Caravaggio Burial of St. Lucy 1608
It has become clear the Biden-Harris administration is trying to invoke MARTIAL LAW and not give the Presidency over to me by starting World War 3. Iran is now planning to obliterate Israel. We must stop the neocons in the White House from causing WWIII! pic.twitter.com/dKbL502Z1W
— Donald J. Trump – Parody (@realDonParody) November 24, 2024
Tucker
https://twitter.com/i/status/1860855911864230331
Obama
BIGGER THAN WATERGATE: STRAIGHT UP TREASON❗️
A: Barack Obama and his CIA initiated the Russia Collusion Hoax and instructed the “5 eyes” (U.S., Canada, Australia, U.K. and New Zealand) to spy on the 2016 Trump campaign.
— Obama’s Chief of Staff John Brennan identified 26… pic.twitter.com/Ys0GUb3GDI
— Jack Straw (@JackStr42679640) November 24, 2024
Rogan
Joe Rogan raising awareness that US Congress have become better stock traders and OUTPERFORM both Warren Buffett and George Soros
“I’m sure you're aware of the Nancy Pelosi stuff. Absolutely. It's wild — It's 100% insider trading”
Nancy Pelosi “We have a free market economy.… pic.twitter.com/hLbzU1idJe
— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) November 24, 2024
“I don’t think anybody in this room should be under any illusion that if the Russians invaded Eastern Europe tonight, then we would meet them in that fight.” Say that again?
• Zaluzhny Claims ‘World War 3 Has Officially Begun’ (ZH)
Former military Commander-in-Chief and Ukraine’s current ambassador to the UK, Valery Zaluzhny, has warned that World War Three is already underway in a recent interview published by Politico. “I believe that in 2024 we can absolutely believe that the Third World War has begun,” he said. He referenced the greater internationalization of the war with the presence of North Korean troops, and Iranian technology on the battlefield, as well as Chinese support to Moscow. “It is obvious that Ukraine already has too many enemies. Ukraine will survive with technology, but it is not clear whether it can win this battle alone,” he explained, also on the heels of Western allies approving Kiev’s long-range strikes against Russian territory with US, UK, and French missiles. Zaluzhny claimed in the interview that Chinese weapons are being injected into the conflict alongside Iranian and North Korean arms.
“Because in 2024, Ukraine is no longer facing Russia. Soldiers from North Korea are standing in front of Ukraine. Let’s be honest. Already in Ukraine, the Iranian ‘Shahedis’ are killing civilians absolutely openly, without any shame.” “It is still possible to stop it here, on the territory of Ukraine. But for some reason our partners do not want to understand this. It is obvious that Ukraine already has too many enemies. Ukraine will survive with technology, but it is not clear whether it can win this battle alone,” he said. But it’s certainly not merely the Russian side which has had outside assistance. The West’s support to Ukraine has been much more direct, including billions of dollars in weaponry. F-16 fighter jets, anti-air systems, and medium and long-range missiles have been given to Ukraine, along with training for all of these systems.
Western advisers have without doubt also long been on the ground assisting Ukrainian intelligence and military officers. Moscow has cited all of this as what’s driving escalation. Meanwhile, Rob Magowan, the deputy chief of the British defense staff, told the House of Commons defense committee last week, “If the British Army was asked to fight tonight, it would fight tonight.” He added, “I don’t think anybody in this room should be under any illusion that if the Russians invaded Eastern Europe tonight, then we would meet them in that fight.” At the same time Washington has also been escalating, seeking to send as much in the way of arms and money to Kiev as the Biden administration can before Trump takes office on Jan.20. Critics have blasted this as reckless and an obvious recipe for runaway escalation.
Hammer meet nail. Everything is war:
“Business leaders in Europe and America need to realize that the commercial decisions they make have strategic consequences for the security of their nation..”
• NATO Admiral Urges Businesses To Prepare For ‘Wartime Scenario’ (RT)
Businesses in NATO countries should prepare themselves for a “wartime scenario” and adjust their production lines and supply chains to be less vulnerable to blackmail by nations such as Russia and China, the outgoing chief of the US-led bloc’s military committee, Admiral Rob Bauer, said on Monday. Speaking at a European Policy Center think-tank event in Brussels, he urged Western industries and businesses to implement deterrence measures. “If we can make sure that all crucial services and goods can be delivered no matter what, then that is a key part of our deterrence,” Bauer argued. “Businesses need to be prepared for a wartime scenario and adjust their production and distribution lines accordingly. Because while it may be the military who wins battles, it’s the economies that win wars,” the NATO official said.
He mentioned China and Russia in the context of how he believes wars are waged in the economic sphere. “We thought we had a deal with Gazprom, but we actually had a deal with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin,” he stated, apparently referring to the drop in Russian gas supplies to the EU, which took place after the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022. At the time, the EU declared that ending its reliance on Russian energy was a key priority, and many members voluntarily halted their imports, while supplies also plunged due to the sabotage of Russia’s Nord Stream pipelines.
American Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh blamed the sabotage on the CIA, alleging that the agency had carried out the attack under the direct orders of the White House – an allegation it has denied. Bauer then extended his warning to China, claiming that Beijing could use its exports to NATO states and the infrastructure that it owns in Europe as leverage in the event of a conflict. “We are naive if we think the [Chinese] Communist Party will never use that power. Business leaders in Europe and America need to realize that the commercial decisions they make have strategic consequences for the security of their nation,” the official claimed. It is unclear what “wartime” Bauer is predicting in his statements.
NATO has long declared Russia to be a direct threat, and Western officials have repeatedly claimed that if Moscow is allowed to win the conflict in Ukraine, it could then attack other European countries. Russia has dismissed these claims as nonsense. Restrictions that Moscow introduced in trade with the West have largely come in response to unprecedented economic sanctions placed on the country in connection with the Ukraine conflict. Beijing has also faced its share of trade barriers and restrictions introduced by Western states, and introduced similar measures in response. According to most experts, including many in the West, the sanctions policy has backfired on Western economies, leading to supply shortages and inflation.
“..talking about securing peace in Ukraine, unlike the White House under Joe Biden..”
• Kremlin Comments On Trump Team’s Ukraine Positioning (RT)
Supporters of US President-elect Donald Trump and those who have been nominated for roles in his administration are talking about securing peace in Ukraine, unlike the White House under Joe Biden, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said. Speaking to reporters during a conference call on Monday, Peskov was asked to comment on a statement by incoming National Security Advisor Michael Waltz over the weekend. The Florida congressman said in an interview with Fox News that Donald Trump was “incredibly concerned” with the “carnage” that is taking place in the Ukraine conflict, and that the next administration would work towards facilitating talks between Moscow and Kiev with a view to securing a ceasefire. “We need to be discussing who is at the table, whether there is an agreement, an armistice, how to get both sides to the table, and then what’s the framework of a deal,” Waltz said, noting that Washington’s allies in Europe would also be involved in the process.
