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Debt Rattle April 19 2026

Apr 192026
 
 April 19, 2026  Posted by at 9:54 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  48 Responses »


Laura Knight The Green Sea, Lamorna 1918


• Trump Forces Iran To The Table: The New World Order (CTH)
• The Strait of Hormuz Is Open (Catherine Salgado)
• Winning in Iran Is Worth Losing the Midterms (A.J. Christopher)
• Iran Says Reasserted Control Over Strait of Hormuz (PressTV)
• “Bit Of Chaos”: Hormuz Shuts Again As Ships Make U-Turn (ZH)
• Iran Bats Down ‘Baseless’ Trump Claim On Handing Over Enriched Uranium (ZH)
• Iran’s New Supreme Leader Surfaces (Sort of) With a Chilling Message (Robert Spencer)
• The Way RFK Jr. Turned the Tables on This Democrat Was Amazing (Margolis)
• Abolishing Veto Power To Spell Beginning Of End For EU — Slovak PM Fico (TASS)
• Liberal Justices Are Stalling a Ruling to Protect Democrats (Margolis)
• 6,000 Apply as Air Traffic Controllers As Duffy Wants To Recruit Gamers (Jung)
• Dick Morris Confirms a Huge Rumor About Bill and Hillary Clinton (Margolis)
• Fetterman Torches His Party Over Its Surging Antisemitism Problem (Margolis)
• Ilhan Omar Not Actually a Multimillionaire After All (Robert Spencer)
• Cuba Sends ‘Secret Letter’ To Trump – WSJ (RT)
• Building of Trump’s White House Ballroom Can Resume In Full: Appeals Court (BBC)

 


 

https://twitter.com/RealDonKeith/status/2045513655983263863?s=20 https://twitter.com/BarronTNews_/status/2045251870726222252?s=20 https://twitter.com/TRUMP_ARMY_/status/2045517128426795500?s=20 https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2045205021453934661?s=20 https://twitter.com/Real_RobN/status/2045325053546668438?s=20 https://twitter.com/CL4WS_OUT/status/2045268311064117578?s=20

 


 

https://twitter.com/BarakRavid/status/2045556264076243035

“..direct negotiations between the United States and Iran for the first time in nearly half a century..”

“.. the old geopolitical order is being replaced in real time. This is not chaos. This is strategy.”

• Trump Forces Iran To The Table: The New World Order (CTH)

Mike Steger from the Promethean group presents thoughtful analysis of the change President Trump is bringing to a new era in geopolitical alignment. This is an interesting and insightful review. As noted by Mr Steger:“From direct negotiations between the United States and Iran for the first time in nearly half a century… to coordinated diplomatic and military movement across the Middle East, South Asia, and beyond… the old geopolitical order is being replaced in real time. This is not chaos. This is strategy.”



TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 The global shift begins
1:20 The strategy behind the Iran deal
3:05 Blockade pressure and economic impact
5:10 Diplomacy with teeth: Islamabad talks
7:20 Iran moves closer to a deal
9:00 Nations aligning: Pakistan, India, China
11:15 A global reset in motion
13:10 The long game: from Riyadh to today
15:20 The new Middle East framework
17:10 Europe’s decline and the old order fading
18:50 What this moment really means

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“THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ IS COMPLETELY OPEN AND READY FOR BUSINESS AND FULL PASSAGE, BUT THE NAVAL BLOCKADE WILL REMAIN IN FULL FORCE AND EFFECT AS IT PERTAINS TO IRAN..”

• The Strait of Hormuz Is Open (Catherine Salgado)

The Strait of Hormuz is fully reopened, President Donald Trump announced on Friday morning. His Truth Social post was in all caps. “THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ IS COMPLETELY OPEN AND READY FOR BUSINESS AND FULL PASSAGE, BUT THE NAVAL BLOCKADE WILL REMAIN IN FULL FORCE AND EFFECT AS IT PERTAINS TO IRAN, ONLY, UNTIL SUCH TIME AS OUR TRANSACTION WITH IRAN IS 100% COMPLETE,” the president wrote. He added, “THIS PROCESS SHOULD GO VERY QUICKLY IN THAT MOST OF THE POINTS ARE ALREADY NEGOTIATED. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER!”


It remains to be seen how soon Iran’s regime will break this agreement. They violated the original ceasefire within two hours by bombarding nearby countries, especially Israel, with missiles. They then claimed they could not and would not disable all the mines they had scattered in the strait, but they still wanted tolls from any countries that used the waterway. The same Islamic jihadi regime remains in power that has terrorized the world and massacred its own people for half a century.

Trump also announced that he “prohibited” Israel from striking Lebanon, which really means the genocidal group Hezbollah. This frankly makes no sense. How can we, from so very far away, tell Israel, whose northern towns have been absolutely wrecked by Hezbollah, that they are not allowed to defend themselves? When Hezbollah breaks the agreement and strikes Israelis within the near future, as it will with absolute and complete certainty, how can we tell Israel they cannot strike back? And how on earth can it be in anyone’s interest not to eliminate Hezbollah? Don’t forget that the Michigan synagogue attacker in America last month was a Hezbollah operative. We have a stake in eliminating this terrorist group, too.

Perhaps Trump means that the ceasefire will last only so long as Hezbollah upholds its side of the bargain.

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Are the midterms a worry for the GOP if the Democrats have no candidate?

• Winning in Iran Is Worth Losing the Midterms (A.J. Christopher)

There has been much hand-wringing among us conservatives about the upcoming midterms. Will we win them? Lose them? What do the polls say? What will be the deciding factor? The economy? Some 11th hour scandal? Or, more pressingly, Iran? What should we do if Iran proves to be a detriment to our chances?The hard truth is that the Iran War needs to be fought to completion. If that takes another week, another month, or another year, it needs to be done. The worst possible thing Trump can do is to cut a deal just for the sake of cutting a deal and going home with enough time to recover in the polls before midterms.


Because all that will do is leave the enemy intact to fight another day. Assuredly, they will. The MAGA movement supports the Iran War because we are the grown-ups in the room. We are worried about the next century more than we are about the next midterms. We are worried about the future of Western civilization, not ensuring our guy gets on whatever appropriations board to ensure he’s cut his slice of the swamp pork.Do I want to lose the midterms? No. But I think a midterm loss will be a lot less devastating than its currently being made out to be.Think about it this way. If we lose the midterms, it most likely won’t be a landslide. We’ll lose control of the House and maybe the Senate by a marginal number of seats. Ok, then what?

Then the Democrats will spend the next two years making complete fools of themselves. Their first order of business for a Democrat-ran House will be to impeach Trump at least two, maybe three times over the next couple years. The impeachments will then go to the Senate to promptly die. This alone will simply prove that the Democrats have no intention of, and certainly no plan for, governing in the interests of the American people and are only interested in sticking it to Orange Man Bad. And history will judge these impeachments not as objective, rational checks on usurped power, but as the shrieking hissy fits of overgrown children that they are.

Second, whatever legislation the Democrats pass won’t be centered on actually fixing any ills that Americans face. They’ll focus on open borders, trans inclusion, net zero, and other catnip for the extreme left. They’ll waste no time in reminding the American voter, once again, why they voted against Democrats last time around.But won’t Democrats use their two-year window to cram in as much of this garbage legislation as they possibly can? Yes, and Trump will use this two-year window to veto all of it. Both the House and Senate would need a two-thirds majority to override a presidential veto, and neither chamber would come close to getting that. It’s likely the Senate Democrats wouldn’t even get a filibuster-proof bill through for a vote.

But what if Democrats nuke the filibuster? Good. I hope they do. That way, the next time we retake the chamber, we won’t be subject to endless excuses from Thune & Co. about the preposterous “integrity” of Senate procedure. But we won’t get any of our legislation passed! And how, exactly, would that change from what’s happening right now? We are not getting any of our legislation passed now. Other than the occasional Ted Cruz or Mike Lee, our representatives are largely an amorphous mass of self-interested, backstabbing cowards who are banking on doing the bare minimum necessary to placate MAGA before, in their estimation, the movement fizzles out and they can go back to the McConnell/Romney days of business as usual.

There are currently 20 REPUBLICANS in the House who are all on board with Maria Salazar’s amnesty bill. This is the majority we’re fighting to keep? Our slim Senate majority, with Tillis and Murkowski blocking everything they can, is what we’re fighting to keep? Regardless of who wins, the post-midterm Congress will be just as useless as the pre-midterm Congress. The only practical downside to losing the Senate is losing the ability to confirm judges. In this outcome, Trump can play just as dirty as his Democrat opponents. If we lose the Senate in the midterms, Thomas or Alito can retire and Trump can get a replacement in before January 2027.

If Thomas and Alito choose not to retire until after January 2027 but before the next election, Trump can keep the seat(s) vacant until we win back the Senate in 2028. During that time, he can continue to put forward reasonable conservative candidates, all of whom will get rejected by the Democrat Senate. This will only serve to further convince Americans that Democrats’ only goal is blocking Trump at all costs.That should be obvious at this point, but there seem to be millions of Americans whose memories don’t extend past the most recent fluctuation in gasoline prices.

My point is, losing the midterms won’t be an unmitigated disaster because Trump holds the veto pen, Trump makes the military decisions, and Trump can outmaneuver anything they lob at him. A midterm loss would be the price we pay for a resounding 2028 landslide when a Vance/Rubio steamroller crushes whatever flax seed munching, non-binary clown car the Democrats unveil as their next sacrificial lamb. When the 2028 campaign seasons kicks into high gear, we will have the previous two years working to our advantage. We will be able to show, again, just how insane the left behaves when it is given just a modicum of power. And we will be able to show that the MAGA Republicans were the only ones in the last half-century who decisively dealt with the Iran problem.

And the Iran problem was this: In 47 years, this Islamist regime had terrorized the region, friends and foes alike.

It declared war on the United States, starting with the 1979 embassy takeover and continuing, unabated, until the present day.

Funds, shelters, and cooperates with almost every Islamic terrorist organization in the region, to include Hamas, Hizballah, al-Qaeda, and the Houthi rebels.

It has broken every agreement it ever made with the West.

It helped maim and kill hundreds, if not thousands, of American troops in Iraq through its funding of anti-American militias and other terror groups.

It was weeks, if not days, away from producing nuclear weapons.

Unlike Russia or China, a nuclear-armed Iran cannot be deterred through mutually assured destruction. If they get nukes, they will use them. First against Israel, then against Europe and/or the Gulf States, and eventually against the United States.

Yeah, but wouldn’t we just nuke them back? Yeah, but they don’t care. We’ve just decimated their navy, their air force, much of the IRGC, and almost all of their senior leadership. They don’t care. They just massacred 40000 of their own unarmed citizens. They don’t care. For them, this isn’t about using nukes as leverage to get concessions. This is about using nukes to usher in the apocalypse they sincerely think is necessary to preclude the coming of the hidden Twelfth Imam. The quicker they start nuking infidels, the quicker their version of the Last Judgment happens.

This nightmare doesn’t end until the current Iranian leadership is either driven from power, or decimated to such an overwhelming (and permanent) degree that they pose less of a threat than did the Branch Davidians. Trump instinctively knows this, but the squishier elements of the GOP have been constantly whispering the word “midterm” into his ear.We put ourselves in this position because, for a decade of elections, we refused to entertain any notion whatsoever about that dreaded four-word phrase boots on the ground!!! Our boots would have been on Tehranian ground by now had we not straightjacketed every candidate or official from even hinting at such a thing.

But what about another quaqmire? Every quagmire we’ve gotten into, from Vietnam to Iraq, has been the fault of the American voter. This includes conservatives. There isn’t a conservative reading this who didn’t fully support Bush when we launched the liberation of Iraq. All of us did. Myself included. We were all America F*** Yeah when the Saddam statues came toppling down. But the moment the going got tough and the polling started to slip? Let’s be honest. We jumped ship. All of us did. Myself included. Bush is now a neocon villain of conservative lore. He’s the moronic sock puppet who let himself get duped by Dick Cheney and Halliburton and the oil companies to the point where there was very little daylight between our arguments and those of the radical left.

The cold, hard truth is that boots on the ground in Iran, done properly and with realistic timelines set, is the only way to fully guarantee the threat of the mullahs is finally and permanently neutralized. But can we really blame Trump or any other Republican from not going all-in on the idea of boots on the ground? They saw how we hung Bush out to dry, why would they want the same treatment?

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PressTV is Iranian.

• Iran Says Reasserted Control Over Strait of Hormuz (PressTV)

The spokesperson for the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters says Iran has reasserted control over the Strait of Hormuz due to the United States’ so-called naval blockade of the waterway and its acts of “piracy.” According to Lieutenant-Colonel Ebrahim Zolfaghari, the Islamic Republic of Iran, in line with previous agreements and with good faith during negotiations, had agreed to a managed passage of a limited number of oil tankers and commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz.


However, the spokesperson added that the Americans, with their track record of repeated breaches of faith, continue to engage in banditry and piracy under the guise of a so-called blockade. “For this reason, control of the Strait of Hormuz has returned to its previous state, and this strategic strait is under the intense management and control of the armed forces,” the spokesperson stated.The spokesperson further declared that as long as the United States does not fully end the disruption to the free passage of vessels originating from Iran to their destinations and from destinations back to Iran, the situation in the Strait of Hormuz will remain under severe control and will stay in its previous state.

https://twitter.com/PressTV/status/2045414583423119598

On Friday, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi announced the reopening of the strait following the implementation of a ceasefire in Lebanon. The Islamic Republic had identified the ceasefire as an indivisible part of a 10-point proposal it had forwarded prior to Trump’s announcement. Reacting to the announcement, Trump took to his Truth Social platform, alleging that Iran had “agreed to never close the Strait of Hormuz again.”

He also claimed that the United States’ “naval blockade will remain in full force and effect as it pertains to Iran, only, until such time as our transaction with Iran is 100% complete.”= Trump additionally said that ceasefire negotiations “should go very quickly and that most of the points are already negotiated.” Iran has categorically refuted Trump’s claims, asserting that the strait was only open to commercial vessels, which would be allowed to transit through only a designated route and with Iran’s authorization.

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Iran closes Hormuz BECAUSE the US closes Hormuz?!

• “Bit Of Chaos”: Hormuz Shuts Again As Ships Make U-Turn (ZH)

The Trump administration’s “baffle ’em with bullshit” methodology has been on full display, as the reopening of the Hormuz chokepoint on Friday drove a broad risk-on in markets: US equities soared, crude collapsed, and Treasury yields declined, based on the assumption that disruption to global energy flows had eased. However, as of early Saturday morning, those moves may prove premature. The Wall Street Journal reports that the world’s most important maritime chokepoint is once again closed to commercial transit.


About 20 ships waiting to enter the Persian Gulf through the maritime chokepoint have turned back toward Oman after Iran’s military declared the waterway closed again, amid a U.S. blockade of Iranian ports.

The OSINT community on X is reporting a Hormuz closure as well…

The vessels had reportedly been prepared to pay $2 million in tolls to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards to pass through, but radio warnings indicated the strait was closed. WSJ notes: “They are now turning back because the Revolutionary Guards are sending radio messages that the strait is closed, according to one Hong Kong owner with a container ship waiting to transit the strait.”

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Trump won’t leave without it. His claim about taking Iran’s enriched uranium is NOT baseless.

• Iran Bats Down ‘Baseless’ Trump Claim On Handing Over Enriched Uranium (ZH)

Iranian source in conversation with Al-Arabi Al-Jadeed: Trump’s claim about the delivery of Iran’s enriched uranium is baseless. Per the report:

• Iranian source in conversation with Al-Arabi Al-Jadeed: Only civilian ships can pass through the Strait of Hormuz, and that too through routes specified by Iran. The announcement of the temporary opening of the Strait of Hormuz has nothing to do with the current negotiations with Washington.
• We waited a few hours to make sure that a ceasefire had been established in Lebanon; then we temporarily opened the Strait of Hormuz. The announcement of the temporary opening of the Strait of Hormuz and the ceasefire in Lebanon are part of the agreement.
• Negotiations on the issues of dispute with the United States are still ongoing, but due to Washington’s excessive demands, there is no clear perspective.
Washington’s demands in the negotiations remain illogical and unreasonable. The US President’s claim about taking Iran’s enriched uranium is baseless

The ‘excessive demands’ complaint is exactly the same Iranian position prior to Friday, when Trump made a series of massive claims and declarations on some kind of agreed-to and imminent final peace deal. Latest:

• Iran says its enriched uranium is “as sacred to us as the soil of Iran and will not be transferred anywhere under any circumstances,” adding that 60% enriched uranium will not leave the country “in any way,” per Iran’s Foreign Ministry via Tasnim.

And more contradiction in terms of Trump’s big claims concerning a major Iran deal in the works, wherein he’s insisted money won’t be exchanged for the US obtaining the enriched uranium and ‘nuclear dust’: The U.S. has told Tehran it would give Iran access to $20 billion if it hands over its stockpile of fissile material, officials familiar with the negotiations say. The proposal is one of the ideas on the table for resolving one of the big sticking points in talks: how to remove Iran’s access to 972 pounds of near-weapons-grade enriched uranium.Axios reported the U.S. proposal earlier Friday. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the offer would include all of Iran’s fissile-material stockpile, which includes medium- and low-enriched uranium. Two of the officials said Iran has neither dismissed nor accepted the proposal at this point.

More Big Trump Words on Alleged Iran Deal in Works
A grand deal in the works as Trump says a second round of direct talks will likely be held this weekend? It’s too hard to say what’s agreed upon from the Iranian side at this point, as Trump continues issuing rapid-fire Friday statements: Talks over a lasting agreement will “probably” be held this weekend, the president said. “Most of the main points are finalized. It’ll go pretty quickly,” Trump said. The president denied that the moratorium on Iran’s nuclear program would expire after 20 years. Asked if the program will completely halt, Trump responded “No years, unlimited.” Really?…

TRUMP TELLS REUTERS WILL BRING IRAN’S URANIUM TO US Iran Threatens to Again Close Strait: FARS.And soon on the heels of what appears to be a lot of Trump projection: IRAN TO CLOSE STRAIT OF HORMUZ IF US BLOCKADE PERSISTS: FARS. In essence, despite the flurry of victory lap-style messages from Trump on Truth Social Friday, the ground reality remains that Iran will do what it has been doing if the US does what it has been doing – but the question will be whether each side keeps up the charade for the sake of the war not restarting, or whether this is again headed toward inevitable clash.

Read more …

What to make of this? There are plenty dead people who are more communicative than this guy.

• Iran’s New Supreme Leader Surfaces (Sort of) With a Chilling Message (Robert Spencer)

Mojtaba Khamenei, the new supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, still hasn’t been seen in public since he was named to his exalted new position. Reuters reported that “three people close to his inner circle” said that the world’s most prominent nepo baby was severely injured in the airstrike that killed his father, suffering disfigurement to his face and reportedly also losing a leg. Nevertheless, in a new message on Telegram Saturday, the younger Khamenei was full of threats and bravado, and ready to give the Great Satan and Little Satan a whipping they won’t soon forget.


“Iran’s navy,” Mojtaba (or whoever was writing the message in his name) declared, “is ready to inflict new bitter defeats on enemies.” That may be, but it’s more than a little improbable. As President Donald Trump put it on Monday, “Their military is destroyed, their whole navy is underwater. One hundred fifty ships are gone, their navy is gone.”It was peculiarly fitting: the threat of a phantom navy from a supreme leader who may very well not be alive at all. The Islamic Republic has admitted that Mojtaba was indeed gravely injured: according to Reuters, “a newsreader on state television described him as a ‘janbaz,’ a term used for those badly wounded in war, after he was named supreme leader.”

On the other hand, Mojtaba Khamenei could be dead, and all this talk about his facial injuries and how he lost a leg is just an attempt to secure some legitimacy for a regime that is on the brink. A new supreme leader who is the son of the old supreme leader immediately commands more respect than a second- or third-line cleric who might have been pressed into duty after the killing of so many of the Islamic Republic’s top leadership. Whatever his true condition may be, the Telegram version of Mojtaba was full of bravado. “Just as Iran’s drones strike like lightning against the US and Zionist criminals, Israel,” he wrote, “the brave navy is also prepared to inflict new bitter defeat on enemies.”

Nor is the Islamic Republic relying upon its navy alone. “The Army,” Khamenei added, “is like the nation’s child, which arises from within the heart of the people’s homes. The Islamic Republic of Iran’s Army is now courageously defending the land, water, and flag that belong to it. Iran’s Army is standing side by side with their comrades from other armed forces, battling the two leading armies of disbelief and Arrogance.” Taking a page from Baghdad Bob, the spokesman for Saddam Hussein who provoked laughter around the world two decades ago when he insisted that the Iraqi army was dealing the Americans a humiliating defeat, even as American troops advanced in the background of his video shot, Mojtaba declared: “And the Islamic Army has exposed those armies’ weakness and humiliation to the world.”

He meant, of course, the armies of America and Israel, not his own, but back in the real world, Trump said: “I think Iran is in very bad shape. I think they’re pretty desperate… We had a meeting that lasted 21 hours. We understand the situation better than anybody, and Iran’s in very bad shape.” Nevertheless, it seems clear from the chest-thumping and threats in the message from Khamenei, or whoever really wrote it, that the Islamic Republic of Iran intends to take up the war in earnest when the true expires on April 22. That has been clear enough from the fact that on Saturday, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) announced: “Following the violation of the ceasefire conditions, the American enemy did not lift the naval blockade of Iranian vessels and ports; therefore, from this afternoon, the Strait of Hormuz is closed until this blockade is lifted.”

Whatever shape Mojtaba Khamenei is really in, the IRGC is likely running the show in Iran now, and that situation will almost certainly continue. Iran’s Islamic regime has been ruling through terror for 47 years, with the IRGC as its principal enforcement arm. Now, with the regime deeply threatened from both within and without, the terror has gotten even worse, and those who have trafficked in it all these years have presented themselves as the only force that can keep the regime in power. Nevertheless, Mojtaba Khamenei, alive or just presented as such, is a powerful force to give the new rulers legitimacy. How long all this strange situation will or can last, however, will depend largely upon the will of the U.S. and Israel to keep up the pressure.

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“That’s not cutting Medicaid; that’s making sure only the people who should be on it are getting it. There’s a significant difference..”

• The Way RFK Jr. Turned the Tables on This Democrat Was Amazing (Margolis)

Democrats thought they had Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. right where they wanted him. On Friday, Kennedy was on Capitol Hill so that Democrats could grandstand on the HHS budget, the 25th Amendment, and whatever else they needed clips of to include in their fundraising pitches. They thought they could abuse Kennedy and he’d just take it. They were wrong. Very, very wrong. During the hearing, Democrats came loaded with their usual talking points about proposed Medicaid changes harming the poor and the sick. What they didn’t anticipate was Kennedy coming armed with numbers that reframed the entire argument. Instead of playing defense, he walked into that hearing room and went on offense.


Kennedy’s central point was straightforward: the administration isn’t cutting Medicaid. It’s cleaning it up. Then came my favorite moment of the exchange. Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) decided to challenge Kennedy with what he clearly thought was a devastating question. “Have you met with any of the 1.4 million people who have lost their health insurance just this last year from dropping off of Obamacare?” Casar asked. “Have you sat down and talked to those folks about the fact they won’t have their health insurance again?” The question was stupid, but the implication was obvious. According to Cesar, Kennedy was supposedly indifferent to real Americans losing coverage.

Kennedy’s response was about as devastating as it gets. “They’re almost all illegal immigrants,” he told him. There was a brief pause before Cesar stuttered his way through a response and then proceeded to talk over Kennedy as he attempted to make a critical point. “We found 1.5 million illegal immigrants illegally collecting Medicaid,” Kennedy said. Kennedy made it perfectly clear what is actually happening. “What we did with Medicaid is we’re kicking people off it who were illegally taking it,” he said. “There were almost 3 million people who were registered for Medicaid in two states, or registered for Medicaid and Obamacare. That’s illegal. There were a million illegal aliens who were on it.”

That’s not cutting Medicaid; that’s making sure only the people who should be on it are getting it. There’s a significant difference, and Democrats have spent months pretending that distinction doesn’t exist. Democrats built their entire line of attack on the assumption that any reduction in Medicaid enrollment represents harm to legitimate beneficiaries. Kennedy dismantled that assumption in real time, in front of Congress, using the administration’s own data. Casar’s question was supposed to be some moral gotcha moment. There are a lot of great clips of Kennedy during the hearings on Friday floating around on social media, and honestly, they’re all pretty great. He didn’t take any of their crap.

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“.. the beginning of the end of this significant international organization, which none of us wants.”

• Abolishing Veto Power To Spell Beginning Of End For EU — Slovak PM Fico (TASS)

Abolishing the veto power of EU member states would mark the beginning of the end of the union, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said in a speech broadcast by the TASR news agency. “The EU is going through a huge crisis,” the prime minister said. “Abolishing the veto is the beginning of the end of the EU, the beginning of the end of this significant international organization, which none of us wants. If anyone puts forward such proposals, they are simply demonstrating an inability to reach compromises,” he added.


Fico condemned the European Commission’s attempts to secure an EU-wide decision to abolish member states’ veto rights on foreign policy issues. He expressed particular concern over a statement to that effect by EC President Ursula von der Leyen, made immediately after the results of the recent parliamentary elections in Hungary were announced. The outgoing government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban rejected attempts to limit the national sovereignty of European countries in foreign policy matters. Fico said he was not yet aware of the position of Hungary’s new authorities.

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“If the justices rule that drawing districts based on race violates the Constitution, Republicans could pick up as many as 19 new seats across the South. ”

• Liberal Justices Are Stalling a Ruling to Protect Democrats (Margolis)

Republicans across the South have been gearing up for what could be the biggest political map shake-up in decades, and it all hinges on one thing: the Supreme Court’s expected ruling in Louisiana v. Callais. This case will decide the constitutionality of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. It would be cliché to say that the stakes couldn’t be higher, but it’s kind of true. For most of the past half-century, Section 2 has required states to draw “majority-minority” districts — districts engineered to elect minority candidates, who happen to vote overwhelmingly Democrat. Frame it however you like, but the practical effect has been a race-based political firewall protecting Democratic power in states they’d otherwise struggle to hold.


That firewall may be about to come down. In fact, it looks likely. All signs point to the court gutting the race-based VRA congressional districts that have propped up Democratic incumbents for generations. What does this mean? If the justices rule that drawing districts based on race violates the Constitution, Republicans could pick up as many as 19 new seats across the South.

“While such a decision is no sure thing, some states are nonetheless planning for the scenario,” Politico reported back in October. “The potential scramble to redraw could completely reshape the midterms, and Democrats are already sounding the alarm.” So why haven’t we seen the ruling yet? That’s the question everyone should be asking — and the answer, if true, is infuriating. Sean Spicer dropped a bombshell on 2WAY that deserves far more attention than it’s gotten. According to Spicer, reliable sources are telling him the decision is already written and ready to go — but the dissenting minority on the Court is deliberately dragging its feet.

“I have been told by reliable sources that that decision is done, and that the minority is slow walking the dissent so that … states do not have time to redistrict ahead of it,” Spicer said. “But I have been told very reliably that the minority is slow walking that dissent.”

https://twitter.com/sethjlevy/status/2044812452982915081?s=20

It’s likely that the dissenting justices are Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. I wouldn’t be shocked if Chief Justice John Roberts joined them as well, but regardless, if what Spicer is hearing is true, that the dissenting minority is sandbagging their own dissent to run out the clock on redistricting timelines, it’s a big deal. If accurate, it’s a naked abuse of the judicial process — weaponizing the timeline of a Supreme Court decision to preserve partisan power.

If states don’t have enough time to redraw their maps before the 2026 midterms, the ruling becomes functionally meaningless for this cycle. Democrats keep their gerrymandered seats for another two years, regardless of what the Constitution says.

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“To reach the next generation of air traffic controllers, we need to adapt..”

“,, skills common among gamers, such as rapid decision-making, sustained concentration, and the ability to manage multiple inputs simultaneously could be applied to directing air traffic.”

• 6,000 Apply as Air Traffic Controllers As Duffy Wants To Recruit Gamers (Jung)

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy declared the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) campaign to recruit video gamers as air traffic controllers “wildly successful,” after nearly 6,000 applicants submitted forms within the first twelve hours of the program’s launch. The FAA is reporting thousands of applicants applied after its unconventional new recruitment initiative launched on April 17, with the application portal reaching its cap at 8,000 candidates. The Trump administration is currently looking to address a persistent nationwide shortage of air traffic controllers, as many of the most experienced have retired in recent years. “To reach the next generation of air traffic controllers, we need to adapt,” Duffy said in a statement.


“This campaign’s innovative communication style and focus on gaming taps into a growing demographic of young adults who have many of the hard skills it takes to be a successful controller.” The recruitment drive features a high-energy promotional video and messaging that frames job requirements as “mission objectives,” which is designed to appeal to Gen Z applicants. Duffy said that skills common among gamers, such as rapid decision-making, sustained concentration, and the ability to manage multiple inputs simultaneously could be applied to directing air traffic. “If you think about what gamers are doing on screens, they’re talking, reacting, and managing a lot at once — that’s very similar to what happens in a control tower,” Duffy said during remarks in Washington.

The push comes as the FAA confronts a shortfall of roughly 3,500 air traffic controllers, a gap that has developed over the past decade amid rising demand for air travel. Federal data shows the number of controllers has declined even as flight volume has increased, placing additional strain on existing personnel and raising broader concerns about system resilience. To attract candidates, the agency is highlighting the role’s long-term earning potential, noting that certified controllers can earn more than $155,000 annually within three years, but stress that certification remains highly selective and rigorous.

Applicants must be U.S. citizens under the age of 31 and fluent in English, while those who accepted face a multi-stage evaluation process, including the Air Traffic Skills Assessment, medical examinations, and security clearances. Even then, only about 2 percent ultimately complete the training pipeline, which can take between two and five years. Industry stakeholders have largely welcomed the campaign as a creative way to broaden the applicant pool. The air traffic controllers union has expressed support for the program, citing the need to bring in new talent amid ongoing staffing pressures, but cautions that it is not a quick fix due to the significant time required to complete training and certification.

Some aviation experts caution that the influx of applicants will not immediately resolve the shortage, as the lengthy training process and high attrition rates mean that even a successful recruitment effort may take years to translate into fully certified controllers in control towers and radar facilities. The initiative arrives at a time of heightened scrutiny of aviation safety and operations, with recent incidents drawing attention to a decline in highly trained personnel. While aviation officials maintain that the system remains safe, they acknowledge that staffing remains a critical issue.

For now, the FAA’s gamer-focused outreach appears to be achieving its immediate goal: capturing the attention of a new generation of potential recruits. Whether that interest translates into a sustained expansion of the controller workforce will depend on the agency’s ability to guide candidates through one of the most demanding training pipelines in the federal government.

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“I’m not sure that would be divorcing Hillary,” he said. “The issue — it was in part Hillary divorcing him.”

• Dick Morris Confirms a Huge Rumor About Bill and Hillary Clinton (Margolis)

Dick Morris has finally confirmed what many people have long suspected: Bill Clinton, while sitting in the Oval Office, seriously entertained the idea of divorcing Hillary — and he had his longtime political advisor run the polls to find out if he could survive it politically. Morris, who advised Clinton for years, as far back as his 1970s gubernatorial campaigns in Arkansas, appeared on Newsmax and dropped a bombshell that has somehow received far too little attention. When host Rob Finnerty asked Morris to confirm the rumor, the answer was blunt.


“Yes, actually several times,” Morris said. “It was a constant topic of conversation between then-President Clinton and myself, and the storminess of the Clinton marriage made that relevant.” It was actually four or five times, by Morris’s count. The man wasn’t merely curious; he kept returning to the question. Morris said the first time was the most consequential, and he came back to Clinton with a clear message: if you’re going to do this, you need to lay the groundwork first. “I came back to him, and I said that if you did that, you have to prepare people by explaining how Hillary has an independent career and has independent priorities.”

This was all happening before the 1996 re-election campaign against Bob Dole, so Clinton was genuinely weighing whether to cut Hillary loose before asking the American public to give him a second term. All while Paula Jones was in the picture, Gennifer Flowers had already gone public with her claims of a 12-year affair (which Clinton eventually admitted to), and Monica Lewinsky was waiting in the wings. But here’s where it gets even more interesting. When Finnerty suggested Clinton was considering divorcing Hillary, Morris pumped the brakes on that framing. “I’m not sure that would be divorcing Hillary,” he said. “The issue — it was in part Hillary divorcing him.”

I’m sure it was mutual, to be honest. So, obviously, the big question is why they have stayed together since. I use the term “together” loosely, by the way. Morris has a theory. “I think that Hillary made a calculation about her relationship with Bill. I think at the beginning it was true love, and I think it was that until the Monica Lewinsky thing came along,” he said. After that, the relationship shifted into something more transactional… at least for Hillary.

“Hillary realized that as long as her power and her prestige was entirely dependent on her marriage to Bill, that it was a shaky reed,” Morris explained. The polling results made it clear that being Mrs. Clinton wasn’t enough. “She had to have in her own right credentials and things she could run on — which she did.” And run she did. Twice, in fact. The whole arc of Hillary’s political career — the Senate seat in New York, the 2008 primary run, the secretary of State role, the 2016 presidential campaign — was all courtesy of a politically convenient marriage, which was merely a vehicle for her own quest for power.

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“I’m not the only Democrat that supports this, but I’m the only Democrat that’s willing to stand up and say it’s the right thing.. “

• Fetterman Torches His Party Over Its Surging Antisemitism Problem (Margolis)

Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) sat down with CNN’s Kasie Hunt on The Arena Friday, and he admitted the ugly truth about the Democratic Party: it has an antisemitism problem. Not a messaging problem. Not a perception problem. And he named names.When Hunt asked Fetterman directly whether the Democratic Party has a problem with antisemitism, he didn’t hedge. “Sure, definitely,” he said, and then kept going. He pointed to Graham Platner, a Democratic primary candidate in Maine who has a Nazi tattoo on his chest and was recently caught online praising a video of Hamas beating and torturing Israeli soldiers to death. That man, Fetterman noted, is currently leading his race.


“The guy that’s going to win the primary in Maine has a Nazi tattoo on his chest, and that’s no problem for a lot of voters,” Fetterman said. “So I don’t know. I don’t know why — that’s crazy.” The RealClearPolitics average shows Platner leading Gov. Janet Mills by 22 points heading into the June primary, and recent polls show Platner beating Collins by an average of 7.6 points. He made clear this isn’t a matter of youthful ignorance, either. “We know he knows. He knew what that was,” Fetterman said. “I mean, if you’re back over 12, 13 years cheering about the death of Israeli soldiers — I mean, you clearly have a serious issue. And the left has a serious issue with antisemitism.”

This goes without saying. Since the Obama years, antisemitism has grown increasingly fashionable inside the Democratic Party. The Nazi tattoo should have ended his political career before it started. Today, it’s where all the Democrat energy is. Platner isn’t just beating Mills in the primary; he outperforms her in matchup polls with Sen. Susan Collins.Then came Hasan Piker — the far-left streamer who has openly praised Hamas, said America deserved 9/11, and declared Hamas “1,000 percent better than Israel.”

Democrats aren’t just tolerating Piker. They’re campaigning with him, and Fetterman lit into his own party over it, daring them to take that act to Pennsylvania. “Go ahead, try to win Pennsylvania and campaign around Hasan Piker, saying, yeah, America deserved 9/11, or Hamas is 1,000 percent better than Israel, or I don’t care about the rapes,” he said. “And for all these other things.”

Fetterman was equally blunt about the party’s broader drift against Israel. He noted that 80% of Democrats now view Israel negatively — a staggering number that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. He called out Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for voting against funding the Iron Dome, the defensive missile system that saves Israeli civilian lives by intercepting rockets fired from Gaza. “I mean, we have a serious problem with my party,” he said. “So if I have to be the last man standing in the Democratic Party, I’m proud to stand with Israel.”

Fetterman also criticized his party’s opposition to Trump’s actions on Iran. He noted how Democrats have been saying for years that Iran can never be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons, but when Trump actually did something to prevent that, they flip-flopped. “I’m not the only Democrat that supports this, but I’m the only Democrat that’s willing to stand up and say it’s the right thing,” he admitted, “because I know how politically toxic it is as a Democrat to support this.”

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Or is she?

• Ilhan Omar Not Actually a Multimillionaire After All (Robert Spencer)

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Mogadishu) has for some time now been the poster child not only for the legion of ungrateful, America-hating migrants, but for members of the House of Representatives who have become multimillionaires on a $174,000 annual salary.


The latter in particular has brought her unwelcome scrutiny: In February, House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) announced that he was opening an investigation after two companies Omar’s husband owns jumped in value from $51,000 to $30 million in value in a single year. Now, however, Omar is trying to make an end run around the whole investigation, and lessen the suspicion that she is a totally corrupt grifter, by claiming that the whole thing was a mistake. She and her hubby Tim Mynett don’t have $30 million after all. It was all just an “accounting error,” you see.

The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that while “an Omar disclosure filed last year showed she and her husband held assets of between $6 million and $30 million, a massive rise in wealth from her previous annual filing,” now “an amended filing” claims “the couple’s assets to be just $18,004 to $95,000. The forms don’t require exact values, only broad ranges.” Man, that’s one massive accounting error. James Comer should find the error in itself worth looking into. Is Omar simply trying to cover something up? Or did she really hire the most inept accountants in the history of the world?

The great solon herself was going with the inept accountant theory, and apparently wants us to believe that she has simply been too busy serving the people to concern herself with such mundane matters as a phantom thirty million dollars: “Aides said that Omar looked at the form before it was filed in 2025, but that the error didn’t jump off the page for her because she isn’t involved with her husband’s businesses and she trusted the accuracy of the accountant who provided her husband’s figures.”

Omar spokeswoman Jacklyn Rogers claimed victory, saying: “The amended disclosure confirms what we’ve said all along: The congresswoman is not a millionaire. The congresswoman amended her disclosures voluntarily as soon as the discrepancy was identified.”

Okay, great. She is as honest as the day is long. That’s wonderful. And yet there is more. Back in January, before Comer announced his investigation, the New York Times, which has generally been quite friendly to Omar, reported that “the Justice Department under the Biden administration opened an investigation into Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, in 2024 to scrutinize her finances, campaign spending and interactions with a foreign citizen, according to people with knowledge of the matter.”

The Biden administration! When one’s own leftist political allies open an investigation on you, you’re either guilty as sin, beyond all denial and stonewalling, or they’re looking for a way to jettison you without backlash or embarrassment. Either way, not a good look for the patriotic servant of the people from Mogadishu, Minnesota. Omar and Mynett have also acted as if they had something to hide. The New York Post reported in Dec. 2025 that “embattled Rep. Ilhan Omar’s husband’s venture capital firm quietly scrubbed key officer details — including former Obama officials — as scrutiny grows over the family’s skyrocketing wealth.”

Mynett’s Rose Lake Capital firm “saw its reported value go from nearly zero in 2023 to between $5 million and $25 million in just a year, and touted its officers’ $60 billion in ‘previous’ assets under management — an amount many Wall Street money managers only dream of.” But once Rose Lake Capital started coming under scrutiny, it suddenly started become considerably more secretive than it had been: “Between September and October — when federal prosecutors announced charges against eight more individuals, including six of Somali descent, for their roles in the welfare scheme — the names and bios of Rose Lake Capital’s nine officers and advisers were removed from the website. None of them were charged in the fraud.”

The names that were removed included “lobbyist and former Obama Ambassador to Bahrain Adam Ereli; former Senator and Obama Ambassador to China Max Baucus; DNC Finance Chair associate Alex Hoffman; former DNC treasurer William Derrough; and former ex-CEO of Amalgamated Bank Keith Mestrich, who once described Amalgamated as “the institutional bank of the Democratic Party.” If it was all just a misunderstanding based on an accounting error, why move to protect these people? They had nothing to worry about, right? Omar’s “accounting error” calls for as much of an investigation as the sudden jump in wealth she denies.

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“US officials reportedly intercepted a proposal with an economic deal that was intended to bypass Secretary of State Marco Rubio..”

• Cuba Sends ‘Secret Letter’ To Trump – WSJ (RT)

The Cuban government attempted to open a direct back-channel with US President Donald Trump last week, tapping a private businessman to hand-deliver a sealed letter to the White House, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing sources. The reported message, which was ultimately intercepted, was meant to bypass US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has pursued a policy of regime change on the island. The move was orchestrated by Raul Rodriguez Castro, grandson and chief aide of 94-year-old former Cuban President Raul Castro, who is widely considered one of the island’s most powerful figures, the report said. It added that the letter bore an official Cuban government seal and was formatted as a diplomatic note.


The letter proposed economic and investment agreements alongside sanctions relief, and warned that Havana was bracing for a possible US military incursion, an unnamed US official told the paper. The courier, Roberto Carlos Chamizo Gonzalez, 37, a luxury tourism and high-end car rental entrepreneur based in Havana, was stopped by security officers at Miami International Airport, who confiscated the letter and sent him back to Cuba.

The paper suggested that the move appeared designed to circumvent US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a son of Cuban immigrants and Washington’s most forceful advocate for maximum pressure on Havana. mRicardo Herrero, executive director of the Washington-based Cuba Study Group, suggested that an attempt to sidestep the top US diplomat was “downright foolish and bound to backfire,” adding that “it’s worse to go with an unknown with no personal relationship to the president, which makes it look more foolish.”

The back-channel bid comes as Cuba is reeling under its worst economic crisis in decades. After US forces kidnapped Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro in January 2026, Washington severed Cuba’s main oil lifeline from Caracas and imposed a near-total fuel blockade. The island is also struggling with recurring complete blackouts. Trump has labeled Cuba “a failing nation”, threatened a “friendly takeover,” and has said recently that the US “may stop by Cuba” after the war in Iran. Havana has warned it is ready for any American attack.

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Fine by me.

• Building of Trump’s White House Ballroom Can Resume In Full: Appeals Court (BBC)

Construction of the underground and above ground portions of US President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom will be allowed to continue, an appeals court has ruled. The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia granted an administrative stay after the Trump administration appealed against US District Judge Richard Leon’s decision to halt above-ground construction on Thursday.Construction is now expected to continue until the next hearing, which is due to take place on 5 June.This week’s rulings came after the appeals court ordered the judge to reconsider the national security implications of halting the work after he temporarily blocked all construction of the ballroom in March.


The ruling marks a victory for the president in his effort to redesign the storied American structure. Leon said on Thursday that he thought the project required congressional approval, adding that the administration reclassifying the ballroom plans as vital for national security appeared to be an attempted work around. “National security is not a blank cheque to proceed with otherwise unlawful activity,” he wrote. Following the ruling, Trump took to Truth Social to accuse the judge of “attempting to prevent future Presidents and World Leaders from having a safe and secure large scale Meeting Place”.


Two annotated images of the White House complex. The top aerial view labels the West Wing, South Lawn, White House residence, and an area marked ‘East Wing demolished.’ The bottom image, dated 23 October, shows the White House residence from the front with the former East Wing area highlighted


“It’s all tied together as one big, expensive, and very complex unit, which is vital for National Security and Military Operations of the United States of America!” he wrote, adding that the underground complex would include bomb shelters and medical facilities. He also said that the ballroom was “needed now” and that “no judge can be allowed to stop” it. The Justice Department filed an appeal against Leon’s ruling on Thursday, arguing it “would imperil the president and national security and indefinitely leave a large hole beside the Executive Residence”. The judge temporarily halted the construction project in late March, ruling that proper procedures were not followed before it had begun.

That decision came after the White House was sued by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The preservation group’s lawsuit, filed last year, alleges that the White House broke the law when it started construction on the ballroom and bunker without filing plans with the National Capital Planning Commission and by declining to seek authorisation from Congress. The East Wing of the White House, constructed in 1902, was demolished in October to make way for the multi-million-dollar ballroom, which will have capacity for 1,350 guests. The White House has said the project was expected to cost $400m (£302m) and was being funded entirely by private donors.

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https://twitter.com/iam_smx/status/2045240233956872229?s=20 https://twitter.com/Globalstats11/status/2045197956224262285?s=20 https://twitter.com/ivan_8848/status/2045283624468038062?s=20 https://twitter.com/ProudofusUK/status/2045173962666062320?s=20

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle April 1 2026

Apr 012026
 
 April 1, 2026  Posted by at 10:09 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  72 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh Pollard Willows and Setting Sun 1888


• Iran Says ‘Prepared To End War’ If Security Guarantees Offered
• France Blocking US Planes From French Airspace (Salgado)
• Eric Trump Shares Remarkable Preview for Trump Presidential Library (CTH)
• RFK Jr. Says Trump Is Finishing What JFK Started (CTH)
• Putin Winning, Ukraine Weakened, From Prolonged Iran War: Zelensky (ZH)
• Judge Reassigns Elon Musk Cases After Accusations Of Bias (ZH)
• AI Is “New Front Door To Commerce” As Consumers Ditch Google For Chatbots (ZH)
• Supreme Court Asked to Hear “Let’s Go Brandon” Case (Turley)
• Federal Judges Rule Against White House Ballroom, Defunding NPR And PBS (ZH)
• Merz: A ‘Considerable Proportion’ of Violence In Germany ‘From Immigrants’ (RMX)
• Merz Says He Expects 80% of Syrians To Return Home Within 3 Years (RMX)

 


 

https://twitter.com/JimFergusonUK/status/2038943707928400237?s=20

 


 

 


 


Need to find a way to talk that saves face.

• Iran Says ‘Prepared To End War’ If Security Guarantees Offered

Iran’s Foreign Minister Aragchi has clarified some things to AI Jazeera regarding diplomatic engagement with the US on potentially ending the war. The main takeaway is his explanation that what is happening now does not constitute negotiations in Tehran’s view, but an exchange of messages directly or through our friends in the region (namely Pakistan). He said that all communication concerning diplomacy and the war is routed through the Foreign Ministry and overseen by the National Security Council. They have neither responded to reported US proposals nor submitted their own, stressing that no decision on talks has been made. Instead of a ceasefire, Iran is calling for a full regional end to the war, along with guarantees against future attacks and compensation for damages.


Aragchi emphasize that Iran is acting defensively, not initiating conflict, and is targeting only US assets – not regional allies per se. The Strait of Hormuz remains open to friendly shipping but could be restricted for adversaries, he continued. While warning they are prepared for escalation, Iran also acknowledges tensions with neighboring countries may rise, though they believe trust can eventually be restored.

Oil Plunges on Iran Overture
A big developing headline has sent oil plunging… IRAN’S PRESIDENT PEZESHKIAN STATES THEY ARE PREPARED TO END THE WAR IF THEY RECEIVE GUARANTEESIranian President Pezeshkian says Iran seeks no war but is prepared to end it with guarantees against further attacks, per state PressTV: • The US-Israeli military aggression against Iran is an unprecedented crime and a flagrant violation of international law. • Iran engaged in good-faith talks with the US, only to be illegally attacked mid-negotiation—proving the US rejects diplomacy. • Neighboring countries hosting US bases failed to prevent their territories from being used to attack Iran. • The solution is an end to aggression; Iran seeks no war but is prepared to end it with guarantees against further attacks. • Europe should drop its destructive approach and engage with Iran professionally and in line with international law.

A big question will be whether this could represent an IRGC vs. civilian government divide, as far as whether this peace overture sticks. Also, the US and Israel would have to both agree to halt the ongoing aerial strikes, but it’s not at all clear whether the Netanyahu government would be on board with ceasefire, given many believe Israel’s objectives are much more expansive, oriented toward total regime collapse.

Trump: Hormuz Strait to ‘Automatically Open'(?)
“When we leave the strait will automatically open,” President Trump has told the New York Post Tuesday, when asked whether he’s considering ending action in Iran without reopening the Strait of Hormuz. “Well, I think it’ll automatically open, but my attitude is, I’ve obliterated the country. They have no strength left, and let the countries that are using the strait, let them go and open it… because I would imagine whoever’s controlling the oil will be very happy to open the strait,” Trump continued. “But we won’t have to be there much longer – but we have more work to do in terms of killing their offensive, whatever offensive capability they have left.”

AntiWar.com’s Dave DeCamp points out a certain circular reasoning and sad reality of where the situation stands: “The goal of the war has become fixing a problem that didn’t exist before the war.”

IRGC Threatens US Tech Companies in Region
The IRGC has reportedly threatened to target the Middle East operations of 18 US technology companies starting Wednesday night. It warned of this escalation should any more senior military commanders or government leaders be assassinated. Among companies named in a statement include Apple, Google, Tesla, Microsoft, Intel, Oracle, IBM, Meta, Nvidia, Boeing, and others. This may have already started happening in terms of the ongoing Iranian bombardment of Israel – though the ballistic missiles are said to be less frequent compared to opening weeks of the war. Newsquawk: “Iran’s Army says they have targeted industries belonging to Siemens and AT&T in Ben Gurion and Haifa.” Confirmed in state media (based on emerging reports, they are Cisco, HP, Intel, Oracle, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Meta, IBM, Dell, Palantir, NVIDIA, JPMorgan, Tesla, General Electric, Spire Solutions, G42, Boeing)

https://twitter.com/PressTV/status/2038988420442402889

US Claims Iran Fragmenting, High Level Desertions
Among Hegseth’s earlier themes which we said signaled preparation for an ‘offramp’ is that he asserted that heavy US strikes on Iran are fragmenting the regime, and greatly dampening morale among Tehran authorities. “Our strikes are damaging the morale of the Iranian military, leading to widespread desertions, key personnel shortages and causing frustrations amongst senior leaders,” Hegseth said at the morning Pentagon briefing on Tuesday. Also, Gen. Caine added that “The joint force continues to degrade and destroy Iran’s ability to project power and threaten stability beyond its borders.” President Trump has followed in words given to NYP that he doesn’t expect the war to continue for much longer, telling Americans they can ‘soon’ expect an end – in a repeat of similar remarks from last week.

France, Italy Block Airspace for Some US Planes Operating In Iran
France has reportedly refused to allow the United States to use its airspace to transport weapons for the Iran conflict -marking the first such denial since the war began, according to Reuters. This follows a similar move by Spain, signaling growing reluctance and angst among key European allies to facilitate US military logistics. At the same time, Italy has denied certain US aircraft access to an airbase in Sicily, though officials there insist the issue stems from procedural violations, specifically that the Pentagon failed to obtain proper authorization before requesting landing clearance.

Italian officials emphasize that all requests must comply with established agreements and legal frameworks, which require case-by-case approval and, in some cases, parliamentary oversight. This legal positioning provides the Meloni government with a way to limit involvement (and so domestic fall-out among largely anti-war youth) while maintaining formal cooperation, even as domestic opposition to the conflict and unease over US interventionism continue to grow.

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Macron is your friend!

• France Blocking US Planes From French Airspace (Salgado)

American and Israeli leaders excoriated the cowardly, treacherous French government for preventing American airplanes from flying through the country’s airspace with military supplies for beleaguered Israel. As the Iranian regime continues to fire at civilian targets in Israel and other nations, and as the United States and Israel take on the world’s worst terror-sponsoring regime (Iran’s), French President Emmanuel Macron and his government are determined to be on the wrong side of history.


Donald Trump pulled no punches. “The Country of France wouldn’t let planes headed to Israel, loaded up with military supplies, fly over French territory. France has been VERY UNHELPFUL with respect to the ‘Butcher of Iran,’ who has been successfully eliminated! The U.S.A. will REMEMBER!!!” the president posted on Truth Social March 31. The Israeli government immediately took action to punish the French government for their despicable decision. The Israeli Defense Ministry sent a statement to The Hill confirming:

The Director General of the Israel Ministry of Defense. Maj. Gen. (Res.) Amir Baram has decided to reduce all defense procurement from France to zero, replacing it with domestic Israeli procurement or purchases from allied countries. France has taken a series of actions that have harmed Israel’s security and the operational capabilities of its defense industry…The Israel Ministry of Defense views the French government’s policy with serious concern, as it undermines security cooperation with Israel, a country that is actively operating on the front line against Iran and protecting the security of the Western world.

European nations, despite being NATO allies of the United States, have persistently either refused aid or actively thwarted our efforts ever since the launch of Operation Epic Fury. The Spanish government just closed its country’s airspace to the United States for military purposes, as Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is a particularly rabid Jew-hater and jihad-lover. Macron followed suit. Since Hamas committed the Oct. 7 atrocities and received millions of dollars in pay-for-slay rewards from the Palestinian Authority, both the French and Spanish governments officially recognized a state of Palestine, which has never existed. Hamas specifically thanked the European governments that recognized a state of Palestine, calling it the “fruits of Oct. 7,” making it blindingly obvious the recognition rewarded and encouraged the genocidal terrorists.

