Jul 152025
 


Pablo Picasso Female bust 1943

 

World War III Has Already Begun (Dmitry Trenin)
Trump Issues Threats To Russia Over Ukraine Conflict (RT)
Trump’s Patriot Pledge is Just Political Theater: Scott Ritter (Sp.)
If Trump Folds to Neocons on Ukraine, MAGA Base Will Bury Him as Biden 2.0 (Sp.)
Bannon Warns of Electoral Catastrophe For Republicans (RT)
Trump Could Send Long-range Missiles To Ukraine – Media (RT)
Interest Groups Are Stronger Than President Trump (Paul Craig Roberts)
Trump Was Saved to Save Our Country (Margolis)
German President Calls For Universal Military Conscription (RT)
Nvidia CEO Says China’s Army Won’t Rely On US AI Chips (ZH)
Kristi Noem Turns NBC’s Ambush Into a Masterclass in Command (Margolis)
FBI Opens ‘Grand Conspiracy’ Probe On Weaponization (JTN)
X Marks The Spat (Zilber)
Biden Defends Controversial Autopen Use For Mass Clemency Decisions (NYP)

 

 

Alex

Tariffs

MIlley

 

 

 

 

 

 

As the MAGA base is still talking about Epstein, Trump is picking a fight with Putin, risking WWiiI. They may forgive him for Epstein, but not that.

World War III Has Already Begun (Dmitry Trenin)

Many now speak of humanity’s drift towards World War III, imagining events similar to those of the 20th century. But war evolves. It will not begin with a June 1941 Barbarossa-style invasion or a Cuban Missile Crisis-style nuclear standoff. In fact, the new world war is already underway – it’s just that not everyone has recognized it yet. For Russia, the pre-war period ended in 2014. For China, it was 2017. For Iran, 2023. Since then, war – in its modern, diffuse form – has intensified. This is not a new Cold War. Since 2022, the West’s campaign against Russia has grown more decisive. The risk of direct nuclear confrontation with NATO over the Ukraine conflict is rising. Donald Trump’s return to the White House created a temporary window in which such a clash could be avoided, but by mid-2025, hawks in the US and Western Europe had pushed us dangerously close again.

This war involves the world’s leading powers: the United States and its allies on one side, China and Russia on the other. It is global, not because of its scale, but because of the stakes: the future balance of power. The West sees the rise of China and the resurgence of Russia as existential threats. Its counteroffensive, economic and ideological, is meant to put a halt to that shift. It is a war of survival for the West, not just geopolitically but ideologically. Western globalism – whether economic, political, or cultural – cannot tolerate alternative civilizational models. Post-national elites in the US and Western Europe are committed to preserving their dominance. A diversity of worldviews, civilizational autonomy, and national sovereignty are seen not as options, but as threats.

This explains the severity of the West’s response. When Joe Biden told Brazil’s President Lula that he wanted to “destroy” Russia, he revealed the truth behind euphemisms like “strategic defeat.” Western-backed Israel has shown how total this doctrine is – first in Gaza, then Lebanon, and finally Iran. In early June, a similar strategy was used in attacks on Russian airfields. Reports suggest US and British involvement in both cases. To Western planners, Russia, Iran, China and North Korea are part of a single axis. That belief shapes military planning. Compromise is no longer part of the game. What we’re seeing are not temporary crises but rolling conflicts. Eastern Europe and the Middle East are the two current flashpoints. A third has long been identified: East Asia, particularly Taiwan. Russia is directly engaged in Ukraine, holds stakes in the Middle East, and may become involved in the Pacific.

The war is no longer about occupation, but destabilization. The new strategy focuses on sowing internal disorder: economic sabotage, social unrest, and psychological attrition. The West’s plan for Russia is not defeat on the battlefield, but gradual internal collapse. Its tactics are all-encompassing. Drone strikes target infrastructure and nuclear facilities. Political assassinations are no longer off-limits. Journalists, negotiators, scientists, and even their families are being hunted. Residential neighborhoods, schools, and hospitals are not collateral damage – they are targets. This is total war.

Read more …

“The Russian stock market soared on Trump’s remarks, with the main index jumping nearly 3%,,,”

Trump Issues Threats To Russia Over Ukraine Conflict (RT)

US President Donald Trump has threatened to impose “severe” tariffs of up to 100% on Russia’s trading partners unless a deal is reached to end the Ukraine conflict within 50 days. Trump issued the warning on Monday during a meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in the Oval Office. “We’re very, very unhappy – I am – with [Russia], and we’re going to be doing very severe tariffs if we don’t have a deal in about 50 days,” he stated. Trump blamed his predecessor Joe Biden for dragging Washington into the conflict, saying the US had spent approximately $350 billion on aid for Ukraine. The US president also mentioned a congressional bill that would impose tougher sanctions on Russia, saying, “I’m not sure we need it, but it’s good they’re doing it… could be very useful.” A Senate vote is expected next week.

He noted that, if there was no progress on Ukraine, slapping Russia with secondary US tariffs would not require congressional approval. Secondary tariffs are sometimes introduced on countries that do business with a sanctioned country. Trump also announced that the US will send weapons to Ukraine through NATO, which would handle both payment and distribution. “We’ve made a deal today where we are going to be sending them weapons, and they’re going to be paying for them,” he said. Russia has repeatedly denounced the West for supplying Ukraine with weapons, warning that this only serves to prolong the conflict and makes no impact on its outcome. The Russian stock market soared on Trump’s remarks, with the main index jumping nearly 3%, according to data from the Moscow Exchange.

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“..while Trump’s tariff and sanctions threat may be “designed to weaken the Russian will…all it’s going to do is collapse the American economy, and it will be the United States that pulls back and withdraws and shows weakness, not Russia and not Russia’s allies,”

Trump’s Patriot Pledge is Just Political Theater: Scott Ritter (Sp.)

Donald Trump’s pledge to source “up to 17” Patriot batteries for Ukraine leaves an array of questions unanswered, like whether US allies will be willing to pony up, whether Ukraine has the personnel required to operate them, and whether the systems would even survive transit to their destination in conditions of near-total Russian air superiority in the skies over Ukraine, Ritter says. “Russia right now enjoys relative freedom of activity over Ukraine in terms of drone operations, missile operations. They apparently have very good intelligence coverage of Ukraine. So as Patriot batteries are transferred to Ukraine there’s an increased likelihood that they will be detected by the Russians and destroyed by the Russians before they’re ever installed,” Ritter told Sputnik.

Delivering the air defense systems to Ukraine would be “a massive waste of money” that “won’t help Ukraine,” but hurt it, needlessly prolonging the conflict, in which time “thousands” more people will be killed, Ritter said. “This is a political gesture being made by President Trump because he’s embarrassed that he hasn’t been able to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin into bending the knee to American demands on how to bring this war to an end,” the analyst emphasized. The CIA being tasked with procuring the Patriots opens the door to even more questions, according to Ritter. “This is a non-standard transaction. It’s not the byproduct of extensive diplomacy and the defense departments of both nations getting together and talking about things.

“This is a CIA covert operation that has its roots, the political drive of a president who needs to be seen as doing something. So there’s a lot of intent in here, but it’s not backed up with a guaranteed outcome. We don’t know if all of the systems that the CIA thinks can be made available are in fact available,” the observer explained. “Germany has 12 Patriot systems…Are the Germans going to relinquish all of their Patriot batteries? How many of those is the United States counting on? The United States may say, ‘give us them all, we’ll back you up’. But are the Germans really going to give up all 12 batteries?” Ritter asked. “The same thing with Spain. Spain is said to be a potential source of Patriot batteries, but Spain has very few Patriot batteries that they’ve procured. And is Spain willing to give up all of its Patriot capability, knowing that the American backfill is dependent upon a production bottleneck that isn’t going to change anytime soon?”

“Then we also have to remember, a Patriot battery is not a Patriot battery,” Ritter said. “There’s old Patriot batteries, there’s less old, there’s new Patriot batteries. If you’re giving away old Patriot batteries with old systems, first of all, many of these missiles may have already gone through a life extension program and are not suitable for continuing to be made operational. They may not function. And if they do function, they’re not designed to do the kind of high-speed maneuvering and target acquisition that’s affiliated with the modern Patriot. So even if you get numbers, the capabilities, they might as well not have a Patriot system,” the observer stressed. Beside the Patriot announcement is Trump’s threat of 100% secondary sanctions on countries cooperating with Russia. Making good on these threats would be “foolhardy” to say the least, according to Ritter.

“Trump just recently unraveled the disaster he made by putting sanctions on China back in April. China’s retaliation on rare earth minerals destroyed the American automobile industry. And only recently did Donald Trump get a new arrangement with China where the pipeline for these magnetic materials and rare earth minerals will once again be opened. But production has already been disrupted. And now if you’re talking about putting on another 100%. First of all, even before that 100% goes on, who’s going to sign contracts today, believing that in 50 days, the entire thing will unravel because of sanctions. This is disruptive in the extreme.”

Secondly, “do you think China is just going to sit there and go ‘okay, yeah, give us that 100%. We’ll do nothing’? No, they’ll retaliate again. It’s ridiculous. India isn’t going to put up with this. And Brazil has already indicated that if the United States wants to play tariff games, then Brazil will just cut off all trade with the United States,” the analyst stressed. In other words, while Trump’s tariff and sanctions threat may be “designed to weaken the Russian will…all it’s going to do is collapse the American economy, and it will be the United States that pulls back and withdraws and shows weakness, not Russia and not Russia’s allies,” Ritter summed up.

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“Putin said the US and its allies have disregarded Russia’s interests since the collapse of the Soviet Union.”

Trump Could Send Long-range Missiles To Ukraine – Media (RT)

US President Donald Trump is weighing whether to authorize the delivery to Ukraine of long-range missiles capable of striking targets deep within Russia, Axios reported on Sunday. The outlet cited two sources with knowledge of the plans for weapons deliveries. Trump is expected to make an announcement regarding Ukraine on Monday, which “is going to be very aggressive,” according to comments to Axios by Senator Lindsey Graham, who supports ramping up the sanctions on Russia. Trump previously said he could send Patriots to Ukraine – without specifying whether he means the missiles or the complete air defense systems – and expressed frustration over Russia’s unwillingness to agree to an unconditional ceasefire.

Moscow considers the ceasefire proposal to be a stalling tactic to allow Ukraine to regroup. Trump has hinted at new weapons deliveries, saying the US will send “various pieces of very sophisticated military” equipment. He added that other nations “are gonna pay us 100%” for the weapons, describing it as good business. He indicated that the EU would cover the costs. During the latest direct peace talks in Istanbul, Moscow offered a conditional ceasefire, saying it would agree to a truce if Kiev takes meaningful steps to deescalate, including suspending deliveries of Western military aid. This proposal was rejected, and Kiev appears unwilling to resume the negotiations.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Kislitsa said last week that “this format has practically exhausted itself,” unless Russian President Vladimir Putin grants his delegation the authority to offer terms suitable for Ukraine. Kislitsa said Kiev’s goal in Istanbul is to push for a summit between Putin and Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky. The Russian president previously said he would meet with Zelensky if Kiev first accepts the terms of a viable peace deal – adding, however, that he does not believe Zelensky has the authority to sign international treaties, as his term as president expired last year and he refused to step down, citing martial law. In a separate interview last week, Putin said the US and its allies have disregarded Russia’s interests since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

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“Trump would effectively become a second Biden, thus committing political suicide.”

If Trump Folds to Neocons on Ukraine, MAGA Base Will Bury Him as Biden 2.0 (Sp.)

President Trump has pulled a 180 on his Russia/Ukraine peace push, including an “aggressive” new arms aid plan, and 100% “secondary tariff” threats against Moscow. Sputnik asked a leading Russian foreign and defense policy expert to weigh in. The US president’s escalatory rhetoric vis-à-vis Russia is the result of the realization that he cannot “force” Russia to make the concessions he needs to declare a peace in Ukraine which doesn’t address the conflict’s root causes, Russian Council on Foreign & Defense Policy Dmitry Suslov has told Sputnik. Succumbing to the “hypocritical flattery” of the neocon wing of the GOP, plus hawkish European allies, Trump is being lobbied to believe that acting “tough” works. At the same time, his intuition is telling him to try to avoid being dragged into a long confrontation with Russia, and thus “become a second Biden.”

The president’s problem is that he’s trying to “maneuver” between neocons and MAGA Republicans who don’t want any more wars on US taxpayers’ dime. “Trump wants to somehow demonstrate toughness to put pressure on Russia, but doesn’t want to ‘privatize’ the Ukraine war,” Suslov argues. If he uses the leftover $4B from Biden’s budget for Ukraine, he can continue to make the argument that this is ‘not his war’. But “if he asks Congress for a new budget to support Ukraine, it will mean that Biden’s war has turned into Trump’s war,” Suslov stresses.

“This would be a political disaster, a political defeat for Trump, because he would antagonize his MAGA base even further,” the observer noted. “Trump would effectively become a second Biden, thus committing political suicide.” As for arms deliveries vs. dialog, everything comes down to the “risks of escalation,” according to Suslov. If Trump approves the use of ATACMS missiles for deep strikes into Russia, this would increase the risks of a direct Russia-NATO clash. If his efforts are limited to freezing the rapprochement and new sanctions, the impact wouldn’t be nearly as serious, the analyst argues. Whatever comes next, Russia will “continue its special military operation, and continue to intensify offensive operations and strikes against military and MIC targets in Ukraine, regardless of what the US does or does not do,” Suslov summed up.

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“Trump’s party could lose up to 40 US House seats and the presidency over the backlash to the Epstein files debacle, the former strategist has said..”

Bannon Warns of Electoral Catastrophe For Republicans (RT)

Republicans could lose 40 US House seats and the presidency if the backlash over the Jeffrey Epstein case continues to divide the MAGA base, President Donald Trump’s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, has warned. On the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly promised to declassify files related to the case of late financier and registered sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. In February, Attorney General Pam Bondi said that a list of Epstein’s clients was “sitting on my desk.” Last week, however, the Justice Department released a memo claiming that no client list exists, and that no evidence has been found to justify the investigation of uncharged third parties.

The memo has triggered outrage among Trump supporters, with accusations that the administration has failed to deliver transparency. Bannon warned during a podcast last week that the fallout could erode 10% of MAGA’s support. “If we lose 10% of the MAGA movement right now, we’re going to lose 40 seats in ‘26, we’re going to lose the presidency,” he said. Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has also cautioned that the Epstein issue “is not going away” and will hinder Trump’s efforts on other national challenges. According to CNN, FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino has not reported to work since the memo’s release and is considering resigning.

Epstein, a financier with ties to influential figures, was arrested in 2019 for sex trafficking and died in jail before trial. His death was ruled a suicide, but many have demanded the release of alleged client names rumored to include Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, Bill Gates, and others. Some suspect Trump may also be implicated. Trump has dismissed the controversy, saying, “Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?” and claiming on Truth Social that the Democrats fabricated the client list. “We’re on one Team, MAGA,” he wrote, blaming “selfish people” for fueling internal divisions.

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“It has only taken the Ruling Establishment six months to cancel the domestic agenda of the Trump administration. The Reagan administration lasted longer before it was neutralized..”

Interest Groups Are Stronger Than President Trump (Paul Craig Roberts)

We are six months into Donald Trump’s presidency, really his first presidency as his previous four years he was staffed by the ruling establishment with his opponents. Washington taught Trump a lesson, and this time he is staffed with people who share the values he expressed in his campaign. Nevertheless, the Trump administration is now at odds within itself and with a significant percentage of its MAGA supporters, if news reports can be believed. The issue splitting the Trump forces is the Epstein dossier. I wrote yesterday about the Epstein Saga. Clearly there are problems. But the nature of the problem is being misrepresented. Attorney General Bondi did not decide on her own that the Epstein file was empty. She was not protecting Trump.

The decision was imposed on the Trump administration by the American Establishment, the Ruling Elite, the Deep State, the Globalists–whatever you want to call those whose money and economic interests rule the governments in the Western World. The issue our rulers put to President Trump was: Are you prepared to discredit in the eyes of the American People the ruling establishment and the government of the United States? If the people lose confidence in their government, how can you accomplish anything? Netanyahu was there with Trump to back them up. If you release the Epstein Files it will be revealed that he was a Mossad agent blackmailing your leaders. We, Israel, will release the names, and your country will be ruined. But it is not only Bondi having difficulties. It is also Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Secretary of Health and Human services, and Trump himself.

Robert Kennedy has found that despite being a cabinet secretary in the US government, he cannot decide based on hard evidence that the Covid “vaccine” is harmful to everyone. All RFK could do was to cease the government’s recommendation of the deadly Covid vax for healthy children and pregnant women. The Secretary of Health and Human Services is powerless to stop the vaccination of the vast majority of the American population with a “vaccine” that kills and destroys the immune system. Big Pharma is more powerful than the US Secretary for Health. Kennedy despite his promise was also unable to ban the deadly glyphosate weed killer that has poisoned food, soil, and water. Kennedy announced that this toxic substance was too important to agri-business to be denied them. Agri-business is more powerful than Secretary Kennedy, and its profits are more important than Americans’ health.

President Trump cannot even impose tariffs or deport immigrant-invaders. Globalism makes countries dependent on imports. Manufacturers are harmed by tariffs, and agri-business is harmed by deportations of illegals. These powerful economic interests are opposed to tariffs and deportations. Trump’s tariffs are used to lower foreign tariffs against the US or to force concessions from foreign governments. But as it turned out the tariffs raise the cost of the remaining American manufacturers and hurt their profits.. They confronted Trump and were granted exemptions from tariffs for their input needs. Essentially, the tariff list was naked. Nothing on it that wasn’t exempted. The same for deportations. According to news reports, there are to be no deportations of restaurant workers, farm workers, and workers in the chicken slaughter houses. The deportations seem mainly to be limited to criminal gangs.

It has only taken the Ruling Establishment six months to cancel the domestic agenda of the Trump administration. The Reagan administration lasted longer before it was neutralized. Trump’s peace agenda has also gone by the wayside. He has bombed Iran for Netanyahu and continues to support Israeli aggression and Israel’s genocide of Palestine. Trump is yet to meet with Putin, instead handing the “peace negotiations” over to Zelensky and Putin. As the war is really between the US and Russia, Zelensky cannot settle it. The military/security complex needs war or the threat of war for its profits and power. Peace does not serve their interests. Americans have a false belief in the power of a president. As long as private money determines politics, money, not the people, rules.

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“..fighting with a clarity and conviction that only comes from knowing just how far the enemy is willing to go..”

Trump Was Saved to Save Our Country (Margolis)

One year ago in Butler, Pennsylvania, America came within inches of catastrophe. A bullet meant for Donald Trump whizzed past his head, grazing his ear thanks to a sudden turn of his head, in a near-miss that could have changed history. That bullet didn’t miss by accident. Trump was spared for a reason. The attempt wasn’t just a physical attack—it was a political one. At the time, Joe Biden was collapsing in the polls. Hispanic and black voters were shifting toward Trump. Democrats and their allies in the legacy media were in a frenzy, comparing him to Hitler, accusing him of being a dictator, and trying to put him in prison. The rhetoric was poisonous—and it was only a matter of time before someone acted on it.

But instead of silencing Trump, the assassin did the opposite. He ignited something far more powerful. The shot missed, and in that moment, Donald Trump emerged not just as a survivor—but as a man on a mission. A president with unfinished business and a renewed sense of purpose. That brush with death didn’t shake him—it emboldened him. Everything we’ve seen in Trump’s second term flows from that moment. He came back stronger, more focused, more unapologetically committed to saving the country from the radical left. There’s no more playing nice, no more deference to broken institutions or phony decorum. The Trump we see today is a man who knows exactly how high the stakes are—and he’s governing like it. Whether it’s securing the border, dismantling the administrative state, or taking on the corrupt DOJ, this is a president unchained.

The media refused to acknowledge that this was a politically motivated attempt to erase Trump from the national stage. But the American people saw it for what it was—and they responded. They rallied around him, not out of sympathy, but out of shared conviction. They saw the left for what it had become: a movement willing to destroy anyone who stands in its way. When lawfare failed, violence was the next option. The miracle in Butler lit a fire that hasn’t gone out. It changed the tone of his presidency and the trajectory of the movement behind him. When Americans voted in November, they didn’t just elect a president—they sent a message. That they were done being bullied by a regime that trades in fear. That they chose secure borders over chaos, defending police over defunding them, protecting children instead of butchering them, and truth over the manufactured lies of the press.

Trump’s survival wasn’t the end of a chapter—it was the beginning of something much bigger. A sharpened presidency. A hardened resolve. A movement that refuses to back down. He was saved to finish the job. And one year later, he’s doing exactly that—fighting with a clarity and conviction that only comes from knowing just how far the enemy is willing to go. The bullet missed, but the message hit its mark: Trump is still here, and he’s more dangerous to the left than ever. America was given another chance that day. And with Trump back in charge, this time we’re not wasting it.

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Russia: “Germany becoming dangerous again..”

German President Calls For Universal Military Conscription (RT)

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has urged a nationwide debate about reinstating military conscription, stressing that Berlin needs to strengthen its armed forces amid what he described as escalating security threats in Europe. Compulsory military service was suspended in Germany in 2011. Although inactive, the legal framework for a draft remains intact and can be reactivated by a simple parliamentary majority. A full-scale return, including women, however, would require changes to the constitution. Speaking to ZDF on Sunday, Steinmeier said Germany must prepare for the possibility that voluntary enlistment will fall short of staffing requirements for the army.

“I am an advocate of conscription because I believe that with the changing security situation in Europe, with the fact that a war is taking place, and with the conclusions we have drawn from it to better protect ourselves, the personnel equipment of the Bundeswehr also needs to be adapted,” he said. He expressed support for Defense Minister Boris Pistorius’ proposal to expand troop numbers and create a backup draft system. The plan aims for around 5,000 volunteer recruits annually, rising to 30,000 by 2029. Legislation which is being prepared for cabinet review in August with possible enactment by early 2026 includes provisions to automatically reintroduce conscription if volunteer numbers fall short.

“We need this debate now, preferably with a positive outcome, so that if there are not enough volunteers, we will probably return to a different form of conscription than the one we have already abolished,” Steinmeier said. Since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022, Germany has been working to strengthen its military, citing what it sees as a security threat from Russia. Moscow has rejected claims that it plans to attack NATO nations, dismissing them as “nonsense” and accusing Western leaders of intentionally alarming their citizens to justify increased defense budgets.

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“We want the American tech stack to be the global standard … in order for us to do that, we have to be in search of all the AI developers in the world..”

Nvidia CEO Says China’s Army Won’t Rely On US AI Chips (ZH)

In an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang argued that, just as the internet was designed and built by American technology, so too should artificial intelligence be shaped by it globally. He emphasized the need to reopen markets where Nvidia’s advanced chips are currently banned, such as China. Zakaria asked Huang: “But what if, in doing that, you are also providing the Chinese military and Chinese intelligence with the capacity to supercharge, turbocharge their weapons with the very best American chips?” Huang replied, “We don’t have to worry about that, because the Chinese military, no different than the US military, won’t seek each other’s technology out to build critical systems.”

“It could be limited at any time; not to mention, there’s plenty of computing capacity in China already,” he said, adding, “They don’t need Nvidia’s chips, certainly, or American tech stacks in order to build their military.” Huang’s remarks follow years of bipartisan U.S. policy imposing trade restrictions on Nvidia’s advanced AI chips to China. He argued that these export controls have been counterproductive, accelerating China’s own AI chip ambitions. Huang contended that U.S. tech leadership means ensuring global AI systems are built on the American tech stack, rather than Chinese technology…

“We want the American tech stack to be the global standard … in order for us to do that, we have to be in search of all the AI developers in the world,” Huang said, noting that about half of the world’s AI developers are based in China. Huang’s CNN interview comes just days after he met with President Trump at the White House late last week, and plans a scheduled trip to Beijing to meet with senior Chinese officials and attend the International Supply Chain Expo. Huang has been vocal in recent months about the combined impact of the Biden-Harris regime and the Trump-Vance administration’s export restrictions on advanced AI chips to China. In May, he told investors, “The $50 billion China market is effectively closed to U.S. industry.”

However, the Trump team cancelled a planned rule by former President Joe Biden called the “AI diffusion rule,” promising fewer restrictions later this year on which countries could receive Nvidia’s advanced AI chips. “The world is right now hungry, anxious to engage AI,” Huang previously said, adding, “Let us get the American AI out in front of everybody right now.” Last week, Nvidia became the first company to close a trading day with a market cap over $4 trillion… This was a symbolic milestone for capital markets and the current bull cycle. Huang is walking a very fine line between Washington and Beijing as he seeks to preserve Nvidia’s global market access. The real question is whether China hawks in the White House will ever allow Beijing unrestricted access to Nvidia’s AI chips—something that seems increasingly unlikely.

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“Within just an hour or two after the flooding, we had resources from Homeland Security on the ground. The Coast Guard was deployed immediately and rescued countless Texans. Border Patrol tactical teams were there. FEMA arrived within hours. Call centers were fully staffed. This was the fastest FEMA deployment in years—maybe decades.”

Kristi Noem Turns NBC’s Ambush Into a Masterclass in Command (Margolis)

Kristi Noem’s appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” this Sunday was a textbook example of how to dismantle media bias with poise and facts. Faced with a predictably hostile Kristen Welker, Noem didn’t just hold her ground—she flipped the script. In a setting designed to put Trump administration officials on the defensive, Noem calmly exposed the hollowness of NBC’s narrative and reminded viewers what real leadership looks like under pressure. The interview focused on the Trump administration’s rapid response to the devastating Texas floods and recent high-profile immigration enforcement actions. True to form, NBC leaned on anonymous sources to push a tired smear—this time suggesting Noem had personally delayed FEMA aid by requiring her approval for contracts over $100,000. But Noem dismantled that narrative without breaking a sweat.

“Those claims are absolutely false,” she said. “Within just an hour or two after the flooding, we had resources from Homeland Security on the ground. The Coast Guard was deployed immediately and rescued countless Texans. Border Patrol tactical teams were there. FEMA arrived within hours. Call centers were fully staffed. This was the fastest FEMA deployment in years—maybe decades.” That’s the reality: while the left hides behind nameless leaks and secondhand gossip, Americans saw a swift, coordinated federal response. Contrary to the media’s implication that federal agencies run on autopilot, it takes leadership to move that quickly. Noem and her team cut through red tape and got it done.

When Welker pivoted to immigration enforcement—specifically a major bust at a California marijuana grow operation—the media’s playbook was once again on display. She tried to push the false claim that Border Czar Tom Homan was advocating racial profiling during an appearance on CNN, but Noem didn’t take the bait. She laid out the facts: over 300 arrests, 14 unaccompanied minors rescued from likely trafficking or exploitation, and criminals among the detained with records including rape, child pornography, and murder. These weren’t random detentions—they were targeted law enforcement actions aimed at dismantling illegal grow operations that often serve as fronts for organized crime.

Of course, the legacy media doesn’t want to talk about that. They’d rather peddle innuendo than acknowledge that the Trump administration is actually enforcing the law—and doing it effectively.This is what voters signed up for: strong, competent leadership that doesn’t cave to media pressure or waste time chasing elite approval. Noem didn’t just survive the interview—she turned it into a moment of clarity for anyone still wondering whether the Trump administration is serious about restoring law and order. While NBC and its allies keep spinning excuses for the failures of the Biden years, Americans are seeing a stark contrast in real time. The chaos at the border, the paralyzed disaster responses, and the endless bureaucratic dithering that defined the last administration are over. Under Trump, we’re witnessing what happens when leaders actually take the job seriously.

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Someone suggested Bondi could be the special prosecutor, making way for Matt Gaetz to be AG, as Trump originally intended.

FBI Opens ‘Grand Conspiracy’ Probe On Weaponization (JTN)

The FBI has quietly launched an investigation into a decade of Democratic party and deep-state antics from Russia collusion to Jack Smith, opening the door for the appointment of a special prosecutor to examine whether the well-documented episodes amount to a criminal conspiracy to meddle in three U.S. elections to the benefit of Democrats and the detriment of President Donald Trump, Just the News has learned. The “grand conspiracy” case was opened several weeks ago after new FBI Director Kash Patel took over, and it could get a significant boost if Trump were to declassify two secret tranches of evidence that identify a potential ignition point to the alleged conspiracy in the summer of 2016, according to several people directly familiar with the inquiry, who spoke to Just the News on a condition of anonymity.

The first piece of evidence is a classified annex to a years-old inspector general probe of Hillary Clinton’s improper email server sought by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley. That annex is believed to show that credible information about possible wrongdoing was intentionally ignored by the FBI. The second tranche of evidence was identified by former Russiagate Special Counsel John Durham in his final report. The evidence was dubbed in the report as the “Clinton plan intelligence,” and it was also placed in a classified annex kept from the American public and even many members of Congress. Excerpts from the publicly-available and unclassified Durham report show that U.S. spy agencies were aware that Clinton’s 2016 campaign was concocting a bogus Russia collusion narrative to harm Trump’s election chances before the FBI opened its now-discredited Crossfire Hurricane probe, in part using evidence created by the Clinton campaign or offered by Clinton associates.

[,,] CIA Director John Ratcliffe earlier this month released a scathing review of the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment of Russian influence in the 2016 election, criticizing then-CIA Director John Brennan for joining the FBI in pushing to include disgraced British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s baseless anti-Trump dossier. In particular, Ratcliffe concluded that then-CIA Director John Brennan “showed a preference for narrative consistency over analytical soundness.” Ratcliffe later posted on social media about his report, calling the smear campaign against Trump an “atypical & corrupt process under the politically charged environments of former Dir. Brennan & former FBI Dir. Comey.”