Peskov responded by acknowledging that Trump supporters and members of the president-elect’s team often use the words ‘peace’ and ‘peace plan’. “Such words are not heard from the mouths of representatives of the current administration,” the spokesman noted, adding that the Biden administration only continues taking provocative steps that lead towards further escalation. He also recalled that Russian President Vladimir Putin had “repeatedly confirmed his readiness for a peace process.” In June, Putin set out a list of conditions for the immediate commencement of negotiations with Kiev, which included the complete removal of Ukrainian troops from all Russian territories, as well as legal guarantees that Ukraine would commit to neutrality and abandon its hopes of joining NATO.
Kiev rejected these demands, with Vladimir Zelelnsky refusing to make any territorial concessions to Russia. Meanwhile, Trump has repeatedly vowed to quickly put an end to the Ukraine conflict once he enters office, but has not revealed the details of his plan for resolving the crisis. Media reports have suggested that he may try to force Ukraine to drop its NATO ambitions and negotiate a freeze of the conflict. Moscow, however, has ruled out freezing the conflict, and insisted that it would achieve all the objectives of its military operation one way or another.
Two terribly unpopular “leaders” think war can save them.
• Britain, France Discussing Deployment Of Troops To Ukraine – Le Monde (RT)
The UK and France have “reactivated” talks on sending troops to Ukraine, French newspaper Le Monde reported on Monday. The idea has already caused a rift among Europe’s NATO members. Back in February, French President Emmanuel Macron caused controversy by declaring his willingness to send ground troops to Ukraine “to prevent Russia from winning this war.” The statement was quickly disavowed by NATO officials, while German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told reporters that Ukraine’s Western backers were “unanimous” in their opposition to the idea. The plan was seemingly shelved, Le Monde has reported, until British Prime Minister Keir Starmer visited Paris earlier this month. Citing anonymous sources, the French newspaper claimed that talks on a possible Franco-British deployment to Ukraine were “reactivated” by Starmer and Macron.
No further information was provided, and Le Monde speculated that this deployment could range from both nations sending private-sector technicians to repair military equipment (as Britain already does), to private military contractors (as Russia insists that France does), to flag-wearing personnel on the ground, either on the front line or to enforce an eventual ceasefire and peace deal. ‘British and French officials have both suggested that some sort of deployment could be in the works. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot told British state broadcaster the BBC this weekend that Paris is “not ruling out any option” when asked directly about the possibility of sending French troops to Ukraine.
A British military source told Le Monde that “discussions are underway between the United Kingdom and France regarding defense cooperation, particularly with the aim of creating a core group of allies in Europe, focused on Ukraine and broader European security.” Russia has long claimed that Western special forces personnel are active in Ukraine, and Russian President Valdimir Putin has noted that Ukraine cannot fire long-range missiles into Russian territory without the assistance of Western experts. When American ATACMS and British Storm Shadow missiles were used in attacks on internationally-recognized Russian territory last week, Putin warned that the Ukraine conflict had “assumed elements of a global nature.”
Western media outlets have been reticent to mention the role of NATO personnel in assisting these attacks. However, Le Monde admitted that “it is not possible for the Ukrainians to use this type of missile without some form of Western support on the ground.” France has given Ukraine permission to use its Storm Shadow (called the SCALP-EG in France) cruise missiles in long-range strikes on Russia, but it is unclear if they have actually been used yet. Russia reserves the right to strike the military facilities of countries that allow their weapons to be used against it, Putin continued, adding that “there will always be a response” to attacks on Russian soil. The Russian military responded to the ATACMS and Storm Shadow strikes by firing a new hypersonic ballistic missile – the nuclear-capable Oreshnik – at a Ukrainian military industrial facility in Dnepropetrovsk.
“The only country speaking out in favor of more death and destruction was the one you and I are citizens of. This is your legacy, Joe?”
• Biden Going Out With a Bang (Michael Moore)
Dear Joe,
What have you been doing? I saw you went to the rain forest. That looked cool. I loved how at the end you just turned away and walked into the jungle as if never to be seen from again. All Presidencies should end this way. A little over a month ago, I sent you a nice letter with some suggestions for how you could use the rest of your time as President of the United States of America. Things like canceling student debt once and for all, closing Guantanamo, freeing Cuba, freeing Leonard Peltier and pardoning Snowden and doing other good deeds. Instead of doing any of these, you have done none of them. In fact, if I’m reading the news right, you’re going in the opposite direction. My suggestions were all about cementing your status as a “Great President” — about shaping your legacy, making you an unforgettable figure in the pantheon of all 44 white men who’ve presided over this country before you (and also your former boss).
You on the other hand seem to be trying to cement your legacy as a war monger — doubling down on some of your worst mistakes and worst impulses. So I’ll ask again, WHAT ARE YOU DOING? Donald Trump just won the election. In two months, you’ll hand him the keys to the White House and the pin number for the alarm system. And you will be out of time. Instead of using your precious little time left to do something to HELP THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, your first action after Trump won was to fast track the delivery of over $6 Billion in weapons to Ukraine. Then, you called up Zelensky and gave him the green light to start firing long range ballistic missiles into a country with a massive amount of nuclear weapons, Russia. Then, as if that weren’t enough carnage for one week, you authorized the use of antipersonnel land mines in Russia.
LAND MINES, Joe? Seriously? THIS is your legacy? This is how you want to go out? In a blaze of horror? Like, if Joe’s gotta go, we all gotta go with him… right into World War III? Joe — America has spent well over a BILLION DOLLARS removing landmines from places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia (you know, the places we invade and then leave our landmines behind). Vietnam was 50 years ago, Joe. And kids today in southeast Asia are still getting their arms blown off by our landmines. That’s your legacy, Joe. This is what you’re doing. This week, 19 brave Democrats rose in the Senate and voted in favor of halting a shipment of weapons to Israel. And what did the Biden White House do? You lobbied against these Democratic Senators. You were scared that others would join them, pleading with Schumer and the others to vote them down, to shut them up, to keep arming this slaughter in Gaza and the West Bank and Lebanon.
So you decided to slander this group of Senators from your own party. You said that by halting these armaments to Israel, these Democrats were on the side of Hamas. Also this week, at the United Nations, 14 of the 15 members of the Security Council voted in favor of an IMMEDIATE CEASEFIRE in Gaza. Fourteen of Fifteen, Joe. And your administration cast that 15th lone vote to veto a chance for peace. America once again single handedly blocked the ceasefire. The only country speaking out in favor of more death and destruction was the one you and I are citizens of. This is your legacy, Joe?
“..Trump reminded everyone who is in charge tonight with drugs and open borders as his main focus..”