When I visited France last year, there were several towns in Normandy that still were predominantly French and had their traditional charm, but Paris was practically a Muslim capital. There were more women in hijabs on the Champs-Élysées and more Muslim families at the Eiffel Tower than I have seen in any one place outside of Jerusalem’s Muslim Quarter and Doha, Qatar. In other words, France is surrendering without a fight, and unless something truly drastic happens, Paris will be a Muslim capital within our lifetimes. And that slavish pandering to radical Islam is part of why the French government keeps backstabbing Israel.

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It’ll be grand.

• Eric Trump Shares Remarkable Preview for Trump Presidential Library (CTH)

Trump Organization CEO, Eric Trump, has shared a preview of the Donald J Trump Presidential Library building and complex that is in the final planning stages for construction in Miami, Florida, on the waterfront.First impressions of the library are quite remarkable. Eric Trump shares, “The Donald J. Trump Presidential Library is officially here. Over the past six months, I have poured my heart and soul into this project with my incredible team at [Trump Organization]. This landmark on the water in Miami, Florida will stand as a lasting testament to an amazing man, an amazing developer, and the greatest President our Nation has ever known.”


It’s worth remembering, in an ironic twist several multi-million-dollar lawsuits against media outlets for their false reporting of President Trump are structured by previous settlement as part of the funding mechanism for the library itself.

In the past year or so reporting identifies multiple corporate settlements with Trump: Meta agreed to pay $25 million to resolve a suit about post Jan. 6 account suspensions, Paramount/ CBS parent paid about $16 million to settle a dispute over a 60 Minutes edit, Disney/ABC agreed to pay about $15 16 million in a defamation claim over comments by George Stephanopoulos, and Google Alphabet/YouTube agreed to pay $24.5 million to settle his 2021 YouTube suspension suit.

I find it rather humorous that Big Tech and corporate media who will likely find themselves criticizing the construction, are the same corporate media paying (in part) for its creation. A very Trumpian outcome.

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I can hear the Kennedy family all the way from here.

• RFK Jr. Says Trump Is Finishing What JFK Started (CTH)

Susan Konkinda from Promethean Action, touches on the recent developments where President Trump and Secretary Bessent have distanced themselves from the old regimes of the former global alliances. Striking out anew, by charting a new course for sovereign nations.


“Susan Kokinda argues that RFK Jr.’s CPAC remarks—praising Trump’s use of power and saying JFK and RFK would back Trump on Iran, Ukraine, and rebuilding the middle class—cut through media narratives and signal a break from post–WWII imperial management. She says Britain and allied institutions are being sidelined, citing Chatham House’s warnings about UK limits and a “Not So Special Relationship” under Trump 2.0, while Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt convene in Islamabad to open U.S.-Iran dialogue without the UK, EU, or NATO.”

“Trump names Vice President JD Vance lead negotiator, presented as an anti–forever war interlocutor who has challenged Netanyahu’s regime-change expectations. Kokinda links this foreign-policy shift to a broader “American System” agenda: Peter Navarro’s protectionist trade revolution and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s rejection of Bank of England–style Fed models, framing it as American System versus British System.”

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The world sees a nagging child. But not Europe.

• Putin Winning, Ukraine Weakened, From Prolonged Iran War: Zelensky (ZH)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned that a prolonged Iran war will be a net win for Moscow – and a significant setback for Kyiv. Speaking to Axios, he said bluntly: “I am sure Russia wants long war. They have benefits: The US is focusing on the Middle East and may decrease military help to Ukraine. Further he highlighted that “Sanctions are partially lifted” on Russian energy and so “I see only benefits for Russia from the war with Iran continuing.” The logic is simple, he explained: higher oil prices and softer sanctions boost Russia, while US focus shifts away from Ukraine – as well as attention from Western partners – which ultimately results in tightening weapons supply. “I am not just concerned, I am sure we will have such challenges. Absolutely,” he continued.


Zelensky has also been reminding Western audiences that Moscow is actively aiding Iran, including targeting support via intelligence: “I think Russia is supporting Iran directly, 100%… the same format of sharing satellite images like they did in the case of Ukraine,” Zelensky asserted. This will in the long-run result in a weaker Ukraine, particularly given the surging demand for interceptors in the Middle East. But Zelensky has for weeks been arguing that Ukraine needs these defensive missiles, such as Patriots, the most – repeatedly calling the issue a matter of “life and death”. Interestingly and somewhat ironically, this has led to Zelensky sounding like a dove and a peacenik:

“Our advice, when they asked us, was to stop the war as soon as possible and sit for negotiations – even if they can’t sit together with Iran – and find a diplomatic way to end the war. But it is up to the sides,” he stressed. Zelensky himself has at various times throughout the war refused any negotiations with Moscow which hinge on making territorial concessions, while demanding more constant flow of arms and ammo from NATO backers. Amid waning support from the Trump administration, Zelensky has set his sights on greatly improving ties with the wealthy oil and gas monarchies in the Gulf.

He’s lately been in the Middle East, even as Iran retaliates on Gulf states said to be hosting US forces, while seeking Ukrainian security assistance. In recent days he has met with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Jordan. The NY Times gave some background context as follows: President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine hailed his Middle East tour to promote anti-drone technologies as a success, saying on Saturday that he had negotiated air defense agreements with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

In the Mideast conflict, Ukraine has sought to shift its image from a recipient of military aid to a supplier. It sees an opening to export its low-cost, innovative designs created during the war with Russia to compensate for shortages of weapons and ammunition. Ukraine’s military often relies on consumer technologies such as virtual-reality goggles for gamers and off-the-shelf drone components. This after Trump has indeed signaled willingness to redirect arms meant for Ukraine to the Middle East, where they are urgently needed as part of Operation Epic Fury, and to defend regional allies and increasingly exposed US regional bases.

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I find this so peculiar:

“I either did not click the ’support‘ icon at all, or I did so accidentally. I do not believe that I did it accidentally,”

• Judge Reassigns Elon Musk Cases After Accusations Of Bias (ZH)

A judge in Delaware on March 30 said she is reassigning cases involving Elon Musk after she was accused of being biased against him. Delaware Court of Chancery Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick said in a letter to lawyers that she was taking the step because “disproportionate media attention surrounding a judge’s handling of an action is detrimental to the administration of justice.” Attorneys representing Musk recently filed a motion for recusal or reassignment, pointing to how McCormick on LinkedIn had clicked that she supported a post that celebrated a 2026 ruling against Musk in California. The post, from a jury consultant, said “sorry, Elon,” and congratulated the legal firms that represented the plaintiff in the case as “standing up for the little guy against the richest man in the world.”


“Defendants cannot ignore the recent reaction by this Court to LinkedIn posts attacking Mr. Musk and his chosen counsel, regarding a case with overlapping factual allegations in the consolidated matter, and that bears directly on the appearance of impartiality in these actions,” Musk’s attorneys wrote in their motion. McCormick had in 2024 ruled that a compensation package for Musk as CEO of Tesla agreed to by the Tesla board of directors was too large, a decision later overturned by the Delaware Supreme Court. McCormick initially said that she did not click to support the LinkedIn post in question.

“I either did not click the ’support‘ icon at all, or I did so accidentally. I do not believe that I did it accidentally,” the judge wrote in a previous letter to lawyers. “So, after learning of this issue last night, I logged into LinkedIn, searched for the post based on the screenshot, and tried to make sure that the support icon was not ’clicked on.’ I then reported the suspicious activity to LinkedIn.” LinkedIn did not respond to a request for comment by time of publication. The judge said she would review the motion, and on Monday agreed to reassign the cases.

However, McCormick maintained that she was not biased against Musk. “The motion for recusal rests on a false premise—that I support a LinkedIn post about Mr. Musk, which I do not in fact support,” she wrote. “I am not biased against the defendants in these actions. In fact, I dismissed a suit against Mr. Musk just last year.” Lawyers for Musk declined to comment on the development. Musk had not appeared to remark on the reassignment on X, which he owns and on which he frequently posts.

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What will manipulate you next.

• AI Is “New Front Door To Commerce” As Consumers Ditch Google For Chatbots (ZH)

Shoptalk, one of the retail and e-commerce industry’s top U.S. conferences, took place in Las Vegas last week, where Goldman analysts had one key takeaway for clients on Monday morning: AI is beginning to reshape how consumers shop. Analysts Brooke Roach and Kate McShane, among others, attended the conference and listened to retailers, consumer brands, and technology vendors focus on the evolving consumer space in the era of AI. Their top takeaway was that AI is emerging as a “new front door to commerce,” and instead of beginning product searches on Google or Amazon, an increasing number of consumers are turning to chatbots to decide what to buy.


“Brands and retailers noted that consumers are increasingly beginning their shopping journey inside AI platforms rather than on brand websites or search engines, with adoption accelerating rapidly over the past several months,” the analyst noted. Here are more takeaways from Goldman’s analysts after attending Shoptalk: The front door to commerce is shifting to AI Brands and retailers noted that consumers are increasingly beginning their shopping journey inside AI platforms rather than on brand websites or search engines, with adoption accelerating rapidly over the past several months.

GAP stated it is seeing stronger purchase intent and higher conversion from customers arriving through agentic channels, and described itself as explicitly not in a wait-and-see mode. The company also noted it is an early partner on Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol, which allows the merchant to bring its own experience including loyalty, promotions, and cart capabilities directly into LLM environments, rather than pushing users to a generic external destination. Enhancing consumer relevance and enabling product research / purchase decisions

Brands noted that becoming relevant within LLMs is a different challenge from search engine optimization, as LLM crawlers ingest content differently and are blocked more often than classic search crawlers.nbSephora announced the launch of its own app inside ChatGPT, which allows users to connect their Sephora accounts and receive personalized beauty advice (e.g., skin type, shade matching). Management is currently experimenting with their entire ecosystem, and is using AI as another channel to extend their core proposition of being a trusted beauty advisor. Behr partnered with Google’s Gemini to launch a paint visualizer designed to help DIY customers overcome color paralysis and feel confident in their purchases. bHD has a shopping agent called Magic Apron, designed to help customers find easy answers on home improvement projects.


LOW is using their AI-shopping assistant MyLow to help associates in stores and deliver personalized recommendations to the customers. Management noted that customer expectations are changing, as they now expect comprehensive answers, not just keyword-based results.RDDT noted that consumer trust in online information is declining, as users are rejecting AI-generated content given its tendency to regurgitate information from other sources. Consumers value authentic perspectives and are turning to their platform for experience-based answers.

AEO emphasized the importance of continuously testing marketing creatives with customers and being attentive to what resonates and what doesn’t. They found that AI-generated content must be clearly identifiable on the platform, so customers can trust that the company is not attempting to deceive them. As consumers shift product searches from traditional Google queries to AI-powered answer engines, the brands and platforms that establish an AI presence first could capture meaningful tailwinds.

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“..the type of expression that sits “at the core of what the First Amendment is designed to protect.”

• Supreme Court Asked to Hear “Let’s Go Brandon” Case (Turley)

I have previously written about D.A. v. Tri-County Area Schools, one of the worst free speech decisions to come out of the appellate courts in years. In this case, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld a school ban on high school students wearing “Let’s Go Brandon” sweatshirts. Sixth Circuit Judge John Nalbandian was joined by Judge Karen Nelson Moore in a deeply flawed holding that, under the “vulgarity exception,” the action was constitutional. The Supreme Court needs to grant review in this case and reverse this obnoxious decision.


As previously discussed, “Let’s Go Brandon!” has become a similarly unintended political battle cry not just against Biden but also against media bias. It derives from an Oct. 2 interview with race-car driver Brandon Brown after he won his first NASCAR Xfinity Series race. During the interview, NBC reporter Kelli Stavast’s questions were drowned out by loud and clear chants of “F*** Joe Biden.” Stavast quickly and inexplicably declared, “You can hear the chants from the crowd, ‘Let’s go, Brandon!’” “Let’s Go Brandon!” instantly became a type of “Yankee Doodling” of the political and media establishment.

In this case, an assistant principal (Andrew Buikema) and a teacher (Wendy Bradford) “ordered the boys to remove the sweatshirts” for allegedly breaking the school dress code. However, other students were allowed to wear political apparel supporting other causes, including “gay-pride-themed hoodies.” The district dress code states the following: “Students and parents have the right to determine a student’s dress, except when the school administration determines a student’s dress is in conflict with state policy, is a danger to the students’ health and safety, is obscene, is disruptive to the teaching and/or learning environment by calling undue attention to oneself. The dress code may be enforced by any staff member.”

The district reserves the right to bar any clothing “with messages or illustrations that are lewd, indecent, vulgar, or profane, or that advertise any product or service not permitted by law to minors.” The funny thing about this action is that the slogan is not profane. To the contrary, it substitutes non-profane words for profane words. Nevertheless, “D.A.” was stopped in the hall by Buikema and told that his “Let’s Go Brandon” sweatshirt was equivalent to “the f–word.” The district court showed an equally dismissive view of the free speech rights of these students, including that the phrase could “reasonably be interpreted” as profane. That was upheld by the Sixth Circuit in its 2-1 decision. Judge John Bush offered an excellent dissent, stating: “

[T]he speech here—”Let’s Go Brandon!”—is neither vulgar nor profane on its face, and therefore does not fall into [the Fraser] exception. To the contrary, the phrase is purely political speech. It criticizes a political official—the type of expression that sits “at the core of what the First Amendment is designed to protect.” No doubt, its euphemistic meaning was offensive to some, particularly those who supported President Biden. But offensive political speech is allowed in school, so long as it does not cause disruption under Tinker. As explained below, Tinker is the standard our circuit applied to cases involving Confederate flag T-shirts and a hat depicting an AR-15 rifle—depictions arguably more offensive than “Let’s Go Brandon!” …

The majority says the sweatshirts’ slogan is crude. But neither the phrase itself nor any word in it has ever been bleeped on television, radio, or other media. Not one of the “seven words you can never say on television” appears in it . Instead, the phrase has been used to advance political arguments, primarily in opposition to President Biden’s policies and secondarily to complain about the way liberal-biased media treats conservatives. It serves as a coded critique—a sarcastic catchphrase meant to express frustration, resentment, and discontent with political opponents. The phrase has been used by members of Congress during debate. And even President Biden himself, attempting to deflect criticism, “agreed” with the phrase.

We cannot lose sight of a key fact: the students’ sweatshirts do not say “F*ck Joe Biden.” Instead, they bear a sanitized phrase made famous by sports reporter Kelli Stavast while interviewing NASCAR race winner Brandon Brown at the Talladega Superspeedway. The reporter said the crowd behind them was yelling “Let’s go, Brandon!” She did not report the vulgar phrase that was actually being chanted. The Majority even concedes Stavast may have used the sanitized phrase to “put a fig leaf over the chant’s vulgarity.” That is telling….”

The Sixth Circuit opinion constitutes a significant infringement on the free speech rights of students. I readily admit that I am critical of some past cases, including Morse v. Frederick, 551 U.S. 393 (2007), where the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the Juneau-Douglas High School could suspend student Joseph Frederick after he displayed a banner reading “BONG HiTS 4 JESUS” across the street from the school during the 2002 Winter Olympics torch relay. In my view, the courts have honored Tinker largely in the breach in such cases. FIRE has filed the petition below, and hopefully, the justices will.

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“We swear on all that is holy that we have nothing better to do.

• Federal Judges Rule Against White House Ballroom, Defunding NPR And PBS (ZH)

Another week, another couple of activist judges ruling against the Trump administration.
Architect Shalom Baranes shows a site plan for the White House ballroom during a meeting of the National Capital Planning Commission in Washington on Jan. 8, 2026. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images


On Tuesday, federal judges issued orders blocking the ongoing ballroom construction at the White House, and halted federal agencies from pulling funding for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service. On the Ballroom: U.S. District Judge Richard Leon said the president of the United States “is the steward of the White House for future generations of First Families. He is not, however, the owner!” Leon said Trump claims Congress gave the president authority in current statutes to build his East Wing ballroom project “and to do it with private funds.”

The National Trust for Historic Preservation argues the president has no such authority under existing laws and that a preliminary injunction is needed to avoid irreparable harm, the judge said. -Epoch Times “I have concluded that the National Trust is likely to succeed on the merits because no statute comes close to giving the President the authority he claims to have,” Leon continued – granting a preliminary injunction and ordering that “the ballroom construction project must stop until Congress authorizes its completion.” On NPR and PBS, U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss, based in Washington, said Trump’s order targeted the broadcasters, known as NPR and PBS, for their point of view.

“The First Amendment does not tolerate viewpoint discrimination and retaliation of this type,” he wrote in a 62-page decision. As the Epoch Times notes further, Trump’s May 1, 2025, order directed the end of funding for NPR and PBS. “Government funding of news media in this environment is not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence,” he said, adding later that it did not matter which viewpoints NPR and PBS promoted, but “what does matter is that neither entity presents a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens.”mIn a fact sheet released on the same day, the White House said that NPR and PBS had “fueled partisanship and left-wing propaganda with taxpayer dollars.”

Officials pointed to decisions such as NPR refusing to initially cover a story on a laptop computer that once belonged to President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden, and PBS featuring a drag queen on a program aimed at children as young as 3. NPR and PBS soon filed separate lawsuits that alleged the funding cuts were unconstitutional.mNPR’s suit said that the order violated “the First Amendment’s bedrock guarantees of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of association.”

In court filings, government lawyers had said the order did not impose unconstitutional conditions on speech, but “merely aligns the Government’s sponsorship of activities with its policy priorities” and “declines to extend federal funding for Plaintiffs’ programs.” Moss said that he was declaring Trump’s order illegal and unenforceable, and barring all federal agencies named as defendants from implementing or enforcing it.m“This is a ridiculous ruling by an activist judge attempting to undermine the law,” Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, told The Epoch Times in an email. “NPR and PBS have no right to receive taxpayer funds, and Congress already voted to defund them. The Trump Administration looks forward to ultimate victory on the issue.”

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“Foreigners are responsible for half of gang rapes, 65% of sexual violence in German trains and train stations, and 40% of violent incidents in the school system”

• Merz: A ‘Considerable Proportion’ of Violence In Germany ‘From Immigrants’ (RMX)

The debate over violence in German society and schools has reached a boiling point in the Bundestag, pitting Chancellor Friedrich Merz and his supporters against critics who accuse him of racism, including a Left Party politician who published a photo of herself on Instagram giving him the middle finger.The controversy intensified following a session where Merz addressed the issue of digital and analog violence, particularly against women.“We have exploding violence in our society, both in the analog and digital space, and we must do something about it together,” said Merz. However, he said that one must then also talk about where this violence comes from, he said to applause from members of the CDU/CSU and the AfD. “And then we must also address the fact that a considerable proportion of this violence comes to the Federal Republic of Germany from immigrant groups,” he added.

https://twitter.com/RMXnews/status/2037526130110910670

These remarks drew sharp condemnation from the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Left Party. SPD parliamentary group leader Matthias Miersch argued that violence against women should be viewed broadly rather than being reduced to a single population group. Miersch stated, “I don’t think that was an adequate response from the chancellor.”He added that “violence against women has no origin or religion, it is a problem of society and must be addressed clearly. It is about protecting victims, regardless of who the perpetrator is.”

Data on violence against women and foreigners
However, statistics tell another story from what Miersch asserted. Foreigners commit 65 percent of all sexual crimes on German trains and in train stations despite making up approximately 15 percent of the population. It must be noted that German citizens with a migration background are not included in this 65 percent figure. As data from North Rhine-Westphalia showed, foreigners commit half of all gang rapes. However, when the first names of gang rape suspects are analyzed, it shows that at least half of the German citizens clearly had names from a foreign background, such as Mohammad. In total, that means 75 percent of all gang rapes are committed by a foreigner or someone with a foreign background.

Data presented by the German government last year shows that 63,977 women were victims of sexual violence in 2024 alone, and the perpetrators were disproportionately foreigners, making up 35 percent of all perpetrators, according to government data released as a result of an inquiry from the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in the Bundestag. German government data also shows there were 135,000 crimes by Syrian suspects against Germans since 2015 — one every 39 minutes.

The data, obtained by Freilich magazine, also shows large numbers of victims of crimes committed by suspects from other countries of origin, including 82,960 linked to Afghanistan, 69,946 to Iraq, 39,918 to Morocco, and 32,383 to Algeria. Altogether, more than 460,000 crimes were recorded in a 10-year period involving suspects from the 10 main countries of origin: Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Morocco, Algeria, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, and Eritrea.

The Left says migrants should not be blamed
In the educational sector, Saskia Esken, chairwoman of the parliament’s Education and Family Committee, also raised concerns about school-related crimes. While acknowledging that the number of violent crimes recorded by the police in schools has increased significantly in all federal states, she firmly rejected the migration narrative, despite clear statistical evidence showing there is a serious problem with violence from Germany’s foreign population.

“Migration is not the problem in our schools,” Esken asserted, arguing that violence arises where children neither at home nor at school learn other ways to regulate their feelings and resolve conflicts. She described school as a motley, quasi-forced community where social workers and psychologists are desperately needed to address underlying issues like poverty and lack of prospects. Again, the data contradicts her, showing that 40 percent of all violent crime suspects in German schools are foreigners. This data shows that there were 4,254 foreign suspects and 7,309 suspects with German citizenship, the German government announced in response to a parliamentary inquiry from Alternative for Germany (AfD) MP Martin Hess.

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He does not. At best, he hopes.

• Merz Says He Expects 80% of Syrians To Return Home Within 3 Years (RMX)

Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) met with controversial Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former jihadi terrorist, in Berlin on Monday afternoon. Among the topics discussed, one of the most prominent was the fact that Merz wants 80 percent of the Syrians currently living in Germany to return home.m“In the longer perspective of the next three years, it is the wish of President al-Sharaa that around 80 percent of the Syrians in Germany should go back into their homeland,” said Merz, before adding: “We need a reliable repatriation option, cooperation with Syria.”


Merz said he supported that, saying many of them “are needed at home.” The chancellor also made clear that protection statuses would be reassessed. “Those who have no claim will leave Germany again,” he said — particularly those who “abuse our hospitality.” He balanced this with an acknowledgment that “we are pleased about the many Syrian skilled workers who have integrated.” Merz reflected on how, roughly a year ago, the dictatorship in Syria “was shaken off,” and reaffirmed that Germany had always stood by the Syrian people, despite the new government being accused of a number of atrocities against minorities, including Christians and Druze.

Merz described reconstruction as an “enormous effort,” stressing that stability and economic performance would be essential for it to succeed. A German delegation is set to travel to Syria “in a few days” to advance cooperation on that front. The Syrian head of state opened by expressing his “deep gratitude” to Germany, declaring that “Syria is an important country for Europe” and that the country could “come back stronger,” adding: “We want to rebuild our country.” He noted that 1.3 million Syrians currently live in Germany, including 6,000 doctors who could make a significant contribution to Syria’s recovering economy.

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https://twitter.com/RealHellenist/status/2038602591270322227?s=20 https://twitter.com/AmIsrlChai/status/2038663025113153724?s=20 https://twitter.com/HungaryBased/status/2038685188969083229?s=20 https://twitter.com/XKx3_XS3x/status/2038880410252214391?s=20 https://twitter.com/ivan_8848/status/2038959535373656496?s=20

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle February 26 2026

Feb 262026
 
 February 26, 2026  Posted by at 10:39 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  58 Responses »


Piet Mondriaan Composition No. 10 1939-42


• Cuban Regime Kills Four in Shootout With Florida Vessel (Sarah Anderson)
• CNN’s Instant Poll of the State of the Union Will Trigger the Left (Margolis)
• A Masterclass in Giving a Speech Without Giving a Speech (Stephen Green)
• Which Party Represents Americans? (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Sen. Chris Murphy Joins Pledge to Throw Trump Figures in Jail (Turley)
• Trump Admin to Launch New Free Speech Site to Combat Censorship Abroad (ET)
• A Continental Revolution Is Brewing In Europe (Zemánek)
• RFK Jr. Defends Trump’s Glyphosate Order (ET)
• EU To Start Permanent Ban on Russian Oil 3 Days After Hungarian Election (CTH)
• Solidarity Simulacra: Zelensky’s Four-Year Reality Check (RT)
• Moscow Will Respond If NATO Gives Nukes To Nazi Regime In Kiev – Medvedev (RT)
• Zelensky Demands €90 Billion EU Loan (RT)
• Bill Gates Begins Apology Tour Over His Epstein Ties (ZH)
• Fani Willis Plotted Trump Case Closely With Biden DOJ, J6 Democrats (JTN)
• Comey’s Leaker Claims The Epstein Files Shouldn’t Have Been Released (Pinsker)

 


 

https://twitter.com/tesla_archive/status/2026300209794630110?s=20 https://twitter.com/_MAGA_NEWS_/status/2026280929224986641?s=20

 


 

 


 


Are the Cubans especially jittery for some reason?

• Cuban Regime Kills Four in Shootout With Florida Vessel (Sarah Anderson)

The Cuban regime may have just sealed its fate. Cuba’s Interior Ministry announced on Wednesday that four men on a Florida-registered vessel, possibly a speedboat, were shot and killed by its Border Guard after entering Cuban waters near Santa Clara Province. Six other people aboard the boat were wounded. The regime claims that the people on board the vessel shot at the Border Guards first. It’s not yet clear if the people on board were United States citizens, though many are assuming so since the boat was registered in the U.S. The Interior Ministry’s full statement reads:


“On the morning of February 25, 2026, a violating speedboat was detected within Cuban territorial waters. The vessel, registered in Florida, United States, with registration number FL7726SH, approached up to 1 nautical mile northeast of the El Pino channel, in Cayo Falcones, Corralillo municipality, Villa Clara province.” When a surface unit of the Border Guard Troops of the Ministry of the Interior, carrying five service members, approached the vessel for identification, the crew of the violating speedboat opened fire on the Cuban personnel, resulting in the injury of the commander of the Cuban vessel.


As a consequence of the confrontation, as of the time of this report, four aggressors on the foreign vessel were killed and six were injured. The injured individuals were evacuated and received medical assistance. In the face of current challenges, Cuba reaffirms its determination to protect its territorial waters, based on the principle that national defense is a fundamental pillar of the Cuban State in safeguarding its sovereignty and ensuring stability in the region.


Investigations by the competent authorities continue in order to fully clarify the events. There’s been no word from President Donald Trump or Secretary of State Marco Rubio yet — Rubio is currently in Saint Kitts and Nevis for a CARICOM meeting, where the situation in Cuba has been a hot topic. Rep. Carlos A. Gimenez (R-Fla.) has issued a statement, calling for an immediate investigation into the “massacre.” Gimenez, who was born in Cuba, also suggested that “his regime must be relegated to the dust bin of history!”

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“Let that line marinate: two-thirds positive .. “

• CNN’s Instant Poll of the State of the Union Will Trigger the Left (Margolis)

After Donald Trump’s 2026 State of the Union address, CNN political director David Chalian broke down the network’s instant poll — and it didn’t exactly produce the outrage or “failing Trump” narrative that the left likes to see. It was the kind of segment that left-wing pundits will be scrambling to spin before breakfast. You could tell the numbers would be bad for the left when Chalian immediately began qualifying the findings. “I just want to take a moment here to explain. This is a poll of speech watchers,” he began. “So it is not a poll that is reflective of the population overall.” Yeah, that’s kind of how polls of speeches work. Thanks for reminding us. But seriously, the fact that he made sure to emphasize that point twice, you just knew. It was like he was really about to say, “Hey, don’t get too happy, MAGA world.”


Oh yeah, and there was another caveat before he began. “What we know about people who tune in to State of the Union addresses,” Chalian added, “they tend to be fans of the president, whichever president is giving the speech.” He explained that the “polling universe here is about 13 points more Republican than the overall population usually is.” You ready? “So just keep all that in mind as we go to the results,” Chalian continued, doing damage control in real time. “Get this reaction from those that watch the speech tonight. 38% said they had a very positive reaction to the speech, 25% somewhat positive, 36% negative.” He paused just long enough for the math to sink in. “So roughly two-thirds in the positive territory, one-third negative among speech watchers.”


Let that line marinate: two-thirds positive ..

On CNN.

For Donald Trump.


https://twitter.com/WarMachineRR/status/2026530396821758073?s=20 Chalian also noted that among speech watchers, 64% “say his policies will move the U.S. in the right direction.” But here’s a metric I think is really important: the change from pre-speech to post-speech. According to the poll, before the speech, 54% of speech watchers said Trump’s policies would move the United States in the right direction — a 10-point jump. “So Donald Trump made some progress with people watching the speech from their pre-speech expectations to what they saw in the speech itself,” Chalian observed. “And that 64% number, that’s pretty much in range across all of his State of the Union addresses, in his first term, last year, the joint session, that’s about what we’ve seen is roughly two-thirds have walked away from his speeches thinking he’s going to move it in the right direction.”

https://twitter.com/RapidResponse47/status/2026531073459355793?s=20


Since this is CNN, Chalian still tried to cast the moment as a low point, even though most people who tuned in clearly liked what they heard, and even he had to admit that it was a good night for Republicans running in this year’s midterm elections. “If you’re a Republican on the ballot in 2026, I think you leave this speech being as happy as you could possibly be that he sort of stuck to the script on the economy,” Chalian said. “He gave red meat to the base on immigration, and they can leave the hall tonight and sort of take that out on the campaign trail.”

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“Trump addressed exactly one person: the American watching at home.”

• A Masterclass in Giving a Speech Without Giving a Speech (Stephen Green)

Let’s set aside “the optics,” what the polls might show in a few days, who got “destroyed,” how many “truth bombs” Trump dropped, the “What it All Means” chin-scratcher pieces — ugh, I give up. I went MEGO again just mentioning those things, so that’s the last of them you’ll see in this column, and also, you’re welcome. But President Donald Trump’s whirlwind, time-defying performance left me (and maybe you, too) with a nagging question/realization that I’ll try to explain today: How do you give a speech — particularly a speech of two hours — without giving a speech? It was the longest State of the Union in history, but it was no slog.


“I wasn’t even planning to watch the whole thing and I just kept watching,” blogfaddah Glenn Reynolds posted to Instapundit last night, and my friend and partner in thoughtcrime Stephen Kruiser added in today’s Morning Briefing, “It may seem weird to say it about a speech of that length, but there was an economy to it that made it effective.” Plenty of the non-speech speech was scripted, of course, primarily penned by Ross Worthington. The wrap was particularly effective, and delivered with a grace that Trump throws aside whenever he likes. But not this time: “The revolution that began in 1776 has not ended. It still continues, because the flame of liberty and independence still burns in the heart of every American patriot. And our future will be bigger, better, brighter, bolder, and more glorious than ever before.”

Good stuff. But what people will and ought to remember are the moments when Trump at least appeared to go off-script. One instant classic example was when he called on Congress to outlaw insider trading — by Congresscritters. The ad-lib — and you can watch Trump wait for the perfect moment to sink the barb — comes at the 0:29 mark. “They stood up for that, I can’t believe it.”But then Trump pauses and waits again, the audience primed for a segue into the next topic, when he sinks the second barb, this one more direct: “Did Nancy Pelosi stand up, if she’s here? Doubt it.”

If. She’s. Here. A joke inside the joke that followed the joke. There were many such seemingly unscripted moments, particularly when Trump addressed his guests in attendance, or presented TWO Congressional Medals of Honor.While the congresscritters in attendance all played their party-mandated roles, Trump wasn’t speaking to them. He was speaking to us. More than that, I think he was speaking for us. That’s how a billionaire real estate mogul and reality TV star manages to maintain what we used to call “the common touch.” Bill Clinton — who grew up without any of Trump’s privileges — had to whack audiences over the head with how common he was. “I feel your pain,” indeed. Trump, on the other hand, does it more subtly.

Did I really just write “subtly” about Trump? Indeed, I did. Not quite a speech, Trump’s SOTU, I noted on Instapundit today, was more like a conversation — with the American people, with heroes in attendance, and even at times with surly Dems — that made the two hours fly. But the real secret is that Trump wasn’t speaking to the pundits with their mostly pre-written chin-scratchers based on the text of Trump’s talk. Trump addressed exactly one person: the American watching at home.

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” Just as Democrats have made it clear that they represent illegal aliens and not American citizens, Republicans have made it clear that they represent Israel and not American citizens”

• Which Party Represents Americans? (Paul Craig Roberts)

For sometime I have made the point that America’ s enemies are at home, not in Iran, Russia, and China. Last night at Trump s State of the Union speech, the Democrats proved me to be correct. Trump asked the members of the US Congress to stand up if they agreed with his statement: the first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens. Many Democrats did not stand, which proves my point that if Democrats represent Americans at all, Democrats represent Americans as second-class citizens whose interests are sacrificed to illegal immigrant-invaders.


This is not an endorsement of Republicans. Unlike Democrats, Republicans do not hate white Americans. But Republicans, along with many Democrats, do sacrifice America’s interest to Israel’s. The US fights Israel s wars at the expense of American blood, money, and reputation. Federal state and local governments censor and punish Americans for criticizing Israel. Criticism of Israel is gradually being turned into an antisemitic hate crime, which means among other things that Americans cannot criticize the genocide and destruction of Palestine. In some American states, a person who is a critic of Israel cannot hold a state job or provide goods and services under contract to the state.

Currently in Texas the Israel lobby has brought a vote before the Texas legislature that incorporates Israeli propaganda as a mandatory part of statewide education in Texas. Is a bought and paid for Texas legislature going to permit Israel to shape the outlook of the rising American generation? If so, will it be an American generation or an Israeli one? Just as Democrats have made it clear that they represent illegal aliens and not American citizens, Republicans have made it clear that they represent Israel and not American citizens. The representation of Israel is manifest in the chant you can’t be an American if you don’t love Israel. Allegedly, America is a democracy, but neither political party represents Americans who are forced to support Israel and illegal aliens.

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Dems want, no, need, to see Trump not as The Other Party, but as The Enemy. i wonder why that is.

• Sen. Chris Murphy Joins Pledge to Throw Trump Figures in Jail (Turley)

Before the State of the Union, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) joined other leaders in promising Americans that the Democrats will unleash a revenge tour after taking power in November, pledging to start throwing Trump people in jail when they retake Congress. Murphy went on MS NOW to feed the rage addiction that has taken over his party.We recently discussed how Susan Rice joined the mob in stating that “When it comes to the elites, you know, the corporate interests, the law firms, the universities, the media … it’s not going to end well for them.”mShe followed other Democrats, assuring voters that, if they returned Democrats to power, they would crack down on their political opponents.


Republicans and law enforcement are now regularly called “Nazis” and “fascists” by Democratic leaders. Some are promising arrests from the President to individual police officers. Last week, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner promised to “hunt down” ICE officers like “Nazis.” Democratic strategist James Carville previously threatened that “collaborators” may be treated in the same way as they were after World War II. Gov. Tim Walz, who has called ICE officers “Gestapo,” said that this may be our “Fort Sumter” moment, a triggering event for a civil war that killed hundreds of thousands of Americans.

Democratic members have been warned that they have to join the mob or be devoured by it. Bravo star and liberal podcast host Jennifer Welch praised footage of a “No Kings” protester celebrating the death of Charlie Kirk. After playing the clip, Welch laughed with joy and declared, “So listen up, Democratic establishment. You can either jump on board with this s—, or we’re coming after you in the same way that we come after MAGA. Period.” Murphy clearly got the message and added his voice in declaring that “they’re going to get their clocks cleaned this November, and a bunch of people are probably gonna end up going to jail.” It is a curious pledge, since the Democrats could retake the House and Senate in November. That would not give them the ability to throw people into jail even if they had actual crimes to charge.

What is clear is that the Democratic Party has now decided to try to ride the rage wave to power, leading the mob with such reckless rhetoric. In “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution,” I explore the rise of what I call the “new Jacobins,” establishment figures who are calling for radical changes to our constitutional system and for retaliation against political opponents. It is a book about revolutions and how they can consume those who start them.These Democratic politicians will learn this lesson from history that they are likely to be devoured by the very mobocracy that they are unleashing through rage politics.

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Europe depends on it. A dark curtain is about to be drawn.

• Trump Admin to Launch New Free Speech Site to Combat Censorship Abroad (ET)

In response to what the Trump administration says is a rising tide of censorship in Europe, the State Department is launching a new app that will give users worldwide access to content that has been censored in other countries. This includes not only Europe but also China and Iran. The platform, called Freedom.gov, will go live over the next several weeks, according to the State Department, and will be operable on iOS and Android devices.“Freedom.gov is the latest in a long line of efforts by the State Department to protect and promote fundamental freedoms, both online and offline,” the State Department stated in an email to The Epoch Times. “The project will be global in its scope, but distinctly American in its mission: commemorating our commitment to free expression as we approach our 250th birthday.”


Lauding the move, Jeremy Tedesco, senior counsel at the Alliance Defending Freedom, a civil rights legal group that has been critical of recent EU speech laws, stated on X that “for 250 years, this is what America does,” citing examples such as Radio Free Europe, which broadcast into communist countries during the Cold War. “If Europe’s bureaucrats don’t want you to see it, that tells you everything,” Tedesco stated. “Because even if your government fears freedom—ours doesn’t.” The First Amendment, which prohibits the U.S. government from “abridging the freedom of speech,” has provided a legal restraint against government censorship that most other countries lack.

Recent European speech laws, most notably the Digital Services Act (DSA), were ostensibly written to combat what lawmakers deemed “hate speech,” “harmful speech,” and “misinformation,” as well as pornography and abusive AI deep fakes. But critics of European speech codes say they are becoming increasingly draconian. In 2025, Virginie Joron, a French member of the European Parliament, called the DSA a “Trojan horse for s urveillance and control.” In Finland, Paivi Rasanen, a member of parliament, was charged for quoting Bible verses online in 2019, criticizing her church’s participation in a gay pride event. “I never imagined that quoting the Bible in a Twitter post would lead to years of criminal charges, yet this is now the reality in Europe,” she told The Epoch Times.

In Germany, illegal online speech could include insulting government officials. German police conducted early morning raids in June 2025 as part of Germany’s 12th annual “day of action against hate-posts,” and arrested 140 residents in the process. In the UK, people praying silently in the vicinity of abortion clinics were arrested in 2023 and 2025. Left-wing ruling parties in Canada are likewise working to remove religious exemptions from their “hate speech” laws. Increasingly, U.S. companies are facing extensive fines for allowing online posts that are illegal in Europe. In December, social media company X was fined $140 million for violating EU speech laws.

Such fines on U.S. tech companies, both for speech code violations and for what the EU deems to be anti-competitive behavior, could become a trade issue for the Trump administration. In January, President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that the “EU makes more from fines on US tech, than tax from ALL of public European tech,” noting that in 2024, the EU fined American tech companies a total of 3.8 billion euros. In addition, legal experts have warned that Europe’s online censorship laws could also silence Americans if U.S. tech companies are forced, on a global basis, to take down content that violates EU speech codes.

A House of Representatives report released on Feb. 3 and titled “The Foreign Censorship Threat” stated that “The European Commission, in a comprehensive decade-long effort, has successfully pressured social media platforms to change their global content moderation rules, thereby directly infringing on Americans’ online speech in the United States.” According to the Digital Services Act, illegal online speech could include anything that is prohibited in any EU member country. And in one of the more explicit efforts to regulate speech globally, European Commissioner Thierry Breton warned X owner Elon Musk during the 2024 U.S. presidential campaign that his company could face penalties for posting an interview with Trump.

In a 2025 interview with The Epoch Times, Andrew Puzder, U.S. ambassador to the European Union, stated: “When a company like Facebook or Twitter or X has to change its algorithm, and that algorithm might impact the free speech rights of Americans, that’s something that we really can’t tolerate. I know President Trump is not going to allow a foreign government to restrict the free speech rights of American citizens in ways that even our own government couldn’t restrict them.”

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“The future of the region is being written east of Brussels – and Marco Rubio’s tour confirmed exactly what Brussels fears most ..”

• A Continental Revolution Is Brewing In Europe (Zemánek)

When US Secretary of State Marco Rubio left the polite but brittle atmosphere of the Munich Security Conference and headed for Bratislava and Budapest, the contrast could not have been sharper. In Munich, the old guard of transatlantic liberalism clung to its vocabulary of ‘rules-based order’ and ‘shared values’, even as its political base erodes across the continent. In Central Europe, Rubio encountered something different: Governments confident in their mandates, unapologetic about sovereignty, and aligned with Donald Trump’s insistence that nations – not supranational bureaucracies – are the primary actors of history.


Last week’s visit was a statement of intent. Washington under Trump has made a deliberate choice: If Europe is to be a partner rather than a liability, it must be rebuilt from its healthiest political core. And that core lies not in Brussels, but along the Danube. In Bratislava, Rubio met with Prime Minister Robert Fico and President Peter Pellegrini. The agenda – regional security, nuclear cooperation, military modernization – was substantive. But the subtext was unmistakable. “Under President Trump, this administration is going to make not just Slovakia but Central Europe a key component of how we engage the continent and the world,” Rubio said. It was a diplomatic sentence with revolutionary implications.

For years, Central Europe was treated by Brussels as a problem to be managed: Too conservative, too attached to national identity, too resistant to cultural engineering. Now it is being treated by Washington as an asset to be cultivated. Fico’s remarks revealed why this shift matters. When he visited Moscow and Beijing last year in pursuit of Slovakia’s national interests, the reaction from EU institutions was furious – accusations, insinuations, moral lectures. Genuine diplomacy, in Brussels’ view, is acceptable only when it aligns with the prevailing orthodoxy. Yet from the White House, Fico encountered no hysteria – only what he described as “common-sense pragmatism.” The contrast speaks volumes.

Central European leaders have grown weary of an EU that polices internal politics more aggressively than it secures external borders. They have watched as energy supplies became instruments of political pressure and as ideological conformity became a condition of financial solidarity. Slovakia and Hungary have both experienced the weaponization of gas and oil transit routes by Kiev and Brussels – an illustration of how geopolitics, under Brussels’ watch, too often morphs into leverage against dissenting member states. Trump’s America reads the situation differently. Stability requires diversification, not dogma. Slovakia’s negotiations with Westinghouse Electric Company to build a new nuclear power plant by 2040, along with plans to expand its fleet of F-16 fighter jets, represent more than procurement decisions.

They symbolize a rebalancing: Energy sovereignty anchored in American partnership rather than EU dependency. Slovakia’s upcoming presidency of the Visegrad Group offers an even broader horizon. A potential V4-US summit would institutionalize what is already happening politically: The consolidation of a Central European bloc that sees Washington – not Brussels – as its most reliable strategic interlocutor. The Visegrad countries are not seeking rupture with the EU necessarily. They are seeking a radical reform within it. And they are finding in Trump’s America an ally that understands the difference.

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‘Unfortunately, our agricultural system depends heavily on these chemicals,’ Kennedy said.

Poison or hunger.

• RFK Jr. Defends Trump’s Glyphosate Order (ET)

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Feb. 22 said that glyphosate is poisonous but necessary as he backed President Donald Trump’s recent order designating the production of the herbicide as critical to national security. In a lengthy post on social media, Kennedy said pesticides and herbicides are toxic. “When we apply them across millions of acres and allow them into our food system, we put Americans at risk,” he wrote. “Chemical manufacturers have paid tens of billions of dollars to settle cancer claims linked to their products, and many agricultural communities report elevated cancer rates and chronic disease. Unfortunately, our agricultural system depends heavily on these chemicals.”


If the United States were to stop using the products, then “crop yields would fall, food prices would surge, and America would experience a massive loss of farms even beyond what [it is] witnessing today,” Kennedy said. He described Trump’s order as protecting national defense and the nation’s food supply, stating that Trump inherited the current agricultural system and that his administration is shifting from it without destabilizing the food supply. “We are accelerating the transition to regenerative agriculture by expanding farming systems that rebuild soil, increase biodiversity, improve water retention, and reduce reliance on synthetic chemicals, including pre-harvest desiccation,” Kennedy wrote.

“We are also driving the rapid adoption of next-generation technologies, including laser-guided weed control, electrothermal and electrical systems, robotics, precision mechanical cultivation, and biological controls that replace blanket spraying with precision intervention. “These solutions are not theoretical. Farmers are already putting them to work. Markets are scaling them. Now the federal government will act with urgency to expand their reach and accelerate adoption nationwide.” Kennedy said later: “The Make America Healthy Again agenda forces us to challenge long-standing assumptions about how we grow food, structure markets, and measure success in this country. Reform at this scale will test entrenched interests, and it will not move in a straight line.”

In his Feb. 18 order, Trump said herbicides with glyphosate are widely used in the United States and enable farmers to achieve high yields and low production costs. “There is no direct one-for-one chemical alternative to glyphosate-based herbicides,” the president wrote. “Lack of access to glyphosate-based herbicides would critically jeopardize agricultural productivity, adding pressure to the domestic food system, and may result in a transition of cropland to other uses due to low productivity.“Given the profit margins growers currently face, any major restrictions in access to glyphosate-based herbicides would result in economic losses for growers and make it untenable for them to meet growing food and feed demands.”

He designated production of glyphosate as a critical national security and directed Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins to ensure that there is an adequate supply of the herbicides and elemental phosphorus, one of the ingredients in the products. Some people supportive of the Make America Healthy Again movement criticized the designation. Kelly Ryerson, coexecutive director of American Regeneration, told The Epoch Times that it “doubles down” on a system that is making the U.S. population sick and killing the soil. “We already have a limited number of harvests left,” she said.

Bayer, which produces glyphosate-based herbicide Roundup, just proposed a $7 billion settlement to resolve thousands of lawsuits that allege that Roundup caused cancer. Bayer maintains that Roundup is not carcinogenic and can be used safely. That stance is shared by the Environmental Protection Agency, although the International Agency for Research on Cancer lists glyphosate as probably carcinogenic.

Kennedy, while running for president in 2024, said in a post on X that glyphosate was “one of the likely culprits in America’s chronic disease epidemic” and that the Department of Agriculture would, if he won the election, ban its use as a desiccant on wheat. His Make America Healthy Again Commission in 2025 also said that glyphosate studies “have noted a range of possible health effects, ranging from reproductive and developmental disorders as well as cancers, liver inflammation and metabolic disturbances.”

Kennedy said in a previous statement to The Epoch Times, after Trump signed the new glyphosate order: “When hostile actors control critical inputs, they weaken our security. By expanding domestic production, we close that gap and protect American families.” Zen Honeycutt, founder of Moms Across America, said in response to Kennedy’s post on X that she understands aspects of his position but that after about a year of the Trump administration being in power, officials have not worked to limit people’s exposure to pesticides. “We love you Bobby but this administration needs to keep their word,” she said in a Feb. 23 post on X. “We were promised specifically clean air, clean water, and addressing of the pesticides [in] our foods.”

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If the EU wins, everybody loses.

• EU To Start Permanent Ban on Russian Oil 3 Days After Hungarian Election (CTH)

I guess we can put this in the open admission file surrounding the all-out effort by the European Union to defeat Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban According to a leaked document received by Reuters, the European Union is scheduled to permanently ban all EU nations from importing Russian oil. They have scheduled the ban to trigger on April 15th, three days after the Hungarian election.


BRUSSELS, Feb 24 (Reuters) – “The European Commission will submit a legal proposal to permanently ban Russian oil imports on April 15, three days after Hungary’s parliamentary election, according to EU officials and a document seen by Reuters. Two EU officials told Reuters the timing was designed to prevent the oil ban becoming a major factor in Hungary’s election campaign. Hungary and Slovakia, still reliant on Russian oil imports, are strongly opposed to any ban.In the April 12 election, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his nationalist Fidesz party are facing the biggest challenge to their hold on power in 16 years.

The EU has already imposed sanctions on imports of seaborne Russian oil. But it wants to enshrine a full phase-out of Russian oil in legislation that would remain in place, even if a peace deal in the Ukraine war led to the EU lifting sanctions. nThe Commission plans to propose the Russian oil ban on April 15, according to a draft agenda seen by Reuters. Asked about the matter, a Commission spokesperson told Reuters the EU executive’s agendas were provisional and that it did not have a confirmed timeline for submitting the proposal.” (read more)

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“To UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, the true goal of Tuesday’s get-together seemed to be ensuring that Ukraine keeps winning in the imagination of the Western public.”

• Solidarity Simulacra: Zelensky’s Four-Year Reality Check (RT)

Vladimir Zelensky brought some of his most ardent fans to Kiev to mark the fourth anniversary of his wartime leadership, but the supporting actors in the Ukraine Cinematic Universe had little to offer him.mA look at the guests who showed up suggests Ukraine’s backers are divided into those who have to and those who don’t. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council chief Antonio Costa arrived in Kiev on Tuesday morning, along with the leaders of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Croatia, Norway, and Sweden. Von der Leyen declared “that Europe stands unwaveringly with Ukraine, financially, militarily, and through this harsh winter,” and promised to help Zelensky achieve “Peace on Ukraine’s terms.”

“In Kyiv for the tenth time since the start of the war.To reaffirm that Europe stands unwaveringly with Ukraine, financially, militarily, and through this harsh winter.To underscore our enduring commitment to Ukraine’s just fight.And to send a clear message to the Ukrainian”… pic.twitter.com/iULkEQji16 — Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) February 24, 2026

In reality, von der Leyen’s plan to keep Ukraine afloat until 2028 with a €90 billion ($106 billion) debt-funded loan package has been vetoed by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Von der Leyen arrived in Kiev empty handed, and in a video address to the European Parliament later on Tuesday, Zelensky held out the begging bowl once more, asking for the loan, for fast-tracked EU membership, and for more sanctions on Russia – which Orban has also vowed to veto. The European leaders who accompanied von der Leyen are in no place to help Zelensky either. The Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have long ago emptied their arms stockpiles, with former Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis admitting in 2023 that he could only provide “political arguments” for arming the Ukrainian military, as Lithuania does not have its own “significant stockpile of weapons.”

All of the European leaders who visited Zelensky on Tuesday have authorized weapons purchases from the US for Ukraine under NATO’s PURL initiative. However, NATO’s European members have spent just over $4 billion on American weapons in the five months since August. When the US was arming Ukraine directly, it spent $10 billion every five months.

Where are the Americans?
The US, despite still indirectly arming Ukraine through PURL and providing intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance data to its forces, remains the only Western power capable of forcing Zelensky to make the necessary concessions to resolve the conflict. Whereas the US has participated in three rounds of trilateral talks with Russian and Ukrainian officials, the Kremlin sees no point in talks with the Europeans. In the words of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, “the current generation of European leaders…have entrenched themselves too deeply in a posture of hatred towards Russia” to be taken seriously.

Not a single US official made the trip to Kiev on Tuesday. Their absence was conspicuous, after a year of Zelensky lobbying US President Donald Trump to visit the Ukrainian capital, and after a BBC interview on Monday in which the Ukrainian leader begged Trump to “stay on our side.” The British, French, Germans, and Italians also skipped the junket, choosing to send their messages of solidarity remotely during a meeting of the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ later in the afternoon. If Zelensky hoped for something more concrete from the coalition, his hope was misplaced.

During the meeting of the 34-nation group, Ukraine received the promise of “full and sustained support,” according to a statement published by the UK, which co-chaired the virtual gathering. In reality, the coalition’s members could only echo Zelensky’s calls for more money and weapons, without actually offering any of either. Talk by coalition members France and the UK of sending troops to Ukraine remains a post-conflict hypothetical, and a red line for Russia. To UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, the true goal of Tuesday’s get-together seemed to be ensuring that Ukraine keeps winning in the imagination of the Western public.

”We’ve got to shift the narrative,” Starmer said. “Whatever Putin tells himself and his people, Russia is not winning, and we must shift the narrative into that place with greater force and determination.” Starmer’s statement sums up the current state of play for Zelensky and his Western backers. Narrative management is the best they can offer. Think more ‘Ghost of Kiev’ myths instead of actual deliveries of fighter jets. More pomp and circumstance, troop reviews, and deal memos.

The danger exists that once Ukraine’s most committed European backers come to terms with the fact that they’ve poured all their money and political capital into a hopeless cause, drastic solutions could become more appealing. In that light, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) on Tuesday accused Britain and France of plotting the “covert transfer of relevant European-made components, equipment, and technologies” for the production of nuclear weapons to Ukraine. Both nations are also reportedly considering handing over a French TN 75 warhead to Kiev, or encouraging the Ukrainians to build a dirty bomb.