If Trump declassifies the Grassley and Durham documents, prosecutors could submit them to a grand jury in an effort to try to show a distinct pattern of the FBI and spy agencies willfully ignoring intelligence or evidence damaging to Democrats while relentlessly pursuing Trump with evidence that was often flawed. Trump administration officials have weighed naming a special prosecutor to probe the recent bombshell revelations reported by Just the News that the FBI received human source intelligence – and some corroborating evidence – that China was engaged in a scheme to create fake mail-in ballots in 2020 to help Joe Biden win. The FBI failed to investigate the matter, and even recalled the intelligence and asked fellow spy agencies to destroy it. But the five-year statute of limitations on that inquiry is only weeks away from expiring since the evidence arrived in August 2020, leaving the potential for criminal charges or other accountability on an almost impossibly tight timetable.

The overarching conspiracy case opened by Patel’s FBI offers a more expansive approach that would allow a special prosecutor time to tie alleged criminal events currently covered by statutes of limitations to older events by treating them as part of an ongoing conspiracy or even a racketeering operation. The “grand conspiracy” probe also would open the door to empanel a grand jury outside of Washington D.C. where juries have been reluctant to convict actors who pursued Trump. If voting patterns are any indicator, the Capitol City is the most hostile venue to Trump. The district has never supported a GOP presidential candidate. CNN reported that only one Republican presidential candidate has ever won more than 20% of DC’s vote — Richard Nixon in 1972, with 21.56%, and in the last election, a whopping 92.1% of the vote went against Trump.

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“She tried to ride the tiger but was thrown off.”

X Marks The Spat (Zilber)

Linda Yaccarino’s resignation from X as chief executive marked the end of a high-pressure — and at times emotional — two-year stint that insiders described as riddled with stress, conflict and power struggles, according to a report. At times, Yaccarino was reportedly tearful in the office, worn down by the overwhelming demands of working under Elon Musk and the increasing pressure surrounding her role, the Financial Times reported over the weekend. Yaccarino had claimed in an interview just three weeks before stepping down that “I’m the CEO of X and my boss remains the same.” But last Wednesday she announced her departure, citing X’s merger with Musk’s AI venture xAI as a turning point and calling it a “new chapter” for the company.

Their contrasting styles — Yaccarino’s polished advertising world background versus Musk’s unfiltered, hands-on leadership — clashed repeatedly. “Elon calls all the shots,” an advertising executive who knows both Yaccarino and Musk told FT. “She tried to ride the tiger but was thrown off.” A breaking point reportedly came early last year, when Yaccarino helped secure a content deal with former CNN anchor Don Lemon. The arrangement backfired after Lemon conducted a contentious interview with Musk, asking if he used drugs. Musk canceled the deal, and Lemon is now suing for breach of contract. The internal tension and lack of authority reportedly took an emotional toll. Multiple people who worked with Yaccarino said she was “at times being tearful in the office.”

One former colleague told FT: “She lasted two years in a job that would have crushed most people in two weeks.” Though she managed to lure back some major advertisers like Apple, Google and Verizon, many in the industry questioned the sustainability and strategy behind the return.“To her credit, she did get advertisers back to X,” one longtime executive told FT. “She did it with a gun, but they came back.” Another added, “They did not return voluntarily or happily.” Others criticized the platform’s underperformance. “Many clients don’t advertise on X, not because of the content, but because it does not perform very well,” one executive told FT. Sensor Tower reported some renewed ad strength, and Emarketer projected a revenue increase to $2.3 billion in 2025 — still far below the $4.1 billion in global sales before Musk’s takeover.

[..] Yaccarino’s priorities sometimes diverged from Musk’s, particularly around child safety — a concern she reportedly believed Musk was not focused on enough, according to FT. She ultimately informed a small circle ahead of time about her resignation, which happened to coincide with xAI’s chatbot Grok publishing antisemitic content, FT reported. X staff said the two events were unrelated. Yaccarino’s challenges began as soon as she took the job in 2023, leaving NBCUniversal to help repair the damage Musk’s $44 billion takeover of the platform had inflicted on advertiser relations. Brands had fled the platform, citing Musk’s volatile behavior and tolerance of toxic content. She was known as the “Velvet Hammer” in the industry, with a reputation for toughness and a powerful Rolodex of brand contacts.

She scored some victories, securing deals with creators and sports leagues, upgrading X’s video features and laying the groundwork for a digital wallet called X Money. She also aggressively pursued advertisers — at one point suing their trade group and companies like Shell and Pinterest, accusing them of an “illegal boycott.” But despite her efforts, she never gained full control of the company. Musk retained ultimate authority, even in areas core to her role like advertising, the FT reported. He began making unilateral decisions — banning hashtags in ads, charging brands based on vertical ad size — and hired product chief Nikita Bier without her input, according to FT. Musk’s growing relationship with President Donald Trump created further complications. His focus on politics temporarily drew attention away from X, offering Yaccarino some breathing room.

“What saved her was the election and Elon diving deep into the administration,” one person who worked with both told FT. But once Musk returned to business and pushed the $45 billion acquisition of X by xAI, her position became increasingly tenuous, it was reported. Financial control was another battleground. Musk brought in Mahmoud Reza Banki as CFO, who reported directly to Musk and bypassed Yaccarino. Their relationship grew strained, especially when Banki redirected funds away from creator and ad-tech investments — areas Yaccarino viewed as crucial, according to FT. Publicly, Yaccarino remained loyal to Musk, but insiders suggested her style never resonated with him. Her deep ties to Trump, however, remain intact, according to the FT.

She is reportedly close to Ivanka Trump, HUD Secretary Scott Turner and Director of Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. One confidante said she still supports Trump despite his falling-out with Musk. Her next move remains unclear. Some speculate she may join the Trump administration or assume a public-facing role around free speech.

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“Zients wrote in an email at 10:31 p.m.: “I approve the use of the autopen for the execution of all of the following pardons.”

Biden Defends Controversial Autopen Use For Mass Clemency Decisions (NYP)

Former President Joe Biden has acknowledged in a stunning new interview that he didn’t agree to the name of every person who received one of the 46th president’s sweeping pardons — with emails indicating that then-White House chief of staff Jeff Zients approved the use of the notorious White House autopen. The 46th president insisted in a phone interview with the New York Times last week that “I made every decision” about clemencies issued during his term before admitting that he had his staff replicate his signature because “we’re talking about a lot of people.” Biden’s team used an autopen on 25 warrants for pardons and commutations in December and January of last year, but two of those warrants granted clemency to thousands of people.

On Dec. 12, Biden commuted roughly 1,500 sentences and outright pardoned 39 more. Three days before he left office, the then-president commuted the sentence of nearly 2,500 federal inmates convicted of crack cocaine offenses. According to the Times, Biden approved what standards would be used to determine which convicts would qualify for a pardon or commutation, while his underlings sorted out the specifics. In cases where changes were made to the list of inmates, staffers waited until a final version of the clemency roster was produced, then ran it through the autopen rather than ask Biden to keep signing successive versions. President Trump has cast doubt on the legitimacy of the documents Biden signed via autopen—— which has been used since at least the Trump administration to reproduce the president’s signature.

“I understand why Trump would think that,” the former president told the Times,” because obviously, I guess, he doesn’t focus much. Anyway, so — yes, I made every decision.” Emails from a meeting held on the final night of Biden’s presidency, Jan. 19, indicate that the then-president decided to issue pre-emptive pardons to members of his family — including controversial first brother James Biden — with mere hours to go in his term. After messages summarizing the meeting circulated among top Biden advisers, Zients wrote in an email at 10:31 p.m.: “I approve the use of the autopen for the execution of all of the following pardons.” The autopen was managed by former staff secretary Stefanie Feldman, who put documents through the device. Feldman would receive “blurbs” or written accounts confirming that Biden supposedly gave the order to use the autopen, per the outlet.

But most of the time, the assistants who drafted those “blurbs” weren’t actually in the room to hear Biden give the orders, according to the New York Times. Still, Biden was adamant that he approved every high-profile pardon with aides, specifically noting Gen. Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “We know how vindictive Trump is, and I’ve no doubt they would have gone after Mark for no good reason,” Biden said. “The general, you know. So they may read off his name — what’d I want? I told them I wanted to make sure he had a pardon because I knew exactly what Trump would do — without any merit, I might add.” Biden, too, accused Republicans of lying about speculation that his subordinates abused the technology to try and hide his mental states.

“They’re liars. They know it. They know, for certain. I mean, this is — look, what they, they’ve had a pretty good thing going here. They’ve done so badly. They’ve lied so consistently about almost everything they’re doing,” he griped. “The best thing they can do is try to change the focus and focus on something else. And this is a — I think that’s what this is about.” Trump, for his part, recently claimed that Biden’s aides had committed “crimes” by using the autopen to “do anything they wanted.” “That’s a crime to do that to the country,” Trump said on The Post’s “Pod Force One” podcast hosted by Miranda Devine. “Well, number one, I really believe it was a crime because I don’t think he knew he was doing it. I think that people took over the autopen. They got things signed that shouldn’t have been signed.”

“It was people that surrounded that desk that operated the autopen. They surrounded the beautiful Resolute Desk,” Trump continued. “They are criminals, and what they did to our country should never be forgotten. And hopefully, as criminals, they’ll pay a price for what they do.” The Justice Department launched an investigation into the autopen controversy last month to probe whether any White House aides “abused the power of Presidential signatures.” The White House has also confirmed that Ed Martin, the head of an anti-weaponization working group, is probing whether Biden “was competent and whether others were taking advantage of him through use of AutoPen or other means.”

Meanwhile, House Republicans — led by Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) — have started a separate inquiry into allegations of a White House cover-up involving aides who hid the president’s diminishing mental acuity from the public. Trump’s White House only allows two top aides — staff secretary Will Scharf and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles — to use the autopen “for all matters,” according to an internal memo previously reported by The Post.

https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1944605889962332374

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Toxic

IVM

Dragonfly

Cats

Emanuel
https://twitter.com/gunsnrosesgirl3/status/1944402600255795268

Rube

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jul 132025
 
 July 13, 2025  Posted by at 9:21 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  49 Responses »


Paul Gauguin Road in Tahiti 1891

 

Trump To Impose 30% Tariffs On Mexico, European Union (ZH)
Tariff Windfall Drives Surprise $27 Billion US Budget Surplus in June (ET)
US Lawmakers Move To Curb Trump’s Control Over Ukraine Aid (RT)
Trump Sees Zelensky As ‘Primary Obstacle’ To Ukraine Peace – FT (RT)
Trump Denies Coverup In Jeffrey Epstein Case (RT)
Nvidia CEO Makes Pit Stop At White House Before China Trip (ZH)
Why John Brennan Belongs in Prison (Harsanyi)
The Democratic Party Civil War Just Escalated Big Time (Margolis)
How Do You Solve a Problem Like Mamdani? Democrats Don’t Know (Caldwell)
Americans Fighting For Ukraine Should Lose Citizenship – Tucker Carlson (RT)
Tucker Carlson Reveals Who He Thinks Funded Jeffrey Epstein’s Crimes (VF)
Ukraine To Receive German-funded Long-range Weapons This Month (RT)
Baltic Sea Will Remain Common Despite NATO Fantasies – Russian Ambassador (Sp.)
France Is Sweating Its Brains Out Thanks To The EU’s Climate Madness (Marsden)

 

 

Benz

Lacalle

Gaetz
https://twitter.com/MsKristaMonroe/status/1943896573844304013

Kirk

Miller

Scott

 

 

 

 

Has anyone seen a counterproposal from Europe? A dialogue even? Doesn’t that silence make them guilty by association?

Trump To Impose 30% Tariffs On Mexico, European Union (ZH)

President Trump on Saturday morning fired off two trade warning letters via Truth Social, threatening to impose 30% tariffs on all Mexican and European imports starting August 1. The warning to Mexico hinges on action to curb the flow of fentanyl and dismantle drug cartels, while the threat to Europe demands an end to long-standing trade imbalances driven by EU tariffs and non-tariff barriers. This caps off a week of letters sent to America’s top trade partners, with tariff threats used as a negotiation tool by the Trump administration to seal deals.

“Despite our strong relationship, you will recall, the United States imposed Tariffs on Mexico to deal with our Nation’s Fentanyl crisis, which is caused, in part, by Mexico’s failure to stop the Cartels, who are made up of the most despicable people who ever walked the Earth, from pouring these drugs into our country,” Trump said in the letter addressed to Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo. He continued, “Mexico has been helping me secure the border, BUT, what Mexico has done, is not enough. Mexico still has not stopped the Cartels who are trying to turn all of North America into a Narco-Trafficking Playground.”

Here are the key points in the letter:
• 30% tariff will apply to all Mexican imports unless action is taken.
• Tariff waivers will be granted for companies that build or manufacture in the U.S.
• If Mexico raises tariffs in retaliation, the U.S. will match them on top of the 30%.
• Adjust tariffs if Mexico successfully confronts the cartels and halts fentanyl trafficking

The second letter by Trump was addressed to Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, in which he informed Brussels that he would impose a 30% tariff on all EU products starting August 1, unless long-standing trade imbalances—driven by EU tariffs and non-tariff barriers—are addressed. “The European Union, despite having one of our largest Trade Deficits with you. Nevertheless, we have decided to move forward, but only with more balanced and fair TRADE,” the president said.

He emphasized:
• The U.S. market is open and fair, but EU practices have created an unsustainable trade deficit.
• The 30% tariff applies separately from any sectoral tariffs and will be higher for goods transshipped to avoid it.
• No tariffs will be applied if EU companies manufacture within the U.S.
• The EU must allow full market access to the U.S. or face higher tariffs.
• Retaliatory EU tariffs will be met with additional levies.

Trump warned that this trade deficit with the EU is a “major threat to our Economy and, indeed, our National Security!”

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The tariffs story is almost everywhere presented in a negative light. There’s a flipside.

Tariff Windfall Drives Surprise $27 Billion US Budget Surplus in June (ET)

New data from the Treasury Department show that surging tariff revenues in June helped the U.S. government post an unexpected budget surplus of $27 billion, offering a rare fiscal bright spot amid persistently high federal deficits and suggesting that President Donald Trump’s tariff policies are becoming a significant source of government revenue. After running a $316 billion deficit in May, the government recorded a surplus of just over $27 billion last month, according to data released on July 11 by the Treasury Department. The tariff windfall helped narrow the fiscal year-to-date deficit to $1.34 trillion—a slight 1 percent improvement from the same period last year. By contrast, June 2024 saw a $71 billion deficit. A key driver of the improved balance was a record-breaking surge in customs duties.

The Treasury data released on Friday show that tariff collections soared to $27 billion in June alone, pushing total tariff revenues since October to $108 billion—the highest ever recorded for the first nine months of a fiscal year. June’s haul marked a significant jump from May’s prior record of $22 billion and was about 93 percent higher than the $56 billion collected during the same nine-month span of the previous year. So far in July, customs duties have added another $2.4 billion to federal coffers, according to daily Treasury figures. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has predicted even higher tariff revenues in the months ahead. Speaking at a July 8 White House Cabinet meeting, he said the United States is on track to collect $300 billion by the end of calendar year 2025, noting that the “major” tariffs imposed under the Trump administration did not start until the second quarter.

https://twitter.com/TRUMP_ARMY_/status/1943691228291399938

Since returning to the White House for a second term, Trump has imposed 10 percent universal tariffs on trading partners, along with reciprocal tariffs announced in April on a number of nations, depending on the trade barriers they have with the United States. Trump initially applied a 90-day pause to most of the reciprocal tariffs, and later signed an executive order that extended the reprieve to Aug. 1. In recent days, the president sent letters to several countries—including Japan, South Korea, and Thailand—informing them that reciprocal tariffs ranging from 25 to 40 percent will be imposed after Aug. 1 unless they agree to reduce trade barriers and negotiate bilateral deals. Trump has said the higher duties will substantially boost government revenue.

“The big money will start coming in on Aug. 1st. I think it was made clear today by the letters that were sent out yesterday and today,” he said during the Cabinet meeting. Bessent also cited a June 4 report from the Congressional Budget Office projecting that tariff revenues could total $2.8 trillion over the next decade—a figure he said the administration believes is understated. Trump said he won’t extend the Aug. 1 deadline for countries to start paying reciprocal tariffs, signaling a firm stance after earlier suggesting flexibility for nations offering trade concessions.

In one recent round of letters, Trump announced new tariffs as follows: 25 percent on Japan, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, South Korea, and Tunisia; 30 percent on Bosnia and Herzegovina and South Africa; 32 percent on Indonesia; 35 percent on Bangladesh and Serbia; 36 percent on Cambodia and Thailand; and 40 percent on Burma (also known as Myanmar) and Laos. In each letter, Trump noted that the tariffs might be lowered if countries open their markets and reduce non-tariff barriers, emphasizing that persistent trade deficits pose “a major threat” to U.S. economic and national security. More recently, Trump sent another round of letters, noting that Algeria, Iraq, Libya, and Sri Lanka will each be charged a 30 percent tariff, Brunei and Moldova will face a 25 percent tariff, and the Philippines will face a 20 percent tariff. The president has also announced that Canada will face 35 percent tariffs starting on Aug. 1.

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War guarantee.

US Lawmakers Move To Curb Trump’s Control Over Ukraine Aid (RT)

A bill authorizing more Ukraine aid and barring the Pentagon from unilaterally halting arms shipments has passed the Senate Armed Services Committee. The measures are part of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the annual defense bill that outlines the Pentagon’s priorities and funding for the next fiscal year. The bill comes as tensions have risen between Congress and the White House over aid pauses earlier this year. In March, President Donald Trump temporarily halted all Ukraine assistance and intelligence sharing, while earlier this month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth paused weapons deliveries, citing the need to review dwindling Pentagon stockpiles. Aid resumed earlier this week after Trump expressed frustration over delays in the peace process and said Ukraine needs weapons to “defend” itself.

Media reports later suggested Trump had not been informed of the latest suspension and struggled to explain whether he had approved it. The new NDAA draft was passed in a bipartisan vote this week. It “reaffirms” US support for Ukraine, extends aid through 2028, increases annual authorizations from $300 million to $500 million, and requires the Pentagon to continue intelligence support for Kiev, according to a summary released on Friday. Senator Jeanne Shaheen, however, said the bill also includes language blocking the Pentagon from halting aid or intelligence sharing without congressional approval. She noted that provisions listed in the bill “put guardrails” on the Trump administration “to make sure promised military assistance continues to flow to Ukraine.”

A separate version of the NDAA drafted by House Armed Services Committee Chair Mike Rogers extends aid through 2028 but keeps it capped at $300 million per year. It also prohibits the Trump administration from halting funds without written justification to Congress and requires Hegseth to report regularly on support to Ukraine. The House committee will vote on its version on Tuesday. The bill must pass committee votes before being submitted for a full congressional vote. Ukraine has received nearly $115 billion in military, financial, and humanitarian US aid since its conflict with Russia escalated in February 2022. The military component of this sum has come through congressional bills such as the NDAA and the Presidential Drawdown Authority, a fund capped by Congress that allows the president to send US weapons directly to Kiev.

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So get rid of him instead of giving him weapons.

Trump Sees Zelensky As ‘Primary Obstacle’ To Ukraine Peace – FT (RT)

US President Donald Trump continues to regard Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky as the main hurdle to resolving the conflict, despite his recent criticism of Moscow, the Financial Times reported on Saturday, citing sources. Speaking to journalists on Tuesday, Trump said he was “unhappy” with Putin, claiming the Russian leader did not want to end the conflict. “We get a lot of bullsh*t thrown at us by Putin,” Trump said. The US president added that while Putin was “very nice all the time,” it turned out to be “meaningless” for ending the fighting. Later, he announced a “major statement” on Russia soon amid reported discussions in Washington over imposing a 500% tariff on countries that buy Russian energy and goods.

However, two unnamed senior officials involved in defense and security talks with Washington told the FT that there was little indication the White House had actually adopted a more pro-Kiev stance. Ukraine’s backers, the report said, are “still assuming Trump was predisposed to seeing Putin as his main negotiating partner in any settlement and Zelensky as the primary obstacle to a workable peace deal.” One official pointed to “a little bit of overexcitement based on a shift in tone,” while cautioning that “we’re not seeing that translate into major actions.” The FT report echoes a New York Times article in June claiming that the US president is “exasperated” with both Putin and Zelensky, but “reserves special animosity” for the Ukrainian leader, viewing him as a “bad guy” pushing the world towards a global conflict.

In May, Trump openly criticized Zelensky, suggesting that “everything out of his mouth causes problems.” The fiercest public clash between the two came in February at the White House, when Trump accused Zelensky of ingratitude and “gambling with World War III.” Commenting on Trump’s remarks targeting Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russia is “calm about this,” adding that “we are committed to continuing our dialogue with Washington and our policy of repairing the significantly damaged bilateral relations.” Russia maintains it is open to a diplomatic settlement of the Ukraine conflict, but in a way that would address its “root causes” and its security concerns. Moscow insists on Ukraine’s neutrality, recognition of the “territorial reality on the ground,” as well as demilitarization and denazification.

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Simple denials won’t work. See Pandora’s box.

Trump Denies Coverup In Jeffrey Epstein Case (RT)

US President Donald Trump has pushed back against claims of a coverup in the Jeffrey Epstein case, defending his administration’s handling of the release of files related to the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender’s death in jail.nSome of Trump’s allies, including journalist Tucker Carlson and former adviser Steve Bannon, have criticized a report by the Department of Justice and the FBI, which found no evidence of a list of powerful individuals to whom Epstein trafficked underage girls. The report also found no signs of foul play in Epstein’s 2019 death at a Manhattan correctional facility, which was ruled a suicide. In a Truth Social post on Saturday, Trump claimed that the so-called Epstein Files were created by prominent Democrats, including former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

“They created the Epstein Files, just like they created the FAKE Hillary Clinton/Christopher Steele Dossier that they used on me, and now my so-called ‘friends’ are playing right into their hands,” he wrote. “Why didn’t these Radical Left Lunatics release the Epstein Files? If there was ANYTHING in there that could have hurt the MAGA Movement, why didn’t they use it?” he added. Trump defended his Attorney General Pam Bondi and argued that federal agencies should instead focus on investigating Democrat-linked scandals and corruption, as well as the 2020 presidential election, which he continues to claim was rigged in favor of Joe Biden. “LET PAM BONDI DO HER JOB – SHE’S GREAT!” Trump wrote. He previously said that the Epstein case has been used to distract from more pressing issues, including the deadly floods in Texas.

FBI Director Kash Patel also dismissed the allegations. “The conspiracy theories just aren’t true, never have been,” he wrote on X. Critics have pointed to a minute-long gap in the surveillance footage outside Epstein’s cell on the night of his death, claiming the tape had been doctored. Bondi, however, denied that there was anything suspicious about the video. The debate surrounding the case has reportedly caused a rift within the government, with several news outlets claiming that FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino is considering resignation.

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“Also on Thursday, Nvidia became the first company to close a trading day with a market cap over $4 trillion… ”

Nvidia CEO Makes Pit Stop At White House Before China Trip (ZH)

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang met with President Trump at the White House on Thursday, just days before a trip to China. The meeting comes as Nvidia—now the world’s most valuable chipmaker (and world’s most valuable company)—remains largely shut out of China’s semiconductor market due to U.S. export restrictions. While the conversation wasn’t disclosed, Huang likely focused on the urgent need to restore Nvidia’s ability to sell advanced AI chips in the world’s second-largest economy. CNBC’s Megan Cassella reported Thursday afternoon that Huang met with Trump. No details about the meeting were released, but the president praised Nvidia in a Truth Social post: “NVIDIA IS UP 47% SINCE TRUMP TARIFFS. USA is taking in Hundreds of Billions of Dollars in Tariffs”… “COUNTRY IS NOW ‘BACK.'”

Also on Thursday, Nvidia became the first company to close a trading day with a market cap over $4 trillion… This was a symbolic milestone for capital markets and the current bull cycle. In a separate report, Bloomberg noted that Huang’s White House visit comes just days before he is scheduled to travel to Beijing, where he will meet with senior Chinese officials and attend the International Supply Chain Expo. Huang has been vocal in recent months about the combined impact of the Biden-Harris regime and the Trump-Vance administration’s export restrictions on advanced AI chips to China. In May, he told investors, “The $50 billion China market is effectively closed to U.S. industry.”

However, the Trump team cancelled a planned rule by former President Joe Biden called the “AI diffusion rule,” promising fewer restrictions later this year on which countries could receive Nvidia’s advanced AI chips. “The world is right now hungry, anxious to engage AI,” Huang said, adding, “Let us get the American AI out in front of everybody right now.”

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“No, I’m not under the impression Brennan will end up in prison, where he likely belongs, or even see an indictment…”

Why John Brennan Belongs in Prison (Harsanyi)

Former CIA Director John Brennan is one of the most contemptible and shady people in public life. Few people have abused their position, power, and access with such impunity and hubris. So, it was a pleasure to read a Fox News report that the FBI has launched a criminal investigation into Brennan, along with former FBI Director James Comey, for possible wrongdoing related to the Trump campaign-Russia collusion probe, including making false statements to Congress. No, I’m not under the impression Brennan will end up in prison, where he likely belongs, or even see an indictment. The statute of limitations has largely sunset. And even if they hadn’t, the notion there will be any reckoning is remote.

My modest hope is that perhaps a better accounting of his corruption for the historical record will destroy Brennan’s reputation forever, which shouldn’t be a heavy lift. Last week, CIA Director John Ratcliffe released a report on the origins of the Intelligence Community Assessment that concluded Russia had interfered in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump. It was more or less as one might have expected. One of the things we learned, however, was that Brennan claimed in 2017 testimony before Congress that the Steele dossier, an oppo doc paid for by Hillary Clinton and Democrats, wasn’t “in any way” used as a basis for the Intelligence Community Assessment. In a 2023 House interview, Brennan claimed the “CIA was very much opposed to having any reference or inclusion of the Steele Dossier in the Intelligence Community Assessment.”

The problem is that newly declassified CIA emails allegedly show Brennan not only repeatedly pressing for insertion of the Steele dossier’s claims but doing it over the objections of others. In one 2016 email, Brennan allegedly disregarded warnings from his deputy that the dossier would undermine “the credibility of the entire paper.” When two CIA mission center leaders responsible for Russia challenged him about integrating a poorly constructed partisan document into the Intelligence Community Assessment, Brennan overruled them, insisting: “My bottom line is that I believe that the information warrants inclusion in the report.” Now, there is always a chance that Ratcliffe’s report is skewed to make Brennan’s emails look more incriminating than they were. We’ll have to see. We already know that Brennan has for years lied about having insider knowledge of an unprecedented seditious criminal conspiracy against the United States.

When Robert Mueller’s investigation was unable to pull together a single indictment related to “collusion,” Brennan shrugged it off by saying that he may have “received bad information.”He hadn’t. “Trump is scared of me because I know too much about Russia’s election meddling,” Brennan would tell the press. When special counsel John Durham released his report on the origins of the FBI’s investigation of the “collusion” investigation, we learned that Brennan, despite spinning unhinged conspiratorial rants nightly on cable television, knew there was nothing there. Indeed, Durham reports that Brennan had admitted to investigators that there had been “no conspiracy.” Yet, as Durham points out, only days later, the former CIA director was on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” contending the opposite, using his former position to suggest there was still much to be divulged.

To understand what little regard Brennan had for truth or position, recall a 2020 email uncovered by the House Judiciary Committee. In it, former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell, who was working with the Biden campaign to concoct “a talking point” to “push back on Trump” during the final presidential debates, asked Brennan to sign on to the infamous “disinformation” letter that claimed Hunter Biden’s laptop was a Russian plant. “Ok, Michael, add my name to the list. Good initiative. Thanks for asking me to sign on,” Brennan replied. That’s all it took for the former director of the CIA to sign his name onto a letter that would be the ostensive reason for a major story implicating a presidential candidate with corruption to be censored by virtually every legacy media outlet and major social media platform. One hopes his legacy will now be irreparably tarnished.

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“..the Democratic Socialists of America..” Doesn’t sound American to me.

“..The Democratic civil war is no longer a distant threat. It’s here, it’s ugly, and it’s escalating.”

The Democratic Party Civil War Just Escalated Big Time (Margolis)

The Democratic Party’s internal fractures are no longer simmering beneath the surface—they’re erupting into open warfare. The latest salvo comes from within the party’s own ranks, as the far-left wing grows increasingly emboldened to challenge the establishment’s authority. What we’re witnessing is not just a disagreement over policy or tactics, but a full-blown civil war for the soul of the Democratic Party. Democratic Socialist allies of Zohran Mamdani are reportedly laying the groundwork for primary challenges against several incumbent congressional Democrats in New York City—potentially even targeting House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Following Zohran Mamdani’s primary win last month, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) declared that “this movement is bigger than one person, election, city, or organization.”

“We encourage all people inspired by the Zohran campaign to join their local DSA or YDSA chapter and get involved so we can continue to fight alongside Zohran and DSA elected officials across the country to create the future we all deserve,” the group said in a statement. Now that message appears to be turning into action. DSA leaders are reportedly weighing primary challenges against several prominent House Democrats representing New York City—including Jeffries, as well as Reps. Ritchie Torres, Jerry Nadler, Dan Goldman, and Yvette Clarke. Jeffries, who two years ago succeeded longtime House Democratic leader and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, has been criticized by some of New York City’s far-left leaders as a moderate and establishment Democrat.

“His leadership has left a vacuum that organizations like DSA are filling. I think that is more important right now,” New York City’s Democratic Socialists of America chapter co-chair Gustavo Gordillo told CNN. Democratic socialist state Sen. Jabari Brisport, whose district includes some of the same areas of Brooklyn as Jeffries House district, argued in a statement to Fox News that the longtime congressman is “rapidly growing out of touch with an insurgent and growing progressive base within his own district that he should pay more attention to.” Top Hakeem Jeffries adviser Andre Richardson is sounding the alarm over rumblings of a left-wing primary challenge, lashing out at the Democratic Socialists circling Jeffries’ seat. “Our response will be forceful and unrelenting. We will teach them and all of their incumbents a painful lesson on June 23, 2026.”