• Trump Announces 25% Tariff For Canada, Mexico; Ramps Up Tariffs On China (ZH)
Just when you thought his choice of Scott Bessent as Treasury Secretary had tamped down the market’s “tariff tensions”, President-Elect Trump reminded everyone who is in charge tonight with drugs and open borders as his main focus. In a statement on his Truth Social account, Trump swung the hammer against Mexico, Canada…
“As everyone is aware, thousands of people are pouring through Mexico and Canada, bringing Crime and Drugs at levels never seen before. Right now a Caravan coming from Mexico, composed of thousands of people, seems to be unstoppable in its quest to come through our currently Open Border. On January 20th, as one of my many first Executive Orders, I will sign all necessary documents to charge Mexico and Canada a 25% Tariff on ALL products coming into the United States, and its ridiculous Open Borders. This Tariff will remain in effect until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country! Both Mexico and Canada have the absolute right and power to easily solve this long simmering problem. We hereby demand that they use this power, and until such time that they do, it is time for them to pay a very big price!”
BREAKING: Donald Trump announces that one of his first acts as president will be to initiate a 25% tariff on all products coming in from Mexico and Canada.
The decision comes in response to Mexico and Canada allowing crime and drugs to pour into the U.S.
"As everyone is aware,… pic.twitter.com/uWYLxFRFh1
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) November 25, 2024
…and of course China… “I have had many talks with China about the massive amounts of drugs, in particular Fentanyl, being sent into the United States – But to no avail. Representatives of China told me that they would institute their maximum penalty, that of death, for any drug dealers caught doing this but, unfortunately, they never followed through, and drugs are pouring into our Country, mostly through Mexico, at levels never seen before. Until such time as they stop, we will be charging China an additional 10% Tariff, above any additional Tariffs, on all of their many products coming into the United States of America. Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
As a reminder, Fentanyl, the powerful synthetic opioid, has been linked to around 100,000 deaths annually in the United States, with much of the flow of the deadly drug coming from south of the border. A damning report released earlier this year by the U.S. House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party found that the Chinese regime was facilitating the proliferation of fentanyl in the United States. Additionally, Trump has previously vowed to end China’s most-favored-nation trading status and impose tariffs in excess of 60 percent on China-made goods. The initial reaction to Trump’s threatening posts was a surge higher in the dollar, erasing the weekend’s losses (following Bessent’s appointment) with the peso and loonie both tumbling along with the offshore yuan…
Stocks also dropped in Japan, Australia and SouthKorea, with US futures modestly higher. Goldman’s research team suggests this FX reaction is perhaps a little overdone: This seems to be more eased vs. what market has generally expected… and the less hawkish pick of Treasury head also said to roll out the tariffs in layers (which means the 10% mentioned by Trump just now is indeed a beginning but still more gentle than market expectation).
“..it would be a rather curious attempt at an insurrection if Trump was suggesting the use of thousands of troops to prevent any breach of Congress.”
• Jan. 6 Investigation Looks Less and Less Credible (Turley)
On Jan. 6, 2021, the nation was rocked by the disruption of the certification of Joe Biden as our next president. With Donald Trump set to return to the White House in 2025, it is astonishing how much of that day remains a matter of intense debate. Those divisions are likely only to deepen after a slew of recent reports that have challenged the selective release of information from the House January 6 Committee. January 6 remains as much a political litmus test as it is a historical event. Whether you refer to that day as a riot or an insurrection puts you on one side or the other of a giant political chasm. I viewed the attack on that day as a desecration of our constitutional process, but I did not view it as an insurrection. I still don’t. It was a protest that became a riot when a woefully insufficient security plan collapsed. And that is a view shared by most Americans. One year after the riot, a CBS poll showed that 76 percent viewed it as a “protest gone too far.”
A Harvard study also found that those arrested on that day were motivated by loyalty to Trump rather than support for an insurrection. A recent poll found that almost half of the public (43 percent) felt that “too much is being made” of the riot and that it is “time to move on.” Of course, that still leaves a little over half who view the day as “an attack on democracy.” The continued distrust of the official accounts of Jan. 6 reflects a failure of the House Democrats, and specifically former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), to guarantee a credible and comprehensive investigation. The House Select Committee to investigate January 6 was comprised of Democrat-selected members who offered only one possible view: that January 6 was an attempt to overthrow our democracy by Trump and his supporters. The committee hired a former ABC News producer to create a slick, made-for-television production that barred opposing views and countervailing evidence.
The members, including Republican Vice Chair Liz Cheney, played edited videotapes of Trump’s speech that removed the portion where Trump called on his supporters to protest “peacefully.” The committee fostered false accounts, including the claim that there was a violent episode with Trump trying to wrestle control of the presidential limousine. The Committee knew that the key Secret Service driver directly contradicted that account offered by former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson. While the Democrats insisted that Trump’s speech constituted criminal incitement, he was never charged with that crime — not even by the motivated prosecutors who pledged to pursue such charges. The reason is that Trump’s speech was entirely protected under the First Amendment. Such a charge of criminal incitement would have quickly collapsed in court. Nevertheless, the Washington Post, NPR, other media and the committee members called Jan. 6 an “insurrection” engineered by Trump.
Figures such as Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) insisted the committee had evidence that Trump organized a “coup” on Jan. 6, 2021. That evidence never materialized. The lack of adequate security measures that day has long puzzled many of us. After all, there had been a violent riot at the White House before January 6, in which more officers were injured and Trump had to be moved to a secure location. The National Guard had to be called out to protect the White House, but those same measures (including a fence) were not ordered at the Capitol. Two of the recent reports offered new details related to those questions. One report confirmed that Trump did, in fact, offer the deployment of the National Guard in anticipation of the protest. The Jan. 6 Committee repeatedly dismissed this claim. After all, it would be a rather curious attempt at an insurrection if Trump was suggesting the use of thousands of troops to prevent any breach of Congress.
The committee specifically found “no evidence” that the Trump administration called for 10,000 National Guard members to be sent to Washington, D.C., to protect the Capitol. The Washington Post even supposedly “debunked” Trump’s comments with an award of “Four Pinocchios.” Yet evidence now shows that Trump personally suggested the deployment of 10,000 National Guard troops to prevent violence. For example, a transcript includes the testimony of former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Anthony Ornato in January 2022 with Liz Cheney present. Ornato states that he clearly recalled Trump’s offer of 10,000 troops. Videotapes have also emerged showing Pelosi privately admitting that she and Democratic leadership were responsible for the security failure on Jan. 6.
Another new report from Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), who chairs the House Administration’s Subcommittee on Oversight, shows that it was the Defense Department that delayed the eventual deployment of National Guard in the critical hours of the riot. The evidence shows that, at 3:18 p.m., Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy “tells sheltering Members of Congress that he is not blocking the deployment of the National Guard and, while referencing the D.C. National Guard, shares that ‘We have the green light. We are moving.’” However, the secretary of the Army’s own timeline indicates that the DCNG did not physically leave the Armory until 5 pm. That was the critical period for the riot. Around 2:10 p.m., people surged up the Capitol steps. Just an hour later, McCarthy said troops were on their way. At 4:17 p.m., Trump made his public statement asking rioters to stop — roughly an hour and a half later. Yet it was not until 5 pm that the troops actually left for the Capitol.
