Adam Schiff (now a Senator) needs to be brought to justice.” Schiff, of course, denies the allegations.
Since I led his first impeachment, Trump has repeatedly called for me to be arrested for treason.
So in a way, I guess this is a bit of a letdown.
And this baseless attempt at political retribution won’t stop me from holding him accountable.
These aren’t wild allegations plucked from thin air; the evidence is pretty clear. According to records, Schiff claimed his main residence was a spacious 3,420 square foot home in Maryland, a move that conveniently secured him better mortgage rates — rates designed for people who actually reside in those homes as their principal dwelling. Simultaneously, he grabbed a homeowner’s exemption on a much smaller 650 square foot condo in Burbank, Calif., handing himself a tidy cut of about $7,000 off his tax bill by also insisting that the property was his “primary residence.” Two homes, both allegedly his principal residence, in two different states, reaping benefits from both ends. Is that some kind of bureaucratic miracle? Or a calculated abuse of the system he’s sworn to oversee?
Schiff’s own paperwork — mortgage forms, exemption claims, and that curious personal check he used to pay California property taxes (listing his Maryland address, no less) — tells a story of someone playing the system with both hands. Adding insult to injury, Schiff only made that personal check payment once, in 2017. The evidence is serious enough that a senior administration official confirmed to The New York Post that the Federal Housing Finance Agency, responsible for overseeing Fannie Mae, has submitted a criminal referral to the Justice Department, calling for a full investigation.
“It is extremely serious and [Schiff] is not taking it seriously,” the official told the Post. The source added that Schiff had a criminal count for each time he paid his monthly mortgage. The Federal Housing Finance Agency, under the leadership of Bill Pulte, has remained tight-lipped, declining to comment on the referral involving Schiff. But it was Pulte who, just a few months ago, referred another high-profile Trump adversary, New York Attorney General Letitia James, to the Justice Department over alleged mortgage fraud tied to properties in Brooklyn and Virginia.
The EU General Court in Luxembourg has ordered Marine Le Pen and her two sisters to repay more than €300,000 (over $350,000) to the EU. The funds were “considered to have been wrongly received” by their father, the late opposition leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, during his time as a member of the European Parliament, the court said in a statement on Wednesday. The legislative body claimed in 2024 that Le Pen “had improperly invoiced personal expenses” and demanded repayment. The latter, however, sought to appeal. Following Le Pen’s death in January, his daughters pursued the proceedings as his legal heirs.
Jean-Marie Le Pen was founder of the right-wing National Front and a longtime critic of EU integration. He served as an MEP from 1984 to 2019. His outspoken positions on national sovereignty and immigration challenged the French political establishment for decades. What were once dismissed as fringe positions have since become major issues in European politics. The ruling comes just months after his daughter, Marine Le Pen, former leader of the right-wing National Rally (RN) and three-time presidential candidate, was convicted of embezzling EU funds. Although she denied any wrongdoing, she received a prison sentence, was fined €100,000 ($116,000), and barred from holding public office for five years, a decision widely seen as eliminating a leading contender from the 2027 presidential race.
Le Pen has appealed the conviction. A verdict is expected in the summer of 2026 and will prove decisive in her bid for the presidency. The previous election in 2022 resulted in a run-off between Le Pen, who won over 42% of votes, and Emmanuel Macron, who secured 58%. Le Pen’s conviction triggered a wave of protests, with her supporters condemning the ruling as politically motivated and aimed at silencing dissent. US President Donald Trump accused the French political establishment of employing lawfare against the right-wing figure, urging Paris to “free” her.
The first Tesla Supercharger station was built on September 24, 2012, it’s pretty wild that Elon was able to foresee the future and thus build +50,000 of these things when a majority thought it was a crazy endeavor since an EV future was such a distant dream pic.twitter.com/dmMeRjEEVh
WWII Victory Day, celebrated in Russia on May 9, has become a special holiday. The war was both the greatest trial and the greatest triumph in Russia’s modern history. However, the celebrations acquired their current shape and form not so long ago, and some important traditions were established quite recently. The Act of Unconditional Surrender of the German Third Reich was signed by Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel on May 8, 1945, at 22:43 Central European Time. In Moscow, it was already the early hours of May 9th. That very morning, Russians found out that the war, which had claimed 27 million Soviet lives, was finally over and the enemy had surrendered. The first celebration of victory in WWII – or the Great Patriotic War, as it is known in Russia – took place that very day.
Army reports instantly dropped their official tone and described how the residents of Prague pulled the troops off their armored vehicles to dance and drink together. In the provinces, people ran out on the streets and congratulated each other. Indeed, some fanatical Nazis continued to put up resistance, Europe was full of mines, and reports stated that there were many losses throughout the month of May. But the big war was over, and to the sound of fireworks, people returned home. No one doubted that victory in WWII was an incredibly important event. However, people were grieving the deaths of their relatives and friends, and their pain was great. May 9 was immediately designated a national holiday. However, lavish celebrations seemed out of place as the country was in ruins, and mentally and physically crippled soldiers, concentration camp prisoners, ‘ostarbeiters’ and refugees returned home.
In Western Ukraine and the Baltic States, battles against nationalist partisans continued. In those years, the Victory Day Parade was held only once, in the summer of 1945. During this grand spectacle, Wehrmacht and SS banners seized in Germany were thrown in front of the Kremlin. But in the following years, the celebrations became more modest. Every year on May 9th there was a fireworks display, but otherwise, from 1947 it was a regular workday (even though a festive one), and veterans usually celebrated it with friends. Things changed in 1965. By that time, 20 years had passed since the end of the war. New Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, himself a WWII veteran, decided to once again make May 9 a day off. From then on, military parades were held on Victory Day jubilees, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier memorial was opened by the Kremlin wall, and the tradition of laying wreaths at the memorials was established. In short, the holiday acquired a grand scale and became quite solemn after the nation’s pain had somewhat subsided.
The country is gone, but the memory remains . The annual large-scale celebration of Victory Day, with parades held across the country and a military parade on Moscow’s Red Square, is a fairly new tradition. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, an obvious question arose – what should be done with the country’s communist legacy and symbology? For example, the Day of the 1917 Revolution was observed on November 7. It was replaced by another holiday, associated with Russian national heroes Minin and Pozharsky, who lived in the 17th century. But no one ever considered revising May 9th as Victory Day.
However, the authorities wanted to separate the holiday from socialist ideology. In the Soviet Union, ideology and victory were inseparable. But in the 90s, a new era had dawned. The USSR had collapsed. Moreover, many war heroes fell prey to new conflicts. For example, Vladimir Bochkovsky, a hero of the battles in Ukraine and Germany, became a citizen of the unrecognized Republic of Transnistria, which started a bloody uprising against the former Soviet Republic of Moldova. Meliton Kantaria – the standard-bearer who had hoisted the Soviet flag over the Reichstag – was forced to flee from Abkhazia when an ethnic conflict broke out between the Abkhazians and Georgians, even though by that time, he was a very old man. At that time, a question arose – what does Victory Day mean for the new republics?
Opinions differed. In the Baltic states, national elites believed that in the 40s their countries had been held hostage by two totalitarian regimes. Moreover, unofficially, the Nazis were preferred over the communists – for example, in Latvia, the memorial day of the Latvian SS Legion was officially celebrated for some time. In many other former USSR republics, Victory Day is celebrated in one way or another. In Russia, Victory Day has remained one of the most important national holidays, and a key moment in Russian history. However, the holiday has lost some of its political meaning. For example, Lenin’s Mausoleum is draped on May 9 in order to avoid ideological ties, and a new symbol has been added to the celebrations – the black and orange St. George ribbon, which resembles both the ribbon of the Order of St. George (the highest military decoration in Imperial Russia) and the ribbon of the Order of Glory – a WWII soldier’s award.
Russian communists and leftists didn’t like the fact that the Soviet symbols were replaced. However, for the majority of Russian people, other aspects turned out to be more important. WWII impacted almost every family in Russia, and most people consider the Soviet era as simply one period in the country’s history. Therefore, national motives are considered more important than Soviet symbology.
Before the start of the Manhattan prosecution of former president Donald Trump, I characterized the case of District Attorney Alvin Bragg as based on a type of obscenity standard. In a 1984 pornography case, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart wrote “I shall not today attempt further to define [obscenity]. . . . But I know it when I see it.” Bragg has refused to clearly define the crime that Trump was seeking to conceal when payments for a non-disclosure agreement were listed as a legal expense. We would just know it when we saw it at trial. We are still waiting, but this week, Bragg seems to be prosecuting an actual obscenity case. The prosecution fought with Trump’s defense counsel to not only call porn star Stormy Daniels to the stand, but to ask her for lurid details on her alleged tryst with Trump. The only assurance that they would make to Judge Juan Merchan was that they would “not go into details of genitalia.”
For Merchan, who has largely ruled against Trump on such motions, that was enough. He allowed the prosecutors to get into the details of the affair despite the immateriality of the evidence to any criminal theory. Neither the NDA nor the payment to Daniels is being contested. It is also uncontested that Trump wanted to pay to get the story (and other stories, including untrue allegations) from being published. The value of the testimony was entirely sensational and gratuitous, yet Merchan was fine with humiliating Trump. Daniels’ testimony was a dumpster fire in the courtroom. The most maddening moment for the defense came at the lunch break when Merchan stated, “I agree that it would have been better if some of these things had been left unsaid.” He then denied a motion for a mistrial based on the testimony and blamed the defense for not objecting more.
That, of course, ignores the standing objection of the defense to Daniels even appearing, and specific objections to the broad scope allowed by the court. This is precisely what the defense said would happen when the prosecutors only agreed to avoid “genitalia.” There was no reason for Daniels to appear at all in the trial. Even if he was adamant in allowing her, Merchan could have imposed a much more limited scope for her testimony. He could also have enforced the limits that he did place on the testimony when it was being ignored by both the prosecutors and the witness. Merchan said that he is considering a limiting instruction for the jury to ignore aspects of the testimony.
But that is little comfort for the defendant. The court was told that this would happen, it happened, and now the court wants to ask the jury to pretend that it did not happen. Merchan knows that there is no way for the jury to unhear the testimony. More importantly, the prosecution knew that from the outset. Daniels appeared eager to share the stories for the same reason that she was eager to sell her story. While she said that she “hates” Trump and wants him “held accountable,” Daniels is no victim.
Alan Dershowitz breaks down why Stormy Daniel's disastrous testimony yesterday could have just doomed the prosecution's entire case in NYC:
"There was clear reversible error today committed by the judge and by the prosecution."
“..Trump and other defendants argued that McAfee was wrong not to remove both WIllis and Wade, writing that “providing DA Willis with the option to simply remove Wade confounds logic and is contrary to Georgia law.”
One day after former President Donald Trump’s classified documents trial was postponed indefinitely after we learned that the DOJ mishandled evidence in the case (with Judge Aileen M. Cannon citing a mountain of ‘outstanding’ pre-trial matters that would make a May 20 trial ‘imprudent’), another Trump case appears to have no chance of going to trial before the 2024 election. On Wednesday, a Georgia appeals court agreed to review a lower court ruling which allowed Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to remain on the Trump RICO prosecution despite being highly conflicted. To review, Atlanta Judge Scott McAfee of Fulton Superior Court, who donated to Fani Willis when she was running for office, ruled in March that the Fani simply had to kick her lover, Nathan Wade, off the case after she paid him more than $600,000. The two notoriously took several lavish vacations together on Wade’s dime (which Fani swears she repaid in cash).
According to McAfee, while he found the “appearance of impropriety,” no “disqualification of a constitutional officer necessary when a less drastic and sufficiently remedial option is available,” adding “that the prosecution of this case cannot proceed until the State selects one of two options.” And now, the Atlanta Court of Appeals has agreed to hear an appeal from the defendants over whether McAfee erred in his decision. Willis indicted Trump and 18 other defendants last August, accusing them of a wide-ranging scheme to attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in the state. All of the defendants were charged under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, or RICO, law. Trump and most of the other defendants have pleaded not guilty. In their appeal application, Trump and other defendants argued that McAfee was wrong not to remove both WIllis and Wade, writing that “providing DA Willis with the option to simply remove Wade confounds logic and is contrary to Georgia law.”