Jeffries, for his part, feigned ignorance about the whole thing. “I have no idea what these people are talking about,” he told CNN, before pivoting to the usual script about “pushing back against extremism”—as if the radicals threatening to take his job aren’t in his own party. Despite praising Zohran Mamdani’s far-left campaign and defending him from Trump’s criticism, Jeffries, along with Gov. Kathy Hochul and Sen. Chuck Schumer, has stopped short of endorsing the DSA-backed Democratic nominee for mayor. That’s probably not a coincidence. What’s truly astonishing is the Democratic leadership’s inability—or unwillingness—to confront this rebellion head-on. Instead of standing up to the radicals, too many establishment figures are cowering in fear, hoping the storm will pass.

But appeasement only emboldens the insurgents. Every time a figure like Mamdani gets away with slandering party leaders, the fringe left grows stronger and more brazen. If the Democratic Party continues down this path, the results will be catastrophic for them… which make is so enjoyable to watch. A party consumed by internal warfare cannot hope to govern, let alone offer a compelling alternative to the opposition. The radicals may think they’re winning, but in reality, they’re burning down the very house they claim to want to lead. The Democratic civil war is no longer a distant threat. It’s here, it’s ugly, and it’s escalating. The question now is whether any adults are left in the room to stop the madness before it’s too late.

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In one extreme blue pocket, they manage to get an extreme candidate elected. And then draw the conclusion they should do that all over the country.

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Mamdani? Democrats Don’t Know (Caldwell)

The meteoric rise of New York City Democrat mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani poses a major question for Washington Democrats—is his brand of Palestinian activism, economic interventionism, and pro-LGBTQ+ rhetoric the future of their party? The 33-year-old state assemblyman’s trouncing of former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the city’s party primary has brought to light a host of controversial positions: supporting taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries on his campaign website, proposing government-run grocery stores, and refusing to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada,” among other things. Asked how he views a candidate who does not condemn phrases which many consider genocidal, Ken Martin, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, chose a live-and-let-live approach.

“There’s no candidate in this party that I agree 100% of the time with,” he replied. “To be honest with you, there’s things that I don’t agree with Mamdani that he said. But at the end of the day, I always believe … that you win through addition, you win by bringing people into your coalition. We have conservative Democrats, we have centrist Democrats, we have labor progressives like me, and we have this new Democrat, which is the leftist.” But what works in New York City might not work in the swing districts and swing states that decide who has power in Washington. But Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., who has consistently supported Israel, said of Mamdani, “Everything that I’ve read on him, I don’t really agree with virtually any of it politically. So that’s just where I’m at as a Democrat. I mean, he’s not even a Democrat, honestly.”

Fetterman, much like swing-state Democrat Sens. Ruben Gallego of Arizona and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, has generally chosen moderated rhetoric over doubling down on progressive rhetoric since Republican President Donald Trump’s victory in November. Slotkin, asked shortly after Mamdani’s mayoral primary victory how she interpreted the development, chose to focus on Mamdani’s cost-of-living proposals, while shying away from commenting on his more controversial platform planks.“People, just like in November, are still really focused on costs and the economy, and their own kitchen table math, and they’re looking for a new generation of leadership,” Slotkin said, adding, “It reinforces that you may disagree on some key issues, but understanding that people are concerned about their family budget, that is a unifying thing for a coalition.”

Slotkin, who narrowly won her Michigan Senate seat in November by just over 19,000 votes out of more than 5.57 million cast, or 48.6% to 48.3%, emphasized economic issues throughout her campaign and warned as early as September 2024 that the Democrats’ presidential candidate, then-Vice President Kamala Harris, was “underwater in our polling.” For now at least, Democrats in Washington appear to not know what to do with Mamdani. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., has still not endorsed Mamdani, despite his primary win. When asked, he consistently chooses to mention Mamdani’s proposals to address the high cost of living in New York City. Jeffries has applied a bit of pushback against Mamdani’s rhetoric on the Israel-Hamas war, though, particularly his repeated refusals to condemn “globalize the intifada.”

“‘Globalizing the intifada,’ by the way of example, is not an acceptable phrase, and he’s going to have to clarify his position on that,” Jeffries said after Mamdani’s victory. “With respect to the Jewish communities that I represent, I think our nominee is going to have to convince folks that he is prepared to aggressively address the rise in antisemitism in the city of New York.” It remains to be seen how Mamdani’s rise as a national face of the Democratic Party will affect Democrats’ chances outside of their dark-blue urban centers of support. Democrats are seeking Senate seat pickups in 2026, for example, in states such as Maine and North Carolina—far removed from New York. Vice President JD Vance has accused Mamdani of creating a coalition of “downwardly mobile, college-educated people” and carved-out ethnic blocs by pandering to shared hatreds.

“That’s an interesting coalition. Maybe it works in the New York Democratic primary. I don’t think it works in the United States at large,” the vice president said in a July 5 speech in San Diego. Rural America and moderate voters appear to be the target for Democrats going into the midterms. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is now running ads against GOP incumbents such as Rep. Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin and Rob Bresnahan of Pennsylvania, accusing them of attacking rural hospitals with the recently passed Republican budget reconciliation bill’s restructuring of Medicaid. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., is also trying to appeal to moderate voters ahead of a difficult 2026 reelection campaign. As Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” was considered, he joined just three other Democrat senators to vote for an amendment to the bill that would have discouraged states from issuing Medicaid payments to illegal immigrants. That’s a far cry from Mamdani who has openly called for “standing up for our sanctuary city policies” in New York City.

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Any foreign countrry. Including Israel.

Americans Fighting For Ukraine Should Lose Citizenship – Tucker Carlson (RT)

Americans who fight for other countries, including Ukraine and Israel, should be stripped of their US citizenship, journalist Tucker Carlson has argued. Speaking at a conservative conference in Tampa, Florida called Turning Point USA on Friday, Carlson was asked whether he believes US nationals can pledge allegiance to two countries at once. The former Fox News categorically denied the notion of double loyalty. “I think anybody… who serves in a foreign military should lose his citizenship immediately. There are a lot of Americans who’ve served in the IDF, they should lose their citizenship. There’s a lot of Americans who’ve served in Ukraine and they should lose their citizenship. You can’t fight for another country and remain an American. Period.”

He added that common sense dictates that “no man can serve two masters.” “You can only really pledge your loyalty to one person or one country,” he added. Under US law, there are no automatic penalties for serving in a foreign military. The US has never signed the 1989 UN Mercenary Convention, which aims to ban the recruitment, use, financing, and training of mercenaries. However, since the late 19th century, the US government has been prohibited from employing organizations that offer “quasi-military armed forces for hire,” meaning it cannot use the services of private military contractors such as Blackwater. Carlson’s remarks come after CNN reported in January that more than 20 US citizens had been reported missing in action in Ukraine.

In late 2024, Russian officials reported that around 6,500 out of 15,000 foreign mercenaries who had arrived in Ukraine had been killed. In recent months, several US citizens have been convicted in absentia in Russia for what are described as mercenary activity and “terrorist acts” in Russia’s Kursk Region, where a now-defeated Ukrainian incursion was launched last year. In May, Aleksandr Bastrykin, the head of Russia’s Investigative Committee, said that a total of 902 individuals had been charged with engaging in mercenary activity. Courts have delivered guilty verdicts against 97 mercenaries from 26 countries. Moscow has repeatedly warned that it treats foreign mercenaries fighting for Ukraine as legitimate targets.

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“..it’s extremely obvious to anyone who watches that this guy had direct connections to a foreign government. Now, no one’s allowed to say that that foreign government is ISRAEL ..”

Tucker Carlson Reveals Who He Thinks Funded Jeffrey Epstein’s Crimes (VF)

Just this Friday night, Tucker Carlson named who he believes really FUNDED Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes. What he said is guaranteed to make many in Washington furious. And there’s no taking it back now. On Tuesday, Tucker Carlson delivered two theories on why Pam Bondi won’t release the Epstein Files. Theory #1 was “Trump is involved.” But Carlson thought this explanation was not very likely. Then came Theory #2, which was that Carlson believed “intel services are at the very center of this story—US and Israeli—and they’re being protected.” “I think that seems like the most plausible explanation,” Carlson said. “And we have every right to ask on whose behalf was he working? How does a guy go from being a math teacher at the Dalton School in the late 70s with no college degree to having multiple airplanes, a private island, and the largest residential house in Manhattan? Where did all the money come from?” Carlson asked.

https://twitter.com/goddeketal/status/1943857723658940431

Then came the big claim. “And no one has ever gotten to the bottom of that because no one has ever tried. And moreover, it’s extremely obvious to anyone who watches that this guy had direct connections to a foreign government. Now, no one’s allowed to say that that foreign government is ISRAEL because we have been somehow cowed into thinking that that’s naughty,” Carlson said. “There is nothing wrong with saying that,” Carlson continued. “There is nothing hateful about saying that. There’s nothing anti-Semitic about saying. There’s nothing even anti-Israel about saying that.” Someone who agrees with Carlson’s assessment is CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou. On Wednesday, he told the story of the recruitment of a copy machine repairman who earned his CIA operational officer a big promotion.

At first, Kiriakou laughed at the notion of a copy machine repairman being useful, but then he realized the brilliance of the plan when he learned that the repairman secretly sent every document from a prime minister’s office straight to the CIA. How did he do it? By planting a tiny device on the copy machine. This flow of information was pure leverage for the CIA: “You know what they’re thinking. You know their next move. You know who their enemies are and who their allies are. Maybe it’s their position on trade negotiations. Maybe the prime minister has a health problem you need to plan for. You never know what might come through,” Kiriakou explained. “That ONE critical nugget is all it takes.”

That, he says, is EXACTLY what Epstein was to Israeli intelligence: someone with access (like the copy machine repairman) who quietly delivered leverage on the world’s elite. Back to Carlson. He addressed the claims that he’s taking money from the Qatari government head-on. What was his reaction to this claim? He literally laughed out loud. “Maybe I was taking tons of money from some bad country. One of the bad countries you’re not allowed to talk about or like—Qatar!” Carlson said before bursting into laughter. “That’s the most hilarious [claim]. Qatar is kind of controlling our conversation. Qatar. Evil Qatar,” he mocked.

An audience member asked if Carlson was laughing, and he confirmed, “I am laughing.” “I’ve actually been to Qatar. It’s awesome. Never taken a dollar from the Qataris or the Qataris or whatever they’re called. Great country. But even if I was, like, on the payroll of Qatar, which I guess I’m like—I can’t now. But even if I was [taking money], it still wouldn’t make the question any less relevant. Why is this [war with Iran] a good idea?” Carlson asked. “And their refusal to answer that question lets you know right away that you are not dealing with a person of good faith. You’re dealing with a propagandist who is trying to control you.” What’s your take on Carlson’s claim about Israeli intelligence? Is he exposing an uncomfortable truth, or is he chasing attention and controversy?

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“..Dmitry Peskov accused Germany of “competing with France in primacy for stoking the war..”

Ukraine To Receive German-funded Long-range Weapons This Month (RT)

Ukraine will receive its first batch of long-range missiles financed by Germany by the end of July, a top German general has said, acknowledging that Kiev’s battlefield situation is deteriorating. In an interview with ZDF, Major General Christian Freuding, who oversees the coordination of Berlin’s military support for Kiev, said Germany is “ready to make these weapons systems available.” Ukraine will receive the weapons “by the end of this month,” Freuding stated, adding that they will arrive “in high three-digit numbers.” He did not specify which missiles will be delivered or what their range is. ”We need weapons systems that can reach deep into Russian territory and attack depots, command facilities, airfields, and aircraft,” Freuding said.

He went on to say the deliveries stem from a contract between Ukraine’s Defense Ministry and its domestic weapons industry, backed by German funding secured in late May. Freuding stressed that Germany is not providing Kiev with long-range Taurus missiles with a range of 500km. Despite Ukraine’s pleas, Berlin has been reluctant to approve deliveries, arguing that doing so could escalate the hostilities and draw Germany into the conflict. He acknowledged that Ukraine is facing mounting battlefield challenges, noting that Russia is making “small but steady” gains, forcing Ukrainian units to retreat to deeper defensive lines. In the air, the situation has “worsened in recent weeks,” he said, citing a single night when Kiev came under an attack involving more than 700 drones and dozens of missiles.

The Russian Defense Ministry has said it only attacks military-related facilities and never targets civilians. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz expressed support in late May for developing Ukraine’s own long-range weapons. He said that while Kiev will receive German financial backing to procure these systems, it will not face restrictions on how it uses them. Russia has warned against Western military aid to Ukraine, saying it will only prolong the conflict without changing the outcome. Responding to Merz’s announcement, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov accused Germany of “competing with France in primacy for stoking the war,” warning that these moves hinder peace efforts. He added that supplying Taurus missiles to Ukraine would bring an “inevitable escalation.”

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Will anyone open fire?

Baltic Sea Will Remain Common Despite NATO Fantasies – Russian Ambassador (Sp.)

The Baltic Sea will remain a common space for all regional states, no matter what NATO countries “fantasize” about, Russian Ambassador to Denmark Vladimir Barbin said in an interview with Sputnik. “Whatever the alliance’s countries fantasize about, the Baltic Sea was, remains and will be a common space for all states in the region without exception,” Barbin said. He said the course chosen by Denmark and NATO countries to militarize the Baltic Sea region has no future. The ambassador said the increase in military activity does not delay, but increases the risk of a conflict, especially in the absence of direct dialogue and mutual trust between Russia and NATO.

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Overwhelming idea: You’re guilty so you don’t deserve A/C.

“Like the outdated idea that every woman should anchor her existence around a husband and kids, the anti-A/C dogma should stop where logic and personal freedom begin..”

France Is Sweating Its Brains Out Thanks To The EU’s Climate Madness (Marsden)

Paris was melting last week, flirting with 40°C and zero chill. Apparently, the moment was ripe for an epiphany. I was in an Uber, as one does when public transport becomes a slow cooker. I always enjoy chatting with the driver – usually Algerian or Moroccan. We got to talking about our lives and what led us to France. At one point he looked at me and said, “No husband, no kids, and you have air conditioning! You’re totally cheating at life!” “Cheating,” huh? Interesting word choice. So opting out of the standard life script is breaking the rules? But whose rules? The ones written by the establishment – whichever power structure has successfully colonized your brain.

I was fortunate to have been raised by parents who believed in free thought, not groupthink, and who told me that you should be able to do anything you want with your life as long as you’re not harming others. Which is a long way of saying that if I want to crank the A/C during a heatwave in my own home, it’s nobody’s business. Especially not that of some guy in the front seat of a Peugeot who thinks that I’ve short-circuited the Matrix. But the fact that he grouped air conditioning with not having kids or a man says a lot. It’s not just cultural expectations, but also the deep programming of state-sanctioned virtue that has come to dominate cultural norms. And in France, one of the strangest markers of virtue is rejecting modern cooling technology.

The week was so blisteringly hot that the French government anticipated shutting down 1,350 schools so kids could sweat it out at home instead of in class. Even the local public swimming pool had to close – the one place that usually offers relief – because the deck hit 50°C and the water was bathtub temperature. Instead, the French spent the day playing what I call the “Blinds and Windows Game.” Open everything in the morning. Close it all when the heat starts. Pull the blinds down just right so the sun hits the metal outside instead of the window glass. I opted out. I’ve got better things to do than play around with my window coverings. So I turned on the air conditioning.

My neighbors were not fans. I’ve had a mob of French residents of my building bang on my door demanding that I turn it off. Why? Because they spotted the portable A/C exhaust tubes poking out my window. Having ignored them, I later received a formal letter with instructions on when I was allowed to use it. According to them, that would only be when they collectively decide that the temperature justifies it – and only during certain hours. “For the well being of everyone,” they wrote, before launching into a sermon about how A/C is bad for the environment and ruins it for everyone else.

Give me a break. This is a country powered by decarbonized nuclear energy, so the climate change excuse doesn’t work here. But even without that, they invent new reasons: It causes “thermal shock.” It gives you neck spasms. It’s “unnatural air.” It’ll make you sick… Like the outdated idea that every woman should anchor her existence around a husband and kids, the anti-A/C dogma should stop where logic and personal freedom begin. No, gyms shouldn’t be set to 26°C in the summer because some guy wants to do five squats and scroll on his phone without feeling “chilly” during a heatwave. You shouldn’t be sweating through your clothes at the movies. And hospitals and nursing homes shouldn’t feel like a slow death in a convection oven.

But the moment far-right National Rally leader Marine Le Pen suggested a “grand plan for air conditioning” a few days ago, the narrative defenders of the establishment status quo promptly lost it. “Air conditioning saves lives. Letting people die in hospitals, or letting children or vulnerable people suffer because there is no air conditioning, is completely absurd,” Le Pen said in the National Assembly. The opposition Ecologists’ national secretary Marine Tondelier shot back that “air conditioning won’t suffice.” Guess they’re still hoping to lower the Earth’s thermostat manually. Since they’re clearly failing, despite all the lifestyle sacrifices they’ve extracted from us, maybe we could at least normalize cooling the rooms we actually live in.

Apparently not. France’s Ecological Transition Minister, Agnès Pannier-Runacher of Macron’s Renaissance party, said that it was okay to “air condition vulnerable people” but “not everywhere.” Because “global warming.” Oh, please. Go yell at your German Green pals from the last coalition government, that had to fire up coal plants that dump filth into Europe’s air, all because their sacred renewables can’t carry the load.

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Autism
https://twitter.com/Censored4sure/status/1943754763062952419

https://twitter.com/SimonDixonTwitt/status/1943769455567548819
https://twitter.com/AlpacaAurelius/status/1943753190295711921

Parrots

Leopard
https://twitter.com/buitengebieden/status/1943917020208091433

Emanuel
https://twitter.com/DrClownPhD/status/1943792667160457554

 

 

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Feb 022025
 


Pablo Picasso Les Demoiselles d’Avignon 1907

 

Musk Reveals Treasury Has Been Auto-Paying Everyone, ‘Even Known Terrorists’ (ZH)
USAID Website and X Account Go Dark (RT)
Trump’s Overhaul of Federal Bureaucracy Backed by Recent Survey Research (RCW)
US Federal Workers Told To Remove Pronouns From Email Signatures (RT)
NYT, NBC, NPR, Politico Evicted From Pentagon Press Offices (ZH)
Chuck Schumer Is Now Under Federal Investigation (Margolis)
Ric Grenell Scores Big Win For Trump In Venezuela (ZH)
Border Encounters Plummet 94% Under Trump (ZH)
Mexico Announces Retaliation Against US (RT)
Canada Strikes Back With Tariffs (RT)
Musk Sank $288 Million Into Trump Campaign – WaPo (RT)
Can Trump Make A Peace Deal With Putin? (SCF)
White House Wants Zelensky To Hold Elections – Trump Envoy (RT)
The Chihuahua Energy Policy: It’s a Gas, Gas, Gas (Pepe Escobar)
Russia and China Boost NVIDIA Performance 800-Fold (Sp.)
Norway Clears Russian-Crewed Ship In Sabotage Probe (RT)
Global Green Spending Is Falling Short of Net Zero Targets (OP)

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1885410502513234140

https://twitter.com/i/status/1885451352819560698


https://twitter.com/i/status/1885447526746300753

AfD
https://twitter.com/i/status/1885741075509252315

 

 

 

 

What a story…: “..a handful of career officials within the Bureau of the Fiscal Service” … control “the US government’s payment system”, which includes Social Security, Medicare, federal salaries, payments to government contractors, tax refunds, grant recipients, and more. No payment is ever refused, and $6 trillion per year is disbursed this way. The Treasury Department’s highest-ranking career official flees the scene when Musk comes close.

I would take a good look at these guys’ bank accounts and other assets over the past 10 years. And it looks like DOGE can find a lot of savings here.

Musk Reveals Treasury Has Been Auto-Paying Everyone, ‘Even Known Terrorists’ (ZH)

Update (0942ET): Well, well, well – DOGE moves into the Treasury, triggering their longest-serving, highest-ranked career official to quit in a huff, and they find that department has essentially been auto-paying everyone, according to Elon Musk. “The @DOGE team discovered, among other things, that payment approval officers at Treasury were instructed always to approve payments, even to known fraudulent or terrorist groups,” said Musk in a Friday night tweet. “They literally never denied a payment in their entire career.”

***
The Treasury Department’s highest-ranking career official quit after a clash with aides of Elon Musk over access to sensitive payment systems, according to the Washington Post, citing (of course), three anonymous sources. David A. Lebryk, a decades-long Treasury official who President Trump named as acting secretary upon taking office last week, announced his retirement in a Friday email to colleagues. According to the report, Lebryk had a dispute with Musk surrogates over access to the US government’s payment system used to disburse trillions of dollars every year. [Imagine Musk and team uncover decades of improper payments and shady dealings?] The Musk surrogates are affiliated with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and have been asking since the election for access to the system, according to the report. The requests were reiterated after Trump’s inauguration.

After Trump pick Scott Bessent was confirmed as Treasury Secretary on Monday, Lebryk ceased to be acting agency head. The payment system in question is run by a handful of career officials within the Bureau of the Fiscal Service – which controls the flow of more than $6 trillion annually to households, businesses, and other entities nationwide – and includes Social Security, Medicare, federal salaries, payments to government contractors, tax refunds, grant recipients, and more. The clash is the latest incident involving career ‘deep state’ bureaucrats vs. the Trump administration. And of course, WaPo, the CIA’s favorite tentacle, frames it as follows:

“The clash reflects an intensifying battle between Musk and the federal bureaucracy as the Trump administration nears the conclusion of its second week. Musk has sought to exert sweeping control over the inner workings of the U.S. government, installing longtime surrogates at several agencies, including the Office of Personnel Management, which essentially handles federal human resources, and the General Services Administration, which manages real estate. (Musk was seen on Thursday visiting GSA, according to two other people familiar with his whereabouts, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal matters. That visit was first reported by the New York Times.) His Department of Government Efficiency, originally conceived as a nongovernmental panel, has since replaced the U.S. Digital Service.”

Translation: “Unfortunately for the career bureaucrats, Trump signed an executive order instructing all agencies to ensure DOGE has “full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems,” which appear to include the Treasury payment systems. Musk has previously slammed rising national debt as an existential threat to the country, while DOGE has already made progress in rooting out bullshit programs established by Democrat administrations.

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“About 98 percent of USAID grants pay for activities and not results..”

USAID operates like the typical NGO of today. A vehicle to ‘silently’ dole out money. Ukrainian media are fully dependent on such vehicles, to name an example.

USAID Website and X Account Go Dark (RT)

The US Agency for International Development (USAID) website has gone offline following an executive order by President Donald Trump that pauses most American foreign aid programs for three months to reassess US overseas spending. The website became inaccessible on Saturday afternoon, displaying a message stating that the “server IP address could not be found.” Later that day, the agency’s X account also disappeared. The outage follows reports that the Trump administration is considering placing USAID under the control of the State Department. Last week, Trump signed an executive order freezing most US foreign aid for 90 days, citing the need for a comprehensive review of how funds are allocated.

The order states that “billions of taxpayer dollars flow to programs that do not serve American interests and, in many cases, actively work against them.” The White House has framed the move as part of Trump’s “America First” policy, aimed at cutting wasteful spending and redirecting resources toward domestic priorities. USAID, which oversees humanitarian and development programs abroad, has been significantly impacted. The agency spent over $60 billion on foreign assistance in 2023 alone. On Friday, Reuters reported that the Trump administration is planning to strip USAID of its independence and place it under the control of the State Department. According to sources familiar with the discussions, the National Security Council has hosted meetings on the issue, and legal options are being explored for Trump to issue an executive order formalizing the merger.

Some officials believe the order could be signed as early as this weekend. Photographs of USAID headquarters reviewed by Reuters showed that signs bearing the agency’s official seal had already been removed. Critics have condemned the proposed reorganization, with Senator Chris Murphy, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, warning that such a move could face legal challenges. “A president cannot eliminate an appropriated federal agency by executive order. That’s what a despot – who wants to steal the taxpayers’ money to enrich his billionaire cabal – does,” Murphy wrote in a post on X on Friday. US-based billionaire Elon Musk, who is advising Trump on downsizing the federal government, reacted by saying: “Live by executive order, die by executive order.”

USAID was created in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy through an executive order, consolidating various foreign assistance programs under one agency. Its mission has been to promote economic growth, respond to humanitarian crises, and advance U.S. national security interests globally. However, the agency has faced growing criticism over its effectiveness, with experts questioning whether its assistance programs achieve their intended goals. “About 98 percent of USAID grants pay for activities and not results,” Walter Kerr, co-executive director of Unlock Aid, said earlier this month. “Less than 10 percent of our foreign assistance dollars flowing through USAID is actually reaching those communities.”

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“..just 45% of Federal Government Managers would follow a legal order from President Trump if they thought the order was bad policy, and instead would do what they thought was right.”

Trump’s Overhaul of Federal Bureaucracy Backed by Recent Survey Research (RCW)

Since returning to office for a second term, President Trump has taken aggressive action to overhaul the federal bureaucracy. After a week in office some of Trump actions towards federal workers include: removing employment protections for civil servants, firing 17 inspectors general, reassigning career officials in the Department of Justice, sending home 160 staffers from the National Security Agency and firing the lawyers at the Department of Justice who prosecuted Trump under special counsel Jack Smith. Trump’s efforts have been met with hostility and criticism from the media and predictably from his political opposition. Opinionist Phillip Bump at the Washington Post writes Trump’s actions are “a sharp disruption of how the government works.” Bump laments that “Trump is clearly interested in…seeding loyalists throughout the executive branch.”

At Axios, Zachary Basu and Dave Lawler explain that Trump is “transform[ing] the federal bureaucracy into an army of loyalists.” Democratic Senator Tim Kaine, who represents 140,000 federal workers in Virginia, told reporters “This gleeful hatred of the federal workforce will lead to nothing good. “But are Trump’s efforts to transform the government workforce justified by a real concern that his policy platforms–which earned him a presidential victory–will be thwarted by anonymous bureaucrats? Recent survey research suggests Trump is right to be concerned. Napolitan Institute found that just 45% of Federal Government Managers would follow a legal order from President Trump if they thought the order was bad policy and instead would do what they thought was right.

Among managers who voted for Kamala Harris that figure jumps to nearly three-quarters (69%.) The survey also found a majority (52%) of the federal managerial class voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. Those current survey results are consistent with events that developed in the first Trump Administration, where we learned how bureaucratic opinions on “right” policy interfered with the power of the duly elected executive officer. Former diplomat Jim Jeffrey revealed that his team routinely mislead the Trump Administration after the president had ordered the withdrawal of troops from Syria. “What Syria withdrawal? There was never a Syria withdrawal,” Jeffrey said. “When the situation in northeast Syria had been fairly stable after we defeated ISIS, [Trump] was inclined to pull out. In each case, we then decided to come up with five better arguments for why we needed to stay. And we succeeded both times. That’s the story.”

“We were always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had there,” Jeffrey said in an interview.While Jeffrey’s revelation came after Trump had left office from his first term, there was a real time revelation of a policy conflict between President Trump and the “interagency consensus” that would become foundation of the first Trump impeachment.The policy difference originated from a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky when Trump requested Zelensky open an investigation into possible corruption at the Burisma energy company before receiving a military aid package. Trump’s 2020 election opponent Joe Biden’s son was on the board of Burisma. A central part of the subsequent impeachment case was testimony from Lt. Alexander Vindman (ret.), who had been detailed to the National Security Council and present for the phone call.

Vindman explained in his opening statement to the House impeachment committee he was concerned the president chose to wield his executive authority in a way that was at odds with the “interagency consensus.” Vindman testified “…a false narrative of Ukraine inconsistent with the consensus views of the interagency,” Vindman said in his opening statement. “This narrative was harmful to U.S. government policy. While my interagency colleagues and I were becoming increasingly optimistic on Ukraine’s prospects, this alternative narrative undermined U.S. government efforts to expand cooperation with Ukraine.” But Vindman and the “interagency consensus” have no authority to determine or execute their interpretation of U.S. government policy or in other words, “do what they thought was right.”

The New York Times editorial board supported and encouraged the usurpation of executive authority in favor of the “right” bureaucratic opinion by praising the government bureaucracy overriding or ignoring President Trump’s lawful authority. “…patriotic public servants — career diplomats, scientists, intelligence officers and others…have somehow remembered that their duty is to protect the interests, not of a particular leader, but of the American people.” There is no way to know exactly how extensive bureaucratic resistance interfered with Trump’s ability to govern in his first term, but we do know 46% of current Federal Government Managers would ignore the legal order of President Trump and instead do what was “right.” Trump is making the correct move to overhaul the federal bureaucracy in order to deliver on the campaign promises that got him back in office.

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How did we ever get here?

US Federal Workers Told To Remove Pronouns From Email Signatures (RT)

Employees at US federal agencies have been ordered to remove pronouns from their email signatures, according to internal memos obtained by several media outlets. The directive reportedly cites two presidential executive orders seeking to curb diversity and equity programs across the government.On his first day back in office, US President Donald Trump repealed 78 executive orders signed by his predecessor, Joe Biden. They included several measures to protect transgender rights and promote diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). The orders also set a 60-day timeframe for federal agencies and departments to cease DEI-related practices.The memos on removing pronouns from signatures reportedly set Friday afternoon as the deadline.

“Pronouns and any other information not permitted in the policy must be removed from CDC/ATSDR employee signatures by 5 p.m. ET on Friday,” ABC News cited one such message as saying. It was sent to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention employees on Friday morning. The outlet reported that a similar notice urging the removal of DEI “language in Federal discourse, communications, and publications” had been received by federal employees with the Department of Energy and the Department of Transportation on Thursday.

