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Debt Rattle May 7 2026

May 072026
 
 May 7, 2026  Posted by at 10:11 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  39 Responses »


Edward Hopper Approaching a city 1946


• ‘Fate Of Iran Refineries Now At Risk’ As US Blockade Begins To Bite (ZH)
• ‘Framework’ Still Being Hammered Out For ‘Monthlong’ US, Iran Talks (ZH)
• Iran Spox Blasts ‘Unrealistic’ White House ‘Wish List’ To End War (ZH)
• Inside The Moscow Meeting That Laid Bare Iran’s Weak Hand (Watkins)
• Trump Dropped an ICE Rebrand — and Democrats Are Losing It (Margolis)
• Kash Patel Outlines Secret Room in FBI Headquarters (CTH)
• Trump Is Purging RINOs, and the Left Is Panicking (Margolis)
• FBI Raids Virginia Senate President’s Office (Salgado)
• OpenAI Co-founder Greg Brockman Defends Company’s For-Profit Pivot (ET)
• Former OpenAI Board Member Says Elon Musk Offered Her Sperm Donations (BBC)
• Three Justices Chastise Jackson for Groundless, Irresponsible Dissent (Turley)
• The EV Bust Claims Five More Victims… and They Aren’t Even EVs? (Green)
• Tectonic Shift In Church Framing of Homosexuality (Tim O’Brien)

 


 

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2052179925700903125?s=20 https://twitter.com/CRRJA5/status/2051854394044375415?s=20

 


 


“The sea blockade is a much more serious threat than even war.. ”

• ‘Fate Of Iran Refineries Now At Risk’ As US Blockade Begins To Bite (ZH)

An Iranian energy official just conceded something in a surprise admission that the US naval blockade has begun to bite the Islamic Republic’s oil industry. According to new reporting in the NY Times: The blockade has halted Iran’s oil exports, choking off crucial revenues, and the country risks running out of places to store its oil. It is also affecting the import of other goods, forcing Iran to seek alternative routes through neighboring countries and its smaller ports on the Caspian Sea. And the economic pain inside Iran, already dire before the war, is becoming much worse.


“The sea blockade is a much more serious threat than even war, and the current stalemate must be broken because the export of our oil and energy and the fate of our refineries is now at risk,” said Hamid Hosseini, an expert on Iran’s oil sector who serves on the energy committee of Iran’s Chamber of Commerce, in an interview from Tehran.This as Kpler has stated based on its data that since the US blockade took effect on April 13, no Iranian oil-laden tankers have been able to exit the strait.

“The bottom line is that Iran could run out of storage space in about 25 to 30 days if the blockade is not lifted, according to Homayoun Falakshahi, Kpler’s head of oil analysis,” continues the Wednesday report. “Other experts have given different estimates ranging from a few weeks to a month or more.” Last month we offered the following, saying a likely 15 days – probably followed with a few weeks left on the clock before the Iranians run out of storage space… As for the current Trump blockade strategy, another analyst told the Times, “The blockade really is about putting a financial deadline on the Islamic Republic’s head.”

US Jet Fires On Iranian Tanker Trying To Pass
So much for that ceasefire and alleged ‘pause’ in US naval blockade actions, as things just took another escalatory turn. In this case, a rare live fire incident unfolded Wednesday in Gulf waters as a US jet launched from the Lincoln carrier fired on and possibly disabled an Iranian-flagged tanker, per the officials US Central Command statement: U.S. forces operating in the Gulf of Oman enforced blockade measures by disabling an Iranian-flagged unladen oil tanker attempting to sail toward an Iranian port at 9 a.m. ET, May 6. U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) forces observed M/T Hasna as it transited international waters enroute to an Iranian port on the Gulf of Oman. American forces issued multiple warnings and informed the Iranian-flagged vessel it was in violation of the U.S. blockade.

After Hasna’s crew failed to comply with repeated warnings, U.S. forces disabled the tanker’s rudder by firing several rounds from the 20mm cannon gun of a U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet launched from USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72). Hasna is no longer transiting to Iran. The Pentagon/CENTCOM statement then emphasized, “The U.S. blockade against ships attempting to enter or depart Iranian ports remains in full effect. CENTCOM forces continue to act deliberately and professionally to ensure compliance.” Tehran’s response to this will be interesting, and follows prior alleged attacks this week on the UAE.

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Don’t fall for those talks. After a month you’ll be right back where you started.

• ‘Framework’ Still Being Hammered Out For ‘Monthlong’ US, Iran Talks (ZH)

Iran’s Foreign Ministry has said that Iran’s response to the United States has not yet been presented to mediator Pakistan, as the WSJ reports that the US and Iranian sides are currently trying to hammer out a one-page memorandum of understanding which features 14-points. This would “lay out a framework” – the report says, for a “monthlong period of talks to end the war.” Given that agreement cannot even be found on the ‘framework’ for future talks, it seems the process is not very advanced at all – but is perhaps still back at square one, with headlines in the US way out front, and likely overly optimistic.


CNN citing the White House: “The White House received positive feedback from Pakistani mediators on Tuesday that the Iranians were progressing toward a compromise.” And more from WSJ: Iran’s mission to the UN said that “the only viable solution in the Strait of Hormuz is clear: a permanent end to the war, the lifting of the maritime blockade, and the restoration of normal passage.”

Key Timing of Wang-Araghchi Meeting in Beijing
During Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi’s visit to Beijing on Wednesday, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi pushed for the rapid reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and a halt to the fighting. Araghchi echoed the urgency, saying, “Currently, it is possible to resolve the issue of reopening the Strait of Hormuz as soon as possible.” Wang called for a “comprehensive ceasefire” and stressed that “the international community shares a common concern for restoring normal and safe passage through the Strait,” urging swift action.

The coordinated messaging reflects shared economic and strategic interests, especially as US naval actions have disrupted Iranian oil flows to China. Wang also signaled support for Tehran’s position, stating China “appreciates Iran’s pledge to not develop nuclear weapons,” while Iran continues to insist its nuclear program is peaceful and maintains its right to uranium enrichment as a matter of sovereignty. Wang reinforced Beijing’s stance by warning that “a comprehensive ceasefire brooks no delay” and that negotiations must continue, while US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has called on China to pressure Iran to ease its blockade of the strait.

Alarmed Reaction from Israel
An Israeli official cited in Times of Israel said Israel did not know that President Trump was close to a deal with Iran to end the fighting and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, even as global headlines pointed to progress. The official said Israel had been preparing for escalation, reflecting recent reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government was waiting for US approval to resume its aerial campaign following 38 days of strikes under Operation Epic Fury.

US messaging has shifted rapidly. with Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday having announced the end of Operation Epic Fury and a pivot to Project Freedom focused on reopening Hormuz, while Trump later declared a pause to allow negotiations. The mixed signals from Washington created confusion as diplomacy and military positioning unfolded simultaneously. Both Iran and Israel signaled readiness to escalate despite the diplomatic push. Iran warned its “finger is on the trigger,” while Israeli military chief Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir said forces have multiple targets prepared inside Iran and remain on high alert. He emphasized ongoing coordination with US forces and readiness to resume a broad campaign if fighting restarts.

More Official Iran Denials: Too Much ‘Speculation’
The latest response out of Tehran via Tasnim: “Despite claims by US media that Iran and the US are close to a final one-page agreement to end the war, Iran has not yet given an official response to the Americans’ final text, which contains some unacceptable clauses.” And separately Iran’s ISNA calls parts of the Axios report “speculation” – also reiterating the country has rejected some recent US proposals, as they are “unrealistic”. However, an Iranian spokesperson has said that Iran is indeed “reviewing the US proposal to end the war.”