Most recently, Willis has defiantly refused to appear before a Georgia Senate Investigative Committee, telling reporters earlier this week (via RedState): REPORTER: Would you appear before a Georgia Senate committee without a subpoena? WILLIS: Well first of all I don’t even think they have the authority to subpoena me, but they didn’t learn the law. REPORTER: Will you appear, yes or no? WILLIS: I will not appear to anything that is unlawful. I have not broken the law in any way. I’ve said it, you know, I’ll say it amongst these leaders—I’m sorry folks get p***ed off that everybody gets treated even. FAITH LEADER STANDING NEXT TO HER: I think she answered that very well.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. once thought he had a brain tumor but the dark spot on the scans turned out to be a dead parasitic worm, the New York Times has reported citing legal documents. President John Kennedy’s nephew, who is currently running an independent presidential campaign, has argued that he is both younger and healthier than incumbent President Joe Biden and his chief rival Donald Trump. In 2010, however, RFK Jr. was experiencing “brain fog” and memory loss so severe, he turned to top neurologists for advice about a possible tumor, according to the Times. One New York doctor gave him a different opinion, however: a dead parasite. The anomaly seen on the scans “was caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died,” Kennedy said in a 2012 deposition.
In the same legal interview, Kennedy said he “clearly” had cognitive problems, including short-term and longer-term memory loss. In a subsequent interview with the Times, however, he attributed those to mercury poisoning, caused by his fish-heavy diet at the time. Blood tests found mercury levels 10 times higher than the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) considers safe, Kennedy said, adding that he fully recovered after undergoing chelation therapy to remove the heavy metal from his body. According to the Times article, the cyst containing the dead worm remained in Kennedy’s brain and did not require treatment, nor did he have any aftereffects from it. He said he did not know what type of parasite it may have been or how he contracted it, though he suspected it was on a trip to South Asia.
The 2012 document was related to divorce proceedings from Mary Richardson Kennedy, RFK Jr’s second wife. Kennedy argued at the time that his earnings potential had been diminished by cognitive struggles. Kennedy has been outspoken about another obvious mental condition, a neurological disorder called spasmodic dysphonia that causes his voice to become hoarse and strained. RFK Jr. initially launched a primary challenge to Biden within the Democratic Party, but switched to an independent bid after several months of stonewalling from the party apparatus. Biden, 81, is widely believed to suffer from several cognitive impairments due to his age and prior medical conditions – though his doctors have insisted that the oldest US president ever to be inaugurated was just fine.
EU elites are growing increasingly disenchanted with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Swiss newspaper Neue Zurcher Zeitung has claimed. Bloomberg reported last month that French President Emmanuel Macron, widely regarded as a key backer in von der Leyen’s rise, is eyeing a replacement for her. Although she is unelected, von der Leyen’s fate still indirectly depends on the outcome of the European parliamentary elections scheduled for next month. She remains the main candidate for the center-right European People’s Party (EPP), which has the most seats in the European Parliament. Despite an expected right wing surge in the upcoming votes, it is expected to reinforce its dominant position in June. Any EPP nominee would still require the backing from an absolute majority of MEPs and von der Leyen has refused to rule out a coalition with right wing groups in order to secure another five-year term.
In an article on Wednesday, Neue Zurcher Zeitung claimed that “in the capitals, many are dissatisfied with [von der Leyen’s] record, with her excessive climate policy [and] the weakening economy.” The media outlet added that “accusations of nepotism and non-transparency” have also cast a shadow on her prospects. According to the Swiss newspaper, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, along with French President Macron, are considering alternatives to von der Leyen, including former European Central Bank president Mario Draghi. Citing anonymous sources, Bloomberg also claimed in April that Macron was discussing potential replacements with other EU leaders. The media outlet likewise named Draghi as a possible candidate.
Macron has taken several thinly veiled swipes at von der Leyen in recent months. In March, he complained that while the “commission presidency is there to defend the general interest,” it has become “over-politicized.” Von der Leyen’s standing has also been shaken by several high-profile scandals. Last month, the commission president found herself in hot water after giving fellow German MEP Markus Pieper the lucrative job of “special adviser” on a reported salary of €17,000 ($18,000) a month. EU heavyweights such as the bloc’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, and Commissioner Thierry Breton have sounded the alarm over “questions about the transparency and impartiality of the nomination process.”The commission, however, insisted that the “process [to appoint Pieper] took place in full compliance with procedures.”
Startling mirror images swirl around two major developments this week directly inbuilt in the Grand Narrative that shapes my latest book, Eurasia v. NATOstan, recently published in the U.S.: Xi Jinping’s visit to Paris and the inauguration of Vladimir Putin’s new term in Moscow. Inevitably, this is a contrasting tale of Sovereigns – the comprehensive Russia-China strategic partnership – and lackeys: the NATOstan/EU vassals. Xi, the quintessential hermetic guest, is quite sharp at reading a table – and we’re not talking about Gallic gastronomic finesse. The minute he sat at the Paris table he got the Big Picture. This was not a tete-a-tete with Le Petit Roi, Emmanuel Macron. This was a threesome because Toxic Medusa Ursula von der Leyen, more appropriately defined as Pustula von der Lugen, had inserted herself in the plot.
Nothing was lost in translation for Xi: this was graphic illustration that Le Petit Roi, the leader of a third-rate former Western colonial power, enjoys zero “strategic autonomy”. The decisions that matter come from the Kafkaesque Eurocracy of the European Commission (EC), led by his Nanny, the Medusa, and directly relayed by the Hegemon. Le Petit Roi spent the whole of Xi’s Gallic time babbling like an infant on Putin’s “destabilizations” and trying to “engage China, which objectively enjoys sufficient levers to change Moscow’s calculus in its war in Ukraine”. Obviously no pubescent adviser at the Elysee Palace – and there’s quite a crowd – dared to break the news to Le Petit Roi about the strength, depth and reach of the Russia-China strategic partnership.
So it was up to his Nanny to volunteer out loud the fine print on the “Monsieur Xi comes to France” adventure. Faithfully parroting Treasure Secretary Janet Yellen in her recent, disastrous Beijing incursion, the Nanny directly threatened the superpowered hermetic guest: you are exceeding in “over-capacity”, you are over-producing; and if you don’t stop it, we will sanction you to death. So much for European “strategic autonomy”. Moreover, it’s idle to dwell on what can only be described as suicidal stupidity.
“..if anything is falling, it’s American hegemony, whose containment strategies have so far only resulted in even stronger and more capable opponents..”
The Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, once said that the formula used by the European Union to manage its relations with China is “impractical”, “it’s like driving a car to an intersection and looking at the traffic light and seeing the yellow, green and red lights on at the same time”. I would say more… In addition to the confusion with the traffic light indications, the driver — for the Chinese only — still has to watch out for nails, oil and potholes in the road, which can lead to a crash or damage to the vehicle.
And who would cause such dangers along the way? Given the desperation of the actors involved and the unidirectional nature of the actions… Consequently, the exasperated and catastrophic tone that we find in the Western press, as opposed to a more triumphalist tone that was still in force six months ago (maybe even less than that), tells us everything we need to know. It’s incredible how Western emotions run riot, going from one extreme to the other in very short periods of time. From certain victory in Ukraine against Russia, we move on to widespread panic, in which Sullivan, Biden, Borrell or Macron, who as recently as September were already bathing in the good waters of Crimea, have now moved on to the certainty that Russian troops will not stop at the Dnepr and perhaps not even at the Danube, Rhine or Elbe.
During 2023 we all watched the unstoppable succession of predictions of the fall of the Chinese economy — remember, the Russian one was already “in taters — only now to be panicked by the flood of high-quality, low-cost products that the lazy West can’t even dream of competing with. It’s happening in cars, as well as semiconductors and agricultural machinery, and we’re gradually discovering, from the hysterical tone of Janet Yellen and Blinken, that if anything is falling, it’s American hegemony, whose containment strategies have so far only resulted in even stronger and more capable opponents. After all, it’s hard work that shapes character. The rentier capitalist elite of the West is too used to the easy money of royalties to be able to compete with those who have never abandoned industry, agriculture and truly productive activities.
The fact is that, in the Washington Post, David Ignatius, a researcher linked to the U.S.’s largest think thank, based on work by the Rand Corporation itself, says that analysts say the U.S. is entering a decline from which few powers have recovered; it is also RAND that provides us with an article entitled “U.S.-China rivalry in a new middle age”, pointing to the need for decision-makers to develop a neo-medieval mentality, namely by having to wage war in the knowledge that the “public” doesn’t want it; Borrell says that the U.S. is no longer hegemonic and that China has already become a superpower, something that Brzezinski had promised would never happen again; or the statistics on the U.S. economy, which say that it grew by only 1.6% in the first quarter of 2024, which shows a slowdown compared to the forecast. A big slowdown, considering the 2.7% predicted by U.S. broadcasting networks such as the IMF.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg considered acquiring or taking a major stake in the Associated Press news agency, Business Insider reported on Tuesday, citing sources. The potential deal was mooted after the social media giant faced accusations of influencing the 2016 US presidential election. Now known as Meta, the company’s role in the election, in which Donald Trump was voted into power, faced intense scrutiny from Washington amid claims that the platform had helped spread fake news. The moral panic worsened after Facebook disclosed that a Russian agency had spent $100,000 on social network ads that allegedly attempted to incite divisions during the presidential campaign.
Moscow has denied any attempt to interfere in the US election, while Facebook’s vice president for advertising, Rob Goldman, later revealed that the Russian spending had in fact come after the election. Zuckerberg, however, was still forced to make significant changes to Facebook’s services and privacy policies, and even officially apologized to the US Congress in 2018 for his management of the platform. According to Business Insider, the CEO had the idea of acquiring a news outlet around the same time. Sources said Zuckerberg had planned to use it as a reliable source of information to create high-quality news posts and tackle controversy over the platform’s content. The billionaire reportedly discussed the idea extensively within Facebook. While Zuckerberg is said to have considered several media outlets for acquisition, he eventually focused on the Associated Press (AP), the major international news agency based in New York.
The AP is a news cooperative, which made an outright acquisition difficult, sources claimed. Instead, Zuckerberg reportedly focused on the potential permanent subsidization of the agency. According to the report, the tech boss was set on acquiring the AP and even involved Facebook’s mergers and acquisitions team in his plans. He ultimately dropped the idea, however, supposedly fearing even more regulatory scrutiny over the move. Later, Zuckerberg reportedly mulled the idea of launching Facebook’s own news organization to produce original content, and considered luring top journalists from other outlets with financial incentives. This idea was also said to have been abandoned amid concerns about the lack of public trust in the social media giant at the time.
Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia has filed a motion to vacate the chair of the US House of Representatives, accusing Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana of betraying his party. According to the text of the resolution, made public by fellow Republican Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Johnson “has not lived up to a single one” of the seven tenets he announced when he was elected speaker last October. Johnson’s tenure “is defined by one self-serving characteristic: When given a choice between advancing Republican priorities or allying with Democrats to preserve his own personal power, Johnson regularly chooses to ally himself with Democrats,” Greene said. The House leadership responded to Greene’s proposal with a motion to dismiss the resolution. The final vote was 359 in favor (196 Republicans and 163 Democrats) to 43 opposed, saving Johnson’s speakership.
Only 11 Republicans and 32 Democrats voted to support Greene’s resolution, indirectly proving Greene’s point that the speaker is aligned with the “uniparty” in Washington. Among the things Greene and Massie – who backed her proposal – blamed Johnson for was the expulsion of Congressman George Santos in December. His seat was taken over by a Democrat in a special election. Johnson counted on Democrats to pass the omnibus government funding bill in March and the $61 billion funding package for Ukraine in April; on both occasions, the majority of House Republicans voted against. “By passing the Democrats’ agenda and handcuffing Republicans’ ability to influence legislation, our elected Republican Speaker Mike Johnson has aided and abetted the Democrats and the Biden administration in destroying our country,” Greene added.
Bills that Johnson worked to pass funded all of President Joe Biden and the Democrats’ agenda, Greene argued, including the “deadly border invasion,” the “energy-killing Green New Deal climate agenda,” the “weaponized” FBI and the Department of Justice, the “trans agenda on kids,” continued full term abortions, and the “fueling of foreign forever wars.” Greene’s resolution called Johnson’s excuses for these actions “pathetic, weak, and unacceptable,” noting that even with a razor-thin majority in the House, the GOP still has the power of the purse. Johnson also trampled his previous record as a defender of civil liberties to vote against requiring a warrant for FISA spying on Americans, Greene said, and funded the Democrats’ “witch hunt” against the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump.