“If these people had to be honest, it would all be over.” — Mike Benz
• The End of the World Frolics (James Howard Kunstler)
“Joe Biden” is feeling blue. Not a joke. In the lurid sunset of his dwindling term-in-office, the long shadow of his legacy points toward a gigantic glowing cinder where North America used to be. Such are the grievances of the outgoing president. I pass unto you and your legions of white supremacist slobs the ashtray that was once our mighty nation. Fix that! But, as Sir Mick Jagger observed some time ago: you can’t always get what you want. “Joe Biden,” in despair, sinks deeper into his McTeer power recliner and slips back into the bitter dream of his nemesis, a beast named Chrump. . . . It’s such a chewy name: Chrump, a fricative fiesta! The tongue briefly presses against the alveolar ridge before releasing, then curls back, and the jaw opens slightly to form this vowel sound, the lips close to let the sound resonate nasally before releasing air. Chrump Chrump Chrump. Like, what your mouth would feel like working through a bowl of Froot Loops. So satisfying!
The outgoing Party of Chaos can’t stop chanting it on the cable news networks, as if trying to invoke the ancient furies, ghastly, terrifying figures with snakes for hair, dogs’ heads, blood-red eyes, and bat-wings, brandishing torches and scourges to mortify their enemy. Otherwise, fantasy aside, they are in paralysis as this enemy, Mr. Trump, marshals his pieces on the gameboard: Musk, Vivek, Bobby Jr, Tulsi, Bondi, Hegseth . . . . Ay-yeeeeee! They are coming to get us. . . . Somebody. . . do something. . . ! Okay, then, who, exactly, in the shadows behind the half-conscious ghoul in the White House, thinks that now is a great time to commence an ATACMS (Attack’ems) missile barrage on Russia as the very thing to salvage our Ukraine project? You’d naturally turn first to Blinken and Jake Sullivan, those gold-dust twins of overseas jiggery-pokery. Or, is it the geniuses at Spook Central, worried about the fumigating operation incoming with Mr. Ratcliffe?
Or perhaps it’s the men-in-skirts over in the Pentagon, seeking to punish humanity because of the clerical error inflicted on them by the desk up-yonder that handles sexual assignments at birth. Blow it all up! The psychopathic wrath of this gang is really getting out-of-hand. Can Mr. Putin make it any clearer? FA and FO. Hence, many of us are a little concerned that the Thanksgiving birds might not make it to table this year, or ever again, if “Joe Biden” and company keep it up. One more sortie of ATACMS or British Storm Shadows and the satellite targeting and navigation installations for these missiles will get vaporized, along with the NATO member technicians on duty there. What’s your next move, “Joe”? ICBMs? I think we all know what that means.
Let me tell you a few things about this Russia Russia Russia business. It’s been thirty years since the fall of the Soviet Union. It was a bold political experiment running a society by means contrary to human nature, and after an impressively long run, seven decades, if finally flopped, bankrupt in every sense of the word. It took a while for the dazed Russians to get their minds right after that long misadventure, but they have come around to embrace the idea of being a normal European nation. That is, a country whose citizens are at liberty to do business, travel freely, enjoy a rule-of-law (rather than a rule of despotic personalities). That is, much like we are supposed to be. Surely, Russia under Mr. Putin has its imperfections, at least as viewed through the lens of America’s Woke-cryptoMarxist-Neocon/psychopath lens.
Mainly, it won’t do what we tell it to do: roll over and die! But as often is the case with illnesses of the mind, the American cabal projects its own perverse thoughts on its adversary. Russia, we keep insisting, wants to take over the world! Is it news to you that this does not comport with reality? (By now you know that news in the USA does not comport with reality.) Rather, America acts like we want to take over the world. Hegemony: power over everyone and everything, an increasingly sick notion, given how things are going in this world. Sorry to tell you: that dream is over. Since 1990, Russia has tried like hell to establish normal relations with western Europe and the USA. Our blob wouldn’t allow that. Russia even asked to join NATO some years ago. Russia wanted to trade with Germany, France, Italy, and the rest.
Our blob had to stop that. Finally, the blob geniuses decided that they could put Russia out of business altogether, bust it up to make it helpless, and then own all its mineral and energy resources. Ukraine would be the means to accomplish that — plus we’d end up with all the goodies in Ukraine, too: the breadbasket lands, the ores. BlackRock, Halliburton, and many other companies lined up to benefit from this scheme, which is now a smoldering wreck. Mr. Trump, wants to terminate that stupid, wicked project. Going back even further, to 2016, he proposed to try making friends with Russia. The benefits were obvious, principally, keeping them on our side against the rising power of the CCP. Russia, no longer under communism, had interests in common with Western Civ — hell, it was part of Western Civ, really, its literature, music, science, manners.
“Business leaders generally want peace and incomes, while crazed ideologues want hegemony through war..”
• What Ails America—And How to Fix It (Jeffrey Sachs)
America is a country of undoubted vast strengths—technological, economic, and cultural—yet its government is profoundly failing its own citizens and the world. Trump’s victory is very easy to understand. It was a vote against the status quo. Whether Trump will fix—or even attempt to fix—what really ails America remains to be seen. The rejection of the status quo by the American electorate is overwhelming. According to Gallup in October 2024, 52% of Americans said they and their families were worse off than four years ago, while only 39% said they were better off and 9% said they were about the same. An NBC national news poll in September 2024 found that 65% of Americans said the country is on the wrong track, while only 25% said that it is on the right track. In March 2024, according to Gallup, only 33% of Americans approved of Joe Biden’s handling of foreign affairs.
At the core of the American crisis is a political system that fails to represent the true interests of the average American voter. The political system was hacked by big money decades ago, especially when the U.S. Supreme Court opened the floodgates to unlimited campaign contributions. Since then, American politics has become a plaything of super-rich donors and narrow-interest lobbies, who fund election campaigns in return for policies that favor vested interests rather than the common good. Two groups own the Congress and White House: super-rich individuals and single-issue lobbies. The world watched agape as Elon Musk, the world’s richest person (and yes, a brilliant entrepreneur and inventor), played a unique role in backing Trump’s election victory, both through his vast media influence and funding. Countless other billionaires chipped into Trump’s victory. Many (though not all) of the super-rich donors seeks special favors from the political system for their companies or investments, and most of those desired favors will be duly delivered by the Congress, the White House, and the regulatory agencies staffed by the new administration.