Trump Admits: ‘Too Soon’
And now a bit of rapid narrative reversal, coming from President Trump himself, after once again a likely premature early morning Axios report with overly optimistic language. Trump’s fresh words are via the NY Post: President Donald Trump said it’s “too soon” to plan peace talks with Iran despite reports of a near deal, downplaying prospects of imminent negotiations in Pakistan. He warned that if Iran accepts terms, hostilities could end and the Strait of Hormuz reopen—but failure to agree would trigger intensified military action.

Indeed the Iranian reaction issued via media reports also suggests this is the case, that all the talk of an agreement being close is premature, and there remains immense hurdles and a long way to go. Axios’ Barak Ravid still insists that “the sources said this was the closest the parties had been to an agreement since the war began.”

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“..if Tehran doesn’t agree then “the bombing starts” and it will be at a “much higher level and intensity than it was before”.

• Iran Spox Blasts ‘Unrealistic’ White House ‘Wish List’ To End War (ZH)

And now a bit of rapid narrative reversal, coming from President Trump himself, after once again a likely premature early morning Axios report with overly optimistic language. Trump’s fresh words are via the NY Post: President Donald Trump said it’s “too soon” to plan peace talks with Iran despite reports of a near deal, downplaying prospects of imminent negotiations in Pakistan. He warned that if Iran accepts terms, hostilities could end and the Strait of Hormuz reopen—but failure to agree would trigger intensified military action.


Indeed the Iranian reaction issued via media reports also suggests this is the case, that all the talk of an agreement being close is premature, and there remains immense hurdles and a long way to go. Axios’ Barak Ravid still insists that “the sources said this was the closest the parties had been to an agreement since the war began.”

Initial Word From Tehran: Doesn’t Reflect Reality
Iranian initial reaction through its media: “What US media outlets are publishing about the details of the negotiations does not reflect the reality of what is happening, according to AI Araby citing Iranian Sources.” “Progress has been made in talks with Washington through Pakistan, but it has not yet reached a level that would lead to an agreement,” the statement says. The Iranians are also clearly sticking by their approach which says the nuclear issue is a non-starter and that talks must focus on opening Hormuz and finding a final end to the conflict. “The negotiations are focused on ending the war, not the nuclear issue,” the statement in Al Araby continues.

And then the final criticism of Washington’s approach: “The negotiations are still facing the intransigent American approach and excessive demands.” And further, this: Ebrahim Rezaei dismissed U.S. demands as unrealistic, saying Washington won’t gain through conflict what it failed to secure in talks. He added Iran is ready to act and warned of a severe, regret-inducing response to any provocation. Here is the full statement from the Iranian Spokesperson of the National Security and Foreign Policy Commission (via machine translation):


Trump Issues Carrot & Stick
The below is a fresh Trump Truth Social Post on Wednesday morning, warning the Iranians that the Hormuz Strait must be “open to all”. However, the president continues, if Tehran doesn’t agree then “the bombing starts” and it will be at a “much higher level and intensity than it was before”.


All of this has followed an awkward 24 hours of drastically different signals coming from various top officials of the US administration.

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Iran was long screwed over by Russia while it itself screwed over US and Israel?

• Inside The Moscow Meeting That Laid Bare Iran’s Weak Hand (Watkins)

Iran has a long history of being screwed over by Russia, and last week’s meeting in Moscow between Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Russian President Vladimir Putin over the U.S.–Israel–Iran war suggests nothing in that dynamic is about to change, according to extremely well-placed sources on both sides who spoke exclusively to OilPrice.com over the weekend. On the one hand, Tehran’s perennially baseless optimism that “this time will be different” was on full display in Araghchi’s excited praise for the marvels of the two countries’ so called ‘strategic relationship’.


On the other hand, Moscow responded with all the warmth of an international telephone operator: Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said only that Russia stands ready to offer “goodwill or mediation services”, with no indication of any upgrade to the relationship service package. It fits so neatly into the familiar pattern of this abusive relationship that one wonders whether social services should be called. Or perhaps Moscow’s disinterest is merely an act — a way of masking the deep and broad assistance from Tehran that it so clearly craves?

The theoretical basis of this relationship is the 20-year comprehensive cooperation deal between Iran and Russia — formally titled The Treaty on the Basis of Mutual Relations and Principles of Cooperation between Iran and Russia — approved by Iran’s late Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, on 18 January 2024, as I exclusively reported in OilPrice.com at the time. It replaced the 10-year deal signed in March 2001 (extended twice by five years) and was expanded in duration, scope and scale, particularly in the defence and energy sectors.

In several respects, the new deal complemented key elements of the all-encompassing Iran-China 25-Year Comprehensive Cooperation Agreement, first revealed anywhere in the world in my 3 September 2019 article and analysed in full in my latest book on the new global oil market order. The similarities were deliberate, designed to make the division of the key strategic assets most coveted by Moscow and Beijing easier to manage in practice. Related: China Orders Refiners to Ignore U.S. Sanctions on Key Iranian Oil Buyers

As with much of Russia’s foreign policy dealings, the devil was in the details. As a sign of how things would pan out for Tehran in the rest of the document, Russia stood to benefit at Iran’s expense in the key energy sector to begin with. The deal gave Russia the first right of extraction in the Iranian section of the Caspian Sea, including the potentially huge Chalous field. This came on top of Russia’s startlingly brazen theft in 2019 of at least US$3.2 trillion in revenues from Iran through the lost value of energy products across their shared Caspian assets going forward.

The same right of first extraction for Russia was also applied in the new 20-year deal to several of Iran’s major oil and gas fields in the Khorramshahr and nearby Ilam provinces that border Iraq, which China had not already prioritised for its own needs. Several of these sites had the broader financial and geopolitical benefits attached to their being shared fields with Iraq. This status allowed the effective free movement of Iranian oil disguised as Iraqi oil, and extended Tehran’s influence over Baghdad through its political, economic, and military proxies. By extension, it did the same for Moscow and Beijing, which used this as a springboard to further project their influence across the Iran-dominated Shia Crescent of Power.

This powerbase in Iran and Iraq had also been central to Russia’s longstanding plan to build a ‘land bridge’ to the Mediterranean Sea coast of another of its key global assets at the time — Syria. This would enable Moscow to exponentially increase weapons delivery into southern Lebanon and the Golan Heights area of Syria to be used in attacks on Israel. The core aim of this policy was to provoke a conflict in the Middle East that would draw in the U.S. and its allies into an unwinnable war, and was seen as a natural extension of the Israel-Hamas War that had begun after the terrorist organisation’s murderous spree across Israel on 7 October 2023.

Given its centrality to Moscow’s plans, then, Iran was at that point still confident that the Kremlin would meet its other promises in the 20-year deal, despite the shenanigans surrounding the energy side of the treaty as it related to the Caspian’s oil and gas riches. “Iran had long been asking Russia for the means to defend itself better against any attacks, especially those that might come from Israel or the U.S. — in particular for the S-400 missile defence system and Sukhoi Su-34 and 35 fighter jets,” a very senior source working closely with Iran’s Petroleum Ministry exclusively told OilPrice.com. “But these requests have continually been subject to further conditionality by Russia, such as upgrading key airports and seaports that Moscow sees as especially useful for dual-use by its air force and navy, and which are also close to major oil and gas facilities.

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“Will ICE officially become NICE? Probably not anytime soon. But the mere suggestion has Democrats tying themselves in knots ..”

• Trump Dropped an ICE Rebrand — and Democrats Are Losing It (Margolis)

Leave it to the left to have a meltdown over a single letter. Last month, President Donald Trump endorsed rebranding Immigration and Customs Enforcement as National Immigration and Customs Enforcement — NICE — and on Tuesday, the White House unveiled updated branding for the agency, complete with a new patch mockup. DHS amplified the rollout on its own X account, and the trolling was, well, quite effective. The idea didn’t originate in the Oval Office. Comedian Adam Carolla first floated it back in September.