Several federal government agency websites, including the Federal Aviation Administration and the Census Bureau, temporarily went down on Friday, according to The Guardian. Some pages displayed as blank before reappearing later that day. The British newspaper noted that the Bureau of Prisons had renamed a webpage called “inmate gender” to “inmate sex” and stopped displaying a list of trans inmates. Donald Trump declared in his inaugural address on January 1 that the US would officially recognize only two genders. ‘Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government’, one of the orders signed by the president later that day, states that “there are only two genders, male and female,” and orders agencies to update official documents such as passports and visas in accordingly.

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Legacy no more: “The Trump White House will speak to all media outlets and personalities, not just the legacy media that are seated in this room..”

NYT, NBC, NPR, Politico Evicted From Pentagon Press Offices (ZH)

The innumerable consequences of the 2024 election keep gushing forth at a pace that’s hard to keep up with. Here’s a new gem: On Friday evening, the Department of Defense told The New York Times, NBC News, National Public Radio and Politico that they have two weeks to vacate their long-held and treasured offices inside the Pentagon. Three of their four replacements skew decidedly to the Trump-friendly sector of the political spectrum: the New York Post, One America News Network and Breitbart. Throwing a bone to leftists, HuffPost news snagged Politico’s old slot. The Pentagon Press Association said it was “greatly troubled by this unprecedented move by DOD to single out highly professional media.”

The short-notice evictions from the hallowed “Correspondents’ Corridor” spring from the launch of a “new annual media rotation program for [the] Pentagon Press Corps,” according to a memorandum sent by DOD spokesman John Ullyot on Friday and posted by CNN Pentagon correspondent Haley Britzky. The program seeks to “broaden access to the limited space…to outlets that have not previously enjoyed the privilege and journalist value of working from physical office space in the Pentagon,” said Ullyot. The booted outlets will retain their status as full members of the Pentagon Press Corps, entitled to attend briefings and be considered for travel with officials. “The only change will be giving up their physical workspaces in the building to allow new outlets to have their turn to become resident members of the Pentagon Press Corps,” wrote Ullyot.

Make no mistake: Those physical workspaces are a big deal. “Kicking out reporters HURTS coverage. If you can’t file your stories from inside the building you are disadvantaged. If you don’t have a work space you are disadvantaged,” wrote former Pentagon Press Corps VP Kevin Baron on X. That commentary was part of a thread condemning the development as “the erasure of journalism at the Pentagon.” The Pentagon Press Corps comprises more than two dozen outlets. The program calls for one outlet from each press medium to rotate from the premises every year. As if Breitbart’s invitation into the Pentagon weren’t enough to outrage establishment media types, the fact that it’s taking the “radio” slot from NPR only compounded the indignation. In a Friday night article, CNN’s Brian Stelter called foul:

“Breitbart – a well-known web site for pro-Trump coverage and commentary – barely has a radio operation of its own. The word ‘radio’ doesn’t appear on its home page at all. The media outlet has a distribution deal with SiriusXM and one big podcast, Breitbart News Daily. Its footprint pales in comparison to NPR, which provides news coverage for local stations all across the country.” In another hilarious, leftist-pummeling swap, One America News Network will be sliding into NBC’s slot. Expressing sympathetic disbelief, CNN’s Britzky emphasized that NBC “has an entire booth w/ cameras etc.” NBC News promised to soldier on, telling Reuters, “We’re disappointed by the decision to deny us access to a broadcasting booth at the Pentagon that we’ve used for many decades. Despite the significant obstacles this presents to our ability to gather and report news in the national public interest, we will continue to report with the same integrity and rigor NBC News always has.”

For the many Americans who are still angry about legacy media’s aggressive role in working to derail Trump’s 2020 re-election bid, Politico’s punishment is perhaps the most satisfying. The outlet took the lead in spreading the consequential, Deep State lie that Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell” — first reported by the New York Post — was part of a Russian misinformation scheme. That lie helped ignite unprecedented censorship of the Post’s coverage. Fittingly, the Post — the country’s longest-running newspaper — is among the outlets graduating to space in the Pentagon.

“The National Press Club is deeply concerned by the Defense Department’s decision to remove certain media organizations from their dedicated spaces in the Pentagon,” club president Mike Balsamo said in a statement. “Any action that restricts the ability of journalists to report on the operations of the U.S. government should alarm all who value transparency and press freedom.” Balsamo pointed to the Pentagon press corps’ history of “diversity,” yet the announced swaps inarguably increase viewpoint diversity. The Pentagon’s shot across the bow of legacy media follows Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s announcement that the White House will significantly broaden media access, with an emphasis on alternative media. “The Trump White House will speak to all media outlets and personalities, not just the legacy media that are seated in this room,” she said in her first press conference. Never a dull moment in Trump II: The Revenge. What’s next?

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“I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh: You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price,” Schumer said to a chorus of cheers..

Chuck Schumer Is Now Under Federal Investigation (Margolis)

Interim D.C. U.S. Attorney Edward R. Martin, Jr. has made a bold move, dismissing about 30 federal prosecutors involved in the Capitol riot cases. This decision, announced on Friday, signals a significant housecleaning of the top prosecutor’s office in Washington, D.C., as Martin gears up to purge partisans who weaponized the Justice Department against Joe Biden’s political enemies, including Trump, pro-life activists, and others. But he’s also taken another bold step, effectively launching an investigation into Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer over comments he made back in March 2020 during a #MyRightMyDecision rally outside the Supreme Court. During the rally, Schumer blatantly threatened Trump-appointed Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch over their potential votes in the first abortion case before the Supreme Court with the new conservative majority.

“I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh: You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price,” Schumer said to a chorus of cheers. “You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.” According to 18 U.S. Code ß/ 115, whoever threatens a federal official, with intent to impede, intimidate, or interfere with such official, judge, or law enforcement officer while engaged in the performance of official duties, or with intent to retaliate against such official, judge, or law enforcement officer on account of the performance of official duties, shall be punished by a fine or imprisonment of as much as ten years. Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, has been calling on Schumer to be federally prosecuted for years. “Schumer should have been (and should be) criminally prosecuted for his threats targeting two Supreme Court justices,” Fitton wrote.

“If I had said that, I’d have two U.S. marshals in my office, or frankly, probably in my home in the least, questioning me, questioning my family, questioning everyone here at Judicial Watch,” he said back in 2022. “Anyone else I had talked to about that threat on the Supreme Court, Justice Roberts responded, rightly so, said that type of language is dangerous.” “We take threats against public officials very seriously. I look forward to your cooperation,” Martin wrote Schumer in a letter obtained by the Washington Post.

According to the Post, while Martin’s actions are “likely to be welcomed by Trump and allies, who assert they were unfairly targeted by the past administration,” but “career prosecutors who have served under presidents of both parties say Martin is politicizing the office and potentially breaking with 50 years of Justice Department policy and practice intended to shield criminal prosecutions from political considerations.” That’s cute. I wonder what those “career prosecutors” had to say about the various cases the Biden administration launched against Donald Trump.

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Grenell truly is a special envoy. When the going gets tough…

Ric Grenell Scores Big Win For Trump In Venezuela (ZH)

Update (1815ET): The government of Venezuela has agreed not only to release six detained Americans, who arrived home Friday evening with Trump envoy Richard Grenell, the Maduro government has will take back tens of thousands of migrants, President Trump said on Saturday. “It is so good to have the Venezuela Hostages back home, and, very important to note, that Venezuela has agreed to receive, back into their Country, all Venezuela illegal aliens who were encamped in the U.S.,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social, adding that Venezuela would take back members of the Tren de Aragua transnational gang that has recently expanded into America from various Latin American countries. According to the WSJ, Maduro’s government will provide transport for its citizens to return.”This is good news for all who care about ensuring that Venezuelans with removal orders actually get sent home,” said Kevin Whitaker, a former U.S. ambassador to Colombia who also had served as deputy chief of mission in Venezuela.

* * *
More of the Trump effect: six imprisoned Americans have been freed by Venezuela after President Trump’s envoy Richard Grenell visited the country this week. They were released and flown home on a State Dept. aircraft on Friday. “Just been informed that we are bringing six hostages home from Venezuela,” Trump announced on social media. “Thank you to Ric Grenell and my entire staff. Great job!” This comes amid reports of some significant behind-the-scenes deal-making with Venezuela, as Washington demands the Latin American country receive back illegal migrants in the US.The six men were not named, but previously the White House had called on Venezuela to release what it dubbed “US hostages” or else suffer consequences. Grenell had reportedly met directly with President Maduro.

At least nine people with American citizenship or residency had been detained in Venezuela, after authorities accused them of planning to kill President Nicolás Maduro. According to the NY Times: Relatives of three detained U.S. citizens said they had gotten very little information from the American government and had not heard from their loved ones for months since they had disappeared. David Estrella, 64, who worked in quality control for pharmaceutical companies in New Jersey, was among those released, according to his family. “After such horrible moments that we and David have suffered unjustly, we look forward to welcoming him home and taking care of him until he fully recovers and leaves all this unfortunate incident behind him,” said Elvia Macias, Mr. Estrella’s former wife and close friend.

He had entered Venezuela from Colombia to visit friends, Ms. Macias said. Another reason this is such an unexpected positive development is that the United States has no diplomatic presence or embassy in Venezuela, and also has sanctions against the country and its top officials.As for what could be a factor in the release, Financial Times speculated that “a deal could involve an easing of US sanctions on Venezuela and dropping a US reward offered for Maduro’s capture in return for Caracas taking back thousands of [Venezuelan] migrants from the US, shipping more oil to American Gulf Coast refineries and releasing US nationals held in Caracas.” The jubilant freed Americans thanked President Trump in a phone call on the plane ride home:

https://twitter.com/i/status/1885535726973915381

The US State Department special envoy for Latin America, Mauricio Claver-Carone, has meanwhile said the discussions and this new initiative with Caracas will not change Washington’s overall Venezuela policy. “President Trump expects Nicolás Maduro to take back all of the Venezuelan criminals and gang members that have been exported to the US, and to do so unequivocally and without condition,” he said.

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Now add the threat of Guantanamo. It’s ugly, but it may work.

Border Encounters Plummet 94% Under Trump (ZH)

Since President Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, illegal alien encounters at the southern US border have plummeted an average of 94% during his first 9 days, compared to President Biden’s last 19 days in office. During Trump’s first 9 days in office, after new border measures were implemented, there were an average of 126 daily encounters at the border vs. 2,087 per day during the last 2.5 weeks of the Biden administration.

As Rasmussen’s Mark Mitchell put it last week, “It’s like a switch was flipped.” During his 2024 campaign, Trump vowed to crack down on illegal immigration by continuing construction on the border wall, conducting the largest mass deportation in US history, slapping tariffs on Canada and Mexico until they control the situation from their end, and increasing penalties for illegal aliens.

To that end, there were more than 3,500 illegal immigrants who were arrested during Trump’s first week in office, including over 1,100 in a single day. As American Greatness notes further, on Wednesday, shortly before signing the Laken Riley Act into law, the 45th and 47th President announced his intention to send 30,000 of the most dangerous criminal illegals to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Laken Riley Act, named after the 22-year-old Georgia nursing student who was murdered by a Venezuelan illegal, is the first bill signed into law during President Trump’s second term. It gives federal immigration authorities broader power to arrest illegals who commit dangerous crimes, including drunk driving and assaulting police officers.

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Pete Hegseth is talking about US military action against cartels inside Mexico.

Mexico Announces Retaliation Against US (RT)

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has accused the United States of fueling cartel violence by allowing powerful firearms to flow south, pushing back against President Donald Trump’s claims that Mexico is failing to stop illegal migration and drug trafficking. Sheinbaum’s comments late Saturday came as she ordered retaliatory tariffs on US goods in response to Trump’s sweeping 25% duties on imports from Mexico and Canada. “We categorically reject the slander made by the White House against the Government of Mexico, accusing it of having alliances with criminal organizations,” Sheinbaum wrote in a fiery post on X. “If such an alliance exists anywhere, it is in the armories of the United States that sell high-powered weapons to these criminal groups – as demonstrated by the US Department of Justice itself.”

Her remarks apparetly referred to a recent report by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), which indicated that a significant number of military-grade firearms used by Mexican cartels originate in the United States. Sheinbaum also touted her administration’s anti-narcotics efforts, stating that in just four months, Mexican security forces have seized over 40 tons of drugs, including 20 million doses of fentanyl, and arrested more than 10,000 people linked to organized crime. She criticized the US government’s approach to the drug crisis, arguing that if Washington were serious about combating drug abuse, it would “start a massive campaign to prevent the consumption of these drugs and take care of its young people, as we have done in Mexico.”

Trump’s new tariffs, set to take effect on February 4, impose a 25% duty on goods from Mexico and Canada and a 10% duty on imports from China. The US administration justifies these measures by citing concerns over illegal immigration and drug trafficking, particularly fentanyl entering the United States. In response, Sheinbaum has instructed the Ministry of Economy to “implement the Plan B that we have been working on, which includes tariff and non-tariff measures in defense of Mexico’s interests.” While details have not been disclosed, sources indicate that Mexico aims to impose measures targeting key US industries, particularly agriculture, while seeking to avoid further escalation.

The Mexican leader called for bilateral cooperation to address the drug crisis but insisted on equal footing. ”If the United States truly wants to combat the criminal groups that traffic drugs and generate violence, we must work together comprehensively,” she said. “But always under the principles of shared responsibility, mutual trust, collaboration, and, above all, respect for sovereignty, which is non-negotiable.”

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Trudy is far too woke for Trump, and far too close to “Joe Biden”. That will never work.

Canada Strikes Back With Tariffs (RT)

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced retaliatory 25% tariffs on American goods, hours after US President Donald Trump imposed sweeping trade restrictions on Canadian imports. “Tonight, I am announcing Canada will be responding to the US trade action with 25% trade tariffs against $155 billion worth of American goods,” Trudeau said at a news conference on Saturday. The first wave of tariffs, covering $30 billion worth of US goods, will take effect on Tuesday, with broader measures following in 21 days to allow Canadian companies to adjust.

“These tariffs will be far-reaching and include everyday items,” the Canadian leader said, listing alcohol, fruits, vegetables, clothing, and shoes. In addition to direct tariffs, Ottawa is exploring “several non-tariff measures,” which could include restrictions on critical minerals, energy procurement, and other trade partnerships. “We will stand strong for Canada,” Trudeau said. “We will stand strong to ensure our countries continue to be the best neighbors in the world,” he added, urging citizens to support domestic businesses.

Trump’s 25% tariffs on nearly all Canadian goods were announced earlier on Saturday, with the White House citing concerns over illegal drug trafficking and immigration. “The extraordinary threat posed by illegal aliens and drugs, including deadly fentanyl, constitutes a national emergency,” a White House fact sheet read. “President Trump is taking bold action to hold Mexico, Canada, and China accountable to their promises of halting illegal immigration and stopping poisonous fentanyl and other drugs from flowing into our country.”

The US president claimed that Canada has played “a central role” in America’s fentanyl crisis and failed to “devote sufficient attention and resources” to combat the flow of illicit drugs. In an effort to avert the tariffs, Ottawa introduced a $1.3 billion spending plan aimed at strengthening border surveillance and tackling drug trafficking. Trump said on Friday, however, that there is “nothing Canada can do right now” to avoid the new tariffs. Economists warn that the escalating trade dispute could lead to rising consumer prices and economic disruptions in both countries.

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Is that him, or the PAC?

Musk Sank $288 Million Into Trump Campaign – WaPo (RT)

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk was “the biggest political donor” of the 2024 election cycle, contributing at least $288 million to Donald Trump’s presidential bid, the Washington Post has reported, citing an analysis of new Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings. Trump appointed Musk to lead the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, which aims to cut federal spending and regulations. In an article published on Friday, the Washington Post said, “the staggering 2024 political spending by Musk” cemented his influence within Trump’s political network, with some critics calling him a “de facto, unelected co-president.”

Musk’s political spending largely flowed through America PAC, a super PAC he helped establish to support Trump by mobilizing low-turnout voters in key battleground states. The group raised $263 million, backed not only by Musk but also by his close allies, including Tesla board member Antonio Gracias, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, and Sequoia Capital investor Shaun Maguire. According to the report covering the period from November 26 to the end of the year, Musk contributed $11.2 million on December 31, which was described as “petition incentives.”

The billionaire launched the initiative in October, pledging “$1M to someone in swing states who signed our petition to support free speech & the right to bear arms.” Those who signed the petition could also receive $47 for referring a registered voter in battleground states such as Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, and North Carolina. With earlier FEC filings showing an in-kind contribution of nearly $40.5 million, the total spending for petition incentives alone amounts to at least $52.7 million.

Musk’s “investment in the 2024 election has already paid off enormously,” the newspaper said, with his net worth surging by more than $200 billion since Trump’s victory on November 5. This is primarily attributed to the soaring stock price of Tesla. Shares of the electric vehicle manufacturer have risen approximately 70% since the election, significantly boosting Musk’s wealth. His fortune was estimated at around $442 billion as of mid-December. Musk, who previously positioned himself as politically neutral, publicly endorsed Trump shortly after the failed assassination attempt on the Republican nominee on July 13.

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“The U.S. is a party to this war, not a peace broker..”

Can Trump Make A Peace Deal With Putin? (SCF)

U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly said he wants to open talks with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, to end the war in Ukraine. Trump has spoken about the urgency of bringing the conflict to a peaceful conclusion. Fair enough. For his part, President Putin has magnanimously reciprocated, saying he is ready to engage in talks with Trump. So far, so good. At least the American side is no longer encumbered with the stupid intransigent, hostile mentality of the Biden administration, which refused to have any diplomatic contact with Russia. Russia, for its part, has always been willing to negotiate a genuine way to not just end the conflict but to avoid future conflict.

Before the war in Ukraine erupted three years ago in February 2022, Moscow put forward a comprehensive proposal for a security treaty in Europe in December 2021. The proposal stipulated that the U.S.-led NATO military alliance desist from aggressive expansion on Russia’s borders and, in particular, for Ukraine never to be a member of NATO. Those proposals were rejected out of hand by the U.S. and its European partners. At the earliest stage of the Ukraine conflict, in March 2022, Russia negotiated a potential peace settlement with the Kiev regime in Istanbul, only for that proposal to be rejected by Washington and its British surrogate. The result has been three years of bloodshed and destruction, with millions of Ukrainian casualties and refugees. Ukraine has been destroyed thanks to the intransigence of its NATO sponsors.

If diplomacy is the art of making politics work then anything is possible. Opening talks is at least a start to exchanging ideas and demands to bring the conflict to an end and stop it from spiraling into a catastrophic global war between nuclear powers. President Trump says he wants to end the conflict. But does he understand what the conflict is really about? If a problem is not correctly defined, then a solution is elusive.Trump has a showman style of doing politics. He bragged about ending the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of being elected. Now he is talking about ending it in 100 days. There are some positive indicators of good intentions. Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban said this week that he believed the Trump administration is determined to do a peace deal.

Trump’s pick for Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, told senators during confirmation hearings for the post that her “priority would be to support President Trump’s efforts to get Russia and Ukraine to the negotiating table.” (She may not be confirmed, however.) U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in an interview this week, repeated his calls for the war in Ukraine to end. In a telling comment, Rubio said the onus was on Russia and Ukraine to make compromises. Here’s where the problems emerge. The Trump administration seems to think that a resolution is a matter for two sides – Russia and Ukraine – and that the U.S. is acting as a mere peace broker instead of being the instigator. This was reflected in Trump’s own recent comments when he boorishly and stupidly warned Russia that if it did not come to the negotiating table, he would impose crippling sanctions on the Russian economy.

Trump is delusional if he thinks he can bully Russia or threaten the Russian economy. Such a fatuous attitude is out of order and counterproductive. The fact is the American and European sanctions against Russia have already failed. Russia’s economy has strengthened by being more independent and developing new trade relations with the rest of the world. It is now ranked 4th in the world, above Germany and other European nations. More importantly, Russia is decisively winning the war in Ukraine despite the colossal arming of the Kiev regime by the U.S. and its NATO partners. Ukrainian military lines are crumbling amid mounting losses. Even the Western media are reporting on the disarray and mass desertion of Ukrainian soldiers. The notion that Russia can be pressured to the negotiating table by the Trump administration is a fallacy and a serious misconception about the nature of the conflict.

Furthermore, the two parties that need to negotiate are not the corrupt puppet regime in Kiev and Russia. It is the United States and Russia. The U.S. is a party to this war, not a peace broker. If Trump’s administration is serious about making a peace deal, then it will have to be understood that the United States must accept Russia’s terms. A mere ceasefire and freezing the hostilities in Ukraine, which is what Trump aides are touting, is far from adequate as a solution. As we pointed out in our editorial last week, the conflict in Ukraine has deep roots in the imperialist machinations of the U.S. and its NATO proxy toward Russia. The history of this goes back decades, not just a few years. Only by addressing the root causes of the conflict can an authentic peaceful resolution begin.

Russia’s terms have been adumbrated clearly for a long time. The United States and its NATO war machine need to respect Russia’s national security interests. The security treaty that Moscow proposed in December 2021 is a basis for negotiation. So too are the realities on the ground. Russia’s new territories of Donbass, Kherson, Zaporozhye, as well as Crimea – all historic lands of Russia – are not negotiable. Neither is Russia’s insistence that Ukraine can never be part of the NATO alliance.

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Get rid of Zelensky first, then hold elections.

White House Wants Zelensky To Hold Elections – Trump Envoy (RT)

Washington wants Kiev to have presidential and parliamentary elections, potentially by this year’s end, Reuters reported on Saturday, citing President Donald Trump’s special envoy for the Ukraine conflict, Keith Kellogg. According to the report, Kellogg and other White House officials have discussed asking Kiev to hold the votes as part of a potential truce deal with Moscow. Speaking to the agency, Kellogg said that both the presidential and parliamentary elections “need to be done.”“Most democratic nations have elections in their time of war. I think it is important they do so,” the special envoy said. “I think it is good for democracy. That’s the beauty of a solid democracy, you have more than one person potentially running.”

Parliamentary and presidential elections in Ukraine scheduled for October 2023 and March 2024 were not held after Vladimir Zelensky announced in December 2023 that they would not take place while martial law imposed during the conflict with Russia remains in force. Martial law was declared after the escalation of hostilities between Kiev and Moscow in February 2022 and has been repeatedly extended ever since. In November 2024, it was prolonged once again and is now expected to continue at least until February 7, 2025. US President Doland Trump has repeatedly vowed to swiftly end the Ukraine conflict. On Friday, he claimed that the US was “having very serious discussions about that war” with Russia – something that Moscow has not confirmed so far.

The American president also stated on multiple occasions that he was ready to speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin as soon as possible to negotiate an end to the fighting. Moscow has repeatedly stated it its ready for dialogue at any time, but has received no specific signals from the US. According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, no such talks are currently planned and all communications are being conducted at the embassy level. If the US plan eventually involves a temporary ceasefire deal prior to a more permanent agreement, the winner of the Ukrainian presidential election could be responsible for negotiating the terms of the final treaty, Reuters reported on Saturday, citing discussions in the White House.

Moscow has questioned Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s legitimacy and said that he is no longer qualified to sign international agreements on behalf of Ukraine as his presidential term officially expired in May 2024. Earlier this week, Putin said that although Zelensky could take part in any potential negotiations, he could not be part of a final deal. “It’s possible to negotiate with anyone,” the Russian leader said, adding that any agreement would be a “very serious question” and must “guarantee the security of both Ukraine and Russia” for a “serious” period of time.Putin had previously stated on multiple occasions that the Ukrainian constitution does not envisage any extensions of the president’s term, only authorizing this for the parliament. Moscow has also said it will not agree to a temporary truce and that a settlement must include “reliable, legally binding agreements eliminating the root causes of the conflict.”

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“..the European logic is completely different from the American logic: one is the logic of war and the other is the logic of peace.”

Orban: US Now Seeks Peace In Ukraine, While EU Wants War To Continue (TASS)

The new US administration and the EU leadership have different approaches to the conflict in Ukraine: Washington now favors a peaceful settlement, while Brussels wants to continue the war, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said during a Kossuth radio broadcast. “The Europeans are saying that sanctions must be maintained and even tightened in order for the Ukrainians to win the war against Russia. Yesterday US Secretary of State [Marco Rubio] said in a big interview that it would be unfair to fool everyone by saying that the Ukrainians can win this war. Well, thank him for that interview, because it showed that the Americans want peace, not sanctions, and the Europeans want sanctions, not peace,” the prime minister said.

He emphasized that now “the European logic is completely different from the American logic: one is the logic of war and the other is the logic of peace.” Orban reiterated that the Hungarian government still favors a negotiated settlement of the Ukrainian conflict, and is counting on US President Donald Trump in this endeavor.

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The Chihuahua Strategic Victory Plan. For Pepe, Europeans are chihuahua’s.

The Chihuahua Energy Policy: It’s a Gas, Gas, Gas (Pepe Escobar)

As highlighted before, the U.S. – via fracking – has enough gas for domestic consumption, but not enough to export en masse to the EU, because of liquification problems. That explains why even buying more American energy for exorbitant prices, the EU de facto remains largely dependent on Russian LNG – and non-U.S. sources – since the sabotage of the Nord Streams, unveiled in detail by Sy Hersh. Even at full capacity, the Empire of Chaos simply cannot deliver all the gas the EU needs; add to it virtually no investment in both badly needed extra exploration plus the infrastructure necessary to meet increased EU demand. On the domestic U.S. oil market, things do get positively Kafkaesque. U.S. trucking – a massive service industry – is dependent on imported Russian diesel, which needs to be mixed with Made in America oil in order to be suitable for trucks.

Now cut again to Davos, which came and went barely registering a blip. Toxic EC Medusa von der Leyen told Davos that Europe had “substantially reduced”, and “in record time”, its dependency on Russian fossil fuels. Nonsense. Europe’s energy reality is bleak. Russian LNG from Novatek is currently priced at around $4.5–$4.7 per MMBtu. That’s more expensive than pipeline gas but still much (italics mine) cheaper than American LNG. Every industry pro from the Persian Gulf to Antwerp knows that Europe is now importing Russian LNG like it never did before. That’s it – or a dry death. In parallel, Russia will triple its LNG supply capacity by 2035. End result: whatever those “energy commissioners” in Brussels may come up with, Russia will remain essential when it comes to European energy security.

There are no limits – even stratospheric – for Eurocracy stupidity, which corrodes the system like a plague. The Europeans not only have managed to shut off their own gas pipelines but are still “investigating” the Nord Stream de facto terror attack. End result: they are now importing more (italics mine) Russian gas, but by different means, from third-party suppliers, and paying a fortune. This is what can be described as the Chihuahua Strategic Victory Plan. Russia’s LNG exports hit a record high last year, growing by 4% – and delivering 33.6 million tons. The monthly record was 3.25 million tons in December 2024 – 13.7% more than November. The largest Russian exporter is Yamal LNG: 21.1 million tons, 6% more than in 2023. Now cut to proverbial American rumble, in the form of Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Resources Geoffrey Pyatt ordering the “full termination” of Russian gas exported to Europe.

To hell with what nations like Hungary, Austria and Slovakia may think – and do need. Pyatt told the Atlantic Council, “Today we are the largest LNG exporter in the world, and by the end of the Trump administration, we will have doubled what we’re doing today […] The decision has clearly been made in Brussels to get to zero [gas supplies from Russia] by 2027…and the United States strongly supports that goal.” Oh dear. Do these people even read the basic headlines? As reported by Politico, the EU is “devouring” Russian gas at unprecedented levels since the start of 2025, importing 837,300 metric tons of LNG just in the first two weeks of the year. The Ukraine transit deal was shut off for good – at least for now – starting on January 1st. The action now is on the maritime routes.

Enter the U.S. Treasury with a new – what else – sanctions package against Russian oil trade, targeting up to 5.8 million barrels a day shipped by sea. As it stands, the global oil market is experiencing a surplus of about 0.8 million barrels a day. Oil prices for 2025 should remain at around $71 for a barrel of Brent crude (as it stands, it’s $76.2). Not exactly what Mr. Disco Inferno wants. So let’s assume these 5.8 million barrels of Russian oil – under stiff sanctions – would vanish from the global market. In this case we would have oil prices skyrocketing to an average of $150 to $160 a barrel. Once again, not what Mr. Disco Inferno wants: he vociferously promised – and keeps promising – a MAGA oil superpower, while lowering oil prices to max $50 a barrel.

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“The algorithm allows gaming GPUs to be used for scientific computing..”

Russia and China Boost NVIDIA Performance 800-Fold (Sp.)

Scientists from the two countries have developed a breakthrough algorithm using information from reverse engineering video card accelerators. The algorithm allows gaming GPUs to be used for scientific computing. The innovation was achieved by specialists from Shenzhen MSU-BIT University, co-founded by Lomonosov Moscow State University and Beijing Institute of Technology. This enables Russia and China to reduce their reliance on NVIDIA GPUs, weakening the impact of US sanctions.

It also means that Russia and China need to buy less NVIDIA GPUs, which likely led to the collapse of NVIDIA stock price, Russoft association President Valentin Makarov tells Sputnik. He believes ongoing research includes new machine learning algorithms and a next-gen GPU being developed in Russia. These advancements highlight Russia’s technological expertise, allowing collaboration with China and potential future partnerships with India.

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“It is quite absurd to continue to blame Russia for everything without any reason.”

Norway Clears Russian-Crewed Ship In Sabotage Probe (RT)

Norwegian police have released a Russian-crewed vessel after finding no evidence linking it to recent damage to an undersea fiber optic cable connecting Latvia and Sweden. The Norwegian-owned Silver Dania, which operates between St. Petersburg and the northern Russian port of Murmansk, was detained on Thursday night following a request from Latvian authorities and a ruling from a local court. Norwegian police said that the ship, which was escorted to the northern port of Tromso, could have damaged a critical fiber optic link belonging to Latvia’s state broadcaster and connecting the Baltic nation and Sweden’s Gotland island. It added that the law enforcement is “conducting an operation on the ship to search, conduct interviews, and secure evidence.”