Six months out from November’s election, US President Joe Biden continues to flounder on a key foreign policy issue. “We’ve made clear our views about operations in Rafah that could potentially put more than a million innocent people at greater risk,” said White House spokesman John Kirby Monday. “[Biden] also made clear that we continue to believe that the hostage deal was the best way to avoid that sort of an outcome while securing the release of those hostages.” Days later, the IDF’s operation in the southern Gazan city of Rafah continues with no apparent progress on a deal to bring it to an end. The incident is characteristic of the White House’s relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, claimed analyst Hasan Unal, which leaves the US president with the impossible task of attempting to please both pro-Palestine elements in his party and Israel’s far-right leadership. The professor of political science and international relations at Bashkent University joined Sputnik’s Fault Lines program Wednesday to discuss these latest developments and their strategic and humanitarian implications.
“I think Israel would’ve wanted to see Hamas rejecting any deal on that,” said Unal after reports emerged the Palestinian group had accepted a proposal negotiated with the help of the US, Egypt and Qatar. “That would have cleared the way for Israel, particularly the Netanyahu government, to undertake that awful military operation in Rafah… It has certainly placed Israel in a very difficult corner in that sense. So Hamas has won the tactical game.” “That doesn’t mean that that is going to stop Israel,” he explained. “Don’t forget, the United States is the only country perhaps in the world that has so much leverage over Israel. On the one hand, yes, there is the Israeli lobby, which is very powerful in the United States. But at the same time the United States has enormous influence and leverage over Israel.”
Unal recounted the United States’ efforts to rein in Israel in the past, such as during 1956’s Suez Crisis in which the US, the Soviet Union, and international authorities ordered Israel to end its occupation of Egyptian territory in the Sinai Desert. The US again forced Israel into a compromise during the 1978 signing of the Camp David Accords and once again when former President Ronald Reagan ordered the country to end its bombing of Beirut in 1982. In 1991 US Secretary of State James Baker succeeded in delaying US loan guarantees to Israel until it agreed to pause illegal settlement building in Gaza and the West Bank. Baker and former President George H.W. Bush faced strident opposition for the move from AIPAC and other pro-Israel interests. Bush lost reelection the following year, and US leaders have shown little willingness to challenge Israel ever since.
One of the more notorious organizations in the Ukrainian military that uses all of these Nazi symbols that we're all familiar with is now apparently refusing to fight.pic.twitter.com/DEl1l1My14
A Boeing quality engineer just testified to Josh Hawley that their planes are not safe and that he was threatened and silenced by the company when he tried to bring it up to them. pic.twitter.com/OhNw4GFkK0
Macgregor: “The United States has not commit to attacking Iran. This is unacceptable to Netanyahu, and he will work to alter Washington’s position.
Under the circumstances, Washington should expect Israel to employ whatever military power is at its disposal, including nuclear weapons, to destroy Iran’s strategic power.
Destroying Iran’s underground nuclear facilities has been a goal for a very long time. Both parties must realize Moscow will not tolerate a devastating attack on Iran.”
“They create felonies out of thin air by stretching the interpretation of law beyond its meaning..”
“.. that their country has been stolen from them and that the ruling elite are not going to permit Trump to give it back to them..”
From the beginning it has been completely clear that the criminal and civil indictments of Trump have the purposes of using up his energy, money, and time so that he cannot campaign and of discrediting him with the insouciant part of the population that is stupid enough to have faith in the “justice system.” The trials themselves and the words of the prosecutors and judges prove it. The black Democrat New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg, put into office by anti-Trump billionaire George Soros, who Elon Musk says hates humanity (which means gentiles), has concocted a criminal case against President Trump for “falsifying business documents” that legal scholars dispute. Apparently, Bragg cares not a whit about his reputation, only about preventing Trump from campaigning. Bragg contends that Trump should have reported his $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels as a campaign contribution to himself and not as legal fees. But, of course, it would have been one of Trump’s lawyers or CPA who filled in the form.
A person of Trump’s wealth leaves such decisions to professionals and does not himself navigate complicated and risky forms. Regardless, there is nothing illegal whatsoever in making extortion or bribery payments to a porn star so that she doesn’t make harmful accusations. It is a much cheaper solution than suing for slander. You should understand that there is nothing illegal about Trump’s payment to the porn star. The payment is perfectly legal. Trump is not charged with making an illegal payment. He is charged with reporting it differently than a black quota hire, clearly incompetent, George Soros DA alleges Trump should have reported it. The whore media has not made this clear to the public. Instead the presstitutes have planted the idea that it is the payment that is the criminal action.
In law the charges against Trump are misdemeanors, not crimes. Trump’s black enemy has in an unspecified way elevated the charges to a felony. Increasingly prosecutors do this. They create felonies out of thin air by stretching the interpretation of law beyond its meaning. Prosecutors know that by the time a wrongly convicted defendant reaches the point that he can appeal the wrongful conviction to a higher court he will have run out of money and energy and will make a plea to a lessor charge. In Trump’s case, the black DA knows that given the slowness of the system Trump will be in court for years appealing wrongful decisions. As corrupt prosecutors suffer no punishment for their crimes against defendants, there is no barrier to their legal abuse of law–particularly when they are in court with a biased judge and have a biased jury. This first of 4 criminal trials began yesterday. Estimates are that the show trial will keep Trump in court for four days a week for the next six or more weeks. Clearly this is election interference and nothing else.
The other criminal trials are in various stages of disrepair. Fani Willis, the black Democrat Atlanta DA who has brought RICO charges against Trump and his attorneys is in trouble herself for paying her lover $700,000 of taxpayers’ money and using the money for vacations. She apparently is another George Soros plant and is shielded by the Democrat machine. She has had to remove her lover from Trump’s case, but is unlikely to suffer any consequences other than embarrassment. A New York civil case orchestrated by a black Democrat attorney general and a Trump-hating Democrat judge confiscated Trump’s NY real estate empire. In order to delay the confiscation until his higher court appeal is decided, the two required Trump to post a $500 million payment that would have depleted his cash for his political campaign. The payment was seen as a form of extortion, and the corrupt AG and judge had to reduce it to $175 million.
Clearly, these are not normal trials or normal charges. The law schools, bar associations, Congress and the whore media don’t even raise questions about the show trials that clearly constitute election interference. As I have said many times, the system will not permit Trump’s return to office. Americans need to understand that their country has been stolen from them and that the ruling elite are not going to permit Trump to give it back to them.
“Netanyahu is influenced by his [fundamentalist] political partners to go into an escalation so he can hold onto power and accelerate the coming of the Messiah.”
A Holy of the Holies was shattered in the Holy Land as Iran staged a quite measured, heavily choreographed response to the Israeli terror attack against its consulate/ambassador residence in Damascus, a de facto evisceration of the Vienna Convention on diplomatic immunity.This game-changer will directly interfere on how the Anglo-American system manages its simultaneous conflagration with Russia, China and Iran – three top BRICS members. The key problem is escalations are already built in – and will be hard to remove. The Total Cancel War against Russia; the genocide in Gaza – with its explicit policy masterfully decoded by Prof. Michael Hudson; and the decoupling/shaping the terrain against China won’t simply vanish – as all communication bridges with the Global Majority keep being torched.Yet the Iranian message indeed establishes a “New Equation” – as Tehran christened it, and prefigures many other surprises to come from West Asia.
Iran wanted to – and did send – a clear message. New equation: if the biblical psychopathic entity keeps attacking Iranian interests, from henceforth it will be counter-attacked inside Israel. All that in a matter of “seconds” – as the Security Council in Tehran has already cleared all the procedures. Escalation though seems inevitable. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak: “Netanyahu is influenced by his [fundamentalist] political partners to go into an escalation so he can hold onto power and accelerate the coming of the Messiah.” Compare it to Iranian President Raisi: “The smallest act against Tehran’s interests will be met with a massive, extensive, and painful response against all its operations.” For Tehran, regulating the intensity of the clash in West Asia between Israel and the Axis of Resistance while simultaneously establishing strategic deterrence to replace “strategic patience” was a matter of launching a triple wave: a drone swarm opening the path for cruise missiles and ballistic missiles.
The performance of the much-vaunted Iron Dome, Arrow-3 and David’s Sling – aided by F-35 fighter jets and the US and the UK naval force – was not exactly stellar. There’s no video of the “outer-layer” Arrow-3 system shooting down anything in space. At least 9 ballistic missiles penetrated the dense Israeli defense network and hit the Nevatim and Ramon bases. Israel is absolutely mum on the fate of its Golan Heights intel installation – hit by cruise missiles. Amidst classic fog of war, it’s irrelevant whether Tehran launched hundreds or dozens of drones and missiles. Regardless of NATOstan media hype, what’s proven beyond the shadow of a doubt is that the supposedly “invincible” Israeli defense maze – ranging from US-made AD/ABM systems to Israeli knockoffs – is helpless in real war against a technologically advanced adversary.
What was accomplished by a single operation did raise quite a few professional eyebrows. Iran forced Israel to furiously deplete its stock of interceptors and spend at least $1.35 billion – while having its escalatory dominance and deterrence strategy completely shattered. The psychological blow was even fiercer. What if Iran had unleashed a series of strikes without a generous previous warning lasting several days? What if US, UK, France and – traitorous – Jordan were not ready for coordinated defense? (The – startling – fact they were all directly dispensing firepower on Tel Aviv’s behalf was not analyzed at all). What if Iran had hit serious industrial and infrastructural targets?
“..if Iran joins Russia and China and, as part of this troika, becomes an actor in the great world politics, the Middle East will face some big changes..”
[..] the most intriguing question now is how the countries of the region, namely the Arab world, will react to Iran’s actions – after all, the attitude towards modern Tehran is quite mixed. Iran has been able to bolster its hand by using proxy organizations, which are now moving against Israel to defend the interests of Palestine. Judging by their neutral reactions – and quite unsurprisingly, in fact – none of the Arab leaders is interested in a strong Iran. They are interested in Iran existing as a moderate state allied with the West, with which they themselves cooperate. However, if Iran joins Russia and China and, as part of this troika, becomes an actor in the great world politics, the Middle East will face some big changes.
Despite the IRGC’s counterattacks, Iran continues to maintain its position that nobody needs a war, and it’s not interested in one by any means. As for its strikes so far, Iran considers them quite successful; they succeeded in making a point and delivering ‘a clear message’ to the entire West that Tehran is no longer confining itself to verbal statements and that, in general, things are going to get very real. Furthermore, any potential response from Israel will now justify similar operations by Iran, which may become harsher and harsher every time. Besides, the moral victory also belongs to Iran. Tehran had held the situation in suspense all along, and the world witnessed strikes on military bases in the north of Israel and saw them take damage. Iran’s strike, albeit a token one, has happened. The Islamic Republic is beginning to act like the flagship power in the region.
In this case, Israel hardly needs a direct war with the Islamic Republic, especially with the Hamas issue not settled yet, Gaza still not demilitarized, hostages yet to be rescued, and Western allies offering nothing in terms of support but nice statements and condemnations. In the meanwhile, there are rather serious reasons to believe that Israel may not be able to keep its temper and strike, just for self-consolation. Expecting a response strike from Iran, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said, several days prior to the counterattack, that if Iran strikes from its territory, then Israel will attack in response. That means the Israelis could go further and continue their attacks. Yes, Netanyahu has changed his tone somewhat and tries to show now that he doesn’t want a big war. He, however, may be under pressure from the security wing, members of which yearn for revenge and want to blow off steam on Iran, which they think created the situation Israel has been in since October 7, 2023. If Israel does strike back, attacking Iranian territories and killing people, the situation will spin out of control and there will be no stopping the Iranians.
The goal of Iran’s counterattack against Israel was not to unleash a big war. This action can be seen differently: as a PR effort, a propaganda schtick, or muscle-flexing. Some may say that Iran failed to retaliate fully, as its attack didn’t achieve anything equal to the two generals and 11 diplomats that Israel’s strike had killed. The message of the counterstrike, however, was not only to take revenge for Iran’s dead. Tehran deliberately didn’t strike targets in major Israeli cities. Its strikes on Israel were limited, mostly targeting the occupied Golani Heights, which legally belong to Syria, and military installations in Negev desert, in order to avoid escalation and prevent further provocations on Israel’s part. Besides, Iran has proved that it can penetrate Israel’s air defenses and that Israel is not that well protected.