Then in March, conservative influencer Alyssa Marie wrote on X, “I want Trump to change ICE to NICE (National Immigration and Customs Enforcement) so the media has to say NICE agents all day everyday.”Trump promptly endorsed it on Truth Social, calling it a “great idea.” Then on Tuesday came the onslaught. Trump posted what many believe to be a potential rebrand on Truth Social, which the Department of Homeland Security reposted on X.

https://twitter.com/DHSgov/status/2051754837683896415

The White House also posted a patch concept.

https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/2051761247779979301

Looks good, doesn’t it? Naturally, Democrats started flipping out. Because, of course, they did. And obviously, they responded in their usual “classy” way. I don’t have to tell you this isn’t what happened. Renee Good attempted to run over an ICE agent with her car, and he fired in self-defense. But facts have never been the left’s strong suit when there’s a narrative to protect. But I digress.

This all sounds great, and the reactions from the left are so worth it. But officially changing the agency’s name from ICE to NICE would require an act of Congress to amend the statute that created the agency. Still, the NICE rebrand is a perfect piece of political judo. It reframes the public conversation around an agency the left has spent years trying to demonize. Democrats want the word “ICE” to conjure fear and cruelty. Trump wants the media to be forced to say “NICE agents” every single day, in every single broadcast. It’s hard to run a “Defund NICE” campaign with a straight face. The left knows it, which is exactly why they’re reacting with such theatrical fury.

Will ICE officially become NICE? Probably not anytime soon. But the mere suggestion has Democrats tying themselves in knots, and that alone is worth it. Sometimes the point of a move isn’t to execute it — it’s to watch your opponents trip over themselves reacting to it. On that score, this one is already a win. So, yeah, I’m all for it. Frankly, I’m surprised it wasn’t called NICE to begin with. Clearly, Carolla was onto something, and I really hope we see it happen… if for no other reason than to see Democrats lose it.

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“The most effective way to get the best outcome is to approach and enlist the smart ones from outside government to come and assist. Patel was always an insider.”

• Kash Patel Outlines Secret Room in FBI Headquarters (CTH)

My opinion on our current FBI Director is the same as it was the day his nomination was announced. The best, the most competent, the smartest, the most insightful and stable thinking people do not originate on a track from inside government work. The most effective way to get the best outcome is to approach and enlist the smart ones from outside government to come and assist. Patel was always an insider.


The FBI is an institution built upon corruption and fraud. Unfortunately, neither President Trump, nor the American people, will ever get the vindication and accountability he/we deserve until Kash Patel is no longer the one in charge of delivering it. It’s just that painfully simple. Trying to reform a corrupt system while maintaining the structures that enabled the corruption leads to endless discussions and ‘trust me bro’ delays.

In this interview FBI Director Kash Patel sits down with Sean Hannity to discuss current and prior events within the FBI. Patel’s primary objective is the performance; the presentation of what he thinks will endear him to President Trump the most. This is not effectiveness; the outcome is the illusion of leadership.

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“..going against Trump in a primary means ending up “in the grinder..”

• Trump Is Purging RINOs, and the Left Is Panicking (Margolis)

Tuesday night’s Indiana Republican State Senate primary turned into a political slaughterhouse. Five of seven GOP incumbents who’d stonewalled efforts to redistrict the state in Republicans’ favor went down in flames. There was nothing subtle about the message from MAGA voters. They want strong Republicans who will fight the Democrats, not be weak, useful idiots for the left. And if there’s anything that Donald Trump has taught the GOP, it’s how to be a fighter. “He’s the boss of the party,” Scott Jennings said of Trump on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees. “He calls the shots in the Republican Party, and if you go against that, he will pour his wrath out upon you, and it doesn’t typically turn out well.”


That’s not spin. That’s just reality at this point. Jennings invoked Harry Enten’s well-worn observation that going against Trump in a primary means ending up “in the grinder,” and Indiana delivered a fresh case study. And weak-kneed Republicans should take note, because the carnage won’t stop in Indiana. Jennings immediately pointed to what comes next: Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District in a couple of weeks, where Thomas Massie — arguably the single biggest thorn in Trump’s side in the entire House — is staring down a well-funded primary challenge.

“If you look at what happened in Indiana tonight, and you’re Thomas Massie tonight, or you’re anybody else in a primary right now where Trump’s on the other side of you, you’ve got to be thinking, this is a bad night for me,” Jennings said. The money’s there. The will is there. The precedent is being set, one primary at a time. Then Van Jones opened his mouth. Jones went full pearl-clutching, calling Trump a “petty little punching-down bully” and complaining that the president couldn’t find the Epstein files or lower gas prices but somehow found time to meddle in statesenate races.

“I would be embarrassed if I were the President of the United States with the level of crisis that we have, that this is his most important objective and the only thing he’s gotten right, apparently, in the past six months,” Jones said. He topped it off with a little lecture about sovereignty and kings: “We don’t have a king.” Really? He’s playing the King Card? Of course, Jennings calmly torched Jones’s whole argument with one question: “Do you think that those sorts of rules apply to, say, Barack Obama when he engages in the Virginia redistricting referendum?”Jones tried to wiggle out of it. “He didn’t — he got involved in a ballot measure,” Jones said. “He didn’t go poking and picking on individual dog catchers and everybody else.”

And Barack Obama never endorsed Democrats in competitive primaries before? Give me a break. What a dumb argument to make. So, obviously, Jennings wasn’t buying it. “Well, he was picking on the Republican congressman who represented their constituents.” And that was that. Jones tried to lecture about the sanctity of political prerogatives, even apparently forgetting that presidents from both parties have long used their influence to shape their parties, be it by endorsing or recruiting candidates, raising money, cutting ads, etc. What Jones is really upset about here is that Trump has succeeded.

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It’s too easy to be corrupt in the US. Because the people paid to prevent this were all focused on getting Trump.

• FBI Raids Virginia Senate President’s Office (Salgado)

A top Virginia Democrat and ally of radical Gov. Abigail Spanberger is suddenly in the spotlight as the FBI raids her office amid a reported corruption investigation. Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin posted on X May 6 that Fox was “on scene in Portsmouth, VA where the FBI is raiding the office of Virginia Senate President Pro Tempore L[.] Louise Lucas, a Democrat and close ally of VA Governor Spanberger. Fed law enforcement sources tell FOX this is in connection to a major corruption probe, and the FBI is serving multiple search warrants, approved by a federal judge, at her office and a next door cannabis dispensary. More to come with correspondent @AlexHoganTV, who reports that Lucas just showed up on scene as the FBI searches her office.”


Fox’s foreign correspondent Alex Hogan posted the video below:

Ironically, like so many other Democrats, Lucas previously lectured that “no one is above the law” when gloating over the March 2023 Manhattan grand jury indictment of Donald Trump. Now Trump is back in the White House, and his FBI is raiding Lucas’s office.

It is not clear if this investigation will involve Spanberger directly at all, or only indirectly, because her ally Lucas is the one under federal investigation.

Notably, however, Spanberger also arguably violates federal law on a regular basis whenever she enforces sanctuary policies for illegal aliens. For instance, the Department of Homeland Security just rearrested Guatemalan illegal alien and pedophile Walvin Victor Hugo Garcia after Spanberger and her fellow Democrats defied an ICE detainer request and released Garcia. And earlier this year, after Sierra Leone criminal illegal alien Abdul Jalloh, with 30 prior arrests, stabbed a 41-year-old Virginia mom, Stephanie Minter, to death at a bus stop, Spanberger explicitly refused to hand Jalloh over to federal immigration authorities.