Many of these donors also push one overall deliverable: further tax cuts on corporate income and capital gains. Many business donors, I would quickly add, are forthrightly on the side of peace and cooperation with China, as very sensible for business as well as for humanity. Business leaders generally want peace and incomes, while crazed ideologues want hegemony through war. There would have been precious little difference in all of this with a Harris victory. The Democrats have their own long list of the super-rich who financed the party’s presidential and Congressional campaigns. Many of those donors too would have demanded and received special favors. Tax breaks on capital income have been duly delivered by Congress for decades no matter their impact on the ballooning federal deficit, which now stands at nearly 7 percent of GDP, and no matter that the U.S. pre-tax national income in recent decades has shifted powerfully towards capital income and away from labor income.
As measured by one basic indicator, the share of labor income in GDP has declined by around 7 percentage points since the end of World War II. As income has shifted from labor to capital, the stock market (and super-wealth) has soared, with the overall stock market valuation rising from 55% of GDP in 1985 to 200% of GDP today! The second group with its hold on Washingtons is single-issue lobbies. These powerful lobbies include the military-industrial complex, Wall Street, Big Oil, the gun industry, big pharma, big Ag, and the Israel Lobby. American politics is well organized to cater to these special interests. Each lobby buys the support of specific committees in Congress and selected national leaders to win control over public policy.
Bye Jack.
• Jack Smith Drops Trump Election Case, Classified Documents Appeal (ET)
Special counsel Jack Smith on Monday dropped his election interference case against President-elect Donald Trump, while also moving to drop his appeal of a judge’s decision in the president-elect’s classified documents case. In a six-page court filing in a Washington federal court, Smith’s team argued that the Department of Justice (DOJ) has long argued “that the Constitution requires that this case be dismissed before the defendant is inaugurated,” referring to Trump’s recent election victory. “This outcome is not based on the merits or strength of the case against the defendant,” the filing states. His office said that prosecutors have conferred with Trump’s attorneys, who indicated they do not oppose the government’s motion. “Based on the Department’s interpretation of the Constitution, the Government moves for dismissal without prejudice of the superseding indictment,” the court documents state.
At the same time, in an appeals court, Smith also wrote he is dropping his appeal of U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s July decision to dismiss a case that accused the president-elect of illegally retaining classified records and allegedly obstructing an investigation. “Dismissing the appeal as to defendant Trump will leave in place the district court’s order dismissing the indictment without prejudice as to him,” his filing said. But his appeal concerning two other defendants in the case, Walt Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira, “will continue because, unlike defendant Trump, no principle of temporary immunity applies to them.” Cannon had dismissed the case after agreeing with arguments that Smith was not lawfully appointed as special counsel. Smith in August asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit to reverse her decision.
The move marks an end to Smith’s criminal pursuit of Trump over the past two years or so accusing him of attempting to illegally overturn the 2020 election. Smith accused Trump of mishandling classified documents in a separate case, which was dismissed over the summer by a federal judge. The decision was anticipated after Smith’s team said in court filings that it was assessing how to wind down both the 2020 election interference case and the classified documents case in the wake of Trump’s win on Nov. 5 over Vice President Kamala Harris. According to Smith’s team, the DOJ believes that the president-elect can no longer be tried in accordance with longstanding policy that says sitting presidents cannot be prosecuted.
Turley
.@JonathanTurley: "I wrote over a year ago that there was a good chance Jack Smith would never see the inside of a courtroom for a trial in this case. It made this election the largest effective jury verdict in history by re-electing Donald Trump." pic.twitter.com/UFmucqjs99
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) November 25, 2024
“..there’s no reason why the Democrats are going after her other than the fact they’re upset that she left their woke party..”
• Trump Nominees Gabbard, Hegseth Will Face Grilling in Congress (ET)
Multiple Democratic and Republican senators on Nov. 24 signaled that they will grill President-elect Donald Trump’s choices to lead the Intelligence Community and the Pentagon. Earlier this month, Trump nominated former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard to become his director of national intelligence (DNI) and Fox News host Pete Hegseth to be his secretary of defense. Both positions require confirmation by the Senate. Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on Nov. 24 on CNN that his panel will have “lots of questions” for Gabbard, singling out her meeting as a congresswoman with Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad as a point of contention. “She met with Bashar Assad. We’ll want to know what the purpose was,” he said. “We’ll want to get a chance to talk about past comments that she’s made and get them into full context.”
Also on Nov. 24, Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) told the network that she believes Hegseth, a former Army National Guard officer, is “unqualified” to head up the Pentagon and also criticized the choice of Gabbard for DNI. “I do think that we have a real deep concern whether or not she’s a compromised person,” Duckworth said, referring to the Assad meeting and her previous comments on Russia. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), a member of the chamber’s Judiciary Committee, told ABC News on Nov. 24 that she wants background checks on Trump’s Cabinet selections. “They’ve got to get their background checks together. They’ve got to get qualified nominees,” Klobuchar said. “I want to make a decision on each one of them on the merits, as I’ve done in the past, and I can’t do that without the background checks.” However, Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) told CNN that Gabbard could easily pass a background check because she is serving in the Army Reserve.
“There’s no document, there’s no background there for her to see, for anyone to see. She is a true patriot of the United States, and there’s no reason why the Democrats are going after her other than the fact they’re upset that she left their woke party,” he said, referencing the former congresswoman’s departure from the Democratic Party two years ago and her officially joining the Republican Party in October. Hegseth has come under scrutiny in recent days after a 2017 police report revealed allegations—not charges—against the Fox News host. The report states that a woman accused him of sexual assault at a hotel room in California; Hegseth has denied the allegations and has never been charged. When he is nominated to head the Department of Defense after Trump takes office on Jan. 20, 2025, he is likely to face questions over the matter.
Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), told ABC on Nov. 24 that Hegseth is a “very talented individual” and that the claims are just “allegations.” According to the senator, Hegseth may help boost recruitment numbers or retain enlisted members. “We have a huge recruitment problem, a huge retention problem in the military,” he said, noting that people have told him that some military officials have informed him that they will stay in the military as a result of the Hegseth announcement. “That’s the type of inspirational leader we need to see. Don’t let these allegations distract us. What we need is real, significant change,” Hagerty said. “The Pentagon has been more focused on pronouns than they have lethality the past four years. We need to get back to business, and I think Pete is just the person to do it.”
“So more power to the DOGE of Musk & Ramaswamy. In spades!”
• How To Cut $2 Trillion of Fat, Muscle, Bone From the Federal Budget (Stockman)
A goal of $2 trillion of budget savings is crucial to the very future of constitutional democracy and capitalist prosperity in America. In fact, the soaring public debt is now so out-of-control that the Federal budget threatens to become a self-fueling financial doomsday machine. So more power to the DOGE of Musk & Ramaswamy. In spades! For want of doubt, just recall this sequence. When Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980 on a call to bring the nation’s inflationary budget under control, the public debt was $1 trillion. By the time Donald Trump was elected the first time it had erupted to $20 trillion, which has now become $36 trillion. And under current built-in spending and tax policies it will hit $60 trillion by the end of the current 10-year budget window. Thereafter, however, soaring interest expense will ignite a veritable fiscal wildfire.