Therefore, Iran’s goal was to change the rules of the game in the region and, by and large, it succeeded. Tehran’s counterattack put paid to any talk of Iran not putting its money where its mouth is and brought the conflict between the two countries to a whole new level. This half-measure cannot be seen as a defeat, but it’s not exactly a victory either. Besides, Israel is not going to sit idle. The Jewish state will start reviewing its actions and correcting mistakes; after all, matters of its own security are the utmost priority for Israel.
The Russians are coming — or coming back, better put. As the November elections draw near, let us brace for another barrage of preposterous propaganda to the effect Russians are poisoning our minds with “disinformation,” “false narratives,” and all the other misnomers deployed when facts contradict liberal authoritarian orthodoxies. We had a rich taste of this new round of lies and innuendo in late January, when Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat who served as House speaker for far too long, asserted that the F.B.I. should investigate demonstrators demanding a ceasefire in Gaza for their ties, yes indeedy, to the Kremlin. Here is Pelosi on CNN’s State of the Union program Jan. 28: “For them to call for a cease-fire is Mr. Putin’s message. Make no mistake, this is directly connected to what he would like to see. Same thing with Ukraine…. I think some financing should be investigated. And I want to ask the F.B.I. to investigate that.”
O.K., we have the template: If you say something that coincides with the Russian position, you will be accused of hiding your “ties to Russia,” as the common phrase has it. Be careful not to mention some spring day that the sky is pleasantly blue: I am here to warn you—“make no mistake” — this is exactly what “Putin,” now stripped of a first name and a title, “would like to see.” There is invariably an ulterior point when those in power try on tomfoolery of this kind. In each case they have something they need to explain away. In 2016, it was Hillary Clinton’s defeat at the polls, so we suffered four years of Russiagate. Pelosi felt called upon to discredit those objecting to the Israeli–U.S. genocide in Gaza. Now we have a new ruse. Desperate to get Congress to authorize $60.1 billion in new aid to Ukraine, Capitol Hill warmongers charge that those objecting to this bad-money-after-bad allocation are… do I have to finish the sentence?
Two weeks ago Michael McCaul, a Republican representative who wants to see the long-blocked aid bill passed, asserted in an interview with Puck News that Russian propaganda has “infected a good chunk of my party’s base.” Here is the stupid-sounding congressman from Texas, as quoted in The Washington Post, elaborating on our now-familiar theme: “There are some more nighttime entertainment shows that seem to spin, like, I see the Russian propaganda in some of it — and it’s almost identical on our airwaves. These people that read various conspiracy-theory outlets that are just not accurate, and they actually model Russian propaganda.” I read in the Post that McCaul’s staff abruptly cut short the interview when Julia Ioffe, a professional Russophobe who has bounced around from one publication to another for years, asked him to name a few names.
So was this latest ball of baloney set in motion. A week after McCaul’s Puck News interview, Michael Turner, an Ohio Republican who, as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, swings a bigger stick, escalated matters when, reacting to McCaul’s statements, reported that this grave Russian penetration was evident in the upper reaches of the American government, as again reported in The Washington Post: “Oh, it is absolutely true. We see directly coming from Russia attempts to mask communications that are anti–Ukraine and pro–Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor.” Masked communications uttered on the House floor: Hold the thought, as I will shortly return to it.
The White House said on Monday that it opposes the idea of a bill that would give additional military aid to Israel without funding Ukraine and Taiwan. “We are opposed to a standalone bill that would just work on Israel, as we’ve seen proposed. We would oppose a standalone bill, yes,” said White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby. Kirby’s comments came a day after House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said he would work on getting more military aid to Israel this week in the wake of Iran’s attack on Israeli territory, which came in retaliation for the bombing of Iran’s consulate in Damascus. Later on Monday, AP reported that Johnson told fellow GOP lawmakers that he plans to bring the package to the floor this week but will hold separate votes on funding for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan.
Back in February, the Senate passed a $95 billion foreign military aid bill that included $60 billion for the proxy war in Ukraine, $14 billion to support the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians, and a few billion for Taiwan and other spending in the Asia Pacific region. While Johnson wants to hold separate votes, his plan is expected to send about the same amount of money to each country, and each measure will likely pass. He has been under increasing pressure from the White House and congressional hawks in both parties to bring the $95 billion bill to the floor for a vote. “Time is not on anyone’s side here in either case, so they need to move quickly on this,” Kirby said. “And the best way to get that aid into the hands of the IDF and into the hands of the Ukrainian soldiers is to pass that bipartisan bill that the Senate passed.”
Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie on Tuesday became the second representative to call for an end to Mike Johnson’s reign as Speaker of the House, joining Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene. He delivered that news directly to Johnson in a closed-door Republican conference meeting, telling the Louisianan “you’re not going to be the speaker much longer,” two representatives told Politico. Massie has criticized Johnson for backing aid packages for Ukraine and Israel, kick-the-can spending bills and the extension of warrantless NSA spying via the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — while failing to bolster border security. In March, Greene — incensed at Johnson for collaborating with Democrats to push through a $1.2 trillion spending package over the objection of conservatives seeking spending cuts — filed a motion to “vacate the chair,” which would initiate a vote by House members on whether to fire Johnson from the job of speaker.
It’s unclear when Greene, Massie or someone else will call for a vote on the motion. Greene has said that she wants to allow time “for us to go through the process, take our time and find a new speaker of the House that will stand with Republicans and our Republican majority instead of standing with the Democrats.” She’s also expressed wariness over risking the GOP’s razor-thin House majority — which has withered in recent weeks as multiple Republicans announced they’re leaving Congress before finishing their terms. Massie says it’s only a matter of time before the House votes on Greene’s motion to vacate. “The motion is going to get called, OK? Does anybody doubt that? The motion will get called,” Massie told reporters after Tuesday’s meeting. “And then he’s gonna lose more votes than Kevin McCarthy. And I have told him this in private, like weeks ago.” Johnson’s predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, was himself dethroned in October via a motion to vacate the chair.
While Massie and Greene are far from alone in their disappointment in Johnson, many of their disgruntled colleagues are wary of a scenario in which Johnson is ousted and the House spends days or weeks struggling to settle on a successor. “We saw what happened last fall when this all went down — there’s not an alternative…You are not going to get a majority of votes for any new person,” Louisiana Rep. Garret Graves told Politico. Massie has asked Johnson to first allow the party to select a successor, and then voluntarily step down. On Tuesday, Johnson was defiant. “I am not resigning and it is in my view an absurd notion that someone would bring a vacate motion when we are simply trying to do our job,” he told reporters. Massie’s announcement in the closed-door meeting ruffled feathers. Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan voiced his discomfort with the idea, saying, “We don’t need that, no way. We don’t want that. We shouldn’t go through that again. That’s a bad idea.”
On Monday night, Johnson compounded conservatives’ anger when he announced he would bring four separate measures to a vote: aid to Ukraine, aid to Israel, aid to Taiwan and another bill with miscellaneous measures including a TikTok ban. As the New York Times explains, the goal is to cobble together legislation that would match what Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is cooking up: If all four pieces passed the House, they would then be folded into a single bill for the Senate to take up, in an effort to ensure that senators could not cherry-pick pieces to approve or reject. “We’re steering toward everything Chuck Schumer wants,” said Massie. Decoupling the proposals also saps conservatives’ leverage to force more spending on border security. Greene called the plan “a scam” and added, “He’s definitely not going to be speaker next Congress if we’re lucky enough to have the majority.”
Last week Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) wrote in a Tuesday op-ed that officials from 15 federal agencies “knew in 2018 that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was trying to create a coronavirus like COVID-19.” “These officials knew that the Chinese lab was proposing to create a COVID 19-like virus and not one of these officials revealed this scheme to the public. In fact, 15 agencies with knowledge of this project have continuously refused to release any information concerning this alarming and dangerous research. Government officials representing at least 15 federal agencies were briefed on a project proposed by Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.” -Rand Paul. Paul was referring to the DEFUSE project, which was revealed after DRASTIC Research uncovered documents showing that DARPA had been presented with a proposal by EcoHealth Alliance to perform gain-of-function research on bat coronavirus. New documents released by Drastic Research show Peter Daszak and the EcoHealth Alliance had applied for funds that would allow them to further modify coronavirus spike proteins and find potential furin cleavage sites.
Now, Paul points to an email between EcoHealth’s Daszak and “Fauci Flunky” David Morens from April 26, 2020 (noted days before by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic), when the lab-leak hypothesis was gaining traction against Fauci – who funded EcoHealth research in Wuhan, and Daszak’s orchestrated denials and the forced “natural origin” narrative. In it, Daszak laments the “real and present danger that we are being targeted by extremists” (for pointing out that they were manipulating bat covid down the street from where a bat covid pandemic broke out), and called Donald Trump “shockingly ignorant.” He also told David that he would restrict communications “to gmail from now on,” and planned to mount a response to an NIH request which appears to suggest moving out of Wuhan – to which Daszak says “Even that would be a loss – we have 15,000 samples in freezers in Wuhan and could do the full genomes of 700+ Co Vs we’ve identified if we don’t cut this thread.”
In 2016 Peter Daszak (the man Fauci’s NIH was funding) openly talked about the gain of function research being done in China.
Which means Daszak, funded by Fauci, lied when he said “every single one of the SARSr-CoV sequences @EcoHealthNYC discovered in China is already published.” And Anthony Fauci concealed the ‘700 unknown coronaviruses’ in Wuhan. Meanwhile, an EcoHealth progress report referenced “two chimeric bat SARS-like CoVs constructed on a WIV-1 backbone.”
At his peak, Elon Musk was worth $340BN (Nov 2021) and stood alone as the world’s richest man/women/other. According to Bloomberg’s billionaires list, he is now worth mere $175BN… sliding to just the fourth-richest in the world as Tesla’s share price has declined and after a Delaware judge decided in January that Musk was just paid too damn much for creating a $1.2 trillion company by Nov 2021. But now, he may be about to climb that wealth ladder back to the top once more as Tesla has asked shareholders to vote again on the same $56 billion compensation package that was voided by a Delaware court early this year. Tesla Chair Robyn Denholm criticized the Delaware Chancery Court’s January decision, writing in the proxy that it amounted to second-guessing shareholders who had approved Musk’s performance-based award in 2018.
“Because the Delaware Court second-guessed your decision, Elon has not been paid for any of his work for Tesla for the past six years that has helped to generate significant growth and stockholder value,” Denholm wrote. The filing went on to say that negotiating a new pay package would take time and lead to incurring billions of dollars in additional compensation expense. Therefore, ratifying the 2018 package will be faster and “avoid a prolonged period of uncertainty regarding Tesla’s most important employee.” Additionally, the filing shows Tesla considered nine other states as alternatives to Delaware before narrowing its choice down to California, Nevada, New York or Texas.
Finally, Bloomberg reports that, according to the filing, dozens of institutional shareholders have contacted Tesla and expressed support for the 2018 compensation plan, including four of the top 10. The carmaker also said that thousands of retail investors have sent letters and emails to the board expressing the same sentiment. Of course, if this passes the shareholder vote, we assume the honorable Chief Judge Kathaleen St. J. McCormick – who described the company’s directors as “supine servants of an overweening master” – will have problems asserting that they hadn’t looked out for the best interests of investors… since it was the investors themselves, now fully informed, that democratically voted for Musk’s compensation plan. …or does democracy (and capitalism) die in Delaware?
It appears that National Public Radio has solved the problem of the intolerance for opposing views, detailed in an article by award-winning editor Uri Berliner: he is now out of NPR. Berliner resigned after NPR suspended him and various other journalists and the CEO lashed out at his discussing their political bias. For those of us in higher education, it is a chillingly familiar pattern. Editors, journalists, and listeners at the public-supported outlet will now be able to return to the echo-chambered coverage without the distracting voice of a dissenter. After Berliner wrote his piece in the Free Press, NPR CEO Katherine Maher attacked Berliner and made clear that NPR had no intention to change its one-sided editorial staff or its coverage. Others at NPR also went public with their criticism of him and falsely portrayed his criticism as opposed to actual racial and other diversity of the staff.
In his article, NPR’s David Folkenflik acknowledges that the Berliner criticism “angered many of his colleagues.” Maher response was hardly surprising. After years of criticism over NPR’s political bias, the search for a new CEO was viewed as an opportunity to select someone without such partisan baggage. Instead, it selected Maher, who has been criticized for controversial postings on subjects ranging from looters to Trump. Those now-deleted postings included a 2018 declaration that “Donald Trump is a racist” and a variety of political commentary. Maher was unlikely to address the problem. She is the problem. Maher lashed out at Berliner, calling his criticism and call for greater diversity in the newsroom “profoundly disrespectful, hurtful, and demeaning.” So now Berliner has resigned rather than work at a media outlet where he was shunned and denounced. In social media post on Wednesday, Berliner published his resignation letter to NPR leadership and stated “I cannot work in a newsroom where I am disparaged by a new CEO whose divisive views confirm the very problems at NPR I cite in my Free Press essay.”