However, less than a day later, the police stated that Silver Dania “will be able to leave Tromso already on Friday evening.” They added that while the investigation will continue, “no findings have been made linking the ship to the act,” and the crew had been cooperative. The cable sabotage case is the latest in a string of incidents involving damage to critical infrastructure in the Baltic Sea, with speculation rife that Russia could have played a role. Short of any proof, however, Western officials have refrained from leveling direct accusations.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed allegations of Moscow’s involvement. “It is quite absurd to continue to blame Russia for everything without any reason.” The Washington Post, citing Western intelligence sources, reported earlier this month that the damage to Baltic Sea infrastructure likely stemmed from maritime accidents involving poorly maintained ships and inexperienced crews rather than deliberate sabotage. NATO has launched a mission dubbed “Baltic Sentry” to enhance surveillance and protection of critical undersea infrastructure in the area and address concerns about possible sabotage.

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The only thing that will reach net zero is the spending.

It’s all just a money grab delusion: “..the world needs to pour in $5.6 trillion each year..”

Global Green Spending Is Falling Short of Net Zero Targets (OP)

Global investments in green energy solutions topped $2 trillion last year, for the first time ever, but the world needs to pour in $5.6 trillion each year into low-carbon energy to get on track for global net zero by 2050, in line with the Paris Agreement, BloombergNEF said in a new report on Thursday. Last year, green energy investments reached a record high globally, but the pace of growth has slowed from the 2021-2023 period, according to BNEF’s report Energy Transition Investment Trends 2025. The world invested a total of $2.1 trillion in low-carbon energy in 2024, up by 11% compared to 2023, the report found.

However, the pace of growth has slowed. In the years 2021 to 2023, global investment in clean energy jumped by between 24% and 29% each year, according to BNEF. Electrified transport continued to be the top segment for low-carbon energy investment, drawing in $757 billion in 2024. China remained the single biggest market with $818 billion of investment, up by 20% from 2023 and increasing investment in all sectors. China’s total investment last year was greater than the combined investment of the U.S., the EU, and the UK. However, investment was stagnant in the U.S., at $338 billion, and fell in both the EU and UK, hitting $381 billion and $65.3 billion, respectively, BNEF said.

The research provider also noted that energy transition investment will have to average $5.6 trillion each year from 2025 to 2030, in order to get on track for global net zero by 2050, in line with the Paris Agreement. The current investment level of $2.1 trillion implies that the world is only at 37% of what is required to get on track, BNEF said. “There is still much more that needs to be done, especially in emerging areas like industrial decarbonization, hydrogen and carbon capture, in order to reach global net-zero goals,” commented Albert Cheung, Deputy CEO of BNEF.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Bats

 

 

Orca
https://twitter.com/i/status/1885682013589414176

 

 

Elephant
https://twitter.com/i/status/1885538600085053571

 

 

Daddy
https://twitter.com/i/status/1885737803666825299

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Oct 182024
 


Pablo Picasso Bather on the beach 1920

 

RNC Chairman Michael Whatley: Results Will Be Known On Election Night (JTN)
The Election Will Decide President Trump’s Legal Fate (Davis)
Elect Kamala and Install a Sociopath Regime (PCR/Greenwald)
If Trump Wins, Guess Who Will Be In Charge Of Certifying The Election? (Snyder)
Harris Adopts a Purely Pedestrian View of the Presidency (Turley)
Democratic Election Lawyer Marc Elias’ History Of Legal Failures (JTN)
CNN Panel Goes Berserk When Guest Suggests ‘Field’ Blacks Voting For Trump (ZH)
Trump Blames Zelensky For Conflict With Russia (RT)
Ukraine May not Operate a Full F-16 Squadron for Months to Come (Sp.)
Ukraine Must Have Nukes or NATO – Zelensky (RT)
Ukraine Claims It Could Have Nuclear Weapons Within Weeks – Bild (RT)
10 Facts The West Must Understand Before Talking To Putin (Remchukov)
The Insanity Of Repetition: Israel’s Return To The Lebanese Quagmire (Raiss)
The Israeli Spies Writing America’s News (Macleod)
SpaceX Sues California over Political Targeting (AmG)
EU Commissioner Labels Musk ‘Promoter Of Evil’ (RT)
Nvidia CEO Blown Away After Musk Sets Up 100,000 GPUs In 19 Days (ZH)

 

 

 

 

Tucker

CNN
https://twitter.com/i/status/1846693917971845148

Trump ad

Bret Baier


https://twitter.com/i/status/1846777546228003103

OMG Meta

Scott Ritter Iran

Maguire

Angry guy

 

 

Sounds very optimistic.

RNC Chairman Michael Whatley: Results Will Be Known On Election Night (JTN)

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley predicted Wednesday that results for the 2024 election will be known on election night. “I think we’re going to know on election night,” Whatley said on the “Furthermore with Amanda Head” podcast. “I feel really good about where we’re going to be, and we like the map right now. We like the polls right now. I like the voter registration numbers.” As the 2024 presidential election gets closer, the GOP has been embracing early voting, unlike their strategy in 2020, and Whatley said it was paying off. “I like the early voting numbers that are coming in right now,” Whatley said. “We’re very upbeat. And I think we are going to know on election night.” He went on to predict that America would be “very excited” and ready to welcome former President Donald Trump back into the White House. He also encouraged Americans to have a plan to vote. “It’s great if you want to vote early,” he said. “It’s great if you want to vote by mail. It’s great if you want to vote on Election Day. You have to make a plan, execute the plan and deliver that vote. There’s absolutely no substitute for it.”

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“President Trump’s fate is now in the hands of one more jury: the American people.”

The Election Will Decide President Trump’s Legal Fate (Davis)

President Trump’s fate depends in large part on the election result. If Vice President Harris prevails, it is certain that Jack Smith will continue to prosecute Trump, unless the Supreme Court determines that his appointment is unconstitutional. At that point, however, the other political appointees in the Kamala-Walz Justice Department could resume control of the prosecution. Trump might prevail at trial before a reasonable jury in Florida, but his conviction before a highly biased D.C. jury would be a virtual certainty. There is also no reasonable doubt that Judge Chutkan would hammer him at sentencing. She has shown how ardently anti-Trump she is, and she also has been one of the most harsh sentencers of January 6 defendants. If she gets the chance, she will make sure that Trump rots in a cage for the rest of his life.

A Trump victory in November would ensure that he would not go to prison based on Bragg’s case at least until 2029 if at all, if the appellate courts fail to stop this clearly illegal political persecution. Even though Trump does not have a criminal record, it is likely that, if given the chance, Judge Merchan would send him to Rikers Island, the notorious jail where prisoners await trial and those convicted serve short sentences. Judge Merchan’s daughter Loren would certainly raise a lot of money off that republic-ending travesty. If Trump prevails, it is doubtful that Judge Merchan would try to throw Trump in prison in the month and a half between the potential sentencing and the inauguration. If he were to act rashly, however, either a higher court in New York or the United States Supreme Court would almost certainly put a stop to his shenanigans.

The Georgia appellate courts should end Fani Willis’ lawfare against Trump. If Trump wins the White House again, even if the case is not dismissed, Trump would not face trial until at least 2029. By that point, a new district attorney might decide to drop the case. The Georgia Court of Appeals hopefully will put an end to this and disqualify Willis, a decision that should be affirmed in short order by the Georgia Supreme Court. Given her disgraceful conduct, Willis has more than earned that remedy.

If Vice President Harris prevails, the Supreme Court almost certainly will no longer be a safeguard against the anti-Trump lawfare. The Vice President has indicated that she is open to packing the Court with hardcore leftists who undoubtedly will be clones of Judges Merchan, Engoron and Chutkan. They will serve as rubber stamps for Smith, Bragg, James and Willis. Trump thus will spend the rest of his life in prison based on charges that never should have been brought. He also might face the lesser consequence of bankruptcy if a Supreme Court packed with leftists gives its blessing to the nearly half a billion dollars in judgments against him from New York courts.

This election will decide whether the lawfare waged against President Trump for so many years and on so many fronts will be rewarded or punished. Several juries have rendered verdicts, and President Trump has appealed. In mere weeks, voters will deliver the most crucial verdict, and it is unappealable. President Trump’s fate is now in the hands of one more jury: the American people.

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“Kamala Harris’s campaign apparently unsatisfied with continuing to drag around Dick and Liz Cheney, released a new ad featuring the wise words of John Bolton..”

Elect Kamala and Install a Sociopath Regime (PCR/Greenwald)

Tonight: Donald Trump gave a speech last week in which he denounced the warmongering of George Bush, Dick Cheney and Barack Obama as achieving nothing other than what he said was, quote, “leaving a bunch of dead people.” Meanwhile, Kamala Harris’s campaign apparently unsatisfied with continuing to drag around Dick and Liz Cheney, released a new ad featuring the wise words of John Bolton, the person who is almost certainly the most psychotic and unhinged warmonger to reach national office in the last several decades. Perhaps only John McCain and Lindsey Graham compete with him for that title. The Harris campaign continues to be shaped and driven by reliance on the support of some of the worst sociopaths of the D.C. swamp and the military-industrial complex. When one views the ideology and policies of the Democratic Party that all makes sense and we’ll examine all of that.

Then: Both public polls and campaign internal polls continue to show the worst nightmare possible for the Democratic Party and the Harris campaign, namely the ongoing migration of both Latino voters and even Black voters, primarily Black men away from the Democratic Party and toward Donald Trump. We’ve actually seen this trend for several years now, even as the national media spends every day calling Donald Trump a white supremacist, but it has intensified over the last year with more and more nonwhite voters, signifying that they don’t want to vote for the Democratic Party.

While the Harris campaign reacts with desperate pandering or hectoring accusations of misogyny from Barack Obama, liberal media outlets like The New York Times do what they always do when they see nonwhite voters or other, quote-unquote, “marginalized groups” they believe they own failing to vote and think as they’re told to do, namely, they unleash deeply racist screeds, arguing that these nonwhite voters are not coming to their own conclusions because of their own faculties, but instead are being manipulated and hypnotized by much smarter and more conniving influencers. We’ll take a look at The New York Times latest attack, basically on the intelligence of nonwhite voters who refuse to do as they’re told.

And finally: Nick Cruse of the Revolutionary Black Out Network is one of the most vocal and incisive critics of the Democratic Party and its condescending tactics to deceive various groups of voters to believe that they’re on their side. He is a friend of the show, he’s been on before because of how great his commentary is, and he has a lot to say about Kamala’s latest, desperate last-minute pandering, including her brand new agenda for the Black man and the blatantly false gestures she and her campaign and followers are now making on Israel and Gaza. He’ll talk with us tonight about all of that and more.

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” I fear that there will be unprecedented chaos in our streets. Hopefully I am wrong about that. Hopefully cooler heads will prevail. But in our current political environment, I am certainly not optimistic about what is ahead.”

If Trump Wins, Guess Who Will Be In Charge Of Certifying The Election? (Snyder)

Do you know who will be in charge of certifying this election? In January 2021, it was Vice-President Mike Pence, and we all remember how that turned out. Well, an even more interesting scenario is shaping up this time around. In January 2025, Vice-President Kamala Harris will be in charge of certifying the election. In other words, if Donald Trump wins the person that he was running against will be in charge of certifying his victory. This is a major defect in our system, and it could potentially set the stage for widespread chaos if things do not go smoothly. With each passing day, a Trump victory is looking even more likely. For example, a brand new Gallup survey has found that the percentage of Americans that identify as Republicans has jumped by four points since late September…

“With just 20 days left until Election Day, a new Gallup poll has revealed a concerning trend for Democrats. According to the poll, more Americans are identifying as Republicans or independents, with fewer calling themselves Democrats. Conducted from October 1-12, the poll shows a significant shift in political affiliations since mid-September, causing potential challenges for Democrats ahead of the crucial vote. The data shows that 31% of respondents now identify as Republicans, marking a 4-point increase from the previous poll conducted in late September. Meanwhile, only 28% of Americans consider themselves Democrats, a 3-point drop over the same period. The number of independents, while still holding a significant share at 41%, dropped by 1%.”

Another new survey shows that national support for Trump has risen dramatically since early August… “The presidential race is swinging in former President Donald Trump’s direction, according to a national poll released by Marquette. The latest survey shows both Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris tied with 50 percent support each in a two-way race with leaners included. This reflects a four-point swing in Trump’s direction, as the last poll — released August 1 — showed Harris up by four points, garnering 52 percent support to Trump’s 48 percent support. The survey also took a look at the results with a “full field” and found Harris up by a single percentage point — 48 percent to Trump’s 47 percent support. Another four percent said “other.” For greater perspective, the last survey showed Harris up by eight points in the full field, with 50 percent to Trump’s 42 percent.”

[..] On Jan. 6, 2025, Vice President Kamala Harris is set to preside over Congress and count the electoral votes that will make either her — or Donald Trump — the 47th president of the United States. And like her predecessor Mike Pence, who resisted enormous pressure from Trump to upend the 2020 election results, Harris says she won’t interfere. Hopefully that is true. But would she really just stand aside and hand the presidency to a man that she has described as a “threat to democracy”? Just consider what Harris said about Trump earlier this week… “A second Trump term is a huge risk for America. He is increasingly unstable and unhinged. And he is out for unchecked power and control over your lives”. If she truly believes that Trump is going to end democracy in the United States, wouldn’t she feel compelled to take action? That is a question that a lot of people will be asking. Already, many on the left are suggesting that the 14th Amendment could be used to block Trump from taking office. The following is what Section 3 of the 14th Amendment says…

“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability. “I really hope that Democrats do not consider such a course of action if Trump wins the election. And I really hope that we see a very peaceful transfer of power no matter who wins. Unfortunately, many of our leaders continue to make statements that are not helpful at all. For example, Joe Biden just said that he is very much looking forward to seeing Donald Trump get sentenced and put away…

Joe Biden said the quiet part out loud and admitted that his DOJ is working to jail Trump after the election. “The same guy who has three other major cases waiting for him when he loses,” Biden said referring to Jack Smith’s federal cases against Trump. “And by the way, 34 felonies,” Biden said after he sent his DOJ hatchetman Matthew Colangelo to New York to get Trump. “He got the sentence kicked back, but I want to watch that sentence,” Biden gleefully said hoping Trump is jailed. If Donald Trump loses this election, he is going to go to prison for the rest of his life. So the truth is that this election means everything to Trump. Of course this election also means everything to tens of millions of Americans on both sides of the political spectrum. No matter what the outcome is, I fear that there will be unprecedented chaos in our streets. Hopefully I am wrong about that. Hopefully cooler heads will prevail. But in our current political environment, I am certainly not optimistic about what is ahead.

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“The interview had a seasonal feel with Halloween approaching like a political reading of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven where every question is answered by “Nevermore.”

Harris Adopts a Purely Pedestrian View of the Presidency (Turley)

Last night, millions tuned in to watch Fox’s Bret Baier interview Vice President Kamala Harris in a brief but substantive exchange. One of the most interesting aspects of the interview was the purely pedestrian view of the presidency that Harris presented in the interview. Harris repeatedly responded with “I will follow the law” while refusing to say where she personally stands on immigration, transgender athletes, and other issues. After confining interviews to largely softball forums like The View, Harris faced a serious journalist who pushed for actual answers on policies. While confined to a short time by the Harris campaign, Baier kept pulling Harris back to these questions to cut off the evasions that have characterized past interviews. Baier noted that she has previously campaigned on some of these issues and publicly declared that she worked for such things as gender transitioning operations for undocumented persons.

Harris now refuses to state her position on such issues and says “I will follow the law.” Yet, Harris is not adopting that pedestrian model in other areas like abortion rights where she is pledging to use executive powers to resist pro-life laws. The Biden-Harris Administration has used such orders to negate both constitutional and statutory authority. That includes orders that were declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court on issues like the national eviction moratorium. Notably, Harris did flip her position on decriminalizing unlawful entries. Despite running on that pledge in her earlier unsuccessful run for the White House, Harris now says that she is against such decriminalization. As with her past opposition to fracking and gun rights, the change is likely to draw criticism that Harris is adopting a new persona for a close race.

The refusal to give her position on these issues is reminiscent of Joe Biden’s last campaign where he simply refused to say if he opposed packing the Supreme Court with an instant liberal majority. What is different is that Harris previously stated strong and public positions on these questions but is now refusing to confirm that she continues to support those policies, including some that rank near the top of issues for voters. Baier did a heroic job in trying to prevent the filibustering of the interview and push for answers on these questions. It was the first such interview where Harris faced a dogged interviewer. Given the frantic effort of the staff to end the interview (after showing up late), it is likely to be the last. The mantra of “I will follow the law” ignores that a president plays a major role in the legislative process and has considerable executive powers in determining how such laws are enforced.

The presidency is more than a promise of “joy” and compliance. It is about leadership on issues that matter to voters. The interview had a seasonal feel with Halloween approaching like a political reading of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven where every question is answered by “Nevermore.” That could well be the theme of the Harris campaign. When pressed on contradictions or controversies, Harris seemed to declare “Nevermore Trump” over and over again. We will see if that is enough in a matter of a few weeks. In the meantime, real journalists will be left seeking answers that never come, exclaiming like Poe’s protagonist “tell me—tell me, I implore!” However, “Quoth the [Harris] ‘Nevermore.’”

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“..we saw the rules changes that [Marc] Elias and his operation were able to impose on states through the litigation process of 2020. And they’re already starting that up again this year.”

Democratic Election Lawyer Marc Elias’ History Of Legal Failures (JTN)

Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias has had a history of legal misses as he has pushed for changing election laws on behalf of left-wing groups and candidates over the years and continues litigation during the 2024 presidential election cycle. While Elias has secured many legal victories for Democratic candidates and left-wing organizations through election lawsuits, he has also suffered legal setbacks that have significantly impacted elections. Elias started Elias Law Group in 2021 after leaving the Democratic law firm Perkins Coie amid the probe by special counsel John Durham into the Steele dossier. He continued representing the Democratic Party and many of its candidates and PACs at his new law firm. Last year, the Democratic National Committee ended its professional arrangement with Elias over various strategic disagreements. A few months later, President Joe Biden’s campaign split with Elias.

Elias is anything if not relentless. This year Elias will be aiding Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign with post-election lawsuits and recounts, and has provided services for other Democratic groups, including the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the 2024 Democratic National Convention Committee, the Senate Majority PAC, and House Majority PAC. On Saturday, Elias posted on X, “My firm is currently litigating 69 voting and election cases in 21 states. We are not done fighting and we are not done winning.” Election litigation played a significant role in the 2020 presidential election amid irregularities and recounts, and most famously, Democrats insisted that Al Gore was the “real” victor in 2000, taking the case to the Supreme Court. Failed candidate Hillary Clinton and other Democrats would later call Republicans “election deniers,” but she herself implied that the 2016 race was “stolen” from her.

In 2020, there were as many as 400 lawsuits brought by both Republicans and Democrats regarding election procedures and laws as election administration was quickly changed during the COVID-19 lockdowns leading up to the presidential election. Democratic and left-leaning plaintiffs filed election lawsuits, 180 in all. However, only 18% of the Democrats’ cases were won, with 40% lost on the merits and 42% lost on procedural grounds. Elias posted on X on Monday, “With only 22 days until Election Day, there are still 192 voting and election cases pending in 38 states.” He added that the top five states with election cases are Georgia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Arizona. The Honest Elections Project (HEP), an election integrity group, released a report in January with 14 election reforms that it says states should implement.

One recommended reform of “Ensur[ing] that elected lawmakers write election laws” explains that “Lawmakers, not courts and bureaucrats, make the laws that govern elections. But partisan special interests, spearheaded by left-wing lawyer Marc Elias and allied left-wing groups, use frivolous lawsuits and collusive settlements to weaken and rewrite election laws for political gain.” HEP Executive Director Jason Snead previously told Just the News, “One of the biggest threats that we’re gonna face between now and November is gonna be just a torrent of left-wing litigation.” He explained, “We saw the chaos, we saw the confusion, we saw the rules changes that [Marc] Elias and his operation were able to impose on states through the litigation process of 2020. And they’re already starting that up again this year.”

Elias was successful in ensuring many election changes were made during the COVID-19 lockdowns, such as rules expanding mail-in voting and the use of ballot drop boxes. However, in recent years, he and his law firm have encountered significant setbacks or losses in court. In May, a Wisconsin federal judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by Elias’ law firm that sought to toss out the witness requirement for absentee voting. U.S. District Judge James Peterson ruled against their attempt to cancel the witness requirement for voters who cast absentee ballots.

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“blacks who support Kamala Harris are ‘house African Americans,’ while working class ‘field’ African Americans support Donald Trump..”

CNN Panel Goes Berserk When Guest Suggests ‘Field’ Blacks Voting For Trump (ZH)

Two CNN hosts went absolutely berzerk after a guest quoted Malcom X to suggest that blacks who support Kamala Harris are ‘house African Americans,’ while working class ‘field’ African Americans support Donald Trump. During a Wednesday appearance on CNN News Central, co-anchor Sara Sidner hosted pro-Trump radio host Shelley Wynter vs. pro-Harris ex-DNC Vice-Chair Michael Blake to discuss the race, when Wynter articulated that working class ‘field’ black men, ‘who work with their hands’ and ‘who build’ things are Trump supporters, while paper-pushing ‘house’ African Americans are voting for Kamala Harris. Sidner and Blake went into hysterics and refused to let Wynter continue his point.

SARA SIDNER: Kamala Harris has been doing interviews on Black media. Trump, though, is overperforming in polling with both groups compared to past Republicans. Here is what he said when he was campaigning in Pennsylvania.
DONALD TRUMP: Any African-American or Hispanic– and you know how well I’m doing there — that votes for Kamala. You got to have your head examined because they they are really screwing you. They are really screwing you.
SARA SIDNER: And it is Kamala, for the record, But he is denigrating voters for making a choice that he does not like. Shelley, to you, what does he achieve with this.
SHELLEY WYNTER: Well how is it, wait? First of all, how is he denigrating voters?
SARA SIDNER: He’s saying that they are being, for lack of a better word, screwed.
SHELLEY WYNTER: Taken advantage of the they’re being taken advantage of. They’re paying higher pricing. They’re the working class, the ones that he’s talking about, working class, lower middle class. They’re paying more for food. They’re paying more for gas and they’re being taken advantage of.
SARA SIDNER: He also said that they you know, they had to have their head examined. That that’s that is not something that is a compliment.

SHELLEY WYNTER: Obama just told me the same thing. Obama just told me the same thing.
SARA SIDNER: He did not use those words.
SHELLEY WYNTER: … He inferred them. He implied them. He certainly did. He even threatened us with. We’re lucky Michelle’s not here. I mean, come on. Let’s not make things up. Let’s be honest here. And let’s really be clear what’s being said. If you’re an African-American man. Look, let me boil this election down in the African-American community to a very simple, I’ll reference the great Malcolm X. This race is between House African-Americans and field African-Americans and the field African-Americans are going for Donald Trump. I’m talking about your men. I’m talking about your men who build, your men, who put things together, your men who work with their hands, your men who do things, not the men who push paper on, the men who are connected to power and want to continue to be connected to power.

Read more …

And Biden.

Trump Blames Zelensky For Conflict With Russia (RT)

The Ukraine conflict is a lost cause and the country’s leader Vladimir Zelensky should have never allowed it to happen, former US President and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has said. During his appearance on PBD Podcast, hosted by Patrick Bet-David, on Thursday, Trump noted the lavish military aid provided to Kiev by Washington amid the fighting with Moscow as an example of the wastefulness of the administration of US President Joe Biden. Biden and Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, are “the worst president and vice president in history,” he said. “It is so bad what they are doing to our country on the borders; it is so bad what they are doing with the money.” Ukrainian leader Vladimir “Zelensky is one of the greatest salesmen I have ever seen. Every time he comes in [to the US] we give him a hundred billion dollars. Who else got that kind of money in history?” the former president stressed.

”That does not mean I do not want to help him because I feel very badly for those people [in Ukraine]. But he should never have let that war start. That war is a loser,” he said. However, later in the conversation, the Republican presidential candidate said: “I do largely blame Biden” for the outbreak of the fighting between Moscow and Kiev in February 2022. ”If you watch his words [in the run up to the conflict], his words were the exact opposite of what he should have been saying. He instigated that war…. [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is no angel, but everything Biden said was wrong,” Trump pointed out. “That should have never happened,” he said of the fighting between Russia and Ukraine.

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Nothing good will come of this.

Ukraine May not Operate a Full F-16 Squadron for Months to Come (Sp.)

The first batch of F-16s, which was delivered to the Ukrainian military in late July, failed to change the situation on the battlefield in favor of the Kiev regime, with the Ukrainian Air Force confirming that one such jet crashed just weeks after the first batch supply. The United States has changed its program to train Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16 fighter jets, adding “younger cadets” with no prior flight experience, the Wall Street Journal has cited unnamed officials as saying. “It is a mix. Some have been experienced pilots, and we still are receiving more experienced pilots. But there’s also those that do not have that kind of pilot training and experience,” one of the officials said The decision to refocus the training on the cadets rather than experienced air force members may extend the timeline in when the Kiev regime could start to operate a full squadron of F-16s on the battlefield “by many months,” according to the sources.

They argued that even before the decision was taken, Ukraine would hardly have 20 F-16s and 40 pilots to operate them until spring or summer next year at the earliest. The insiders also said that the move to change the training program is the result of a lack of experienced Ukrainian pilots “with requisite English-language abilities who can be spared from the battlefield.” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov earlier warned the United States and its NATO allies that Moscow perceives the presence of nuclear-capable F-16s in Ukraine as a nuclear threat. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in turn emphasized that Ukraine’s Western-supplied F-16 jets would not have the power to alter the situation on the battlefield. He warned that if these fighter jets are deployed from the territory of third countries, they will be considered legitimate targets for Russian forces. The president further stated that the F-16s, just like other Western equipment delivered to Kiev, would be destroyed.

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“The secretary general of the US-led bloc, Mark Rutte, said on Thursday that Ukraine may not even be the next nation to become a member.”

Ukraine Must Have Nukes or NATO – Zelensky (RT)

Ukraine can protect itself either by becoming a nuclear state or a member of NATO, Vladimir Zelensky said on Thursday, claiming that he had offered the same line of reasoning to former US President Donald Trump. Speaking at a press conference after promoting his ‘victory plan’ for the conflict with Russia to European officials, Zelensky suggested that Ukraine would need nuclear weapons, should it not be granted NATO membership. “Which of the big nations, the nuclear nations, suffered? Everyone? No, just Ukraine,” he stated, referring to the signatories of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. The document involved the US, UK, and Russia extending security assurances to Kiev in return for the removal of Soviet nuclear weapons from Ukraine.

“Speaking to Donald Trump, I told him: ‘What is the way out for us?’ Either Ukraine will have nuclear weapons, and they will serve as protection, or we need to be in some kind of an alliance. We don’t know any effective alliances except NATO,” Zelensky added. Ukraine’s choice is to become a NATO member, Zelensky said, claiming that Trump had found his reasoning justified. Ukraine has never controlled nuclear weapons, but claims it was formerly among the major atomic powers before agreeing to relinquish them. In February 2022, weeks before the escalation of the Ukraine conflict, Zelensky expressed regret at the decision in a speech at the International Security Conference in Munich, suggesting that his country had “every right” to reverse it.

Zelensky last met Trump during his visit to the US in late September. The Ukrainian leader was touring the country to present his ‘victory plan’ to President Joe Biden and the two presidential candidates from the main parties, Vice President Kamala Harris and Trump. He also became embroiled in controversy over a visit to a munitions plant in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, which Trump supporters claimed was evidence of Zelensky campaigning for Democratic candidate Harris. Zelensky confirmed this week that an immediate invitation for Ukraine to join NATO was on his list of requests to Western donors. The secretary general of the US-led bloc, Mark Rutte, said on Thursday that Ukraine may not even be the next nation to become a member.

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“We have the material, we have the knowledge. If the order is given, we will only need a few weeks to have the first bomb..”

Ukraine Claims It Could Have Nuclear Weapons Within Weeks – Bild (RT)

Kiev has the capability to build a nuclear weapon “in a few weeks,” German tabloid Bild reported on Thursday, citing a high-ranking Ukrainian official. The report comes after Vladimir Zelensky alluded to such a possibility during a visit to Brussels on the same day. The Ukrainian leader claimed his country needs either nuclear weapons or membership of NATO. Zelensky is currently promoting his ‘victory plan’ to Ukraine’s Western backers, which he argues can end the conflict with Russia. Bild has now revealed that a Ukrainian official involved in weapons procurement claimed “a few months ago” that Kiev was willing to go nuclear. “We have the material, we have the knowledge. If the order is given, we will only need a few weeks to have the first bomb,” the unnamed official said, according to the German tabloid. He added that the West should “think less about Russia’s red lines and more about ours.”

Zelensky’s adviser Dmitry Litvin denied Bild’s report, however, telling the Ukrainian outlet Strana on Thursday that it was “nonsense” and suggesting that the German tabloid “can be confused with Russian propaganda.” In his speech on Thursday, Zelensky claimed to have informed US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump about Kiev’s possible atomic aspirations. “Speaking to Donald Trump, I told him: What is the way out for us? Either Ukraine will have nuclear weapons, and they will serve as protection, or we need to be in some kind of an alliance. We don’t know any effective alliances except NATO,” Zelensky said. He also claimed that Trump agreed with him. The former president has made no mention of Zelensky’s nuclear proposal, however.