On paper the public debt would power upward unabated to $150 trillion by mid-century under CBO’s latest projection. Yet even the latter is based on a Rosy Scenario budget model that assumes Congress never again adopts a single new tax cut or spending program and that the US economy steams along without a recession, inflation recurrence, interest flare-up or other economic crisis during the entirety of the next quarter-century! Of course, long before the public debt actually hits $150 trillion or 166% of GDP per CBO’s current long-term projection, the whole system would implode. Every remnant of America as we now know it would go down the tubes. So we need be clear that the team of Musk & Ramaswamy is talking about savings of $2 trillion per year and relatively soon, too. We make this clarification because we see the usual clueless commentators on bubblevision saying, “oh, they must be talking about $2 trillion over 10-years or at least a multi-year period of time”.
But we don’t think they meant that at all because Elon’s statement on the matter at the Madison Square Garden rally was very clear, and, quite frankly, if realized over 10-years or even 5 years it would be hardly worth the bother. That because the nation’s fiscal doomsday machine will be accumulating interest expense so fast as to make $2 trillion of savings spread over a decade little more than a rounding error. To wit, Federal interest expense has already passed the $1 trillion per year mark, which figure will hit $1.7 trillion by 2034 according to CBO and would top $7.5 trillion per year at minimum by our calculations by mid-century. That is, if something drastic is not done now—like a $2 trillion annual budget savings soon—America will be paying more interest on the public debt within 25 years than the entirety of the Federal budget —Social Security, defense, Medicare, education, highways, interest and the Washington Monument— today.
So, yes, Musk surely did mean $2 trillion per year in this interchange: “How much do you think we can rip out of this wasted, $6.5 trillion (annual) Harris-Biden budget?” Howard Lutnick, a Wall Street CEO and Trump’s transition team co-chair, asked Musk at the former president’s recent rally held at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Without offering specifics, Musk said in response that he thinks “at least $2 trillion” in a brief moment that has since gained widespread attention online and drawn mixed reactions from budget world. Obviously, the sprawling Federal government and its prodigious expanse of spending and debt literally defies easy comprehension and graspable solutions.
After all, the current annual budget of $7 trillion amounts to Federal spending of nearly $20 billion per day and $830 million per hour. And when you talk about the 10-year budget outlook, comprehension literally fades away completely: The current CBO spending baseline for 2025-2034 amounts to $85 trillion or just shy of the annual GDP of the entire planet this year. So based on experience we suggest building the $2 trillion case around a target year and several big buckets of savings by type. The latter can then be used to build a detailed but comprehensible plan for arraying and conveying the desperately needed house-cleaning of the Federal budget.
“About 15,000 active US service members are openly transgender..”
• Trump To Kick Trans Soldiers Out of Army – Times (RT)
US President-elect Donald Trump is planning to ban transgender people from serving in the US military, The Times reported on Monday, citing defense sources. The plan reportedly entails Trump signing an executive order shortly after he takes office that would remove trans personnel already serving and prohibit such people from enlisting in the future. About 15,000 active US service members are openly transgender. Those targeted would be discharged on medical grounds, deemed unfit to serve on the basis of their gender identification. It is unclear, however, whether they will have to undergo any examination to determine their trans status. The new legislation is seen as a harsher version of the ban Trump passed during his first term in office. In 2018, he banned openly transgender people from joining the military, but allowed those already serving to keep their jobs.
At the time, Trump claimed he had consulted with military experts and concluded that trans people should not serve in the army in “any capacity.” He stressed that allowing trans people into the ranks of the army comes with “tremendous medical costs,” as they allegedly require expensive hormone treatment. The ban was rescinded by outgoing President Joe Biden in 2021. Trump’s pick for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, is expected to support the move. The former Fox News host and US National Guard veteran recently published a book ‘The War on Warriors,’ in which he slammed the US military for embracing woke ideology and becoming “effeminate” by promoting diversity and inclusion. He also urged the next commander-in-chief to “clean house,” and argued that medical care for transgender service members is too costly for the Pentagon.
Several sources argued that the potential ban would come at a bad time for the US military, which is struggling to recruit enough personnel. “Abruptly discharging 15,000-plus service members, especially given that the military’s recruiting targets fell short by 41,000 recruits last year, adds administrative burdens to war fighting units, harms unit cohesion, and aggravates critical skill gaps,” Rachel Branaman, head of Modern Military Association of America, told the news outlet. She added that the loss of experience the ban would entail could take around 20 years and billions of dollars to replace. Paulo Batista, an analyst in the US Navy who is openly transgender, also argued against the ban, warning that it would cause disruptions across the entire US army. “You take 15,000 of us out – that’s 15,000 leadership positions, every one of us play a vital role… You pull one of us out, that means others have to cover. These jobs could take months or even years to fill,” he told the news outlet.
“..catering to federal employees who are personally devastated by the normal functioning of American democracy.”
• US Lawmakers Want Federal Employees Needing ‘Trump Therapy’ Ousted (RT)
US State Department employees who can’t handle Donald Trump’s presidential victory should be fired on day one of his administration, Republican lawmakers have argued. The diplomatic corps reportedly organized therapy sessions for people who are upset over the outcome of the recent election. In a letter sent to Secretary of State Antony Blinken last week, Republican Representative Darrell Issa of California accused the department of “catering to federal employees who are personally devastated by the normal functioning of American democracy.” Issa was referring to a report published earlier this month by the Washington Free Beacon, which cited an internal memo about two therapy sessions on “managing stress during change,” the first of which was on the Friday after the election.
A State Department source described the event as a “‘cry session’ over Trump’s victory.” It was disturbing, Issa said, that “ostensibly nonpartisan government officials would suffer a personal meltdown over the results of a free and fair election.” He suggested that “if foreign service officers cannot follow through on the American people’s preferences, they should resign and seek a political appointment in the next Democrat administration.” The letter, which was shared with the Washington Free Beacon, requested that Blinken provide explanations about the therapy sessions and other similar events that it may have held in-house in the past.
A similar rebuke came from Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who fumed that “our diplomacy is too important to be left to children” and called for every attendee of the therapy sessions to be fired “on day one” of the Trump administration. Trump’s inauguration will take place on January 20. He picked Senator Marco Rubio of Florida to replace Blinken at the helm of the State Department, with no obstacles expected for his confirmation in Congress. Left-leaning UK newspaper The Guardian offered its employees, particularly those living in the US, free counseling and emotional support following Trump’s victory, according to a memo quoted by Guido Fawkes, a British political gossip blog.