It is all-too-familiar to many of us in higher education where conservatives, libertarians, and republicans have been purged from most faculties. This is done through a mix of filling open slots with liberal academics while making life intolerable for those who remain. For years, a conservative North Carolina professor faced calls for termination over controversial tweets and was pushed to retire. Dr. Mike Adams, a professor of sociology and criminology, had long been a lightning rod of controversy. In 2014, we discussed his prevailing in a lawsuit that alleged discrimination due to his conservative views. He was then targeted again after an inflammatory tweet calling North Carolina a “slave state.” That led to his being pressured to resign with a settlement. He then committed suicide just days before his last day as a professor.
NPR’s CEO Katherine Maher on the truth:
“Our reverence for the truth might be a distraction that’s getting in the way of finding common ground and getting things done.”
The EU needs new leadership as the bloc’s current top officials have proven entirely unsuccessful, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has claimed. Orban made the comments at the European Parliament on Tuesday as part of a public discussion with Former Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and the leader of the French National Rally party, Fabrice Leggeri. “Now we have a leadership in the EU with some major projects selected by themselves like green transition, RRF (Recovery and Resilience Facility) policy, migration, war [in Ukraine] and sanctions policy, and they all failed,” Orban said. “The present leadership of the European Union must go away. And we need new leaders,” the Hungarian prime minister insisted. Orban said he intends “to come and take over Brussels,” reiterating his earlier warning to “occupy” the EU’s key institutions with his allies in order to bring change to the bloc.
According to the Hungarian leader, the rule of law and conditionality system created by the current EU leadership has “proved to be… an instrument of political blackmailing. If you do not behave as we expect, you do not get the money.” Hungary has not received “a single penny” from the RRF because European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has openly voiced dissatisfaction with Budapest’s reluctance to accept migrants and its opposition to the bloc’s gender policies, he said. The EU’s green transition “has failed because it has gone against [the] economic and industrial” interests of the bloc, Orban added. A switch towards climate neutrality should not be “politically motivated,” otherwise “it would destroy the competitiveness of the European economy. That is where we stand today,” he explained.
In contrast to many other EU members, the Hungarian leader has refused to provide arms to Ukraine and has consistently criticized the bloc’s sanctions against Russia over the conflict. According to Orban, the time has come for Brussels to define “what it should do with the issue of the war” in order to find a solution to the crisis and prevent similar ones in the future. Even goodwill gestures may “cause difficulties for the European economy,” such as the recent protests by farmers in Poland, France, Germany, and other nations partly caused by the preferences given by the EU to Ukrainian food suppliers, he explained. Orban also insisted that the issue of aid to Kiev should be “separated as much as possible from the issue of Ukraine’s accession to the EU,” formal negotiations for which were approved last year.
The former Fox News anchor and conservative media personality divulged that he had set up an official Telegram channel for his Tucker Carlson Network, encouraging the public to “keep an eye on the announcements there.” The channel has already attracted more than 150, 000 subscribers. Speaking with Tucker Carlson, Russian-born IT entrepreneur and co-founder of the Telegram social network Pavel Durov focused on a variety of topics, including his visit to the United States. The 39-year-old revealed that he was closely watched and monitored by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) during his time in the country. “We got too much attention from the FBI, [and] the security agencies, wherever we came to the US,” Durov said during the interview released on Wednesday.
In an interview with US journalist Tucker Carlson, Telegram founder Pavel Durov described his experience with ubiquitous FBI agents following him everywhere.
“Whenever I would go to the US I would have two FBI agents greeting me at the airport, asking questions. One time I was… pic.twitter.com/3hWoUHXYKV
According to the businessman, one of his top employees once told him that he had been approached by the US government. “There was an attempt to secretly hire my engineer behind my back by [US] cybersecurity officers,” Durov claimed. He argued that those officers were trying to persuade the engineer to use “certain open-source tools,” which he would then integrate into Telegram’s code that, in Durov’s opinion, “would serve as backdoors” for hacking the platform. The entrepreneur stressed that he believes what the employee said was true, adding, “There is no reason for my engineer to make up [such] stories.” When asked if infiltrating Telegram’s systems would allow the US government to spy on its users, Durov stated that he did not dismiss the possibility, acknowledging that any government could potentially carry out such an action. “A backdoor is a backdoor, regardless of who uses it,” he underscored.
In an interview with US journalist Tucker Carlson, Telegram founder Pavel Durov complained about excessive attention from the FBI and other intelligence agencies “wherever we came to the US.”
Durov told Carlson how an intelligence agency attempted to convince his employee to… pic.twitter.com/IwwbABp5EH
The 39-year-old tech tycoon noted that he had “personally experienced similar pressure” in the US, where law enforcement officials approached him on many occasions. “Whenever I would go to the US, I would have two FBI agents greeting me at the airport, asking questions. One time, I was having breakfast at 9 am and the FBI showed up at the house that I was renting,” the businessman asserted. According to him, FBI agents knew what he and his team were doing, but the agents wanted the details. “My understanding is that they [also] wanted to establish a relationship to in a way control Telegram better. I understand that they were doing their job. [But] for us running a privacy-focused social media platform, that probably wasn’t the best environment to be in. We want to be focused on what we do, not on government relations of that sort,” Durov pointed out.
The interview comes just a day after Carlson published the first post on his newly-created Telegram page, the Tucker Carlson Network, where users will “get all the latest updates, behind-the-scenes insights, and exclusive content.”
There are already more than 150,000 subscribers for the channel, and their number is growing with every passing second.
“Whatever we do, we'd be violating the US constitution” – Durov stunned by letters from Congress
In an interview with journalist Tucker Carlson, Telegram founder Pavel Durov explained how he was blackmailed by US lawmakers.
Apple and Google “could, basically, censor whatever you can read, access on your smartphone,” Pavel Durov, the co-founder of the popular messaging app Telegram has told Tucker Carlson in an interview; he lamented that the pressure coming from the tech giants is stronger than that exerted by governments. The entrepreneur has also said he received warnings from both the Democratic and Republican parties after the January 2021 riots in the US Capitol. The rare discussion took place at the Russian-born IT entrepreneur’s office in Dubai, and was released on Wednesday. Carlson asked Durov to give an example of a request to build backdoors into Telegram that crossed into censorship, and could be considered spying, or violating people’s privacy. The messaging app claims to have over 900 million active users.
“There was a funny story related to your home country,” the tech entrepreneur replied. “After the events of January 6, we received a letter from, I believe, a congressman from the Democratic side, and they requested that we share all the data that we have in relation to what they called ‘that uprising.” On January 6, 2021, a mob loyal to then-US President Donald Trump stormed the US Capitol and forced lawmakers into hiding in an attempt to prevent Congress from formalizing Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election. Durov said his team checked the letter and it “seemed very serious,” essentially saying: “if you fail to comply with this request, you will be in violation with the US Constitution.” “Two weeks after that letter, we got another letter, a new letter, from the Republican side of the Congress, and there we read that, if we give out any data [to the Democrats], it would be in violation of the US Constitution.
So we got two letters that said: whatever we do, we would be violating the US Constitution.” However, the most pressure on Telegram, according to Durov, comes from tech giants Apple and Google, Durov stressed. “I would say that the largest pressure is not coming from governments. It is coming from Apple and Google. When it comes to the freedom of speech, those two platforms could, basically, censor whatever you can read, access on your smartphone,” he said. “They make very clear that if we fail to comply with their guidelines, as they call it, Telegram could be removed from the [app] stores.” Durov dismissed any suggestion of links between Telegram and the Russian government, suggesting that competitors could be stirring up such rumours to discredit the company.
“..through an “innocuous change” to the definition of “electronic communications surveillance provider” in the FISA 702 bill, the U.S. government could go far beyond its current scope..”
The United States National Security Agency (NSA) is only days away from “taking over the internet” with a massive expansion of its surveillance powers, according to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. In an April 16 post to X, Snowden drew attention to a thread originally posted by Elizabeth Goitein — the co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice — that warned of a new bill that could see the U.S. government surveillance powers amplified to new levels. The bill in question reforms and extends a part of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) known as Section 702. Currently, the NSA can force internet service providers such as Google and Verizon to hand over sensitive data concerning NSA targets. However, Goitein claims that through an “innocuous change” to the definition of “electronic communications surveillance provider” in the FISA 702 bill, the U.S. government could go far beyond its current scope and force nearly every company and individual that provides any internet-related service to assist with NSA surveillance.
“That sweeps in an enormous range of U.S. businesses that provide wifi to their customers and therefore have access to equipment on which communications transit. Barber shops, laundromats, fitness centers, hardware stores, dentist’s offices.” Additionally, the people forced to hand over data would be unable to discuss the information provided due to hefty gag order penalties and conditions outlined in the bill, added Goitein. The bill initially received heavy pushback from privacy-conscious Republicans but passed through the U.S. House of Representatives on April 13. Part of the pushback saw the bills’ proposed spying powers time-frame cut from five years to two years, as well as some minor amendments to the service providers included under the surveillance measures. However, according to Goitein, the amendment did very little to reduce the scope of surveillance granted to the NSA.
In her view, the amendment could even see service providers such as cleaners, plumbers and IT service providers that have access to laptops and routers inside people’s homes be forced to provide information and serve as “surrogate spies,” claimed Goitein. The bill has seen strong pushback from both sides of the political aisle, with several government representatives claiming the bill violates citizen’s constitutional rights. Democratic Senator Ron Wyden described the bill as “terrifying” and said he would do everything in his power to prevent it from being passed through the Senate. “This bill represents one of the most dramatic and terrifying expansions of government surveillance authority in history.” Republican Congressperson Anna Paulina Luna, who voted against the bill in the House of Representatives, said Section 702 was an “irresponsible extension” of the NSA’s powers. Luna added that if government agencies wanted access to data, they must be forced to apply for a warrant. The bill is slated for a vote on April 19 in the U.S. Senate.
In Part 1 ( https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2024/04/11/the-great-dispossession/ ), I reported that we already do not own anything. The immediate response from readers is: what can we do to avoid dispossession? Offhand, the answer might appear to be debt-free property and gold and silver in personal possession. However, if the goal is that we own nothing and are controlled under a digital currency regime, these assets will be taken as well. Webb says if the billionaires and large financial institutions can be made aware of the situation, they could make Congress aware of the regulatory changes and force Congress to use its law-making power to undo the regulatory changes. After all, if there is no private financial property, there is no one to contribute to Congressional elections. Billionaires’ campaign donations elect the politicians, and what the regulatory changes do to billionaires is to reduce them to the same poverty as a homeless person. What the changes mean for large financial institutions such as Merrill Lynch, Schwab, etc., is their existence ceases.
Webb’s hope is the combined influence can undo the regulatory changes. The question is whether awareness can be generated. The fate of Congress is also at stake. In the Great Reset there is no input from the people and no function for Congress. As in all of my writings, I am trying to bring awareness. Little doubt the messenger will be shot. The purpose of Part 2 is to outline the regulatory changes that have been made that have turned our property in financial assets into the property of “secured creditors.” Webb terms them legal changes, which they are, but as I read it from regulatory, not legislative, action. Webb says the changes are global, but he only describes how the US and EU effected the changes for themselves. I am unable to imagine that Russia, China, Iran and any parts of the world not captured in the Western financial system are parties to the dispossession, especially under the regime of sanctions. As I read it, the dispossession that awaits is limited to the Western world and its captive countries. By global, perhaps Webb means the global operations of Western world financial organizations.
First some definitions: an “account holder” is you, your IRA, your pension plan, your stock and bond investments held at an “account provider” or “intermediary” or “depository institution” such as Merrill Lynch, Schwab, Wells Fargo. An “entitlement holder” is the definition of you whose ownership claim to your financial assets has been subordinated to the claims of “secured creditors” of the institution where you have your accounts. Please do understand that the dispossession of which I write is your dispossession. As reported in Part 1, a country’s securities are pooled in a Central Security Depository (CSD). Each national CSD is linked to the International Security Depository (ICSD), which in the words of a 2013 report by the Bank for International Settlements Committee on the Global Financial System, makes available to “secured creditors” all available collateral (all of our stocks and bonds) and provides cross-border mobility of collateral from the “collateral giver” to the “collateral taker.” Yes, these terms are explicitly used, indicating recognition that theft is taking place.