While London and Paris have both denied any plot to supply Ukraine with nukes, one line in the statement stands out – that the leaders of Britain and France have “lost touch with reality.” When reality does catch up with Zelensky and his ‘Avengers’, the results will be messy.On February 24, four years to the day since the constant killing in Donbass escalated into open conflict, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky trudged through the snow outside his offices in Kiev to a Soviet-era air raid bunker with a camera crew in tow. In a concrete tunnel once built to ensure continuation of government in the event of a Western attack, Zelensky opened his fourth anniversary video address with a now-famous anecdote:

”Here I spoke with [US] President [Joe] Biden, and it was right here that I heard: ‘Vladimir, there is a threat, you need to leave Ukraine urgently’. And here I replied that I need ammunition, not a ride.” The quote was entirely fake – fabricated by US intelligence agents for Western consumption. But four years into a conflict that could have been easily settled in 2022, with tens of millions of Ukrainians dead, injured, or emigrated, and with his country sentenced to lifetimes of unpayable debt, Hollywood one-liners and Marvel-comic optics are all Zelensky has left.

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France and the UK are considering covertly handing nuclear capabilities or a ‘dirty bomb’ to Kiev, Russian intel has claimed..

• Moscow Will Respond If NATO Gives Nukes To Nazi Regime In Kiev – Medvedev (RT)

Russia would launch a nuclear response if NATO countries supplied atomic weapons to Ukraine, former President Dmitry Medvedev has warned. Medvedev, who now serves as deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, was commenting to RT on Tuesday on claims by Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) that London and Paris are considering ways to provide nuclear weaponry or related components to Kiev.m“I will be blunt and state the obvious,” Medvedev said, adding that the reported intention by the UK and France to hand over nuclear capabilities to the “Nazi regime in Kiev” would change the situation entirely. “This is a direct transfer of nuclear weapons to a country at war,” he stated.


According to the SVR, British and French officials are weighing the “covert transfer of relevant European-made components, equipment, and technologies to Ukraine,” and preparing an information campaign to portray any resulting capability as domestically developed. “There should be no doubt whatsoever that in such a scenario Russia would be forced to use any means at its disposal, including non-strategic nuclear weapons, against targets in Ukraine that threaten our country,” Medvedev stated. “And if necessary, against the supplier nations now implicated in a nuclear conflict with Russia. This is the kind of symmetrical response that the Russian Federation would be entitled to,” he added.

The SVR also alleged that another option under discussion was the provision of a complete French TN 75 nuclear warhead used on submarine launched ballistic missiles, or assistance in building a radioactive “dirty bomb” using conventional explosives and nuclear materials. Kiev could seek “more advantageous terms” in any negotiations if it possessed such weapons, the SVR suggested, adding that Germany had “prudently refused” to participate. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described the reported plans as “potentially very dangerous,” saying they would threaten the global non-proliferation regime. Ukraine has argued that it gave up its nuclear arsenal in exchange for security guarantees that later proved worthless. While a significant portion of Soviet nuclear forces were stationed in Ukraine, Kiev never controlled the missiles.

The 1994 Budapest Memorandums provided assurances – but not legally binding guarantees – to Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan that their territorial integrity would be respected after transferring Soviet nuclear weapons to Russia. At the 2022 Munich Security Conference, shortly before the Ukraine conflict escalated, Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky suggested Kiev could reconsider its non-nuclear status.Moscow maintains that after the 2014 Western-backed coup in Kiev, Ukraine’s new authorities breached the neutrality pledge underpinning its post-Soviet independence by making NATO membership a key foreign policy goal.

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“.. if approved, the EU loan would end up being stolen by corrupt Ukrainian officials..”

• Zelensky Demands €90 Billion EU Loan (RT)

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has demanded that the EU approve a €90 billion ($106 billion) loan backed by the bloc’s taxpayers that has been vetoed by Hungary. Provisionally agreed upon last December, the plan envisages an interest-free loan to Ukraine for 2026-2027, with €60 billion earmarked for military needs and €30 billion for “general budget support.” It would be covered through joint EU borrowing and only repaid if Ukraine receives war reparations from Russia. Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic opted out of contributing to the loan, which is estimated to result in up to €5.6 billion in annual interest payments for member states. The scheme was approved after the bloc failed to agree to use Russia’s frozen central-bank assets to finance Ukraine due to opposition from several member states over the legal hurdles and risks.


Addressing the European Parliament via video link on Tuesday, Zelensky said that “right now there is an important decision… on the table – €90 billion in support for Ukraine over two years.”“This is a real financial guarantee of our security and our resilience, and it must be implemented,” the Ukrainian leader insisted. On Monday, Hungary vetoed the EU’s proposed emergency loan for Ukraine, as well as the latest package of sanctions against Russia. Budapest accused Kiev of jeopardizing the “security of Hungary’s energy supply” by deliberately blocking use of the Soviet-era Druzhba pipeline for political reasons. The transit of Russian oil to EU consumers via the conduit has been on hold since late January, with Kiev blaming Moscow for damaging it. Russia has denied the allegations.

Ukraine expects its Western backers to cover a budget deficit of around $50 billion this year. El Pais reported in October that the Ukrainian government could run out of money by April. Speaking last month, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that if approved, the EU loan would end up being stolen by corrupt Ukrainian officials.

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It’s about money.

• Bill Gates Begins Apology Tour Over His Epstein Ties (ZH)

A week after Bill Gates abruptly pulled out as a keynote speaker at a high-profile global AI summit in India, the left-wing billionaire finally mustered enough nerve to “take responsibility for his actions” over his ties to late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein during a town hall meeting with Gates Foundation employees.The Wall Street Journal reports that Gates told employees at a town hall event for the foundation on Tuesday that he never spent time with Epstein’s victims, and never visited Epstein’s island. He revealed that Epstein later learned about two affairs he had with Russian women, but said those relationships did not involve Epstein’s victims. Gates said photos in the Epstein files show him with redacted women were taken by Epstein’s assistants after meetings. Did Gates fall into a Russian honeypot?


“I did nothing illicit. I saw nothing illicit,” Gates emphasized, according to a recording reviewed by WSJ journalists. Gates continued, “To be clear, I never spent any time with victims, the women around him.” “It was a huge mistake to spend time with Epstein” and bring Gates Foundation executives into meetings with the sex offender, Gates said, adding, “I apologize to other people who are drawn into this because of the mistake that I made.” Last week, the $86 billion philanthropic body’s last-minute decision to yank Gates was a major embarrassment and came as the Epstein fallout worsened, with many high-profile people under fire.

“Knowing what I know now makes it, you know, a hundred times worse in terms of not only his crimes in the past, but now it’s clear there was ongoing bad behavior,” Gates said. He gave credit to his ex-wife, who “was always kind of skeptical about the Epstein thing.” Gates told staff he began meeting Epstein in 2011, despite the financier’s 2008 guilty plea for soliciting a minor for prostitution. He said he was aware of the “18-month thing” that had restricted Epstein’s travel, yet continued the relationship, even after his then-wife, Melinda French Gates, raised serious concerns in 2013. He said the relationship continued through 2014 and that he flew on a private jet with Epstein and spent time with him in Germany, France, New York, and Washington. “I never stayed overnight,” he said, or visited Epstein’s island.

He said Epstein “talked about the kind of intimate relationship he had with a lot of billionaires, particularly Wall Street billionaires,” and that he could help raise money for global health nonprofits. “It definitely is the opposite of the values of the Foundation and the goals of the Foundation,” he said. “And our work is very reputation-sensitive. I mean, people can choose to work with us or not work with us.” No matter what, the Gates Foundation has a dark cloud hanging over it because of Gates’ involvement amid the deepening Epstein fallout.

Gates is worth billions, so why would he need Epstein to raise money for global health nonprofits? Something doesn’t pass the sniff test in this damage-control town hall he held for his foundation’s employees.

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“Joe Biden waived Trump’s executive privilege ..”

• Fani Willis Plotted Trump Case Closely With Biden DOJ, J6 Democrats (JTN)

Just the News and America First Legal win access to 8,000 pages of documents after extensive open records litigation. The memos include revelations on how Joe Biden waived Trump’s executive privilege specifically to aid Georgia prosecutors. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis coordinated extensively with the Biden Justice Department and White House as well as Democrats on the House Jan. 6 investigative committee as she built a failed criminal case against President Donald Trump and his allies related to their challenge to Georgia’s 2020 election results, according to a trove of internal communications obtained by Just the News.


The memos show that President Joe Biden’s top White House lawyer personally opened the door for Willis’ prosecutors to interview Trump administration officials by waiving claims of executive privilege, that federal prosecutors waived certain rights to allow the interviews to proceed before a state grand jury and that Willis’s team spoke glowingly of the congressional efforts to expose Trump’s involvement in the disputed election. “Our initial review of the report confirms you all have accomplished amazing things in the past year,” F. Donald Wakeford, a top deputy to Willis, wrote in a December 2022 email to Tim Heaphy, chief investigative counsel for the Democrat-run Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Just the News, alongside the nonprofit public interest law firm America First Legal (AFL), sued Willis for the records, under Georgia’s Open Records Law. Willis, a longtime Trump nemesis, sought to hide many of the records with claims of legal privilege during a prolonged legal fight. In a reaction to the lawsuit, Willis’ office this week dropped all privilege claims and released all the documents without any redactions, providing to Just the News — and the public — more information than it did to congressional Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee.

“These documents reveal that the Biden Administration and the January 6 Committee were much more involved in District Attorney Fani Willis’s prosecution of President Trump than was previously believed. AFL was happy to represent Just the News to get Americans this new information,” said Will Scolinos, an attorney at America First Legal. The documents show a cozy relationship between the Biden administration and Willis’ staff, one that included a meeting between her outside special prosecutor Nathan Wade and the Biden White House.Wade, who admitted to a “personal relationship” with Willis outside the office, billed Fulton County $2,000 for an “interview with DC/White House” on Nov. 18, 2022, just as Willis’ probe was accelerating, according to the new records Willis was forced to disclose.

There is no further explanation in the documents for that interaction, and Fulton County told Just the News and its lawyers at AFL that Wade did not keep any records of what happened at that meeting. Calls to Willis for comment were not returned by publication time.= The new memos show that the Biden White House counsel’s office gave Willis’ prosecution team a major gift, waiving Trump’s ability to claim executive privilege and to block former administration officials from testifying.

Executive privilege is the implied authority of the U.S. president to withhold information that the executive branch possesses from Congress or the Judiciary on the grounds that a president is entitled to confidential advice before making decisions. It is a long-standing American tradition and the secrecy of presidential communications was first referenced by Chief Justice John Marshall in the landmark case Marbury v. Madison.

Ironically, President Obama and his Attorney General Eric Holder asserted the same privilege during investigations of the botched “Fast and Furious” gunrunning scheme. The Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press noted that “When a president invokes executive privilege, it may be among the most difficult walls to penetrate because the number of potential leakers with access to White House documents is limited and closely monitored.” In some instances, reporting has simply been prevented from reporting on an important issue because the blockade worked.

Biden, however, believed that the “extraordinary events” surrounding the “insurrection” on Jan. 6 in the U.S. Capitol, warranted waiving this historical understanding of the privacy of presidential communications, the new memos show.

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“He’s not a puppeteer. He’s simply a pervert.”

Oh no Scott Pinsker, he was the master puppeteer.

• Comey’s Leaker Claims The Epstein Files Shouldn’t Have Been Released (Pinsker)

But the common thread of leveraging sex to monetize relationships is 100% applicable. It happens a lot. And that’s the biggest blessing of the Epstein Files: It took the repulsive practice of peddling flesh for financial favors out of the shadows. Today, the whole world knows the truth. Sunlight really is the best disinfectant. Which is also why the PR pushback of the Deep State is so fascinating: On Feb. 23, the New York Times ran a remarkable op-ed: “The Epstein Files Should Never Have Been Released.” A few excerpts: [W]e should recognize the release of millions of pages of the Epstein files as both a sign of institutional failure and a cause for concern. If our justice system were working properly, the public would never have such access.


[…]The release of the files is also cause for concern because so much of the raw investigative material in them — untold layers of hearsay, unverified accusations and vague circumstantial connections — ought not be released for the public to pick over. […] When materials collected in a criminal investigation get released in bulk for public consumption, the justification for the coercive and privacy-invading tools we give investigators gets a lot weaker. Institutions claiming to protect user or customer privacy might be more likely to resist valid uses of these tools. Witnesses who would otherwise speak to investigators about sensitive matters might start to rethink whether they want to provide grist for internet searches.

What’s especially fascinating is the author of the New York Times’ piece: Daniel Richman, whom the Times described as a “former federal prosecutor.” But that’s not why Richman is famous. Daniel Richman is the Columbia Law School professor who leaked anti-Trump news stories on behalf of disgraced FBI Director James Comey to trigger a special counsel investigation. From ABC News (June 13, 2017): Who Is James Comey’s Friend and Leaker Daniel Richman? “Daniel Richman is the Columbia Law School professor through whom former FBI Director James Comey shared details of his contemporaneous memos about meetings with President Donald Trump to the New York Times.

Speaking before the Senate Intelligence Committee on June 8, Comey said he wanted to get a record of his meetings with President Donald Trump “out into the public square” so he decided to ask a friend to share the content of his memo with a reporter. “Didn’t do it myself, for a variety of reasons. But I asked him to, because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel. And so I asked a close friend of mine to do it,” Comey told Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine). Collins asked who that was, and he responded, without providing a name, “A good friend of mine who’s a professor at Columbia Law School.” [emphasis added] Those “variety of reasons” began and ended with a list of one: It would’ve exposed Comey to criminal prosecution for leaking classified information.

PJ Media colleague and friend, Dave Manney, explored Richman’s twisted logic and elitist double-standard on secrecy: Daniel Richman wants the public to regret the files even as they read them, calling the dump a spectacle that highlights the Justice Department’s lack of confidence. I hate to tell him, but confidence died because the department slow-walked leads and cut sweetheart deals for decades. Americans didn’t ruin the system by demanding the truth. The people who protected Epstein and his ilk ruined it. He’s right — but the bigger story isn’t just Richman’s pretzel-shaped logic. It’s the intent behind it. Because Richman has proven himself to be a willing mouthpiece for the Deep State.

That’s how we all know his name. The New York Times might’ve described him as a “former federal prosecutor,” but that’s not why he’s famous. It’s his relationship with Comey that put him in the limelight. Based on precedent, it’s reasonable to assume he’s still speaking for James Comey. So why would the ex-FBI director — and hardline Trump critic — come out swinging AGAINST the release of the Epstein Files? After all, despite the hype and hoopla, none of the conspiracy theories about blackmail schemes, international espionage, and foreign governments were substantiated. If anything, the millions of Epstein documents and/or 300-plus gigabytes of data vindicated the government’s approach: It was less an elaborate cover-up and more a rich guy gaming the legal system on his own.[..]

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https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2026670599674663075?s=20

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle September 19 2025

Sep 192025
 
 September 19, 2025  Posted by at 9:54 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  55 Responses »


Caspar David Friedrich The Monk by the Sea c1809

 

• Prove Charlie Right (David DesRosiers)
• TPUSA Names Charlie Kirk’s Widow Erika as New CEO (Salgado)
• Chris Cuomo Schools the Left on Kimmel’s Suspension (Margolis)
• Jimmy Kimmel Missed This Clue About Trump; It Was His Downfall (Tim O’Brien)
• Kimmel Has No One to Blame but Himself for Cancellation by ABC (Perrotta)
• Trump to Antifa: IT’S GOING DOWN (Victoria Taft)
• Brigitte Macron To Prove To US Court She’s A Woman (NYP)
• Macron Is In A Political Death Spiral (Amar)
• ‘Not The Right Time’ To Call For Russia-Ukraine Ceasefire – Trump (RT)
• Trump Files Emergency Request With SCOTUS To Make Lisa Cook Fired Again (ZH)
• RFK Jr. Cannot Proceed With Overhaul of Health Agencies, Court Rules (ET)
• The ‘Golden Billion’ Has Lost Its Crown (Bobrov)
• Bank of Russia Governor Dismisses Talk Of Recession (RT)
• Great Moments In The History Of Chrystia Freeland’s Failure (Helmer)
• China To Test Arctic Express Route To Europe (RT)

 

 

https://twitter.com/TONYxTWO/status/1968488772468650199

Benny

 

 

 

 

The Charlie tragedy enters day 10 today.

• Prove Charlie Right (David DesRosiers)

On Sept. 10, 2025, Charlie Kirk was assassinated for the political sin of showing up on college campuses across our country and taking and answering questions. These queries came from students and guests whether they were allies or adversaries – or simply curious-minded Americans engaging in their unalienable birthright to engage in civics openly. Charlie Kirk was martyred for the free exercise of his First Amendment rights. And the right to free speech, which he championed, was critically wounded in the attack. The aftermath marks a turning point in our nation’s “house divided” future. Let’s do as Charlie did masterfully and probe the mindset of the other – in this case his assassin’s and that of his like-minded enablers. It was Charlie’s way. It is the Socratic way. It is the Western Civ, the American way.

Who will rid us of this meddlesome apostle of free expression? Progressives don’t like to think of themselves as King Henry, the man who uttered the fateful words that caused four loyalists to murder Thomas Becket. But where else can their constant denunciations of Republicans as “Nazis” or “fascists” lead? A young man, who was being groomed to be a moral monster by our culture and the passions it unleashes, heard the dog whistle call to arms, seized the opportunity of a public event in his home state, and did what was collectively seen by his ilk as necessary and proper. To do so, he suspended morality, the rule of law, and human decency in order serve what he and too many others see as a higher political purpose. Sadly, this moral madness is what is taught in our nation’s colleges. This is the ethic that guided the global left – paired now with America’s identitarian vanguard –to fundamentally remake America.

Their immoral reasoning not only led to the killing of Charlie Kirk, but it is also the rationale of messianic monsters through the ages. In the 20th century alone, under the guise of National Socialism and global communism, it led to the murder of a hundred million souls. Social media has given it another Great Leap Forward. It is the justification for the show trials, the guillotine, the oven, the suicide vest, and the lone sniper. This assassin’s creed is not for everyone. Only a few have the wherewithal to take this beyond-good-and-evil step. But those who do take things to their evil conclusion do so knowing that those with less nerve but shared adjacency on the ends will find in their partisan hearts that what they did was needed and therefore good, if not praiseworthy.

This is the recipe for political madness and incompatible with our venerable experiment in self-government that we must now defend in common. What does Charlie Kirk’s assassination portend for our country? I see the potential of a natural turning point towards the good, the restoration of the First Amendment’s spirit, and a return of political, civic, cultural, religious, and economic toleration. That would be a big rainbow following a storm. So far, there has been little call for retaliatory violence. So much for the “Hitler Youth” handwringing. There have only been completely peaceful prayer vigils. Unlike this assassin’s creed and its enablers, Charlie Kirk’s soul and mind would not allow such a demonic transvaluation of value. His true followers share that moral position. On this point, the partisan calls for moral equivalence don’t hold.

The good news for us, the living, is that Charlie is being honored in death by his followers in a way that gives us all a new political lease on life. I first heard of his shooting from my 28-year-old son and 18-year-old nephew. They saw Charlie’s execution with their own eyes within moments of it happening and captured the core un-American inhumanity of it all. “A man is gunned down for the thought crime of debating on a college campus.” “This guy is a family man,” they said. “He has a wife and two young children.” What happens going forward? Charlie’s influence was huge before he was shot. It appears to be growing by the day in death. I hope something good is happening in real time. I believe you can see, hear, and feel it.

It turns out that when a public figure with 35 million followers gets assassinated for the whole world to see for simply speaking on a college campus, those who never heard of him – or heard something, good or bad – will naturally check it out themselves. A national re-examination may be happening. The curious are finding an immediate and growing corpus, which is deconstructing the demonic caricature made of him, and are standing up for this smart, fast-talking, civil, happy man in the prime of this life. Charlie’s wife Erika gave a speech full of love and principle that brought tears to those with open hearts. This organization Charlie dedicated half of his life to is not going anywhere but onward and upward. Since his assassination, Turning Point USA has received tens of thousands of applications to set up TPP college chapters.

College Mandarins in charge of green-lighting or gaslighting student organizations and regulating speech to their Orwellian liking should tread lightly going forward. The Justice Department will be watching. Charlie is dead but not gone. His happy warrior spirit and first-rate mind are already immortalized in the cloud. TPP should enlist the help of AI to give Charlie’s mind and his “Prove Me Wrong” method a second lease on life for our collective sake. To the legion of young people whose hearts are broken and want to do more, you know that Charlie would want you to follow in his footsteps. The time for being a spectator was canceled with an assassin’s bullet. Today, it is time to stand up, show up, and be like Charlie. You know his mind and his method. From heaven, Charlie is saying to all those who love him, “Prove Me Right.”

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“We have a country to save.”

• TPUSA Names Charlie Kirk’s Widow Erika as New CEO (Salgado)

Turning Point USA lost its beloved CEO and founder, Charlie Kirk, to an assassination last week. Who better to take his place than his widow, Erika? Erika Kirk not only lost a friend and inspirational leader but also her much-loved husband last Wednesday. Now she has to raise their children alone. But she is not cowed by the horrific leftist violence that took her husband’s life, and she will be taking his place as the CEO and chairwoman of the board at TPUSA.= During her heartbreaking but inspiring comments after Charlie’s death, Erika declared, “You have no idea the fire that you have ignited within this wife. The cries of this widow will echo around the world like a battle cry. To everyone listening tonight across America, the movement my husband built will not die.” She is more committed than ever to his life’s work.

In the X post announcing Mrs. Kirk’s new position, TPUSA’s Board explained that Charlie had told multiple executives within the organization that, if he should die prematurely, he would want his wife to take over his job. The TPUSA Board voted accordingly for her yesterday, on Constitution Day. The statement from TPUSA began by citing Ecclesiastes in the Bible and expressing faith in God, just as Charlie always did: In Ecclesiastes, King Solomon wrote that mankind is to be tested by God. Today we are facing such a test, yet we also know that God has prepared us with everything we need to overcome this ordeal. It was the honor of our lives to serve as board members at Charlie’s side. Charlie prepared all of us for a moment like this one. He worked tirelessly to ensure Turning Point USA was built to survive even the greatest tests. And now, it is our great pride to announce Erika Kirk as the new CEO and Chair of the Board for Turning Point USA.

Charlie said he wanted his legacy to be his faith. And he wanted to inspire a whole generation of young patriots to carry on his work. The outpouring of love for him, not just in America but around the world, highlights his great success. The TPUSA board emphasized that every member of the organization has “a special role in carrying Charlie Kirk’s mantle and completing his vision of bringing us all closer to our Lord and fostering a prosperous country for generations to come.” It quoted Charlie’s famous saying, “We have a country to save.” Notably, just before his death, Charlie expressed a goal of putting a TPUSA “Club America” chapter at every high school in the country (somewhere around 25,000). Since Charlie’s assassination, TPUSA has had 37,000+ applications for new chapters.

Therefore, the Board affirmed: We will not surrender or kneel before evil. We will carry on. The attempt to destroy Charlie’s work will become our chance to make it more powerful and enduring than ever before. May God Bless Erika, the Kirk family, and the entire team at Turning Point USA. As Erika Kirk very truly said to her husband’s murderer, “You have no idea what you have just unleashed across this entire country and this world.”

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If Kimmel had been a big hit, he would never have been cancelled. Nothing to do with Trump.

• Chris Cuomo Schools the Left on Kimmel’s Suspension (Margolis)

Chris Cuomo just dropped a dose of inconvenient truth about Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension, and it’s not what the left wants to hear. Instead of feeding the narrative that this was some grand assault on free speech, Cuomo cut through the noise—and his blunt take won’t sit well with leftists desperate to turn Kimmel into a martyr. Cuomo began by stripping the drama down to the essentials: “You can like or not like Disney’s decision on Kimmel.” He then explained the obvious point the media refuses to entertain: absent evidence of state interference, this is a brand protecting itself. “But until I see proof of actual government coercion of their decision, this is about Disney making a business decision about its brand and the responsibility it has to respect the desires of its audience and its license.”

Throughout, Cuomo refused to barter facts for feelings. “I don’t care how you feel about it,” he said, adding bluntly, “We don’t have the proof before us. Maybe we will, then I’ll change my analysis.” In other words: show me the evidence or stop pretending the First Amendment has been violated. After the tragic murder of Charlie Kirk, the facts quickly confirmed what many already suspected: his killer was a radicalized leftist. Yet on his show, Jimmy Kimmel mocked the truth, sneering, “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”

https://twitter.com/JasonJournoDC/status/1968833785513828511

That wasn’t just inaccurate—it was blatant propaganda, and it crossed a legal line. Under 47 CFR § 73.1217, better known as the FCC’s “broadcast hoaxes” rule, television networks and radio stations are strictly prohibited from airing false information about crimes or catastrophes when they know it isn’t true. And it simply wasn’t and there was no excuse for anyone at ABC not to know that. Cuomo reiterated the point that should shut down every hysterical hot take on the left: the First Amendment limits government action, not private companies. “And no, it is not a First Amendment issue until you have proof of government intervention because the First Amendment doesn’t apply to private industry in this context. It’s a restriction on government regulation. Okay?”

That’s the core of Cuomo’s point. The idea that a network’s license hinges on personal loyalty to a president—or that Disney somehow lost its autonomy because of political pressure—is the stuff of tabloid headlines, not court-ready proof. “The basis of having a license is not on whether or not you are good to Trump. Okay?” Cuomo said, cutting through the noise. That suspicion is precisely why he insists on proof. And right now, the left has none.

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“And she reassured the president, because as his friend, she knew he may have needed this reassuring, that Charlie knew the president loved him, too. This is powerful because anyone who knows how men actually think knows that there is a good chance this was on the president’s mind..”

• Jimmy Kimmel Missed This Clue About Trump; It Was His Downfall (Tim O’Brien)

If you didn’t know that Jimmy Kimmel has been suspended from his nightly gig producing a propaganda broadcast in front of a live audience, you’ll be forgiven for actually having a life. But for those of us who’ve been inundated with online reports of how this is bad or good for Western civilization, our forensic investigation continues. My colleague Stephen Kruiser put it all in perspective in The Morning Briefing today. And if gloating is your thing, you have to read about Roseanne Barr’s epic reaction, courtesy of Matt Margolis. Going by the headlines, the major reason Kimmel now has more time on his hands is that, when he inserted the Charlie Kirk assassination into his “comedy” monologue, he spread the myth that the alleged shooter, Tyler Robinson, was MAGA.

This has raised the question of whether comedians should be held to the same standards for truth and accuracy as journalists. While it’s one thing to debate how far-reaching the government should be in policing speech, it’s certainly within the purview of Disney, the owner of Kimmel’s show, to make the prudent decision to take him off the air if he’s spreading a dishonest narrative that adds to the current culture of toxicity. A culture that many blame for Charlie’s assassination. But there was another part to Kimmel’s monologue that demonstrated just how out-of-touch he has become and why his humor so consistently misses the mark.

He set up his joke by saying, “On a human level, you can see how hard the president is taking this.” And then he played a clip of President Trump taking impromptu questions from a scrum of White House reporters. One off-camera reporter offered the president his condolences and asked him how he was holding up. The president in DJT style answered by deflecting and pivoting in less than a second. “I think very good, and by the way right there you see all the trucks. They just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House,” the president said as he proceeded to change the subject. Kimmel’s punchline then is that Trump is at the fourth stage of grieving, “construction.” He then went on to frame the president’s approach to grieving as that of how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish.

OK, we all know it’s a joke, and a bad one, and timing-wise, a very insensitive one. But it also shows just how clueless Kimmel is when it comes to how real men deal with personal loss and grief. Kimmel, who’s surrounded by Hollywood types who revel in their identities of victimhood, doesn’t get real men, which is why he doesn’t get Trump. Trump is among the richest people in the world, and yet he does not afford himself the luxury of showing off his vulnerabilities to the world. He grew up on movies where John Wayne and Clint Eastwood presented the classic male archetype. Fortitude in the face of danger, death, and tragedy. In all of these stories, the hero is not distracted by all of the madness around him. He stays cool and focused, and he serves as a solid guidepost for those around him.

The current, more fashionable term for this is stoicism. Trump came up in the construction industry. It’s always been a man’s world, populated by no small number of tough and unsavory characters. To deal with all of the interests he’s had to deal with over the years, and to change skylines, he’s learned not to show weakness. Now in his second term as president, he knows the world is watching his every move. The Middle East is watching. Europe is watching. Vladimir Putin is watching. Xi Jinping is watching. The last thing Trump wants to show them is a crack in his armor. In terms of his public persona, Trump is easy to understand. He almost never takes off his tie or suit, and when he does, he’s on the golf course. When he talks in public, he’s rarely introspective.

For those who’ve met him, it’s always about you when he talks. He wants to talk about you. When he talks to the press, it’s almost always about the thing he’s trying to get done, or the people who stand in his way. One of his skills is to break this up often enough to entertain, and he does that by bragging a little (or a lot) and by praising or taking shots at famous people. He never uses the media to serve as his therapist, as so many celebrities do. This approach to compartmentalizing personal feelings is not unique to Trump. Most men are this way in some fashion, especially men of his generation. But Kimmel has lost sight of that, and that’s why he couldn’t comprehend why the President of the United States wouldn’t vomit his vulnerabilities to the press corps on demand.

Last Friday night, when Erika Kirk gave her address to the nation, one of the most touching parts of an extremely touching speech was when she looked into the camera and spoke directly to Charlie’s friend, President Trump. She told the president that Charlie loved him. And she reassured the president, because as his friend, she knew he may have needed this reassuring, that Charlie knew the president loved him, too. This is powerful because anyone who knows how men actually think knows that there is a good chance this was on the president’s mind. Just don’t expect him to talk about such a personal and intimate thing in public. It’s ironic that Kimmel’s breakout venture into entertainment was a show about men called “The Man Show,” and in 2025, the one thing Kimmel doesn’t have a clue about is men.

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“(A decision made easier by the fact Kimmel’s audience is down to about 12 leftists and whatever tourists and homeless he can drag off Hollywood Boulevard into his studio.)”

• Kimmel Has No One to Blame but Himself for Cancellation by ABC (Perrotta)

Jimmy Kimmel has been yanked faster than a pitcher who gave up five home runs in a row … and spit on the bat boy. The longtime late-night host who self-identifies as a comedian was pulled off the air “indefinitely” by ABC/Disney after making a horrific slur against the “MAGA gang” in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Specifically, despite mountains of public evidence that the suspect held in connection with Kirk’s killing is an antifa-echoing, trans-loving, MAGA-loathing leftist, Kimmel declared in somber tones Monday night: “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”

He lied to his audience. Period. He explicitly pinned the killing on supporters of President Donald Trump. Period. This was not a poor attempt at a joke. At this point, Kimmel wouldn’t know a joke from a jukebox. This was not a live, on-the-air slip-up. (Like ABC News reporter Matt Gutman gushing about the “very touching” nature of accused gunman Tyler Robinson’s texts to his live-in transitioning lover.) This was a deliberate, scripted, placed on the cue-cards, vicious character assassination against a grieving segment of the population. It would be like Johnny Carson after James Earl Ray’s arrest for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1968 assassination going on “The Tonight Show” and saying, “The Negroes are acting like a white man did this to hide that it was a brother, just so they can get more welfare.”

It was outrageous, and decent people agree: “No more.” As conservative podcaster Megyn Kelly posted on the social media platform X: “But what the Left doesn’t seem to understand and needs to hear is that MAGA has f****** HAD IT. We are ANGRY. We are INCENSED watching the [Left] smear us, our [people], literally getting some of our friends killed (not to mention our president shot and nearly assassinated again weeks later) and then LYING about it. (‘Trump faked his injury! He wasn’t actually shot!’ ‘We have no idea what the motives ever are … if they are bad for our side!’)” Two major TV-station owners of ABC affiliates, Sinclair and Nexstar, also had enough. ABC/Disney finally had it as well. (A decision made easier by the fact Kimmel’s audience is down to about 12 leftists and whatever tourists and homeless he can drag off Hollywood Boulevard into his studio.)

Faux Outrage
Naturally, Democrats and some in the liberal media are gnashing their teeth over Kimmel’s cancellation. As are those dozen Kimmel viewers. Daily Signal Executive Editor Rob Bluey laid out five of the most egregious examples, from Sen. Chris Murphy to CNN’s Van Jones. Too bad the Emmys were last Sunday night. These performances would have swept the awards. Even Barack Obama, the nation’s Divider Emeritus, weighed in. They’re the worst breed of hypocrites. As Bluey noted, these sudden champions of free speech were perfectly happy to sit on their pampered rear ends while the Biden administration launched an all-out war on conservative voices. And Obama? He’s the one who unleashed the rabid dogs of the IRS to maul the Tea Party movement to death. On this, he should on Mount Shushmore.

It’s not just that they’re hypocrites. They’re gaslighters. Again, they’re talking about the oppressive Trump regime (read “fascists”) stamping out dissent, the same basic messaging that got Kirk killed, when Kimmel’s canning was simply a corporate decision. In recent years, when cancel culture was at its peak, the very same woke ABC/Disney machine: • Fired Roseanne Barr from her show because of a single Ambien-fueled joke on Twitter about former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett that was deemed racist. • Fired “The Mandalorian” star Gina Carano over some pointed political posts on social media that did not fit their woke view of the world. • Forced out longtime “Bachelor” host Chris Harrison for showing sympathy for a contestant who got canceled after trolls dug up that she had attended an antebellum plantation-themed party years before in college. Not a peep from those weeping and gnashing teeth over Kimmel’s ouster.

Let’s go back even further. This same ABC canceled Bill Maher’s show “Politically Incorrect” after 9/11 when he suggested the hijackers were not “cowards” because they undertook a suicide mission … as opposed to the U.S. military lobbing bombs from a thousand miles away. Nobody’s infringing Kimmel’s free speech. He’s free to launch a podcast tomorrow … free to play the martyr on X …. free to do more blackface. Free to hit open mic nights and pretend to again be a comedian. And ABC is free to say they don’t want Kimmel representing the network.

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Shapiro undoubtedly thinks he makes a coherent argument. It’s just that I don’t see it.

• The Assassination and the Violent Movements We Must Denounce (Ben Shapiro)

This week, my friend Charlie Kirk was murdered in cold blood in front of a crowd of thousands at Utah Valley University. He was assassinated while debating with students — something Charlie did frequently, and with aplomb — by a radicalized leftist with a trans boyfriend. That assassin decided to kill Charlie because of Charlie’s belief that men cannot become women, and vice versa; as he allegedly wrote in a text message to that trans boyfriend, “I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can’t be negotiated out. If I am able to grab my rifle unseen, I will have left no evidence.”

I was in Los Angeles when Charlie was shot. My first reaction was shock; my second, horror; and my third, the realization that the shooting was almost certainly the result of a radicalized leftist, probably associated with transgender ideology. If we are to be honest with ourselves, we all have such reactions upon learning of acts of evil: We jump to the most likely conclusion about the source of that evil. If a synagogue is targeted in a mass shooting, the suspect will almost certainly be either a radical Muslim or a white supremacist; if a church is targeted, a radical Muslim or a trans activist; if a CEO is shot, a Marxist radical of some sort. There is a reason for such suppositions: Not all ideologies are equally likely to produce violence at the margins.

Ideologies that breed violence share three specific elements. First, they share a conspiratorial view of the universe in which a shadowy cabal of powerful people are responsible for all of your failures and shortcomings, and in which their arguments are not in fact arguments, but instead, a la Michel Foucault, a facade for power. Second, such ideologies share a belief that you or your group are being targeted for destruction by that shadowy cabal. Finally, such ideologies hold that violence is justifiable self-defense.

All the ideologies listed above fit this model. Trans ideology argues that trans people are victims of a conspiracy — a conspiracy to deny their identity; that such denial is responsible for all their life problems and amounts to a form of “erasure” or “genocide”; and that the proper response to such “hate” is violence. Radical Marxism argues that poor people are victims of a conspiracy of the wealthy, who exploit them; arguments on behalf of free markets are merely false consciousness promoted by the powerful; violence is therefore an appropriate response (“FREE LUIGI!”). White supremacy argues that whites are being targeted by people of color, Jews, and other minorities and fellow travelers; their very existence is a threat, and force is thus a justifiable response. Radical Islam argues that the failures of Islamic civilization are due to imperialism and colonialism; that the success of the West is inherently violent; and that violence is the proper response.

When politicians say, therefore, that they are against “political violence” but then move to justify violence by massaging these ideologies, their words are useless. They are a prettification of reality, an attempt to gloss over radical evils gnawing at the intestines of a functional society. Even worse, politicians who continue to foment such ideologies provide a permission structure for violence, excusing it and even valorizing it. The only way to truly fight political violence is to denounce the ideologies that breed it. Anything less means that more radicals take their ideologies to the logical extreme — and the result is blood in the streets, innocents dead and an ever-widening cycle of violence.

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“..it’s possible that the very organizations he needed to carry out his order — the FBI and DOJ — were too busy trying to destroy his presidency.”

• Trump to Antifa: IT’S GOING DOWN (Victoria Taft)

President Trump announced on TruthSocial on Constitution Day that he is officially designating Antifa a domestic terrorist organization. To commemorate the occasion, I’ve used one of Antifa’s own hype quotes from its posters, websites, and signs to announce: Antifa: It’s Going Down. It’ll take some work, but at least some of the people in this destructive, antisocial organization will likely get rolled up in the Trump Administration’s efforts to treat Antifa like the terror organization it has proven itself to be. Trump 45 gave oxygen to the idea of treating Antifa like a terrorist organization, but it’s possible that the very organizations he needed to carry out his order — the FBI and DOJ — were too busy trying to destroy his presidency. Political treachery carries a cost. And Portland has carried much of that cost.

Despite Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s endorsement of Antifa in that feature photo above, Antifa has been a scourge on the American political landscape for more than a decade. You saw their work in Portland, starting in 2015 when they made their presence known by running “security” as “allies” of the Black Lives Matter movement. There were swarming assaults on independent journalists such as Mike Strickland and Andy Ngo before and after Donald Trump’s election, and, most notoriously, you, like most of the nation, were horrified by the “Summer of Love” in 2020. Those riots were so calamitous that Portland hasn’t yet recovered from the untold hundreds of millions of dollars in damage and the ongoing public relations disaster that cost the city and local businesses millions more. The recent sale of a downtown high-rise for pennies on the dollar shows the disrepute in which Portland — and the security of its citizens — is held.

Seattle’s autonomous zone, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Kenosha, and Antifa in San Diego were all involved in what looks like a conspiracy to foment violence. Professional protesters started hundreds or thousands of riots with impunity. Those few who were arrested were freed by woke George Soros district attorneys. The damage done by this group is unquantifiable. It certainly was for Aaron Danielson’s family. He’s the man who was assassinated on the streets of Portland in 2020 during Antifa’s “Summer of Love.” Danielson was part of the group Patriot Prayer. That group would hold free speech rallies, and when Antifa invariably showed up to start the violence, the Patriot Prayer guys would make sure the Anti-First Amendment collection of trans, soy boys, and strapped and trained Antifa members regretted it.

Patriot Prayer was eventually and unofficially PNG’d from Portland by city and county officials. That’s right: Portland eventually kicked out the only people doing anything about Antifa. That happened after an Antifa shoot-out on Portland streets. We digress, however. Danielson was walking with his buddy in downtown Portland during the riots and was shot at point-blank range by a “100% Antifa” assassin. I wrote about it in this story, “Police Say Suspected Antifa Hit-Man Stalked Pro-Trump Victim Before Portland Murder.” Oh, Antifa has much to answer for. If you think designating them as a terrorist organization is impossible because of our First Amendment laws, however, you may have a point. But there is hope of finally bringing these bastards to court.

In 2021, God bless San Diego County for charging a violent sect of Antifa, some of them on loan from L.A., under state law. I wrote about it then in this story, “Violent Antifa Terrorists Are Finally Prosecuted for Attacking Conservatives,” and in 2023, a swath of this group was found guilty. Three years later, I wrote about their sentencing in my West Coast, Messed Coast™ report, in which one of the defendants apologized at his sentencing, saying, “I want to apologize to the victims and the city of San Diego. No one should be attacked for their political views.” I wrote at the time, “…another blaring advertisement for requiring civics to be taught in schools.” Defendants were brought up on a variety of charges. But they were also charged with a conspiracy to commit riot.

The Antifa of their day were members of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and Animal Liberation Front (ALF). A federal prosecution that few remember occurred in Oregon — if you can believe it — and was against ELF and ALF, which the feds dubbed “The Family.” These were the same losers that, over a period of years from mid-1990s until someone set that Vail ski lodge on fire, incinerated a lab and 20 years of research at the University of Washington Horticulture Center, burned a “street of dreams” multi-million dollar home in Seattle, torched a San Diego condo complex under construction, and firebombed SUV dealerships, attacked furriers, torched an excavator in Mexico, and conspired to do it all in their commune in Eugene, Ore. It was a case that no one thought would ever come to fruition, and the members of those domestic terrorist groups were rolled up by the feds in Operation Backfire in 2006. The last person was sentenced in 2009.

On Wednesday, Ryan Mauro of the Capital Research Center released his report about the tentacles of the George Soros empire in the violent movements on college campuses and America’s streets. It’s quite enlightening. You should read it. The most salient part of his research concerns the funding of Antifa’s violent takeover of what they called “Cop City” in Atlanta. Antifa expert, independent reporter Andy Ngo, said he thinks there might be some problem going after Antifa as a terrorist organization because, under current U.S. law, there must be an international touchstone. Mauro’s report may indeed be the international touchstone connecting Antifa in America. On page 60 of his 95-page report, Mauro discovered that the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, which has ties to Hamas and the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees, helped support the Antifa group in their “Stop Cop City” reign of terror.

The Alliance has also come to the defense of the aforementioned Stop Cop City/Defend the Atlanta Forest terrorists. …In 2020, the Alliance endorsed violence against law enforcement, posting a graphic showing weapons and criminal tactics used by protestors, such as blockading roads in order to impede police cars and encouraging demonstrators not to provide information about each other’s crimes. Over 40 of the anarchists are being prosecuted on domestic terrorism charges as of February 2024 and over 60 were indicted in August 2023 on racketeering charges. Among those accused of being terrorists is Thomas Jurgens, one of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s attorneys.

Read more …

This should be good.

• Brigitte Macron To Prove To US Court She’s A Woman (NYP)

French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte, will present photographic and scientific evidence to a US court to prove the French first lady is, in fact, a woman. The two are submitting the documentation as part of a defamation lawsuit against conservative influencer Candace Owens, who claimed that Brigitte Macron was born a male and later secretly transitioned. The Macrons’ attorney, Tom Clare, told the BBC’s “Fame Under Fire” podcast that there will be “expert testimony that will come out that will be scientific in nature.” The attorney did not elaborate on exactly what it would be, beyond that it would include pictures of Brigitte, now 72, when she was pregnant with their kids.

The French power couple is ready to demonstrate “both generically and specifically” that the allegations are false, Clare stated firmly. “It is incredibly upsetting to think that you have to go and subject yourself, to put this type of proof forward,” he said of the distress it has caused the first lady. “It is a process that she will have to subject herself to in a very public way. But she’s willing to do it. She is firmly resolved to do what it takes to set the record straight,” he said. Owens has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that Brigitte Macron, 72, was born male — going as far as to say on her podcast earlier this year that she “would stake my entire professional career on all of those points.”

The Macrons filed a lawsuit against Owens in Delaware in July, alleging Owens “disregarded all credible evidence disproving her claim in favor of platforming known conspiracy theorists and proven defamers.”Owens’ claims are similar to those previously made in France by two women whom Brigitte Macron sued in 2021. That case was initially ruled in the French first lady’s favor but has been overturned on appeal. She has taken the case to France’s highest appeals court. Brigitte Macron was 39 years old when she became the future French leader’s teacher when he was 15 in 1993. The pair married in 2007.

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“Two British experts discussing the French mess for the conservative British magazine Spectator could not help but recall that the French Revolution – the big one, 1789 – started with a debt crisis, too.”

• Macron Is In A Political Death Spiral (Amar)

The France of President Emmanuel Macron, who is really the egomaniac-in-chief, is somewhere on the spectrum between “spiraling political crisis” (Financial Times), “big trouble” (The Economist) and terminal collapse. Again. Barely a week after a new, if fragile, government was cobbled together in acute crisis mode, the country is bracing “for big anti-austerity street marches and labor strikes,” while the state’s finances are “pernicious” and the budget for 2026 a big question without an answer. In Paris, for instance, the Metro is semi-comatose; in the country as whole, a third of teachers are on strike. An earlier wave of protests – under the slogan “Let’s block everything”– did not quite achieve that ambitious aim, but it did attract double the number of participants the authorities had expected.

In that respect – even if they were different in their ideological background – the French protests resemble the recent ‘Unite the Kingdom’ rally in London. On both sides of the Channel, decrepit, unpopular, unresponsive Centrist regimes are barely hanging on now. As the French have taught us to say “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” (“The more things change, the more they stay the same”). Especially after Macron’s two irresponsible and egotistic decisions of 2024, France can’t find a way out of the mess he has created: first, he called snap parliamentary elections to then, second, ignore the will of the French voters.

If Macron had respected the results of the elections that he himself initiated, he would have had to charge either a left-wing bloc, with the most combined votes, or the new-right Rassemblement National (RN), which obtained the most votes for a single party, with building a new government. Yet the man with a vast ego and an incredibly shrinking popularity base, clearly rejected by a preponderant majority of his people, felt he knew better. Since then Macron has tried to impose his will against parliament. The problem? Parliament won’t agree.

So, after what the YouTube channel of venerable left journal l’Humanité calls “the parliamentary hara-kiri” of the last politically short-lived prime minister, here we go again. Total deadlock at the political center; in the streets, picturesque unrest featuring traditional folklore, such as burning rubbish bins, baton-charging police, and teargas galore; and finally, yet another compulsive attempt by Macron the Unpopular to succeed with what keeps failing: installing a new – his fifth in less than two years – prime minister (his name is Sébastien Lecornu, but don’t bother remembering) who has no majority in parliament and thus, cannot possibly pass the budget ex-investment banker Macron wants in order to get his kind of austeritarian-neoliberal handle on France’s very real debt crisis. Please the rich, squeeze all others.

In short, since Macron refuses to either call fresh parliamentary elections or go away, let’s do the doom loop again. That at least is a tempting reading of the current situation in Paris and the unfortunate country that its detached president plagues. And yet, perhaps things are different this time. As in, even worse. Maybe this crisis is not just bad-business-as-usual but a sign that a bigger political earthquake is coming, the kind that reshapes the landscape. Consider for starters the intriguing frequency with which commentators are making historic comparisons. Two British experts discussing the French mess for the conservative British magazine Spectator could not help but recall that the French Revolution – the big one, 1789 – started with a debt crisis, too.

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“Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov noted that Trump had shifted “from issuing an ultimatum for an unconditional ceasefire to advocating for a long-term, sustainable solution.”

• ‘Not The Right Time’ To Call For Russia-Ukraine Ceasefire – Trump (RT)

US President Donald Trump said it is not the right time for him to call for a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine. A reporter asked Trump aboard Air Force One whether it was time to press for a ceasefire, noting that a month has passed since his rare face-to-face meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska. “It doesn’t feel like it,” Trump said. “But at the right time, if I have to do it, it will be harsh,” he added. Trump, who has at times criticized both Russia and Ukraine, recently admitted that negotiating an end to the conflict would be harder than he had anticipated. Speaking at a press conference with Prime Minister Keir Starmer during his trip to the UK on Thursday, Trump said that Putin had “really let me down.”

Last week, the US president said he would impose additional “major sanctions” on Moscow, but only if all NATO members stop purchasing Russian oil. “This is not TRUMP’S WAR (it would never have started if I was president!), it is Biden’s and Zelenskyy’s WAR,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform, referring to his predecessor and the leader of Ukraine. In an interview aired on Russian TV on Thursday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov noted that Trump had shifted “from issuing an ultimatum for an unconditional ceasefire to advocating for a long-term, sustainable solution.” Moscow has demanded that Ukraine recognize its new borders, abandon its plan to join NATO in favor of permanent neutrality, and agree to limit its military. Zelensky has rejected these terms.

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“..the district court judge “lacked authority to order reinstatement as an equitable remedy for the removal of an officer of the United States..”

• Trump Files Emergency Request With SCOTUS To Make Lisa Cook Fired Again (ZH)

The Trump administration filed an emergency request with the Supreme Court on Thursday to allow it to remove Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook from the central bank’s board while a lawsuit plays out in lower court over Cook’s ouster by President Trump last month. The request comes after a federal appeals court in Washington DC rejected the administration’s attempt to remove an order blocking Cook’s removal in a 2-1 decision the night before the Fed’s meeting earlier this week. “This application involves yet another case of improper judicial interference with the President’s removal authority — here, interference with the President’s authority to remove members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors for cause,” wrote the administration’s lawyer, Solicitor General John Sauer.

According to court filings, the Trump administration maintains that Cook committed mortgage fraud based on evidence provided by Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte – which showed that Cook claimed two properties as her primary residence within weeks of each other. On Aug. 25, Trump announced that he was firing Cook from the seven-member Fed Board. Cook sued in response, resulting in a federal district court on Sept. 9 barring her removal while the suit plays out – which the appeals court upheld. Sauer says that the Supreme Court, for various reasons, should stay the district court judge’s preliminary injunction reinstating Cook to the Fed, claiming that the DOJ is likely to prevail in the lawsuit “because Cook lacks a Fifth Amendment property interest in her continued service as a Governor of the Federal Reserve System,” and her job is not protected by due process considerations.

Sauer also disputed the judge’s alternative finding that Cook’s firing “for cause” was invalid because the alleged conduct occurred before she was appointed to the Fed. “The Federal Reserve Act’s broad ‘for cause’ provision rules out removal for no reason at all, or for policy disagreement,” he wrote, adding “But so long as the President identifies a cause, the determination of ‘some cause relating to the conduct, ability, fitness, or competence of the officer’ is within the President’s unreviewable discretion.” “Cook had made contradictory representations in two mortgage agreements a short time apart, claiming that both a property in Michigan and a property in Georgia would simultaneously serve as her principal residence,” Sauer continued. “Each mortgage agreement described the representation as material to the lender, reflecting the reality that lenders usually offer lower interest rates for principal-residence mortgages because they view such mortgages as less risky.”

“When her apparent misconduct came to light, the President determined that Cook’s ‘deceitful and potentially criminal conduct in a financial matter’ renders her unfit to continue serving on the Federal Reserve Board, and at a minimum demonstrates ‘the sort of gross negligence in financial transactions that calls into question [her] competence and trustworthiness as a financial regulator.” Sauer also says that the district court judge “lacked authority to order reinstatement as an equitable remedy for the removal of an officer of the United States, as we have discussed in several recent stay applications.” Cook has denied wrongdoing, and has argued that unproven allegations are not sufficient grounds for removing the Biden appointee.

Read more …

“.. the administration “does not have the authority to order, organize, or implement wholesale changes to the structure and function of the agencies created by Congress.”

• RFK Jr. Cannot Proceed With Overhaul of Health Agencies, Court Rules (ET)

A federal appeals court on Sept. 17 declined to lift a preliminary injunction blocking a plan by Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to overhaul the department in line with the Trump administration’s policy priorities. Attorneys general from 19 states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit in May challenging Kennedy’s restructuring of HHS, including layoffs and the reorganization of several agencies, arguing that the changes violate federal law and the U.S. Constitution.= On Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the Boston-based First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the Trump administration’s claim that the states could not show they would be immediately harmed if the injunction were lifted pending an appeal. The panel noted that the lower court relied on hundreds of pages of testimony from state officials.

“The government does not explain how the district court clearly erred in crediting these uncontroverted facts,” the court said in an unsigned order. Kennedy announced on March 27 that his department would “streamline the functions” of its federal workforce by consolidating subagencies, reducing the number of regional offices, and implementing a reduction-in-force plan that would impact 10,000 HHS employees. They were all offered buy-out options to incentivize them to quit ahead of the announced job cuts. The restructuring plan looked to streamline 28 divisions into 15, and close half of the department’s 10 regional offices. Four HHS sub-agencies were named in the restructuring: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, the Administration for Children and Families’ Office of Head Start, and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE).

Attorneys general filed a lawsuit in federal court in Rhode Island challenging the restructuring plan. Plaintiffs said the executive action violated the Administrative Procedure Act and exceeded the scope of executive authority, violating the Constitution’s separation of powers doctrine and appropriations clause. They also pointed to potential harms their states would face if the executive action were allowed to proceed, saying their agencies would be unable to conduct sufficient laboratory testing or process critical health data needed to track infectious diseases and improve maternal and infant health outcomes. They added that the reforms would create financial strain, forcing the states to cover funding gaps left by the pullback in federal resources.

The Trump administration had argued that the states’ case rested on speculation about what harms they would suffer as a result of changes to department services, and that any challenges to the firings had to be pursued by the federal employees themselves before the Merit Systems Protection Board. In July, the District Court for the District of Rhode Island granted a preliminary injunction to the plaintiffs. U.S. District Judge Melissa DuBose ruled that the administration “does not have the authority to order, organize, or implement wholesale changes to the structure and function of the agencies created by Congress.” Her injunction ordered the HHS to freeze its reduction-in-force and restructuring plans at the four agencies. On Aug. 12, the government filed to temporarily lift the injunction, pending court proceedings.