Both main parties have collapsed. Time for Nigel Farage? There’s no one else left..
• Petition Demanding UK General Election Hits 2 Million Signatures (RMX)
A petition demanding a new general election in the United Kingdom has surpassed 2 million signatures, piling pressure on Keir Starmer’s Labour government, whose popularity has plummeted since it gained power in July. The petition, launched late last week on the U.K. parliament’s website, calls for another public vote due to the left-wing government having “gone back up on the promises it laid out in the lead-up to the last election.” Parliament is obliged to debate all petitions that surpass 100,000 signatures. The petition recorded the fastest growth to 1 million signatures in history, reflecting the widespread public dissatisfaction toward the current government and the desire for a renewed mandate.
Michael Westwood, the man behind the viral petition, told the Express news website that he, like many of the British public, is feeling “betrayed with the promises we were told” during the election campaign, and claimed the reality “looks nothing like what was promised.” “I think people have had enough, people have seen what’s happened over in America as well, and I think that’s had a knock-on effect. If people stand together and vote, then we can make a change,” he added. The Labour Party’s ascent to power in the United Kingdom was significantly bolstered by pledges to shield working individuals from tax hikes and to uphold key social benefits. However, recent policy decisions, particularly those unveiled in Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s budget, have sparked widespread criticism and allegations of broken promises.
Having vowed not to increase the record-high tax burden on “working people,” the left-wing government has, within just four months, announced a £25 billion rise in employers’ national insurance contributions, the cost of which many believe will affect wage rises and drive up costs for consumers. Additionally, Reeves announced increases in capital gains tax to 18 percent for basic rate taxpayers and 24 percent for higher rate taxpayers, slashed Winter Fuel Payments designed to help the elderly manage heating costs during the colder months, and introduced inheritance tax rules for farmers that could see a majority of family-owned farms have to sell productive land to meet tax obligations. Asked about the petition on Monday, government minister Jess Phillips dismissed the concerns of the signatories. “I make no bones about the fact that we will have to make difficult decisions and some people won’t like that. I didn’t come into politics to please everybody all the time,” she told LBC. When asked why she believed the petition was gaining such unprecedented traction, she replied: “You’ll have to ask the petitioners.”
“There will always be an England, as the old song goes.”
• The ICC Warrants and the World They Announce (Patrick Lawrence)
There is an old, often-told story about a front-page article one of the big dailies here once ran as severe weather hit in these parts. “Storm in Channel, Continent Cut Off,” the headline read. Nobody is certain any newspaper ever published any such story with any such headline. The majority view is that it is an apocryphal tale meant to suggest the Anglocentric sensibility you sometimes find among the English. People cite some specifics from time to time: It appeared in The Times in the 1930s. No, it was in the Daily Mirror in the 1940s. “A common date and name I’ve seen,” a reader remarked some years ago in AskHistorians, a portal carried on Reddit, “is The Daily Telegraph somewhere in 1929.” I have always been inclined to the view that there’s a home truth in this chestnut but no literal truth to it.
With the reporting coming out since the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister and defense minister on Nov. 21, however, I have to wonder about The Telegraph. “ICC puts its reputation on trial by chasing Netanyahu,” is the headline that appeared in its Thursday evening editions. The subhead is just as hourglass upside-down: “Pursuit of democratically elected individuals who have been supported by the West will test court’s legitimacy.” There will always be an England, as the old song goes. The court has not released the documents pertinent to its warrants. On Thursday it simply cited “reasonable grounds” that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant “intentionally and knowingly deprived the civilian population in Gaza of objects indispensable to their survival.” This is legal language alleging that the Israelis systematically used starvation as a weapon of war, an open-and-shut war crime of which the terrorist regime is open-and-shut guilty.
But given the slaughter and atrocities the world has witnessed in real time, my guess is there are probably a lot more in the charges to come out of Khan’s investigations. The ICC issued a third arrest warrant for Mohammed Deif, Hamas’s top military commander, for “crimes against humanity and war crimes.” In my read this was pro forma, a pre-emptive response to charges that Khan’s findings are one-sided. However culpable Deif was for the events of Oct. 7 a year ago, he will never face trial: The Israelis announced over the summer that they killed him in an air strike last July. The court said simply that it cannot verify his death. And so the warrant. The Western powers and the Zionist state have been bracing for these warrants since Karim Khan, the court’s chief prosecutor, requested them last May. The Netanyahu regime instantly termed Kahn’s recommendations an antisemitic disgrace. “Outrageous,” proclaimed President Biden, a professed Zionist who has accepted many millions of dollars from the Israel lobby.
Tell me something new under the sun, please. The interesting thing here is that this kind of carrying on no longer goes anywhere. The main argument as the world awaited the warrants—and why did the court take so long, we have to wonder—has been jurisdictional: Israel is not among the ICC’s 124 members, and the Zionist regime asserts its leadership is therefore not subject to the court’s rulings. The Biden regime, also not a member, has supported this contention—all by its lonesome, per usual. This, too, has not held up, to state the obvious. There has also been quite a lot of funny business obscured from public view. Last month the Daily Mail, the London tabloid, reported that a woman on the ICC staff had accused Khan of sexual harassment. Khan immediately termed the accusation disinformation, welcomed an impartial investigation, and called for a separate investigation into the origin of the charges. Anyone with a well-maintained bullshit detector and a familiarity with the disgusting tricks American and Israeli intelligence have in their bags could detect what this was all about.
“Israel’s power and reach are far too great, but they are not unlimited, and they are declining.”
• ICC Arrest Warrant For Netanyahu Is Really An Indictment Of The West (Amar)
What is a ‘rogue regime’? According to one of the first US propagandists of the term, Anthony Lake, former President Bill Clinton’s national security adviser from 1993-97, it is an “outlaw” government that chooses to stay outside polite international society and also to “assault its basic values.” The term, of course, was never even meant to be applied honestly. From the get-go, it was designed to be weaponized as a tool of Western hybrid warfare against countries such as Cuba, Iraq, and Libya that in reality had only one thing in common: They would not bend to the will of the US and its clients, together making up the Collective West: When Western politicos and their careerist stenographers in the mainstream media start calling you a ‘rogue regime’, get ready to fend off invasions, coups, economic warfare up to starvation-siege level, and, when it all comes together, bloody regime change, including vile public torture and assassination.
And yet, let’s take this primitive propaganda term at face-value for a moment. The underlying theory (if that’s the word) is as simple-minded as can be: There are goody-two-shoe states – almost all of them in the Global North, as it happens – that follow the rules, and then there are the bad kids that spit on them. And we won’t even ask what rules, or who makes and applies them. That question would lead us into the fetid moral-intellectual morass of the ‘rules-based international order’ drivel. That, in reality, is a euphemistic Western shorthand for: ‘We are above international law (here, the actual opposite of those obscure and adjustable ‘rules’), we spit on the UN, and in addition, we have the unique privilege to order others around and kill them, individually and collectively, if they don’t comply’. No, let’s just roll with the ideological nonsense for a moment and – step one – pretend (just pretend) that the truly Orwellian term ‘rogue regime’ actually has a meaning an intelligent, unbiased observer could take seriously.