In Part 1, I explained that the next financial crisis will be bailed out not with central bank money creation but with our stocks, bonds and bank balances. In Part 2, I explained the multi-year quiet regulatory changes that dispossessed us of our property. In Part 3, I explain David Rogers Webb’s conclusion that a massive financial crisis is pending in which our financial assets are the collateral underwriting the derivative and financial bubble and will result in the loss of our assets but leave us with our debts as happened to those whose banks failed in the 1930s. Webb begins with the economic formula that the velocity of circulation of money times the money supply equals nominal Gross Domestic Product. V x MS = GDP. The velocity of circulation is a measure of how many times a dollar is spent during a given period of time, e.g., quarterly, annually. A high velocity means people quickly spend the money that comes into their hands. A low velocity means people tend to hold on to money.
Velocity impacts the Federal Reserve’s ability to manage economic growth with money supply changes. If the velocity of money is falling, an expansionist monetary policy will not result in rising GDP. In such a situation, the Federal Reserve is said to be “pushing on a string.” Instead of pushing up GDP, money supply increases push up the values of financial assets and real estate resulting in financial and real estate bubbles. Webb notes that falls in velocity are precursors of financial crises. A multi-year sharp fall in velocity preceded the stock market crash in 1929 and the Great Depression that gave birth to regulatory agencies. The 21st century is characterized by a long-term fall in velocity that has reached the lowest level on record, while stocks and real estate have been driven to unprecedented levels by years of zero interest rates. When this bubble pops, we will be dispossessed.
Will the bubble pop? Yes. The Fed suddenly and rapidly moved from zero to 5% interest rates, a reversal of the policy that drove up prices of stocks and bonds. The Fed raises rates by reducing money supply growth, thus removing the factor supporting high stock prices and collapsing the value of bonds. This results in a lowering of the value of stocks and bonds serving as collateral for loans, which, of course, means the loans and the financial institution behind them are in trouble. Bonds have already taken a hit. The stock market is holding because participants believe the Fed is about to reverse its interest rate policy and lower rates. Webb notes that the official data show that the velocity of money collapsed in the 21st century while the Fed introduced “quantitative easing.” He makes the correct point that when the velocity of money collapses, the Fed is pushing on a string. Instead of money creation fueling economic growth, it produces asset bubbles in real estate and financial instruments, which is what we have at the present time.
When after more than a decade of near zero interest rates, the Fed raises interest rates it collapses the values of financial portfolios and real estate and produces a financial crisis. As the authorities have set in place a system that bails out secured creditors with our bank deposits, stocks, and bonds, we will have no money and no financial assets to sell for money. People with mortgaged homes and businesses will lose them, as they did in the 1930s, when they lost their money due to bank failures. People with car payments will lose their transportation. The way the system works is you lose your money but not your debts. The secured creditors are the creditors of the troubled institutions. Ultimately, the secured creditors are the mega-banks defined as “privileged creditors.”
Back in February, when everyone was predicting a Fed rate cut, precious metals expert and financial writer Bill Holter said rates would be going up and not down. Since that call, the 10-Year Treasury is up more than 30 basis points. It closed today at 4.67%. Now, Holter is still calling for higher interest rates that will coincide with higher gold and silver prices. Why? It’s called inflation, and it’s not temporary. Holter explains, “Foreigners are backing away from buying Treasuries. That is the only thing that has kept the doors open, so to speak, is the fact we are able to borrow an unlimited amount of money because we are the world reserve currency. Foreigners backing away from our debt is going to lead the Federal Reserve to be the buyer of last, and then, only resort. So, you will have direct monetization between the Fed and the Treasury. What that will cause is a currency that declines in purchasing power. It will decline in a big way, and it will decline rapidly. So, what I am describing is inflation that turns into hyperinflation.”
But that is not the end of our problems. Holter points out, “I do think it is going to get worse, and that means interest rates will go higher, and that will put on much more pressure. We are at 4.65% on the 10-Year Treasury now. We went from 3.75% to 4.65% (in a short amount of time). We run through 5% on the 10-year Treasury, and everything blows up. . . . The bottom line here is we are at the end game of a fiat currency. Young people have never experienced high inflation. . . . Where we are this time around, Paul Volker (Fed Head in 1979) was able to raise rates to 16% or 17% and crush inflation. He was able to do that because there was not a ton of debt. The U.S. debt back in 1980 was 35% of GDP. Now, it is 125% plus debt to GDP. If you raise rates to 6% to 8%, you will blow up the entire system because much of this debt was put on during the 1% to 3% interest rate time. . . . The inflation is going to push rates higher no matter what the Fed says.”
Gold is hitting one new record high after another. It’s not greed, but fear, and Holter says, “Big money is buying gold because they are looking for protection.” The other wild card is war, and Holter says, “War is a way to keep the system propped up.” In closing, Holter contends, what you are seeing is not a series of mistakes by incompetent people. Holter says, “This is too stupid for it not to be the plan. . . .This is not a Republican or Democrat thing. We are being steered directly into a brick wall because the globalists can’t take over the world with the US standing. They have to take the US down, and if they take the US down, so will the western financial system fall. If that happens, the globalists can have their way.”
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has raised concerns about overspending by the US government, warning it has been reigniting inflation risks and undermining financial stability around the world. The US federal budget deficit jumped from $1.4 trillion in fiscal 2022 to $1.7 trillion last year, according to the latest World Economic Outlook, issued by the IMF on Tuesday. “The exceptional recent performance of the United States is certainly impressive and a major driver of global growth,” the IMF said. However, the report explained that this “reflects strong demand factors as well, including a fiscal stance that is out of line with long-term fiscal sustainability.” The ballooning US national debt, which exceeded $34 trillion in December, and the fiscal deficit threatened to exacerbate sky-high levels of inflation while posing a long-term risk to the global economy, according to the report.
“Something will have to give,” the IMF warned. The US exceeded its debt ceiling, which was legally set at $31.4 trillion, in January 2023. After months of warnings of an imminent and economically disastrous default from the US Treasury, President Joe Biden in June 2023 signed a bipartisan debt bill that suspended the cap until January 2025. This effectively allowed the government to keep borrowing without limits through next year. Debt spiked to $32 trillion less than two weeks after the bill was approved, and has been piling up ever since. The debt held by the public could surge by $19 trillion over the next decade to surpass the $54 trillion mark, owing to the mounting costs of an aging population and higher interest expenses, according to recent projections by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
Since entering office, Biden has spent trillions on Covid relief as well as on infrastructure. The US has also spent billions on aid for Ukraine. The Biden administration, however, has been insisting that tax cuts signed into law by then-President Donald Trump were to blame for the ballooning national debt. Last month, Biden unveiled a $7.3-trillion budget plan for 2025 which would push US debt over 100% of GDP, as he laid out a fiscal agenda that boosts spending but plans to save $3 trillion through higher taxes over ten years. Republicans in the House of Representatives have described the proposed budget as a “roadmap to accelerate America’s decline,” accusing the Biden administration of “reckless spending” and of engaging in a “runaway spending spree” that disregards fiscal responsibility.
This dog stopped eating after they sent his bull friend away. ''The farmer gets the bull back after noticing this. ''After the reunion, & they're joyful. Many beings know love & loyalty, & they are worth a lot for every being. pic.twitter.com/Wpb5eUfO4d
"Nobody wanted to start BRICS… this happened because of our weaponization of the U.S. dollar and weaponization of our foreign policy," says Democratic presidential candidate @RobertKennedyJr. "We need to deescalate our… violence around the world." pic.twitter.com/L6cSojM1gt
DAX Anthony
https://twitter.com/i/status/1697712291163058624
17% of Americans got the latest booster. They’ve seen enough.
“..the party will be so badly damaged by then that it will have no other option except to let Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., in to drive out the remaining demons..”
In what might be one of his last official acts, “Joe Biden” announced last week that Americans would be “encouraged” to get a new-and-improved mRNA vaccine booster against the new Covid virus strain EG.5 “Eris” (named after the Greek goddess of strife and discord). The “president,” said he asked Congress for funding “for a new vaccine that is necessary, that works…. It will likely be recommended that everybody get it no matter whether they’ve gotten it before or not.” Say, what…? Did the earlier vaccines not work, Joe? Most assuredly they did not. The shots injured, disabled, and killed a great many people, and it staggers the rational mind that the CDC is still pushing these shots. You might conclude that they’re pretending this didn’t happen to evade responsibility. After all, what would be the consequences if these officials admitted that all the previous Covid vaccines were ineffective and harmful?
And what would be the reaction of the 81.3 percent of the population who got at least one dose of the previous vaccines and the 65.6 percent who are “fully vaccinated” with two or more shots? (Note, statistics from the CDC.) I’ll tell you what would happen: the CDC officials and a great many other persons on the public payroll would be in court on criminal charges. And doctors and hospitals would be subject to so many lawsuits they would never again have time to actually practice medicine, while millions of people with damaged immune systems and wrecked organs take flight like so many black swans flapping into the setting sun of their own prematurely attenuated lives. If you care to be astounded, listen to this talk that Dr. Peter McCullough gave to an audience in New Hampshire a few days ago, calling out all the principals who devised the Covid-19 fiasco by name: Ralph Baric, Anthony Fauci, Peter Daszek, and Francis Collins, and then describing exactly how the dastardly act and the cover-up went down.
Speaking of happenings this autumn, expect the war in Ukraine to come to an end. The news media might omit to inform you about this, but it awaits. Russia will not trumpet its victory, so as to avoid inflaming America’s crazed neo-cons. Rather it will just quietly take charge of its successfully neutralized neighbor, make provision for some sort of administration over what remains of the rump state — in a way that affords Russia a sense of permanent security — at the same time that Russia commences new negotiations separately with several European nations to reestablish realistic relations.
The US will be delicately hung out to dry on this. Short of resorting to nuclear World War Three, there is nothing the US can do about it — except for the Democratic Party to blame the whole sorry thing on “Joe Biden” as he is forced to resign from office pending that aforesaid impeachment threat. No other explanation for the end of our Ukraine project will be required. The party of chaos will flounder a while in the very chaos that it induced, trying laughably to switch out Kamala Harris for Gavin Newsom — or some other ploy to stay in business. But the party will be so badly damaged by then that it will have no other option except to let Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., in to drive out the remaining demons and save the venerable old org from suicide.
If you think that these various momentous happenings won’t affect the financial markets and the banking system in the coming season, prepare to be amazed. This is how America truly gets to feel the pain, and this might be how the pitchforks finally come out for the people who wrecked our country.
The White House has brought together two dozen legal and media experts to combat an expected Republican effort to impeach US President Joe Biden, NBC reported on Friday, citing a White House aide familiar with the administration’s strategy. According to eight inside sources, the counter-impeachment strategy has reportedly been under development for several months as House Republicans have attempted to investigate the president and his son, Hunter Biden, and their foreign business entanglements. The White House aide who revealed the project to NBC also shared its ultimate goal: to present any impeachment inquiry as an “evidence-free partisan sham that shows a [Republican Party] penchant for chaos.”
The administration’s response will show that its opponents are “out of touch,” one official explained, by juxtaposing Republican attacks on Biden with the president’s work on “economic issues” that affect ordinary Americans. The team has been constructed to prevent any impeachment inquiry from interfering in White House business, the aide explained. This is supposed to allow administration officials to concentrate on their jobs without being “bogged down in the minutia of ongoing investigations.” “Never in modern history has an impeachment been based on no evidence whatsoever,” the aide told the news outlet, implying that taking on the Bidens would constitute such an impeachment.
White House aides on the counter-impeachment team have reportedly spent August’s vacation researching Republican talking points, putting together a message and response team to fight back. They have commissioned polls and studied political ads in the hope of disseminating a unified message supporting Biden to the Democratic Party. The Republican investigation into Biden and his son initially focused on the younger Biden’s alleged crimes, which – according to evidence gathered from a laptop he left in a Delaware repair shop, at least – include influence peddling and corruption as well as more pedestrian drug, gun, and prostitution offenses.