In the time since their meeting, he also made the case in an interview that nuclear weapons were the greatest threat to humanity and that he had hoped to make a global deal on eventual denuclearization during his first term in the White House. The leadership in Kiev has long argued that the US and its allies had an obligation to protect Ukraine because of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, in which the US, UK and Russia gave security assurances in exchange for the removal of Soviet nuclear warheads from Ukraine’s territory. Moscow has maintained that the 2014 violent coup in Kiev put the West in breach of the memorandum and that a hostile, nuclear-armed Ukraine on its doorstep is an intolerable threat to its security. Zelensky’s adviser Dmitry Litvin denied Bild’s report, however, telling the Ukrainian outlet Strana on Thursday that it was “nonsense” and suggesting that the German tabloid “can be confused with Russian propaganda.”

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“The fact is, the president is here to stay.”

10 Facts The West Must Understand Before Talking To Putin (Remchukov)

1. Putin makes all fundamental decisions personally, on the basis of his own ability, expertise, and sense of historical responsibility. A vivid example of this was the president’s speech at the Russian Foreign Ministry on June 14, in which he outlined the key provisions of Russia’s foreign policy priorities and his vision for the formation of a new international order. Most participants in the meeting expected the head of state to speak for no more than half an hour. In practice, Putin spoke for almost 80 minutes on theses he had written out himself, which he later explained to journalists.

2. The task of ensuring the security of the country and protecting Russians and Russian speakers in Ukraine, which Putin has been facing since 2014, has become the main existential factor of his rule. He will not hand over power to anyone before the final, internationally guaranteed settlement of this issue. He cannot give up control until there is a final, globally recognized solution. Anything short of this would mean handing his successor a messy bunch of unresolved problems. Today, no one in Putin’s entourage is better at solving problems than the president. He knows this and is firmly convinced of it.

3. Putin will not resign. At the beginning of September, a schoolgirl in Tuva asked the president: “How would you spend your days if you were an ordinary man, i.e. not the president?” Putin replied succinctly and clearly: “It’s hard for me to imagine that now.” This is his most important message of recent times – both for Russians and outsiders. Putin is saying that in your own future planning, proceed from the basis that I will be in the Kremlin. In this way, the president has delivered a reality check to the many Western politicians and indeed Russian opposition activists who have been dreaming and deluding themselves, claiming that “if there is Putin, there is a problem; if there is no Putin, there is no problem.” The fact is, the president is here to stay.

4. It is now clear that after more than two years of a nuclear threat hanging over us all, the world is ready for real negotiations on this issue. However, there are doubts about whether talks will be successful. The most serious Western politician – and someone who actually understands the consequences of nuclear war – is US President Joe Biden. Sadly, he will be gone in a few months. Neither Kamala Harris nor former President Donald Trump has the foreign policy credentials to even grasp the importance of this issue and the dangers involved.

5. The past years and months of the Ukraine conflict, the brutal sanctions, and the radical transformation of the driving forces of the Russian economy have clearly demonstrated that it is time for our own domestic public and political consciousness to decisively abandon the notion, once sown by the Polish/American thinker Zbigniew Brzezinski, that Russia’s greatness rests on its unity with Ukraine. If the country is torn out of Moscow’s sphere of influence, Russia’s status as a great power will come to an end, he warned.

But that was then, and this is now. Today it is obvious that Russia’s place in the world is guaranteed regardless of the degree of proximity to any country or group of countries. Liberation from speculative constructs in the minds of influential ideologues is a powerful factor in normalizing the development process and assessing fundamental risks and opportunities. Russia can be a great and important power regardless of the degree of integration with other states. The greatness of a country is measured by the level of well-being and opportunities of its citizens, by achievements in health care, education, science, and technology.

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Kornet.

The Insanity Of Repetition: Israel’s Return To The Lebanese Quagmire (Raiss)

In the days following 8 October, Hezbollah’s battlefield updates have consistently emphasized one key phrase: direct hits – Israeli radar stations obliterated, military convoys shattered by precise strikes, and armored vehicles reduced to smoldering wreckage. These operations, carried out in support of the Palestinian resistance in Gaza, have been so devastatingly effective that Tel Aviv invoked military censorship, desperate to conceal the full extent of its losses, as it has been doing throughout the conflict on the northern front over the past year. But behind the phrase “direct hits” lies a weapon few might recognize – the Kornet missile. Although not always visible to the viewer, the Kornet’s role is unmistakable. First deployed by Hezbollah in 2006, the Kornet transformed into a battlefield game-changer, proving its worth in ambushes against Israeli Merkava tanks.

On 11 August 2006, 24 Merkava tanks rolled into a deadly trap, as if swallowed by the Bermuda Triangle, vanishing under a barrage of Kornet missile fire. By the end of it, 11 tanks lay in ruin – charred remains of Israel’s once-feared armored division. This decisive moment showcased Hezbollah’s mastery of asymmetric warfare, where small, mobile units equipped with precision-guided Kornets could dismantle Israel’s armored might. The Merkava, long regarded as the symbol of Israeli dominance in ground warfare, was designed to excel in direct combat. However, in the unforgiving Lebanese terrain, the Kornet missile revealed a critical vulnerability: the Merkava’s reliance on heavy armor, which, despite its thickness, was helpless against the Kornet’s ability to pierce reactive plating.

The missile’s precision focused on the tank’s soft spots – its engine and lower hull – areas that conventional defenses struggled to protect against long-range, guided strikes. The once-formidable Merkava, crippled in its ability to maneuver through Lebanon’s rugged landscape, became an easy target for well-planned ambushes. Now, with Israeli convoys once again making daily incursions into Lebanon – repeating the very missteps of 2006 – it’s as if history is whispering its warnings, only to be ignored. Israel’s persistence in retracing these familiar steps shows a refusal to reckon with past lessons, locked in a cycle that leads to the same inevitable failures. The Kornet missile, first deployed by Hezbollah during the 2006 war, has become a defining force in its tactical operations.

This Russian-made, laser-guided anti-tank missile, capable of penetrating up to 1,200 millimeters of reactive armor from distances of up to 5.5 kilometers, turns Israel’s Merkava tanks into unsuspecting prey caught in carefully planned ambushes. Hezbollah’s elite Radwan special forces, particularly within the Aziz and Nasr units, utilize this weapon with precision, turning each ambush into a coordinated strike that devastates Israel’s most advanced armored forces. The Kornet’s range allows Hezbollah fighters to strike from concealed positions and swiftly reposition, ensuring they remain elusive in the heat of battle. These units, operating across the varied terrain of southern Lebanon, have made the Kornet indispensable in their strategy of attrition warfare.

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“Ravid is far from the only Israeli ex-spook working at top U.S. media outlets, working hard to manufacture Western support for his country’s actions..”

The Israeli Spies Writing America’s News (Macleod)

One year after Oct. 7 attacks, Netanyahu is on a winning streak.” So reads the title of a recent Axios article describing the Israeli prime minister riding on an unbeatable wave of triumphs. These stunning military “successes,” its author Barak Ravid notes, include the bombing of Yemen, the assassinations of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, and the pager attack against Lebanon. The same author recently went viral for an article that claimed that Israeli attacks against Hezbollah are “not intended to lead to war but are an attempt to reach ‘de-escalation through escalation.’” Users on social media mocked Ravid for this bizarre, Orwellian reasoning. But what almost everybody missed is that Barak Ravid is an Israeli spy – or at least he was until recently. Ravid is a former analyst with Israeli spying agency Unit 8200, and as recently as last year, was still a reservist with the Israeli Defense Forces group.

Unit 8200 is Israel’s largest and perhaps most controversial spying organization. It has been responsible for many high-profile espionage and terror operations, including the recent pager attack that injured thousands of Lebanese civilians. As this investigation will reveal, Ravid is far from the only Israeli ex-spook working at top U.S. media outlets, working hard to manufacture Western support for his country’s actions. Ravid has quickly become one of the most influential individuals in the Capitol Hill press corps. In April, he won the prestigious White House Press Correspondents’ Award “for overall excellence in White House coverage”—one of the highest awards in American journalism. Judges were impressed by what they described as his “deep, almost intimate levels of sourcing in the U.S. and abroad” and picked out six articles as exemplary pieces of journalism.

Most of these stories consisted of simply printing anonymous White House or Israeli government sources, making them look good, and distancing President Biden from the horrors of the Israeli attack on Palestine. As such, there was functionally no difference between these and White House press releases. For example, one story the judges picked out was titled “Scoop: Biden tells Bibi 3-day fighting pause could help secure release of some hostages,” and presented the 46th President of the United States as a dedicated humanitarian hellbent on reducing suffering. Another described how “frustrated” Biden was becoming with Netanyahu and the Israeli government.

Protestors had called on reporters to snub the event in solidarity with their fallen counterparts in Gaza (which, at the time of writing, comes to at least 128 journalists). Not only was there no boycott of the event, but organizers gave their highest award to an Israeli intelligence official-turned-reporter who has earned a reputation as perhaps the most dutiful stenographer of power in Washington. Ravid was personally presented with the award by President Biden, who embraced him like a brother. That a known (former) Israeli spy could hug Biden in such a manner speaks volumes about not only the intimate relationship between the United States and Israel but about the extent to which establishment media holds power to account.

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“..engaged in naked political discrimination..”

SpaceX Sues California over Political Targeting (AmG)

On Tuesday, Elon Musk’s company SpaceX has filed a lawsuit against a California state agency over alleged political discrimination against the company. As reported by Politico, the lawsuit stems from the California Coastal Commission’s (CCC) decision to reject SpaceX’s plans to increase the number of experimental rocket launches from the Space Force base in Santa Barbara County. Lawyers from the Los Angeles-based firm Venable LLP, which represents SpaceX, claimed that the CCC made its decision purely due to political differences with Musk, an outspoken supporter of former President Donald Trump and a vocal critic of Governor Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.).

The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in Los Angeles, asserts that the CCC and its 12 members “engaged in naked political discrimination” in last week’s debate over a proposal by the Department of Defense (DOD) to expand the number of SpaceX launches at Vandenberg Space Force Base. The proposal would have seen the number of launches increase from 36 to 50. “Rarely has a government agency made so clear that it was exceeding its authorized mandate to punish a company for the political views and statements of its largest shareholder and CEO,” the lawsuit reads.

The lawsuit named all 12 members of the commission, as well as executive director Kate Huckelbridge and alternate commissioner Gretchen Newsom, as defendants. The commissioners are appointed by the governor and the legislature. On Thursday, they voted 6-4 in favor of rejecting the DOD plan. However, the debate over the motion prior to the vote quickly veered away from the specifics of the plan itself, and instead focused on Musk’s support for Trump. “Elon Musk is hopping about the country, spewing and tweeting political falsehoods and attacking FEMA while claiming his desire to help the hurricane victims with free Starlink access to the internet,” said Commissioner Newsom, who bears no relation to Governor Newsom. Newsom and Chairwoman Caryl Hart both criticized Musk’s political stances before voting against the deal.

“Many things are said in the course of meetings, whether it’s a Coastal Commission meeting, whether it’s a legislative meeting, whether it’s a planning department,” said Chairwoman Hart on Tuesday, in an attempt to justify her vote. “The basis for this decision is the commission’s conclusion that SpaceX, as a private company engaged in private activities, needs to apply for a coastal development permit.” Although Musk has generally remained a political moderate, he began expressing support for President Trump following the first assassination attempt against him on July 13th in Butler, Pennsylvania. Since then, Musk has launched the pro-Trump America Pac, which has donated $45 million to supporting Trump’s campaign every month since July. Musk himself appeared onstage with President Trump at his return rally in Butler, just over two months after the assassination attempt; during his speech, he reaffirmed his support for freedom of speech, and urged the audience to get as many people as possible out to vote in the coming election.

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“..X has become “the main hub for spreading antisemitism.”

EU Commissioner Labels Musk ‘Promoter Of Evil’ (RT)

X CEO Elon Musk is unable to “recognize good and evil,” said outgoing EU commissioner for values and transparency, Vera Jourova, accusing the tech billionaire of failing to curb antisemitism on his platform. “We started to relativize evil, and he’s helping it proactively. He’s the promoter of evil,” Jourova told Politico magazine in an interview published on Wednesday, arguing that X has become “the main hub for spreading antisemitism.” Jourova has never met Musk in person. She argued, nevertheless, that “even without this personal meeting, I would say that out of all the bosses I met, he is the only one who is not able to recognize good and evil.” The official added that she was “really scared by digital platforms in bad hands,” and that “we have to be sure that the innovations are developed to do good to people.” She further argued that Musk’s platform failed to take “sufficient action” to tackle antisemitism.

Musk hit back at Jourova on X, saying “if she wants to know what evil looks like, she just needs a mirror.” In 2022, the EU adopted the Digital Services Act (DSA), which allows officials to fine online platforms as much as 6% of their yearly global revenue for failing to remove illegal content and disinformation or respect transparency regulations. In its preliminary findings released in July, the EU accused X of violating the DSA in “areas linked to dark patterns, advertising transparency and data access for researchers.” After finalizing the purchase of Twitter in the fall of 2022, Musk promised to rebrand the platform as a more transparent space that is devoted to free speech and is free of censorship. He pledged to combat hate speech and paid a trip to Auschwitz, the site of a former Nazi death camp in Poland, in January.

X has “the least amount of antisemitism” compared to other platforms, Musk argued, adding that “it’s never going to be zero if you’ve got 600 million people on the platform.” Musk also has accused the European Commission of wanting to make him sign “an illegal secret deal” while seeking to quietly censor speech on X.

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“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.”

Nvidia CEO Blown Away After Musk Sets Up 100,000 GPUs In 19 Days (ZH)

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says Elon Musk pulled off a “superhuman” feat by setting up a supercluster of 100,000 H200 Blackwell GPUs in just 19 days – a process he says takes everyone else “one year to accomplish.” According to Tom’s Hardware, the xAI team reportedly went from “concept” to full-ready compatibility with Nvidia’s “gear” in less than three weeks – including running xAI’s first AI training run. From start to finish, the process involved building the massive X factory where the GPUs would reside and equipping the entire factory with liquid cooling and power to make all 200,000 GPUs operational. That’s not to mention all of the coordination between Nvidia’s and Elon Musk’s engineering teams to get all of the hardware and infrastructure shipped and installed precisely and in a coordinated manner. What’s more, Huang says that networking Nvidia’s gear isn’t as simple as networking traditional data center servers. “The number of wires that goes in one node…the back of a computer is all wires,” he said, adding that Musk’s integration of 100,000 H200 GPUs has “never been done before,” and probably won’t be repeated by anyone else anytime soon.

Watch:

Nvidia

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Trump SNL

 

 

Survival
https://twitter.com/i/status/1846808880296136837

 

 

Ducks

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Jun 052024
 


Vincent van Gogh The good Samaritan (after Delacroix) 1890

 

Trump Calls For Supreme Court To Intervene Before Sentencing (MN)
Dershowitz: Trump Could Fast-Track His Appeal To Supreme Court (ZH)
Republicans Vow To Scorch the Earth After Trump Conviction (RCW)
The Fake Conviction (Newt Gingrich)
Joe Biden’s Health Is About To Be Put To A Severe Test (Sadygzade)
Biden Does ‘We Gotta Secure The Border!’ Routine (ZH)
“A Blatant Lie” (Turley)
Freedom of Speech in the USA? Think again! (Gilbert Doctorow)
Swiss Senate Votes Against Aid For Kiev (RT)
NATO Member Turkiye Would Like to Join BRICS – Top Diplomat (Sp.)
NATO Preparing Troop Plans For Potential Russia Conflict – Telegraph (RT)
Punish Hungary To Ensure EU’s Future – Bloc Presidency Holder Belgium (RT)
Orban Believes Trump, EU Could End Ukrainian Conflict In 24 Hours (TASS)
People are Not Reading Your Stuff: Publisher Drops Truth Bomb at WaPo (Turley)
The Military-Industrial Complex Is Killing Us All (Vine/Arriola)
Musk Corrects “Liar” CNBC Journo Over Nvidia Report (ZH)
Pakistan Overturns Imran Khan’s Treason Conviction (RT)

 

 

 

 

“He’s polling right up there with fungal infections!”
https://twitter.com/i/status/1798001509697032668

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1797758238215016770

 

 

 

 

Hunter jurors

 

 

 

 

Border poll

 

 

Gaetz
https://twitter.com/i/status/1798004447362343011

 

 

O’Leary Musk
https://twitter.com/i/status/1798142196753048004

 

 

 

 

Before July 11th.

Trump Calls For Supreme Court To Intervene Before Sentencing (MN)

Donald Trump has called for the Supreme Court to step in before he is sentenced in the ‘falsified business documents’ case on July 11th. In a Truth Social post, Trump said he has not done anything wrong and referred to the prosecutors as “Fascists.” He added “A Radical Left Soros backed D.A., who ran on a platform of ‘I will get Trump,’ reporting to an ‘Acting’ Local Judge, appointed by the Democrats, who is HIGHLY CONFLICTED, will make a decision which will determine the future of our Nation?” “The United States Supreme Court MUST DECIDE!” Trump asserted. The sentencing date has been set a few days before the RNC Convention in Wisconsin. Trump is currently at the mercy of Judge Merchan, with the potential sentence being up to four years in jail for each of the 34 charges.

Merchan is a Columbian immigrant whose daughter is president of a political consulting firm that works closely with Democratic candidates. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg was literally funded into office by George and Alex Soros’ Open Society, with the latter gloating about the verdict last week and calling for Democrats to repeatedly label Trump a “convicted felon.” “Repetition is the key to a successful message,” Soros declared. In the wake of the verdict, there was a massive spike in Google searches for how to donate to Trump, and he has raised over $200 million and counting since. It is an unprecedented amount for a candidate. Despite Trump being convicted on 34 counts, there has been no negative impact on his support and even a slight increase in favorability, especially amongst independent voters.

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“..the Supreme Court has an obligation to review the case before the election so that the American public has resolution..”

Dershowitz: Trump Could Fast-Track His Appeal To Supreme Court (ZH)

In a Friday interview with Megyn Kelly, Dershowitz suggested that Trump’s legal team should immediately push to get their appeal heard before the New York Court of Appeals, asking them to bypass the Appellate Division – which, Dershowitz suggested, are elected and more likely to work against Trump. “The Appellate Division or Manhattan judges that are elected and they don’t want to have to face their families and say you were the judge who allowed Trump to become the next President of the United States. They don’t want to be Dershowitz’ed,” he said, referring to the fact that he defended Trump during his first impeachment trial in the Senate. “They don’t want to be treated in New York, the way I have been treated in Martha’s Vineyard and Harvard and New York because I defended Donald Trump, so they should skip the Appellate Division.”

And so, to avoid the politicized Appellate Division, Trump’s attorneys should ask the Court of Appeals for an expedited appeal while preparing to argue in front of the US Supreme Court that the Manhattan case was rushed to try and get a verdict before the election. Dershowitz further suggested that the Supreme Court has an obligation to review the case before the election so that the American public has resolution. As Tom Ozimek of the Epoch Times notes further, Dershowitz has in the past accused Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg of unfairly building the case against the former president by using a novel legal theory to elevate misdemeanor business falsification charges into a felony by alleging that the records fraud was carried out to conceal an underlying crime. In the Trump case, the underlying crime that was alleged was seeking to interfere in the 2016 election by using non-disclosure agreements to prevent unfavorable media coverage about an alleged affair with adult film actress Stormy Daniels that the former president has denied.

Mr. Dershowitz said that Trump attorneys should consider supporting their petition to the New York Court of Appeals by highlighting two issues, with the first relating to the fact that the state’s highest court recently reversed Harvey Weinstein’s rape conviction because the trial judge prejudicially allowed testimony on allegations unrelated to the case. The retired law professor alleged that Judge Juan Merchan “improperly” allowed irrelevant salacious details of President Trump’s alleged tryst with Ms. Daniels to be admitted into the record, while also raising the so-called “missing witness” issue. The second point that Mr. Dershowitz said would bolster a petition for an expedited review to the New York Court of Appeals is that the judge allegedly didn’t instruct the jury properly on why prosecutors didn’t call former Trump Organization CFO Alan Weisselberg to testify in the case. The judge was open to having Mr. Weisselberg testify but the prosecution didn’t call him, framing him as an unreliable witness due to earlier perjury charges in an unrelated case, while the defense also didn’t call him, citing the fact that prosecutors had undermined his credibility.

Mr. Dershowitz argued that failure to call Mr. Weisselberg left a hole in proving the case because it was expected that his testimony would have undermined some of the claims from another witness, former Trump attorney Michael Cohen, who testified against the former president. “Number two, I think would be the failure to give an instruction on the missing witness,” Mr. Dershowitz said. “The way the judge and the prosecution handled Allen Weisselberg really denied the defendant the right to a presumption that the only reason he wasn’t called was because he would not have corroborated the very important testimony, lying testimony of Michael Cohen.” Mr. Dershowitz said those two issues are what Trump attorneys should highlight in their request for an expedited appeal. “This is a winnable appeal,” he insisted.

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“They’ve broken a seal,” Lee said of the Trump conviction. “I don’t know that it can be contained.”

Republicans Vow To Scorch the Earth After Trump Conviction (RCW)

Spurred by the volcanic temper of their base, Republicans are now preparing to scorch the earth in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s conviction, potentially setting off a chain reaction that could fundamentally alter the American political system entirely. No one knows exactly how far they will go in their response. What is clear is that conservatives have no patience for President Biden’s argument Friday morning that justice was served in Manhattan, that “the American principle that no one is above the law was reaffirmed.” They see the conviction instead as unprecedented “lawfare” meant to interfere with the coming election and, some say, an unprecedented response is now in order. “The good guys must be as tough as the villains or freedom is doomed,” senior Trump advisor Stephen Miller told RealClearPolitics without offering exact details. Rep. Mike Collins, meanwhile, was explicit. “Time for Red State AGs and DAs to get busy,” the Georgia Republican said Thursday, floating the idea that Republicans should begin using the courts to pursue their political enemies.

“Hillary Clinton’s campaign-funded Steele dossier is a good start,” Collins continued, referencing how the former Secretary of State’s presidential campaign misreported their spending on the infamous opposition research document. Clinton was later fined $11,000 by the Federal Election Commission. No criminal charges were brought. “The statute of limitations expired but I’m told that’s not a thing anymore,” Collins said. Republicans on Capitol Hill are preparing a more traditional counter-offensive, one within established parliamentary rules. Led by Utah Sen. Mike Lee, eight Republicans have vowed to oppose all major legislation “not directly relevant to the safety of the American people” and blockade all judicial nominees in protest of Trump’s conviction. “We can’t pretend that our political world didn’t change yesterday pretty dramatically and for the worse,” Lee told RCP. The Utah Republican admitted that legislation normally slows ahead of an election but White House efforts to get anything through the Senate “just got a lot harder for them.”

A legislative blockade alone may not satisfy a conservative base hell-bent on retribution. “I don’t want to hear elected Republicans complaining. I don’t need to see their tweets and statements condemning the verdict. The only thing I want to hear from these people is which Democrats they will have arrested. Don’t tell us that you’re sad about the verdict. We don’t give a shit about your feelings. We want to see corrupt Democrats frog marched on camera in handcuffs. If you won’t do that, then shut up,” Matt Walsh, a Daily Wire columnist with a following in the millions, wrote on the social media website X. Replied conservative influencer Chaya Raichik: “Exactly. Where’s the list! Here’s a start: Obama Hillary Joe Biden Hunter Biden.”

Mike Davis, a longtime Republican strategist floated as a potential Trump attorney general, told Axios he wants prosecutors in red states like Georgia and Florida to open criminal probes into Democrats for allegedly conspiring to interfere in the election by indicting the former president. For his part, Lee stopped short of endorsing those efforts. He likened it to some campaigns on the left to pack the Supreme Court, an initiative he has long opposed, warning that it would lead to “lawlessness” and “politicization.” “I think this is an analogous circumstance,” the senator said of the prosecution of a major presidential candidate, something that the Department of Justice has long avoided. “They’ve broken a seal,” Lee said of the Trump conviction. “I don’t know that it can be contained.”

He held out one remote possibility: If Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and his team experience a change of heart during the appeals process. “They could confess error on appeal,” Lee said. “Other instances of lawfare, wherever they exist, could be dropped. You could put this genie back in the bottle still, but not for very much longer.”

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“..You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate, rather than hung from a tree.”

The Fake Conviction (Newt Gingrich)

Americans are now being forced to think through the first fake conviction in the history of presidential politics. As an historian, I am really bothered when I hear lawyers on television describe these proceedings as though they were somehow related to the rule of law and the normal legal process. It is clear that what happened to President Donald J. Trump in Judge Juan Merchan’s court was not a legitimate conviction. Nearly every element of the prosecution was false. Therefore, the outcome is false. To say President Trump is now a convicted felon – as the left and its propaganda media allies are practically singing – is to legitimize the most corrupt judicial event in American presidential history. The burden of proof is not on President Trump. He remains an innocent citizen framed by an astonishingly corrupt district attorney, judge, and Biden Justice Department. Don’t take my word for it alone. Consider what a host of experts have to say.

Alan Dershowitz, professor emeritus at Harvard, sat through much of the trial and condemned it with strong language in his newsletter: “I have observed and participated in trials throughout the world. I have seen justice and injustice in China, Russia, Ukraine, England, France, Italy, Israel, as well as in nearly 40 of our 50 states. But in my 60 years as a lawyer and law professor, I have never seen a spectacle such as the one I observed sitting in the front row of the courthouse yesterday. “The judge in Donald Trump’s trial was an absolute tyrant, though he appeared to the jury to be a benevolent despot. He seemed automatically to be ruling against the defendant at every turn.” George Washington Law professor and legal analyst Jonathan Turley said, “Before jurors left, however, Judge Juan Merchan framed their deliberations in a way that seemed less like a jury deliberation than a canned hunt.” Attorney Mike Davis on the Just the News “No Noise” TV show said: “I would say the first one is there is no crime here. They waited until after this multi-week trial to even tell the criminal defendant what the legal allegations he was supposed to defend himself in that prior trial. He had no opportunity to defend himself.”

An innocent citizen being “hunted,” in Turley’s language, cannot be honestly convicted. That is why I argue this is a fake conviction. Again, I’m not the only one who thinks this. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is hardly a fan of President Trump, said, “These charges never should have been brought in the first place. I expect the conviction to be overturned on appeal.” House Speaker Mike Johnson called it “a shameful day in American history,” and continued, “Alvin Bragg targeted a political opponent, made up unprecedented charges, and denied him his Constitutional right to a fair trial.” House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik summarized the corruption and dishonesty brilliantly: “The facts are clear: this was a zombie case illegally brought forward by a corrupt prosecutor doing Joe Biden’s political bidding in a desperate attempt to save Joe Biden’s failing campaign. She pointed out that the case hinged on the word of Michael Cohen, who has a history of perjury and an axe to grind with Trump.

She pointed out that Judge Merchan’s own family members benefited financially from the case, that he levied unconstitutional gag orders on Trump, and repeatedly sided with the prosecution throughout the case. Mark Steyn captured why we must insist that the conviction is fake and reject any effort to suggest that Trump is guilty. As Steyn wrote: “pretending that there is anything ‘great’ about this that should command our ‘respect,’ is making evil and corruption respectable and bi-partisan.” Ironically, in a Senate hearing involving smears and sexually salacious accusations chaired by then-Sen. Joe Biden 33 years ago, we were taught how to stand up to outrageous, corrupt, and disgusting behavior by then-Supreme Court Justice nominee Clarence Thomas. After being repeatedly slandered by senators on Biden’s committee, on Oct. 11, 1991, Thomas said:

“This is a circus. It’s a national disgrace. And from my standpoint as a black American, as far as I’m concerned, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you. You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate, rather than hung from a tree.” A generation later, President Trump, is learning what Justice Thomas learned in 1991: Challenge the establishment, and it will go all out to destroy you. Every time you talk with someone who says President Trump is a convicted felon, point out it is a fake conviction. Challenge them to defend the dishonest, corrupt people who are putting the nation through this mess – starting with President Biden, the leader of the corrupt and dishonest.

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“Biden is described as a “healthy, active, robust 81-year-old male, who remains fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency, to include those as Chief Executive, Head of State and Commander-in-Chief.”

Joe Biden’s Health Is About To Be Put To A Severe Test (Sadygzade)

The Biden administration managed to keep the discourse surrounding his health out of the mainstream political discussion, and all stumbles and falls were attributed to fatigue and a heavy schedule, or written off as commonplace. However, the situation changed with the publication of Robert Hur’s report in February 2024, where the special prosecutor responsible for investigating a scandal involving Biden’s handling of secret documents commented on his health. Hur’s report states that during his investigation “evidence was found that President Biden intentionally retained and disclosed secret materials after the end of his vice-presidency when he was a private individual.” However, Hur concluded that “the evidence does not support guilt beyond reasonable doubt.” He reasoned that “in court, Mr. Biden would likely appear before the jurors just as he was during our interview with him – a charming, affable elderly man with poor memory.”

In Hur’s opinion, “it would be difficult to convince jurors that they should convict him – the by then former president, deep into his eighties – for a serious criminal offense requiring intent.” The widespread resonance of Hur’s report required immediate action by the Biden administration to mitigate the damage caused by its publication. This response was the publication of the president’s current health report on February 28, 2024. The examination was conducted by the president’s physician Kevin O’Connor from The George Washington University School of Medicine & Health Sciences. According to the document, addressed to the president’s assistant and White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, Biden is described as a “healthy, active, robust 81-year-old male, who remains fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency, to include those as Chief Executive, Head of State and Commander-in-Chief.”