In its appeal, the HHS said that the lower court ruling should be set aside as the lawsuit was functionally identical to two earlier cases in which the U.S. Supreme Court lifted orders requiring it to reinstate employees let go en masse at other agencies by the administration. The Epoch Times contacted the HHS and the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James, which is spearheading the lawsuit, for comment but received no response by publication time. HHS’s mandate is to “enhance the health and well-being of all Americans, by providing for effective health and human services and by fostering sound, sustained advances in the sciences underlying medicine, public health, and social services,” according to its website.

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“Today, these countries not only occupy most of the earth’s land and constitute the majority of the world’s population but they also account for the majority of the world’s GDP.”

• The ‘Golden Billion’ Has Lost Its Crown (Bobrov)

In economics and sociology, there’s a well-known observation called the Pareto Principle. Named after the Franco-Italian thinker Vilfredo Pareto, it is often summarized as the “80/20 rule”: 20 percent of efforts yield 80 percent of results, while the remaining 80 percent of efforts account for just 20 percent. Over time, this idea inspired Western “elite theory,” a convenient justification for why every society contains an active minority that dominates a passive majority – why 20 percent of the population holds 80 percent of the wealth. Today, the principle has outgrown national borders. In diplomacy, it has come to symbolize a deeper conflict: the “global minority” versus the “global majority.”

The first group, sometimes called the “golden billion,” began to take shape in the late 20th and early 21st centuries under the Democratic administrations in the United States and their allies in the G7 and NATO. This group gradually solidified its position through exploiting globalization in their favor. In contrast, the latter group, resisting the formation of a unipolar world and advocating for a more equitable multipolar global order, has gained increasing significance on the world stage. This momentum has been fueled not only by the individual efforts of nations like Russia, China, and India but also through the establishment of fundamentally new institutions for multilateral diplomacy such as BRICS, the SCO, and others.

Achieving significant progress in diminishing the hegemony of the collective West, evidenced by the SCO+ summit in Tianjin (August 31 – September 1, 2025) which became the largest in the organization’s history, and the second BRICS summit during Brazil’s presidency this year (September 8, 2025), the nations of the ‘global majority’ have effectively reversed the Pareto principle. Today, these countries not only occupy most of the earth’s land and constitute the majority of the world’s population but they also account for the majority of the world’s GDP. Leveraging their vast reserves of essential resources and consistently demonstrating robust economic growth, these nations have achieved remarkable success by overcoming internal divisions and consolidating power with the support of their populations.

In stark contrast, the countries of the “global minority” are witnessing an opposite trend. As they lose their leading positions in the global economy and access to key natural resources, political fragmentation is becoming prevalent. In many of these nations, an active minority with low trust ratings clings to power. This has resulted in deepening societal divides in numerous countries – from the US, UK, and France to Poland and Israel – and a clear paralysis of government authority. For instance, in the US, the Democrats, who are rapidly losing ground, are resorting to increasingly radical political tactics.

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NOTE: Russian debt-to-GDP is 18-20%. US debt-to-GDP is 124%.

• Bank of Russia Governor Dismisses Talk Of Recession (RT)

Russia is not in recession, central bank governor Elvira Nabiullina said on Thursday, adding that a slowdown in growth should not be mistaken for an outright contraction. Since the Ukraine conflict escalated in 2022, Russia has operated under sweeping Western sanctions. The economy, however, has proved resilient, with GDP expanding 4.1% in 2023 and 4.3% in 2024. Growth is expected to slow to 2.5% this year, with the central bank’s forecast even more cautious, at 1-2%. Nabiullina said Russia was experiencing an economic slowdown but not a recession, stressing that even the criteria for a technical recession — two consecutive quarters of contraction — had not been met.

“One should not confuse a recession, which I agree is associated with very negative phenomena, with an economic slowdown. Yes, the economy is slowing, but there is no recession,” she said at the Moscow Financial Forum. She noted that growth had cooled to more moderate levels after a period of overheating, though the summer months had brought signs of renewed activity, including stronger consumer demand and rising corporate lending. Earlier this month, Russian Economic Development Minister Maksim Reshetnikov said growth was slowing faster than expected and that forecasts were being revised. He had earlier warned that the country was close to recession, with the outcome hinging on policy and interest rates.

The central bank, which raised its key rate to a record 21% in October 2024 to curb inflation, has since cut it to 17%. His warnings were echoed by Sberbank CEO Herman Gref, who described the second quarter (April-June) as a period of “technical stagnation” and urged timely measures, including lower borrowing costs, to avoid slipping into recession. “July and August showed clear signs we are approaching zero growth,” he said. Russian President Vladimir Putin disagreed with the assessment, saying that while many were unhappy with the central bank’s key rate, it was necessary to fight inflation. He warned that sharp cuts to the rate could trigger higher prices.

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She almost took over Canada.

“ACHIEVED MORE FOR UKRAINIAN FASCISM (2013-2025) THAN HER GRANDFATHER ACHIEVED AS HITLER’S PROPAGANDIST AND SPY (1939-45)”

• Great Moments In The History Of Chrystia Freeland’s Failure (Helmer)

Chrystia Freeland’s final leap at political power in her 12-year attempt to rule Canada ended yesterday when she fell flat on her face. Prime Minister Mark Carney, whose push has proved more kinetic than Freeland’s jump, allowed this to be understood when he offered Freeland the less than face-saving post of reconstructing the Ukraine which her warfighting campaign against Russia has all but destroyed. The cost to Canada of this destruction since the Special Military Operation began in February 2022 has been C$22 billion, including about C$13 billion in loans which the Kiev regime cannot repay but which are being serviced from the interest earned on Russian assets seized by the NATO allies. Freeland’s ouster was so rushed, there was no time for her to explain what the hurry was in her departure, nor for Carney to prepare what Freeland would be doing as his special envoy to the Ukraine without any staff or diplomatic rank.

In his official release, Carney appeared not to know that Freeland is resigning her parliamentary seat. According to Carney’s announcement, Freeland had “helped to secure historic trade negotiations, guide the response to a global pandemic, complete early learning and child care agreements across Canada, and…remove all federal barriers to internal trade.” Not a word about the priorities of Freeland’s career, war against Russia and war against China. “I have asked Chrystia to serve as Canada’s new Representative for the Reconstruction of Ukraine,” Carney said, “in addition to her responsibilities as a Member of Parliament.” Carney is believed to have authorized press leaks ahead of his cabinet meeting on Tuesday to reveal Freeland was resigning her combined portfolio of internal trade and transport. In the rush, Carney took several hours before deciding to split the portfolios and assign them to different individuals.

After the cabinet meeting Freeland avoided the press. Returning to her office, she drafted the social media post of a letter which she addressed, not to the prime minister, but to “dear neighbours, dear Canadians.” She then announced: “I do not intend to run in the next federal election.” As her reason for the exit, Freeland claimed she “is not leaving to spend more time with my family or because the burden of elected office is too heavy to bear.” Instead, “after twelve fulfilling years in public life, I know that now is the right time for me to make way for others and to seek fresh changes for myself.”

Freeland had her 57th birthday last month. A Canadian source in a position to know commented that there have been growing policy differences between Carney and Freeland. “Carney has signaled his willingness to lower tariffs on Chinese electric vehicle (EV) imports in order to secure Chinese cooperation on their tariffs on Canadian canola. Freeland is recognized in Beijing as a China-hater who, as we know, made sabotaging Canada’s relationship with Beijing a top priority.” Canola is Canada’s most valuable field crop and farm export, with farm cash receipts of C$12.9 billion in 2024.

China had been importing about two-thirds of the Canadian canola crop until Beijing imposed a 100% tariff on canola oil and canola meal in March, and then a 76% tariff on canola seed in August. This was retaliation against a series of hostile Canadian political and trade attacks on China, culminating in August 2024 in a 100% tariff on EV imports and a 25% tariff on imported Chinese steel and aluminium. Freeland’s “past behaviour”, said the source, “displays that she’s not at all trustworthy, let alone capable of putting the government’s goals in front of her own ambitions. Other members of cabinet didn’t hide their dislike of her from Carney. She has the reputation of blowing up cabinet meetings with clumsy, hysterical attempts to run everyone else’s business. That has threatened Carney. Freeland then underestimated his ruthlessness in getting rid of her.”

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One oil tanker disaster and….

• China To Test Arctic Express Route To Europe (RT)

China is preparing to launch a new shipping route along Russia’s Northern coast, via the Arctic to Europe, Politico has reported on Thursday. The Northern Sea Route (NSR), which runs for thousands of miles through Russia’s Arctic waters along its northern coast, has become more accessible due to receding sea ice and has been hailed in Moscow as an opportunity for new international projects. On September 20 China is sending the Istanbul Bridge container ship on an 18-day trip with icebreaker escort from Ningbo-Zhoushan port to Felixstowe in the UK. The new route is significantly faster than traditional voyages, which take about 40 days via the Suez Canal, 50 days via the Cape of Good Hope at Africa’s southern tip, and around 25 days via Eurasian railways.

“The Arctic is the first region where climate change is changing the geopolitical map,” Malte Humpert of the Arctic Institute told Politico, adding that the region is “changing the geopolitical dynamics because of resources and access to shipping routes.” He noted that while most trade still flows through the Suez Canal, Mediterranean and Singapore, the Arctic could soon become an alternative because the voyage is about 40% shorter and faces “a lot less geopolitical uncertainty.” His comments come as traditional corridors like the Suez Canal have faced piracy flare-ups near the Horn of Africa and missile and drone threats in the Red Sea, pushing some carriers to detour around Africa.

Russia has repeatedly called for international cooperation to develop the Arctic. Earlier this year, President Vladimir Putin outlined goals for the region, including making the Northern Sea Route a central part of the Trans-Arctic Transport Corridor and raising cargo volumes to 70–100 million tons by the end of the decade. He also announced plans to ensure year-round navigation supported by Russia’s exclusive nuclear icebreaker fleet, as well as to expand existing ports such as Murmansk and build new ones along the route. Putin has further highlighted the vast opportunities for oil, gas, metals and rare earth extraction in the Arctic, calling for joint ventures with foreign partners such as China, India, the UAE and others. He has also pledged to expand development of Arctic cities and promote tourism across the region.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Rogan

Yeadon

statins

 

 

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Debt Rattle September 8 2025

Sep 082025
 
 September 8, 2025  Posted by at 10:06 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  48 Responses »


Banksy Bataclan emergency door 2018

 

• Putin and Trump ‘Will Prevent WWIII’ – Kremlin Envoy Dmitriev (RT)
• Macron’s Government Is Collapsing. Ukraine Should Worry (RT)
• Putin Notes an Underlying Issue Within Ukraine that Impedes Negotiation (CTH)
• Peace in Ukraine ‘Easier Without Brussels Hawks Fueling War’ (Sp.)
• Orban: EU’s Next 7-Year Budget to Become Last One If Bloc Does Not Change (Sp.)
• THE CAMP OF THE SAINTS (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Trump Astride at 7 Months (Victor Davis Hanson)
• Truth About CV19 Vax Awakens Public – Karen Kingston (USAW)
• Thoughts on Robert F Kennedy Jr Congressional Testimony (CTH)
• Trump Threatens ‘War’ On Chicago Over Immigration (RT)
• 29 Million Deaths Linked To EU and US Sanctions (RT)
• US in ‘Very Deep Negotiations’ With Hamas to End Gaza Conflict – Trump (ET)
• Globalists’ Attacks on Russia Linked to Its Rich Natural Resources – Dmitriev (Sp.)
• Gold & Silver Sniffing Out Risk & Fear – Bill Holter (USAW)
• Bessent Doubles Down On Tariffs, Predicts Economic Surge (ZH)
• Once Were Relevant (el gato malo)

 

 

BLM

Optimus

Conor
https://twitter.com/CilComLFC/status/1964731216751648805

Chicago
https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/1964735109900439575

 

 

 

 

Do let’s start the day, and the week, with some optimism.

• Putin and Trump ‘Will Prevent WWIII’ – Kremlin Envoy Dmitriev (RT)

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart, Donald Trump, are bringing the end of the Ukraine conflict closer, Kirill Dmitriev, a presidential aide on international economic affairs, has said. He added that the diplomatic efforts of the two men could prevent World War III. Dmitriev, who is also the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), the country’s sovereign wealth fund, wrote on X on Saturday: “Stalin, Roosevelt & Churchill won WWII. Putin & Trump will prevent WWIII.” He accompanied his post with a picture of the Soviet, US, and British leaders made during the historic 1945 Yalta Conference, which laid the foundations for the post-war order after the defeat of Nazi Germany.

https://twitter.com/kadmitriev/status/1964424166498619598?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1964424166498619598%7Ctwgr%5E4cb35d87737794ec695f4472c5464573d6efc307%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Frussia%2F624235-putin-trump-prevent-wwiii%2F

He also pushed back against former US ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, who suggested that Moscow is not serious about negotiations to end the conflict and urged more Western weapons for Ukraine. “Wrong. Peace is close precisely because of Trump-Putin dialogue. Idiotic [former US President Joe] Biden’s approaches failed. Isolation attempts failed. Sanctions failed. Dialogue, respect, understanding each other, problem-solving to find [a] long-term solution is the way,” Dmitriev said. Breaking a long hiatus in top-level talks between the US and Russia, Putin and Trump have held several phone conversations and met face-to-face in Alaska in mid-August.

While no ceasefire agreement was reached at the Alaska summit, the two sides praised the engagement as highly productive. Following the talks, Trump said that Ukraine cannot hope to join NATO or reclaim Crimea. On Friday, Putin struck a cautiously optimistic tone about the prospects for ending the conflict, noting that “there is light at the end of the tunnel,” but noted that if no diplomatic solution is found, “we will have to reach all the goals through arms.” Moscow has insisted that a sustainable resolution to the conflict is possible only if Ukraine commits to neutrality, demilitarization, denazification, and recognizes the new territorial reality on the ground.

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“Kiev’s guarantees are cast into doubt, and Moscow can argue convincingly that Europe’s talk of peace is inseparable from its rush to militarize.”

• Macron’s Government Is Collapsing. Ukraine Should Worry (RT)

France’s government is once again on the verge of collapse. Prime Minister Francois Bayrou faces near-certain defeat in a confidence vote over a disputed austerity plan, a showdown that threatens President Emmanuel Macron’s authority at home and casts doubt on Paris’ ability to deliver on its ambitious promises abroad – including security guarantees for Ukraine.

France in meltdown – how bad is it this time? Bayrou has staked his survival on a confidence vote scheduled for Monday, September 8. At issue is an austerity package worth €44 billion, meant to shrink France’s deficit from 5.4% of GDP in 2025 toward 4.6% in 2026. Under EU fiscal rules, the official ceiling is 3%, so Brussels is pressuring Paris to cut deeper. But the plan – which includes reducing public holidays and raising healthcare contributions – has triggered anger at home. Trade unions are preparing strikes, while opposition parties from the far left to the far right have pledged to vote against Bayrou. With his government already in a minority, few in Paris believe he can survive.

Macron’s friend, savior, or dead weight? Francois Bayrou is one of the most familiar names in French politics. He leads the centrist Democratic Movement (MoDem) and has been mayor of the city of Pau since 2014. Back in 2017, his endorsement was crucial for Macron, giving the then-upstart candidate credibility in the political center. As president, Macron briefly made him justice minister, and after Michel Barnier was forced out in late 2024, Bayrou was elevated to prime minister to hold together Macron’s fragile coalition. But with his budget collapsing and support evaporating, the man once hailed as a stabilizer is now being blamed for dragging Macron further into crisis.

How did one budget plan blow up the PM’s career? In France, governments can invoke Article 49.3 of the Constitution to force a bill through the National Assembly, the lower house of parliament, without a vote. The mechanism has existed since 1958 and is legal, but risky: once Article 49.3 is triggered, opposition lawmakers have 24 hours to file a no-confidence motion. If that motion passes, the government falls. Bayrou’s decision to use 49.3 turned his €44 billion austerity plan into a survival gamble. Bayrou chose confrontation over compromise. By tying his austerity program directly to a confidence vote, he hoped to project resolve. The package included unpopular measures such as cutting public holidays and raising healthcare charges. Instead of rallying deputies behind him, the move united nearly every opposition faction. The far-right National Rally, the Socialists, and the leftist France Unbowed all declared they would vote him out, filing no-confidence motions that set up a showdown on Monday. What was meant to be a show of strength turned into political suicide.

Macron without Bayrou – what’s left of his power? If Bayrou falls, Macron is left exposed: he’s going to have to pick between two bad options. He can install a Socialist prime minister to get a budget through parliament, effectively conceding control of domestic policy. Or he can gamble on snap elections, which polls suggest would hand more seats to Le Pen’s National Rally. With Macron’s approval ratings already scraping historic lows, either choice would deepen the sense of a weakened presidency. Commentators warn that if markets lose confidence in France’s ability to control its 5.4% of GDP deficit and 110% debt-to-GDP ratio, the country could face a crisis reminiscent of Britain’s “mini-budget” turmoil under Liz Truss.

Where does Bayrou actually stand on Ukraine? On foreign policy, Bayrou has been a vocal supporter of Kiev. In March 2025, he openly criticized Washington for pushing Ukraine to negotiate peace with Moscow, calling such demands “unbearable.” He argued that pushing concessions would humiliate Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky and amount to rewarding Russia. Inside Macron’s government, Bayrou has been one of the strongest advocates of sustained European backing for Ukraine, insisting that Paris must stand firm.

And Ukraine – what happens when Paris goes quiet? For Kiev, French instability brings real costs.
• Cash flow: The €3 billion pledged for 2024 but still not disbursed was meant to cover weapons and financial aid. But such spending has to pass through the annual budget. With Bayrou’s plan collapsing and parliament in revolt, securing new funds will be politically and legally harder for any caretaker government.
• Losing an ally: Bayrou’s exit would strip Kiev of one of its most reliable advocates inside the French cabinet. By contrast, opposition parties – and even voices within Macron’s camp – have been more skeptical of pouring money into Kiev while cutting spending at home. His departure strips Macron of a key advocate inside the cabinet.
• Security guarantees in limbo: Macron has positioned France as the organizer of the “Coalition of the Willing,” where 26 countries promised postwar guarantees for Ukraine, potentially including a reassurance force. Such a plan requires stable leadership, funding commitments, and parliamentary approval. A government in turmoil cannot push through the legal and financial framework needed to turn pledges into reality.
• ‘Armed to the teeth’ peace plan: Macron has also announced an extra €6.5 billion in defense spending for 2025-2027, lifting France’s annual budget from about €47 billion in 2024 to €64 billion by 2027 – a roughly 35% increase. This blurs the line between “peace guarantees” and outright militarization, reinforcing Moscow’s argument that Europe’s settlement talk is cover for escalation.

If France wobbles, is the EU still ‘united’? The fallout would reach Brussels as well. The EU relies on France, the bloc’s second-largest economy, to underwrite collective aid to Kiev, yet the €3 billion pledge Paris made for 2024 is in doubt. That damages the bloc’s credibility as a reliable funder at a time when Germany is reluctant to shoulder the costs alone. Macron has also styled himself as the champion of “strategic autonomy,” calling together with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz for a stronger European defense role. But as the Financial Times has noted, those ambitions collide with weak finances and political divisions. With France paralyzed, the EU’s claim to speak with one voice looks hollow, and existing rifts – from Hungary’s open skepticism to Slovakia’s resistance on energy and sanctions – are harder to conceal.

Bottom line Bayrou’s downfall would leave Macron weaker at home and less credible abroad. France’s ability to anchor the EU’s Ukraine policy looks shaky, Kiev’s guarantees are cast into doubt, and Moscow can argue convincingly that Europe’s talk of peace is inseparable from its rush to militarize.

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Machine translation?!

• Putin Notes an Underlying Issue Within Ukraine that Impedes Negotiation (CTH)

I have often said that Russian dialogue is essentially different from Western dialogue in that Russian speaking is direct and without pretense. This difference is very visible when outlining positions built on pragmatic acceptances. Recently, Russian President Vladimir Putin was asked about the status of negotiations with Ukraine. President Putin notes some of the internal political issues within Ukraine must be deconflicted in order for discussions to proceed. Without these issues resolved, discussion is futile.

Russian President Vladimir Putin: “First. After all, quite recently, the leadership of the Kyiv regime, mildly speaking unflatteringly of us, and excluded all possibility of direct Contacts. Now we see that they are asking for these contacts, at least Offer. I have repeatedly said that I am ready for these contacts. At the news conference in Beijing, which you mentioned, I said that there is no point in I don’t see much of it. Why? Because it will be agreed with the Ukrainian side is almost impossible on key issues. Even if there is a political will, What I doubt is that there are legal and technical difficulties that are that any agreements on territories must be confirmed in accordance with the Constitution of Ukraine at a referendum. In order to hold a referendum, martial law must be lifted, Martial law is not carried out. If martial law is lifted, it is necessary to immediately hold presidential elections.

After the referendum, if it is held, regardless of the results, it is necessary to obtain a decision of the Constitutional Court. And the constitutional court does not work, because after requests, as I understand it, to the Constitutional Court about the legitimacy of the current government, the court evaded these decisions, and the head of the regime He simply ordered the guards not to let the chairman of the Constitutional Court into the working place. This is the kind of democracy there. And the chairman of the Supreme Court is just sitting in prison on corruption charges. It is well known that Ukraine has enough of this Corruption. But why was it necessary to send the chairman of the supreme court to prison to plant, it is not very clear. Although it is clear that it came to destruction their judicial system as such. This is another of the striking signs of “democracy” current Ukrainian authorities.

Therefore, this endless process is going nowhere. Nevertheless, we said that we are ready for a summit meeting. Listen, the Ukrainian side wants this meeting and offers this one Meeting. I said: ready, please come, we are definitely completely We will provide working conditions and safety, the guarantee is one hundred percent. But if We are told we want to meet with you, but you go there for this meeting, it seems to me that these are just their excessive requests to us. I repeat once again: if someone really wants to meet with us, we Ready. The best place for this is the capital of the Russian Federation, the hero city Moscow.” {SOURCE}

Vladimir Putin: “We have an open dialogue with President Trump. There is an agreement that in case of We can call, contact, and talk to each other. He knows that I am open to these conversations; And he too – I know about it. But so far, we have not had conversations in Europe based on the results of these consultations. Actually, it was difficult for me to do this, I had just come from China, I’m here. We have no problems with communications here. First. Secondly, regarding possible military contingents in Ukraine. This is one of the root causes of Ukraine’s involvement in NATO. Therefore, if there are some troops appear, especially now, in the course of hostilities, We proceed from the assumption that these will be legitimate targets for their destruction.

And if solutions are reached that lead to peace, to long-term peace, then I simply do not see any point in them being on the territory of Ukraine, that’s all. If agreements are reached, let no one doubt that Russia will comply with them in full. We will respect those guarantees security, which, of course, must be worked out both for Russia and for Ukraine. And I repeat once again: of course, Russia will agree to these agreements execute. In any case, no one has discussed this with us on a serious level, that’s all.”

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“Brussels, “the capital of diplomacy..”

• Peace in Ukraine ‘Easier Without Brussels Hawks Fueling War’ (Sp.)

It would be easier to achieve a peaceful settlement of the Ukrainian crisis if the “hawks” in Brussels stopped fueling the conflict, the Russian Embassy in Belgium said on Sunday. “It is obvious that if the ‘hawks’ in Brussels and other Western capitals stop fueling the war and support peace efforts, including those undertaken by US President [Donald] Trump, then it will become much easier to achieve peace,” the embassy wrote on Telegram. Instead, the Belgian government is becoming more and more Russophobic, misleading its citizens about Russia’s alleged intent to attack Brussels, the embassy added. Earlier in September, Belgian Defense Minister Thomas Francken said that Moscow was capable of “infiltrating” one of the NATO member states by 2030 under the pretext of protecting the Russian-speaking minority in it, while at the same time attacking Brussels, “the capital of diplomacy,” with drones and missiles.

“The flawed logic offered to ordinary citizens confirms that the current Belgian leadership is rapidly moving away from its previously declared moderation in foreign affairs and is increasingly joining the ranks of the most Russophobic part of the EU and NATO, pursuing an extremely dangerous course of inciting confrontation with our country,” the statement read. The Russian embassy dismissed the allegations, adding that the policies pursued by the Belgian government result in significant economic and social costs, which Belgian citizens are forced to pay.

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“..its days are numbered, it would fall apart on its own, there would no point in even leaving it..”

• Orban: EU’s Next 7-Year Budget to Become Last One If Bloc Does Not Change (Sp.)

The European Union is in a state of disintegration, and if there are no radical changes, the next seven-year budget will be the last one for the community, according to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
“I believe that the European Union has now entered a state of disintegration. And if it continues like this — and the likelihood of this is very high, — then the EU will go down in history as a depressing result of a noble experiment,” Orban said, speaking at the opening of the political season in the city of Kotcse. The Hungarian prime minister recalled that the European Union must now adopt a new common budget for 2028-2035.

“Even if we manage to pass this budget — which we may have serious doubts about — but if we do, it will be the last seven-year budget of the European Union. If things continue like this, I consider it completely impossible to pass a common budget after 2035,” he emphasized. The Hungarian Prime Minister proposed a possible way out of the crisis: the formation of four “circles,” so that the outermost one would include countries that want to cooperate in the field of security and energy security, which could include not only EU member states, but also Turkey, the United Kingdom and Ukraine; the second circle would include countries that have a common market, similar to the EU’s internal market; the third circle would include eurozone countries with a common monetary policy, and the fourth would unite countries that want a close political union with common political principles.

“Only such a flexible structure of circles can ensure interaction between European countries at different levels of cooperation… If we do not move to this order, the European Union will fall apart,” Orban concluded. Orban previously stated that if the European Union continued its economic policy, its days are numbered, it would fall apart on its own, there would no point in even leaving it, and the period during which something could be radically changed is two to three years. According to the politician, Europe will fall apart before our eyes if the liberals in power in Brussels are not replaced by representatives of patriotic governments, “purges” are needed, similar to those taking place in the United States.

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“Britain is being over-run again. First the Romans. Then the Anglo-Saxons. Then the Vikings. Then the Normans. In all previous times, the British fought. But not this time.”

• THE CAMP OF THE SAINTS (Paul Craig Roberts)

The British nation no longer exists. A Muslim immigrant-invader has been appointed Home Secretary. She is in charge of immigration, borders, and the police. When the ethnic British elected Starmer, they signed their death warrant. The 1939 English song, “There’ll always be an England,” turned out to be mistaken.

British political parties have concluded that ethnic British self-rule is racist. The Conservative Party chose an Indian Prime Minister. The Labor Party chose a Muslim Home Secretary. The leader in waiting of the Conservative Party is an African woman. The Mayor of London is a Muslim. Immigrant-invaders are also mayors of 18 British cities, including the largest ones. Rape of white ethnic British females by immigrant-invaders, due to non-enforcement of law, has become a de factor right of immigrant-invaders. Raped ethnic British females who complain about being raped risk arrest for “offensive statements” and “hate crimes” against a protected class–immigrant-invaders. The ethnic British people have recently been protesting their treatment by their government, but with insufficient force to be effective.

Britain is being over-run again. First the Romans. Then the Anglo-Saxons. Then the Vikings. Then the Normans. In all previous times, the British fought. But not this time. The Muslim world has claimed Britain. England as an ethnic British nation is a lost cause.


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“..the Left’s strategy is that of the kamikaze: to destroy Trump at the cost of destroying the Democratic Party.”

• Trump Astride at 7 Months (Victor Davis Hanson)

President Donald Trump’s greatest achievement within six months was simply ending illegal immigration as we had once known it—without “comprehensive immigration reform” or any other rhetorical trickery. It remains difficult to find, much less deport, the 10 to 12 million illegal aliens who entered in the last four years. Those who helped break the law, by design or indifference, now believe it was moral to destroy federal immigration law but immoral to uphold it. And it is still unclear whether former President Joe Biden’s handlers deliberately sabotaged their own border for political and demographic purposes out of sheer orneriness or utter incompetence. Many of the Left’s cherished totems—massive Green New Deal subsidies, the diversity/equity/inclusion industry, biological males competing in women’s sports, and the U.S. Agency for International Development revolving door—are either comatose or in their death throes.

The historic drop-off in military recruitment reversed shortly after Trump took office. Republican voter registration is up, and Democrat registration is down. Abroad, Trump finds remarkable successes. For now, there are pauses in the fighting between India and Pakistan, Egypt and Somalia, Cambodia and Thailand, Rwanda and Congo, Serbia and Kosovo, and Armenia and Azerbaijan. Much credit is due to Trump for brokering ceasefires. Iran will not get a bomb in the next four years—as seemed likely when Biden left office. The Middle East’s current most grotesque terrorist cadres and states—Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis—are far weaker than they were when Trump entered office in January. There is at least some engagement in envisioning the outlines of a ceasefire in Trump’s inherited Ukraine War.

The rub is finding the degree of ordnance necessary to convince Putin that increasing Russia’s casualties to more than one million will endanger his own dictatorship sooner than destroy Ukraine. Breaking up the new three-billion-person China/India/Russia nexus hinges on ending the war. The economy is still strong. Gas prices are at historic lows. Increases in all types of energy production proceed full bore. Current gross domestic product, inflation, unemployment, and the stock market—all at one time or another said to be in a crisis state—remain strong. Talk of an impending recession or hyperinflation is mostly muted. No one quite knows either the full effects of Trump’s tariffs—especially given the injunctions issued by left-wing district justices—or of the promised over $10 trillion in foreign investments.

Much of Trump’s agenda will hinge on whether interest rates are lowered, Republicans survive the midterms, and the degree to which unelected left-wing lower-court justices can be stopped from hijacking the Constitution and de facto running the country. As for the Democrat opposition, there is no counter agenda, no shadow government responsible leadership, and no willingness to craft bipartisan legislation. Instead, the Left’s strategy is that of the kamikaze: to destroy Trump at the cost of destroying the Democratic Party. Otherwise, Democrats seek to prove so obnoxious in demonizing Trump that they create such mass hysteria that the weary electorate figuratively lies down, closes its eyes, covers its ears, and screams nonstop, “Make them all go away!”

Former foul-mouthed vice presidential candidate Tim Walz is now reduced to a ghoulish status. He recently boasted to an audience that rumors of Trump’s death—who survived two assassination attempts last summer—will thankfully one day prove true. The top of the failed ticket, Kamala Harris, wanders aimlessly without an office, constituency, audience, or ideas. To remain viable, she knows she must continue touring and speaking. But Harris accepts that the more anyone hears her word salads, the more they will remember her 2024 train wreck. Head of the Democratic Party, Ken Martin, now screams that Trump is a fascist. But by what standards does he judge? Did Trump try to take his rivals off state ballots? Does he advocate for destroying the filibuster, the Electoral College, and the 156-year-old nine-justice Supreme Court, or packing the Senate by admitting two new states?

Are local, state, and federal prosecutors—a la Bragg, James, Smith, and Willis—coordinating with the White House and the Justice Department to indict Trump’s current chief adversaries, such as Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris, or Josh Shapiro? Did Trumpers hire a foreign spy to concoct a fake hit dossier on Democrat grandees? Are his subordinates now spreading it to the media. Are 51 conservative former CIA contractors and retired spooks swearing that Newsom or Harris is working with the Russians, Chinese, or any of our enemies? The greatest Democrat fear? That it has so institutionalized excessive executive orders, ad hominem lawfare, lower-court usurpation, state nullification of federal law, and federal intervention in higher education, the energy industry, and the nation’s open spaces that their own legacies empowered Trump and now will boomerang upon themselves—as the public applauds the karma.

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“And nearly five years later, every single thing Kingston predicted about the CV19 bioweapon vax has been proven true.”

• Truth About CV19 Vax Awakens Public – Karen Kingston (USAW)

Karen Kingston is a biotech analyst and former Pfizer employee that warned in her very first appearance on USAWatchdog in September of 2021 that the “CV19 Vaccines are Poison.” Nearly five years ago, Kingston said, “They are only intended to poison, mutate, cause genetic mutations, and kill adults and children. They contain advanced medical technologies called lipid nanoparticles that are made of hydrogel, which contain graphene oxide (poison to humans) . . .. There are strong immunosuppressants, different types of chemotherapies that could suppress your immune system while being injected by something that is going to highjack your immune system . . .. and actually produce this disease-causing genetic material that can cause cancers, inflammatory diseases, genetic disorders, infertility and etc.”

And nearly five years later, every single thing Kingston predicted about the CV19 bioweapon vax has been proven true. The latest example showing the deadly and debilitating disaster that is the CV19 vax comes from a new peer reviewed study that “Finds COVID-19 ‘Vaccines’ Increase Risk of Multiple Cancers — CONFIRMS Fears of ‘Turbo Cancer’ Epidemic.” There are also diseases of “epidemic” proportions with heart, immune system and brain function, to name a few more. Maybe this is why Florida, just today, ended all vaccine mandates. Many of these ‘vaccines’ contain deadly and debilitating mRNA. This ban also includes the CV19 “vaccine.” Kingston reports, “The Florida Department of Health, in partnership with the governor, is going to be working to end all vaccine mandates in Florida law, ALL of them, EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM,” says Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joe Ladapo.

President Trump is also questioning the CV19 vaccines and is demanding the vaccine makers justify the safety of their products. Trump said in part on Truth social, “With CDC being ripped apart over this question, I want the answer, and I want it NOW. . .. I hope OPERATION WARP SPEED was as “BRILLIANT” as many say it was. If not, we all want to know about it, and why??? Kingston says, “President Trump is demanding that Pfizer shows its data. . .. One report from June of 2022 from Pfizer and people calling in and they recorded it. Pfizer recorded nearly five million adverse (CV19 vax) events across nearly 1.5 million people. The most common were neurological. There were nearly 750,000 nervous system disorders. . .. This is really scary. . .. This was in a period of 18 months.” Kingston says there were at least a dozen other CV19 vax studies that were never released and were kept from the public.

Did Pfizer stop the shots and alert President Trump about this? NO! Now, even top former CDC officials are trashing the CV19 shots. Kingston says, “Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, a CDC director, just repeated what HHS Secretary Kennedy said in 2021, and that is the CV19 vaccine is ‘the deadliest vaccine ever made.’ (So-called fact checkers said back in 2021 this was not true. In 2025, with millions of victims dead, it most certainly IS TRUE.) My point is Daskalakis repeated what Kennedy said in 2021 recently on MSNBC. They are putting it out there. They can’t undo the damage that has been done. RFK Jr. just revoked more than $500 million in research projects of mRNA. There have been a lot of movements, and it is interesting Trump is calling on the drug companies to step in and disclose their information. The last time they disclosed their information, it was horrible. . .. By the way, a lot of data they submitted to the FDA has never been released.”

Multiple top people at the CDC recently have quit or been fired. Also, the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the CV19 vax has been terminated. This move makes many now liable for adverse vaccine reactions. Maybe this is why CVS and Walgreens have restricted the CV19 vax after this announcement. Kingston calls what is happening now “a watershed moment of awakening” for the people who want the ugly truth to come out for the CV19 vax. Kingston says, “It’s all criminal, and this is what I have always said. This is the data.”

Now, Kingston says people need treatment to “detox” from the ill effects of the CV19 vax. Let’s hope the treatment starts soon and we don’t wait another five years to start saving lives of the CV19 vaccine injured.

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“DANCING FUCKING NURSES!

See, that’s why.”

• Thoughts on Robert F Kennedy Jr Congressional Testimony (CTH)

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. appeared before the Senate Finance Committee after U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez was fired and four senior officials have resigned amid growing tensions over vaccine policies and public health directives. I have not commented on what happened during the hearing, nor shared the numerous confrontational segments of wide distribution, because the background context of the hearing itself is challenging to discuss in stable mindset without blowing a blood pressure cuff. However, here goes.

COVID-19 is the name of the disease caused by the SARS-CoV2 virus. Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) – Corona Virus Disease of 2019 (CoV2), colloquially referred to as “COVID-19”, was a man-made influenza (flu) virus created in a laboratory in Wuhan China, using “gain of function” research grants from the United States government. The virus escaped the laboratory and became a pandemic influenza virus as it spread throughout the world. The response to the release of the virus, the mitigation effort, was organized by global intelligence services and coordinated through western military cooperation. The military and intelligence services coordinated the mitigation efforts with various national health services, the compliance rules and subsequent restrictions upon Americans were a downstream consequence.

Everything within the mitigation process was fraught with governmental fear, widely ridiculous panic, over-the-top reactions and a level of political pressure never before seen in modern history. All of the rules and restrictions were genuinely crazy at the time events were happening, and in hindsight review none of the mitigation efforts made any sense whatsoever. Commonsense was thrown out the window as mass formation psychosis spread like wildfire with a hurricane. Approximately a year after the COVID-19 virus was unleashed a quickly created and untested genetically modifying serum called a “COVID-19 vaccine” was then promoted to the world as the most important element in virus mitigation. There was never, NEVER, a more heavily pushed and forced mandate by the entirety of western collective government, and global intelligence systems, as the modern compliance effort to force citizens to take the “vaccine.”

Ultimately, the vaccine rules, demands, mandates and economic compliance pressures, divided the various nations into two sets of people: (1) those who took the vaccine, and (2) those who did not. Much like the COVID-19 mitigation rules themselves, the pressure to take the vaccines was unrelenting. The United States Government, through various emergency declarations and legal processes, mandated compliance forcing the vaccine upon people who did not want to take the untested, unverified and eventually determined unsafe genetically modifying serum. Within the control systems deployed by government, including the panel who were recently questioning HHS Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr., non-compliance with the “vaccine” mandate was not optional. Every regulatory and enforcement element of government was deployed to coerce and ultimately force compliance to take the vaccine.

The U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights (first 10 amendments) was subverted, manipulated and legally twisted at the behest of government officers, including President Joe Biden using emergency powers. Families were torn apart as the dynamic of the compliant -vs- the non-compliant played out in every relationship. Socially, the cohesive nature of acceptable behavior was destroyed. Children were forcibly taken for vaccinations and parents who would not comply with the vaccine were legally held accountable, threatened, ostracized and ridiculed. During the panic, industries were taken over by government, hundreds of thousands of unnecessary and unneeded ventilators were built, portable hospitals were erected in football stadiums and convention centers by military and national guard, they were never used; forced lockdowns were mandated and travel was restricted by local, state and federal authorities.

People were not permitted to work; the economy was shut down and the workforce was divided into essential -vs- nonessential positions. All of it was madness. In the USA the entire weight of the scientific community and healthcare industry was leveraged by the intelligence agencies, military and government politicians, to force compliance with all the rules and regulations as determined by “experts” in the field of health and science. This was the largest psychological control operation ever deployed against the American people, and anyone who stood up against the system of forced compliance was immediately identified, removed, shutdown, had their social media presence blocked, and every element of the government regulation used to silence their dissent.

The President Biden administration used their emergency powers to collaborate with and force social media platforms and tech systems to control the electronic messaging and communication of the American people. Private industry was forced into compliance and small business were forcibly shutdown if they did not adhere to the rules and regulations of the various enforcement mechanisms. The federal, state and local police were used as armed compliance officers to monitor the behavior of the American people and control their activity. Government checkpoints were put into place to verify status as “essential” during travel, and vaccination compliance documents were required for commerce and social engagements.

Four years later the larger American population now realizes all of what took place was built on a foundation of fraud and lies. Four years later we discover the rules, regulations and compliance techniques were carried out with no official scientific basis. Worse still, the untested and unsafe vaccine -forced upon millions of Americans- is now identified as killing hundreds-of-thousands of innocent victims who were completely healthy until they were injected with a genetically modifying serum of unknown consequence. To protect themselves from the consequences of their conduct, all of the officials who engaged in the process of mandated vaccine deployment are now hiding the data in an effort to avoid the consequences.

This is the background for newly appointed and highly skeptical HHS Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr to appear before congress and explain the changes he is making to a U.S. healthcare system that was shown to be completely broken by the example of SARS-CoV-2. I have not previously commented about the RFK Jr hearing, genuinely because discussing…. THE MURDEROUS FUCKING ACTS OF BIDEN’S GOVERNMENT DURING COVID-19 FORCED VACCINATIONS… is beyond my capacity for stable-minded discussion. Congress sits there, arguing narratives from perches, as if we the people have completely forgotten the madness that took over the entire healthcare system.

DANCING FUCKING NURSES!

See, that’s why.

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“..the reality is that he wants to occupy our city and break our Constitution..”

• Trump Threatens ‘War’ On Chicago Over Immigration (RT)

US President Donald Trump has ramped up threats to deploy federal troops to Chicago for an immigration crackdown, warning that the city “will soon find out” why he renamed the Defense Department the “Department of WAR.” The warning follows Trump’s order to dramatically ramp up deportations in Democrat-led cities after riots swept Los Angeles earlier this year. On Saturday, Trump posted on Truth Social what appears to be an AI-generated meme showing him in military uniform with the Chicago skyline, helicopters, and flames in the background. Above the image, Trump wrote: “I love the smell of deportations in the morning… Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.”

The caption to the meme read: “Chipocalypse Now,” a play on the 1979 film ‘Apocalypse Now’, which includes the line: “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.” Trump offered no further details.Trump’s warning has drawn massive pushback from local officials. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker wrote on X that the president “is threatening to go to war with an American city,” adding, “Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.” Illinois Representative Mike Quigley told Politico at Chicago’s Mexican Independence Day parade that Trump spoke “like a true tyrant.” “The President’s threats are beneath the honor of our nation, but the reality is that he wants to occupy our city and break our Constitution,” Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson wrote on X.

Illegal immigration has been a central focus of Trump’s presidency. On Inauguration Day, he vowed to deport “millions and millions” of undocumented immigrants. Since then, he has expanded border security, tripled Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention funding, cut humanitarian programs, and detained thousands of illegal migrants, among other regulatory measures. Saturday’s post adds to Trump’s repeated threats to include Chicago in his list of cities targeted for expanded immigration enforcement. In June, his administration deployed National Guard troops to Los Angeles, followed by Washington, DC, after mass pro-immigration riots. Trump has also suggested that Baltimore and New Orleans could face similar measures.

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Over 50 years.

“..564,258 deaths per year, similar to the global mortality burden associated with armed conflict..”

• 29 Million Deaths Linked To EU and US Sanctions (RT)

Western sanctions contributed to nearly 29 million excess deaths worldwide over five decades – a toll comparable to that of wars, according to a recent study. The research, published last month in the Lancet Global Health, has gained attention around the world. Examining age-specific mortality in 152 countries from 1971 to 2021, using statistics from the Global Sanctions Database, researchers compared mortality rates before and after sanctions, tracking long-term trends to estimate their toll in excess deaths. They focused on three sanctioning authorities: The UN, the US, and the EU (and its predecessor). “We estimate that unilateral sanctions over this period caused 564,258 deaths per year, similar to the global mortality burden associated with armed conflict,” the authors noted, with a total of 28.8 million deaths across the 51-year span.

We found the strongest effects for unilateral, economic, and US sanctions, whereas we found no statistical evidence of an effect for UN sanctions. Most excess deaths occurred among the most vulnerable – the very young and the elderly. “Our findings reveal that unilateral and economic sanctions, particularly those imposed by the USA, lead to substantial increases in mortality, disproportionately affecting children younger than 5 years,” the study said, noting that the age group accounted for 51% of the total death toll. The report found that the sanctions undermine economic and food security, often causing hunger and health problems among the poorest. Additionally, the dominance of the dollar and euro in global transactions allowed the US and EU to amplify the impact of their sanctions.

At last year’s BRICS summit, member nations called for “unlawful unilateral coercive measures” to be eliminated, warning of their disproportionate impact on the most vulnerable. Members have increasingly avoided the dollar “to shield themselves from US arbitrariness,” Moscow has said. At the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Tianjin this week, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for a fairer global governance system based on mutual respect and opposition to Western dominance. Russian President Vladimir Putin welcomed the proposal as especially relevant when “some countries still do not abandon their desire for dictatorship in international affairs.”

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What i see coming is deep alright.

• US in ‘Very Deep Negotiations’ With Hamas to End Gaza Conflict – Trump (ET)

The United States is in “very deep negotiations with Hamas” to bring an end to the current conflict in the Gaza Strip, President Donald Trump announced on Sept. 5. Hamas, which continues to hold hostages taken from Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, has so far rejected any deals to end the nearly two-year Israeli military campaign across the Gaza Strip, despite widespread death and destruction throughout the territory. Addressing the ongoing hostage situation and the surrounding conflict, Trump reiterated calls for Hamas to release all of the remaining hostages in a bed to end the carnage. “We said let them all out right now. Let them all out, and much better things will happen for them. But if you don’t let them all out, it’s going to be a tough situation. It’s going to be nasty. That’s my opinion. Israel’s choice, but that’s my opinion,” the president said during a White House press briefing.

In recent weeks, Israeli forces have been ramping up operations in Gaza City, which is located towards the northern end of the embattled strip of territory. The Israeli military has claimed responsibility for strikes targeting high-rises in the city, and footage has shown strikes toppling at least one tower there. As many as 20 captives may still be alive, though Trump said “there could be some that have recently died, is what I’m hearing.” “I hope that’s wrong,” he added. The bodies of around 30 more captives also remain in the Gaza Strip. Hamas released a video on Sept. 5 with Israeli hostage Guy Gilboa-Dalal. In the video, apparently dated Aug. 28, Gilboa-Dalal states that he and other hostages are being held in Gaza City and fear they will be killed in the intensifying Israeli operation.

Trump offered few specifics about what Hamas is requesting in negotiations for the release of the remaining hostages. “They’re asking for some things that are fine,” Trump began, when asked about Hamas’s demands, but said the initial Hamas attack on Israel—in which around 1,200 were killed and thousands more were wounded—must be taken into consideration in the negotiations. Throughout the conflict, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has articulated a goal to ensure Hamas is defeated and that the Gaza Strip can never become a haven for the group or similar militants opposed to Israel.

In an Aug. 10 speech, Netanyahu said the Gaza City takeover plan is not part of an indefinite Israeli occupation of the strip. At the same time, he indicated the plan is for Israel to have “overriding security responsibilities” for the territory, while allowing a “non-Israeli, peaceful civil administration. Netanyahu said Gaza’s post-Hamas civil authority must be one that “doesn’t educate its children for terror, doesn’t pay terrorists, and doesn’t launch terrorist attacks against Israel.” Netanyahu said these terms would disqualify the Palestinian Authority—which has partial governing authority in the West Bank—from stepping in as Gaza’s eventual civil authority.

In a Sept. 6 statement, Hamas representatives said, “The movement affirms its openness to any ideas or proposals that achieve a permanent ceasefire, a comprehensive withdrawal of the occupation forces from the Gaza Strip, unconditional entry of aid, and a real prisoner exchange through serious negotiations via mediators.”

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“rich natural resource reserves, estimated at $75 trillion..”

• Globalists’ Attacks on Russia Linked to Its Rich Natural Resources – Dmitriev (Sp.)

Russian Federal Agency for Mineral Resources (Rosnedra) has completed the development of a geological exploration program for new Russian regions and is coordinating this work, the Agency’s representative earlier said. Globalists’ attacks on Russia are linked to its rich natural resource reserves, estimated at $75 trillion, Russian Direct Investment Fund CEO Kirill Dmitriev, who is also the Russian president’s special representative for investment and economic cooperation with foreign countries, says.

“Russia is Number 1 in the world with an estimated $75 trillion natural resource value. That’s also why it is constantly attacked by globalists and the deep state. Russia has partnered and will build new partnerships with the leading countries for joint resource development,” Dmitriev said on X. According to estimates by the international agency Statista for 2021, which RDIF CEO cites, after Russia, the top five countries in terms of natural resource reserves include the United States ($45 trillion), Saudi Arabia ($34 trillion), Canada ($33 trillion) and Iran ($27 trillion).

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“..capital from all over the world will be trying to get off the railroad tracks because gold and silver cannot default.”

• Gold & Silver Sniffing Out Risk & Fear – Bill Holter (USAW)

Precious metals expert and financial writer Bill Holter worked side by side with his business partner Jim Sinclair for more than a decade. No two people knew more about markets and money than them. Two years ago, Sinclair, aka “Mr. Gold,” passed away. Now, the baton has passed to Holter, who is the new “Mr. Gold.” Holter warns one explosive new all-time high, hitting day after day, for the yellow metal is signaling big trouble coming. Holter explains, “There is a huge breakout. In my opinion, the metals market is sniffing out risk and fear. . .. They funded literally trillions of dollars by borrowing in yen. Now, what has happened, the Japanese yield curve has gone from basically zero to over 1.6 % on a ten-year (bond) and 3.2% on a 30-year (bond).

So, that carry trade now is being squeezed because the yen has gone higher . . . your cost to carry has gone higher because Japanese yields have gone higher. So, the gold market is looking at the Japanese carry trade in the process of blowing up. It is sovereign bonds across the world. If you look at interest rates worldwide, they are actually going higher.” If the Fed cuts interest rates later this month, it may not be good news. The bond market could rebel. Holter says, “You could see bond prices drop and yields go higher. There is also a very high probability with lower Fed rates that the dollar weakens.” Earlier this year, Holter called the global economy a hyper-levered house of cards. The leverage has gotten worse, much worse.

Holter says, “There is a turbocharge to this, and when I say turbocharge, it’s fear. It’s fear of bankruptcy. It’s fear of default. The world is clearly over-levered, and there are going to be sovereign defaults left and right going forward. The only two monies that cannot default on the planet are gold and silver.” So, is there going to be a big crash coming soon? Holter says, I don’t know if it is going to be September, October or whatever, but you look at the math and the valuations. The valuations are ridiculous. Look at the math on sovereign debt all over the world. Look at the math on the amount of debt outstanding and margin debt, and this is a huge credit bubble. Credit bubbles do not go away quietly. Credit bubbles burst and markets collapse. The problem now is there is so much debt in the system and the system is so big the central banks together cannot stand against the tsunami of bankruptcies that are coming. There is no white knight this time.”

Holter (aka, the new Mr. Gold) says, “The vast majority of wealth will seek a safe haven that cannot evaporate or be taken away. It’s going to be gold and silver. You are going to see a bull market in gold and silver unlike any bull market in any field ever. . .. Gold and silver will make financial history because capital from all over the world will be trying to get off the railroad tracks because gold and silver cannot default.” In closing, Mr. Gold says if you just divide the amount of official gold held in the US Treasury by the official US government debt, you get about $135,000 per ounce gold price and around $6,700 per ounce silver price. Holter says with $2 quadrillion in derivative debt, who knows how high the price of gold and silver can go. One thing for sure is gold and silver cannot default.

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Well, the jobs numbers were pretty bad… Let’s start there.

• Bessent Doubles Down On Tariffs, Predicts Economic Surge (ZH)

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent pushed back Sunday against growing concerns that the U.S. economy is sliding toward a “jobs recession,” defending the administration’s trade policies, tariffs, and fiscal strategy while signaling confidence that growth will accelerate by year’s end. In a wide-ranging interview on NBC’s Meet the Press (full interview at the bottom), Bessent rejected forecasts from economists at Moody’s Analytics and elsewhere who have warned that slowing hiring trends and manufacturing job losses point to deeper weakness. Instead, he argued that recent data is noisy, revisions are likely, and that President Donald Trump’s economic agenda remains on track to deliver a “substantial acceleration” in the fourth quarter.

Host Kristen Welker opened the interview by citing Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi, who recently described the U.S. slowdown as a “jobs recession.” Asked if he agreed, Bessent pushed back: “We’re not going to do economic policy off of one number,” Bessent said. “Good policies are in place that are going to create good high-paying jobs for the American people.” He added that August is “the noisiest month of the year” for employment data and stressed that significant revisions are common: “We need good data before we jump to conclusions.” Pressed on manufacturing job losses since the April rollout of the administration’s new tariffs, Bessent urged patience, noting that factories “can’t be built overnight” citing a “record amount of investment intentions” already underway.

He highlighted July’s passage of the administration’s flagship tax and infrastructure package – the One Big Beautiful Bill, which included full expensing for factories and equipment. According to Bessent, many companies were “holding back” investment until the bill passed and are now planning major capital expenditures and expansions. Still, U.S. manufacturing employment has declined by 42,000 jobs since April, even as the White House has promised a “manufacturing renaissance”” Bessent attributed some of the perceived weakness to flawed data collection and suggested that upcoming revisions could wipe out hundreds of thousands of jobs previously reported under the Biden administration. “We’re going to get revisions next week that may be as big as an 800,000-job downward revision,” Bessent said. “I’m not sure what these people who collect the data have been doing, but we need good data.”