Hunter Biden has not been convicted of anything related to the current investigation, though he was about to enter a guilty plea on tax evasion and gun charges last month before a judge balked at the sweetheart deal he had worked out with prosecutors which would see him avoid a custodial sentence or felony conviction entirely. An issue for an impeachment would be the extent to which the elder Biden was involved in his son’s business deals in countries like Ukraine and China, deals which were directly affected by the policies Joe Biden was making as Vice President under then-president Barack Obama. While the president has denied any knowledge of or participation in his son’s professional activities, email records, as well as the testimony of Hunter Biden’s former business partner Devon Archer, contradict his public statements on the matter.
Republican firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has consistently spoken out against sending more arms supplies to Ukraine. After the Biden administration signed off on the delivery of DPICM cluster munitions to Kiev in July, the congresswoman warned that Washington was dragging the US into an unwanted war with Russia. US President Joe Biden has every single American “involved in a proxy war with Russia” that Moscow “is winning,” Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) told an audience gathered at a town hall meeting in Floyd County on August 31. The politician, who has been staunchly opposed to how the Biden administration has been bankrolling the regime in Kiev, told constituents: The Republican politician went on to point out that the intelligence community was blatantly “lying” to Americans, claiming that Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, wants to “take over Europe.” “If that was the case… He would be much more aggressive in the war, and he’s not,” the politician, also known by her initials, MTG, emphatically stressed.
“Now, I’m old enough to remember, and I know you are. Every single foreign war America has been involved in… What did we see on television? … Bombing after bombing. Remember all that? Do you guys remember we watched the rockets being fired… We watched troops fighting… How many of you have been able to watch the war in Ukraine that you’re paying for on the nightly news? None of you. You want to know why? America is being lied to about that war. Here’s the tragedy. They’re losing. Russia is winning. That’s the truth,” stated the Georgia congresswoman. MTG weighed in on the cost-of-living issues plaguing the people of America, saying that “energy bills are going up, your groceries are going up… inflation is hurting you. You’re watching your retirement money shrink to nothing because inflation’s going up.” Pointing out that the US federal government was mired in debt “worth $32 trillion,” she queried: “Are we going to end up in another war?”
[..] Reacting to the latest exorbitant military assistance for Ukraine announcement, Marjorie Taylor Greene told the gathering on constituents on August 31: “Washington has sent $113 billion over there. 113 billion. I voted no to every single penny of it. No, I said, no.” She added that there were “innocent people dying every single day” in the Ukraine conflagration. Indeed, despite the massive military assisstance to Kiev, the Ukrainian counteroffensive that started in June has brought no tangible results so far, with the costly Western-gifted weapons destroyed by Russia’s military. The Ukrainian military has sustained tremendous losses, including over 43,000 troops dead and even more wounded. “… But what funding that war means is means we are funding death. We are funding the murder of innocent people,” the congresswoman stressed to the crowd. If the “arrogant leaders” in Washington continue to fund the Ukraine conflagration at the rate they are doing it now, it’s “going to drag on for decades,” said MTG.
As BRICS gains momentum, the US economy becomes weaker because the members of the grouping can circumvent American sanctions and trade in their own currencies, Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said on Thursday. Speaking to her constituents in Georgia, the Republican congresswoman lashed out at the administration of US President Joe Biden, which she said is turning a blind eye to the rise of BRICS – an economic group which consists of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa and accounts for more than a quarter of global GDP. The Republican firebrand claimed that while the Washington is “doing… nonsense” – including providing all kinds of support to Ukraine which is locked in a conflict with Russia – “there are other countries in the world, powerful countries, organizing together because they are tired of the United States.”
In this sense, the BRICS countries are making serious trade agreements “where they are saying: we’ll buy from you, you’ll buy from us, we don’t care about US sanctions and we’ll sell to one another, buy and sell in our own currency, not the US dollar,” she stated. “This is one of the most devastating things that can happen to all of us,” Greene claimed. As BRICS becomes more powerful, the US dollar gets weaker, she said. “And you know what happens to all of us? We’re going to go broke,” the congresswoman predicted, adding that this dynamic will negatively affect the retirement plans and personal savings of ordinary Americans. “What is going to happen to our children, when the US dollar means nothing anymore, because Russia, and China, and India with its huge population of billions of people have more buying power in their own currencies than we do?
This is a very serious concern,” Greene said. The congresswoman’s remarks come on the heels of a historic BRICS summit in South Africa, where the group agreed to an unprecedented expansion, admitting six new countries – Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates – which will become full-fledged members in 2024. In a declaration summarizing the summit, BRICS, which has historically positioned itself as an alternative to Western-dominated international institutions, reaffirmed its commitment to inclusiveness, while expressing support for the “legitimate aspirations” of African, Asian, and Latin American countries to play a more prominent role in the global arena.
The US Senate is “the most privileged nursing home in the country”, the Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley said. The former South Carolina governor and ambassador to the United Nations, 51, was speaking to Fox News a day after the Republican leader in the Senate, 81-year-old Mitch McConnell, suffered a second freeze in a month, this time while speaking to reporters in Kentucky. “What I will say is, right now, the Senate is the most privileged nursing home in the country,” Haley said. “I mean, Mitch McConnell has done some great things, and he deserves credit. But you have to know when to leave.”
On Thursday, the congressional physician said McConnell was clear to work, perhaps while suffering the after-effects of concussion, sustained in a fall in March, or dehydration. Other falls have been reported, including a “face plant” at a Washington airport, but McConnell has said he will complete his current six-year term, his seventh, which ends in 2026. It was reported on Thursday that some Republican senators were discussing whether to force a confrontation on the issue of their leader’s health. Haley said: “No one should feel good about seeing [McConnell’s freezes] any more than we should feel good about seeing Dianne Feinstein, any more than we should feel good about a lot of what’s happening or seeing Joe Biden’s decline.”
Feinstein, 90, is a Democrat and the senior senator from California. Her health and mental capacity long in question, she has said she will retire next year. Biden, 80, is the oldest president ever elected and would be 86 by the end of his second term if he wins re-election. A recent poll showed that more than 75% of Americans think he is too old to run again. This week, the Guardian reported a claim in a new book that Biden has privately admitted he is occasionally tired. The current Senate is the oldest in US history. An old political saying, that the word “Senate” comes from the same Latin word as “senile”, is circulating again.
Polling shows support for upper age limits for elected officials. Haley has called for mental competency tests for candidates over 75, though aiming such remarks more at Biden than Trump, the 77-year-old Republican frontrunner. “I wouldn’t care if they did [tests] over the age of 50,” Haley told Fox News. “But these people are making decisions on our national security. They’re making decisions on our economy, on the border. “We need to know they’re at the top of their game. You can’t say that right now, looking at Congress.”
Kiev should bring the ongoing hostilities with Moscow to Russian territory, the head of the Ukrainian military’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) has said, contradicting Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s earlier statement. Both officials’ comments, however, come as Moscow has repeatedly accused Kiev of staging numerous “terrorist attacks” inside Russia. In an interview with Ukrainian TV anchor Natalya Moseichuk, Kirill Budanov touted a transfer of military action to Russian territory as an “excellent idea.” “The war must be extended to other territory – which for us is clearly Russia – and other areas where they have influence,” he said. According to Budanov, such a tactic would help Ukraine stretch and paralyze Russian forces. “The wider the operations are, the better,” the intelligence official added.
Budanov’s remarks starkly contrast with Zelensky’s comments last month when he ruled out attacks on Russian territory, explaining that this “would pose a great risk that we would be left alone” without the West’s help. Around the same time, however, Mikhail Podoliak, a top aide to the Ukrainian leader, said that Kiev’s Western backers supported the destruction of “everything Russian” in the territories it deems “occupied,” including the Crimean Peninsula, a statement the Kremlin shrugged off as wishful thinking. Russian territory, including Moscow, has come under recurring drone raids targeting civilian facilities in recent months. Ukraine has stopped short of claiming responsibility for the attacks, with Podoliak blaming “unidentified” aircraft instead.
In addition to aerial attacks, Moscow has repeatedly accused Ukraine of attempting to stage incursions into border regions, resulting in intense skirmishes and civilian deaths. In one notable example, in May, a Ukrainian saboteur group infiltrated the Belgorod region, killing one civilian and injuring several others. Kiev claimed this was an operation conducted by the Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK), comprised of neo-Nazi militants and another collaborationist group called the “Freedom of Russia Legion.”
The US is set to become the second country after the UK to greenlight shipments of depleted-uranium shells to Ukraine, according to Reuters, despite concerns that such munitions could have a dramatic negative effect on public health and the environment. The munitions are intended for US Abrams tanks, first of which are expected to arrive in Ukraine in the coming weeks, the agency reported. According to several unnamed US officials and a “document” cited by Reuters on Saturday, the depleted uranium shells will be part of the next multi-million dollar arms donation expected to be announced next week. The reported plan follows another highly controversial US move to cluster munitions to Ukraine, which had been criticized even by some of Washington’s closest allies.
Should the US approve depleted-uranium shells for Ukraine, it would follow an earlier move by the UK, which announced similar shipments in March. The UK’s decision left Moscow furious, with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov saying that the delivery would be “taking this escalation to a new and very serious stage.” Russia’s embassy in London accused the US and its allies of being willing to turn Ukraine into “not only an anti-Russian military shooting range, but also a radioactive landfill.” When these toxic shells first showed up in Ukraine, Moscow warned that the UK “will be held accountable” for the irreparable harm caused to civilians and soldiers alike. However, both UK and US officials have disputed health hazards associated with DU shells – which use a dense uranium core to improve their armor-piercing capabilities – and deny studies that the weapons were linked to a spike in cancer and birth defects in Iraq.
In the wake of the British move, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Moscow would respond by placing tactical nuclear weapons in neighboring Belarus. He noted that in this respect Moscow’s actions do not differ from those of the US, which has nuclear weapons deployed in five European countries. Moscow said it will only remove these weapons if the US removes its own nuclear missiles from Europe and dismantles the infrastructure associated with them. Ukraine’s Western backers claim that they are not directly participating in the conflict in Ukraine, and have avoided providing certain weapons – notably fighter jets and long-range missiles – that would risk provoking a direct clash with Russia. Nevertheless, they have sent Kiev more than $100 billion worth of arms, while ignoring Moscow’s repeated warnings that every subsequent weapons package brings the US and NATO closer to active participation in the conflict. Furthermore, by enabling Ukraine’s drone attacks on Russian civilians, Western nations have become “sponsors of terrorism,” according to the Kremlin.
The Russian military has reported a major uptick in Ukraine’s recruitment of foreign mercenaries. Estimates on just how much these ‘soldiers of fortune’ get paid vary wildly, from less than $1,000 a month to $2,000 per day. Sputnik did a little digging and spoke to a pair of veteran military experts to try to get to the bottom of things. A Bundeswehr vet who volunteered to fight alongside the Ukrainian Army gave a tell-all interview to German media recently, revealing the surprisingly low going rate of foreigners taking part in NATO’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine “It depends on how much time you spend on the front lines. There is a principle of combat payments – that is, they pay for each day spent in battle…Per month, it turns out to about €2,000-€2,500 euros. For Ukraine, this is quite a lot,” the mercenary said.
He added that troops who spend more time on the front can get even more, up to about €3,000 (or $3,260), per month. The merc’s testimony seems to match up with figures put out in February by Russia’s Investigative Committee, which has been collecting information on potential war crimes in Ukraine. According to investigators’ figures, foreigners in Ukraine receive between 30,000 and 100,000 hryvnia (about $815-$2,710). The Investigative Committee launched criminal cases against 160 mercs from 33 different countries, including Georgia, the US, Latvia, Israel and Sweden related to suspected crimes against Russian troops and civilians.
The ballpark figures have also been separately confirmed in an investigation by French media this summer, which uncovered that mercs attached to Ukraine’s infamous International Legion receive a base salary of €500 euros, and up to €3,000 a month when they’re on the front lines. Volunteers also complained about having to pay out of pocket for vehicles, supplies and even small arms, notwithstanding the nearly $100 billion in aid doled out by the West to date for weapons. The monthly figures are a far cry from the smattering of information reported during the early stages of the crisis last year, including reporting by British media in March 2022 on payments of up to $2,000 per day plus bonuses for multilingual former soldiers willing to head to Ukraine to engage in extraction operations.
It also challenges the traditional range of “security contractor” job postings, which similarly cite a pay rate of $500-$1,000 per day, equivalent to a six-figure salary when annualized (assuming that the fighter lives that long). “$1,000-$2,000 a month, I think, is kind of low. If you told me that’s for a day, I’d say okay, I can see that. Maybe a little on the high side, but up to that amount for a commander or something, yes, I can see that. But if you’re talking on a per month basis, actually it’s quite low for a mercenary type of situation,” Earl Rasmussen, a retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel-turned international consultant with over two decades of military experience, told Sputnik.