This triggered an additional flurry of discussions about Biden’s health. Questions also arose about the position of the Democratic administration members regarding their support for Biden’s nomination for another presidential term, as Robert Hur is a subordinate of US Attorney General Merrick Garland, a very influential person in the structure of the Democratic party. Given the realities of political life in the US, it is fair to say that a new presidential campaign begins on the day of the inauguration of the elected president. However, the last year, especially the last six months before federal elections, are the most challenging for the candidate. This stage is characterized by frequent trips to undecided states, public appearances at rallies, and participation in debates. All this requires the candidate to have robust health and a significant amount of energy. For the incumbent president, this stage is even more challenging, as he is forced to combine election campaigning with the duties of the President of the United States.

In April of this year, Biden stated in an interview on “The Howard Stern Show” that he plans to participate in debates with the likely candidate from the Republican party, Donald Trump. “I’m happy to debate him,” Biden said, dispelling doubts about his participation in presidential debates, which traditionally take place in three different states. Later, in May, Biden’s team agreed to participate in debates organized by CNN, which are tentatively scheduled for June 27. Biden’s decision to participate in the debates pursues two important goals: to change the public narrative that Biden avoids direct discussion with his Republican opponent, and to improve his standing in the polls (according to most voter surveys, Biden is either trailing Trump or is on par).

If, in order to solve the first task, Biden simply needs to appear on stage at the appointed time; the second task may prove to be more challenging. The incumbent president, like any politician defending his position through participation in debates, needs to be persuasive, logical, and demonstrate mental agility. And all this in the conditions of a 90-minute live broadcast with a very strong debater – Donald Trump. Predicting the possible consequences of Joe Biden’s health on the upcoming elections is mere speculation and guesses. The analysis of possible scenarios directly depends on the actual state of health of the president and his diagnoses, which are unknown to the general public. But undoubtedly, Joe Biden’s health will become one of the main elements of Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric, including during the first face-to-face debates scheduled for June. However, how convincing these arguments will be will depend on Biden’s public appearance during the main summer-autumn phase of the 2024 presidential race.

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40-odd months of open borders later, and 10-20 million illegals, the story will now be: see, we secured the border, as the GOP refused. And half the population will buy that.

Biden Does ‘We Gotta Secure The Border!’ Routine (ZH)

After shredding Donald Trump’s ‘xenophobic’ Executive Orders on border security his first day in office more than three years ago, resulting in what some estimate to be upwards of 20 million illegal migrants pouring into the United States (which Trump plans to deport), President Joe Biden is quietly signing an executive order on Tuesday aimed at slowing migrant crossings. As we noted on Friday, the EO would slash asylum claims by roughly two-thirds of where they stand today – and would cap the number of daily encounters at an average of 2,500 crossings per day (or 912k per year), however Biden would allow mass asylum claims to resume once border encounters fall to around 1,500 per day. US Border Patrol recorded approximately 4,300 daily encounters in April – which of course doesn’t include ‘gotaways’ – those who enter the US without notice. The move comes three months after the White House said Biden was no longer considering using executive action to secure the border.

According to Bloomberg, lawmakers and others have been invited to a Tuesday afternoon event at the White House. The order is Biden’s most aggressive move yet to address the crisis on the US-Mexico border, which has seen record levels of migrants and taxed communities across the country struggling to deal with the influx of new arrivals. A bipartisan Senate plan that would have given Biden similar powers was blocked by Republicans at Trump’s behest earlier this year, denying the president a political win and prompting him to act unilaterally. Tuesday’s order is politically risky. It will invite criticism from Biden’s left flank, which has blasted moves to ramp up deportations as an inhumane approach to the crisis. That has the potential to stymie his efforts to shore up an electoral coalition already riven by divisions over his handling of the Israel-Hamas war and overarching concerns over his age and fitness to serve a second term. -Bloomberg

The Biden administration’s move underscores how the administration has been compelled to act just months before the 2024 US election – as it’s become a centerpiece issue for Republicans on the campaign trail. Donald Trump has been constantly hammering Biden over the border as polls continue to show that voters think the border and immigration are critical issues. The Executive Order is also timed to reflect an effort to deter a seasonal increase in crossings that typically occurs each summer and early fall (right before the election), and comes as Mexico welcomes a new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, who was elected on Sunday. She doesn’t take office until Oct. 1, and it’s unknown what actions she will take on the border situation.

In recent weeks the Biden administration has taken other steps to tighten immigration rules. Last month, they proposed a rule that would allow the US to expedite the expulsion of certain undocumented migrants trying to claim asylum. According to the report, Biden will use Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act – which Trump invoked – which are anticipated to invite legal challenges. House Speaker Mike Johnson told Fox News Sunday that the move is “too little too late,” adding “The only reason he’s doing that is because the polls say that it’s the biggest issue in America.”

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It’s a pattern: taking credit for other people’s achievements. And again: half the population will buy that.

“A Blatant Lie” (Turley)

Winston Churchill once said that “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” It often seems like the Biden White House and campaign has embraced that warning as an operating principle. The most recent target was the veteran Fox news anchor John Roberts, who was accused of airing “a blatant lie” in questioning Biden’s claim that he was the first president to push through a cap of $35 on insulin treatments. Roberts was entirely correct, but the campaign has still not removed the false attack on his integrity and accuracy. In the interests of full disclosure, I am a legal analyst for Fox News and I have known Roberts for decades. There is no one who I hold in higher regard for his integrity or his intellect than John Roberts. We have known and worked with each other at different networks through the years. Roberts is an old-school journalist with impeccable credentials.

Yesterday, the Biden campaign launched the attack on Roberts for his questioning of the claim of President Joe Biden that he solely secured the insulin cap. Roberts remarked that he had a recollection that it was former President Donald Trump who pushed the cap. “I seem to remember that back in May of 2020, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid said that President Trump had signed an executive order to cap the price of insulin for Medicare recipients at 35 bucks. Now, maybe I’m misremembering that, but I think it kind of already happened.” The Biden campaign then called it “a blatant lie” in a posting on X that has reached over a million people. Contrary to the Biden campaign’s claims, Roberts’s recollection was entirely correct. Under the Trump Administration, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced in May 2020 that the Part D Senior Savings Model participating plans would cap insulin copays to $35 per month’s supply, and over 1,750 Medicare Advantage and Medicare Part D plans applied to offer lower insulin costs.

Trump praised the new policy, which was widely covered by the press. There was a Rose Garden event where Trump was praised for his actions: Trump later, in July 2020, signed four executive orders aimed at lowering the cost of insulin. That included Executive Order 13937, which required Federally Qualified Health Centers to pass 340B discounts on to patients. Notably, Biden later reversed Executive Order 13937 before those cost-saving measures could take effect.

This is obviously not the first false statement from the President. However, it is notable that his campaign spread obvious disinformation that was picked up by over a million people but then declined to take down the false claim. The campaign is now in a worse position. To take down the posting is to acknowledge not just that it has lied about Roberts, but that the President lied in taking sole credit for this cap. This is the same administration supporting the banning, blacklisting, and throttling of those responsible for disinformation. I would not support such censorship of the campaign. This and other columns refuting the false account is sufficient to combat a “blatant lie” by the Biden campaign. Whether it is his uncle being eaten by cannibals or insulin caps, free speech can correct false claims without government regulation. However, President Biden and his administration continue to push for censorship of others accused for false or misleading statements. The fact that John Roberts was right is hardly surprising. However, there remains a “blatant lie” on the Biden campaign’s social media that must still be corrected.

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Not only Scott Ritter was pulled off that plane to St Petersburg, so was Judge Nap(olitano).

Freedom of Speech in the USA? Think again! (Gilbert Doctorow)

First there was the news that Scott Ritter, a former U.S. military intelligence officer, was pulled off his plane which, with further flight connections would have taken him to St Petersburg, Russia where he was designated as a high level invited guest and would speak at the International Economic Forum that opens tomorrow. Upon being removed from the plane, his documents were taken from him. He was eventually released but his U.S. passport was kept by officials. Clearly Scott is not headed anywhere for some time. For those of you who have not been paying close attention to the U.S. “dissident movement,” allow me to explain that Scott Ritter has been a very active and widely listened to critic of American foreign policy, particularly as it relates to Russia and the Ukraine war. The weight of his messaging has been reinforced by his having been an insider and implementer of U.S. policies a couple of decades ago. Scott was one of the few U.S. inspectors of Iraq’s alleged programs of weapons of mass destruction. When snippets from his interviews are aired by Russian state television, they never fail to remind audiences of his past in U.S. intelligence.

Following his visit to Russia a year ago to promote a book he had just published, Scott became especially warm to the Putin ‘regime,’ as they would say in Washington. My first reaction upon hearing about this blatantly political act by the Biden Administration to knee-cap its critics and stifle free speech, was to look for an explanation in Ritter’s past military service. This viciousness of powers-that-be against one of their own sounded like what happened in Canada in the year before the onset of Covid to a very widely read and authoritative blogger, Patrick Armstrong. He was a former diplomat and had served in the Canadian embassy in Russia. Armstrong was visited by Justin Trudeau’s storm troopers who advised him to close his blog lest he lose not only his state pension but all of his savings. Patrick understood where things stood and fell silent. However, the follow-up news on the Yandex-Dzen website regarding events in Scott Ritter’s plane yesterday is still more damaging to my vision of free speech in the U.S.A. at present.

One other passenger was taken off the plane by U.S. government officials to prevent his appearing at the St Petersburg Economic Forum: Judge Andrew Napolitano. Judge Napolitano is the moderator of the very widely watched interview program “Judging Freedom” which is disseminated on youtube as well as on the main social media. He is a very responsible and informative critic of U.S. foreign policy, as are his regular guests. He is at the higher level of intellectual discourse a peer to the journalist Tucker Carlson who caters to the hoi polloi. He also is known for defending Donald Trump’s positions on a variety of issues. The deprivation of travel rights served on Judge Napolitano is a gross infringement of freedom of speech that the Biden administration cannot live down. All talk from the Oval Office of defending American democracy is shown through actions like these to be crass lies and utter hypocrisy. It is a long way to the November elections, but hopefully American voters will ‘throw the bums out’ and save what is left of freedom of speech.

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“..Lavrov argued that Switzerland was no longer a neutral party and had “turned from neutral to openly hostile.”

Swiss Senate Votes Against Aid For Kiev (RT)

Switzerland’s upper house of parliament rejected a 5 billion Swiss franc ($5.58 billion) aid package to finance the reconstruction of Ukraine on Monday. Lawmakers cited concerns that it would violate borrowing restrictions in the neutral country, Reuters has reported. The proposed aid was part of a wider package that also included additional funding for the Swiss military, the outlet said. The Council of States, one of Switzerland’s two houses of parliament, announced plans to set up a special 15-billion-franc ($16.7 billion) fund in April, proposing to allocate 10.1 billion francs to the Swiss Army and send the rest to Ukraine to support its economic development and reconstruction. The fund, despite initially being backed by a Swiss parliamentary committee, had faced opposition from right-wing lawmakers and was widely expected to be defeated, the report noted.

With 28 votes against and 15 in favor, the House rejected both the additional funding for the Swiss Army and the reconstruction aid for Ukraine. Opposition came from the conservative Swiss People’s Party (SVP) and the liberals from the Free Democratic Party (FDP), as well as from left-wing parties. According to the report, lawmakers argued that the package would breach a so-called “debt brake” provision in Switzerland, and would result in budget restrictions.In May, the Federal Council indicated that neither the funding for the Swiss military nor the aid for Ukraine met the “statutory requirements for extraordinary expenditure.” “The contribution amount can be controlled, which is why this expenditure cannot be recognized as extraordinary,” the government said.

The Council noted that the creation of such a fund under special legislation would have to be properly financed, whether through savings or additional revenue. The latest funding was rejected two weeks before the Swiss government is due to host a summit on the Ukraine crisis. The so-called ‘peace conference’ is scheduled to take place on June 15 and 16 at the Burgenstock Resort near Lucerne. Russia has not been invited to the summit. Switzerland has been under increased pressure from Western countries urging Bern to provide more help to Kiev. While refusing to supply Ukraine with military aid, citing its long-term neutrality policy, Bern has provided economic and humanitarian funding worth over $3 billion since the start of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, according to Swiss government data. In April, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov argued that Switzerland was no longer a neutral party and had “turned from neutral to openly hostile.”

Mearsheimer

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Might not go smooth.

NATO Member Turkiye Would Like to Join BRICS – Top Diplomat (Sp.)

BRICS was established in 2009 as a cooperation platform for the world’s largest emerging economies, bringing together Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. On January 1, 2024, the bloc was expanded to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. Turkiye would like to become a member of BRICS and will monitor the developments in the organization, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said on Tuesday. “Certainly, we would like to become a member of BRICS. So we’ll see how it goes this year,” Fidan said during an event at the Centre for China and Globalisation (CCG) in Beijing, as quoted by the South China Morning Post newspaper. The BRICS bloc outperformed the G7 – the conglomerate of wealthy industrialized nations – in GDP in 2022. According to a forecast, BRICS economies will account for more than 50 percent of global GDP by 2030. Russian President Vladimir Putin said that BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization have become key pillars in the emerging multipolar world.

Economic experts stress that BRICS is also a locomotive of de-dollarization of the global economy since members of this bloc are increasingly switching to national currencies in trade relations – for instance, 90% of settlements between Russian and Chinese companies are now made in rubles and yuans The BRICS doubled its membership last year, becoming the BRICS+ after including Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates on January 1, 2024. Russia welcomes Turkiye’s interest towards BRICS, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on uesday. “We, of course, all welcome this increased interest in BRICS on the part of our neighboring states, including our important partners such as Turkiye. Of course, the topic of this interest will be on the agenda of the BRICS summit, which will be chaired by Russia,” Peskov told reporters.

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“..training exercises have exposed red tape and infrastructure bottlenecks that prevent the rapid transfer of personnel and materiel across the continent.”

NATO Preparing Troop Plans For Potential Russia Conflict – Telegraph (RT)

NATO is working on plans to rush tens of thousands of US troops along “land corridors” in Europe in the event of war with Russia, a senior strategist has told The Telegraph. Last year, members of the US-led military bloc agreed to keep 300,000 troops ready for deployment, purportedly in response to a potential Russian attack. However, training exercises have exposed red tape and infrastructure bottlenecks that prevent the rapid transfer of personnel and materiel across the continent. NATO military leadership is therefore working to ensure that the flow of troops would not be stopped by likely Russian strikes on ports used by the US military to unload its cargos, The Telegraph reported on Tuesday.

“It is clear that huge logistics bases, as we know it from Afghanistan and Iraq, are no longer possible because they will be attacked and destroyed very early on in a conflict situation,” Lieutenant General Alexander Sollfrank, head of NATO’s JSEC logistics command, told the newspaper. The primary route for American troops in the event of war with Russia would be via the Dutch port of Rotterdam to Germany and Poland, the report said. Alternative corridors would start in Italy, Greece, and Türkiye, and would respectively run through Slovenia and Croatia to Hungary and through Bulgaria and Romania. There are also plans to involve Norway, Sweden, and Finland for backup logistics.

The US and its allies have claimed that Moscow could attack NATO, and that sending arms to Ukraine to fight Russia will help stall or prevent that outcome. Moscow has denied having any such intentions, and has accused Western governments of creating false threats to deceive their populations over the Ukraine conflict. Russian officials have described the hostilities with Ukraine as a US-initiated proxy war aimed at undermining Russian development, in which Ukrainian soldiers serve as “cannon fodder” while weapons, intelligence, training, and planning is contributed by the West. A direct conflict with NATO would be an existential threat to Russia, according to Moscow, considering the bloc’s superiority in conventional forces. Consequently, any such clash would warrant the deployment of nuclear weapons under Russian nuclear doctrine, it has warned.

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“If we go all the way with this mechanism, it must work. If it doesn’t work, we have to reform it. That’s the future of the European Union.”

Punish Hungary To Ensure EU’s Future – Bloc Presidency Holder Belgium (RT)

The EU should strip Hungary of its voting rights to safeguard the union’s future, Belgian Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib has argued. Budapest is scheduled to take over the EU Council’s rotating presidency in July. Belgium, the current holder, is in a group of countries voicing frustration over Hungary’s opposition to key EU plans – including support for Ukraine in the conflict with Russia. “I think we need to have the courage to make decisions: go right to the end of Article 7, activate Article 7 right to the end, which provides for the end of the right of veto,” the Belgian diplomat told Politico on Sunday. Article 7, which involves a suspension of voting rights, is often referred to as a “nuclear option” against member states considered to have breached the EU’s values.

The European Parliament voted to launch the procedure against Hungary in 2018, accusing Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government of undermining the rule of law through alleged attacks on the media and judiciary – but the process stalled due to disagreements between member states. Orban is a vocal critic of the Western stance on the Ukraine crisis. He has argued that the arming of Kiev against Moscow has failed to stop the hostilities, and that sanctions have inflicted more harm on the EU than on Russia. Budapest has repeatedly used its veto power to block trade restrictions on Russia that it views as a threat to Hungarian interests, and to restrict funding for Ukraine. Lahbib accused the Orban government of “increasingly adopting a transactional, blocking and veto attitude” to the bloc’s affairs.

“This is a moment of truth,” she said of the Article 7 threat. “If we go all the way with this mechanism, it must work. If it doesn’t work, we have to reform it. That’s the future of the European Union.” Hungary is the only EU member currently facing such proceedings. In May, Brussels dropped a similar inquiry into Poland’s domestic policies. Warsaw aligns with Brussels on Ukraine, but until recently had a conservative government that opposed it on other matters, including refugees and LGBT rights. This changed last December, when Donald Tusk – a longtime EU supporter and former president of the European Council – returned to office as Polish prime minister. “You can do anything as long as you’re one of them, as long you’re part of the Brussels mainstream,” Polish MEP Radoslaw Fogiel said at the time, in an interview with the news outlet Hungarian Conservative.

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The man that Belgium thinks should be punished:

“We must not forget that the war is waged by people, and these very people, if they are willing, have every opportunity to make peace..”

Orban Believes Trump, EU Could End Ukrainian Conflict In 24 Hours (TASS)

Donald Trump, the potential Republican candidate in the US presidential election, and the European Union could put an end to the conflict in Ukraine in 24 hours, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said. “If Trump and the EU wanted to end the war [in Ukraine], they could have done it in 24 hours. We must not forget that the war is waged by people, and these very people, if they are willing, have every opportunity to make peace. I think that if Trump became president, he could achieve a ceasefire in Ukraine in one day, and then start talks,” the prime minister told the Il Giornale newspaper. According to him, the EU strategy on the Ukrainian issue has failed even from a tactical point of view. “We don’t understand that we are playing with fire. We should ask ourselves what are Europe’s strategic interests and demand a ceasefire. Our citizens want peace, not war, which could be a political game,” Orban added.

The prime minister said that he expects a new right-wing majority in the European Parliament after the elections scheduled for June 8-9. “The current European Commission has failed on the agricultural issue, on the conflicts, on the migration issue, on the economy, and now its leadership must go. Strengthening democracy means electing a new commission, different from the current one, which was the worst in my memory,” Orban said. At the same time, he hinted that much depended on the decision of his Italian counterpart Giorgia Meloni, the leader of the European conservatives, and Marine Le Pen, the leader of the French National Rally party’s parliamentary group. “The right-wing parties must cooperate, we are in the hands of two women who must come to an agreement,” the Hungarian prime minister concluded.

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“..you need to return to being reporters and not advocates; you need to start reaching an audience larger than yourself and your friends.”

People are Not Reading Your Stuff: Publisher Drops Truth Bomb at WaPo (Turley)

Washington Post publisher and CEO William Lewis is being denounced this week after the end of the short-lived tenure of Executive Editor Sally Buzbee and delivering a truth bomb to the staff. Lewis told them that they have lost their audience and “people are not reading your stuff.” It was a shot of reality in the echo chambered news outlet and the response was predictable. However, Lewis just might save this venerable newspaper if he follows his frank talk with meaningful reforms to bring balance back to the Post. As someone who once wrote for the Washington Post regularly, I have long lamented the decline of the paper following a pronounced shift toward partisan and advocacy journalism. There was a time when the Post valued diversity of thought and steadfastly demanded staff write not as advocates but reporters. That began to change rapidly in the first Trump term.

Suddenly, I found editors would slow walk copy, contest every line of your column, and make unfounded claims. In the meantime, they were increasingly running unsupported legal columns and even false statements from authors on the left. When confronted about columnists with demonstrably false statements, the Post simply shrugged. One of the most striking examples was after its columnist Philip Bump had a meltdown in an interview when confronted over past false claims. After I wrote a column about the litany of such false claims, the Post surprised many of us by issuing a statement that they stood by all of Bump’s reporting, including false columns on the Lafayette Park protests, Hunter Biden laptop and other stories. That was long after other media debunked the claims, but the Post stood by the false reporting.

The decline of the Post has followed a familiar pattern. The editors and reporters simply wrote off half of their audience and became a publication for largely liberal and Democratic readers. In these difficult economic times with limited revenue sources, it is a lethal decision. Yet, for editors and reporters, it is still professionally beneficial to embrace advocacy journalism even if it is reducing the readership of your own newspaper. Lewis, a British media executive who joined the Post earlier this year, reportedly got into a “heated exchange” with a staffer. Lewis explained that, while reporters were protesting measures to expand readership, the very survival of the paper was now at stake: “We are going to turn this thing around, but let’s not sugarcoat it. It needs turning around,” Lewis said. “We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. Right. I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.” Other staffers could not get beyond the gender and race of those who would be overseeing them. One staffer complained “we now have four White men running three newsrooms.”

The Post has been buying out staff to avoid mass layoffs, but reporters are up in arms over the effort to turn the newspaper around. The question is whether, after years of creating a culture of advocacy journalism and woke reporting, the Post is still capable of reaching a larger audience. If you want to read about certain stories, you are not likely to go to the Post, NPR or other outlets. Likewise, with reporters referring to the January 6th riot as an “insurrection,” there is little doubt for the reader that the coverage is a form of advocacy. Again, such stories can affirm the bona fides for reporters, but they also affirm the bias for readers. I truly do hope that the Washington Post can recover. The newspaper has played a critical role in our history and a towering example of journalism at its very best from the Pentagon Papers to Watergate. If you want people to “read your stuff,” you need to return to being reporters and not advocates; you need to start reaching an audience larger than yourself and your friends.

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“Americans should pray it never actually has to defend the United States..”

The Military-Industrial Complex Is Killing Us All (Vine/Arriola)

The Emergence of a Monster: To face what it would take to dismantle the MIC, it’s first necessary to understand how it was born and what it looks like today. Given its startling size and intricacy, we and a team of colleagues created a series of graphics to help visualize the MIC and the harm it inflicts, which we’re sharing publicly for the first time.

The MIC was born after World War II from, as Eisenhower explained, the “conjunction of an immense military establishment” — the Pentagon, the armed forces, intelligence agencies, and others — “and a large arms industry.” Those two forces, the military and the industrial, united with Congress to form an unholy “Iron Triangle” or what some scholars believe Eisenhower initially and more accurately called the military-industrial–congressional complex. To this day those three have remained the heart of the MIC, locked in a self-perpetuating cycle of legalized corruption (that also features all too many illegalities). The basic system works like this: First, Congress takes exorbitant sums of money from us taxpayers every year and gives it to the Pentagon. Second, the Pentagon, at Congress’s direction, turns huge chunks of that money over to weapons makers and other corporations via all too lucrative contracts, gifting them tens of billions of dollars in profits. Third, those contractors then use a portion of the profits to lobby Congress for yet more Pentagon contracts, which Congress is generally thrilled to provide, perpetuating a seemingly endless cycle.

But the MIC is more complicated and insidious than that. In what’s effectively a system of legalized bribery, campaign donations regularly help boost Pentagon budgets and ensure the awarding of yet more lucrative contracts, often benefiting a small number of contractors in a congressional district or state. Such contractors make their case with the help of a virtual army of more than 900 Washington-based lobbyists. Many of them are former Pentagon officials, or former members of Congress or congressional staffers, hired through a “revolving door” that takes advantage of their ability to lobby former colleagues. Such contractors also donate to think tanks and university centers willing to support increased Pentagon spending, weapons programs, and a hyper-militarized foreign policy. Ads are another way to push weapons programs on elected officials.

Such weapons makers also spread their manufacturing among as many Congressional districts as possible, allowing senators and representatives to claim credit for jobs created. MIC jobs, in turn, often create cycles of dependency in low-income communities that have few other economic drivers, effectively buying the support of locals. For their part, contractors regularly engage in legalized price gouging, overcharging taxpayers for all manner of weapons and equipment. In other cases, contractor fraud literally steals taxpayer money. The Pentagon is the only government agency that has never passed an audit — meaning it literally can’t keep track of its money and assets — yet it still receives more from Congress than every other government agency combined.

As a system, the MIC ensures that Pentagon spending and military policy are driven by contractors’ search for ever-higher profits and the reelection desires of members of Congress, not by any assessment of how to best defend the country. The resulting military is unsurprisingly shoddy, especially given the money spent. Americans should pray it never actually has to defend the United States. No other industry — not even Big Pharma or Big Oil — can match the power of the MIC in shaping national policy and dominating spending. Military spending is, in fact, now larger (adjusting for inflation) than at the height of the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Iraq, or, in fact, at any time since World War II, despite the absence of a threat remotely justifying such spending. Many now realize that the primary beneficiary of more than 22 years of endless U.S. wars in this century has been the industrial part of the MIC, which has made hundreds of billions of dollars since 2001. “Who Won in Afghanistan? Private Contractors” was the Wall Street Journal‘s all too apt headline in 2021.

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Musk: on X: “Laura “Liar” Kolodny”.

The move makes a lot of sense.

Musk Corrects “Liar” CNBC Journo Over Nvidia Report (ZH)

Another day, another Tesla report to take with a big grain of salt until further notice. In the latest report from CNBC, citing “emails written by Nvidia senior staff” and “correspondence from Nvidia staffers” that “Musk presented an exaggerated picture of Tesla’s procurement” of Nvidia’s flagship artificial intelligence chip, the H100, diverting “a sizable shipment of AI processors” from Tesla to X and xAI. Update: Further notice has occurred… the salt was wise. In a Tuesday morning post on X, Musk said: “Tesla had no place to send the Nvidia chips to turn them on, so they would have just sat in a warehouse,” adding “The south extension of Giga Texas is almost complete. This will house 50k H100s for FSD training.” According to Musk, “Of the roughly $10B in AI-related expenditures I said Tesla would make this year, about half is internal, primarily the Tesla-designed AI inference computer and sensors present in all of our cars, plus Dojo,” adding that Nvidia hardware “is about 2/3 of the cost.”

Musk estimated that Tesla purchases of Nvidia hardware will be “$3B to $4B this year.” As CNBC continues; By ordering Nvidia to let privately held X jump the line ahead of Tesla, Musk pushed back the automaker’s receipt of more than $500 million in graphics processing units, or GPUs, by months, likely adding to delays in setting up the supercomputers Tesla says it needs to develop autonomous vehicles and humanoid robots. “Elon prioritizing X H100 GPU cluster deployment at X versus Tesla by redirecting 12k of shipped H100 GPUs originally slated for Tesla to X instead,” an Nvidia memo from December said. “In exchange, original X orders of 12k H100 slated for Jan and June to be redirected to Tesla.”

A more recent Nvidia email, from late April, said Musk’s comment on the first-quarter Tesla call “conflicts with bookings” and that his April post on X about $10 billion in AI spending also “conflicts with bookings and FY 2025 forecasts.” The email referenced news about Tesla’s ongoing, drastic layoffs and warned that headcount reductions could cause further delays with an “H100 project” at Tesla’s Texas Gigafactory. The new information from the emails, read by CNBC, highlights an escalating conflict between Musk and some agitated Tesla shareholders who question whether the billionaire CEO is fulfilling his obligations to Tesla while also running a collection of other companies that require his attention, resources and hefty amounts of capital. Really? Does it highlight the escalating conflict?

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But he will remain in jail because of all the other indictments.

Pakistan Overturns Imran Khan’s Treason Conviction (RT)

The Islamabad High Court on Monday vacated the former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s conviction for leaking state secrets. He remains behind bars, however, for allegedly violating Islamic tradition with his marriage. Khan, 71, was ousted in April 2022. Since then, he has faced over 100 indictments, which his party has denounced as politically motivated. The state secrets case saw him sentenced to ten years in prison in February, just ahead of the national elections. “Thank God, the sentence is overturned,” Naeem Panjutha, a spokesman for Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, said after the court announced its decision. Former foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi (2018-2022) was also acquitted of the charges. Khan has cited a classified cable as proof that the Pakistani military conspired with the US to overthrow his government after he visited Russia. The US has denied the accusation.

The government in Islamabad has claimed that by revealing the contents of the cable, Khan violated the state secrets law. “It is a fact that a national security document was used for political purposes,” government spokesman for legal issues Aqeel Malik said at a press conference on Monday, noting that PM Shehbaz Sharif’s government might appeal Khan’s acquittal to the Supreme Court. Two other convictions against Khan, handed out just days before the February 8 vote, have been stayed pending appeal. In one case, he and his wife Bushra were sentenced to 14 years for illegally selling state gifts. Khan remains in prison because of the seven-year conviction for allegedly violating Islamic tradition by marrying Bushra too soon after her divorce. According to his party, the case has no leg to stand on, as Bushra herself had the sole right to decide on the timing of the marriage.

Multiple convictions have been used to bar Khan and PTI from running for office in the February election. The party’s candidates still got 93 out of the 266 directly elected seats in the legislature, but were kept from power by a coalition of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), which won 54 and 73 seats, respectively. While Monday’s acquittal is a “huge political and legal victory” for Khan, the cricket-star-turned-politician won’t be released any time soon, journalist and political analyst Mazhar Abbas told Reuters.

Read more …

 

 

From Jim Kunstler’s site. Obviously, we have the same issues. Credit card expiration is a point that warrants attention. Our Patreon revenue is down 25%. So is Paypal.