The interview grew tense as Welker pressed Bessent on widespread reports from U.S. manufacturers that tariffs are increasing costs and forcing layoffs. Companies including John Deere, Nike, Black+Decker, and the Big Three automakers have warned investors that tariffs are adding hundreds of millions – in some cases billions – in unexpected expenses. Goldman Sachs recently estimated that 86% of tariff costs have ultimately been borne by U.S. companies and consumers. Bessent rejected those conclusions outright. “For every John Deere, we have companies telling us the tariffs have helped their business,” he said, citing meetings with executives at Treasury. “They’re increasing capital expenditures and expanding employment. And if things are so bad, why was GDP up 3.3% and why is the stock market at a new high?”

When asked directly whether tariffs amount to a tax on U.S. consumers, Bessent responded flatly: “No, I don’t.” He also dismissed Goldman Sachs’s analysis, quipping: “I made a good career trading against Goldman Sachs.”

Read more …

X thread.

• Once Were Relevant (el gato malo)

i don’t think western europe and canada understand how little their opinions matter anymore. once, at least europe was relevant, but today? both are failing, no-growth, collapsing demographic failures that are rapidly losing anything like their high trust, flourishing cultures as they are eaten by the davos/WEF culture collapsers and the occupying armies they invite. both are dying regimes held up by censorship and political suppression. they are overrun by barbarian invaders to whom they are too effete and butthurt to advocate resistance. the contrast with eastern europe, which refuses to fall for this societal suicide pact (likely because they have living memory memories of communism) could not be more stark in both economics and culture.

of course the EC elites hate an american return to vibrance and strength. it highlights how badly they themselves lack this. their misery demands company that america will no longer provide. it will be fun to watch and see if they can learn to defend themselves. it’s not that america is dying. it’s that we’re getting ready to live again by escaping this nonsense. it’s europe who is on the table in critical care. i hope their smug senses of self-importance can keep them warm in the coming conquest by caliphate and the green death of watermelon politics. those who advocate the US imitating the serfdom surrender of europe and canada have been far too dominant for far too long. and their 15 minutes are up. i wonder when spencer will realize this?

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https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/1964688908857250278

Owls

Scott

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle September 6 2025

Sep 062025
 
 September 6, 2025  Posted by at 9:56 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  37 Responses »


Pablo Picasso The dream 1951

 

• Vance Torches Hypocritical Dems for Targeting RFK (Salgado)
• Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: A Voice That Cannot Be Silenced (Jamie K. Wilson)
• The Grifters’ Lament (James Howard Kunstler)
• A New World Order Where The West Is Optional (Lukyanov)
• Russia Never Turned Its Back On The US – Putin (RT)
• Did Putin Really Threaten Potential Peacekeepers In Ukraine? (RT)
• Ukraine’s Backers Select Non-NATO Forces For Buffer Zone – NBC News (RT)
• US Generals Involved In European Plan To Send 10,000 Troops To Ukraine (RT)
• NATO Troops In Ukraine Would Be ‘Legitimate Targets’ – Putin (RT)
• ECHR ‘Endangers The Existence Of Western Democracies’ (RMX)
• The FBI Corruption Scandal Just Got a Whole Lot Worse (Margolis)
• Letitia James Asks Appeals Court to Reinstate Trump’s $500 Million Penalty (ET)
• Damning New Evidence Emerges in Biden Autopen Scandal (Margolis)
• New Biden Autopen Scandal Bombshell Involves Kamala (Margolis)
• Tesla Offers Musk Unprecedented $1 Trillion Pay Package (ZH)
• President Trump Hosts Tech Executives at White House for Dinner (CTH)

 

 

Gen. Flynn is right: the song is brilliant. And the video too.
It should be no.1 in the British charts.

RFK
https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/1963616927982493702


https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1963624700845731852

A complete idiot

Rutte

Medvedev

Musk
https://twitter.com/iam_smx/status/1964127814904316142

 

 

 

 

“We were lied to about everything — we were lied to about natural immunity,” he said. “We were told again and again the vaccines would prevent transmission, [that] they prevent infection. It wasn’t true. They knew it from the start.”

• Vance Torches Hypocritical Dems for Targeting RFK (Salgado)

After Democrat senators made fools out of themselves at a Thursday congressional hearing with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Vice President JD Vance called out the senators for “enriching big pharma” at the expense of Americans. The Big Pharma acolytes have their knives out for Kennedy right now, since he is actually trying to put Americans’ health ahead of corporate kickbacks and pressure. Democrats are particularly manic about the fact that Kennedy backed away from the controversial COVID-19 vaccines. Vance disgustedly posted on X, “When I see all these senators trying to lecture and ‘gotcha’ Bobby Kennedy today all I can think is: You all support off-label, untested, and irreversible hormonal ‘therapies’ for children, mutilating our kids and enriching big pharma. You’re full of shit and everyone knows it.” Kennedy reacted to Vance’s comment:

One of the senators who almost exploded spontaneously from fury at Kennedy was Elizabeth “Fauxcahontas” Warren, who came in full war paint, ready to tomahawk Kennedy for no longer unequivocally recommending the COVID-19 vaccines to every age group. “If you don’t recommend then the consequence of that in many states is that you can’t walk into a pharmacy and get one. It means insurance companies don’t have to cover the $200 or so cost,” she said. “As senator — doctor Cassidy said, you are effectively denying people vaccines.” Kennedy countered, “We’re not going to recommend a product for which there’s no clinical data for that indication. Is that what I should be doing?” He later exposed exactly why Warren is beside herself.

“And I know you’ve taken $855,000 from pharmaceutical companies, senator!” As Rush Limbaugh always said, follow the money. Warren apparently doesn’t care whether any safety and efficacy tests were done as long as she gets kickbacks. Perhaps that is also why Democrats are so enthusiastically behind unscientific transgender “treatments.” Secretary Kennedy also ripped apart those in the medical, scientific, and political communities who falsely framed untested and ultimately harmful COVID-19 policies as incontrovertible science. “We were lied to about everything — we were lied to about natural immunity,” he said. “We were told again and again the vaccines would prevent transmission, [that] they prevent infection. It wasn’t true. They knew it from the start.”

In fact, Kennedy stated, “It wasn’t true because that’s what the animal studies in the clinical trial showed. We were told that there was science behind cloth masks. The CDC allowed the teachers unions to write the order closing our schools, which hurt working people all over the country, and then pretend it was science-based.” But it turned out that was very far from the truth. And how many children suffered because of it? Nor can any alleged vaccine benefit be quantified, Kennedy said, because of the “data chaos at CDC.” He bluntly asked, “Did it save a million lives? Well, there’s no data to support that, or … there’s no studies, …there’s faulty data. I’m not going to sign on to something if I can’t make it to a scientific certainty. It doesn’t mean that I’m, you know, anti-vax, it just means I’m pro-science.”

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Lovely portrait. Is it the female touch?!

• Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: A Voice That Cannot Be Silenced (Jamie K. Wilson)

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. does not sound like other politicians. Where others glide on polished cadence, his words arrive jagged and rasping, sometimes strangled mid-syllable as though each one must be forced out against resistance. For many, the sound is jarring. For him, it is a daily war. Kennedy suffers from spasmodic dysphonia, a rare neurological disorder of the voice. In this condition, the brain misfires signals to the larynx, causing the vocal cords to spasm uncontrollably just as they’re needed for speech. Instead of vibrating smoothly, they seize up, clamp shut, or flutter open at the wrong moment. The result is a broken, strangled voice — not from weakness of will, but from muscles betraying the speaker at the most intimate moment of communication.

The mechanics are cruel enough. But what it feels like is worse. Patients describe it as trying to talk while someone presses fingers into their throat. The words are fully formed in the mind, yet trapped in the larynx. Each syllable becomes a contest of strength, like forcing air through a blocked pipe. The effort leaves muscles sore and the speaker fatigued, as if a long run had been crammed into a two-minute conversation. And layered over the physical strain is the constant social pressure: the sideways looks, the assumption that the speaker is nervous, drunk, or evasive. Most who live with this condition retreat. They limit calls, avoid public speaking, or slip quietly out of leadership roles. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. did not.

He was diagnosed in the late 1990s at Massachusetts General Hospital after years of legal advocacy had already begun to strain his voice. Treatments exist — botulinum toxin injections that temporarily paralyze the spasming muscles, voice therapy to retrain breathing — but none are permanent. Every few months, the fight resets. For most patients, the disorder is enough to narrow their lives. Kennedy chose the opposite: to live in the open arena of public speech, and to keep showing up even when every sentence feels like lifting a stone uphill.

That persistence is not simply personal grit; it’s leadership. Kennedy’s willingness to endure visible and audible struggle in order to be heard demonstrates the same force of will he applies to his causes: a refusal to be silenced, even when silence would be easier. Where his father and uncle were remembered for soaring oratory, he is remembered for the determination it takes to simply finish a sentence. And in that difference lies a different kind of strength.

Which is why it was especially ugly to see The Daily Beast sneer at his “Darth Vader breathing” during Senate testimony. This was not satire or cleverness, but cruelty: mocking a man for a neurological disorder that makes every sentence a battle. The same media class that congratulates itself for “amplifying marginalized voices” revealed its hypocrisy by jeering at the very act of persistence. Kennedy’s strained cadence is not an affectation. It is authenticity, and their contempt shows how little of it they can bear.

But wait, there’s more. That hearing centered on the COVID vaccine — and many of the senators shouting Kennedy down were the same ones who, during the Biden years, colluded with media and tech giants to muzzle scientists and doctors who questioned its safety or proposed alternatives. They silenced debate then, and now, faced with a man whose own body fights to silence him, they fall back on the same tactic: shouting, jeering, and trying to drown him out, even as his own body seeks to silence him.

Kennedy’s voice, then, is more than sound. It has become a metaphor for freedom of speech itself. Just as his body tries to choke off his words, powerful institutions try to silence dissenting voices. Just as his disorder demands greater effort to be heard, so too does speaking uncomfortable truths in an age of censorship, cancellation, and corporate propaganda. Every phrase he utters, forced through pain, echoes the larger struggle to preserve open expression in a society and culture where free speech grows more fragile by the year.

He is no victim. His broken voice is his banner — the scar that testifies to endurance. It is impossible to fake authenticity at this cost. In a political age of spin and slogan, Kennedy’s strangled cadence carries a weight others cannot match: it is the sound of someone who refuses to surrender his voice, no matter how hard the world — or his own body — tries to take it away. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. embodies the First Amendment in flesh and blood: freedom of speech under siege, battered but unbroken, still alive because one man wills it to be so. His voice is more than a condition. It is a witness.

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“We are the sickest country in the world. That’s why we have to fire people at the CDC … They did not do their job! This was their job to keep us healthy!” —Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

• The Grifters’ Lament (James Howard Kunstler)

What a gruesome spectacle it was to see HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. take on a conclave of vicious grifters on the Senate Finance Committee straining to warp reality in defense of their mighty patron, the nation-wrecking pharmaceutical companies. Do you understand how deep, convoluted, and grave the political sickness is? Over the years, the public health agencies and “big pharma” had evolved into a symbiotic vector driving the nation into chronic illness. They allowed the population to poison themselves on a diet of corn syrup, engineered snack foods, and chemical additives. Result: epidemic obesity, diabetes, and many other illnesses. To counter that, they dosed everybody to-the-max with sketchily-tested pharma products while the agency employees raked in royalties and pharma got a get-outa-jail-free card in the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) — legal liability cancelled.

Then, they all badly mis-stepped, conniving in the Covid-19 operation, a still poorly-comprehended scheme to punk the American people and enable mail-in ballot fraud to steal the 2020 election. First, there was Dr. Fauci’s years’ long effort to hatch a novel corona virus, Covid-19, in labs here and overseas. Then, there was the opportune release of the virus in 2019. Then, the pharma response to the virus: a “miracle” mRNA vaccine that was likely already developed in secret, even before Operation Warp Speed was acted-out to pretend that pharma just came up with it. And, of course, there was President Trump 1.0 getting hosed by his Covid Response Team (Fauci, Birx, et al.) on all this.

Thus, you have that battery of US Senators all paid handsomely by Pharma to defend the industry with hysterical obfuscation against the lone figure, Mr. Kennedy, striving to correct all that fantastic corruption. He retorted to their malign nonsense honorably, revealing their conflicts of interest, their cupidity, the bales of dollars paid by pharma to the likes of Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and the rest over the years, and their longstanding silence on the afore-mentioned poisoning and drugging of America.

Incidentally, to understand how this grift got so exorbitant, look to the unfortunate 2010 Supreme Court decision Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (558 U.S. 310). In a 5-4 ruling (by majority conservative justices, then including Alito, Thomas, and Scalia), SCOTUS decided that previous prohibitions on corporate money in election campaigns were unconstitutional because corporations enjoy legal status as persons, that is, as citizens, and giving money to election campaigns is a form of free speech under the first Amendment, which can’t be abridged by any law.

And so, the spigot opened on vast fortunes laid on politicians by corporations seeking to protect their interests. If anything went to warp speed, it was the Beltway lobbying industry. The Citizens United decision was a singular tragedy for our country. The legal reasoning behind it was specious because corporations, unlike real human citizens, do not have duties, obligations, and responsibilities to the nation, entailed in their citizenship. Rather, corporations have duties, obligations, and responsibilities solely (and explicitly in law) to their shareholders, whose interests are not necessarily consistent with the public interest. Why has no one noticed this?

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“The West is retreating inward, shifting to a defensive crouch – sometimes aggressively so – and in the process cutting itself off from much of the world.”

• A New World Order Where The West Is Optional (Lukyanov)

Historical anniversaries often provide the backdrop for diplomacy to become spectacle. This week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Tianjin was deliberately staged ahead of China’s grand parade marking 80 years since the end of World War II. Beijing, the host, made sure the symbolism landed. The timing also underscored the contrast with Washington: Donald Trump, who has long admired military parades, is already planning a lavish one next July for America’s 250th anniversary, after his low-key attempt last summer fell flat. For the SCO itself, the Tianjin meeting carried weight comparable to last year’s BRICS summit in Kazan. Documents were signed, but as always the road from declarations to implementation will be long. What mattered most was setting a benchmark. In international politics, the very act of gathering matters as much as the outcomes.

By inertia, many still measure importance by whether Western powers are in the room. For decades, world affairs were shaped by East-West confrontation in the Cold War, and then by the unilateral primacy of the US and its allies. Membership of the G7 (at one time G8) was once the crown jewel of global respectability. Even the G20, designed to reflect a more diverse world, remained dominated by Western influence over its agenda. Meetings without the West were seen as parochial or symbolic. That perception is now outdated. The real turning point came last year – first at BRICS, now at the SCO. Both groupings, very different in composition, are drawing growing interest. Countries are applying to join or at least to participate. Simply appearing at these forums has become prestigious, and the corridor diplomacy surrounding them allows for meetings that are otherwise difficult to arrange.

The shift is not just about Russia. The attempt by Western governments to isolate Moscow after the escalation in Ukraine has backfired. Instead of leaving Russia in the cold, it accelerated the formation of what is now described as the “global majority.” Many states do not want to submit to anyone else’s political logic. They follow their own calculations of interest and expediency. Structures once mocked in the West as artificial, jealous imitations of Western clubs – BRICS and the SCO foremost among them – are now becoming indispensable. They are no longer simply ideological counters to hegemony, but practical platforms. This explains efforts to expand the BRICS New Development Bank and to set up an SCO Development Bank. These institutions will not rival the IMF or World Bank immediately, but the trajectory is clear: to build alternatives that bypass Western gatekeepers.

The West finds this almost impossible to digest. For Washington and Brussels, any institution outside their control looks like a threat, a conspiracy “against democracy.” In fact, the opposite is taking place. The West is retreating inward, shifting to a defensive crouch – sometimes aggressively so – and in the process cutting itself off from much of the world. The formula that has gained currency in Moscow – “not against the West, but without it” – is finally becoming reality.

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“The two-headed eagle, one of our national symbols, looks both ways,” Putin said, referencing Russia’s coat of arms. “Did we turn our backs on anyone? We did not. The eagle looks both ways just like always.”

• Russia Never Turned Its Back On The US – Putin (RT)

Moscow remains open to economic cooperation with the United States, and American businesses could benefit from joint projects if Washington allows it, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok. “The two-headed eagle, one of our national symbols, looks both ways,” Putin said, referencing Russia’s coat of arms. “Did we turn our backs on anyone? We did not. The eagle looks both ways just like always.” Putin said US companies have expressed an interest in projects and proposed joint natural gas production in Alaska. “They have resources, and we have extraction and liquefaction technologies that are significantly more efficient than what our American partners have,” he said. Putin said American and Russian companies are eager to cooperate, should the US government give the green light.

The Russian leader added that opportunities also exist in the Arctic. “Together with our Chinese friends, we discussed possible three-way operations in our Arctic fields that can be done right now,” he said. “Those proposals are on the table and require a political decision.” US President Donald Trump has argued that expanding economic cooperation with Russia is in America’s best interest, but the Ukraine conflict continues to stand in the way of the normalization of relations. Earlier this week, Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s aide on international economic affairs who is directly involved in talks with the US, said trilateral Arctic ventures involving Russia, the US and China could ease geopolitical tensions among the three powers.

Read more …

We’re talking about two very different situations: 1) before a peace treaty, and 2) after a peace treaty. Before, any troops are a threat to Russia. After, it’s different. First, because as Putin says, no troops are needed. When there is a treaty, Russia will stick by it. Second, because the west appears sensible enough to agree sending non-NATO troops.

There’s talk of Bangla Deshi and Saudi peacekeeping troops. If the will is there, so is the solution. But of course, there’s still people like Rutte, who says it’s none of Russia’s business what troops are in Ukraine. Yes it is.

• Did Putin Really Threaten Potential Peacekeepers In Ukraine? (RT)

When Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke on Friday, he issued his familiar warning: any foreign troops entering Ukraine during active fighting would be considered “legitimate targets.” Yet Western media ran with a drastically different narrative – suggesting he was threatening peacekeepers, not just combatants. That framing missed a crucial distinction. In the same remarks, Putin separately addressed the idea of postwar peacekeeping forces, saying they would be unnecessary once a settlement was reached. Within hours, Western headlines turned those words into something much starker – a supposed threat against European “peacekeepers.” By erasing the context that Putin had separated conflict intervention from postwar scenarios, much of the press presented a conditional statement as intimidating.

1) What Putin actually said Putin’s remarks drew a clear line between two situations. Speaking of the conflict as it stands, he said: “If some troops appear there [in Ukraine], especially now during military operations, we proceed from the fact that these will be legitimate targets for destruction.” This was a reiteration of Russia’s long-stated position: any foreign forces fighting alongside Kiev would be treated as combatants. Later, he addressed the idea of international peacekeepers in the event of a settlement: “And if decisions are reached that lead to peace, to long-term peace, then I simply do not see any sense in their presence on the territory of Ukraine, full stop.” In other words, once hostilities end, the presence of foreign troops would be irrelevant because they would not be needed – not because they would be attacked.

2) What Western media reported The Washington Post explicitly collapsed the two scenarios, writing that “any foreign military troops deployed to Ukraine – even for peacekeeping – would be considered targets.” By inserting “peacekeeping” into the “legitimate targets” line, the paper presented Putin as threatening stabilizing forces that might only arrive after a settlement. The Financial Times published the headline: “Foreign troops in Ukraine would be ‘legitimate targets’ for Russia, Putin warns.” While the article noted elsewhere that Putin dismissed the need for peacekeepers after a deal, the headline stripped away the condition and implied a sweeping threat.

The BBC headlined its story: “Putin says EU troops in Ukraine would be legitimate targets.” Without the qualifier “during military operations,” the piece left readers with the impression that all EU deployments, including peacekeepers, would be targeted. The Guardian summed it up as: “Putin threatens Western troops in Ukraine.” Again, no mention of the wartime vs. postwar distinction, effectively merging peacekeepers and combatants into a single hostile category. In each case, coverage framed Putin as if he had rejected any Western presence in Ukraine, even under a peace deal. The nuance – that his threat applied only to wartime combatants – was stripped away.

3) Why it mattersThis shift in framing has significant consequences. Diplomatically, it paints Russia as unwilling to tolerate even postwar stabilization forces, which narrows the range of perceived options for negotiation. For public opinion, it reinforces the view that Moscow is hostile, potentially hardening attitudes against ceasefire or peacekeeping initiatives. And for journalism itself, it illustrates how stripping away conditions in pursuit of the narrative can distort meaning and erode trust.

4) Bottom line Putin’s remarks drew a clear boundary: foreign soldiers fighting in Ukraine during the conflict would be treated as legitimate targets, while peacekeepers after a settlement would be unnecessary. By collapsing those two scenarios into one, Western media reframed a conditional warning into a sweeping threat – turning a repeat of long-standing policy into another headline of Russian aggression.

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“..foreign soldiers would either become targets for Russian forces during hostilities or serve no purpose if a genuine peace agreement were reached..”

• Ukraine’s Backers Select Non-NATO Forces For Buffer Zone – NBC News (RT)

Kiev’s European backers want the US to oversee a buffer zone between Russia and Ukraine in the event of a peace deal, with troops from non-NATO countries such as Bangladesh or Saudi Arabia potentially deployed on the ground, NBC News reported Friday, citing anonymous sources. According to the outlet, Washington’s role would be to use drones, satellites, and other intelligence capabilities to monitor conditions and coordinate with participating nations. Moscow has repeatedly rejected the idea of foreign troops in Ukraine as part of any peace settlement.

Politico previously outlined the same proposal for a buffer zone, suggesting involvement of third-party states but not naming them, and indicating that French and British troops could make up much of the force. A former Pentagon official told the outlet the plan reflected Kiev’s European backers “grasping at straws.” On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin again stressed Moscow’s opposition, warning that foreign soldiers would either become targets for Russian forces during hostilities or serve no purpose if a genuine peace agreement were reached. He added that “the West’s dragging of Ukraine into NATO was one of the causes of the conflict” and said any settlement would have to include security guarantees for both Russia and Ukraine.

On Tuesday, Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky met with members of the “coalition of the willing,” the group of nations supplying Kiev with weapons and promising security commitments in the event of a resolution with Russia. Most of them have publicly ruled out putting their own forces on the ground. Meanwhile, Moscow has said it plans to establish its own buffer zone along parts of the border to protect Russian civilians, particularly in Kursk and Bryansk regions. Putin noted in May that Ukrainian forces often target non-military assets, including homes and civilian vehicles such as ambulances and farm equipment, which he said made such measures necessary.

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Does this sound like a peace treaty to you?

“..two groups of forces that are to be sent to Ukraine, according to the report. One of them would be tasked with training and assistance to the Ukrainian military, while the second would serve as a “reassurance force” for Kiev.”

• US Generals Involved In European Plan To Send 10,000 Troops To Ukraine (RT)

Top US military officials have been involved in drawing up a plan for “security guarantees” for Kiev advocated by Paris and London that includes a massive troop deployment to Ukraine, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing a European diplomat. The scheme drawn up primarily by European army chiefs includes two groups of forces that are to be sent to Ukraine, according to the report. One of them would be tasked with training and assistance to the Ukrainian military, while the second would serve as a “reassurance force” for Kiev. The troops are to be deployed once Moscow and Kiev reach a peace deal. A total of 26 nations agreed to contribute to “security guarantees” for Ukraine in various ways, French President Emmanuel Macron said earlier this week, following a meeting of the so-called ‘coalition of the willing’ – a group of Kiev’s European backers.

The current commitments would allow for a deployment of over 10,000 troops to Ukraine, the WSJ source said, adding that the plan “received input from some US generals,” including the US head of the NATO Allied Command Operations. The level of US involvement in the scheme remains unclear, the report said, adding that there have been no clear statements from President Donald Trump. Russia has expressed strong opposition to any NATO troop deployment to Ukraine. On Friday, President Vladimir Putin warned that foreign soldiers would either become targets for Russian forces or serve no purpose if a genuine peace agreement were reached.

He added that “the West’s dragging of Ukraine into NATO was one of the causes of the conflict” and said any settlement would have to include security guarantees for both Russia and Ukraine. NBC News also reported on Friday that Kiev’s European backers want troops from non-NATO countries such as Bangladesh or Saudi Arabia to be sent to a “buffer zone” between Russia and Ukraine overseen by the US in the event of a peace deal.

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“Nobody should doubt that Russia would implement the agreed terms fully. We will respect security guarantees that both Russia and Ukraine need to be offered.”

• NATO Troops In Ukraine Would Be ‘Legitimate Targets’ – Putin (RT)

Any Western troops deployed to Ukraine would either become legitimate targets for Russian forces while hostilities continue or irrelevant in the event of a peace deal, President Vladimir Putin said on Friday. Speaking at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin commented on the recent meeting of Ukraine’s European backers – dubbed the “coalition of the willing” – in Paris. He reiterated Moscow’s opposition to the group’s proposals for the deployment of troops to Ukraine. “The West’s dragging of Ukraine into NATO was one of the causes of the conflict. If any troops show up now, while the hostilities are ongoing, we would consider them legitimate military targets,” Putin said. “If decisions are made that result in long-term peace, then I simply see no sense in such a presence,” he added. “Nobody should doubt that Russia would implement the agreed terms fully. We will respect security guarantees that both Russia and Ukraine need to be offered.”

Putin also noted that Kiev’s backers have not seriously discussed security guarantees with Moscow. The coalition – including the UK, France, Germany, and other European nations providing weapons to Kiev – is weighing possible security commitments, although many of its members have publicly rejected sending ground forces to Ukraine. Earlier this week, former Polish President Andrzej Duda said the Ukrainian leadership is “dreaming” of drawing NATO into a direct war with Russia. He referred to a 2022 incident when a Ukrainian missile struck a Polish border village, killing one person, and Kiev swiftly accused Moscow of attacking the member of the US-led military bloc.

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“European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) is undermining national sovereignty by creating what he called a “de facto right to immigration through the back door.”

• ECHR ‘Endangers The Existence Of Western Democracies’ (RMX)

Hans-Jürgen Papier, Germany’s former chief justice and one of the country’s most senior legal scholars, has warned that the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) is undermining national sovereignty by creating what he called a “de facto right to immigration through the back door.” The 82-year-old Ludwig Maximilian University professor, who led Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court at the start of Angela Merkel’s chancellorship, told The Times newspaper that a growing body of asylum case law from national courts and the ECHR in Strasbourg had created an “ever deeper reaching and ever more closely meshed agglomeration” of rulings. These, he said, were now “settling like mildew over the states’ political power to take action.” In his view, the result has been a dramatic broadening of the right to asylum, far beyond what was originally intended under the Geneva Convention.

“The citizens expect those with political responsibility to revise the asylum policies to suit the changed circumstances. But that is in danger of failing because of the ossification of a body of law that is getting increasingly rarefied and ultimately looks irreversible to many politicians,” he said. Papier criticized the way European courts have interpreted Articles 3 and 8 of the ECHR — the rights against inhuman treatment and to family life — to block deportations, including cases where asylum seekers could face homelessness or irregular work in other EU states. “That simply goes too far,” he argued. “Here, human dignity is being treated like small change and thereby robbed of its special dignified status.”

The former judge warned that the overzealous application of human rights laws by the ECHR was “generally destroying the European citizen’s trust in the capacity of their democratic institutions to act, and so at the end of the day endangering the existence of Western democracies.” He called for reforms to the ECHR itself, though he admitted this was unlikely given the need for consensus among all 46 Council of Europe states. Instead, he suggested that the EU or national parliaments draft a “precisely formulated law of migration” that would reduce judges’ scope for interpretation and return asylum rights to the original Geneva standards.

Among his proposals are electronic asylum visas for those with a realistic chance of success, strict annual ceilings on “subsidiary protection” — a weaker asylum status covering people at risk of violence or hardship — and potential third-country solutions for processing applications abroad. Papier has long been a critic of what he sees as Europe’s open-border approach. In an op-ed for the Bild newspaper in November 2023, he warned that “essentially nothing has changed” since the 2015 migration crisis. He accused Germany of allowing migrants to bypass the Dublin Regulation, which requires asylum seekers to lodge claims in the first EU country they enter, and insisted that Berlin should move “as quickly as possible” to introduce clear and enforceable rules.

“It is not about affecting the right to asylum for people who are actually being persecuted,” he wrote, “it is about protecting this right from being abused for reasons that are clearly unrelated to asylum.”

Read more …

“While Hunter Biden was collecting millions from Chinese energy interests, a corrupt FBI official was sabotaging the investigation that might have exposed the entire scheme.”

• The FBI Corruption Scandal Just Got a Whole Lot Worse (Margolis)

Just when you thought the web of corruption surrounding the Biden family’s foreign dealings couldn’t get any more tangled, along comes a bombshell revelation that exposes how deep the rot truly goes within our federal law enforcement agencies. According to a new Justice Department Inspector General report, Charles McGonigal, the former head of the FBI’s New York counterintelligence division, leaked sensitive details about a criminal investigation into CEFC China Energy—the same Chinese conglomerate that funneled millions to Hunter Biden.Let’s be crystal clear about what happened here. While the FBI was secretly investigating CEFC China for criminal activity, McGonigal was simultaneously tipping off the very people they were pursuing. He admitted during a November 2023 proffer session that he warned an associate of the Chinese energy giant about upcoming arrests and shared classified investigative details. His exact words to this individual, known as “Person B,” were that he “made it perfectly clear” that CEFC-related figures would be arrested.

Just the News has more: “McGonigal, who was sentenced in December 2023 for money laundering related to a Russian oligarch, met with prosecutors in November 2023 and “acknowledged during the proffer interview that he shared information with Person B about the CEFC investigation and anticipated arrests arising from it.” “The DOJ watchdog said that “Person B was a consultant to foreign governments and businesses on international investments, and, in addition to his work for CEFC China, Person B was a non-governmental advisor to the Prime Minister of Albania.”

Horowitz assessed that “although the full extent of the harm from McGonigal’s leaks of sensitive investigative information to foreign subjects and targets will likely never be fully known, we determined that the impact of McGonigal’s conduct on the CEFC investigation, a significant FBI criminal investigation, was substantial.” Hunter Biden and his associated businesses are also believed to have received $5 million or more in payments from CEFC in 2017 and 2018, and CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming’s deputy, Patrick Ho, also agreed to pay Biden, the son of former President Joe Biden, a $1 million legal retainer after Ho was eventually arrested. Hunter referred to him as “the f***ing spy chief of China” in a May 11, 2018, voice recording.

Inspector General Michael Horowitz didn’t mince words about the damage McGonigal caused. He assessed that these leaks inflicted “substantial” harm on a significant criminal investigation, emphasizing that the full extent of the damage will likely never be known. Think about that for a moment—we may never understand how badly this betrayal compromised national security and ongoing investigations. McGonigal’s corruption extends far beyond these China-related leaks. He faced multiple charges for accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars from individuals with European business ties and foreign intelligence connections. In December 2023, he was sentenced to fifty months in prison for conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and money laundering, specifically related to his work for sanctioned Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska in 2021.

The pattern here is undeniable. A senior FBI counterintelligence official was simultaneously working for foreign interests while protecting those same interests from American law enforcement. Meanwhile, the Biden family was getting rich off deals with the very Chinese energy company that McGonigal was protecting from federal investigation. This isn’t just another Washington corruption story—it’s a national security nightmare that reaches the highest levels of government. While Hunter Biden was collecting millions from Chinese energy interests, a corrupt FBI official was sabotaging the investigation that might have exposed the entire scheme.

Read more …

Is she just playing for time?

• Letitia James Asks Appeals Court to Reinstate Trump’s $500 Million Penalty (ET)

New York Attorney General Letitia James filed an appeal on Sept. 4 of a court ruling that threw out an estimated $500 million penalty in President Donald Trump’s business fraud case. James’s office filed a notice of appeal with the New York Supreme Court in Manhattan, indicating an appeal was being launched with the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals of the State of New York, on behalf of the state. The brief notice does not spell out arguments from James as to why the appeal should be allowed. The filing came after a ruling on Aug. 21 by the New York Appellate Division’s First Judicial Department, a branch of the New York Supreme Court, tossed the penalty in a fractured ruling but left the civil judgment against Trump undisturbed. The case concerned allegations that the Trump Organization was involved in financial fraud by misrepresenting property values.

The trial judge, New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron, ruled against Trump in February 2024, issuing a judgment of more than $460 million, with interest accruing. Trump posted a bond of $175 million, and the appeals process moved forward in the New York Appellate Division’s First Judicial Department. The Appellate Division affirmed the judgment issued by Engoron, but the panel of five judges was divided, filing three separate opinions, including partial dissents. Two of the jurists—Justices Peter Moulton and Dianne Renwick—said they thought James “acted well within her lawful power in bringing this action, and that she vindicated a public interest in doing so.” However, both disagreed with the high-dollar penalty.

Moulton said in a concurring opinion that the lower court’s penalty order “is an excessive fine that violates the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution.” Justices John Higgitt and Llinet Rosado joined an opinion saying Engoron’s judgment should be vacated and a new trial ordered. Justice David Friedman criticized James, saying she was focused on “political hygiene, ending with the derailment of President Trump’s political career and the destruction of his real estate business.” He said that the court’s ruling “unanimously derails the effort to destroy his business.”

Trump hailed the Appellate Division ruling in an Aug. 21 post on Truth Social, saying he achieved “total victory” and that he was “so honored by Justice David Friedman’s great words of wisdom.” James lauded the Appellate Division ruling when it came out. “The First Department today affirmed the well-supported finding of the trial court: Donald Trump, his company, and two of his children are liable for fraud,” she said on X. “The court upheld the injunctive relief we won, limiting Donald Trump and The Trump Organization officers’ ability to do business in New York.” It is unclear when the Court of Appeals of the State of New York will act on the appeal.

Read more …

“Biden’s team ran a shadow presidency, making major decisions while their boss stayed clueless, and in the process, they shredded any pretense of accountability.”

• Damning New Evidence Emerges in Biden Autopen Scandal (Margolis)

Fresh revelations about Joe Biden’s autopen scandal paint a picture so damning that even his most loyal defenders should be squirming in their seats. Internal emails obtained by the New York Post show a White House in complete disarray, with staff frantically scrambling to figure out whether Biden actually knew what documents were being signed in his name. The timeline alone should make every American’s blood boil. On Jan. 11, Biden allegedly gave verbal approval for commuting the sentences of crack cocaine offenders. But those documents weren’t signed until Jan. 17, and only after a series of panicked late-night emails between White House staff trying to establish some semblance of proper authorization.

Staff Secretary Stef Feldman, clearly the only adult in the room, demanded verification of Biden’s approval before allowing the autopen to do its work. At 9:16 p.m. on Jan. 16, she wrote to Biden’s aides, “I’ll need an [email] from [Deputy Assistant to the President Rosa Po] confirming the president’s sign-off on the specific documents when they are finalized.” But here’s where it gets really ugly. Deputy White House Counsel Tyeesha Dixon forwarded concerns to Chief of Staff Michael Posada, asking, “Michael, any thoughts on how to address this?” Most tellingly, Dixon noted in her email that “the president did not review the warrants.” The expectation that autopen would handle Biden’s pardons and commutations says everything about how his White House operated and raises legitimate questions about who was really running the country.

Staffers routinely mechanically applied Biden’s signature to legal documents, and now we know his own counsel admitted he never actually reviewed what he was supposedly signing. Among those benefiting from this constitutional chaos was Russell McIntosh, a 51-year-old involved in the 1999 murder of a woman and her two-year-old child in North Carolina. This is the caliber of individual Biden’s team was cutting loose while the president remained blissfully unaware of the specifics. The Justice Department wasn’t faring any better. Here’s more from the Post:

“The emails also indicate Justice Department confusion on how to carry out Biden’s orders — with the department not receiving names of the roughly 2,500 affected inmates from the White House until after the public announcement and then quibbling with the content of the files. DOJ veterans expressed concerns about the fact that some of the commutation recipients were violent criminals — and also raised questions about whether the wording of one of three of Biden’s clemency warrants rendered the grants null and void. That document said offenders were having their punishments reduced for “offenses described to the Department of Justice,” without any specifics. DOJ official Elysa Wan wrote to Dixon, English and White House associate counsel DeAnna Evans on the evening of Jan. 17: “We do not know how to interpret ‘offenses described to the Department of Justice.’ Could you please clarify?”

Then-Associate Deputy Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer wrote to Dixon and Evans on Jan. 18 that he too was concerned about the vague wording of the clemency warrants impacting dozens of more serious cases. This wasn’t a fluke or a simple mistake. Biden’s team ran a shadow presidency, making major decisions while their boss stayed clueless, and in the process, they shredded any pretense of accountability. This was a full-blown constitutional crisis. Americans should be furious.

Read more …

“Kamala effectively exercised presidential power without constitutional authority, creating one of the gravest constitutional crises in modern history.”

• New Biden Autopen Scandal Bombshell Involves Kamala (Margolis)

The Biden autopen scandal just got even worse, and this time Kamala Harris finds herself squarely in the crosshairs.The Trump administration’s investigation into former president Joe Biden’s reliance on the autopen has unearthed internal White House memos that reveal something far more damaging than anyone initially suspected: Biden wasn’t just using the autopen to sign documents—he was effectively handing over presidential power to his vice president, who had no constitutional authority to wield it. In the earliest days of Biden’s presidency, White House Staff Secretary Jess Hertz circulated a draft memo that should alarm every American. Just the News obtained and reviewed the documents, which recommended that Biden “personally approve and hand-sign all decisions that require presidential action,” particularly when it came to pardons.

You have to wonder why such a memo was even necessary. From the very start, those closest to Biden knew he wasn’t capable of handling the most basic responsibilities of the office, and decisions normally reserved for the president were being delegated to others. By Biden’s final year in office, even that minimal safeguard had collapsed. Internal memos obtained by the Trump White House reveal that Biden was increasingly deferring to Kamala Harris on clemency decisions. A particularly damning February 2024 memo from Biden’s White House Counsel’s office noted that while Biden had previously asked to discuss pardon candidates personally, the process had shifted to the point where “the Vice President’s approval was sufficient to obtain his approval.”

The Constitution grants the power to “grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States” exclusively to the president—yet Biden was outsourcing this authority to Kamala Harris, who had no constitutional right to exercise it. The National Archives has been unable to find records proving Biden attended four crucial clemency meetings in late 2024 and early 2025. These sessions covered commutations for federal death row inmates, CARES Act recipients, and even controversial preemptive pardons for Biden family members. Despite retroactive emails claiming Biden was present, the Archives found “no specific meeting notes that clearly mention or note that the President was present” for any of them.

Even more troubling, Biden’s clemency decision memo on federal death row cases remains completely unmarked, with no version indicating presidential approval. Yet 37 commutations were signed and executed. If Biden didn’t approve them, who exactly was running the country? The scope of this deception becomes clearer when you look at the numbers. According to the Pew Research Center, Biden granted 4,245 acts of clemency during his tenure—more than any president in history. And based on internal memos, Kamala may have been the one driving that process. Do you remember when Biden tried to dismiss the autopen scandal back in June? He said, “I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation and proclamations. Any suggestion that I didn’t is ridiculous and false.”

But these documents from his own White House now contradict that claim. That’s not a misunderstanding—it’s a cover-up. The Trump administration’s investigation is only beginning, but the evidence already points to a scandal that reaches the very top of the former administration. Kamala effectively exercised presidential power without constitutional authority, creating one of the gravest constitutional crises in modern history. Even more damning, it shows she knew Biden was mentally unfit all along. While she publicly denied his decline, behind the scenes she was actively complicit in deceiving the American people about his health and his ability to govern.

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This is not about cars. It’s the Optimus personal robot.

• Tesla Offers Musk Unprecedented $1 Trillion Pay Package (ZH)

The same leftist activist judge who torpedoed Elon Musk’s Tesla pay deal earlier this year will likely go berserk over the company’s latest plan: a jaw-dropping 10-year, $1 trillion compensation package for the billionaire. This is the largest in the history of corporate America. Then again, when you’re running a company positioned to dominate the 2030s – from EVs to robots to chips to AI – and make the U.S. competitive against China in these critical technologies, it all starts to make sense. Bloomberg reports Musk’s trillion-dollar pay package over ten years is contingent on achieving ambitious growth milestones, such as:

Musk must expand Tesla’s robotaxi business and increase market value from $1 trillion to $8.5 trillion. The terms of the new pay package were outlined in Tesla’s proxy filing on Friday. The additional shares would raise Musk’s stake in the electric-vehicle maker to at least 25%, a level he has previously stated he wants. Unlocking the full 423 million-share payout will be challenging. To justify an $8.5 trillion market value – up from about $1 trillion on Friday – Tesla would need to sell 12 million additional EVs, secure 10 million autonomous driving subscriptions, deploy 1 million robotaxis, sell 1 million AI-powered robots, and expand adjusted earnings 24-fold to $400 billion.

Tesla’s proxy filing highlights some novel features of this new CEO performance award:

Despite a leftist activist judge in a Delaware court who struck down Musk’s prior $50 billion pay package from 2018, Tesla’s board offered the CEO an interim $30 billion pay package in August. “Simply put, retaining and incentivizing Elon is fundamental to Tesla achieving these goals and becoming the most valuable company in history,” Tesla Board Chair Robyn Denholm wrote in a letter to shareholders. Tesla’s proxy filing also details how Musk must participate in the board’s development of a framework for long-term succession planning as the CEO. There was also talk that Musk would “wind down” political work… Recall yesterday, Musk was snubbed from a tech CEO party at the White House.

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It feels extremely short-sighted to assume that Zuckerberg and Gates, whose fortunes stem from pre-AI, will also rule the (post-)AI era.

• President Trump Hosts Tech Executives at White House for Dinner (CTH)

Initially it was supposed to be closed to the press, but President Trump decided to bring in the media as interest increased. President Trump hosted a significant group of some of the most influential tech leaders into the White House for dinner. In large measure, this group is not -by disposition- very favorable toward President Trump, however with the power of the office they understand how dependent they are to his favor. From his perspective, Trump is leveraging the power and ingenuity of advanced technological capacity against adversaries who might align against U.S. dominance (China, Russia et al), so this group represents a capability he is leveraging. Some of the group, looking specifically at Bill Gates, are just plain globalist a-holes, promoting their self-importance as global influencers. President Trump’s decision to open the doors to the media puts the group in an uncomfortable position as they are then forced to reveal publicly their opinion of the assembly. [Insert fox smiling picture here].

Russian President Vladimir Putin made remarks earlier in the day about discussions with President Trump and corporate global energy developers about collaborating in the artic circle and Alaska. In the big picture, President Trump wants both peace and economic abundance globally, and while regional interests like Ukraine influence the background of collaboration, nonetheless the desire remains. One side has raw industrial power; the other has technological capabilities. President Trump is leveraging the abilities of the latter against the strength of the former. I enjoy watching this dance. Somewhere in my smiling dream state I imagine Tulsi Gabbard and Marco Rubio discussing the challenges when President Trump walks into the room and says, “eh, quit worrying; if we need to, we can turn off their little machines. C’mon, let’s go eat tacos, and Marco can tell us about his trip down south.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/Awesomevideos07/status/1963615997283246500

Scott

kookaburra

Surf

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle September 5 2025

Sep 052025
 
 September 5, 2025  Posted by at 9:16 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  61 Responses »


Cy Twombly Untitled 1964

 

• Zelensky’s Dream Is NATO-Russia War – Ex-Polish President (RT)
• Europeans Ready To Offer Security Guarantees To Ukraine – Macron (RT)
• Kremlin Blasts ‘Unacceptable’ Western Plan For Ukraine Security Guarantees (ZH)
• Ukrainian Attacks On EU Oil Supplies Are ‘Sanctions’ – Zelensky (RT)
• Merz Driven By Desire For ‘Maniacal Revenge’ Against Russia – Moscow (RT)
• Merz Instructs To Hide German Involvement In Taurus Deliveries To Ukraine (Sp.)
• Russia-China Gas Deal To ‘Turn The LNG Market On Its Head’ (RT)
• Bulgaria Debunks von der Leyen Jet Claims (RT)
• Did Russia Really Jam Von der Leyen’s Plane? The Data Says Otherwise (RT)
• DOJ Opens Grand Jury Criminal Investigation Fed Governor Lisa Cook (ZH)
• Lisa Cook May Be in Real Trouble Now (Margolis)
• Trump Tells Supreme Court He Will Appeal in E. Jean Carroll Case (ET)
• RFK Jr Spars With Senators During Wild Testimony (ZH)
• Musk Snubbed From Trump’s Tech CEO Party At Rose Garden (ZH)
• The Power Resides in the Enemies of Truth (Paul Craig Roberts)
• New Greek Law Promises Prison For Rejected Asylum-Seekers (ZH)

 

 

“.. any illegal seizure of arrested Russian funds or income from them must be converted into additional territories and other property of country 404. Or by confiscating the valuables of the British Crown. There are still enough of them in various places, including those located in Russia.”
https://twitter.com/DD_Geopolitics/status/1963515368141467821

NATO

Sachs

Kaja
https://twitter.com/peacemaket71/status/1963457298078089567

Putin
https://twitter.com/nxt888/status/1963309350921060686

AfD

 

 

 

 

And most of Europe shares that dream. Provided the US fights their fight.

• Zelensky’s Dream Is NATO-Russia War – Ex-Polish President (RT)

Vladimir Zelensky’s “dream” is to draw NATO directly into the conflict with Russia on Ukraine’s behalf, former Polish President Andrzej Duda said Tuesday. Speaking in an interview with journalist Bogdan Rymanowski, Duda recalled an incident in November 2022, when a Ukrainian air defense missile struck near a Polish border village, killing one person. Zelensky immediately blamed Russia and urged Warsaw to invoke NATO’s collective defense clause. Duda said the Ukrainian leader pressured him to publicly declare the weapon Russian in origin, which he refused to do.

“From the very beginning, they’ve been trying to drag everyone into the war. That’s obvious,” Duda said. “Any leader of a nation in a situation like Ukraine’s would want the entirety of NATO to fight on its side.” “Having NATO support for the army, NATO tanks and soldiers fighting side by side against Russia – that’s a dream [in such circumstances],” he added, stressing that “Poland, being a NATO state, could never have agreed to that.” Poland has been one of Kiev’s staunchest backers, providing both arms and diplomatic support. Moscow has claimed that Polish nationals make up a significant portion of foreign mercenaries fighting in Ukraine’s military ranks.

The relationship between Warsaw and Kiev has also seen disputes. In 2023, several eastern European states, including Poland, banned EU-facilitated Ukrainian grain imports, citing market disruptions. Tensions have also repeatedly flared over Kiev’s veneration of nationalist figures responsible for the mass killing of Poles during the Second World War. Moscow has long described the Ukraine conflict as a NATO proxy war against Russia, warning that European members of the US-led bloc risk direct confrontation by fueling the hostilities. Prior to the escalation in 2022, Russia sought a legally-binding pledge that NATO would freeze its expansion eastward, a proposal that was rejected.

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No, Russia will not allow troops inside Ukraine. Every word about it is a waste of everybody’s time.

• Europeans Ready To Offer Security Guarantees To Ukraine – Macron (RT)

A number of European countries are prepared to offer security guarantees to Ukraine once a peace deal between Kiev and Moscow is signed, French President Emmanuel Macron has said. He made the comments after months of debate within NATO about possible models for post-conflict Ukraine, which have coincided with US President Donald Trump’s renewed efforts to mediate a deal with Russia. “We Europeans are ready to offer security guarantees to Ukraine and its people on the day a peace deal is signed,” Macron said following a meeting with Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky in Paris on Wednesday.

“The contributions prepared, documented, and confirmed this afternoon at the level of defense ministers, in an extremely confidential manner, allow me to state that the preparatory work is complete,” he added, without specifying the details. “We are ready for a robust peace and a lasting peace for Ukraine and for Europeans,” Macron said.Zelensky expressed confidence that “firm security guarantees” would be agreed upon during the meeting of Ukraine’s backers, known as the Coalition of the Willing, on Thursday. Kiev has been pressing the West to provide guarantees that could serve as a substitute for NATO’s collective defense after the US effectively blocked Ukraine’s bid to join the bloc.

Several European nations, including France and the UK, have voiced their readiness to deploy peacekeepers, while Germany recently said it has no such plans. Trump has ruled out sending US troops to Ukraine. Russia has repeatedly warned that it would not tolerate NATO countries’ soldiers on Ukrainian soil, even under the guise of a peacekeeping force. President Vladimir Putin has listed an end to Western military aid to Kiev as one of the conditions for a ceasefire.

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As long as the West refuses to admit that Russia won, they can demand peace talks on an equal basis. Or so they think.

• Kremlin Blasts ‘Unacceptable’ Western Plan For Ukraine Security Guarantees (ZH)

After earlier this week European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen boasted to The Financial Times that the European Union had “pretty precise plans” for deploying a multinational force to Ukraine, and which is backstopped by the Untied States, the Kremlin has made clear it has flatly rejected such a prospect. Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Wednesday that Moscow would not even discuss or entertain in any way deployment of foreign troops in Ukraine as part of a future peace deal. There will be no international post-conflict security force “in any format” – she made clear. “Russia is not going to discuss the fundamentally unacceptable and security-undermining foreign intervention in Ukraine in any form, in any format,” Zakharova told reporters on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok.

Suggesting that it’s entirely a waste of time for the West to be talking about such a topic, she said “next time they aim to discuss this topic, they should have a pointer in the form of Russia’s position.” “Judging by Ukraine’s losses, the European Commission has simply outdone itself,” Zakharova added, at a moment Russia’s ground forces continue to make gains in the east, and even into the more central Dnipropetrovsk region. And yet Europe is still forging ahead, with French President Emmanuel Macron hosting a summit of European leaders on Thursday. He declared, “We are ready, we the Europeans, to offer the security guarantees to Ukraine and Ukrainians the day that a peace (accord) is signed.”

He called details of guarantees “extremely confidential” but indicated that the preparations had been complete. Various allied defense ministers will take up the issue in the Paris meeting on Thursday. But confidential or not, Russia has clearly already rejected whatever multinational force plan that the Western allies have on the table. Moscow has consistently made clear its position, stretching back months or even over the last year, but this doesn’t seem to have gotten through to Western capitals. President Putin while speaking from Beijing Wednesday, after observing Xi’s big military parade along with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, didn’t sound like he’s in a hurry to make compromises at the negotiating table.

He painted a picture of his troops having the clear battlefield momentum and upper-hand, describing that “Ukrainian combat-ready units are staffed at no more than 47-48%,” in a speech. “Ukrainian military is constantly forced to redeploy units from one part of the front, to another,” he said. That’s when he underscored that if the Ukraine conflict “cannot be resolved peacefully, Russia will be forced to achieve its objectives by military means.”

He did say that “If Zelensky is interested in meeting, let him come to Moscow” – but that such a meeting can only happen once clear understandings are reached, and if something substantial can be agreed up, and not just for the sake of optics or having a meeting just to have it.

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They’re attacking (the sovereignty of) NATO members.

• Ukrainian Attacks On EU Oil Supplies Are ‘Sanctions’ – Zelensky (RT)

Kiev’s attacks on Hungarian and Slovakian energy supplies from Russia are a form of “sanctions,” Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has claimed. In August, Ukraine repeatedly struck the Druzhba pipeline, a key conduit transporting Russian and Kazakh crude to Slovakia and Hungary. Both EU nations have since accused Kiev of threatening their energy security. US President Donald Trump is “very unhappy” that nations in Western Europe are still buying oil from Russia, Zelensky said at a joint press conference alongside French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Thursday. “Among others, there are two countries, we know that these are Hungary and Slovakia,” he said.

Ukrainian attacks on the Russian energy pipelines “reduce the possibilities of [Hungary and Slovakia] obtaining the corresponding oil,” he added. Therefore, you see, Ukraine has found these types of sanctions. However, according to Budapest, Trump has voiced displeasure at Kiev’s attacks on the Druzhba pipeline. “I am very angry about it. Tell Slovakia,” he said in a letter to Prime Minister Viktor Orban shared by Hungarian officials last month. Both Budapest and Bratislava have demanded that the European Commission act against Ukrainian attacks on a pipeline “indispensable” to their energy security, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said last month.

The EC has since said that it contacted Kiev and asked all sides to “ensure the security of critical infrastructure.” Szijjarto announced on Monday that Hungary would accelerate the development of a joint oil pipeline with neighboring Serbia. He added that gas supplies to the country via Serbia and the TurkStream route have grown to 21 million cubic meters a day. Slovakia will “retaliate very harshly” against Ukrainian attacks on the Druzhba pipeline, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico told Putin in China on Tuesday, adding that he will raise the issue in talks with Zelensky later this week.

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His grandfather was a card-carrying member of the nazi party. Which lost to Russia in1945.