The reason I say this behavior potentially violates the law is that, according to 18 U.S. Code § 111, anyone who “forcibly assaults, resists, opposes, impedes, intimidates, or interferes with” designated federal officers has committed a criminal offense. 8 U.S. Code § 1324 also states that anyone who “encourages or induces an alien to come to, enter, or reside in the United States, knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that such coming to, entry, or residence is or will be in violation of law” or “conceals, harbors, or shields from detection, or attempts to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection, such alien” violates the law. Spanberger appears to have broken both those laws, as have all officials in Virginia enforcing sanctuary policies. Maybe the Feds need to raid Spanberger next.

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“In one from 2017, Brockman muses, “It’d be wrong to steal the nonprofit from [Musk] and turn it into a B-Corp without him—doing so would be pretty morally bankrupt.”

• OpenAI Co-founder Greg Brockman Defends Company’s For-Profit Pivot (ET)

In the second week of a high-profile jury trial that could have profound impact on the race for artificial intelligence, OpenAI president Greg Brockman rejected allegations that he and other co-founders betrayed the company’s philanthropic mission and illegally enriched themselves by flipping the non-profit lab into a for-profit corporation.Tesla CEO Elon Musk in 2024 sued Brockman and CEO Sam Altman, alleging they bilked him of $38 million in donations then restructured as a for-profit corporation by exclusively licensing their flagship product to Microsoft—betraying a founding mission to operate as an open-source charity that would counter the risks of profit-driven AI.


OpenAI and Microsoft deny the allegations, arguing that Musk abandoned the company in 2018 to start his own for-profit competitor, xAI, when other founders rejected his bid to take full control of the operation. “I think we’ve been very consistent on the mission,” Brockman told a federal court in Oakland. “If you look at what we’ve accomplished—currently the foundation has $150 billion worth of OpenAI equity value. That’s something we’ve built through hard blood, sweat, and tears through all this time since Elon left.” The company’s nonprofit foundation has a 27 percent stake in OpenAI’s for-profit corporation; Microsoft, which has invested more than $13 billion since 2019, owns 26 percent.

Called as an adverse witness for the plaintiff, Brockman over two days May 4–5 offered testimony outlining an alternate narrative and timeframe than the one Musk presented the week prior. Brockman also attempted to add context to what he has claimed were “cherrypicked” segments of his personal diary, unsealed during the discovery process. He often spoke in incomplete sentences, punctuated by stock phrases like, “We were solving for the mission.” Arguably, this had less zing to it than, “You can’t just steal a charity”—a phrase Musk favored in his own testimony.

‘Morally Bankrupt’ Musk’s attorney Steven Molo grilled Brockman on a series of diary entries from 2017 and 2018, a time of intense negotiations with Musk over the future structure of the company. In one from 2017, Brockman muses, “It’d be wrong to steal the nonprofit from [Musk] and turn it into a B-Corp without him—doing so would be pretty morally bankrupt.” Brockman denied this contradicted his commitment to OpenAI’s mission. “I think I meant it would actually serve the mission, but it would be hard to look at yourself in the mirror,” he told the court. Under cross-examination, he explained he was referring to the idea of voting Musk off the board of directors, which he had considered at the time.

“It had been made clear to us,” he said, “that if we didn’t come to [Musk’s] terms, he was going to start an AGI competitor.” Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is the hypothetical point at which digital intelligence reaches or surpasses human cognitive abilities and can operate autonomously. Some, including Musk, believe we have already achieved an early version of it, and that AGI advancement in the wrong hands poses the greatest existential threat to humanity. Musk testified that this threat was the express motivation for creating OpenAI as an open-source, nonprofit lab. From late 2017 to early 2018, Musk, Altman, Brockman, and Ilya Sutskever, another OpenAI co-founder and its former chief scientist, floated various ideas as they debated how to fund the project at a competitive level.

Musk, the main donor, rejected an even equity split among the four co-founders, instead proposing a deal that would give him majority stake, to be diluted as more investors joined. Brockman said he and Sutskever were willing to accept Musk being CEO and having a majority stake. “But the one thing we could not accept was to hand him unilateral total control over the AGI.” Musk was the wrong man for the job, according to Brockman. “Look, he knows rockets, he knows electric cars, he did not and I believe does not know AI,” Brockman said of the Tesla and SpaceX CEO. “And Ilya and I did not think he was going to spend the time required to actually get good at it.”

Brockman alleged Musk “didn’t recognize that spark” in early language models underlying the GPT technology. “It was there, a working version, we could see the promise. … We really needed someone running the company that had that effect.” Molo pressed the witness, pointing to emails from Musk proposing a 16-person board for the new corporation, in which Musk would have a 25 percent influence. “This is the man you’re saying wanted to be the AI tyrant and have absolute and total control?” Molo probed. “He wanted a board, and conducted in a way you were not familiar with because you didn’t have the experience of corporate governance, did you?” Brockman acknowledged, “Definitely, this is something I was new to,” but maintained that there was never a real plan for Musk to relinquish control.

In a January 2018 email to Musk and others, Brockman stressed that a moral high ground was “our best tool,” and to maintain it, the company should endeavor to remain a nonprofit. “AI is going to shake up the fabric of society, and our fiduciary duty should be to humanity.” But back in November 2017, Molo pointed out that Brockman’s diary entries show he was worried about how it would look if the founders continued to say they were committed to a nonprofit while planning to convert to a for-profit. “Cannot say that we are committed to the nonprofit. Don’t wanna say that we’re committed. If three months later we’re doing b-corp then it was a lie,” Brockman wrote. “Can’t see us turning this into a for-profit without a very nasty fight.”

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What is more newsworthy? That he offered sperm or that he fathered 4 children with her?

• Former OpenAI Board Member Says Elon Musk Offered Her Sperm Donations (BBC)

A former OpenAI board member has explained how her unconventional personal relationship with Elon Musk evolved into having four of his children. Shivon Zilis testified in a federal courtroom in Oakland, California for hours on Wednesday as part of Musk’s lawsuit trying to reverse OpenAI’s change to a for-profit company. The focus of Zilis’s appearance was her direct involvement in early talks with Musk around the company becoming a for-profit, but also how she worked for and became involved with Musk as she advised OpenAI. “I still really wanted to be a mum and Elon made the offer around that time and I accepted,” she said, explaining Musk in 2020 had offered to donate sperm.


Zilis and Musk attended the wedding of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino at Mar-a-Lago in February


“He was encouraging everyone around him at that time to have kids and he’d noticed I did not. He offered to make a donation,” Zilis said. Zilis has worked as a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley for over 15 years and held executive positions at Musk’s car company, Tesla, and his neurotechnology firm Neuralink. She joined OpenAI as an advisor in 2016, not long after it was founded, a position through which she said on Wednesday is how she first met Musk. Given Zilis’s role across Musk’s companies and OpenAI, eventually becoming a director at OpenAI from 2020 to 2023, she is an important witness in the trial. OpenAI lawyers have suggested that she funnelled information about OpenAI to Musk after he in 2018 left the AI company, which he co-founded and made early donations to.

Zilis said she had a “one-off” romance with Musk about a decade ago but was not romantically involved with Musk in 2020, when Musk initially made the offer to father her children. She explained she had been struggling with certain health issues which had changed her initial plans to follow a more traditional personal path of getting married and having children with a romantic partner. Zilis’s initial plan for Musk’s role in the lives of the first two children she had by him was not necessarily as an active father, and the two had agreed to keep his paternity “strictly confidential.” Today, Musk is an active participant in the lives of his now four children with Zilis, she said, explaining that they spend a few hours a week together as a family.

Zilis said the confidentiality agreement with Musk is why she did not disclose to OpenAI’s chief executive Sam Altman that twins she gave birth to in 2021 were fathered by Musk. She told Altman that Musk was the father the following year, when she learned a Business Insider report on Musk’s paternity of the children was imminent. Nevertheless, Altman and OpenAI’s president Greg Brockman wanted to continue with Zilis on the board of the AI company. Zilis said on Wednesday that the three remained friends until at least 2023. When asked earlier this week about Zilis’ involvement with OpenAI for years after Musk had left the company, Brockman said: “We trusted her to keep the Elon conflict under control.”