More than 90% of Western businesses that were present in Russia before the conflict with Ukraine broke out are still operating in the country, Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg said on Thursday. In an interview with German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Schallenberg also highlighted Russian companies are still active in Austria and Germany, while Vienna’s dependence on gas supplies from the sanctions-hit country remains high. “Exit from the Russian market is a far more complicated process than it is often described,” Schallenberg said. Austria’s reliance on Russian gas supplies has been reduced but still amounts to 50%, the minister said, stressing that the landlocked country cannot build LNG terminals, unlike some fellow EU member states.
“All in all, only 12% of Austria’s energy requirements are covered by Russian gas supplies,” the minister added. “We have created strategic gas reserves, and won’t face intermittent power outages during the upcoming winter.” Earlier this year, Schallenberg said Russia would remain important for the EU, urging the bloc’s lawmakers to “get real.” The minister defended the right of Raiffeisen Bank International, Austria’s second-largest lender, to continue operating in Russia, as it is one of only two foreign banks that is systemically important for the Russian economy, along with pan-European commercial bank UniCredit. “To think that there won’t be Russia anymore and we can decouple in all areas is delusional,” he stated in a March interview with Reuters.
French prosecutors have just charged former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who spearheaded Western support for the overthrow of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, over alleged Libyan financing of Sarkozy’s 2007 election campaign. Time sure does fly! It seems like it was just yesterday that the Libyan leader was visiting Sarkozy at the Élysée in the wake of Sarkozy’s 2007 election victory, insisting on making himself comfortable in a traditional Bedouin tent on the lawn of the lavish state guest house. Sarkozy had made a trip to Tripoli himself just a few months earlier, barely weeks after taking office. His spokesman called France and Libya’s anti-terrorist cooperation a “longtime common combat.”
But suspicions about Sarkozy’s motives for leading the regime change charge arose in 2012, when Libyan intelligence officials implicated French agents in the capture and killing of Gaddafi in October 2011, alleging a cover-up related to Sarkozy’s 2007 election campaign. Anonymous European officials also started singing the same tune to the Western press. When former US president Barack Obama took office in 2009, Paris insiders said that, given his focus on containing China, Obama delegated much of Africa to the French and Brits – who promptly screwed things up. And Obama was still talking about those screwups in 2016 when he told The Atlantic in an interview that he “had more faith in the Europeans, given Libya’s proximity, being invested in the follow-up,” in the wake of the French- and UK-backed coup against Gaddafi.
Obama underscored, in the same interview, just how easy it was to “purchase France’s involvement in a way that made it less expensive for us and less risky for [America]” – just by allowing Sarkozy to take credit for the coup. The idea that France or a French president can be “purchased” seems relevant here. These events in Libya should also raise questions about the recent coup in Gabon and the role of France in creating the conditions that ultimately gave rise to it. As with Libya and Gaddafi, Sarkozy also seemed to have an odd fixation with Gabon, making three visits to the country between his election in mid-2007 and February 2010, including shortly after Ali Bongo took power in 2009, with 42% of the vote, in the wake of his father Omar’s death. Kind of weird for a French president whose predecessor, Jacques Chirac – who loved Africa so much he built the Musée du Quai d’Orsay in tribute to it – had lamented his lack of interest in the continent.
“The main interest of my trip is to reaffirm loyalty. I want to show that France is faithful,” Sarkozy said during one of those visits to Gabonese President Ali Bongo in 2010. In the wake of these new corruption charges, it seems that French “loyalty” in the case of Libya may have been tied directly to French presidential or special interests. And, by some accounts, that could also be the case with Gabon.
“More than anyone, the CIA and Kiev had a score to settle and wanted Prigozhin dead… Projecting Russian influence into Africa is a crucial part of Putin’s foreign policy, and Wagner is the key to this success..”
Africa, especially west Africa, has a strong sense of collective identity. Trends in one country have a way of spreading across the continent. Therefore, It might or might not be a coincidence that the military takeover in Gabon on Wednesday came just a day after French President Emmanuel Macron took a tough stance vis-a-vis the generals in power in Niger. Macron not only scoffed at the generals’ demand seeking removal of the French envoy in Niamey and the French troops numbering 1500 personnel in that country but threatened to attack Niger. Apparently, Macron meant business. AFP had reported last week the stern warning by the spokesman for the French general staff, Colonel Pierre Gaudillière, that “French military forces are ready to respond to any resurgence of tension that would undermine French military and diplomatic bases in Niger” and that “measures have been taken to protect these bases”.
But the generals in Niamey hit back despatching a communication to the French foreign ministry that Macron’s envoy, Ambassador Sylvain Itté “no longer enjoys the privileges and immunities attached to his status as a member of the diplomatic staff of the French Embassy”; his “diplomatic cards and visas” and those of his family members “are cancelled”; and, the Niger police “have been instructed to proceed with the expulsion” of Itté. It is a humiliating rebuff to Macron. He has no option now but to dial back his threat. A bloodbath in Niger to vent his anger at the deportation of his ambassador will be disastrous for France’s international standing. Besides, a “known unknown” factor also comes into play which will make Paris (and Washington) think twice — the ghost of Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin. This needs explaining.
Although no credible source has linked Russia to the coup in Niger, its strong connection with interventions in African countries — Central African Republic, Sudan, Mali and Libya — through the Wagner group leaves unanswered questions. This of course brings up the circumstances of the plane crash of Prigozhin in mysterious circumstances, which Russian investigators now estimate as an act of sabotage. There is no question that Prigozhin was an obstacle to the US/NATO plans in Africa. John Varoli, former foreign correspondent for New York Times, Bloomberg and Reuters TV (who was based in Moscow from 1992 to 2013 and was “trained as a US foreign policy expert with a focus on Russia and Ukraine”) wrote a riveting blog in Substack recently where he concluded on the following lines:
“More than anyone, the CIA and Kiev had a score to settle and wanted Prigozhin dead… Projecting Russian influence into Africa is a crucial part of Putin’s foreign policy, and Wagner is the key to this success. Relations with African leaders are built on Prigozhin’s personal charisma… Likewise, by eliminating Prigozhin and his top officers, NATO has dealt a blow to the Kremlin’s ambitions in Africa… Like with any high-profile assassination, we will never know the full truth. But one thing is for certain — the U.S., certain NATO members and Ukraine benefit the most from Prigozhin’s demise, while the Kremlin gains absolutely nothing. All available information points to Western involvement and guilt.”
Another conflict with escalatory potential involves the state of Niger, located in the Sahara desert. A recent military coup d’état overthrew the elected government several weeks ago (although the coup leaders contend the election was fraudulent). Some surveys show that the military junta enjoys broad popular support. Niger is France’s largest supplier of uranium, while France is one of the largest builders of nuclear power plants in the world. France desperately needs to restore order in Niger, including forcing the junta to step aside and reinstate the elected government. France has special forces including the French Foreign Legion ready to intervene. However, France does not want to proceed unilaterally, and is trying to recruit African allies to join the invasion.
The most significant regional grouping is the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which includes both Francophone states like Senegal and Côte D’Ivoire and important Anglophone states such as Nigeria. France is recruiting ECOWAS to participate in its invasion of Niger. ECOWAS members are divided on the idea. In any case, ECOWAS action would require approval of the African Union and possibly the United Nations as well as weeks of mobilization. So no military action is likely for several months at the earliest. There’s no evidence that Russia was involved in the Niger coup, but Russia certainly stands as a major beneficiary. Russia is the other large manufacturer of nuclear power plants in addition to France. Russia gets its uranium from inside Russia, Kazakhstan and other Central Asian republics. (Russia also owns large amounts of U.S. uranium deposits obtained in a deal authorized by Hillary Clinton in exchange for huge donations to the Clinton Foundation).
If Russia can cut off France’s access to Nigérien uranium, it will tighten its hold on global uranium supplies and enhance its position as a provider of nuclear power plants. There is some talk now (not confirmed) that Russia may offer support to the Nigérien coup, including possible deployment of the Wagner Group mercenary army. That would greatly complicate any plans for French or ECOWAS involvement. Again, we would have the specter of Russia (via Wagner) and France (a NATO member) squaring off in a war for uranium in the Sahara desert. The escalatory potential is obvious. By the way, the bloodthirsty Victoria Nuland visited Niger recently and was not warmly received. She departed the country empty-handed. No doubt she left some threats of U.S. support for the French behind.
JPMorgan flagged over $1 billion in suspicious transactions linked to deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, which the bank reported to the US government, the US Virgin Islands has claimed in its lawsuit against the bank. “JPMorgan was a full-service bank for Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking,” said Mimi Liu, an attorney for the USVI, which says the enormous sum bolsters key allegations in their legal action against the bank, which they say knowingly benefited from Epstein’s wrongdoing, Bloomberg reports, noting that this is the first time in the case that the ‘sheer volume of Epstein’s financial activity at JPMorgan over a 16-year period has been disclosed.’ The suspicious activity was detailed in a 2019 filing to the US Department of Treasury, a USVI attorney told a federal court in Manhattan on Thursday.
The filing was made after Epstein died in a Manhattan jail cell a month after his arrest on sex trafficking charges. Epstein had been with the bank from the late 1990s through 2013, when they finally cut ties with him. Epstein notoriously trafficked some of his victims to a private island in the USVI. JPMorgan denies that it let Epstein’s activities slide, and says it reported around 150 cash transactions to a federal regulator between 2002 and 2013. Last month, the USVI told the judge in the case that the bank facilitated over $1.1 million in payments from Jeffrey Epstein to “girls or women,” many of whom had Eastern European surnames. Over $320,000 of the payments were made to “numerous individuals for whom JPMorgan had no previously identified payments,” Singer wrote, accusing the bank of failing to disclose the payments until after the end of discovery – the period in which parties in a lawsuit exchange evidence.
The bank claims that’s irrelevant, because the USVI doesn’t have legal standing to claim JPMorgan obstructed a trafficking investigation because it wasn’t a victim. That said, Liu is urging the judge in the case to decide various claims in the USVI’s favor without a trial. “The only reason that JPMorgan after 16 years reported the $1 billion in suspicious transactions was because he was arrested and then he was dead,” she said. JPMorgan claims they had no idea what Epstein was up to – pointing to depositions from current and former employees who say they had no knowledge of the trafficking. “There is hotly disputed testimony and evidence,” said Feliia Ellsworth, an attorney for the bank.
In Egypt, there are over 60,000 political prisoners and arbitrary detentions. There is also torture, enforced disappearances, death sentences; the persecution of independent journalists and the repression of any dissent are the order of the day. In Iran, the protests following the murder of the young Masha Amini were brutally repressed, leading to several death sentences after show trials. Here too, arrests (often of journalists, accused of documenting protests and abuses), torture, and enforced disappearances, not to mention discrimination against women and the persecution of gays and lesbians are widespread. Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy where human rights are systematically violated, freedom of expression is attacked and women are discriminated against by law.
Here too there are unfair trials, arbitrary detentions and death sentences often imposed for simply participating in sit-ins and protests. With the bombings in Yemen, Saudi Arabia has also caused massacres of civilians and one of the most serious humanitarian crises in the world. In the UAE, consensual same-sex relationships between adults are criminalized and political dissidents are subjected to abuse, arbitrary detention and ill-treatment. Press freedom is hindered and limited by controls and bans. In India, democracy is degenerating into an increasingly totalitarian form and aims to transform a multilingual and multireligious country into a monolithic entity dominated by a fanatical Hindu party. Protests and dissent are repressed and religious and ethnic minorities persecuted.
As of 2022, the NGO Reporters Without Borders ranks China as one of the ten countries in the world with the least freedom of the press. In Russia, conscientious objectors and all those who refuse to participate in the war against Ukraine are persecuted, arrested and imprisoned. Brazil, Argentina and South Africa are the only BRICS members to have abolished the death penalty. China invaded Tibet in 1950 and annexed it in 1959, bloodily suppressing the revolt of the population; a situation that continues today. Russia has been carrying on an invasion war in Ukraine for over a year that has caused thousands of dead and wounded and terrible devastation, which is countered by an equally criminal warmongering policy by NATO, the European Union and the United States.
Currently, only Brazil and South Africa are among the 92 signatories and 68 states parties to the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Among the remaining BRICS members India, Russia and China are nuclear powers with expanding arsenals.