• Merz Driven By Desire For ‘Maniacal Revenge’ Against Russia – Moscow (RT)

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz harbors a “maniacal drive for revenge” against Russia based on Nazi-era grievances, according to the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) in Moscow. The chancellor’s stance – including his push for Ukraine to use German missiles against Russia – has reportedly caused concern in Berlin. Merz has pledged to supply long-range Taurus missiles to Kiev but has not commented publicly on the details. According to a press release from the SVR on Thursday, the chancellor’s anti-Russian stance is partly fueled by a personal family grievance tied to Nazi Germany’s defeat in World War II. “Desire for revenge grew in him from childhood and morphed into an overwhelming passion after the launch of his political career,” the statement said, adding that Merz’s attitude is well known to his inner circle.

The agency accused Berlin of preparing a batch of Taurus missiles with identifying markings removed to conceal their origin. It further alleged that any potential launches from Ukraine would be carried out by German troops, as training local forces to operate the systems would take too long. “Merz’s maniacal drive for revenge is causing growing concern among the political elites [in Germany],” the SVR said, adding that politicians in Berlin fear Russian retaliation if the missiles are used. Earlier this week, Merz urged Western allies to pursue “economic exhaustion” of Russia through sanctions on its trade partners, saying military aid for Ukraine alone was inefficient. He also labeled Russian President Vladimir Putin “perhaps the most serious war criminal of our time,” insisting there could be no “leniency” toward Moscow.

Putin dismissed the accusations, suggesting Merz was attempting to absolve the West “of responsibility for the tragedy currently unfolding in Ukraine.” Moscow characterizes the conflict as a NATO-driven proxy war waged “to the last Ukrainian.” Merz’s family history has also drawn scrutiny. Local media have cited archives showing that his maternal grandfather, Josef Paul Sauvigny, who served as mayor of Brilon under the Nazis, was granted NSDAP membership at least in May 1937, after applying sometime between 1933 and 1936. Merz had previously denied the connection, but acknowledged Sauvigny’s Nazi ties during his campaign for the chancellorship. He stressed that his grandfather had died in 1967, when Merz was 13 years old.

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“..Merz’s maniac desire for revenge is causing increasing concern among the German political elite, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service concluded.”

• Merz Instructs To Hide German Involvement In Taurus Deliveries To Ukraine (Sp.)

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz gave instructions to hide Germany’s involvement in the Taurus missile deliveries to Ukraine as much as possible, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) said on Thursday.
Last week, the German cabinet passed a draft bill to introduce voluntary military service, which may pave the way for mandatory conscription if extra troops are required. Merz said Germany needed to enhance its military capabilities in light of an alleged threat posed by Russia. “The Chancellor, admittedly, takes into account the risks of Germany’s direct involvement in military operations against Russia. In this regard, he instructed to hide Berlin’s involvement in the supply of such weapons to Kiev as much as possible,” the statement said.

German politicians fear that the use of Taurus missiles on Russia can trigger a retaliatory strike, under which all the territory of Germany would be at risk, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service said. The factory markings are being removed from the missile components and individual parts are being replaced from the Taurus systems, the statement said. “However, Merz cannot escape the fact that the Taurus will be operated by German military personnel sent to Ukraine,” the statement added. Many European experts are puzzled by Merz’s harsh anti-Russian rhetoric in the context of advancing the Russia-US dialogue on Ukraine, and Merz’s maniac desire for revenge is causing increasing concern among the German political elite, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service concluded.

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“..Russia could displace up to half of the more than 40 million tons of LNG China currently imports each year, including from the US..”

• Russia-China Gas Deal To ‘Turn The LNG Market On Its Head’ (RT)

Russia’s announcement this week of expanded pipeline gas exports to China could shake the global liquefied natural gas (LNG) market and squeeze out US suppliers, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday. During his visit to China, Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed that Moscow and Beijing had reached consensus on a major new pipeline across Mongolia, which would significantly boost existing supplies. Although Chinese officials did not immediately comment, Bloomberg noted that “the ties binding Russia to its most important consumer have undoubtedly tightened.” The proposed Power of Siberia 2 pipeline could be operational by 2030.

Combined with other supply increases, Russia could displace up to half of the more than 40 million tons of LNG China currently imports each year, including from the US, Bloomberg estimated. ”Given that China is the largest importer of LNG, this would turn the LNG market on its head,” analysts at AB Bernstein, a Wall Street research and brokerage firm, wrote in a note cited by the outlet. “For LNG projects that are still being contemplated, this would be a big negative.” The report framed the development as a signal from Beijing to Washington that it does not need US LNG for long-term growth, a message sent as relations between the two countries sour.

Bloomberg added that China appears comfortable with deeper reliance on Russian supplies, which Bernstein predicted could cover 20% of its gas demand by the early 2030s, up from around 10% today. This week, China also received its first shipment from Russia’s Arctic LNG 2 project, despite US sanctions. Moscow has accused Western governments of prioritizing geopolitics over fair competition, pointing to the freezing of Russian sovereign assets and attempts to curtail its energy exports through economic restrictions. Russian officials argue such actions are pushing Moscow to seek more dependable customers, particularly for pipeline gas, which requires heavy infrastructure investment and long-term cooperation.

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Bulgaria should sue the European Commission.

“..the Commission cited Bulgarian authorities as suggesting the incident was “due to blatant interference from Russia.”

“In an interview with Bulgarian channel bTV, Deputy Prime Minister and Transport Minister Grozdan Karadjov denied that the government had submitted any information on the matter to the European Commission, contradicting the Commission’s assertion that Bulgarian authorities suspected the disruption was the result of the Kremlin’s hybrid warfare.”

• Bulgaria Debunks von der Leyen Jet Claims (RT)

There is no evidence Russia interfered with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s airplane during her recent flight to Bulgaria, the country’s authorities have said. The European Commission earlier claimed Bulgarian authorities had confirmed the incident. On Sunday von der Leyen’s pilots allegedly reported issues with their navigation systems while landing in Plovdiv on a PR exercise to visit “Europe’s frontline states.” The Financial Times Brussels bureau chief Henry Foy, who was on board the press junket, reported that the flight was “forced to circle for an hour.” EU officials later told Sky of suspected “blatant Russian interference.”

NATO chief Mark Rutte claimed “we are all on the eastern flank now, whether you live in London or Tallinn. ”However, Bulgarian Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov has outright contradicted Brussels’ claim and the reporting, telling parliament on Thursday that no evidence of a Russian attack had been found and that von der Leyen’s plane did not suffer any serious issues, only short-term signal degradation, which is common in densely populated areas.

“After checking the onboard records, we saw that the pilot did not express any concerns. The plane was in the holding area for about five minutes, and the signal quality remained good the entire time,” Zhelyazkov was quoted as saying by Bild. Bulgarian Deputy Prime Minister and Transport Minister Grozdan Karadjov has also confirmed that there is “not a single fact that confirms the claim that the plane’s GPS signal was jammed,” citing empirical data, radio intercepts, recordings of our civil and military departments. In an interview with bTV, Karadjov also denied sharing any information about the incident with the European Commission.

Moscow on Thursday dismissed the “preposterous” accusations pushed by Brussels, pointing to publicly available flight tracking data which indicates that von der Leyen’s jet had reported good GPS signal quality throughout the flight. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova suggested that the EU’s accusations were “not just paranoia, but a cynical plot to distract their own population from the EU’s worsening economic situation and from considering the real culprits behind the European crisis – the irresponsible, kleptocratic political elites of the European Union.” Since 2024, the Nordic and Baltic countries have accused Russia of disrupting communications on planes and ships as a form of “hybrid warfare,” allegations Russia has denied.

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Made up from A to Z.

• Did Russia Really Jam Von der Leyen’s Plane? The Data Says Otherwise (RT)

A flurry of reports from EU officials and Western media claimed this week that Russia jammed the plane carrying European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen into Bulgaria. The tale of “hybrid warfare” in the skies made front-page news across an unquestioning mainstream press. But flight-tracking data shows something very different to what has been widely reported, and Bulgaria has backed it up.

1) What Brussels claimed happened. On Sunday, von der Leyen traveled to Plovdiv as part of an Eastern Europe tour of “frontline states” in a chartered jet with the elite of Brussels media. The junket was intended to harden Western backing for Kiev. Together with Bulgarian Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov, she visited the VMZ arms plant in Sopot and praised Sofia as a critical supplier of weapons to Ukraine. Yet the headlines were less about the factory floor and more about the flight path. Upon landing the Financial Times bureau chief Henry Foy claimed that Russia had “blatantly interfered” with the Commission President’s aircraft, knocking out its GPS navigation system on approach. According to those accounts, the plane was forced to circle for an hour and the pilots had to fall back on paper charts before landing in Plovdiv.

2) How the scare took off. Once seeded, the story raced through the Western press: The Financial Times carried the initial claims of “blatant Russian interference,” Politico described a “GPS scare gripping Europe,” The Guardian tied the episode into a string of alleged Russian plots. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte declared the alliance was working “day and night” to counter jamming and spoofing. Italy floated the idea of hiding the routes of official flights altogether. The narrative slotted neatly into von der Leyen’s larger mission: selling a new round of defense spending as protection from a threatening Russia.

3) Does data back the drama? No. FlightRadar24, the go-to service Western journalists themselves usually rely on for in-flight information on Monday quietly brought the claims flying out of Brussels back down to Earth.
• Its data showed “good GPS signal quality from take-off to landing.”
• The aircraft touched down nine minutes late, not an hour.
When activists online tried to poke holes, FR24 doubled down with a second statement: the telemetry is clear, no signal loss, no blackout. Furthermore, the flight path published by FR24 shows a standard figure of either approach and landing, no circling. In other words: no evidence of Russian jamming, no missing hour, no emergency fallback to paper maps.

4) Official walk-backs, muted corrections. Zhelyazkov on Thursday told the Bulgarian parliament that there had been no attempts to jam the GPS signal and that any break was consistent with flying over heavily populated areas. “After checking the plane’s records, we saw that there was no indication of concern from the pilot. Five minutes the aircraft hovered in the waiting area, with the quality of the signal being good all the time,” he told lawmakers. The European Commission itself quietly denied there had been any “targeted actions” against von der Leyen’s plane. Despite that, the original “Russian plot” framing still stands, uncorrected, in most coverage.

5) Moscow cries foul. Moscow was quick to seize on the contradiction. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called the reports “preposterous” and part of a Western “web of lies.” The point, she argued, was not aviation safety but distraction – keeping Europeans focused on an external enemy while their economies strain under sanctions and defense bills.

6) Bottom line.The EU got its headline about Russian interference. But von der Leyen’s jet didn’t circle for an hour, didn’t lose GPS, and didn’t need paper maps. FlightRadar24’s data doesn’t match the drama.

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“In a Tuesday court filing, Cook’s lawyers said she “did not ever commit mortgage fraud.”

• DOJ Opens Grand Jury Criminal Investigation Fed Governor Lisa Cook (ZH)

The Department of Justice has opened a criminal investigation into Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook – and has issued multiple subpoenas as part of the inquiry into whether she committed mortgage fraud, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing ‘officials familiar with the matter.’ The probe – for which a grand jury has been assembled, will begin by looking at Cook’s properties in Ann Arbor, Michigan and Atlanta. It comes on the heels of two criminal investigations from Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte, who has been dropping receipts for weeks with evidence that Cook committed fraud – including claiming two properties as her “primary residence” – as well as claiming that a rented out third property was her ‘second home’ – all things that would qualify her for better rates and tax treatment.

“Pulte accused Cook of misleading banks on multiple mortgage applications to receive favorable lending terms, such as lower interest rates, typically given to a buyer who intends to occupy the home they purchase. A judge is considering Cook’s request for an emergency order stopping her from being removed from the Fed board while the case proceeds. The Fed’s next meeting is set to begin Sept. 16.” -WSJ. Last Thursday, Cook filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration after President Donald Trump fired her that Monday ‘for cause.’ Among the excuses contained in the lawsuit for alleged mortgage fraud was a possible clerical error.

Except, Cook described herself in her 2023 nomination hearing as having “significant experience in banking and finance, as is evidenced by my service on the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and of a Community Development Financial Institution in Michigan, in addition to my employment at an investment bank and a large commercial bank.” What’s more, the Federal Reserve Act allows the president to fire Fed governors ‘for cause’ – which the Trump administration claims applies. In a Tuesday court filing, Cook’s lawyers said she “did not ever commit mortgage fraud.”

Pulte shot down any notion that the fed wasn’t political in a Thursday appearance on CNBC, saying “I don’t believe for the last 4 years that the Fed has been independent.” According to the report, the DOJ investigation involves Ed Martin, a top DOJ official who AG Pam Bondi designated to investigate mortgage fraud among public officials.

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More Lisa Cook. She thought that nobody would dare touch her.

“In 2024, there were 38 federal mortgage fraud offenders who received an average prison sentence of 14 months..”

• Lisa Cook May Be in Real Trouble Now (Margolis)

Last month, President Donald Trump fired Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook amid allegations of mortgage fraud, and the left promptly freaked out, with Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) calling for Trump’s ouster via the 25th Amendment. Now, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal, Cook’s legal problems have just become very real. “The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, issuing subpoenas as part of an inquiry into whether she submitted fraudulent information on mortgage applications, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter,” the paper reported Thursday. The initial scrutiny has centered on Cook’s properties in Ann Arbor, Mich., and Atlanta, with investigators using grand juries as part of the probe, the officials said.

The investigation comes on the heels of two criminal referrals from Bill Pulte, the Trump-appointed director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, who has publicly alleged that Cook engaged in mortgage fraud. President Trump has cited those allegations in his bid to fire Cook and wrest control of a central bank that has historically remained independent. [..] Cook filed a lawsuit last month alleging Trump’s move to fire her was unlawful. She argued Trump “concocted” a basis for her firing to vacate a seat on the board that he can fill to “forward his agenda to undermine the independence of the Federal Reserve.” Cook has argued in court that her firing was illegal. She points out that the Federal Reserve Act allows a president to fire a governor only “for cause,” not because of political disputes or unsubstantiated claims.

Cook says she never received a fair hearing or proper notice, adding that she “has been deprived of her Fifth Amendment right to due process, and of her right to process under the Federal Reserve Act.” Despite her claims, recent reports have shown that Cook has indeed listed multiple residences she owns as her primary residence, a move that property owners commonly make to obtain better mortgage terms. Both Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and New York Attorney General Letitia James are facing similar accusations.

“Felony convictions of mortgage fraud are relatively rare. In 2024, there were 38 federal mortgage fraud offenders who received an average prison sentence of 14 months, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission,” the Wall Street Journal notes. “A 2023 report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia found that one-third of single-family home investors misrepresent their occupancy status on their mortgage applications.” But that’s not really the point here, is it? Cook wants due process, and she’s getting it. Whether the DOJ decides to prosecute her or not, as a former Federal Reserve governor, she should have known better than to claim multiple homes as her primary residence. Her willingness to do so raises serious questions about her judgment, which makes her unfit for a position that demands integrity and accountability.

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Gotta do it. This is the ultimate lawfare. $83.3 million for the script of a detective series episode, it makes no sense. It turns the entire US justice system into a laughing stock.

• Trump Tells Supreme Court He Will Appeal in E. Jean Carroll Case (ET)

President Donald Trump plans to ask the Supreme Court this fall to overturn a civil jury verdict that found he sexually abused writer E. Jean Carroll and defamed her, his attorneys said in a new court filing. Trump’s intentions were revealed in an application docketed by the nation’s highest court on Sept. 2. In the application, his lawyers asked the court to extend an upcoming Sept. 10 deadline for filing a petition to challenge the $5 million verdict to Nov. 10. The application was directed to Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who handles urgent appeals from New York. Trump “intends to seek review” of “significant issues” arising out of the trial and what he termed the “erroneous” ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit that affirmed the verdict, according to the application.

On June 13, a divided Second Circuit denied a rehearing in the case. Circuit Judges Steven Menashi and Michael Park dissented from the ruling. “These holdings conflict with controlling precedents and produced a judgment that cannot be justified under the rules of evidence that apply as a matter of course in all other cases,” Menashi said in a dissent joined by Park. Trump’s attorney in the case, Justin D. Smith of James Otis Law Group LLC in St. Louis, Missouri, said more time was needed to file the petition. “Undersigned counsel faces a significant press of business due to many upcoming deadlines,” Smith said. Carroll gave evidence during a 2023 trial that Trump attacked her in 1996 in a dressing room in a Manhattan department store near the Trump Tower.

In its May 2023 verdict, the federal jury held Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll and defaming her when he made statements in October 2022 denying her allegations. The jury awarded Carroll $5 million in damages. In another lawsuit filed by Carroll, a federal jury ordered Trump to pay $83.3 million in damages over statements he made in 2019 denying the sexual assault allegations. A three-judge panel of the Second Circuit affirmed the verdict in December 2024, rejecting Trump’s argument that the trial judge’s ruling invalidated the trial by allowing others who accused Trump of sexual abuse to testify. Three women said Trump carried out similar acts against them in 2005 and the 1970s. Trump denied the allegations.

“President Trump has consistently and unequivocally denied Carroll’s allegations in both cases,” the new application said. Carroll obtained the $5 million award based on “incorrect findings,” after which the federal district court “wrongly” interpreted the law and “improperly [prevented] President Trump from contesting the merits in that action,” the filing said. After that, Carroll secured the “unjust judgment of $83.3 million,” the application said. “We do not believe that President Trump will be able to present any legal issues in the Carroll cases that merit review by the United States Supreme Court,” Roberta Kaplan, Carroll’s attorney, said on Sept. 3.

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Bernie and Pocahontas. Time did stand still.

There are 1,000 different people coming after RFK. Big pharma wants its profits.

• RFK Jr Spars With Senators During Wild Testimony (ZH)

Update (1520ET): Well that was actually pretty interesting. As Democrat Senators read prepared zingers to try and corner RFK Jr. over vaccines and other malarkey, Kennedy hit back with several very specific haymakers during the three-hour session – calling the Democratic lawmakers ‘liars’ – and even pointing out the Elizabeth Warren has taken nearly a million dollars from pharmaceutical companies. At the center of Thursday’s hearing was Kennedy’s surprise decision last week to fire CDC Director Susan Monarez, just a month after she took the job. The move plunged the agency into turmoil, prompting several senior officials to resign. Kennedy accused Monarez of lying in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published the same morning, in which she claimed she was removed for refusing to “rubber stamp” vaccine recommendations from Kennedy’s advisory committee.

“We are the sickest country in the world, that’s why we have to fire people at CDC,” Kennedy said. Kennedy also defended his June purge of 17 members of the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel, known as ACIP, framing the move as an effort to “depoliticize” the committee. “I didn’t politicize ACIP, I depoliticized it,” he insisted. Kennedy also said that that leading medical organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, were compromised because they accept pharmaceutical industry funding. That prompted an exasperated retort from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT): “In your eyes, everybody but you is corrupt.” During one fiery exchange with Senator Elizabeth Warren, Kennedy said “I know you’ve taken $855K from PHARMA COMPANIES, SENATOR!”

https://twitter.com/townhallcom/status/1963635271578038376?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1963635271578038376%7Ctwgr%5E0f72b4e1d2c1fc8daa8fcbd861acce5571871756%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fwatch-live-rfk-jr-testifies-senate-amid-cdc-turmoil

https://twitter.com/thecjpearson/status/1963614024421031956?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1963614024421031956%7Ctwgr%5E0f72b4e1d2c1fc8daa8fcbd861acce5571871756%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fwatch-live-rfk-jr-testifies-senate-amid-cdc-turmoil

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Sounds like the power structure of the whole AI industry is sort of settled. It isn’t. Far too early for that.

• Musk Snubbed From Trump’s Tech CEO Party At Rose Garden (ZH)

The Hill has obtained the invitation list for an exclusive White House gathering later today in the newly renovated Rose Garden. This event will follow a White House event on artificial intelligence hosted by First Lady Melania Trump. Among those set to attend are Apple CEO Tim Cook, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg. “The Rose Garden Club at the White House is the hottest place to be in Washington, or perhaps the world. The president looks forward to welcoming top business, political, and tech leaders for this dinner and the many dinners to come on the new, beautiful Rose Garden patio,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told the media outlet.

Noticeably absent, according to The Hill, was Elon Musk, whose strained relationship with President Trump earlier this year likely kept him off the guest list. Trump last night, commenting about Musk: “He’s got 80% super genius and then 20% he’s got some problems.”

https://twitter.com/ScottJenningsKY/status/1963347028198781416?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1963347028198781416%7Ctwgr%5E262f9ef54462efe829319af83a888e94f771ba1a%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Ftechnology%2Fmusk-snubbed-trumps-tech-ceo-party-rose-garden

The snub is reminiscent of the Biden-Harris administration’s decision not to invite Musk to a 2021 White House EV summit. Other attendees include many top tech leaders and CEOs, such as Sergey Brin and Sundar Pichai, founder and CEO of Google, respectively; Safra Catz, CEO of Oracle; David Limp, CEO of Blue Origin; Sanjay Mehrotra, CEO of Micron Technology; and Greg Brockman, President of OpenAI. White House AI czar David Sacks will be in attendance, along with Jared Isaacman, CEO of Shift4, who recently withdrew his nomination to lead NASA.]

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“The only question remaining is whether those responsible will be held accountable or whether the ruling elite are just too powerful to ever be held accountable.”

• The Power Resides in the Enemies of Truth (Paul Craig Roberts)

RootsAction is an activist site founded by two progressives to defend the public interest from “an increasingly extremist Republican Party.” RootsAction believes that both parties are compromised by corporate money and power, is against the wars, and was endorsed by Barbara Ehrenreich, Cornel West, Daniel Ellsberg, and Naomi Klein, all principled persons whether or not you agree with them. Some of the organization’s positions are reasonable–put limits on Super PACs to limit the amount of bought government; consider the risks of nuclear power plants–others are half-baked by ignoring the adverse consequences. Therefore, I was surprised to receive from RootsAction an email addressed specifically to me, not a mass mailing, calling for Robert F. Kennedy’s removal as Health Secretary.

Their case against Kennedy is that the limits he has put on the Covid vax, now proven to have caused more deaths and health injuries than Covid, and on other vaccines associated with the plethora of new childhood illnesses that did not previously exist, together with regulations to improve food safety, “is causing future deaths and suffering on a large scale.” As there is no evidence for this charge, the question arose in my mind whether RootsAction was being paid by Big Pharma as a part of Big Pharma’s policy of putting its profits ahead of Americans’ health and safety. Just as President John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s uncle, was considered a risk to the power and profit of the US military/security complex, Robert F. Kennedy Jr is considered a risk to the power and profit of Big Pharma.

This suspicion increased when I saw that RootsAction was predicting future deaths from constraints Kennedy placed on the corrupt revolving door between Big Pharma and the CED, NIH, and FDA and cessation of federal funding for Big Pharma-serving propaganda. How is it possible that RootsAction has learned nothing from the proliferation of scientific peer-reviewed studies documenting the disastrous effects of the Covid Vax, lockdowns, and masks? As the whore media continues to hide these established results from the public in exchange for Big Pharma advertising revenues, it is possible that RootsAction simply doesn’t know the facts. The CDC directors and bureaucrats who were fired were fired for putting Big Pharma’s profits ahead of the public’s health. Many of them came from Big Pharma and many returned to Big Pharma.

The Covid Pandemic was an orchestration. Just as RootsAction disapproves, I assume, of the current orchestrations to promote wars, such as Iran’s alleged “nuclear weapons” and Venezuelan President Maduro’s alleged “narcotics cartel,” like Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction” and Assad’s “use of chemical weapons,” RootsAction should disapprove of Big Pharma’s orchestration to remove Robert Kennedy. For many years my columns have emphasized the decline in the ability of truth to get a hearing. There are many reasons for this: The rise of ideological agendas for which truth is an obstacle, the concentration of the print and TV media in six mega-companies thereby making it possible to establish official narratives regardless of their truthfulness, and an insouciant and largely ignorant population without the interest and ability to examine the official narratives.

Indeed, today in the US education consists of indoctrinating students with official narratives and cancelling those who challenge the narratives. The simple fact is that truth is disappearing, because it does not serve the agendas of the ruling elites. This explains why it is so difficult for Robert Kennedy, Donald Trump with his mandate, and anyone else to set things right. The power resides in the enemies of truth. Consequently, important issues, often crucial ones, are settled by canceling the narrative challenger, smearing him, arresting him on false charges, passing a law to protect the narrative, or simply by ignoring the challenge which is the whore media’s response to the Covid scandal.

Impossible you say? Think about the recent Russiagate hoax. The entirety of the Biden regime, Democrat Party, TV, print, and NPR media, liberal-left intellectuals and professors, RINO Republicans like Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell, the Entire UK and EU press and public figures supported the Russiagate hoax. Yet, as we now know for certain, never was a greater lie perpetuated on the world. The only question remaining is whether those responsible will be held accountable or whether the ruling elite are just too powerful to ever be held accountable.

Read more …

10 years too late.

• New Greek Law Promises Prison For Rejected Asylum-Seekers (ZH)

In the latest example of a European government taking stronger measures to curb illegal immigration, the Greek Parliament on Wednesday passed a law that promises lengthy prison sentences for migrants who stay in the country after their asylum requests have been rejected. “The Greek state does not accept you. You only have one choice: to go back. You’re not welcome,” said Migration Minister Thanos Plevris after the bill passed. The new law is the second major tightening of Greek immigration in the last two months. On July 9, conservative Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis completely suspended asylum applications for three months, saying he was effectively notifying human smugglers that “the passage to Greece is closed.”

The two moves came after the pace of illegal-immigrant arrivals on Crete reached crisis levels this summer, with the number of illegals landing on the island in the first six months of 2025 tripling over the same period last year. The last straw that prompted Mitsotakis’ three-month asylum ban was the arrival of more than 2,600 illegals on Crete just during the first week of July. The move quickly paid off, slashing arrivals to just 500 over the first 27 days of August. Under the new law, which was championed by Mitsotakis, migrants who fail to leave the country after their asylum request is rejected face up to five years in prison and fines of up to 30,000 euros. The penalty for illegal entry is tripled to 10,000 euros.

The deadline for leaving after being rejected was slashed from 25 days to 14, and authorities are now authorized to outfit rejected applicants with ankle monitors so they can be tracked until they leave, the New York Times reports. The law also abolished illegal immigrants’ previous privilege of applying for residence after they’d been in Greece for seven years. During parliamentary debate on Tuesday, Plevris said asylum-seekers fell into two categories: “There are those who are downtrodden, and then there are some who are spoiled, who think that Europe owes them. We need to put emphasis on the voluntary returns, but there will be consequences for those who do not choose to return to their countries.” Crete became a preferred dumping ground for migrant-smugglers after other European countries imposed tougher asylum processes or increased their offshore patrols and other security measures.

When asylum requests were barred, Plevris told a reporter: “All European countries now understand that it is not possible to have open borders, it’s not possible to welcome illegal migrants with flowers. There should be a clear message that countries have borders, (that) Europe has exceeded its capabilities and will not accept any more illegal migrants.” In one of the continuing consequences of Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton’s utterly catastrophic regime-change operation, most of the diversity landing on the shores of Crete this year has come from Libya. Cursed by geography, Greece has long suffered from the effects of US-led destabilization campaigns, particularly in 2015-16, when hundreds of thousands of people fleeing the Middle East, Afghanistan and Africa flowed through the country.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Ladapo
https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/1963254999204442607

Siberia2

Wealth

Pirro

https://twitter.com/KathleenWinche3/status/1963192428246040749

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle August 6 2025

Aug 062025
 
 August 6, 2025  Posted by at 7:40 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  44 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Interieur au Pot de Fleurs 1953

 

• Your Wages Aren’t Rising By Accident. They’re Rising By Design (Nas)
• Trump Rules Out Scott Bessent As Fed Chair (NYP)
• Clintons, ex-AGs and FBI Directors Subpoenaed For Epstein Testimony (NYP)
• Here Comes The Find Out Phase: Russia Collusion Hoax Grand Jury Is On (Taft)
• DOJ To Present Russiagate Hoax To A Grand Jury For Criminal Charges (ZH)
• The EU-US Deal Is Positive and the Only Realistic Alternative (Lacalle)
• GOP Could Bring Down Adam Schiff and Letitia James with LETITIA Act (Margolis)
• ‘Biden’s DOJ Secretly Targeted Trump’s Inner Circle (Margolis)
• Sanctions On Russia’s Partners ‘Obvious Next Step’ – US NATO Envoy (RT)
• US ‘On Precipice’ Of Recession – Moody’s (RT)
• Ukrainian Officials Busted In ‘Large-Scale’ Military Bribery Scheme (RT)
• Europe’s Last Security Project Is Quietly Collapsing (Lukyanov)
• Colonial Theft vs. Wartime Fundraising: The Double Standard of Western Museums (Sp.)
• Thank God for Robert F. Kennedy (Paul Craig Roberts)
• I Run The Country and The World”: Donald Trump (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Is Trump Taking Us to War? (Paul Craig Roberts)
• A Catastrophic War Seems Inevitable (Paul Craig Roberts)

 

 

16%
https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/1952716496523710784

Pelosi
https://twitter.com/TRUMP_ARMY_/status/1952699081832140896

2018

 

 

Ratcliffe: On July 31 2016, the FBI started an investigation into candidate Trump. 6 days before, Russian intelligence “predicted” that would happen. They didn’t guess. They had read the playbook.

 

 

 

 

I’m early today. Could have posted -most of- this last night. My timezone here is E(D)T+6. Maybe more later. A whole day ahead.

 

 

X thread.

The highest ranking US government official in history who’s -openly- gay.

Who was involved in breaking the Bank of England.

Nice interview.

• Your Wages Aren’t Rising By Accident. They’re Rising By Design (Nas)

The numbers are staggering.Household income growth hit 0.7-0.8% in April alone. Real wages for hourly workers rose almost 2% in just 5 months. Bessent dropped this bombshell: “No president has done that before.” But here’s where it gets interesting… Blue-collar wage growth is at its highest level since Trump’s first term. Under Biden? It plummeted. Now it’s back up “just in a few months.” The reason is simple… Bessent revealed the hidden mechanism behind exploding wages: It’s not about minimum wage laws or government mandates. It’s about strategic displacement of cheap labor. “12 or 20 million illegal aliens coming out of the workforce” creates massive wage pressure upward. The manufacturing revolution is here.

Only 9% of Americans work in manufacturing. But here’s what they don’t tell you: Manufacturing jobs deliver “much stronger wage growth than the service economy.” Trump is rebuilding America’s industrial base by design. The negotiation strategy is working brilliantly. 75+ nations are bringing “their best offers” to Treasury. When Trump threatened 50% EU tariffs, European leaders called within hours. Tariffs aren’t just revenue. They’re leverage that gets results. Here’s the secret Wall Street doesn’t want you to know. For decades, they’ve had “a great run” while Main Street struggled. Bessent’s mission? “Now it’s Main Street’s turn to also participate.” The policy shift is already working… The economic data proves it: CPI: 0.1% (best since 2020) PPI: 0.1% (best since 2021)

Recession predictions: Dead wrong Reality: “Economy is very strong” But there’s a deeper story here… Bessent’s opened up about his backstory. His father went broke twice. Young Scott got his first job at age 9 – putting out beach umbrellas and busing tables. “That’s why I am so focused on the debt here and having responsible finances.” This isn’t just policy – it’s personal vendetta against financial recklessness. “We are not going to make the same mistakes my family did.” He’s treating America’s economy like he wished someone had treated his family’s finances. The Wall Street vs Main Street war is real. For years, coastal elites thrived while middle America got “hollowed out.” Bessent’s solution? Bring back strategic industries: steel, semiconductors, pharmaceuticals.

“We got to bring them back home.” Hamilton’s original tariff strategy had two purposes:
• Finance the treasury
• Protect nascent industries
Trump added the third leg: negotiation leverage. This is economic warfare disguised as trade policy. And it’s working. The results speak for themselves: Manufacturing emphasis + immigration control + tariff leverage = exploding wages. It’s not magic. It’s applied economics. And workers are seeing the benefits in real time. This is the economic revolution hiding in plain sight. While media focuses on political drama, actual policy is reshaping American prosperity. Your wages aren’t rising by accident. They’re rising by design.

Bessent

Read more …

Actually, he ruled himself out.

“I asked him just last night, ‘Is this something you want?’ [Bessent said], ’Nope, I want to stay where I am.’ He actually said, ‘I want to work with you.’ It’s such an honor’. I said, ‘That’s very nice. I appreciate that.’””

• Trump Rules Out Scott Bessent As Fed Chair (NYP)

President Trump took Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent off his list of possible candidates to helm the Federal Reserve next year and joked about selecting CNBC anchors for roles with the central bank Tuesday. Trump, 79, claimed he has four finalists in mind to replace current Fed Chair Jerome Powell, whose term ends in May 2026. “I love Scott, but he wants to stay where he is,” Trump told “Squawk Box” of Bessent. “I asked him just last night, ‘Is this something you want?’ [Bessent said], ’Nope, I want to stay where I am.’ He actually said, ‘I want to work with you.’ It’s such an honor. I said, ‘That’s very nice. I appreciate that.’” Bessent’s name had been floated for weeks as a possible successor to Powell, with the Treasury secretary refraining from publicly ruling himself out.

Trump has long fumed at Powell for his reluctance to slash interest rates, bashing him as “too late” and “highly political.” Still, the president has denied that he will attempt to dismiss Powell before his term ends. Critics and legal experts have cast doubt on whether the president even has the authority to fire the Fed chair, who has reportedly insisted he will not resign despite the criticism. “In the end, there are numerous people that are qualified. Everyone on your phone right now, in terms of at your beautiful studio, would be very qualified in my opinion,” Trump quipped about replacing Powell. “You guys are better than most of the people that do it for a living.” During the wide-ranging interview, Trump riffed about two widely reported contenders to take over the Fed — National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett and former Fed board member Kevin Warsh.

Over the weekend, Hassett told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he has the “best job in the world” and is “really well placed at the National Economic Council” but did not rule out accepting the job if Trump asked. Warsh, who served on the Fed’s Board of Governors from 2006 to 2011, was passed over by Trump in favor of Powell during his first term. “Both Kevin Warsh and Kevin Hassett are very good candidates for the Fed,” Trump said, before adding that “I have two other people” under consideration without specifying who those were. The president views Powell’s insistence on keeping interest rates elevated as undermining efforts to refinance the roughly $9 trillion in US debt. However, some economists have defended Powell, noting that the annual inflation rate remains above the Fed’s 2% goal.

During its meeting last week, the Fed’s Federal Open Market Committee, which makes interest rate decisions, opted to leave its benchmark rate between 4.25% and 4.5%. Trump is also dealing with the fallout from an underwhelming employment report, which found only 73,000 jobs were added in the month of July and revised the figures for May and June down by a whopping 258,000 jobs. Hours after the report came out, Trump dismissed Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer, accusing her of fudging the numbers. “Squawk Box” co-host Joe Kernen noted to the president that the soft job market could hasten the Fed’s decision to lower interest rates. “It’s not what I want,” Trump shot back. “I don’t want that. I wanted it a year ago. I wanted it a long time ago. Jay Powell is highly political. And I think, you know, I call him ‘Too late.’”

Read more …

In both Epstein and Giuffre’s cases, it is reported non-stop that they committed suicide. In both cases, there are serious questions about that.

• Clintons, ex-AGs and FBI Directors Subpoenaed For Epstein Testimony (NYP)

House Republicans subpoenaed nearly a dozen former federal officials and politicians — including Bill and Hillary Clinton — as well as records from the Department of Justice on Tuesday amid an expanding probe into the deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. The officials — including former FBI Directors James Comey and Robert Mueller as well as six ex-US attorneys general — were compelled to testify before the House Oversight Committee. Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) announced the move less than two weeks after DOJ officials interviewed Epstein’s late accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence in a federal prison for conspiring to sexually abuse young girls. “The facts and circumstances surrounding both Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell’s cases have received immense public interest and scrutiny,” Comer wrote in all of the letters.

“While the Department undertakes efforts to uncover and publicly disclose additional information related to Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell’s cases, it is imperative that Congress conduct oversight of the federal government’s enforcement of sex trafficking laws generally and specifically its handling of the investigation and prosecution of Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell.” The investigation kicked off after President Trump faced backlash over a two-page memo, released by his DOJ and FBI July 6, that found a “systematic review” of evidence uncovered no Epstein “client list” of rich and well-connected associates implicated in his sickening crimes. Epstein, 66, committed suicide in his Manhattan jail cell Aug. 10, 2019, multiple federal and independent medical investigations determined, but his well-documented links to Hollywood stars, high-powered attorneys, politicians and influential business leaders have caused furious speculation for years.

Trump’s current attorney general, Pam Bondi, had indicated a client list was “sitting” on her desk for the review in February — and that the FBI’s New York Field Office was “in possession of thousands of pages of documents related to the investigation and indictment of Epstein.” But the July 6 memo said threre was “no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions” and no “evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.” The FBI-DOJ document also noted that Epstein’s crimes impacted “over one thousand victims.” On July 17, Trump posted on Truth Social: “Based on the ridiculous amount of publicity given to Jeffrey Epstein, I have asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to produce any and all pertinent Grand Jury testimony, subject to Court approval.” “This SCAM, perpetuated by the Democrats, should end, right now!” he added.

Trump also told reporters of the public’s right to previously undisclosed Epstein information: “Anything that’s credible, I would say, let them have it.” Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche interviewed Maxwell July 24 and 25 at the US attorney’s office in Tallahassee, Fla., before she was shuttled to a spacious correctional center in Bryan, Texas, last week. Maxwell — who was given limited immunity — answered every question about “100 different people,” according to her lawyer, Oscar David Markus. The discussions came amid speculation that the former Epstein associate’s legal team could be seeking clemency for their client, who was convicted in December 2021 and sentenced in June 2022. Her lawyers have already appealed her conviction to the US Supreme Court, arguing that she should have been off limits to prosecutors under a plea agreement reached when Epstein was first charged with sex crimes. The justices will consider her petition in late September.

The disgraced financier had to register as a sex offender after pleading guilty to Florida charges of soliciting sex from a minor in 2007, but went on to host lavish parties and enjoy professional relationships with associates like Prince Andrew and Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Bill Clinton rode on Epstein’s private jet abroad, nicknamed the “Lolita Express,” several times. Hillary Clinton has been asked to appear Oct. 9, while Bill Clinton was ordered to sit for his deposition on Oct. 14 Mueller’s deposition is scheduled for Sept. 2; Comey’s is scheduled for Oct. 7. Also summoned were former President Joe Biden’s AG Merrick Garland, Trump AGs Bill Barr and Jeff Sessions, former President Barack Obama’s AGs Loretta Lynch and Eric Holder as well as former President George W. Bush’s AG Alberto Gonzalez. Barr [..] is set to be deposed Aug. 18, Gonzales on Aug. 28, Lynch on Sept. 9, Holder on Sept. 30 and Garland on Oct. 2. The Justice Department has been given until Aug. 19 to turn over the “full, complete, unredacted Epstein Files.”

Read more …

“We believe that the right move is the grand jury, but not if it’s in DC. That’s felony dumb.”

“The sad situation is that no one remotely right of center would get a fair trial in Washington, D.C. That’s not just sad, it’s true—and it’s criminal..”

• Here Comes The Find Out Phase: Russia Collusion Hoax Grand Jury Is On (Taft)

DOJ leaks reveal that U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi has green-lighted a grand jury to investigate the Russia Collusion hoax. I’d say that this is a BLOCKBUSTER! BAM! BREAKING story, and it IS a HUGE MOVE, but you read PJ Media to get context and insight, so there are questions. Here’s the nut of the exclusive report by Fox News on Monday evening: “EXCLUSIVE: Attorney General Pam Bondi directed her staff Monday to act on the criminal referral from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard related to the alleged conspiracy to tie President Donald Trump to Russia, and the Department of Justice is now opening a grand jury investigation into the matter, Fox News Digital has learned. Bondi personally ordered an unnamed federal prosecutor to initiate legal proceedings and the prosecutor is expected to present department evidence to a grand jury, which would allow the department to secure a potential indictment, according to a letter from Bondi reviewed by Fox News Digital and a source familiar with the investigation. ”

Gabbard’s concerns are republic-shaking ones but not the only ones. Fox Digital reported: “The DOJ confirmed two weeks ago it received a criminal referral from Gabbard. The referral included a memorandum titled “Intelligence Community suppression of intelligence showing ‘Russian and criminal actors did not impact’ the 2016 presidential election via cyber-attacks on infrastructure” and asked that the DOJ open an investigation. Hmmm? While this skeletal report telegraphs a few clues, Bondi’s team has leaked that the AG’s team is acting on Gabbard’s criminal referrals, but there’s no word about the possibly even more concrete referrals from CIA Director and former U.S. federal prosecutor John Ratcliffe. Both sets of allegations are serious, but why leave Ratcliffe’s referrals out of the story?

Here are the allegations he referred to pertaining regarding John Brennan, James Comey, James Clapper, and Hillary Clinton:
• Lying under oath to Congress or federal investigators
• Abuse of office and politicization of intelligence by advancing unsubstantiated claims and manipulating intelligence

Gabbard’s referrals based on the documents she released underscored the conspiracy and its treachery. While that oversight could be because Bondi is caught up between the signal and the noise, what she could be doing is holding her powder. The reason behind that could be what constitutional lawyer and Fox News host Mark Levin said on Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo–and it is important. Bartiromo asked, “How would you be handling this case?” And Levin held a clinic.

I’ll break down what Levin said. It makes sense to those who resist the urge to make the perfect the enemy of the good. “I think it doesn’t help us as to what laws might have been violated. Who cares? Right now, you need to dig in to find out who did what, then you’ll figure out what laws have been violated. We know laws were violated. You’re not bringing charges yet; you’re not bringing a bill of indictment yet. You have to conduct an investigation. I mean, I can think of laws that I haven’t even mentioned. What about federal campaign finance laws? What they did to Donald Trump in Manhattan is a ruse … really? Those are campaign violations. That[‘s] for another day.

What should happen now, for me, my view, the Department of Justice should be making a list of every potential witness or participant. They should immediately receive a letter that a criminal investigation has begun, and they are to preserve all records whether they are to preserve all records—whether they took public records with them—whether they took private records with them, and that includes the long list of texts and emails and on and on and on. What you’ll find, then, is that you are going to find a lot of collusion between the Department of Justice, the FBI, the CIA, the White House—the whole damned bunch of them—and the media.”

Levin is in the camp of preserving documents now and getting to the prosecution later. Sounds great to me. The other huge issue the announcement fails to address is WHERE this grand jury will be convened. Will this grand jury be convened in the Southern District of Florida, where the Mar-a-Lago raid took place, or in the lost land of Washington, D.C. where there is ZERO chance that ANY Democrat would be found GUILTY of any crime? The right answer is Florida. Monday night’s move was huge, but only if Bondi is as careful as a cat stalking a bird. Meow. I told you we wouldn’t punk you. We believe that the right move is the grand jury, but not if it’s in DC. That’s felony dumb. The sad situation is that no one remotely right of center would get a fair trial in Washington, D.C. That’s not just sad, it’s true—and it’s criminal.

Read more …

“The report said that then-President Barack Obama didn’t want Hillary’s scandal to taint his legacy..”

• DOJ To Present Russiagate Hoax To A Grand Jury For Criminal Charges (ZH)

Attorney General Pam Bondi has directed that the Justice Department move forward with a probe into the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation, following the recent release of documents about collusion between the Obama administration and the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign. Bondi has directed a prosecutor to present evidence to a grand jury after referrals from the Trump administration’s top intelligence official, a person familiar with the matter said Monday. Fox News first reported the development. It was not clear which former officials might be the target of any grand jury activity, where the grand jury that might ultimately hear evidence will be located or which prosecutors — whether career employees or political appointees — might be involved in pursuing the investigation.

It was also not clear what precise claims of misconduct Trump administration officials believe could form the basis of criminal charges, which a grand jury would have to sign off on for an indictment to be issued. In one batch of documents released last month, Gabbard disclosed emails showing that senior Obama administration officials were aware in 2016 that Russians had not hacked state election systems to manipulate the votes in Trump’s favor. Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, also released a set of emails last week. The emails were part of a classified annex of a report issued in 2023 by John Durham, the special counsel who was appointed during the first Trump administration to hunt for any government misconduct during the Russia investigation.

According to the annex, an FBI informer identified as “TI” provided the bureau in 2016 with two intelligence reports, which described “confidential conversations” between then-Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and two people at the George Soros-funded Open Society Foundation: Leonard Bernardo and Jeffrey Goldstein. The report said that then-President Barack Obama didn’t want Hillary’s scandal to taint his legacy. Accordingly, “To solve the problem, the President puts pressure on FBI Director James Comey through Attorney General Lynch, however, so far without concrete results.”

The same report also said that Comey favored Republicans, and that the FBI didn’t have any evidence against Clinton—because she deleted her emails. While the FBI informant’s intelligence wasn’t corroborated at the time, the FBI indeed closed its investigation into Clinton without recommending charges. Republicans have particularly focused on a July 27, 2016, email in Durham’s newly declassified annex that claimed that Hillary Clinton had approved a plan during the heat of the campaign to link Trump with Russia. Durham’s own report took pain to note that investigators had not corroborated the communications as authentic and said the best assessment was that the message was “a composites of several emails” the Russians had obtained from hacking.

Read more …

Possible. Still, it’s not about the outcome, but about the process. Did Ursula fight for Europeans? Looks like she didn’t raise a single finger.

• The EU-US Deal Is Positive and the Only Realistic Alternative (Lacalle)

The agreements the United States has signed with its main trading partners are both positive and realistic. They demonstrate that, in 2024, the world was not a trade paradise of spontaneous cooperation among free-market companies as per David Ricardo’s ideal, but rather a statist system filled with barriers against US businesses and political efforts to pick winners and losers. The controversy surrounding the agreement between the United States and the European Union can only be explained for three reasons: animosity toward any achievements of the Trump administration, ignorance about the only realistic alternative, or because critics of the deal were genuinely satisfied with the protectionism and European barriers in place in 2024.

Critics of the deal must answer two questions: What was the only real alternative? The only real alternative was a collapse in European exports, a loss of competitiveness versus Japan, the United Kingdom, South Korea, and other partners, greater offshoring of companies, and, crucially, keeping existing European trade barriers. What would the critics have done? Critics must explain how they would have achieved supposedly better deals when global export leaders have signed agreements like that of the European Union. They need to share with us what essential information they have that the EU negotiators do not, reportedly enabling them to achieve better conditions than Japan, the United Kingdom, South Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Australia, China, and others. Is it reasonable to think that EU negotiators were stupid or reckless and did not weigh all options to achieve a beneficial agreement?

Claiming that the agreement with the United States is detrimental is, inadvertently, to defend the trade barriers with Europe’s main global partner as if they were wonderful and should be preserved. It also stems from a fantastical vision of global trade, imagining that the US market could be replaced by others. What’s worse is that some seem to believe all of this is Trump’s fault—a favourite in today’s economic analysis—and that in four years, a Democratic president or a softer Republican will return everything to the way it was in 2024. This is a mistaken vision. Biden kept all the tariffs from the Trump and Obama administrations and increased several of them.

Why wasn’t there a significant outcry when the EU implemented substantial trade barriers or when Democratic presidents established tariffs? The outrage frequently conceals bias against Trump and conveniently overlooks Europe’s persistent imposition of new barriers on US products. Why wasn’t there an outcry over the EU’s tariffs on US chemicals, agriculture, livestock, automobiles, and manufacturing equipment – or over the 2030 Agenda, the New Green Deal, the CO2 tax, and all the constant excessive regulation? It took Draghi to remind us that the EU imposes more hidden tariffs on itself than the United States does.

Read more …

“Law Enforcement Tools to Interdict Troubling Investments in Abodes”.

• GOP Could Bring Down Adam Schiff and Letitia James with LETITIA Act (Margolis)

It looks like Senate Republicans aren’t just talking tough on corruption—they’re laying the groundwork for real accountability, and Democrats like Sen. Adam Schiff and New York Attorney General Letitia James may finally have reason to worry. Sen. John Cornyn has introduced the Law Enforcement Tools to Interdict Troubling Investments in Abodes—or the LETITIA Act, pointedly named after the New York AG herself. But this isn’t just a symbolic jab. The bill represents a serious move to expand criminal liability and, more importantly, stiffen penalties for public officials who abuse their positions for personal gain—specifically through shady dealings like mortgage or tax fraud.

There’s no mistaking the intent behind this legislation. Letitia James is famous for her partisan pursuit of President Trump, yet she herself now entangled in a federal investigation over mortgage fraud. But the real intrigue emerges with the bill’s potential impact on Adam Schiff—the very same Schiff who for years cloaked himself in the language of integrity while leading partisan witch hunts against Trump and his allies. The tables may be turning. Details in the public record are damning. Housing authority Bill Pulte has accused Schiff of falsifying bank documents and misrepresenting primary residences across multiple states to secure more favorable mortgage terms. These aren’t garden-variety clerical mistakes—they’re deliberate moves that, under Cornyn’s proposal, would be subject to mandatory prison terms.

If signed into law, the LETITIA Act would slap public officials convicted of bank fraud, loan or mortgage fraud, or tax fraud with minimum sentences—one year for bank or loan fraud, six months for tax fraud—ratcheting up to five years for repeated patterns of abuse. No more tepid reprimands or backroom wrist-slaps for insiders who get caught. So, is this the moment where the Senate GOP draws a legal bullseye on Adam Schiff? Cornyn makes no effort to hide his intention to empower President Trump and authorities to finally “hold crooked politicians like New York’s Letitia James accountable for defrauding their constituents, violating their oath of office, and breaking the law.” The context leaves little doubt: this bill is meant not just as a warning to all but as a calibrated legislative knife aimed specifically at the likes of James and Schiff—high-ranking Democrats who have made a career out of prosecuting their rivals and hoisting the banner of unassailable virtue.

Adam Schiff, having cultivated an image as the tireless force against corruption and chaos, now finds that the same legal tripwires he spent years setting for others could be lying directly in his path. The Justice Department hasn’t pressed charges yet, but the bill puts a powerful tool in their hands—one designed to close the loopholes that have too long separated members of the political elite from real-world accountability.

When law’s hammer falls, it must strike without favoritism. The message from Senate Republicans is unmistakable: if Schiff is guilty of the mortgage fraud allegations leveled against him, he should face the same jail time and personal ruin the system eagerly imposes on anyone outside the Beltway. The LETITIA Act, if passed and enforced, tears down the shield of privilege, daring to answer the question: Will Adam Schiff finally be held legally accountable? The answer may come sooner rather than later. For now, the Senate GOP has set the stage. The only thing left is for the Justice Department to decide whether it will step up and bring the same intensity to prosecuting Schiff as he did to others.

Read more …

“Those who dared to challenge the regime were met not with due process, but with the full force of a weaponized federal machine.”

• ‘Biden’s DOJ Secretly Targeted Trump’s Inner Circle (Margolis)

There are new, disturbing revelations about the weaponization of the federal government against former Trump officials that demand attention. Just weeks before returning to the White House, officials who served President Donald Trump during his first term discovered they had been swept up in a politically charged dragnet under orders from the Biden administration. Google, following a legal process that the FBI triggered, quietly collected personal information from their accounts, only alerting the targets after the fact, and only because the court-imposed gag order had finally lifted. Dan Scavino, now White House Deputy Chief of Staff, received one of these anonymous yet chilling notifications from Google.

“Google received and responded to a legal process issued by the Federal Bureau of Investigation compelling the release of information related to your Google account. A court order previously prohibited Google from notifying you of the legal process…” The Orwellian undertone cannot be missed. Scavino described it as “Biden lawfare” in action, calling it “a small taste of the INSANITY that many of us went through—right here in the United States of America. LAWFARE at its finest. A Complete and Total Disgrace!!!!!” According to Fox News Digital, soon after Scavino’s post, Kash Patel, who now serves as FBI Director, revealed he too received one of these covert warnings. This wasn’t a one-off; this was a coordinated campaign of intimidation. Jeff Clark, acting administrator at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, also stepped forward, stating he got a similar message.

“Indeed, a whole Jack Smith team was assigned to go through my emails after there was a privilege review.” Clark didn’t stop there; he exposed how the “group of lawyers ignored my religious pastor privilege, marital privilege, and other privileges and basically shipped all they could to Jack Smith. But it still cost me tens of thousands to try to protect my communications.” Smith, the former special counsel whom Merrick Garland handpicked, got the green light to relentlessly pursue Donald Trump and his allies through a series of politically charged investigations. His mandate? To criminalize Trump’s efforts to challenge the highly questionable 2020 election results and, later, to go after him over the possession of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, despite a long history of former officials handling such matters without prosecution.