Zilis left the board in March 2023 as Musk was launching xAI, an AI company developing a chatbot that is a direct competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.With years of history, including emails and text messages that have been made part of the case between Zilis, Altman, Brockman, and Musk, lawyers for OpenAI seized on several examples of discussions around changing the corporate structure of the AI company. Moving away from being a pure non-profit was seen as necessary as early as 2017 in order for OpenAI to grow and raise from investors many billions of dollars, according to written exchanges shown in court in which Musk was involved.

Brockman and another OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever were pushing for the company to transition to a B Corp, which is a type of for-profit entity that holds itself to a certain mission.nEmails from Zilis showed that Musk wanted more control of OpenAI, through additional board seats and even suggested that the AI company become part of Tesla, possibly as a B Corp subsidiary of the electric car company. Zilis said in a written exchange that such a move for OpenAI “solves the funding issue immediately.” Ultimately, Altman, Brockman, Sutskever could not agree on terms with Musk, in large part because they were adamant that Musk “not have control” of OpenAI’s work, according to an email from Zilis shown in court.

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“Since her appointment by President Joe Biden, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has quickly developed a radical and chilling jurisprudence..”

• Three Justices Chastise Jackson for Groundless, Irresponsible Dissent (Turley)

Since her appointment by President Joe Biden, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has quickly developed a radical and chilling jurisprudence. Her often sole dissents and accusatory rhetoric have drawn not just the ire of her conservative colleagues but her liberal colleagues. This week, that tension deepened with a stinging rebuke from Justice Samuel Alito (joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch).


At issue is the finalization of the Court’s opinion in Louisiana v. Callais, where the Court ruled 6-3 to ban racial gerrymandering. The Court reaffirmed the use of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to ban intentional racial discrimination in the design of voting districts, but effectively found many districts to be unconstitutional in their current form. There is no reason why the decision should not be finalized except for a blatantly partisan effort to protect the Democrats from losing seats in the midterm elections. After all, if these districts are unconstitutional, why should states guarantee that voters are given representatives chosen free of racial discriminatory preferences?

That question is even more confusing given the long wait for this opinion. Not only was the case reargued, but there were growing complaints about the delay in releasing the opinion. Complaints increased after a recent book allegedly reported that Justice Elena Kagan had a vocal confrontation with her colleague, former Justice Stephen Breyer, over his push to release the dissents in Dobbs after the leaking of that opinion. Breyer reportedly agreed with Chief Justice John Roberts that the conservative justices were facing increased death threats due to the delay. Kagan allegedly wanted to further delay the release.

In the Callais decision, the delay was curious since there were six solid votes for the majority and not more of a fracturing of opinions. Indeed, the majority opinion’s references to the Kagan dissent are relatively brief. Nevertheless, the delay has made it very difficult for states to make changes. A few are moving to delay their primaries or draw new maps under extremely tight calendars. Regardless of the delay, there is no cognizable or principled reason to withhold the opinion to preserve unconstitutional districts. The case has already been on the docket for an unusually long time due to a reargument.

In its one-paragraph order, the court acknowledged that the Supreme Court’s clerk normally waits 32 days after a decision to send a copy of the opinion and the judgment to the lower court. However, it noted that the defenders of the challenged districts had “not expressed any intent to ask this Court to reconsider its judgment.” Conversely, the other parties raised the need for states to address the impact of the ruling with the approaching elections.

Jackson stood alone in demanding that the unconstitutional districts be effectively preserved for the purposes of this election — guaranteeing Democratic seats in the midterm that could be lost in non-racially discriminatory districts. Neither Kagan nor Justice Sonia Sotomayor would join her in the dissent, despite dissenting from the Callais decision itself. However, it was her language again that drew the attention of her colleagues. Justice Jackson lambasted the court’s ruling “has spawned chaos in the State of Louisiana.” In an Orwellian twist, Jackson suggested that others were playing politics as she sought to effectively protect unconstitutional Democratic districts. She suggested that the case exposed “a strong political undercurrent.”

In arguably the most insulting line, she lectured her colleagues that this case “unfolds in the midst of an ongoing statewide election, against the backdrop of a pitched redistricting battle among state governments that appear to be acting as proxies for their favored political parties.” She further said that, rather than avoid “the appearance of partiality,” the Court’s action “is tantamount to an approval of Louisiana’s rush to pause the ongoing election in order to pass a new map.”

Justice Alito had had enough. He noted that her reliance on the 32-day period was a “trivial” objection that put form above substance since no party had asked for reconsideration. It would be waiting for 32 days for no purpose, while the other parties had stated a reasonable and pressing need to finalize the opinion. He chastised Jackson for a dissent that “lacks restraint.” He denounced the dissent as making “baseless and insulting” claims. He particularly objected to the charge that her colleagues were engaging in an unprincipled use of power” as a groundless and utterly irresponsible charge.”

What is even more chilling than Jackson’s jurisprudence is the fact that she is often cited as the model for Democrats seeking to pack the Court with an instant majority if they retake power. This and other Jackson dissents show why Democrats are so confident that packing the Court will yield lasting control of the government. Jackson recently told ABC News that “I have a wonderful opportunity to tell people in my opinions how I feel about the issues, and that’s what I try to do.” For some of her colleagues, that cathartic benefit is coming at too high a cost for the Court.

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Carmakers paid through the nose to achieve … nothing.

• The EV Bust Claims Five More Victims… and They Aren’t Even EVs? (Green)

Honda’s failed bet on electric vehicles means the Japanese auto giant will have to stretch the lifecycles of five top-selling vehicles “in some cases to more than a decade,” according to a supplier memo seen by Automotive News. The company will continue selling existing versions of the Odyssey, Accord, and HR-V, as well as the Acura MDX and Integra, after writing down up to $15.8 billion worth of investments in EVs, including eliminating three new EV models for the U.S. market. Car and Driver said the 2023-issue Accord “won’t be redesigned until at least early 2030,” while “the Odyssey minivan isn’t set to be replaced until 2030, while the current HR-V SUV will see its production extended until early 2032.” The two Acura models will suffer similar delays.


It seems like just earlier this spring [It was just earlier this spring, Steve —Editor] I reported on Honda’s massive losses from betting big on EVs — with a big nudge from Big Stupid Government — but the company’s losses show up on more than just the balance sheet. That’s why models that the company actually sells and makes money on — like the aforementioned Accord — won’t see expected refreshes anytime soon. There’s this little thing called opportunity cost, which is the value of the best alternative you give up when you choose one option over another. Honda bet big on EVs, but then changing market conditions forced the company to scale back those plans to the tune of billions of dollars worth of write-downs.

Worse, however, are the updated models that would have sold in volume that the company chose not to invest in.Losing a bet this big hurts in the auto industry more than almost anywhere else, due to development times measured in years — yet vehicles are still subject to the whims of fashion. Consumers expect regular model refreshes, particularly loyal customers hoping to trade in their older car for the latest version of the same model. A two- or three-year delay means customers holding onto their current car for that much longer. Or maybe even shopping the competition.

The current version of the Odyssey minivan debuted in 2018 and hasn’t gotten anything more than a facelift in 2025. Buyers hoping to trade in for the latest and greatest have to wait another four years. Honda said in a statement, “We are not going to comment on future product plans. We are very confident and excited in our future product strategy including our previously announced plans to advance our award-winning hybrid technology to more models.” The company needed 36 words to say nothing at all.