Step two: Let’s ask what, by that logic, would be even worse than a rogue regime. Easy: What’s worse than a regime that openly disregards legal and ethical rules is a regime that pretends to represent – even own – those rules, only to pervert them. Because such a regime does not merely disobey, but fundamentally undermines them. A simple criminal will break the law and morality, but they will easily survive that. But a true villain, a real force of evil, will usurp and defile the law and moral norms, depriving them of general respect and thereby threatening their effectiveness and, ultimately, even existence. And that is why it is the West as a whole that will be challenged the most by the fallout of the International Criminal Court (ICC) finally issuing arrest warrants for two of Israel’s genocidaire leaders, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant. Because it is the Collective West – and only the West – with its genocidal de facto colony Israel that has been that villain.
Don’t get me wrong: There are very disappointing limits to what the ICC – the only international court that can go after individuals for war crimes and crimes against humanity – has done. For now at least, it is targeting only Israeli officials (and far too few of them) – and a Hamas leader who Israel claims is dead already – but not their Western accomplices. In that narrow sense, obviously, Israel, a state constantly breaking new records in committing war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide, will be most directly affected. If, again, by far not enough, because the ICC is doing far too little far too late. Indeed, it has not even charged Netanyahu and Gallant with genocide, as it could have under Article 6 of the 1998 Rome Statute and obviously should have. Instead, the ICC has indicted them ‘only’ for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Finally, the ICC by design lacks any capability to execute its own arrest warrants. For that, it has to rely on those states that have signed up to the Rome Statute, and on their willingness to uphold their obligations under it.
Yet, while the ICC is a judicial institution, the true significance of the arrest warrants is of course political. It is, as The Economist admits, a “diplomatic disaster” – and not just for Netanyahu, as The Economist tries to hedge – but for Israel. This is no ordinary disaster though, but an especially disruptive one because for Israel, it is yet another signal that its impunity is cracking, because that impunity rests on the death grip of its international bullying, corruption, lobbies, spy-and-blackmail networks, and all-purpose subversion. We know that Israel and its accomplices have exerted massive pressure on the ICC to prevent precisely this outcome. And yet they have failed. Israel’s power and reach are far too great, but they are not unlimited, and they are declining.
All Over Bar The Shouting (That The Russians Did It)
• The Novichok Show Trial – All Over Bar The Shouting (Helmer)
Almost over now is the British Government’s six-year operation to prove to the world that in 2018 Russian military officers killed Dawn Sturgess with a Novichok weapon, which they had discarded after using it first on Sergei and Yulia Skripal. Almost finished, too, is the Government’s campaign to prove that Sturgess’s lover and her family are not entitled to a multi-million pound compensation for the negligence of officials in stopping the Russians and their Novichok before they attacked the Skripals, and then before Sturgess died. The Sturgess Inquiry’s public witness testimony, which commenced on October 14, will conclude this week with an appearance by Jonathan Allen, Director General for defence and intelligence at the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO).
Listed to testify on “current HMG [His Majesty’s Government] assessment of Russian State Responsibility” Allen, who defended the Novichok allegations at the United Nations in 2018, will speak on Thursday, November 28; he will be the final witness to appear before lawyers make their summing-up statements. According to the Foreign Office, Allen’s job is “the delivery of UK policy for the FCDO response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and for Eastern Europe and Central Asia policy.” It is now too late for Allen to neutralize the expert witnesses – doctors at Salisbury District Hospital, scientists at the Defence Ministry’s chemical warfare establishment (Porton Down), eyewitnesses, police investigators. Their evidence exposes the alternative narrative that the Skripals were attacked by British government agents who manufactured the Novichok at Porton Down; fabricated traces of it along the trail of two Russian decoys; and then planted a Novichok-poisoned perfume bottle on Dawn Sturgess’s kitchen table – eleven days after police searches had failed to find it.
The hearing record also reveals repeated prompts and interruptions by Anthony Hughes, the retired judge directing the Sturgess Inquiry (titled Lord Hughes of Ombersley), to prevent questioning of witnesses from turning into cross-examination of the Government’s allegations. Last Thursday, an anonymous Health Department doctor code-named V13A testified that the Cabinet Office in London, coordinating the Defence Ministry, health emergency agencies, the police and the security services, had carried out as swiftly as possible the “risk assessment” and “risk mitigation actions” required to protect the public in the Salisbury area. In March 2018, when the Skripals were attacked, V13A said she was a senior official at Public Health England (PHE), and during the course of the risk investigations, she describes following instructions from Nick Gent; he was then a chemical warfare official at Porton Down who was relaying orders from senior intelligence and security officials in London.
The public had been properly safeguarded, the witness concluded her written statement, because the poisoning had been targeted on the Skripals, and there was no evidence of wider-area contamination. She repeated the findings she and Gent had agreed to relay to and from national officials in London: “potential contacts had no symptoms of poisoning”; “the risk to public health from the incident was low, based on the evidence available’”; “the risk to the public was low on the understanding that all known sites had been secured…there was no need to provide further public health advice at that time, with what was known at that moment.”
In her oral testimony, V13A told the Inquiry, “it is helpful from a public health risk assessment to have public health specialists, the relevant scientists at the very least, with the available evidence and that evidence will identify what the risk and then you can identify or consider risk mitigations that are proportionate to both the risk and to the available evidence.” Hughes interrupted to correct the witness. “No, come on, that won’t do. It’s not whether it’s identified as a possible issue.”
Elon phone
Elon Musk: Your phone is fine. It's not going to cause DNA damage. You can sleep easy at night.
“If someone says, is my cell phone going to cause brain cancer because of radiation, I'm like, do you mean photons or particles?
Because it's not emitting particles, so we can just… pic.twitter.com/ZrEu4qf1hK
— ELON CLIPS (@ElonClipsX) November 25, 2024
AI
AI will be incredible
pic.twitter.com/1fU4Jn7yN9— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 25, 2024
Oil
Every left-winger should have their eyes held open and be forced to watch this on repeat until it sinks in.
— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) November 25, 2024
Cat fall
Cats are built to survive high falls.
They reach terminal velocity at a lower speed vs bigger animals.
Plus, they have a relatively large surface area in proportion to their weight: watch as its body turns into a parachute.pic.twitter.com/Swqs3IcXwp
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) November 24, 2024
New fear
https://twitter.com/i/status/1861150674391531578
Caring
https://twitter.com/i/status/1860768531974905892
Gently
https://twitter.com/i/status/1861023240002457923
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