Smith’s team rolled through personal data with utter disregard for privacy and protected communication. “My medical records and other private communications had nothing to do with the 2020 election,” Clark said. “They were no one’s business. But it didn’t matter to these thugs with law degrees and the willingness to abuse government power.” This was vengeance dressed up in legal jargon. And once again, we’re staring down undeniable proof that under Biden’s watch, the law wasn’t blind; it was a weapon aimed squarely at his political enemies. The administration didn’t treat the Constitution as a safeguard but as an obstacle to ignore. Those who dared to challenge the regime were met not with due process, but with the full force of a weaponized federal machine. This is the legacy of the Left’s “justice”: intimidate, isolate, and destroy.

Read more …

The countries you seek to sanction will need oil regardless, but they will have to pay a higher price. That lifts global oil prices, so Russia gets paid more.

• Sanctions On Russia’s Partners ‘Obvious Next Step’ – US NATO Envoy (RT)

Targeting Russia’s partners with sanctions and tariffs is the “obvious next step” in US efforts to mediate the Ukraine conflict, Washington’s ambassador to NATO, Matthew Whitaker, says. Moscow has stated that it is open to talks, holding three rounds of US-mediated negotiations with Kiev in the past two months that resulted in major prisoner swaps and settlement proposals. It views the conflict as a Western proxy war and has said the hostilities would end if Kiev accepts neutrality and demilitarization. US President Donald Trump has expressed frustration with delays in settlement efforts and threatened to place 100% tariffs and secondary sanctions on Russia’s trade partners if a deal is not reached by August 8.

“President Trump’s been clear that this war needs to end… And… is creating the environment that Russia will come to the table and negotiate a ceasefire,” Whitaker told Bloomberg TV on Monday.“Secondary sanctions and tariffs against those that are paying for this war, like China, India, and Brazil, by buying the oil that Russia is producing, is an obvious next step to try to bring this war to an end.” While Trump has acknowledged that new sanctions might prove ineffective, Whitaker said Washington sees targeting Russia’s oil trade as worth trying. “I think this is going to really hit them where it counts, and that is in their main revenue source, which is the sale of oil to these countries,” he stated.

On Monday, Trump threatened New Delhi with new tariffs unless it halts Russian oil purchases. India has refused to take part in the sanctions on Russia, calling its energy trade a matter of national interest. Moscow has faced waves of Western sanctions since the Ukraine conflict escalated in 2022. It has condemned them as illegal and counterproductive, adding that they have largely failed, as Russia redirected most of its trade to Asia, with China and India now its biggest energy buyers. Russian officials say the sanctions will not alter the course of the conflict and have downplayed Trump’s threats, adding that the country has built “immunity” after years of sanctions.

Read more …

I call BS on Moody’s. They appear to play politics.

Tariffs may influence where money flows in America, but the money stays in the country. Part is used to pay down the debt, part flows back to the people.

Likewise, fewer immigrant jobs means more American jobs. Maybe they get paid more, but that money, too, stays in the country.

How can this add up to a recession? There’s simply a shift in money flows.

• US ‘On Precipice’ Of Recession – Moody’s (RT)

US President Donald Trump’s tariffs and immigration policy are pushing the economy toward a downturn, Moody’s chief analyst, Mark Zandi, has warned. He described the US as “on the precipice” of a recession.The warning followed a Bureau of Labor Statistics report showing the US added an average of just 35,000 jobs a month from May to July – less than a third of last year’s pace and the weakest since 2020. Experts say the slowdown signals weakening economic growth. Other indicators have also been bleak: June consumer spending rose only 0.1% after inflation, prices climbed 2.7% year-on-year – the highest since February – and factory activity contracted for the fourth straight month as orders and jobs fell.

“The economy is on the precipice of recession. That’s the clear takeaway from last week’s economic data dump,” Zandi wrote on X on Sunday. “Consumer spending has flatlined, construction and manufacturing are contracting, and employment is set to fall.”He warned that inflation above target leaves the Federal Reserve little room to revive growth, especially under Trump’s policies.“It’s no mystery why the economy is struggling; blame increasing US tariffs and highly restrictive immigration policy,” Zandi stated. “The tariffs are cutting increasingly deeply into the profits of American companies and the purchasing power of American households. Fewer immigrant workers means a smaller economy.”

Since returning to office, Trump has tightened restrictions on illegal immigration, planning to deport 4 million people over four years – a move many warn will trigger severe labor shortages. He has also imposed tariffs on hundreds of US trade partners, framing them as a “reciprocal” strategy to secure better trade terms, protect jobs, revive manufacturing, cut deficits, and fund tax relief. Zandi is not alone in warning of the risks. Fed Chair Jerome Powell has cautioned that tariffs could sharply raise both inflation and unemployment. The Economic Policy Institute estimated that Trump’s mass deportations plan could destroy nearly 6 million jobs. Trump’s alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, warned that deportations would shrink most worker paychecks, cut GDP, and further swell the already massive federal budget deficit.

Read more …

“..a contract for electronic warfare systems at an intentionally inflated price, with the group receiving illegal benefits worth 30% of the contract amount.”

• Ukrainian Officials Busted In ‘Large-Scale’ Military Bribery Scheme (RT)

Several senior Ukrainian officials have been detained on suspicion of receiving up to 30% in kickbacks from military contracts, anti-corruption agencies have announced. The arrests came just days after Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky was forced to abandon his attempts to restrict the independence of the anti-graft agencies.In a statement on Saturday, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) said they had uncovered a “large-scale” corruption scheme involving contracts for the purchase of drones and electronic warfare systems for the Ukrainian army.

Ukrainian media has identified three of the four suspects – Aleksey Kuznetsov, an MP with Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, former Lugansk Governor Sergey Gayday, and Rubezhansky district head Andrey Yurchenko. Between 2024 and 2025, the group allegedly created a scheme to steal budget funds allocated by local governments for defense needs. One part of the scheme involved awarding a contract for electronic warfare systems at an intentionally inflated price, with the group receiving illegal benefits worth 30% of the contract amount.

A separate contract for FPV drones, worth around $240,000, was allegedly overpriced by around $80,000, with the company’s officials later handing over kickbacks to members of the group, the investigators said. The same day, Zelensky stated that he had met with the heads of NABU and SAPO to discuss the scandal, calling it “absolutely immoral” and thanked the agencies for their good work. Two weeks earlier Zelensky had attempted to bring both bodies under government control only for street protests to force him to sign off on their independence last week.

Read more …

“Europe is no longer the center of the world it once was. It has become a theater, not a director, of global affairs.”

• Europe’s Last Security Project Is Quietly Collapsing (Lukyanov)

This week marks the 50th anniversary of a landmark event in European diplomacy. In 1975, the leaders of 35 countries, including the United States, Canada, and almost all of Europe, gathered in the Finnish capital Helsinki to sign the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). The agreement capped years of negotiation over peaceful coexistence between two rival systems that had dominated world affairs since the end of the Second World War. At the time, many believed the Final Act would solidify the postwar status quo. It formally recognized existing borders – including those of Poland, the two Germanys, and the Soviet Union – and acknowledged the spheres of influence that had shaped Europe since 1945. More than just a diplomatic document, it was seen as a framework for managing ideological confrontation.

Fifty years later, the legacy of Helsinki is deeply paradoxical. On the one hand, the Final Act laid out a set of high-minded principles: mutual respect, non-intervention, peaceful dispute resolution, inviolable borders, and cooperation for mutual benefit. In many ways, it offered a vision of ideal interstate relations. Who could object to such goals? Yet these principles were not born in a vacuum. They were underpinned by a stable balance of power between the NATO and the Warsaw Pact. The Cold War, for all its dangers, provided a kind of structure. It was a continuation of the Second World War by other means – and its rules, however harsh, were understood and largely respected. That system no longer exists. The global order that emerged after 1945 has disintegrated, with no clear replacement.

The post-Cold War attempts to graft a Western-led system onto the rest of Europe succeeded only briefly. The OSCE, which evolved from the CSCE, became a vehicle for imposing Western norms on others – a role it can no longer credibly perform. Despite the growing need for cooperation in an unstable world, the OSCE today exists mostly in theory. The notion of ‘pan-European security’ that underpinned the Helsinki Process has become obsolete. Processes are now fragmented and asymmetric; rivals are unequal and numerous. There is no longer a shared framework to manage disagreements. That hasn’t stopped calls to revive the OSCE as a political mediator, particularly amid recent European crises. But can an institution forged in a bipolar world adapt to the multipolar disorder of today?

History suggests otherwise. Most institutions created in the mid-20th century have lost relevance in periods of upheaval. Even NATO and the EU, long considered pillars of the West, face mounting internal and external pressures. Whether they endure or give way to new, more flexible groupings remains to be seen. The fundamental problem is that the idea of European security itself has changed – or perhaps disappeared. Europe is no longer the center of the world it once was. It has become a theater, not a director, of global affairs. For Washington, Europe is increasingly a secondary concern, viewed through the lens of its rivalry with China. American strategic planning now sees Europe mainly as a market and an auxiliary partner, not a driver of global policy.

Read more …

“They use Ukrainian artifacts to raise money. With African artifacts, they just do business.”

• Colonial Theft vs. Wartime Fundraising: The Double Standard of Western Museums (Sp.)

Europe’s museums and not just British ones hold artifacts stolen during colonial rule, forming part of Europe’s wealth, says Yamb Ntimba, political philosopher and founder of the Kheper think tank. These objects are displayed because Europe lacks its own heritage of such diversity, using others’ culture to fuel its economy and tourism. “But with Ukrainian artifacts, the situation is different. They are being used to stir sympathy among the public for Ukraine. That sympathy supports government actions to provide Ukraine with weapons and money.” African artifacts serve as trophies of conquest, displayed in Europe to showcase past dominance over Africa and reinforce a sense of superiority, the commentator believes.

“As for Ukrainian artifacts, I see it as manipulation. They manipulate the minds of their people to create an emotional basis for supporting Ukraine. They send weapons, give money, dispatch soldiers. This is an entirely different path. There are no parallels. It should be clear to everyone: Africa is not Ukraine, and Ukraine is not Africa,” he tells Sputnik. “The exhibition of Ukrainian artifacts is nothing but a fundraising operation. This will be special revenue used to support the war in Ukraine. But people should know that these museums, earning £3.4 billion, get at least 40% of it from African artifacts. That’s money Africa loses simply because our artifacts are there. They do not share these funds with Africa. They use Ukrainian artifacts to raise money. With African artifacts, they just do business.”

Read more …

4 Paul Craig Roberts aticles in a row. Oh well, let’s have it. He’s shifting away frrom blaming Trump and Putin for everything under the sun.

“..civilization has been replaced by a short-term agenda to maximize short-term profits regardless of cost.”

• Thank God for Robert F. Kennedy (Paul Craig Roberts)

For at least two decades it has been an unassailable hard scientific fact that mercury in vaccines is highly toxic and responsible for serious injuries and child development problems. But campaign contributions from the criminal pharmaceutical industry to the whore US Congress and the whore American media living on Big Pharma advertisements put profits before health and life. Honest scientists were demonized as “anti-vaxers” and threatened with loss of employment. The scientifically ignorant American population was indoctrinated that vaccine critics, such as Robert F. Kennedy, were threats to the health and lives of their children.

Their own doctors, dumbshit shills of the pharmaceutical industry, told them that only 54 doses of vaccines filled with mercury could save their children, and the ignorant parents believed them. Consequently, a plethora of childhood afflictions never previously seen characterize the deceptively imposed vaccine era. Robert F. Kennedy, son and nephew of his CIA-murdered father and uncle, has used his authority as Secretary of Health to remove mercury from vaccines used in America. This accomplishment in itself justifies the Trump presidency. In my opinion, the pharmaceutical corporations comprise a criminal conspiracy against the American people in which profits come before health. The only solution is to nationalize the pharmaceutical industry and to get Big Pharma money out of health policy and health education.

My “socialist” recommendation will shock free-market libertarians who continue to hold on to their naive faith that private business can do no wrong. As a life-time libertarian I have been taught by endless examples over the course of my long life of profit-driven private business totally failing every public interest, including, peace, health, and truth. Can any honest libertarian find any redemption in the privately owned media? Is there any example anywhere of a state controlled media worst than CNN, the New York Times, Bloomberg? Did Hitler or Stalin have a journalist worse than Jake Trapper?

The reason I think that Western civilization or its remnants will not survive much beyond my lifetime is that civilization has been replaced by a short-term agenda to maximize short-term profits regardless of cost. Corporations make decisions on short-run stock prices, Governments make decisions based on quarterly employment and GDP numbers which are so poorly calculated as to be worthless. Prosecutors make decisions based on maximizing their conviction rates. Judges make decisions based on clearing their court dockets. No one in the West makes decisions based on the relevant issues that confront us.

Justice demands that Big Pharma and its whore media accomplices be held accountable in class action law suits for negligence in exposing millions of Americans to unnecessary mercury injections. If I had to bet, I would bet that in the agreement Kennedy achieved to ban mercury from vaccines, there is a clause that Big Pharma admits nothing and cannot be sued. In America money is power, not truth, not justice. Money can only be overthrown by violence. Karl Marx said that violence is the only effective force in history. Was he correct?

Read more …

“Is Trump’s over-the-top confidence a guise to hide his submissiveness to Israel? Is Netanyahu the real boss?”

• I Run The Country and The World”: Donald Trump (Paul Craig Roberts)

“I run the country and the world” Donald Trump says in Atlantic interview. The whore media is making much out of this. However, when you think about it, Trump’s over-lthe-top expression of confidence is easy to understand. He came back from, and triumphed over, the worst combination of political and personal blows imaginable.

Some Senate Rinos voted to convict him on the House impeachment charges; Republicans allowed Democrats to steal his re-election; Republicans supported the Democrats’ “insurrection” charges and the kangaroo trials of supporters who attended the January 6 rally; a corrupt New York court (are there any honest courts in NY?) tried to steal his NY properties; golf tournaments blacklisted his golf courses; a corrupt Justice (sic) Department, CIA, and FBI working with Hillary Clinton orchestrated a frame-up of Trump with the Russiagate hoax; corrupt Democrat prosecutors in NY and Georgia prosecuted him on false charges; week after week the whore media served the attacks on Trump, emphasizing the four indictments and speculating on his time in prison. From all of this and more, Trump came back, took control of the Republican Party, mobilized the electorate, and decisively defeated the Democrats.

Trump deserves his confidence. He has done good things. He has stopped the immigrant invasion whether or not the Men in Black allow him to deport the illegals. He has recalled the Democrats’ DEI policy of intentionally discriminating against white people, especially heterosexual males, whether or not the corrupt Democrat civil service abides by his ruling. He has enabled Health Secretary Robert Kennedy to chip away at Big Pharma’s control over health policy that puts profits before health. He has enabled his Director of National Intelligence to expose the criminal actions of the Obama Five who weaponized law against democracy.

Trump’s confidence has produced huge accomplishments for which we should be very appreciative. But Trump must not let his confidence get over-the-top in his dealings with Russia, China, and Iran. The ultimatum Trump delivered to Putin is both nonsensical and dangerous. It has probably convinced Russia that war is inevitable. If indications are reliable that Putin, finally, is equipping Iran with the S-400 air defense system, US and Israeli attacks on Iran are ceasing to be an option. And someone needs to tell Trump that his tariffs on China fall on the offshored production of US corporations. It is the offshored production of US firms that is the main cause of the US trade deficit with China. On this front the Trump administration seems to lack economic competence. His tariff threats to the entire world come across as bullying.

Before we get disillusioned with Trump, think about what it would be like under the Democrats: open borders, weaponized law, DEI discrimination against white people and merit, no limits on Big Pharma’s profits -before- health policy, persecutions of Christians. In effect, an all-out attack on what remains of American society. Trump’s biggest failure is on the Israel front. He has continued Washington’s policy of enabling Israel’s genocide of Palestine, military attacks on Iran, and absorption of parts of Syria into Greater Israel. The question is raised: Is Trump’s over-the-top confidence a guise to hide his submissiveness to Israel? Is Netanyahu the real boss?

Read more …

“Trump issues meaningless ultimatums that show that Trump is not sincere about ending tensions with Russia.”

• Is Trump Taking Us to War? (Paul Craig Roberts)

I need to be more empathetic with Putin’s hopes. Sometimes I, too, let hopes run away with me. Yes, I was wrong to hope President Trump would normalize relations with Russia. Perhaps Trump intended to do so, until the men in black knocked on his door and told him that he was not allowed to takeaway the enemy that justified the power and profit of the military/security complex. In the era of nuclear weapons it makes perfect sense to be on good terms with other nuclear powers. Mutual suspicions and high tensions can result in catastrophic consequences. Russia has not threatened us and clearly has no territorial ambitions. Putin’s ambition is a mutual security agreement with the West.For some reason Trump won’t consider it. Perhaps the situation is one of armament profits taking precedence over life.

Trump doesn’t negotiate. He delivers ultimatums with punishments attached for non-compliance. Never during the Cold War did an American president issue an ultimatum to the Soviet leader. What is Putin supposed to comply with? Trump hasn’t told us or Putin. It seems that Trump intends for Putin to make a deal with Zelensky to end the conflict. But how can Putin do this when Zelensky has said that his terms are for Russia to give back Donbas, Crimea, and pay war reparations, when Zelensky is no longer officially the president and has no authority to negotiate for Ukraine, and when Zelensky is merely the proxy that Washington is using in its war with Russia?Trump says it is not his war. Perhaps, but it is Washington’s war, and Trump is the president in Washington. So it is Trump’s war.

Trump can stop the war by ending weapons delivery, financing, and diplomatic cover, but Trump has not done so. Trump can stop the conflict by sitting down with Putin, understanding what Putin means by “the root causes of the war,” and addressing these issues, but Trump has not done so. Instead, Trump issues meaningless ultimatums that show that Trump is not sincere about ending tensions with Russia. Clearly, ultimatums are not the way to normalize relations.

As far as I can tell, the media have not asked Trump what the agreement is or what parts of the agreement are unacceptable to the Russians. It is reckless to issue threats to Russia in an atmosphere so tense. Putin’s efforts to avoid real war have been misinterpreted as irresolution, thus resulting in more provocations. Putin’s avoidance of war is leading to a larger war. At some point the provocation will go too far. Maybe it will be the missiles that Trump and the Germans are talking about firing at Moscow. This is the dangerous situation that urgently needs to be resolved, not the conflict in Ukraine. If the root causes are addressed, the war goes away.

Read more …

“The principle goal of US foreign policy is to prevent the rise of any country that can serve as a constraint on US unilateralism.”

• A Catastrophic War Seems Inevitable (Paul Craig Roberts)

Yesterday, August 4, Nima and I discussed on Dialogue Works the three iron constraints on the US government that seem to guarantee the world is heading into catastrophic war. https://www.youtube.com/live/AdnUdbcfp3U One constraint is the US foreign policy doctrine of US hegemony over the world, known as the Wolfowitz Doctrine: The principle goal of US foreign policy is to prevent the rise of any country that can serve as a constraint on US unilateralism. This doctrine targets Russia and China. As President Trump recently declared to the Atlantic magazine, ” I run the country and the world.” This is a statement of hegemony. Another constraint is the US military/security complex, a heavy political campaign contributor, which needs enemies, such as Russia, China, Iran, to justify its massive budget and power.

A third constraint is the blackmail power over the US and entire Western world of Epstein’s honey-trap Mossad operation that has films of members of the ruling class having sex with underaged persons. Wrapped up in these chains, no Western leader can undertake action to avoid war.Russian President Putin has contributed to the coming catastrophic war by his ignoring of provocations in the hope that in the end he would secure a mutual security agreement with Washington that would end the tensions that threaten both countries. Putin’s hopes were fruitless, because they ignored the Wolfowitz doctrine, the power of the US military-security complex, and Israel’s blackmail power over the government in America.

In A.P.J. Taylor’s history, The Origins of the Second World War, Taylor points out that the war, which no one intended, including Hitler, resulted from diplomatic blunders, the consequences of which no one understood.Today the same kind of blunders are being repeated, building tensions instead of reducing them. To these tensions Trump adds egomania, which is blinding. The failure of leadership will end in disastrous war.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

OK
https://twitter.com/NextNewsNetwork/status/1952523611631223064

RFK

Marik

Note


https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/1952454331296350587

Box
https://twitter.com/buitengebieden/status/1952632263125995766

lizard

 

 

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Debt Rattle August 1 2025

Aug 012025
 
 August 1, 2025  Posted by at 10:01 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  54 Responses »


Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Portrait of Vincent van Gogh 1887

 

• US Could Offer Russia Enormous Economic Deal – Politico (RT)
• Medvedev Mocks Trump’s ‘Nervous Reaction’ (RT)
• Trump Says Medvedev ‘Entering Very Dangerous Territory’ (RT)
• Trump and Medvedev’s Dangerous Exchange of Words (Scott Ritter)
• Trump Raises Tariff On Dozens Of Countries, With Minimum Rate Of 10% (ZH)
• ‘Damage Has Been Done’: Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Czar Slams Zelensky (RT)
• Whistleblower On Russia Collusion Hoax Threatened Over Reporting: ODNI (JTN)
• Brennan, Clapper Downplay Steele Dossier’s Impact In Russiagate Investigation (JTN)
• Declassified Durham Annex Confirms Hillary Clinton Plan To Smear Trump (ZH)
• Declassified Document Links Russiagate Hoax To Soros (RT)
• Zelensky Calls For ‘Regime Change’ In Russia (RT)
• Germany and Rest of EU Transforming Into Fourth Reich – Lavrov (RT)
• The EU Can’t Make Peace – Only Enemies (Bordachev)
• Even If Obama Has Immunity, He Could Face Prosecution (Margolis)
• MTG introduces Clean Skies Act Banning Weather Modification, Geoengineering (AmG)
• RFK Jr. Drops Stunning New Vaccine Announcement (VF)

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1950526910305292748

hillary

pelosi act
https://twitter.com/nicksortor/status/1950615656803480020

https://twitter.com/JesseBWatters/status/1950719164231905580

flynn

tulsi
https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/1950966222641639721

 

 

 

 

Kalo mina. Let’s start today in left field. If Politico is even half right here, that would shift the earth. It’s just that Russia’s principles are not for sale. Still, how much of Trump knows his current course leads to something he absolutely doesn’t want, war with Russia?!

• US Could Offer Russia Enormous Economic Deal – Politico (RT)

Diplomats in Eastern Europe have been raising concerns that US President Donald Trump could offer Moscow sweeping concessions and “enormous economic deals” to settle the Ukraine conflict, Politico has reported. In an article published on Thursday, citing Eastern European officials, US experts, and industry insiders, the outlet suggests that a Trump-led peace initiative might involve lifting sanctions on Russian energy – a move described as a “sledgehammer that could smash” Western efforts to isolate Moscow. “Of course, we are concerned about the talk of a return to Russian energy, and the lack of clarity about the US’ position,” an Eastern European official said.

Since the Ukraine conflict escalated in 2022, the West has imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia – with a heavy focus on energy – in a bid to cripple its economy and isolate it politically. The EU, once heavily reliant on Russian supplies, has sought to cut ties. However, Russia still accounts for 17.5% of its LNG imports, second only to the US, which holds a 45.3% share. In May, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen proposed phasing out all remaining Russian gas imports by the end of 2027. The plan drew strong criticism from several member states. The EU has invested heavily in LNG infrastructure, linking terminals to Central and Eastern Europe, with countries such as Lithuania prepared to pay a premium for American gas over the cheaper Russian alternative.

However, Politico noted that Brussels’ latest $750 billion energy deal with Washington would require the bloc to slash purchases from other suppliers, including cheaper sources, and more than triple its US imports. Still, the economic pull of Russian gas remains strong. In Germany, some politicians have signaled an openness to resuming imports to revive the country’s struggling industry. Russian energy, the sources noted, remains more affordable than US supplies, once shipping and processing costs are factored in. Russia maintains it is a reliable energy supplier and has denounced Western restrictions as illegal under international law. Moscow has redirected most exports to ‘friendly’ markets, mostly in Asia.

Read more …

“If some words from the former president of Russia trigger such a nervous reaction from the high-and-mighty president of the United States, then Russia is doing everything right..”

• Medvedev Mocks Trump’s ‘Nervous Reaction’ (RT)

US President Donald Trump’s angry comments toward Russian officials were a “nervous reaction” and are evidence that Moscow is pursuing the right path, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has said. Medvedev was responding to a post by Trump on Truth Social hours earlier, in which the US president described him as a “failed” former leader and warned him to “watch his words,” adding that Medvedev was “entering very dangerous territory.” “If some words from the former president of Russia trigger such a nervous reaction from the high-and-mighty president of the United States, then Russia is doing everything right and will continue to proceed along its own path,” Medvedev, who currently serves as deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, wrote on social media.

He also ridiculed Trump’s claim that the Russian and Indian economies were “dead” and going “down together” due to lack of cooperation with the US. Medvedev had earlier dismissed Trump’s demands for Moscow to swiftly end its military campaign against Ukraine, calling the threats of secondary sanctions against Russian energy customers “theatrical” and ineffective. Medvedev insisted that such ultimatums will not prevent Russia from pursuing its national security goals and merely make Trump appear similar to his predecessor, Joe Biden.

Trump previously criticized the BRICS group of nations, which includes Brazil, Russia, India, China, and several other states pursuing a new multipolar world order. The US president claimed proposed tariffs on countries doing business with BRICS members could cripple the organization. Trump’s statement regarding India and Medvedev followed New Delhi’s refusal to accommodate US demands on trade.

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I have no idea why Trump all of a sudden wants to address Medvedev.

• Trump Says Medvedev ‘Entering Very Dangerous Territory’ (RT)

US President Donald Trump has issued a warning to former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, calling him a “failed” leader and cautioning him against combative rhetoric. Medvedev, now serving as deputy chair of Russia’s Security Council, had earlier dismissed the notion that Trump, or any other US official, could dictate Moscow’s stance on the Ukraine conflict. His comments came in response to American calls for Russia to negotiate peace or face tougher sanctions. Trump fired back on Wednesday in a post on Truth Social, in which he vented frustration over resistance from Russia and India to his international trade agenda. He claimed both countries had “dead economies,” before singling out Medvedev.

“Tell Medvedev, the failed former President of Russia, who thinks he’s still President, to watch his words. He’s entering very dangerous territory!” Trump wrote. Medvedev responded, saying the “nervous” reaction by the American leader simply proved that Russia was right in its policy choices and should maintain its course. Earlier this week, Medvedev responded to remarks by US Senator Lindsey Graham, who warned Russia to comply with Trump’s demands for swift peace talks with Ukraine or face consequences. Medvedev retorted that “it’s not for you or Trump to dictate when to ‘get at the peace table.’”

Medvedev has criticized what he described as Trump’s “theatrical” ultimatums, warning that such pressure tactics only increase the risk of a direct conflict between the two nuclear powers. “Don’t go down the Sleepy Joe road!” he said, referencing Trump’s mocking nickname for former President Joe Biden. Russia continues to assert that it will meet all of its military objectives in the Ukraine conflict, whether by force or diplomacy. Officials in Moscow say a negotiated resolution is preferable but currently unfeasible due to what they describe as Kiev’s unreasonable positions and unwillingness to engage in good-faith talks.

Read more …

X post.

“..These missiles would be launched, broadcasting launch codes that would send all strategic nuclear force weapons to their targets, even if Moscow was taken out..”

• Trump and Medvedev’s Dangerous Exchange of Words (Scott Ritter)

As the rhetoric heats up, we must remain cognizant of the consequences. The sharp exchange of words between President Trump and former President Medvedev underscores just how dangerous the deteriorating relations between the US and Russia have become. The threats being promulgated are not idle ones. President Trump has become enthralled with the Israeli “Nasrallah” solution—leadership decapitation and middle management disruption designed to bring about the rapid collapse of a government/system. It was tried—and failed—in Iran. But Trump is being advised by Russophobes who believe that the US can successfully implement such a plan against Russia. This plan begins with sanctions, as all such plans do. It ends with a decapitation strike on Moscow.

Trump’s imagined conversation with Putin, where he threatened to “bomb the sh*t out of Moscow”, is indicative of the President’s thinking in this regard. The preferred decapitation strike is done using B-52 bombers launching cruise missiles, accompanied by Trident missiles launched from Ohio-class submarines operating off the coast of Russia, allowing for a flatter trajectory flight and shorter flight time. Medvedev’s comment about the “Dead Hand” indicates that Russia is well aware of Trump’s plans. The “Dead Hand”, or Perimeter system, is a long-standing fail-safe mechanism/plan which guarantees a full-scale nuclear retaliation in case any nation is foolish enough to try a decapitation strike. It dates back to Soviet times, when a special regiment of SS-20 missiles was equipped with radio transmission devices instead of warheads.

These missiles would be launched, broadcasting launch codes that would send all strategic nuclear force weapons to their targets, even if Moscow was taken out. This wasn’t theoretical—in my book Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika, I write about how the Soviets transitioned this capability to the SS-25 system once the SS-20 was eliminated under the INF treaty. Today this mission is being handled by special regiment of SS-27 missiles. There are other components of the “Dead Hand”. Medvedev’s mentioning of it is a not-to-gentle reminder to Trump and his planners that it is suicide to think of a preemptive decapitation strike against Russia. Hopefully this message gets through. Otherwise, the “Walking Dead” allusion made by Medvedev will be the future of the United States and the world.

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Too many changes, too fast?! Who can keep up?

• Trump Raises Tariff On Dozens Of Countries, With Minimum Rate Of 10% (ZH)

Almost 4 months after Liberation Day sparked a global market crash, moments ago T-Day finally arrived… and barely anyone noticed. Late on Thursday, just ahead of the August 1 deadline for tariff renegotiation, President Trump announced a slew of new tariffs, including a 10% global minimum and 15% or higher duties for countries with trade surpluses with the US, forging ahead with his unprecedented effort to reshape international commerce. First, the silver lining: baseline rates for many trading partners remain unchanged from the duties Trump imposed in April, which may ease investors’ worst fears – although with the S&P sitting at record highs it is difficult to claim anyone had any fears about anything – after the president had previously said they could even double. Yet Trump’s decision to raise tariffs on Canadian goods to 35% threatens to inject fresh tensions into an already strained relationship.

Trump signed the new tariff directive just hours before his prior Aug. 1 deadline for higher tariffs to kick in on scores of trading partners. As Bloomberg reports, most tariffs will take effect after midnight on Aug 7, to allow time for US Customs and Border Protection to make necessary changes to collect the levies. Taken together, the result will be significantly higher tariffs on goods from almost all US trading partners. The average US tariff rate will rise to 15.2% if rates are implemented as announced, according to Bloomberg Economics, an increase from 13.3%, and significantly higher than the 2.3% it was in 2024, before Trump took office. Major industrialized economies, including the European Union, Japan and South Korea, accepted 15% duties on their products, while charges on items from Mexico, Canada and China are even bigger.

Today’s announcement notwithstanding, Trump is expected to unveil separate tariffs on imports of pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, critical minerals and other key industrial products in the coming weeks. Other details are also forthcoming, including so-called “rules of origin” to decide which products are transshipped, or routed through another country, and thus would face at least a 40% rate, a senior US official told Bloomberg, adding that a decision will be made in the coming weeks. The senior US official said there is no date yet when revised auto tariff rates would be implemented. Thursday’s order was signed behind closed doors without the fanfare of Trump’s April tariff rollout, during which he brandished placards with rates during a Rose Garden event. Since then Trump has faced criticism for overpromising on trade deals after he and aides vowed to broker numerous agreements, with at least one pledging “90 deals in 90 days.”

In the end, imports from about 40 countries will face the new 15% rate and roughly a dozen economies’ products will be hit with higher duties, either because they reached a deal or Trump sent them a letter unilaterally setting import taxes. The latter group has the highest goods-trade surpluses with the US. Some of those were expected, such as a 25% levy on Indian exports that Trump announced this week on social media. Others included charges of 20% on Taiwanese products and 30% on South African goods. Thailand and Cambodia, two countries that were said to have struck a last-minute deal, received a 19% duty, matching rates imposed on regional neighbors including Indonesia and the Philippines. Vietnam’s goods will be tariffed at 20%, according to the WSJ. Trump’s deals with the EU, Japan and South Korea would lower duties on their vehicle exports to 15% from the general rate of 25%.

In a separate order, Trump followed through on his threat to hike tariffs on exports from Canada, one of the US’s largest trading partners, from 25% to 35% for goods that do not comply with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. That change excludes goods that are covered under the North American trade pact he negotiated in his first term. That stood in contrast to the 90-day extension Mexico received to negotiate a better agreement. Earlier in the day, Trump wrote on Truth Social that he agreed to extend for 90 days the existing tariffs on Mexican goods. He said a 25% fentanyl tariff, a 25% tariff on cars and a 50% tariff on steel, aluminum and copper would remain in place. Still other nations are set to be hit with even higher tariffs. Trump has pledged to hike tariffs to 50% on Brazil over its digital policies and legal action against former President Jair Bolsonaro, a Trump ally.

The lower 10% and 15% rates are expected to apply to a wide range of mostly smaller- and medium-sized economies that Trump showed little interest in bargaining with one-on-one. He had signaled in recent days there were simply too many countries to cut individualized deals with all of them. Some smaller states, however, were hit with the highest rates, including Syria at 41%, as well as Laos and Myanmar and 40% each, both preferred hubs of Chinese transshipments. [..] One big exception from this week’s deadline is China, which faces an Aug. 12 deadline for its tariff truce with the US to expire. The Trump administration has signaled that is likely to be extended. No final decision has been made but the recent US-China talks in Stockholm were positive, the official said.

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If you give in to street protests, you’re found out.

• ‘Damage Has Been Done’: Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Czar Slams Zelensky (RT)

Ukraine’s top anti-corruption prosecutor has accused Vladimir Zelensky of severely undermining the country’s independent anti-graft institutions, warning that his U-turn – under pressure from protesters and Western backers – will not remedy the damage done. The remarks come following a wave of protests and widespread international criticism over Zelensky’s attempt to bring the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) and the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) under the authority of the executive branch, which he controls. Despite Zelenksy announcing a U-turn following threats of funding cuts from Brussels, the head of SAPO, Aleksandr Klimenko, has insisted that serious damage has already been done.

“Our work has been effectively stopped,” Klimenko said in an interview with the Financial Times published on Wednesday, explaining that the takeover triggered a collapse in cooperation from whistleblowers and raised fears of persecution among investigators. “Almost all of our whistleblowers stopped co-operating with us,” Klimenko stated. “The NABU team is currently confused and frightened because they understand they can be detained without sufficient evidence.” The move to place SAPO and NABU under presidential control – which parliament passed on July 22 and Zelensky signed the same evening – immediately sparked protests in Kiev, Lviv, Dnepr, Odessa, and other cities. Demonstrators demanded full restoration of the agencies’ independence, shouting slogans such as ”Corruption kills,” ”Treason,” and “Zelya is the devil.”

The public backlash and criticism from Kiev’s Western sponsors prompted Zelensky to submit a new bill, promising to reinstate full autonomy for the anti-corruption bodies. A parliamentary vote on the legislation is expected to take place on Thursday, but its passage remains uncertain due to wavering support within his own party. Klimenko revealed that ahead of the raid, SAPO and NABU were investigating corruption allegations involving 31 sitting lawmakers and 40 former MPs, including members of Zelensky’s ruling party. He suggested the attacks on the anti-graft bodies were likely motivated by attempts to derail these investigations. The SAPO chief explained that the anti-graft agencies managed to maintain their independence over the years “largely thanks to international partners – especially the Americans,” but once “interest and pressure waned, that’s part of why this attack was possible.”

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“..statements from a direct supervisor pressuring intelligence officials to endorse the ICA to receive a promotion..”

• Whistleblower On Russia Collusion Hoax Threatened Over Reporting: ODNI (JTN)

A senior intelligence official, who was a whistleblower in the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, was threatened over reporting wrongdoing, according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. On Wednesday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released new documents that give a firsthand account of what the office say is the whistleblower’s “relentless efforts to expose the egregious manipulation and manufacturing of intelligence.” The documents include the whistleblower’s work done in the months leading up to the November 2016 election, their concerns about using “discredited information as then-DNI Clapper and Central Intelligence Agency Director Brennan worked to craft the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) at President Obama’s request,” and how a direct supervisor attempted to pressure them to endorse the key findings of the ICA about the Russian government’s alleged support for Donald Trump at the time, according to the office.

“Thank you to the brave Intelligence Community Whistleblower who courageously came forward to expose the truth about one of the biggest and most impactful scandals in our nation’s history,” Gabbard said in a statement. The documents include what the whistleblower alleges are statements from a direct supervisor pressuring intelligence officials to endorse the ICA to receive a promotion and concerns over flawed intelligence practices, such as choosing to use open-source references to Russian media as “evidence” for the Russian government’s support for Trump, but ignoring foreign media from other countries, including NATO allies, that supported Hillary Clinton and denigrated Trump.

According to the whistleblower’s records, then-DNI James Clapper and other senior Obama administration officials denounced the Steele dossier privately, but also ensured that the January 2017 ICA included it. The dossier was political opposition research on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign compiled by British counterintelligence specialist Christopher Steele. The finding in the report that the campaign appeared to collude with Russia have now been debunked. The whistleblower reported their concerns to more than a dozen government offices including to the office of Justice Department special counsel John Durham, the intelligence community inspector general, a U.S. senator and other official whistleblower channels over the last six years.

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There are rumors circling that Brennan still today has intensive contacts inside the CIA.

• Brennan, Clapper Downplay Steele Dossier’s Impact In Russiagate Investigation (JTN)

Former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper on Wednesday hit back at the Trump administration over allegations they were involved in a treasonous scheme related to Russiagate. The Trump administration and Senate Republicans have recently declassified intelligence reports that allegedly reveal a plot by former President Barack Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to falsely link President Donald Trump to Russia to distract from Clinton’s own classified email server scandal in 2016. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard earlier this month also stated that her office had “revealed overwhelming evidence that demonstrates how, after President Donald Trump won the 2016 election against Hillary Clinton, President Barack Obama and his national security cabinet members manufactured and politicized intelligence to lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump.”

The report released by Gabbard also alleges the December 2016 Intelligence Community Assessment glossed over evidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin may have favored (or at least fully expected) a Hillary Clinton victory nine years ago. Brennan and Clapper on Wednesday defended their investigation in an opinion piece for the New York Times, and claimed that the assessment was focused on Russia’s actions, not whether the country colluded with someone in the U.S. “The assessment made no judgment about the impact of Russian information operations on the outcome of the election,” the former intelligence officials wrote. “While some state and local electoral boards and voter information and registration systems were accessed by Russian intelligence, the assessment made clear that none of those types of systems were involved in counting votes.

“Russian influence operations might have shaped the views of Americans before they entered the voting booth, but we found no evidence that the Russians changed any actual votes,” they added. They also pushed back on the use of the now-discredited Steele Dossier in their investigation, stating that the dossier was “not a source or taken into account for any of its analysis or conclusions.” “We have testified under oath, and the reviews of the assessment have confirmed, that the dossier was not used as a source or taken into account for any of its analysis or conclusions,” the pair said. “At the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s insistence, a short summary of the dossier was added as a separate annex only to the most highly classified version of the document that contained the assessment. That annex also explained why the dossier was not used in the assessment.”

The duo additionally defended the validity of the 2016 intelligence assessment, arguing that even the bipartisan Senate Select Committee on Intelligence validated the assessment’s findings. The select committee included now Secretary of State Marco Rubio. “While some external critiques have noted that parts of the Russia investigation could have been handled better, multiple, thorough, yearslong reviews of the assessment have validated its findings and the rigor of its analysis,” the pair said. “The special counsel John Durham, who was appointed during Trump’s first term to investigate how the Russia probe was conducted, similarly found no evidence of an Obama administration conspiracy against Trump,” they continued. “But he affirmed the findings of the special counsel Robert Mueller, who conducted a separate investigation into the allegations, which found ample evidence of Russian interference in the election.”

The pair concluded by defending their efforts to keep the intelligence review under wraps, declaring that they knew any leaks about Russia’s meddling in the election would become “political dynamite.” “Despite claims by Trump administration officials of a nefarious political conspiracy, we did everything we could at the time to prevent leaks of intelligence reports, including Russia’s preference for Mr. Trump, a requirement that President Obama regularly emphasized,” they wrote. “We knew such reports would be political dynamite. And despite substantial reporting on the matter, we succeeded in preventing such leaks before the election.”

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The Durham Annex is a treasure trove.. Much more to come. Does make one wonder why so much was buried in an annex.

• Declassified Durham Annex Confirms Hillary Clinton Plan To Smear Trump (ZH)

On Thursday, newly declassified documents reveal that not only did the CIA believe a Russian intelligence assessment that the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign planned to smear Donald Trump by linking him to the Kremlin, it’s clear that the FBI helped the Clinton campaign orchestrate the Russia hoax to distract from its investigation into her emails.

To review:
• Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard earlier this month declassified several documents – including a 2020 House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) report and other intelligence communications revealing that the Obama administration “manufactured and politicized intelligence” to create a false narrative that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump defeat Hillary Clinton.
• Gabbard’s releases highlight the inclusion of the Steele dossier – an unverified report funded by the Clinton campaign alleging ties between Trump and Russia – in the 2017 ICA as an annex. The hoax dossier was used to bolster the Russian interference narrative, despite CIA objections and its discredited status. The HPSCI report states that Brennan insisted on referencing the dossier, even though senior CIA officers warned it was flawed, with Brennan allegedly saying, “doesn’t it ring true?
• Gabbard has called these actions a “treasonous conspiracy” led by Obama, Brennan, Clapper, James Comey, Susan Rice, and others, aimed at undermining Trump’s presidency. She has referred the documents to the Justice Department and FBI for investigation into potential criminal implications.

And now we have the Durham annex… which includes a 2016 memorandum alleging that Russian intelligence knew of a Clinton campaign plan to tie Trump to Russian hackers. This memo claims the plan was designed to “distract the [American] public from the Clinton email server scandal.” Gabbard’s HPSCI report similarly references Russian intelligence claiming Clinton’s campaign discussed linking Putin to Trump.

• Clinton’s Approval of Smear Campaign: Pages 4 and 5 of the annex, highlighted in X posts, contain a 2016 memorandum alleging that Clinton personally approved a plan on July 26, 2016, to frame Trump with Russian hacking claims. • The memo suggests this was to distract from her email scandal, with coordination involving DNC leadership and outside groups.
Russian Intelligence Awareness: The annex confirms that Russian intelligence was aware of this plan, which aligns with Gabbard’s claim that the FBI and CIA had access to this information but pursued the Trump-Russia narrative anyway.
• No New Criminal Charges: Despite these allegations, Durham’s broader investigation (2019–2023) found no evidence of a criminal conspiracy among Obama officials to fabricate intelligence. He criticized the FBI’s handling of the Steele dossier and Crossfire Hurricane but did not charge Brennan, Clapper, or others named by Gabbard.

As ZH regular TechnoFog notes;

To briefly summarize, the Classified Appendix provided further information about the matters covered in parts of Durham’s report – specifically, those relating to Hillary Clinton’s plan to link Trump and Russia; the threat of foreign influence by a foreign government; and the Carter Page FISA application renewals. But the most material information covers the Clinton Plan, and provides further details on how that plan started, efforts by Clinton and her team to influence officials within the Obama Administration, and how the Clinton Campaign would use Crowdstrike to further their theory that the Russians hacked and leaked information from the Democratic National Convention (DNC) and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). The Smoking Gun(s)…

https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1950940242401280278?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1950940242401280278%7Ctwgr%5Efd3b7c821c19fe93912eb2c9416995b1c9e80227%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fsmoking-gun-declassified-durham-appendix-confirms-hillary-clinton-plan-smear-trump-use

And as Michael Shellenberger notes, the CIA believed Russian memos mentioning a Clinton plan to smear Trump as a Russian asset: “The CIA prepared a written assessment of the authenticity and veracity of the above-mentioned intelligence. The CIA stated that it did not assess that the above [redacted] memoranda or [redacted] hacked U.S. communications, to be the product of Russian fabrications.” What’s more, other memos reveal that the plan was to have Crowdstrike and ‘ThreatConnect’ spin narratives to the media in the absence of actual evidence of Trump-Russia collusion. Stay tuned, things are getting spicier…

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“..Clinton’s foreign policy adviser Julianne Smith, who said the future Russiagate “will be a long term affair to demonize [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and Trump.”

• Declassified Document Links Russiagate Hoax To Soros (RT)

A newly unclassified document suggests George Soros’ Open Society Foundation was involved in the effort by the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016 to falsely accuse then-candidate Donald Trump of ties to Russia. The document, a 29-page annex to John Durham’s 2023 Special Counsel report, was released by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday shortly after it was declassified. It sheds more light on what Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) described as “one of the biggest political scandals and cover-ups in American history.” “Based on the Durham annex, the Obama FBI failed to adequately review and investigate intelligence reports showing the Clinton campaign may have been ginning up the fake Trump-Russia narrative for Clinton’s political gain… These intelligence reports and related records, whether true or false, were buried for years,” Grassley said in a statement.

The annex cites several emails allegedly sent by Leonard Benardo, senior vice president of Open Society Foundations, throughout July 2016, which provide details on the Clinton campaign’s plans to falsely accuse Trump of Russia links and tie him to the alleged Democratic National Committee (DNC) hack. Analysis by the Durham team concluded the Benardo emails “were likely authentic,” the annex states.“During the first stage of the campaign, due to lack of direct evidence, it was decided to disseminate the necessary information through the FBI-affiliated ‘attic-based’ technical structures… in particular, the Crowdstrike and ThreatConnect companies, from where the information would then be disseminated through leading US publications,” one of the emails reads.

Another email purportedly sent by Benardo states that the “media analysis on the DNC hacking appears solid” and suggests that “later the FBI will put more oil into fire,” apparently predicting the probe by the agency. It also cites an individual named “Julie,” identified in the annex as Clinton’s foreign policy adviser Julianne Smith, who said the future Russiagate “will be a long term affair to demonize [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and Trump.”

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“It’s time to confiscate Russian assets, not just freeze them..,”

• Zelensky Calls For ‘Regime Change’ In Russia (RT)

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has called on Kiev’s Western backers to push for regime change in Moscow in order to “defend” themselves from alleged “Russian aggression.” The Ukrainian leader delivered his remarks during a conference marking the 50th anniversary of the Helsinki Accords, which emphasized equal and indivisible security for all. In an article published for the same occasion, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov argued that the West’s betrayal of those core principles was a key factor that led to the ongoing conflict. “I believe Russia can be pushed to stop this war… But if the world doesn’t aim to change the regime in Russia, that means even after the war ends, Moscow will still try to destabilize neighboring countries,” Zelensky said in his virtual address.

“It’s time to confiscate Russian assets, not just freeze them,” he added, urging Kiev’s sponsors to “put every frozen Russian asset… to work defending against Russian aggression.” Moscow has repeatedly dismissed speculation that Russia plans to attack the EU and NATO as “nonsense.” Lavrov said the EU is sliding into what he described as a “Fourth Reich,” marked by a surge in Russophobia and aggressive militarization, while President Vladimir Putin has accused Western states of deceiving their populations to justify inflated military budgets and cover up economic failures.

Russia has stated that it is ready to negotiate peace with Ukraine and has held several rounds of direct talks with Kiev in recent months. At the same time, it has accused Ukraine and its Western backers of lacking interest in reaching a long-term solution that addresses the root causes of the conflict and the territorial reality on the ground. Moscow has also raised concerns about Zelensky’s legal authority. His five-year presidential term expired in May 2024, but he has refused to call new elections, citing martial law. Russian officials have suggested that any documents signed under his name could later be challenged, insisting that the true power now lies with the Ukrainian parliament.

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“If they want to be part of the process, they must learn proper manners, abandon diktat and colonial instincts, and get used to equality and teamwork.”

• Germany and Rest of EU Transforming Into Fourth Reich – Lavrov (RT)

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has accused Germany and the wider European Union of sliding into what he described as a “Fourth Reich,” marked by a surge in Russophobia and aggressive militarization. The stark warning was delivered in an article published on Friday in the newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 1975 Helsinki Final Act on European security. Lavrov criticized the EU and NATO for betraying the core principles of the Helsinki process, which emphasized equal and indivisible security for all. Instead, he claimed that Western powers have pursued unilateral dominance, NATO expansion, and political interference in sovereign states under the guise of promoting democracy and human rights.

“Today’s Europe has completely plunged into a Russophobic frenzy, and its militarization is becoming, in fact, uncontrolled,” Lavrov wrote, citing German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s calls to build Europe’s strongest army and reintroduce conscription as evidence. He also pointed to recent remarks by Germany’s defense minister about the need to be prepared to kill Russian soldiers as further proof of a hostile and dehumanizing agenda. This brings historical events to mind. With their current leaders, modern Germany and the rest of Europe are transforming into a Fourth Reich. He argued that the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has failed in its mission and has instead become a vehicle for Western propaganda and selective enforcement. He said the West ignored Russian calls for equitable security guarantees, and that NATO’s continued encroachment on Russia’s borders left Moscow no choice but to launch its 2022 military operation in Ukraine.

To defuse tensions, Lavrov called for “an honest dialogue” aimed at stabilizing the situation on the Eurasian continent through a new security framework based on sovereign equality and the principles of the UN Charter. “There will be a place for European countries within this architecture,” he wrote, “but they certainly will not be the ones calling the tune. If they want to be part of the process, they must learn proper manners, abandon diktat and colonial instincts, and get used to equality and teamwork.” Lavrov concluded by warning that if NATO and the EU continue to hollow out the OSCE’s core principles, the organization may collapse altogether, and history will remember those who “buried” the last chance for peaceful coexistence in Europe.

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“Europe is leaving the world stage in disgrace..”

• The EU Can’t Make Peace – Only Enemies (Bordachev)

The most dangerous thing about Western Europe today is not just its decline, but its refusal to recognize it. The half-continent continues to posture, continues to lecture, and continues to imagine itself as a pillar of global order. But it has lost the internal resources that once sustained that illusion. What remains is a hollow echo of power, wrapped in a language of values that even those same Western Europeans no longer seem to believe. The region’s failure is most visible in its inability to make peace. Time and again, it chooses confrontation – with Russia, with China, with reality itself. Devoid of meaningful autonomy, it now functions as a permanent appendage of the US. It is no longer an actor on the world stage, but a supporting cast member, often unwelcome and increasingly irrelevant.

Western Europe’s descent has been rapid. Just 10 or 15 years ago, it projected global importance and confidence. Today, the cracks are impossible to ignore. The reasons are many: Elite degradation, political inertia, a population gripped by apathy. But above all, it is the bloc’s unrelenting selfishness – its refusal to give, only to demand – that lies at the heart of this collapse. Nowhere was this clearer than in last week’s failed EU-China summit. Eurocrats went to Beijing with nothing to offer, only with a desire to extract. China, which has no historical affection for Western Europe, responded accordingly. There was simply nothing to discuss.

And then, as if to underscore its strategic drift, the bloc offered a humiliating concession to the US. Faced with the threat of new tariffs, Brussels agreed to purchase American energy and weapons in vast quantities. So much for ‘strategic autonomy’. These are not signs of a serious power. These are the actions of a civilization on the back foot, stumbling blindly into dependence. Anyone still speaking of a sovereign EU industrial or defense policy is either a fantasist or a liar. What then does Western Europe have to offer the world? One might say historical symphonic music. But beyond that, its legacy is one of oppression and self-justifying tyranny. Its technical achievements were built to subjugate others. Its political philosophy was designed to defend conquest and exploitation.

Fifteen years ago, I sat in a closed meeting organized by Federica Mogherini, the EU’s foreign policy chief at the time. The topic: Western Europe’s new role in the world. The one suggestion they could not accept was that the bloc should offer something to the world without expecting a reward. Their worldview simply doesn’t allow for that. Even in climate change – a cause that should unite the planet – the EU has turned the issue into a cynical trade weapon, using green regulations to punish developing countries. The result? Western Europe stands alone. It has lost its power, and with it, its relevance. Worse, it doesn’t even seem to understand what it’s lost.

Can the region still pose a threat? Possibly. But not because it has the strength. Rather, because it has the recklessness. Its politicians lack vision, competence, or restraint. They cannot imagine peace. And so they default to confrontation – especially with Russia. The danger is not that Western Europe is ready to fight. Its people enjoy lives too comfortable to risk. Its defense industry is in disrepair. But wars can begin through stupidity as well as strength. EU elites, betting on regime change in Moscow, continue to pour weapons into Ukraine. Some dream of extending the conflict into the Baltics. Others talk of arming mercenaries to fight Russia directly.