According to Electrek, Honda’s strategy “now centers on hybrids for the near term, with affordable EVs priced under $30,000 pushed to the end of the decade. The only EV still standing in its US lineup is the Prologue, which recently saw a $7,500 price cut — a GM Ultium-based vehicle that Honda didn’t even engineer itself.” Electrek also noted that Honda completely scrapped plans for a multibillion-dollar EV plant in Canada. Don’t get me wrong, Honda makes great hybrids, and for most people looking to save money on gas, they make so much more sense than going fully electric. But hybrid versions of the company’s most-loved models that could have hit showrooms this year or next, now won’t be seen until the next decade.

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‘sin at its root does not consist in the (same-sex) couple relationship, but in a lack of faith in God who desires our fulfillment.’

• Tectonic Shift In Church Framing of Homosexuality (Tim O’Brien)

Two things that non-Catholics and many Catholics don’t understand about the Catholic Church are that it’s not a democratic organization and it’s not an autocracy. In other words, as powerful as the Pope is, he cannot arbitrarily or single-handedly change doctrine and policy. At the same time, even though the church counts 1.4 billion members around the world, it is not structured to take their input into account the way representative government works in America.


Among Catholics, this confusion often pops up when the discussion turns to declining mass attendance and increases in the number of lapsed Catholics who no longer consider themselves a part of the church, even though they may have been baptized in the church. To get them back, we might argue, the church needs to allow women to be priests, or priests to get married, or to change our hard line on abortion, or to change the church’s position on LGBTQ issues. That’s not how it works, or at least, that’s not how it’s supposed to work. I know I’m going to hear from the Catholic catechism and Canon Law technicians on this oversimplification, but here goes: The church is here for Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit and God Himself.

We exist to please God. God does not exist to please us. He is not our creation. We are His creation. From a purely administrative standpoint, the church has had to find ways over the past 2,000 years to function in a changing world. That is definitely not to say that the church has had to change with the times or change simply to stay relevant, but rather, it has had to stay true to itself in the context of the times. Against this backdrop, Pope Francis decided to convene a Synod of Bishops in 2021 to consider ways in which the church can be more responsive to the culture without diminishing its core doctrines and policies, and the catechism itself.

In the Catholic Church, a Synod of Bishops is a formal assembly where bishops meet to discuss subjects tied to doctrine, governance, pastoral practice, or mission. If there is any one approach the church uses to try to stay relevant, this would be a key method. Of course, there are many within the church who argue against a “synodal mentality,” where they feel that the desire to be more relevant or “accessible” can undermine the core attributes of the church itself. They feel too much weight is assigned to synods.

When this particular synod was convened, the church invited its members from around the globe to participate. “Listening sessions” were held at the most local of levels – the parishes. It’s been reported that millions of Catholics participated in this process, where the input and feedback received were fed up the food chain from the parishes to the dioceses; to the bishops at the local level; then to the “continental level,” and ultimately on to the Vatican. Out of this process emerged what the church called a “Working Document,” which then was reviewed in the Vatican before this final report was released.

And so, Study Group 9 of Pope Francis’s synod has now released its final report, and in it is included the testimonies of two homosexual men. This is included as part of the report’s “cases for listening.” In the slow-moving world of Vatican policy change, this is a tectonic shift.

What’s actually in the report
According to insiders, throughout the synodal process, the bishops looked more closely at a number of issues, including women’s ordination, the church and the internet, ecumenism, polygamy, the Catholic liturgy, and other things. But the headlines coming out of the final report are sure to center mostly on how it treated the LGBTQ issues. The synod’s final report includes that testimony where two “married” homosexual men, who say they are Catholic, described the church’s role in creating an atmosphere of “solitude, anguish, and stigma that accompany persons with same-sex attractions and their families.”

John-Henry Westen, co-founder of LifeSite, reacted to the release of the report on the X platform, saying that it “Suggests a reframing of homosexuality in the church, endorsing testimony without qualification that ‘sin at its root does not consist in the (same-sex) couple relationship, but in a lack of faith in God who desires our fulfillment.’” This is covered in the first couple of minutes in Westen’s video.

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https://twitter.com/GreereMedeea/status/2051772652419748146?s=20 https://twitter.com/lakemonstercl1/status/2051607526353916257?s=20

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle March 31 2026

Mar 312026
 
 March 31, 2026  Posted by at 9:33 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  60 Responses »


Damien Hirst Spiritual Day Blossom 2018


• Trump Presents a Strong Statement Toward Iran – Rubio Responds (CTH)
• Israel Has Launched America Into The Third World War (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Geopolitics of the Third World War (Alexander Dugin)
• Iran’s Victory Would Have a Silver Lining (Paul Craig Roberts)
• EU Parliament Told Continent Is ‘On Track For CIVIL WAR’ (MN)
• US Senators Seek To Sanction Hungary Over Obstructing Ukraine Aid (ZH)
• Whatever the Ruling on Birthright Citizenship… (Turley)
• Springtime for RINOs (James Howard Kunstler)
• The Great Illusion of NATO is Fading Fast (Trenin)
• Tom Homan Bulldozed Jake Tapper’s DHS Funding Narrative (Matt Margolis)
• This Trillion-Dollar Firm Wants Out of Mamdani’s NYC (Stephen Green)
• Scott Jennings Destroyed the ‘No Kings’ Rallies, CNN Wasn’t Happy (Margolis)

 


 

https://twitter.com/MyLordBebo/status/2038285905627136090?s=20 https://twitter.com/MichaelARothman/status/2038389429426147786?s=20

 


 


Rubio’s good.

• Trump Presents a Strong Statement Toward Iran – Rubio Responds (CTH)

As Secretary of State Marco Rubio appears for an interview on Good Morning America, President Trump released the following statement:


“The United States of America is in serious discussions with A NEW, AND MORE REASONABLE, REGIME to end our Military Operations in Iran. Great progress has been made but, if for any reason a deal is not shortly reached, which it probably will be, and if the Hormuz Strait is not immediately “Open for Business,” we will conclude our lovely “stay” in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!), which we have purposefully not yet “touched.” This will be in retribution for our many soldiers, and others, that Iran has butchered and killed over the old Regime’s 47 year “Reign of Terror.” Thank you for your attention to this matter.” ~ President DONALD J. TRUMP

Secretary Rubio responded in real time to questions about the objectives. Rubio impressively underlined the objectives in Iran, reemphasizing the core intent of the military operation to remove the capacity of Iran to pose a threat to the stable alliances that have formed in the region.

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“The UN, EU, US, Russia, China, India are yet to try to stop Israel’s multi-year genocide of the Palestinians.”

• Israel Has Launched America Into The Third World War (Paul Craig Roberts)

“The Third World War has been initiated by the United States in the context of preserving, strengthening, and ultimately consolidating the unipolar model of world order. All others are offered a choice: to become obedient vassals or to be treated as enemies. It is against these opponents of the unipolar world that Washington is waging the Third World War. At stake is sovereignty.”


I think a more correct explanation of Trump’s change of posture is the power of the Israel Lobby over the US government, media, universities, and entertainment and Netanyahu’s ability to use this power to put the US again at war for Greater Israel as the George W. Bush administration was used in “the war on terror,” which was the opening phase of destroying “seven countries in five years” called for by the Zionist neoconservatives. It is the extraordinary control that Israel has over the United States that accounts for Trump’s change in posture. Trump inherited the war with Russia in Ukraine. He could not end it because the combination of the Israel Lobby and the US military/security complex is too powerful for an American president.

I am surprised that a person as thoughtful as Dugin does not see Netanyahu’s role in realigning Trump. Especially so because in February the former Israeli prime minister, Bennett, addressed the American Conference of Jewish Organizations and declared: “Turkey is the next Iran.” These were marching orders to the Israel Lobby to begin the demonization of Turkey and setting Turkey up as the next “terrorist” country to be destroyed. Dugin is very much aware of the threat posed by Greater Israel, but in his article he does not say that it is the Israel Lobby that changed Trump from a multipolar position to a unipolar position, thereby bringing wider wars to the world.