“Note to Readers: We’ve just come through the time of year when credit cards expire. My Patreon revenue is down and I doubt it is because you’re disappointed in this blog’s content. Plus, it comes to you absolutely reliably twice-a-week, without fail. You can continue reading it for free — there’s no pay-wall — but just know that I depend on this support to make a living. Back in the day, a newspaper would pay me a salary, but this is no longer that day and now public voices like mine must perform like buskers on the street. Acknowledging that times are tough and getting tougher, if you are a regular reader here, please consider kicking in maybe two bucks a month for the eight blog-columns you’ll get and probably appreciate, just as I will be grateful to get paid for the work I do putting them out there. Just sayin’. . . .”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Orca
https://twitter.com/i/status/1797838232970834430

 

 

Hug
https://twitter.com/i/status/1798046998677115057

 

 

Excavator

 

 

Owl head
https://twitter.com/i/status/1797883246233231396

 

 

Mom
https://twitter.com/i/status/1797738846701969634

 

 

Pick up
https://twitter.com/i/status/1797671289047703651

 

 

Dog toys
https://twitter.com/i/status/1797975287755641010

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

May 172024
 


Leonard Misonne Waterloo Place, London 1899

 

Why Trials Like Trump’s Must Be Televised (Alan M. Dershowitz)
Trump Lawyer “Dog Walks” Michael Cohen Through Lie After Lie (ZH)
Trump Believes a ‘Great Silent Majority’ Will Vote for Him in November (ET)
Joe Biden Invokes Executive Privilege Over Special Counsel Recordings (ZH)
Freezing the Arms Shipment to Israel Not an Impeachable Offense (Turley)
Martin Armstrong: ‘West Governments Need War’ (SF)
Zelensky Blames ‘Whole World’ For Ukraine’s Failures In Kharkov (RT)
Slovakia Faces ‘Civil War’ – Interior Minister (RT)
Hunter Biden Loses Bid to Halt Tax Evasion Court Proceedings (ET)
“We’ve Had A Hell Of A Run”: Druckenmiller Sells 441,000 Shares Of Nvidia (ZH)
Biden Should Have Pardoned Trump – Romney (RT)
‘Big Blunder’ To Let China And Russia Get Close – US Strategist (RT)

 

 

Vivek debate

 

 

Ogles

 

 

Xi Putin
https://x.com/i/status/1791264681694556387

 

 

Videos are being transferred from twitter.com to X.com. It is not going seamless. Should improve as the day goes by.

 

 

Moose
https://x.com/i/status/1790990564646609003

tiktokers
https://x.com/i/status/1791220831252595119

 

 

 

 

Spectacle?!

Why Trials Like Trump’s Must Be Televised (Alan M. Dershowitz)

If you were flipping between CNN and Fox News following the cross-examination of Stormy Daniels in the New York criminal case against former President Donald Trump, you would have had the impression that the CNN commentator, who professed to be reporting what happened in the courtroom, described a completely different event from what the Fox News reporter, who was also in the courtroom, described. It was as if they had seen two different witnesses and two different lawyers. The CNN commentator reported that Daniels had done a great job holding up against the incompetent cross-examination of Trump’s lawyer. The Fox News commentator reported that the extraordinarily effective Trump lawyer had totally destroyed Daniels’ credibility. Who were you to believe? The CNN commentator was an experienced lawyer who was purporting to describe accurately what had happened without bias or subjectivity.

The Fox News commentator was a former judge and prosecutor with vast experience, who also claimed to be describing the cross-examination without bias. Neither of the commentators even pretended to paint a gray picture. One was starkly black, the other unambiguously white. No nuance in either account. If the trial had been televised, the dominant color would have been gray. Perry Mason cross-examinations rarely occur in real life, and witnesses like Daniels rarely emerge unscathed from cross-examinations even by mediocre lawyers. We, the American public, however, have been denied the right to judge for ourselves how the case against the once and possibly future president is going. We cannot judge the credibility of witnesses, the fairness of the judge or the effectiveness of the lawyers. We must depend on the subjective and generally biased accounts of often partisan “reporters.”

Polls following the OJ Simpson case suggested that those who personally watched the trial on TV were less surprised by the not guilty verdict than those who only read about it in the media, which generally described it as an open and shut case and predicted a guilty verdict. They downplayed or omitted the gaps in the prosecution case and the mistakes made by prosecutors that may have led jurors to find reasonable doubt. The same may be true of the Trump case, except that everyone is seeing the case through the prism of the reporters, rather than with their own eyes. Those who get their “news” from anti-Trump sources will be surprised and outraged if there is an acquittal or hung jury in this “strong” case. Those who get their “news” from pro-Trump sources will be surprised and outraged by a conviction in this “weak” case.

The result of making us rely on partisan secondary sources rather than our own direct observations is inevitable distrust in the justice system. If “Sunlight is the best disinfectant,” lack of visibility is a major source of distrust. Every important trial involving public figures should be televised. Now the trial of Senator Robert Menendez is starting. It, too, should be publicized so that the public can see how the judiciary deals with an important case involving a member of the legislative branch. Even the Supreme Court now permits live audio broadcasts of important appellate cases. Hopefully, they will soon allow telecasting since there is little difference between listening and seeing the justices and the lawyers. The framers of the Constitution intended all judicial proceedings to be public – no secret trials. At the time of the framing, public meant open to print journalists. Today, public means audio and video publication.

The New York trial of Trump is a national scandal. There is no real crime. The judge has allowed testimony that is highly prejudicial and irrelevant. He has made numerous unfair rulings, of which the prosecution has taken advantage. The public has the right to see this abuse with their own eyes, so that we all can judge for ourselves and not allow possibly biased reporters to judge for us. Now the government’s star witness is testifying. Michael Cohen’s credibility promises to be a key factor in the jury’s deliberation. Every citizen should have a right to make his or her own assessment of his credibility or lack thereof. There is no good argument for allowing CNN to tell us whether he is believable, when we might come to a different conclusion based on direct observation with our own eyes.

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Star witness, blindsided by prank calls from a 14-year old.

Trump Lawyer “Dog Walks” Michael Cohen Through Lie After Lie (ZH)

President Donald Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen had his “knees chopped out” by Donald Trump’s defense attorneys in cross-examination during Trump’s ‘hush money’ trial. Cohen was grilled by Trump attorney Todd Blanche about a pivotal phone call that connected Trump to allegations that he approved reimbursements to pay porn star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election. In one exchange, Blanche accused Cohen of lying about speaking with Trump on the phone in October 2016 to reassure his boss that he was handling the payment to Daniels. Blanche then confronted Cohen with text messages that contradicted the lie – revealing that Cohen in fact spoke with Trump’s bodyguard, Keith Schiller. Trump attorney Todd Blanche grilled him about a pivotal phone call that had connected President Trump to the allegations at the center of the case.

He accused Mr. Cohen of calling the former president’s bodyguard, Keith Schiller, to complain about harassing phone calls—not to disclose an update on a plan to purchase the silence of Ms. Clifford. Mr. Cohen said that the prank calls were a part of the conversation with Mr. Schiller. “Now your memory is that you were testifying truthfully on Tuesday, and you had enough time to update Mr. Schiller about all the problems you were having with these harassing calls?” Mr. Blanche asked him. “I always run everything by the boss immediately,” Mr. Cohen said. “It could’ve just been me saying, ‘everything’s been taken care of, it’s been resolved.’” “That was a lie. You did not talk to President Trump that night,” Mr. Blanche said. “You can admit it.” “No sir, I can’t,” Mr. Cohen said. “Because I’m not sure that’s accurate.” “This jury doesn’t want to hear what you think happened,” Mr. Blanche said. -Epoch Times. Cohen appeared blindsided by the line of questioning, and wavered in his recollection of the phone call before blurting out “I believe I was telling the truth!”

Blanche then slapped Cohen around for telling Congress that he didn’t want to work in the Trump administration – only to be confronted with conversations in 2016 in which he expressed disappointment that he was overlooked for the role of Trump’s chief of staff. Cohen also lied about seeking a pardon from Trump, for which his attorneys later had to issue a statement to correct the record. After Cohen had his ass handed to him, CNN pundits were beside themselves. “It was incredible…lawyers want to build a box around the witness & slam it shut–that’s what Todd Blanche did to Cohen…it was an extraordinary cross…Cohen was cornered in…a lie,” said host Anderson Cooper. The network’s top legal analyst said “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a star witness get his knees chopped out quite as clearly and dramatically as what just happened with Michael Cohen.”

https://x.com/i/status/1791174382288765323

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“It’s got to come down much more. That’s a lot of inflation, their number they announced.”

Trump Believes a ‘Great Silent Majority’ Will Vote for Him in November (ET)

Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he believes he has a “great silent majority” who will vote for him during the 2024 election. While speaking to radio host Hugh Hewitt, the former president claimed that he may have the “biggest ever” silent majority, using a term that was popularized by former President Richard Nixon in 1969. He then made reference to the relatively large crowd turnout during last weekend’s rally in Wildwood, New Jersey. “I have a great silent majority … the term was very, very powerfully associated with Nixon, and I didn’t want to be copying the term actually, so it’s the great silent majority,” President Trump said, adding that he believes that 107,000 people attended the Wildwood rally. The Epoch Times could not immediately authenticate that figure. The former president in 2020 made similar claims about a silent majority turning out in droves for him during that year’s election.

But the term was famously used by President Nixon to refer to conservative voters who did not participate in the current political discourse at the time, later resurfacing in the campaigns of former President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. In his interview with Mr. Hewitt, the former president said that he believes inflation may cause some voters to cast ballots in favor of him, coming after the Labor Department released figures Wednesday showing that the consumer price index slightly eased in April. “It’s a lot of inflation when added to the inflation that we’ve suffered that’s been so bad,” President Trump said, likely referring to years of rising prices since the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. “It’s got to come down much more. That’s a lot of inflation, their number they announced.” The former president’s remarks on Wednesday come as a recent poll from Siena College shows that President Joe Biden is trialing the former president in five of six battleground states.

President Trump, notably, is ahead by 6 percentage points in Arizona, 11 points in Georgia, and 13 points in Nevada, the survey revealed. He’s ahead about 3 points in Pennsylvania and 1 point in Wisconsin, while is down by 1 point to President Biden in Michigan. In the 2020 election, races were called for President Biden in all of those states mentioned in the Siena College survey. In a Wall Street Journal poll conducted in April, President Trump garnered a lead of between 2 and 8 percentage points among voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and North Carolina on a ballot that included third-party and independent candidates. The results were similar in a one-on-one matchup with President Biden, it said.

The former president also was viewed as having better physical and mental fitness for the job by 48 percent of respondents, compared to 28 percent for President Biden, the poll showed. Meanwhile, a recent Reuters-Ipsos poll showed that more Americans believe President Trump would handle the economy better than President Biden. Some 41 percent of respondents in the three-day poll said the former president has the better approach, compared to 34 percent for the current president.

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“Because of the President’s longstanding commitment to protecting the integrity, effectiveness, and independence of the Department of Justice and its law enforcement investigations….

…he won’t let us see any of it…”

Joe Biden Invokes Executive Privilege Over Special Counsel Recordings (ZH)

After the DOJ stonewalled over surrendering an audio recording of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s interview with President Joe Biden over his handling of classified documents, the White House has invoked executive privilege to block House Republicans from obtaining it. On Wednesday, Attorney General Merrick Garland requested that Biden assert executive privilege over the recordings following a subpoena from the House Judiciary and Oversight committees. “Because of the President’s longstanding commitment to protecting the integrity, effectiveness, and independence of the Department of Justice and its law enforcement investigations, he has decided to assert executive privilege over the recordings,” said White House counsel Ed Siskel in a letter obtained by The Hill. The Feb. 27 subpoena requested copies of notes, audio files, video and transcripts related to Hur’s probe, and had a deadline of March 7.

“Americans expect equal justice under the law and DOJ is allowing the Bidens to operate above it,” House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) said in an April statement. “Special Counsel Hur’s report outlined that classified documents Joe Biden stashed for years relate to countries where his family cashed in on the Biden brand.” In response to a request for audio of what author Mark Zwonitzer recorded while interviewing Biden, whose two memoirs he wrote, Assistant AG Carlos Felipe Uriarte said there is no need for the department to hand it over because the committees also have transcripts of the interviews. “To go further by producing the audio files would compound the likelihood that future prosecutors will be unable to secure this level of cooperation,” Uriarte wrote.

“They might have a harder time obtaining consent to an interview at all. It is clearly not in the public interest to render such cooperation with prosecutors and investigators less likely in the future.” Uriarte then reiterated that the DOJ has provided ample evidence to the committees. Hur’s 345-page report concluded that no charges should be brought against Biden due to cognitive decline. “We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” Hur wrote. Hur cited 2017 conversations between Biden and Zwontizer, which Hur described as “painfully slow, with Mr. Biden struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries.”

Hur

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“President Trump will not be our last president and what we leave in the wake of this scandal will shape our democracy for generations to come..”

Freezing the Arms Shipment to Israel Not an Impeachable Offense (Turley)

Political analysts on the left and the right have acknowledged that Biden’s hardened stance toward Israel is due to his faltering poll numbers and the threat that he could lose Michigan and Minnesota in the upcoming election. A loss in Michigan, where the state’s large Muslim population has rejected Biden’s past support for Israel, would likely doom his chances for reelection. Even assuming that Biden’s recent changes were motivated by politics in Michigan (which I believe is a fair assessment), it would not be a high crime and misdemeanor. Presidents routinely act out of political interests. Indeed, a democracy involves using one’s voting power to influence politicians like Biden to change policy. The more than 100,000 “uncommitted” votes in Michigan’s Democratic primary clearly spooked the Biden White House.

To impeach presidents for such discretionary conduct would make impeachment a type of “vote of no confidence” device used in countries like the United Kingdom. That is not the purpose of impeachment, which was meant to be a rarely-used measure to address the most egregious forms of presidential misconduct. The recent resolution falls into a type of “just desserts” rationale for impeachment. I testified in the first Trump impeachment and opposed it on constitutional grounds. I warned Democrats that they would rue the day that they lowered the standard and short-circuited the process for impeachment. At the time, I told the House Judiciary Committee: “President Trump will not be our last president and what we leave in the wake of this scandal will shape our democracy for generations to come.

I am concerned about lowering impeachment standards to fit a paucity of evidence and an abundance of anger. If the House proceeds solely on the Ukrainian allegations, this impeachment would stand out among modern impeachments as the shortest proceeding, with the thinnest evidentiary record, and the narrowest grounds ever used to impeach a president. That does not bode well for future presidents who are working in a country often sharply and, at times, bitterly divided.” After ignoring that warning, Democrats went a step further in the second impeachment in 2021 and used what I called a “snap impeachment” in an attempt to punish Trump for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.It would be an easy thing to say “well, turnabout is fair play, so a pox upon their house.”

The problem is that this is the people’s house and we all are harmed by the destruction of the impeachment process. Democrats were wrong in 2019 and 2021 to impeach Trump, but yielding to the same political motives now is no virtue. Ironically, the new impeachment resolution does precisely what Biden is accused of doing: using constitutionally bestowed powers for raw political purposes. The White House has insisted that this latest effort is “ridiculous.” Except that isn’t ridiculous given Democrats’ past actions. But it is equally wrong.

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“I named my computer model after Socrates because the oracle of Delphi had said that he was the smartest man in Greece.”

Martin Armstrong: ‘West Governments Need War’ (SF)

Your predictive model is based on precise calculations. The cycles of history and the economy thus seem to chase each other along the time span of history. If I’m not mistaken, you compared the current context to the crisis and dissolution of the Roman Empire. Is it correct? History repeats because human nature never changes. The Roman Empire is but one example from history of its success and failures. It lasted longer than anyone because it did not impose cultural regulations. The Christians called them pagans because they had so many Gods. That was the product of their policy of freedom of religion. Athens had Athena, Northern Europe had Thor, so they did not try to change the culture of the lands they conquered. They created a common market where someone in Britain could sell products to someone in Rome. So the freedom of religion, low taxation, freedom of movement, and a common market combined to create the Pax Romana.

Is it still possible to avoid a large-scale world conflict? It is unlikely that we can avoid world war. Governments need war because their debts are no longer sustainable. They will use the war as the excuse for defaults – as was the case for WWII. They will create Bretton Woods II with the IMF digital currency as the reserve. [..] Is it correct to claim that your analysis succeed in covering the intersection of geopolitics, Global Markets and Economic Confidence? Can you explain to us in a simple way how your Socrates predictive model works? By the way, why did you name it just like the Greek philosopher? I named my computer model after Socrates because the oracle of Delphi had said that he was the smartest man in Greece. He tried to prove the oracle wrong and the process proved it to be correct. He was put on trial and sentenced to death because he knew too much. My computer has taught me a lot in geopolitics, we had a major bank in Lebanon in the 1980’s and they asked if I could create a model on the Lebanese pound.

I put the data in the computer and it came out and said their country would fall apart in 8 days. I thought something was wrong with the data. When I told the client, they asked me what currency would be best, and I said the Swiss Franc. Eight days later the civil war begn. Obviously they saw the movement of money themselves and came to me for the timing. The same thing happened with a client in Saudi Arabia who was a big shipper. He called me asking me what gold would do tomorrow because Iran was going to begin attacking shipping in the gulf. So once again, there was advanced information about war. By 1998, I understood how the computer was forcasting such events. I warned in June at our London conference that Russia was about to collapse. The London financial Times had snuck into the back of the room and reported that forecast on the front of their newspaper on June 27th 1998. Russia collapsed about 6 weeks later.

Are unpredictable events, such as the terrorist attack in Moscow, also considered among the parameters of your predictive model? A “black swan” type event can change the course of history and geopolitical relations?” Yes, we saw the capital flows shift a day in advance, up to a week in advance in the case of the attack in israel. The defense stocks began to rise even with 9/11 the government used our model to look at who bought puts on airlines in the days before. Someone always knows when they’re going to do these types of events. And they move their money either to profit or to avoid a loss. The computer is tracking everything. It cannot tell me which person has done it. Just that the move is about to take place.

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The whole world except for himself.

Zelensky Blames ‘Whole World’ For Ukraine’s Failures In Kharkov (RT)

The whole world is to blame for Ukraine’s failure to stop Russia’s recent advances in Kharkov Region and must now help Kiev to change the situation, President Vladimir Zelensky told ABC News in an interview on Thursday. It comes after Russian forces managed to capture several settlements near Ukraine’s second-largest city over the past week. Top military officials in Kiev have admitted that the situation is now “extremely difficult,” and that Ukrainian troops are struggling to hold ground due to being outgunned and outnumbered. Asked if he believes Ukraine’s failures on the battlefield to be the fault of the US, Zelensky told ABC reporters that “it’s the world’s fault,” and accused the international community of giving “the opportunity for Putin to occupy.” The Ukrainian leader said the country “cannot afford to lose Kharkov,” and that “the world can help” Kiev to hold on to the vital city in the country’s northeast.

“All we need are two Patriot systems,” Zelensky said, suggesting that “Russia will not be able to occupy Kharkov if we have those.”ng to source billion-dollar Patriot air defense systems for Ukraine. Last month, Zelensky insisted that Ukraine needs 25 such batteries but later revised that number to “at least seven.” The president also complained that funding that has been approved by the US for Kiev is not actually reaching the country and is instead being spent “in American factories, creating American jobs.” Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who visited Kiev this week, assured the Ukrainian leadership that Washington was “actively and urgently” trying.

Each Patriot battery comprises a power plant, radar and control stations, truck-mounted missile launchers, and support vehicles, and costs around $1 billion. Ukraine is currently believed to possess at least three Patriots, one of which is stationed near the capital. Last year, one of these batteries was reportedly damaged or destroyed in a Russian hypersonic missile strike. Moscow, meanwhile, has repeatedly stated that no amount of Western weapon systems can change the inevitable outcome of the conflict, and has warned that continuing to arm Ukraine will only prolong the bloodshed and increase the risk of a direct confrontation between Russia and NATO.

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Alright for now.

Slovakia Faces ‘Civil War’ – Interior Minister (RT)

Slovakia appears to be on the brink of a civil war, its interior minister has warned, following the attempted assassination of Prime Minister Robert Fico on Wednesday. The head of the Slovak government was shot in the eastern town of Handlova, where he had chaired a working meeting. The gunman, identified by the media as an opposition party supporter in his early 70s, acted on political motives, according to Deputy Prime Minister Robert Kalinak. Interior Minister Matus Sutaj Estok warned that the country was “on the edge of a civil war” over political tensions. Social media is full of “hateful comments” in the wake of the attack, he added. Meanwhile, according to Kalinak, who spoke to journalists outside the hospital in the city of Banska Bystrica, where Fico was rushed for emergency surgery, “the inability to accept the will of some part of the public, which some group does not like, is the result that they have worked towards today.”

Fico, a nationalist and euro-skeptic, assumed office last year, after his Smer-SD party won the parliamentary election in September. He promised to put Slovakia’s interests first, including in the highly-contentious issue of the Ukraine conflict. His refusal to provide more arms to Kiev stood in sharp contrast to the previous government. His victory was a defeat for Progressive Slovakia (PS), which suffered a second electoral upset in April. The presidential candidate endorsed by the pro-EU party was defeated by Peter Pellegrini. PS co-founder Zuzana Caputova is set to complete her term as president next month. Fico has lashed out at comments coming from supporters of the opposition, particularly those upset by the waning power of the Progressives. He has also accused some media outlets of fanning the flames.

Some Slovaks are denouncing supporters of political forces they do not like as “misguided blind folk” that they are ashamed to have as their neighbors, he lamented in a video statement last month. Politicians face obscenities in the streets, he added. ”I expect this frustration to turn so intense that it could lead to the murder of one of the leading government officials,” Fico warned. Many Slovak politicians and foreign leaders have condemned the attempt on Fico’s life. Russian President Vladimir Putin said the Slovak leader was a “courageous and strong-spirited man,” and that those qualities would hopefully help him overcome the crisis. Fico’s deputy, Tomas Taraba, said his surgery was a success and that the prime minister is expected to recover.

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It’s alive!

Hunter Biden Loses Bid to Halt Tax Evasion Court Proceedings (ET)

Hunter Biden lost his bid to halt his tax evasion district court proceedings in California on Wednesday after the Ninth Circuit declined to hear his appeal. District Judge Mark Scarsi denied Mr. Biden’s motion for a stay of proceedings in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California pending the outcome of his appeal. The stay had been requested on May 10 after Mr. Biden filed his interlocutory appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. On Wednesday, the Ninth Circuit panel ruled in favor of the special counsel and dismissed Mr. Biden’s appeal. This rendered moot a motion filed by Mr. Biden’s lawyers on Tuesday asking the judge for an expedited hearing on his motion to halt proceedings or, alternatively, for the judge to consider his written motion without hearing oral arguments.

“Because the panel’s order moots Mr. Biden’s motion, the Court grants the application to rule on shortened time and denies the motion,” Judge Scarsi wrote in his order on Wednesday Judge Scarsi’s order stated that his prior orders and the trial schedule would remain in place, and that the court would hear any further requests to modify the pre-trial schedule at a conference on May 29. Mr. Biden, who had argued that the district court’s jurisdiction had been divested once he filed his interlocutory appeal, filed his motion for a stay after the judge wrote in a May 9 order that failing to do so would be “at his own peril.”

Special Counsel David Weiss, who is prosecuting the case on behalf of the government, opposed Mr. Biden’s bid to halt proceedings while waiting to hear the outcome from the Ninth Circuit. He argued that any “problems” with scheduling conflicts in both Mr. Biden’s California tax evasion case and his Delaware gun charges case “are entirely of his own making. In his brief asking for an expedited hearing filed on Tuesday, Mr. Biden’s lawyers told Judge Scarsi that he wasn’t aware that failing to file a motion to stay pending appeal would be “at his own peril,” and that he promptly filed his motion to stay the next day after the judge’s order came down.

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“..the AI boom is likely a “mega-trend like we’ve never seen,” with the potential to be bigger than the internet. ”

“We’ve Had A Hell Of A Run”: Druckenmiller Sells 441,000 Shares Of Nvidia (ZH)

Billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller, head of the Duquesne Family Office, sees the artificial intelligence bubble as overextended. He has slashed some of his holdings in “Magnificent Seven” technology stocks, including Nvidia. He’s not alone. Other notable fund managers and company insiders are jumping ship and unloading their shares. A recent 13F filing reveals that Druckenmiller’s family office sold over 441,000 shares of Nvidia Corp. in the first quarter, reducing its stake to only 176,000 shares, or worth just about $158 million. Since 13F filings are backward-looking, the firm may have further divested or adjusted those holdings since the first quarter. We suspect Druckenmiller has not added to his Nvidia holdings.

Early last week, the billionaire investor appeared on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” explaining that his exposure to Nvidia was reduced after it went from $150 per share to $900 in just over a year. “I’m not Warren Buffett,” Druckenmiller emphasized, noting, “I don’t own things for 10 or 20 years. I wish I was Warren Buffett.” Druckenmiller said that when Microsoft-backed ChatGPT soared in popularity, he doubled down on his Nvidia position because it was an obvious no-brainer. “Even an old guy like me could figure out what that meant,” he said, adding the AI boom is likely a “mega-trend like we’ve never seen,” with the potential to be bigger than the internet.

Druckenmiller concluded: “I just need a break. We’ve had a hell of a run. A lot of what we recognized has become recognized by the marketplace now.” Besides Druckenmiller, 13F filings showed David Tepper slashed his holdings in Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta Platforms. David Bonderman’s Wildcat Capital Management sold Meta stock, bringing his position to $23.7 million. Michael Platt’s BlueCrest Capital Management dumped Nvidia and Amazon.

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Would Trump have accepted?

Biden Should Have Pardoned Trump – Romney (RT)

US Senator Mitt Romney (R-Utah) has suggested that President Joe Biden blundered politically by allowing his administration to prosecute Donald Trump, his hated Republican rival. “Had I been President Biden, when the Justice Department brought on indictments, I would have immediately pardoned him,” Romney said in an MSNBC interview aired on Wednesday. “I’d have pardoned President Trump. Why? Well, because it makes me, President Biden, the big guy and the person I pardoned a little guy.” Romney, a former Republican presidential candidate who has clashed repeatedly with Trump, said Biden made an “enormous error” by allowing prosecutors to indict the ex-president last year for mishandling classified documents and trying to block the transfer of power after losing the 2020 election. The two federal cases are among four criminal indictments against Trump, who has accused Biden and his allies of using sham prosecutions to interfere in the 2024 presidential race.

“He should have fought like crazy to keep this prosecution from going forward,” Romney said. “It was a win-win for Donald Trump. Pressed on the principle of leaving prosecutorial decisions to the Justice Department, the senator said Biden should have led like former President Lyndon B. Johnson. “I’ve been around for a while. If LBJ had been president, and he didn’t want something like this to happen, he’d have been all over that prosecutor saying, ‘You better not bring that forward or I’m gonna drive you out of office.’” Romney, who was defeated by Barack Obama in the 2012 election, has announced plans to retire from the Senate in January 2025, when his term ends. He has criticized both Trump and Biden for running for the presidency again this year, saying they should instead make way for a younger generation of leaders.

Upon announcing his decision last September to leave the Senate, Romney scolded his own party’s voters for favoring Trump. “There’s no question that the Republican Party today is in the shadow of Donald Trump,” he said. “He is the leader of the greatest portion of the Republican Party. It’s a populist, demagogue portion of the party. Look, I represent a small wing of the party. I call it the wise wing of the Republican Party.” Romney, 77, is the son of a former Michigan Governor George Romney and made upward of $200 million during his career in the private-equity business. He was elected governor of Massachusetts in 2002. He has been a leading proponent of prolonging the Russia-Ukraine conflict, saying that using Kiev’s forces to weaken the Russian military “is about the best national defense spending I think we’ve ever done.”

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A new world.

‘Big Blunder’ To Let China And Russia Get Close – US Strategist (RT)

US President Joe Biden’s cabinet has made a major policy mistake by driving Russia and China into a strategic partnership, Heritage Foundation fellow Michael Pillsbury said on Thursday. Pillsbury spoke to Fox and Friends as Russian President Vladimir Putin met with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Beijing on his first foreign trip since inauguration. “To draw, to push together two nuclear powers, Russia and China, it’s really a blunder of the highest order,” he told Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade. According to Pillsbury, China spent much of the past 75 years in conflict with the Soviet Union, “so to see them come together like this to me is just shocking.” It’s one of the biggest blunders we’ll see in my lifetime.”

Pillsbury has helped Washington formulate its China policy since the 1970s. He held a variety of posts at the Pentagon and as a staff member for the US Senate, before settling at China-centric desks at the Hudson Institute and later at Heritage. It has long been a policy objective of Washington to keep China and Russia apart, starting with President Richard Nixon’s detente with Beijing in the 1970s. This policy was in effect as late as 2020, with President Donald Trump trying to use tariffs to pressure China into working with the US, noted Pillsbury. “This would never happen under Trump,” he said. “This was one of Trump’s goals never to allow this to happen.” When Kilmeade suggested that China “needs” the US and EU markets, so the West has leverage over Beijing, Pillsbury pointed out that this “simply isn’t happening under Biden.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also commented on the US attempts to split China away from Russia. In an interview on Thursday, he said that China was “strong enough” to resist the “brazen” attempts at pressure. China and Russia both “defend the principles of fairness and the democratic world order based on the multipolar realities and international law,” Putin said on Thursday, adding that relations between the two countries “are not aimed against anyone.” Putin described the Russo-Chinese cooperation as “one of the main stabilizing factors on the international stage.” Xi agreed, arguing that ties between Beijing and Moscow are a “model of relations between large powers and neighboring states, characterized by mutual respect, trust, friendship and mutual benefit.”

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Horse sculpt
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Geert

 

 

Flying cow

 

 

 

 

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