The Americans won’t die for Europe. That much is clear. But the EU may yet drag the world into catastrophe, simply by being incapable of restraint. If by some miracle a wider war is avoided, what then? What is Western Europe’s future? A museum of irrelevance? A vassal of Washington? Already it is falling behind in science, in technology, in global influence. It doesn’t know where it belongs, and is incapable of adjusting. It will become a permanent satellite of the US – militarily, politically, and economically. Key industries will be handed over. National elites will lose the power to govern. The Collective West as we know it will vanish. In its place: America, and a few adjacent territories managed by obedient proxies. Perhaps this is what Western Europe deserves. It is certainly the path it has chosen.

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“Because of that immunity, he loses the ability to invoke the Fifth Amendment if he’s called before a grand jury..”

• Even If Obama Has Immunity, He Could Face Prosecution (Margolis)

Barack Obama may soon be facing the consequences of a trap he helped set. As we previously reported, investigative journalist John Solomon told Steve Bannon last week that Obama likely won’t be indicted for his role in the Russiagate scandal despite the mounting declassified evidence tying him directly to the scheme. However, he may be wrong. As I’ve pointed out, Obama could indeed face indictment because the Supreme Court did not give presidents blanket immunity. The court ruled that “The President enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official. The President is not above the law.” Still, Solomon believes that while Obama may avoid formal charges, he’s far from out of legal jeopardy and could be facing serious trouble ahead.

Appearing on Real America’s Voice, Solomon laid out the real legal problems facing the former president. He echoed the widespread belief that the Supreme Court’s ruling shields Obama from prosecution for official acts performed as president. Solomon didn’t stop there. Even he knows that’s not the full story, and this time, neither immunity nor the careful spin of “official acts” will shield Obama from scrutiny. “However, Barack Obama can now be summoned before a grand jury. He cannot take the Fifth Amendment because he has immunity from prosecution. He’ll have to tell the truth. If he lies as a private citizen about what he did as president, he’ll no longer have that immunity.”

It’s an irony that hangs heavy, given Obama’s own tactics as president. “The irony of that is significant, because on Jan. 5, 2017, he presided over a meeting in the White House where the FBI had just cleared Mike Flynn of any wrongdoing. And they schemed in that meeting how they might be able to jam up Mike Flynn. They came up with the idea: ‘We’ll lure him into an interview, catch him in a lie, and then prosecute him that way.’ Barack Obama is now about to face a potentially similar situation—one he unfairly created for Mike Flynn.”

If we accept Solomon’s assessment that Obama has immunity that may keep him safe in the technical sense for official acts, it’s now a double-edged sword. Because of that immunity, he loses the ability to invoke the Fifth Amendment if he’s called before a grand jury to testify about what actually transpired in his White House during those fraught days—especially regarding the plotting against General Flynn. He’ll be compelled to answer directly, under oath. And if he lies, he is in legal jeopardy—the exact “trap” his own administration foisted on Flynn. I still think Obama isn’t protected because the Supreme Court indicated that not all acts by the president are official. Actions motivated by politics or personal vendetta don’t get the same constitutional shelter as legitimate actions. Nobody gets to walk free simply because they once held power. The Supreme Court’s ruling was a test, and Obama is about to find out just how limited immunity can be once he steps outside those constitutional boundaries. One way or another, justice may come for Barack Obama.

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Good on her. Got to start somewhere.

• MTG introduces Clean Skies Act Banning Weather Modification, Geoengineering (AmG)

Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has introduced the Clear Skies Act of 2025 calling for an end to what she calls the “dangerous and deadly practice of weather modification and geoengineering.” The bill, designated H.R. 4403, would prohibit weather modification through the use of geoengineering, cloud seeding, and solar radiation management through the release of chemicals into the atmosphere to change the weather, temperature, climate or to block out sunlight. If enacted, the law would punish weather modification violations as a felony with offenders facing up to $100,000 in fines and/or five years in prison for each violation.

https://twitter.com/RepMTG/status/1949890795982496004?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1949890795982496004%7Ctwgr%5Ec12e17fa6e6532683cb2d5ac343102f5339b1e3d%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Famgreatness.com%2F2025%2F07%2F29%2Frep-greene-introduces-clean-skies-act-banning-weather-modification-geoengineering%2F

Greene says her bill is similar to Florida’s S.B. 56 which repeals the state’s ability to issue permits for geoengineering and weather modification and prohibits the injection, release, or dispersion of chemicals or substances into the atmosphere for the express purpose of altering weather, temperature, climate, or sunlight intensity. Under the Clear Skies Act, all existing federal authority and executive orders permitting weather modification would be repealed and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Department of Justice (DOJ) would be directed to investigate and prosecute violations.

H.B. 4403 would also create a public reporting system that would allow Americans to report suspicious activity and which the EPA would be required to investigate. In announcing the Clear Skies Act Greene spoke of the need to protect the nation’s skies, waters and people from weather modification, saying, “It’s time to end this dangerous and unregulated practice.”

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“Over 39 years, the VICP has awarded just $5.4 billion to 12,000 victims. That comes out to about “1.2 awards per million doses administered.”

• RFK Jr. Drops Stunning New Vaccine Announcement (VF)

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. just took aim at a system that has failed Americans for nearly 40 years, the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP). This program was created under the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, which shielded vaccine manufacturers from lawsuits over injury claims. Before becoming HHS Secretary, Kennedy exposed how vaccine manufacturers were being hammered with lawsuits due to injuries. One of the largest manufacturers at the time, Wyeth (now part of Pfizer), reportedly told President Reagan: give us legal protection or we’ll stop making vaccines. Reagan’s response? Why not just make safer vaccines? Wyeth’s answer: Vaccines are “unavoidably unsafe.”

That phrase—“unavoidably unsafe”—would later appear in a Supreme Court decision and reflects the legal premise that some vaccine injuries are inevitable. “And so, anybody who tells you vaccines are safe and effective, the industry itself got immunity from liability by convincing the President and Congress that vaccines are unavoidably unsafe,” Kennedy previously stated. Senator Edward Kennedy, a key sponsor of the law, wrote at the time: “When … children are the victims of an appropriate and rational national policy, a compassionate government will assist them in their hour of need.” That compassionate government never showed up. Over 39 years, the VICP has awarded just $5.4 billion to 12,000 victims. That comes out to about “1.2 awards per million doses administered.”

In a brand-new statement on X, Secretary Kennedy said he intends to FIX the broken system. He explained that the court was meant to resolve claims “quickly and fairly,” with “doubts about causation resolved in favor of the victim.” But that hasn’t happened. “The structure itself hobbles claimants,” Kennedy wrote. “The defendant is HHS, not the vaccine makers; and claimants are therefore facing the monumental power and bottomless pockets of the U.S. government represented by the Department of Justice.” He explained how Special Masters, who decide the cases, often come from government or political backgrounds and typically show a strong pro-government bias. “There is no discovery, and the rules of evidence do not apply,” Kennedy lamented.

He added that petitioners’ attorneys report retaliation, fee suppression, and even denied access to the Vaccine Safety Datalink, a taxpayer-funded CDC database containing the best data on vaccine injuries. Worse, expert witnesses for injured children have reported intimidation and threats to their careers, including the loss of NIH funding if they testify. But Kennedy says that era is over. “The VICP is broken, and I intend to fix it,” he wrote on X. “I will not allow the VICP to continue to ignore its mandate and fail its mission of quickly and fairly compensating vaccine-injured individuals.” Kennedy added that he is working closely with AG Pam Bondi and HHS staff to restore the court’s original mission and pledges to “steer the Vaccine Court back to its original Congressional intent.”

https://twitter.com/TRUMP_ARMY_/status/1950866812683407360

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https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/1950715548259459211

werner
https://twitter.com/GenFlynn/status/1950885611147002295

lagarde

 

 

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Debt Rattle July 2 2025

Jul 022025
 
 July 2, 2025  Posted by at 8:25 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  32 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Woman with blue collar (Portrait d’Inez) 1941

 

• Senate Passes the ‘One Big, Beautiful Bill’-With 3 GOP Defections (Margolis)
• Trump Says DOGE Should Investigate Musk (RT)
• Trump Vs. Musk: “Big, Beautiful Bill” Feud Sparks Overnight Firestorm (ZH)
• Media Forced To Admit Trump’s Tariffs Are Working As Revenues Spike (ZH)
• Pentagon Halts Weapons Supplies To Kiev Over Depleting Stockpiles (RT)
• ‘Catastrophic’ Budget Increase Will Destroy NATO – Lavrov (RT)
• Putin and Macron Talk For First Time In Three Years – Kremlin (RT)
• Italy Could Classify $13.5 Billion Bridge As NATO Spending – Poltico (RT)
• 1 in 5 Illegal Migrants Now Simply Flying Into Germany (RMX)
• Poland Reintroduces Immigration Controls (RT)
• President Trump’s Plan for the Middle East (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Trump Says Israel Agrees To 60-Day Gaza Ceasefire, Urges Hamas To Accept (ZH)
• Syria Could Drop Demand That Israel Return The Golan Heights (RT)
• AI Is The Only Thing Keeping The World From Total Stagnation – Peter Thiel (Flor)
• Kennedy Labels US Democrats ‘War Party’ (RT)
• RFK Jr. Unloads Disturbing Vaccine Secrets On Tucker (VF)

 

 

https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1940120314744070596

Miller census
https://twitter.com/nicksortor/status/1939702115515191304

RFK

j6

https://twitter.com/TheGabriel72/status/1939831962224529910

Candace

Fraud

 

 

Ritter’s Rant 017: The Blame Game

 

 

 

 

“We’re just extending current tax policy,” he said. “We are preventing a $4 trillion tax increase on the American people. When you vote against this, that’s who you’d be voting for.”

• Senate Passes the ‘One Big, Beautiful Bill’-With 3 GOP Defections (Margolis)

After days of gridlock and backroom wrangling, the Senate today passed the “One Big, Beautiful Bill,’ the legislative linchpin of President Trump’s second-term agenda. The tally was 51 yeas and 50 nays, with Vice President JD Vance casting the tiebreaking vote. The Senate was locked in a “vote-a-rama”—a procedural endurance test where senators burn the midnight oil, lobbing amendment after amendment in a desperate bid to tweak, torpedo, or salvage the bill. With a razor-thin majority, Republicans could not afford more than three defections, which is why Vice President JD Vance was summoned to the Capitol to cast the tie-breaking vote. Vance has already played this role before, and it’s clear the White House was counting on him to drag this bill across the finish line.

The real drama, however, wasn’t coming from Democrats—they were united in opposition, as always—but from within the GOP ranks. Senators like Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins became the focal points of intense lobbying, their votes courted with a mix of sweeteners and veiled threats. In the end, Murkowski voted for the bill; Collins voted against it, along with Sens. Thom Tillis and Rand Paul. Naturally, Democrats were panicking, posting apocalyptic predictions on social media. On Monday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune blasted Democrats for what he called a “mind-blowing” display of hypocrisy over the national debt, accusing them of pretending to care about fiscal responsibility now that Republicans are in charge.

“It is rich to hear Democrats all of a sudden concerned about debt and deficits,” Thune said on the Senate floor, as lawmakers debated President Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill.” “Really? I mean, I’ve been here a long time, and I’ve not been involved in a single spending debate in which Republicans [weren’t] trying to spend less and Democrats [weren’t] trying to spend more—except when it comes to national security. Democrats are always willing to cut defense, but never want to cut anywhere else.” Thune reminded the chamber that Democrats had full control of Congress and the White House just a few years ago and used reconciliation not to cut deficits, but to push through massive spending packages.

“One of the bills cost $2 trillion. The other cost $1 trillion. And it was all spending,” he said. “That’s the fundamental difference between us. Democrats like government—and when you send money to Washington, money is power.” Thune contrasted that with the GOP’s effort to stop a looming tax hike. “We’re just extending current tax policy,” he said. “We are preventing a $4 trillion tax increase on the American people. When you vote against this, that’s who you’d be voting for.” The bill now heads to the House.

Massie

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Has he offered to repay the $400 million Musk paid into his campaign?

• Trump Says DOGE Should Investigate Musk (RT)

US President Donald Trump has suggested that Elon Musk should be investigated by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which the tech billionaire formerly headed, for allegedly benefiting excessively from government subsidies. Musk, a former ally of Trump, stepped down as the head of DOGE last month amid disagreements with the president over his so-called “big, beautiful” budget bill, which includes a $5 trillion debt ceiling increase. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO has repeatedly criticized the legislation, saying it undermined his work with DOGE to cut federal spending. The tech billionaire attacked the bill and its supporters again on Tuesday as the US Senate began voting on the amendments to Trump’s 940-page proposal.

“Every member of Congress who campaigned on reducing government spending and then immediately voted for the biggest debt increase in history should hang their head in shame,” Musk wrote on X. “And they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth,” he warned. The entrepreneur also reiterated his call for a new “America Party” to be formed to serve as “an alternative to the Democrat-Republican uniparty so that the people actually have a VOICE.” Trump, who claims that the actual reason for Musk’s anger was not the “big, beautiful bill,” but his plans to roll back the government’s electric vehicle (EV) subsidies, fired back at the Tesla and SpaceX CEO shortly afterwards in a post on his Truth Social platform.

“Elon may get more subsidy than any human being in history, by far, and without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa,” he wrote. Without the assistance from the government to Musk’s companies, there would be “no more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE. Perhaps we should have DOGE take a good, hard, look at this? BIG MONEY TO BE SAVED!!!” Trump insisted. “Elon Musk knew, long before he so strongly Endorsed me for President, that I was strongly against the EV Mandate. It is ridiculous, and was always a major part of my campaign. Electric cars are fine, but not everyone should be forced to own one,” Trump added.

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“As for Trump’s threat about “no more rocket launches, satellites” — referring to Musk’s company SpaceX — good luck following through on that. SpaceX is the reason the U.S. is leading the global space race..”

• Trump Vs. Musk: “Big, Beautiful Bill” Feud Sparks Overnight Firestorm (ZH)

Update (0800 ET):President Trump on Elon Musk this morning:
TRUMP: MUSK IS UPSET HE LOST THE EV MANDATE BUT ‘HE COULD LOSE A LOT MORE THAN THAT’
TRUMP, ASKED ABOUT DEPORTING MUSK, SAYS HAVE TO TAKE A LOOK

* * *
Tesla shares slid in premarket trading in New York following a late-night clash between CEO Elon Musk and President Donald Trump. The feud played out across their respective social media platforms. “Elon Musk knew, long before he so strongly Endorsed me for president, that I was strongly against the EV Mandate. It is ridiculous, and was always a major part of my campaign. Electric cars are fine, but not everyone should be forced to own one. Elon may get more subsidy than any human being in history, by far, and without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

The president continued, “No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE. Perhaps we should have DOGE take a good, hard, look at this? BIG MONEY TO BE SAVED!!!” The Truth Social post came after Musk slammed Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” on X ahead of the final vote, vowing to launch a new political party, claiming that Republicans and Democrats are merely a ‘uniparty’ operating with a limitless taxpayer-funded credit card.

Tesla has long benefited from the $7,500 EV tax credit, which the BBB plan aims to eliminate. While this move has been widely anticipated, it could ultimately work in Tesla’s favor, hitting rivals like Rivian, Lucid, and legacy automakers far harder, as many still rely heavily on such subsidies to stay afloat. Tesla shares are down 4% in premarket trading, currently hovering around $303 per share. On the year, shares are down 21%, as of Monday’s close. As for Trump’s threat about “no more rocket launches, satellites” — referring to Musk’s company SpaceX — good luck following through on that. SpaceX is the reason the U.S. is leading the global space race.

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“If they buy more from US sources or countries not on the list, then their costs will remain low. If they don’t, then they must shift the costs in other ways.”

• Media Forced To Admit Trump’s Tariffs Are Working As Revenues Spike (ZH)

The debate is raging this week over increased government spending and the potential raising of the debt ceiling by $5 trillion, with many fiscal conservatives splitting with the GOP and the Trump Administration over what they feel is a betrayal of their campaign promises to reduce government waste. Trump argues that all the elements included in his “big beautiful bill” are necessary in order to revitalize the US economy and break from the interdependency of the current globalist model. Can the dollar continue to absorb the pressure of ever increasing debt obligations? Is there a way to cut the debt without cutting spending? At least one aspect of Trump’s fiscal plan is showing success in this area despite the warnings of critics; the establishment media has been forced to admit that the administration’s tariff efforts are actually working.

The US has collected over $121 billion in revenues from tariffs on imported goods, and despite claims that tariffs are a “tax on the consumer”, prices on the shelf have not risen so far. Opponents of the policy are struggling to explain the data. Some still argue that disaster is right around the corner while others are acknowledging that there is a potential to pay off US debt over time if the import duties remain in place for the long term. Misconceptions about tariffs lead the public to believe that they are a tax on foreign producers or governments, but tariffs are in fact taxes on companies sourcing products internationally from nations on the duties list. The taxes place the responsibility of adaptation on corporations – If they buy more from US sources or countries not on the list, then their costs will remain low. If they don’t, then they must shift the costs in other ways.

Raising prices is the last thing any company not producing necessities wants to do. Consumers can easily cut back on peripheral goods. In other words, the assertion that tariffs are a hidden tax on the public is rooted in a lack of understanding on import duties and how they affect markets. Consumers will buy from producers that keep prices down by adapting to the tariffs, and there are many ways to adapt. It’s that simple. Democrats and some conservatives argued that prices would rise exponentially as international corporations immediately deferred costs on consumers in order to offset the added expenses on imported raw materials and manufactured goods. They were wrong.

The personal consumption expenditures price index, the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge, rose 2.3% in May, modestly above the central bank’s 2% annual target. The May Consumer Price Index rose at an annual rate of 2.4%, cooler than economists expected. Some blame the “front loading” of imports (increased orders of goods before the tariffs went into effect). However, front loading was estimated to act as a stop-gap for only two months (possibly three by some predictions). Tariffs were initiated in February and though there have been fluctuations it’s been five months waiting for the tariff asteroid to explode American wallets and nothing has happened.

Will companies eventually shift the tariff burden on American consumers over the next year? A better question would be can they shift the burden in a weaker retail market? Would they take the risk of plunging sales? Or will they do what they should have been doing all along: Buy a larger percentage of their goods from US producers and bring manufacturing back home? At the current rate, tariffs could generate around $300 billion by the end of this year and $1.2 trillion over the next four years. It’s not enough to offset increased debt spending, but it does offer an alternative to hiking taxes on the general public (which is what Democrats would do). And if inflation concerns continue to prove over-hyped, then the tariff model could remain in place for many years to come.

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All they needed was a credible excuse.

• Pentagon Halts Weapons Supplies To Kiev Over Depleting Stockpiles (RT)

The Pentagon has suspended shipments of several categories of US-made weapons to Ukraine, according to Politico and NBC News. The decision reportedly followed an internal review of American weapons reserves ordered by US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, amid rising concerns about the rate at which munitions are being depleted. The move reportedly affects dozens of Patriot missile interceptors, Stinger and AIM air-to-air missiles, hundreds of Hellfire and GMLRS systems, as well as thousands of 155mm artillery shells that Washington had previously pledged to Kiev. Some of the weapons were already positioned in Europe have now been withheld before handover to Ukrainian forces, NBC reported. The weapons in question had been funded under the Biden administration through two mechanisms: direct drawdowns from existing US military stockpiles and the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI), which contracts new production from defense contractors.

The Trump administration has not requested any additional Ukraine aid, and existing resources are expected to last only “several more months,” according to Politico. White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly defended the move as a necessary step to prioritize American defense needs. “This decision was made to put America’s interests first following a DOD review of our nation’s military support and assistance to other countries across the globe. The strength of the United States Armed Forces remains unquestioned – just ask Iran,” she said, without confirming any details. The decision to freeze or slow-walk the remaining aid without formal notice to Congress may raise legal concerns similar to the 2019 withholding of some Ukraine assistance under Trump’s first administration –a move the Government Accountability Office ruled unlawful at the time, Politico noted.

Kiev has repeatedly voiced frustration over what it sees as dwindling support from Washington. Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky met with President Donald Trump at the NATO summit in The Hague last week but received no firm promises. Trump said Patriots were “very hard to get” and that the US needed them for its own defense and for Israel. Trump has stated he intends to negotiate a ceasefire with Moscow and bring the conflict to an end. Hegseth said last month that the White House is reducing military funding for Kiev as part of its “America First” strategy and in hopes of achieving a diplomatic settlement.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration signed a deal giving the US priority access to Ukraine’s mineral wealth –a step the White House said would allow America to “get back” some of the hundreds of billions spent under Biden. The Pentagon’s policy shift appears to reflect a broader realignment under Trump, who has publicly questioned the rationale behind endless aid to Ukraine. Russian presidential envoy and head of the Direct Investment Fund, Kirill Dmitriev, noted that the move “highlights the real limits of Western capacity and the shifting priorities of the US military.”

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“Perhaps he foresees – being such a prophet – that this catastrophic, in my view, increase in NATO countries’ budgets will also lead to the organization’s collapse.”

• ‘Catastrophic’ Budget Increase Will Destroy NATO – Lavrov (RT)

The results of NATO countries hiking military budgets will be “catastrophic” and lead to the bloc’s collapse, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Monday. His remarks mirrored Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski’s earlier suggestion that a boost in Moscow’s defense spending could trigger the fall of the government. At NATO’s most recent summit last month in the Hague, member states committed to spending 5% of GDP on the military – a significant rise from the previous 2% target. Poland backed the hike, arguing that failing to achieve the new benchmark “as soon as possible” would pose a ‘‘threat’‘ to the bloc considering the ongoing Ukraine conflict.

In an interview with Polish media, Sikorski drew a parallel between modern Russia and the late USSR. Referring to President Vladimir Putin, he stated that “he himself once said that the Soviet Union fell because it spent too much on armament, and now he is doing exactly the same thing.” Meanwhile, speaking to the press at the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) Foreign Ministers Council in Kyrgyzstan, Sergey Lavrov took issue with Sikorski’s characterization, countering: “Perhaps he foresees – being such a prophet – that this catastrophic, in my view, increase in NATO countries’ budgets will also lead to the organization’s collapse.”

Lavrov also said that Russia “plans to reduce its military spending,” which now accounts for 6.3% of GDP, and “be guided by common sense, but not made-up threats like NATO member states, including Sikorsky.” The 5% GDP target faced opposition from some NATO members. Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said his country could not allocate one-fifth of its state budget to defense, while Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called the goal “not only unreasonable but also counterproductive.”

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Makes the ‘war on Russia’ narrative much harder to maintain.

• Putin and Macron Talk For First Time In Three Years – Kremlin (RT)

Russian President Vladimir Putin has spoken with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron by telephone, the Kremlin press service said on Tuesday. It is the first phone contact between the leaders since September 2022. The conversation revolved around the situation in the Middle East, as well as the Ukraine conflict. During the call, Putin told Macron that the Ukraine conflict was “a direct consequence of the policies pursued by Western states, which for many years ignored Russia’s security interests,” and had established an “anti-Russian bridgehead” in the country, the press service stated. The Russian leader reiterated Moscow’s approach to any settlement, stating that it must “be comprehensive and long-term, address the root causes of the Ukrainian crisis and be based on new territorial realities.”

Putin and Macron also discussed the situation in the Middle East, namely the recent escalation between Israel and Iran. The two leaders agreed that diplomacy was the way forward, the Kremlin press service noted, adding that they agreed to maintain contact for the sake of “possible coordination of the positions.” Both countries share a “special responsibility” to maintain “peace and security,” as well as to preserve the “global nuclear non-proliferation regime,” the two men agreed, according to Moscow. “In this regard, the importance of respecting Tehran’s legitimate right to develop peaceful nuclear energy and continuing to fulfill its obligations under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, including cooperation with the IAEA, was emphasized,” the Kremlin press service said.

France has long asserted itself as one of Kiev’s key backers in the conflict with Moscow. Paris has committed more than €3.7 billion ($4.1 billion) in military assistance to Ukraine since the escalation of the conflict in February 2022, according to the Kiel Institute’s aid tracker. Macron has also repeatedly floated the idea of deploying French soldiers to Ukraine. While the deployment never materialized, Paris repeatedly signaled that troops could be sent after the end of hostilities to act as a deterrent against Russia. Moscow has firmly opposed Western forces in Ukraine in any role, warning the it could trigger an all-out war between Russia and NATO.

In recent months, however, Macron has softened his stance, admitting back in May that the French have done “the maximum we could” to help and could no longer supply Ukraine with weapons. Last week, the French president said that NATO’s European members have no wish to “endlessly” arm themselves and should “think about” restoring dialogue with Russia “right now” in order to negotiate broader European security as part of a potential Ukraine peace deal.

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“..the new designation of the project would make raising money for it easier and would also “override bureaucratic obstacles..”

• Italy Could Classify $13.5 Billion Bridge As NATO Spending – Poltico (RT)

Italian authorities are looking to classify a long-term project to construct a bridge connecting the mainland to the island of Sicily as a NATO expenditure amid their struggle to meet the bloc’s spending goals, according to Politico. The idea of creating an overpass to the largest island in the Mediterranean had been discussed in Italy for many decades, but its realization has been hampered by high costs, the difficulty of operating in a seismic zone and other issues. If built by the current government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, the 3.6-km-long suspension bridge across the Strait of Messina will become the longest in the world. In its article on Monday, Politico described Italy as “one of NATO’s lowest military spenders,” with Rome investing only 1.49% of its GDP in defense last year, a far cry from the 5% goal approved at the bloc’s summit in The Hague in June.

Marking the $13.5 billion bridge as a NATO spending could help Meloni meet the bloc’s 5% target and, at the same time, “convince a war-wary public of the need for major defense outlays at a time when Italy is already inching toward austerity,” the article read. An unnamed Italian government official told the outlet that no formal decision has yet been made by Rome on classifying the bridge as a security project, but further talks would likely be held soon to “see how feasible this feels.” According to another official from the Italian Treasury, who also talked to Politico, the new designation of the project would make raising money for it easier and would also “override bureaucratic obstacles, litigation with local authorities that could challenge the government in court claiming that the bridge will disproportionately damage their land.”

The problem for Rome is that the Strait of Messina lies outside of Italy’s only designated NATO military mobility corridor, the article pointed out. However, the Italian case is backed by the fact that only 3.5% from the NATO spending target must be allocated for core military needs, while the remaining 1.5% could be steered toward broader strategic resilience projects, including infrastructure. “Whether NATO — and more importantly, US President Donald Trump, who loves a big building project — will buy into that logic is another matter,” Politico noted.

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They do it on purpose?

• 1 in 5 Illegal Migrants Now Simply Flying Into Germany (RMX)

In the past 12 months, the German Federal Police have identified 12,858 illegal migrants who entered Germany by air, a significant number that is on the rise. Now, migrants are increasingly choosing simply to fly into Germany instead of dealing with the long ordeal of crossing multiple borders in dangerous conditions. This increase in migrants flying into Germany jumped after Germany tightened border controls.In May of this year alone, at least 977 illegal entries were recorded using air travel to enter Germany, accounting for over 20 percent of all identified illegal border crossings.However, the true number of such crossings is likely much higher, as foreign nationals traveling within the Schengen area are not required to show identification. As a result, they are often only discovered long after they have left the airport, making it impossible to turn them back.

“It would be consistent to also notify the Schengen air borders,” said Heiko Teggatz, a board member of the German Police Union (DPolG).“If the smugglers aren’t completely stupid, they’ll simply bring their people from other Schengen states to Germany by plane. Today, you can easily book a plane ticket within the Schengen area, and you generally don’t have to show your ID anywhere.”All of this information came from a government response from Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (CSU) after Alternative for Germany (AfD) MP Gottfried Curio, the party’s domestic policy spokesperson, launched an inquiry.Dobrindt was forced to acknowledge that the tightened controls “refer exclusively to the land borders,” meaning no illegal migrants were turned back at airports.

This trend of illegal entry by plane has intensified since the new federal government instructed officials to begin rejecting asylum seekers at internal borders. Teggatz confirmed this “increase in secondary migration via airports,” noting that “Medium-sized commercial airports like Hanover are particularly affected.” Despite hundreds of officers being deployed at German airports, checks are almost exclusively conducted on flights from outside the Schengen area. That means if a migrant makes it to Greece and manages to get on a plane to Germany, there is little chance he will be checked.= Dobrindt, like his predecessor, Nancy Faeser (SPD), has reported rejections of migrants coming into Germany, but only from land borders. It remains unclear why airports were not included in tightened border measures.

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People don’t go to Poland to stay there; they’re on their way to Germany.

• Poland Reintroduces Immigration Controls (RT)

Poland has decided to temporarily reintroduce border controls along its frontiers with Germany and Lithuania to stop the flow of illegal migrants. All three nations are part of the Schengen Area, which allows free travel across most of the bloc. The EU has been grappling with a refugee crisis since at least 2015, largely caused by upheavals in the Middle East and Africa, and later by the Ukraine conflict. Warsaw has previously accused German police of “dumping” thousands of migrants back across the Polish border. Some activists have organized self-styled ‘citizen border patrols’ along the German frontier. “We remain advocates for freedom of movement in Europe, but only on condition that there is the shared will of all neighbors… to minimize the uncontrolled flow of migrants across our borders,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said during a cabinet meeting on Tuesday.

He stated that temporary border controls would similarly be implemented on Poland’s border with Lithuania.In 2023, neighboring Germany, the EU’s top destination for asylum seekers, introduced temporary controls on its borders with Poland and the Czech Republic to stem the flow. Most of the people entering Poland travel on to western Europe, where benefits for asylum seekers are more generous. Berlin has since repeatedly renewed the controls. Under the Schengen agreement, participant nations are allowed to temporarily reintroduce border controls in emergency situations, with the Covid-19 outbreak having been one recent instance. Tighter national migration and border control policies could lead to the destruction of the EU, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned in May.

Commenting on the restoration of control on the Polish-Lithuanian border, Tusk accused the Baltic state, as well as neighboring Latvia, of having lax border controls. The lapses have supposedly allowed illegal migrants to cross over from non-EU Belarus, and subsequently to enter Poland. Since 2021, Warsaw has accused Minsk and Moscow of deliberately orchestrating the flow of illegal migrants into EU states. Russia and Belarus have denied the allegations.

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“If Netanyahu has any sense, he will let Trump rescue the Israeli people.”

• President Trump’s Plan for the Middle East (Paul Craig Roberts)

In discussion yesterday with Nima on Dialogue Works about the Israeli-Iranian-Trump-Netanyahu ongoings, I suggested a bold and innovative plan for the Middle East that Trump should present to the world in a speech to the UN General Assembly. I even offered to write the speech. https://www.youtube.com/live/L-8j_NSxC14 I formed the plan from mulling over insights into Trump’s attitude toward the Middle East from Gilbert Doctorow, Michel Chossudovsky, and from Trump’s news conference with Netanyahu when Trump stated Washington’s claim to Gaza as an American possession. Doctorow pointed out that it was irrelevant whether Trump had destroyed the three underground Iranian nuclear sites. What mattered is that Trump’s assertion, true or false, had destroyed Netanyahu’s excuse for war with Iran. Is Netanyahu going to risk Washington’s protection by contradicting President Trump?

Chossudovsky pointed out that in the press conference at which Trump stated Washington’s claim to Gaza, Trump expressed the idea of a Gaza resort as the anchor for an American Middle East colony in place of Greater Israel. In front of Netanyahu Trump unveiled a vision of a Middle East made rich by American management. It would be a different kind of colonial management from the British/French approach that extracted assets and sent them home to Britain and France. Trump envisioned a partnership in which the “colonies” would be shareholders sharing in the profits from economic development. This would be good for Israel as well. When a presstitute asked Netanyahu his opinion, Netanyahu did not disavow it.

I was surprised that Trump’s claim to Gaza and its reconstruction and his idea of a reconstruction of the Middle Eastern countries that previous US regimes had destroyed for Israel did not get a big news play. But Chossudovsky saw it, and he helped me to see it. Ask yourselves, Is there any better solution to the Israeli-Muslim problem in the Middle East? Israel is smaller in area than New Jersey. Iran is 2.5 times larger than Texas. Israel has fewer than 10 million people. Iran has more than 90 million people. Iran can produce modern missiles in greater quantities than Israel can be supplied from the US. In a recent news conference in a demonstration of Israeli insanity, Netanyahu added the territory of Pakistan to Greater Israel. Pakistan has nuclear weapons and a population of 250 million.

Israel has zero chance of winning a war with Iran and the same for Pakistan. Israel knows this but is confident that the power that the Israel Lobby can exert over dumbshit American’s lives and money guarantees that Americans will fight more wars for Israel. The Israeli-subsidized Christian Zionists–a contradiction of terms–are all for it. Amazing, isn’t it, Israel has even corrupted Christian evangelicals, paying their preachers to send Americans to war for Israel. What might be reducing Israel’s control over America is the weakened position of Netanyahu, under two Israeli court indictments for crimes, and by the destruction inflicted on Israel by its irresponsible attack on Iran, culminating in Netanyahu’s plea to Trump to stop the war before Israel had to sue for peace.

This leaves Trump with the upper hand. Israel now understands that it cannot exist without Washington’s protection. Thus Trump can force Netanyahu to give up the unrealistic Zionist goal of Greater Israel and comply with Trump’s vision of a colony under America’s redevelopment of the Middle East. If Trump would take this plan to the UN, it would silence Israel and the American neoconservative zionists and save us from war that could turn nuclear. If Trump establishes peace and cooperation in the Middle East, he can do the same with the West and Russia. Russia was the ally of Britain and France in both WW I and WW II. It is not difficult to come to terms with a former ally. There is no ideological reason and no territorial reason for conflict between the West and Russia.

Think about America’s waste of resources and prestige during the first quarter of the 21st century. Trillions of dollars spend destroying Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Somalia with zero gain. No one except military/security war profits got anything from these wars. There was no terrorist threat. Washington brought no one democracy, only destruction. Think about the destruction Washington brought to entire countries for no purpose than Israel’s absurd idea of a Greater Israel. The millions of dead, permanently maimed, and dislocated people, many of whom have located in Europe and the US burdening those taxpayers with their upkeep. WHO BENEFITTED??

Let’s give Trump a chance. An American partnership in the Middle East is far better than the conflicts inherent in Greater Israel. If Israel refuses to go along, Trump should just run over them. Israel is of no consequence in the world. Israel since its existence has never been anything except a cause of conflict, death, and destruction. Why a people like this has been tolerated, I do not know. Can Sunni and Shia be brought together and Muslims brought together with Jews? Seems fantastic. But perhaps they will see it as preferable to the continuation of endless bloodshed. If Netanyahu has any sense, he will let Trump rescue the Israeli people.

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Too many dead Gazans for a real ceasefire.

• Trump Says Israel Agrees To 60-Day Gaza Ceasefire, Urges Hamas To Accept (ZH)

President Trump said Tuesday that Israel has agreed on terms for a 60-day ceasefire in Gaza and warned Hamas to accept the deal before conditions worsen. Trump announced the development as he prepares to host Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for talks at the White House on Monday. The US leader has been increasing pressure on the Israeli government and Hamas to broker a ceasefire and hostage agreement and bring about an end to the war in Gaza. “My Representatives had a long and productive meeting with the Israelis today on Gaza. Israel has agreed to the necessary conditions to finalize the 60 Day CEASEFIRE, during which time we will work with all parties to end the War,” Trump wrote, saying the Qataris and Egyptians would deliver the final proposal.

“I hope, for the good of the Middle East, that Hamas takes this Deal, because it will not get better – IT WILL ONLY GET WORSE,” he said. Trump’s promise that it was his best and final offer may find a sceptical audience with Hamas. Even before the expiration of the war’s longest ceasefire in March, Trump has repeatedly issued dramatic ultimatums to pressure Hamas to agree to longer pauses in the fighting that would see the release of more hostages and a return of more aid to Gaza’s civilian populace. Israeli Minister for Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer was in Washington on Tuesday for talks with senior administration officials to discuss a potential Gaza ceasefire, Iran and other matters. Dermer was expected to meet with US Vice-President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and special envoy Steve Witkoff.

Earlier on Tuesday, Trump repeated his hope for forging an Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal next week. Asked if it was time to put pressure on Netanyahu to get a ceasefire deal done, Trump said the Israeli prime minister was ready to come to an agreement. “He wants to,” Trump said of Netanyahu in an exchange with reporters while visiting a new immigration detention facility in Florida. “I think we’ll have a deal next week.” Talks between Israel and Hamas have repeatedly faltered over a major sticking point – whether the war should end as part of any ceasefire agreement. About 50 hostages remain captive in Gaza, with less than half believed to be alive.

The development came as over 150 international charities and humanitarian groups called on Tuesday for disbanding a controversial Israeli- and US-backed system to distribute aid in Gaza because of chaos and deadly violence against Palestinians seeking food at its sites. The joint statement by groups including Oxfam, Save the Children and Amnesty International followed the killings of at least 10 Palestinians who were seeking desperately needed food, witnesses and health officials said. Meanwhile, Israeli air strikes killed at least 37 in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis, according to Nasser Hospital. “Tents, tents they are hitting with two missiles?” asked Um Seif Abu Leda, whose son was killed in the strikes. Mourners threw flowers on the body bags.

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“On Monday, President Donald Trump lifted most US sanctions on Syria in order to facilitate the flow of foreign aid for the country’s reconstruction.”

• Syria Could Drop Demand That Israel Return The Golan Heights (RT)

Former warlord Ahmad al-Sharaa, who seized power in Syria last year, may abandon the country’s claim to sovereignty over the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights in exchange for normalized ties with West Jerusalem, according to a report by Lebanese media. Israel captured a large portion of the 1,800 square kilometer region of Syria’s Quneitra Governorate during the 1967 war and effectively annexed it in 1981. Amid the turmoil during al-Sharaa’s rise to power, the IDF seized additional territory. The IDF has also carried out multiple airstrikes against Syrian troops loyal to the current government, which West Jerusalem said were intended to protect the local Druze population, an ethnoreligious minority community which inhabits the contested region.

Lebanese broadcaster LBCI reported Monday that the two countries could normalize relations as part of a broad agreement. Under the proposed deal, Israel would recognize al-Sharaa’s legitimacy, withdraw troops from areas seized since his December takeover, and agree to Syria’s military presence near its borders with Israel and Jordan, with certain restrictions. In exchange, “Israel is expected to secure full sovereignty” over the Golan Heights, LBCI said, citing sources familiar with Syrian affairs. The report added that internal hardliner opposition, including from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham – the jihadist group formerly led by al-Sharaa – could derail the effort.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said Monday that Israel will maintain control of the Golan Heights under any future peace arrangement with Syria. Al-Sharaa has sought international recognition since ousting President Bashar Assad. Under former President Barack Obama, the United States aimed to remove Assad through a combination of sanctions and covert support for anti-government armed groups labeled “moderate rebels.” On Monday, President Donald Trump lifted most US sanctions on Syria in order to facilitate the flow of foreign aid for the country’s reconstruction.

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“..if Trump didn’t win, he’d leave the country. Elon replied: “There’s nowhere to go.” That moment stuck with Thiel. Mars, once a symbol of civilizational escape and ambition, no longer felt like a real option—even to Musk..”

• AI Is The Only Thing Keeping The World From Total Stagnation – Peter Thiel (Flor)

Peter Thiel just did the most mind-exploding, crazy interview I’ve ever listened to. It’s so drastic, I still don’t know what to think – other than everyone should listen to it. So I dissected it piece by piece and organized it to draw some conclusions.nThis is what you cannot miss:

1. We are stuck. Thiel still believes in his “stagnation thesis.” His point? We’ve exited a 200-year period of accelerating change—1750 to 1970 was all about breakthroughs in physical reality: faster ships, railroads, cars, planes. It culminated in the Concorde and Apollo. But since then? Nothing. We’ve made marginal progress in “the world of bits” (internet, mobile, AI), but that’s not the same as reshaping the physical world. In biotech or cancer research, for example, progress is either negligible or cloaked in over-specialization that makes it impossible to track. As Thiel puts it: “The fact that it’s so hard to answer [whether we’re progressing] is itself cause for skepticism.”

2. Our future has been stolen—and it looks nothing like Back to the Future. Back to the Future II imagined 2015 as a world of flying cars, skateboards and radical transformation. What we got instead was smartphones and cars that look the same. Thiel’s kids watching 1985 on screen couldn’t tell it apart from today. “The world seems fairly similar.” That’s the cultural proof of stagnation: if a time traveler from 1985 landed in 2025, they’d be confused by the phone, but everything else would feel familiar. And the economic metric? Ask millennials: How are you doing compared to your parents? For most, the answer is worse.

3. We need to take more risks. Biotech is stuck. “We’ve made zero progress on dementia or Alzheimer’s in 40–50 years,” Thiel says. Scientists are trapped in a dead-end “beta-amyloid” theory that doesn’t work but keeps getting funded. We need to radically increase the risks we’re willing to take in medicine, aging, and beyond. Thiel wants a cultural return to the ambition of early modernity—Francis Bacon, Condorcet—when science promised immortality, not regulation. He tells the story of taking his PayPal team to a “freezing party” in 1999, where people bought cryonics insurance. “That was the last generation who still believed they could live forever.”

4. The moment Peter Thiel realized Elon lost faith in going to Mars. In 2024, Thiel joked to Elon Musk that if Trump didn’t win, he’d leave the country. Elon replied: “There’s nowhere to go.” That moment stuck with Thiel. Mars, once a symbol of civilizational escape and ambition, no longer felt like a real option—even to Musk. Why? Because “the woke AI and the socialist government would follow you to Mars.” The dream of Mars as a frontier for freedom had died. It was no longer a science project—it had become a political one. Thiel calls 2024 “the year Elon stopped believing in Mars.”

5. Will AI become stagnationist? AI is the only real exception to our stagnation—but Thiel worries it might reinforce it. He calls AI “more than a nothingburger, less than a total transformation.” Like the internet in the 1990s, it might boost GDP by 1% a year—but won’t restart the engines of human progress. And worse: it could become conformist intelligence. Like a Netflix algorithm that generates infinite okay-ish content, AI might flood the world with blandness, not breakthroughs. “If you don’t have AI, there’s nothing going on,” Thiel says. But he also warns: if AI becomes too “woke” or compliant, it will deepen the very stagnation it claims to solve.

6. Is AI hype—or is it transhumanism? Thiel sees modern transhumanism as not ambitious enough. It’s not that changing your body is weird—it’s that it’s pathetic compared to what early modern thinkers (and even Christianity) aimed for. “Transhumanism is just changing your body. But you also need to transform your soul.” He notes: the word nature never appears in the Old Testament. The Judeo-Christian story is about transcending nature—with God’s help. The critique of today’s “trans” ideas, he argues, isn’t that they go too far. It’s that they don’t go far enough.

7. The risk of the one-world totalitarian state: how the Antichrist would take over the world. Thiel introduces his most apocalyptic idea: that existential risk (AI, nukes, bioweapons) is being used to justify global governance. This leads to the ultimate form of stagnation: “a one-world state of the Antichrist.” The logic is seductive: to avoid destruction, centralize control. Nuclear weapons? A global authority must manage them. Dangerous AI? Global compute regulation. Thiel’s framing: The atheist slogan = “One world or none.” The Christian framing = “Antichrist or Armageddon.” The twist? The Antichrist doesn’t come with innovation. He comes with regulation. He offers “peace and safety”—and people submit.

8. Is Peter Thiel building the tools for the Antichrist? Thiel’s critics could argue: if anyone’s enabling global surveillance and control, isn’t it Thiel himself—via Palantir and military tech investments? He acknowledges the irony. He doesn’t believe he’s doing that, but concedes that many of the tools he’s helped build could be used that way. He warns that we’re already ruled—softly—by global regulators. The FDA doesn’t just control drugs in the U.S., but worldwide. Same with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. “Nuclear power was supposed to be the technology of the 21st century,” he says. “And it somehow has gotten off-ramped all over the world.”

9. Are we already living under a moderate rule of the Antichrist? Thiel floats a chilling thought: what if the Antichrist isn’t a coming tyrant—but the mild technocracy we already live in? 50 years of “peace and safety” have come at the cost of progress. He cites 1 Thessalonians 5:3: “While people are saying, ‘Peace and safety,’ destruction will come on them suddenly…” Still, he insists we have agency. He rejects Calvinism and determinism. “There’s a huge scope for human freedom. Don’t wait for the lion to eat you.”

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“They were the party of free speech,” he continued. “When President Trump started advocating for free speech… the Democrats became openly for censorship.”

• Kennedy Labels US Democrats ‘War Party’ (RT)

US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has accused the Democratic Party of abandoning its traditional values and transforming into a pro-war, pro-censorship force defined largely by opposition to President Donald Trump. In a wide-ranging interview with conservative talk show host Tucker Carlson published Monday, Kennedy said the Democratic Party now instinctively reverses positions as soon as Trump adopts them. “The Democrats were the anti-war party,” Kennedy said. “But as soon as [Trump] expressed his opposition to the Ukraine war, they became the war party.” “They were the party of free speech,” he continued. “When President Trump started advocating for free speech… the Democrats became openly for censorship.”

Kennedy, a longtime Democrat who briefly ran as an independent candidate in 2024 before supporting Trump and joining his cabinet in early 2025, said he continues to champion the same principles but now faces opposition from former allies. “These were people I was friends with my whole life and I have not changed… but the party has just a knee-jerk reaction against anything that is Trump,” he told Carlson. Kennedy added that Democrats, once critical of the CIA and trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), shifted to support both once Trump voiced criticism. He also accused the party of undermining women’s sports, noting that his uncle, Senator Edward Kennedy, had helped write Title IX, a US federal civil rights law that prohibits sex-based discrimination.

“You can go on and on with those examples, but President Trump is literally dictating the platform of the Democratic Party. Anything that he says, they’re going to be against,” he said, noting that this pattern reflects a deeper problem in American politics. “You know that partisanship by its nature is dishonest and it is the enemy of democracy,” RFK Jr. warned. “And in George Washington’s farewell speech, he said that he was very frightened about the rise of the political party because they would become self-interested rather than patriotic.”Kennedy, the founder of the anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense, has gained prominence in the US for questioning the safety and effectiveness of childhood inoculations and promoting the claim that they are linked to autism –a theory widely rejected by the scientific community.

He was also a vocal critic of the World Health Organization’s Covid-19 response measures, including lockdowns and the rapid rollout of experimental vaccines. Despite his controversial reputation, Kennedy denies being opposed to immunization, noting that his own children have been vaccinated. He has repeatedly stated that he advocates for stricter safety testing and more rigorous studies. After Kennedy endorsed Trump, the president vowed to give him broad authority over healthcare policy, saying he would let Kennedy “go wild.” Kennedy said most opposition to his policies as Health Secretary comes not from industry experts but from media and political operatives. “I get opposition from proxies to the industry. Yes. And I think the major opposition that I feel is from the mainstream media and from Democrats,” he said.

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“And the Democrats have him pegged as a guy who’s sort of sitting in the Cabinet meeting talking about how can we make billionaires richer. He’s the opposite of that. He’s a genuine populist,” Kennedy said.

• RFK Jr. Unloads Disturbing Vaccine Secrets On Tucker (VF)

It’s not every day an active HHS Secretary sits down for 90 minutes straight with Tucker Carlson. But that’s exactly what happened, and Kennedy instantly seized Carlson’s attention with a chilling story of CDC corruption. He revealed that the health agency buried a 1999 internal study led by researcher Thomas Verstraten, which showed an alarming 1135% increase in autism risk from the hepatitis B vaccine. Kennedy said the researchers were “shocked” by the findings. So what did they do? They covered it up, according to Kennedy. “They got rid of all the older children essentially and just had younger children who are too young to be diagnosed [with autism].” RFK Jr. then explained the real reason why your pediatrician will kick you out of their practice for refusing vaccines.

“There’s a published article out there now that says that 50% of revenues to most pediatricians come from vaccines.” It’s all about the money. The higher the vaccination rate, the bigger the bonus. “And that’s why your pediatrician, if you say I want to go slow on the vaccines… will throw you out of his practice because you’re now jeopardizing that bonus structure.” To the claim that the vaccine–autism link has been “debunked,” Kennedy had a message for Anderson Cooper, Jake Tapper, and everyone who smugly insists on it. “None of the vaccines given to children in the first six months of life have ever been studied for autism.” Let that sink in. He went further, revealing that the CDC actually did find a link when they studied the DTaP vaccine.

But they dismissed it. Kennedy said they claimed it “didn’t count” because the data came from VAERS—the very system they use to track vaccine injuries. So when the evidence pointed to harm, they simply claimed their own system wasn’t reliable enough and took no steps to fix it. The vaccine corruption didn’t end there. Kennedy attested that the CDC killed off a vaccine injury reporting system that actually worked—because it worked too well. It showed that 1 in 37 vaccines caused an injury. Tucker was stunned. “Of all vaccines?” he asked. “Yeah,” Kennedy confirmed. RFK Jr. explained that the CDC funded a study led by researcher Ross Lazarus. It compared a sophisticated machine-counting system to VAERS. What did they find? VAERS was failing to catch over 99% of vaccine injuries.

The new system also revealed that 2.6% of all vaccinations resulted in an injury. So what did the CDC do? They shut it down in 2010. And they’re still using VAERS today—even though it’s a completely inadequate system. But Kennedy didn’t stop at old vaccine scandals. He also broke down Pfizer’s own COVID vaccine trial data. That trial showed a 23% higher death rate in the vaccinated group. Pfizer gave 21,720 people the vaccine and 21,728 the placebo. One vaccinated person died of COVID. Two placebo recipients died. They used this tiny difference to claim “100% effective” based on relative risk reduction. But in absolute terms, it took 22,000 vaccinations to save one life. Over six months, 21 vaccinated participants died of all causes, compared to 17 in the placebo group—a 23.5% higher death rate.

And then there’s vaccine spokesperson Paul Offit, often seen on CNN and other mainstream networks. Kennedy shared an infuriating story about how he literally “voted himself rich” on the rotavirus vaccine. While serving on the CDC’s ACIP committee, Offit voted to add rotavirus vaccination to the childhood schedule—even as he was developing his own competing vaccine. He guaranteed demand for his product. The first approved rotavirus vaccine, RotaShield, was yanked from the market for causing dangerous intussusception. Offit’s vaccine, RotaTeq, eventually replaced it. He and his partners later sold their rights to Merck for $186 million. As RFK Jr. said, Offit literally “voted himself rich.” When Carlson mentioned Fauci, Kennedy revealed how Fauci funded research that helped scientists hide evidence of lab-made viruses. The technique, called “seamless ligation,” allowed researchers to engineer viruses in a lab without leaving telltale genetic fingerprints.

RFK Jr. explained: “One of his fundees, Ralph Baric, from the University of North Carolina, developed a technique called the seamless ligation technique, which is a technique for hiding the laboratory origins of a manipulated virus.” “… normally if there’s a virus manipulated, researchers can look at the DNA sequences and they can say this thing was created in a lab. Ralph Baric had developed a technique that he called the no-see technique and its technical name was seamless ligation, and it was a way of hiding evidence of human tampering.” He called it the exact opposite of what real public health work should be. Carlson cut in, saying, “That’s what you would do if you’re creating viruses for biological warfare.”

The conversation shifted to Trump, leading to one of the biggest highlights of the entire interview. First, Kennedy explained that Trump chose his cabinet in an unorthodox way: he wanted to see three clips of each candidate performing on TV before considering them for the job. “One of the things with President Trump is that he really knows how to pick talent… For every one of the positions that he picked, he wanted to see three clips of them performing on TV. He’s very conscious of the fact that these people are going to be out selling his program to the public,” Kennedy said. That’s when Kennedy ended the interview with a bang, sharing his genuine thoughts about Trump for three straight minutes. It was one of the standout moments of the entire conversation.

If you’re on the fence about Trump, listen to Kennedy here. It might just change how you see him. “I had him pegged as a narcissist, when narcissists are incapable of empathy. And he’s one of the most empathetic people that I’ve met,” Kennedy said. “He’s immensely curious, inquisitive, and immensely knowledgeable. He’s encyclopedic in certain areas that you wouldn’t expect,” he continued. Kennedy added that Trump genuinely cares about soldiers who go to war, citing how Trump “always talks about the casualties on both sides” of the Russia–Ukraine conflict. “Whether it’s vaccines or Medicaid or Medicare, he’s always thinking about how this impacts the little guy. And the Democrats have him pegged as a guy who’s sort of sitting in the Cabinet meeting talking about how can we make billionaires richer. He’s the opposite of that. He’s a genuine populist,” Kennedy said.

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Rogan

Hep B

99%

Sun
https://twitter.com/FredsFarm247/status/1939983704379592749

PIANO
https://twitter.com/Ducnghia16/status/1939746838510543130

Cupcakes
https://twitter.com/gunsnrosesgirl3/status/1939990438389092561

Firefly

 

 

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