As best as I can tell, most governments defer to Israel’s explanations and justifications. The UN, EU, US, Russia, China, India are yet to try to stop Israel’s multi-year genocide of the Palestinians. In the US, UK, and some EU countries it is becoming a hate crime and a criminal felony to criticize Israel. American students are expelled from US universities for criticizing Israel. Even Putin defers to Israel and abandoned Russia’s Syrian ally to Greater Israel. As for the current conflict in the Middle East, Hezbollah secretary-general Qassem is the only person to accurately describe the war with Iran in terms of “the US-Israeli project of ‘Greater Israel.’” https://paulcraigroberts.org/finally-an-arab-leader-who-understands/

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“Washington has now fully adopted the neoconservative position and behaves as if it alone possesses genuine sovereignty ..”

• Geopolitics of the Third World War (Alexander Dugin)

(Translated from the original Russian version on RIA Novosti).
Many analysts are now advancing the hypothesis that the Third World War has already begun and that we are in its first stage. Whether this is so or not will become clear in the near future, but for now let us assume the validity of this hypothesis and attempt to survey its geopolitical contours.The essence of the Third World War lies in a radical transformation of the entire architecture of world politics. The international institutions that exist today have long ceased to correspond to the real state of affairs. They are still organized according to the logic of the Westphalian system and the bipolar world. The Westphalian model is based on the recognition of the sovereignty of all states acknowledged at the international level. The United Nations is built on the same foundation.


However, in practice, over the past hundred years, the principle of sovereignty has turned into pure hypocrisy. In the 1930s, a system took shape in Europe in which only three forces were sovereign, and these were strictly ideological: 1. the bourgeois-capitalist West (Britain, the United States, France, and so on); 2. the communist USSR; 3. the Axis countries with a fascist ideology. This situation persisted even after the end of the Second World War, except that one of the ideological poles—the fascist one—disappeared. The other two—the capitalist and the socialist ones—grew stronger and expanded. Yet once again, no national state was sovereign in itself. Some were governed from Moscow, others from Washington. The Non-Aligned Movement wavered between the two poles.

he self-dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the collapse of the USSR put an end to bipolarity, and from that moment only the United States remained as the bearer of sovereignty. The United Nations and the Westphalian model became a fig leaf for global hegemony. Thus emerged the unipolar world. Already in the 1990s, it became clear that international law would have to be revised—either in favor of a world government (the liberal “end of history” scenario of Francis Fukuyama) or in favor of direct Western hegemony (as envisioned by American neoconservatives). European countries followed the world-government scenario and, as a preparatory stage towards it, ceded their sovereignty to the European Union. Everyone else was subtly encouraged to prepare for the same.

However, in the early 2000s, a new tendency emerged: the will to restore sovereignty in Russia and China. Moscow and Beijing moved to make sovereignty not a fiction but a reality. Thus, multipolarity made itself known. From that point onward, it was proposed that sovereignty be vested in “civilization-states”—both those already formed (Russia, China, India) and potential ones (the Islamic world, Africa, Latin America). These, in turn, coalesced into BRICS.

As a result, the unipolar project came into direct confrontation with the multipolar one. Both globalists and neoconservatives opposed multipolarity. The potential for conflict was evident, while the old norms and rules inherited from previous geopolitical eras no longer functioned. Whether the Third World War has already begun or not is ultimately secondary; its geopolitical content is clear: it is a war between unipolarity and multipolarity over a new architecture of the world, over the distribution of sovereign centers of decision-making: either confined to the West alone or shared among rising civilization-states.

Donald Trump returned to the White House for a second term in 2024 with an agenda that suggested he might accept multipolarity: rejection of interventions, criticism of globalists, direct conflict with liberals, sharp attacks on neoconservatives, a focus on domestic U.S. issues, and calls to return to traditional values—all of this gave reason to believe that Trump and his administration would align with multipolarity, while seeking to secure the most advantageous position for the United States within this new framework.

However, very soon the Trump administration began to move closer to the neoconservatives and to move away from its initial position. This was followed by support for the genocide in Gaza, continued provision of intelligence to Kiev, the seizure of Maduro, preparations for an invasion of Cuba, and finally a war against Iran, including the killing of the political leadership of the Islamic Republic. Washington has now fully adopted the neoconservative position and behaves as if it alone possesses genuine sovereignty in the world: without any reference to rules or international law, it asserts unilateral authority over the entire globe. It seeks to prove this in practice: through wars, invasions, abductions of heads of state, and the orchestration of regime-change operations.

The Third World War has been initiated by the United States in the context of preserving, strengthening, and ultimately consolidating the unipolar model of world order. All others are offered a choice: to become obedient vassals or to be treated as enemies. It is against these opponents of the unipolar world that Washington is waging the Third World War. At stake is sovereignty. Since there is as yet no single power capable of symmetrically opposing the United States, it is conducting military operations across several fronts simultaneously.

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“Israel wants to mobilize 15,000 working Israelis. Trump has sent 15,000 Marines and paratroopers. Iran has mobilized 1,000,000 troops. What does that tell you? ”

• Iran’s Victory Would Have a Silver Lining (Paul Craig Roberts)

Former Israeli Army officer says Israel’s military is “on the brink of collapse.” Israel’s capability, with US help, is assassinations and sneak attacks. Israel’s army is good at bombing civilians and shooting mothers and babies in the head. But when it comes to fighting, Israel is pitiful. Twice the vaunted IDF tried to occupy Southern Lebanon in order to steal the water resources there. And twice the Israeli army was totally defeated by a mere Hezbollah militia with no air force, tanks, or artillery. It might be about to happen for a third time.


The current war with Iran now expanded into Lebanon is disrupting Israeli life and bringing bombing home to them as Iranian missiles penetrate Israel and Washington’s air defenses without difficulty. More and more of Israel’s population is seeing the current war as an unnecessary “political war” and do not support it. If by “political,” Israelis mean the Zionist Greater Israel agenda, then the Israeli population’s support for the Zionist agenda of Greater Israel might not be very broad or deep and might be eroding. Possibly Israelis, as well as Muslims, are having the Zionist agenda imposed on them.

If this is the case, then the Israeli population’s support for the Israeli-American war on Iran may falter before the Iranian population’s support does. Already, the American public is heavily against Trump’s war against Iran. Unless the Trump-Netanyahu war criminals use their nukes, Iran is likely to win this war. The silver lining in an Iranian victory is the liberation of both America and the Israeli population from servitude to the crazed Zionist agenda of a Greater Israel from the Nile to Pakistan.

Americans should pray for an Iranian victory. Otherwise, their blood and money will continue to be used for Israel’s bloody purpose of Greater Israel. Israel wants to mobilize 15,000 working Israelis. Trump has sent 15,000 Marines and paratroopers. Iran has mobilized 1,000,000 troops. What does that tell you? If the dumbshit Netanyahu-Trump strike Iran with nukes, Iran will nuke Israel by destroying the nuclear plant at Dimona. Israel will no longer exist. Israel is tiny. lran is as large as Western Europe. An honest American has to ask himself how America became the vehicle for Israel’s wars for Greater Israel. Whatever happened to the requirement that the American government represents Americans’ interests, not those of some foreign country?

The 9/11 attacks were orchestrated by US VP Dick Cheney and the Zionists he positioned in the essential offices of the US government. The orchestrated “attack on America by Muslin terrorists” was the “New Pearl Harbor” that the American Zionist neoconservatives said was necessary to destroy seven Muslim countries in five years. It has taken longer than the five years that 4 Star General Wesley Clark said was the agenda shown to him by Pentagon generals. But America is now working for Israel on destroying Iran, after having disposed of Iraq, Libya, and Syria. Last month former Israeli prime minister Bennett came to America to address the American Organizations for Israel and gave them marching orders to begin demonizing Turkey as “the next Iran.”

Turkey has a leader who is just as stupid as America’s, as the UK’s, France’s, Germany’s, Russia’s, China’s, India’s. If Tayyip Erdogan understood the Zionist agenda of Greater Israel unfolding in front of his eyes, he would understand that he and his country are next and would have united with Iran to preserve Turkey’s sovereignty. But the fool thinks he can sit on the fence and ride both horses. In a world in which nuclear weapons and the ability to deploy deadly infections exist, and in which no objective, inquiring media exists, any fake news can rule.

There is nothing shameful about Iran fighting for its right to exist as a sovereign nation. But it is shameful for America to inflict harm on herself and others by fighting for Greater Israel.

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“Mass migration is shredding cultural homogeneity and paving the way for Balkanisation and violence..”

• EU Parliament Told Continent Is ‘On Track For CIVIL WAR’ (MN)

Europe’s ruling class has spent decades importing chaos under the banner of “diversity,” and now the bill is coming due in the most explosive way possible. A major conference held inside the European Parliament has heard stark warnings that the continent is barreling toward civil war as mass migration erodes trust, creates no-go zones, and fractures societies along ethnic lines. Professor David Betz of King’s College London cut straight to the point, telling the assembled lawmakers and experts: “Europe is on track for civil war”.


The event, titled Civil War: Europe at Risk?, was hosted by French populist-right leader Marion Maréchal and Sweden Democrats MEP Charlie Weimers. It also launched a new report documenting up to a thousand no-go zones across Europe based on public data including crime rates, sexual violence, youth gangs, unemployment, school performance, antisemitism, homophobia, mosque density, attacks on firefighters, and NGO presence. Maréchal opened the conference by reflecting that formerly peaceful and stable societies are “rapidly transforming before our eyes into societies of violence and mistrust”, stating that “the main basis of trust between citizens is cultural homogeneity”, which is now fast eroding.

She warned Europe is already under a great strain of “diffuse guerrilla activity”, which takes various forms, including “riots, looting, random attacks, anti-white racism, and terrorist attacks”. Weimers echoed the assessment, noting the impact of mass migration on cultural cohesion. The Swedish MEP reflected: “Western democracies that were once relatively homogenous societies have become deeply fragmented. Newcomers often share little in common with the indigenous population. More alarmingly, many have no intention of assimilating.” Both hosts said they were driven to hold the conference to find political answers and prevent “the horror of civil war”.

Betz, who has gained prominence for highlighting the collapse of social cohesion, described the trajectory in chilling detail. He warned of “a peasant revolt. A conservative uprising in which the ruled seek to punish their rulers for violating their obligations under the social contract, and for changing the rules of the game against their wishes. It will look something like Italy’s Years of Lead, the ‘dirty wars’ of Latin America, or maybe The Troubles of Northern Ireland, but on a larger scale.” He continued: “What is already a guarded society will become a radically more heavily fortified society as elites seek more protection with more walls, guards, and surveillance. It will be bloody… the Balkanisation of British life along ethnic lines [is underway].”

Betz further urged, “What I call assortative movement is already occurring, quite obviously in some places like Tower Hamlets in London, Sparkhill in Birmingham which are already ethnic enclaves, zones of negotiated policing with parallel legal systems, alternative economies, and… zones of endemic and large-scale out-group sexual predation… this ought to be more generally frightening.” “In government there are plenty of people who understand fully the gravity of the situation, although it is, career-wise, terminal to speak of it openly,” he added.

Betz also warned of the ultimate stakes for native populations. “Where does Balkanisation lead us? … it leads to the extinguishment of Britain in the sense of a coherent cultural entity dominated by people genuinely sharing the titular identity of ‘British’… it leads to large scale and widespread civil war…” “It is very possible that the Britons end up like the Canaanites or the Arcadians, a people of historic interest, their monuments visible here and there in some sort of ruination, of interest to archaeologists and historians,” Betz explained, adding “This would be a tragedy, but that is a very viable option in front of us, and in fact it is a possibility that is quite close.”

Weimers asked bluntly: “Where will Europe be in 50 years? Will there be a Europe in 50 years?” Betz further outlined how any future conflict might unfold, describing “the siege of urban areas but with a few 21st century twists. In many ways it will be reminiscent of the siege of Sarajevo, but much more dominated by paramilitary actors using system disruption tactics. Most importantly, infrastructure attack to degrade and destroy the life support systems of urban, non-native enclaves.” He continued, “The political object is very simple, it is to compel non-natives to leave.

The strategy is to create conditions of life in the cities so intolerable that leaving is preferable to staying… it’s not an implausible theory of victory because its central premise, the instability of the modern urban condition, at the best of times is something scholars of urban studies have been warning against for 50 years already.” Betz warned that “fuel systems are easy to attack, they are flammable if not explosive by definition, they are difficult to repair, and expensive to replace. In fact they are impossible to replace in civil war conditions where no insurance is available.” He continued, “Moreover, disruption of fuel has very rapid knock-on effects of everything else logistically, most importantly the food distribution system which is the traditional weapon of siegecraft.” The full conference is below:

Betz has continually warned of the deep social erosion he’s believes is cascading toward civil war in Britain and Eure. Retired British Army Colonel Richard Kemp has also warned that integration breakdowns have worsened over the past two decades, paving the way for inevitable conflict. Kemp outlined that there is “No government, the government now or any prospective government of the UK, has the guts to stop it” when it comes to the Islamification of Britain. The pattern is unmistakable. Globalist policies of open borders and elite denial have created parallel societies, eroded national identity, and left ordinary Europeans with no peaceful political outlet.

As Betz has noted, many in government already grasp the gravity but stay silent to protect their careers. As educational as this all is, Europe doesn’t need more conferences or reports. It needs leaders with the courage to end mass migration, restore cultural cohesion, and put their own people first — before the warnings stop being theoretical and the conflict becomes reality.

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“The ruling Fidesz party has made anti-Ukraine messages the central element of its election campaign and insisted on maintaining Russian oil imports.”

• US Senators Seek To Sanction Hungary Over Obstructing Ukraine Aid (ZH)

Because US Congress is perfectly functional, and all domestic issues have been resolved (one would very ironically think), the FT reports that a bipartisan pair of US senators are set to introduce legislation calling for sanctions to be imposed on senior Hungarian officials involved in obstructing aid to Ukraine. If passed, the Block Putin act would require President Trump to impose financial sanctions and visa bans on Hungarian government officials involved in the country’s purchases of Russian oil and gas, and who have sought to block support for Ukraine.


The introduction of the bill comes as Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has held up a €90bn EU loan to Ukraine as he faces a tough re-election campaign ahead of parliamentary elections next month. Opinion polls indicated Orbán, who has served as prime minister since 2010, could lose power. The opposition Tisza party’s lead stood at 23% points on Wednesday, according to pollster Median. Pro-government polls show a slight lead for Orbán’s ruling Fidesz. Orbán, historically aligned with Vladimir Putin, has accused Kyiv of disrupting the flow of Moscow’s oil to Hungary by stalling repairs to the Druzhba pipeline, which transits Ukraine.

Democrat Jeanne Shaheen and Republican Thom Tillis, co-chairs of the Senate Nato observer group, are set to introduce the legislation this week. The pair have been outspoken about Europe’s continued dependence on Russian energy. Tillis said: “The United States and our allies must remain united in supporting Ukraine and in cutting off the revenue streams that fuel Putin’s war.”“This bill holds senior Hungarian officials accountable while giving Hungary a clear path to get back in line with its allies by ending its reliance on Russian energy and stopping its obstruction of support for Ukraine,” he added.

Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate foreign relations committee, said: “It is beyond belief that vice-president Vance is reportedly planning on visiting Hungary to provide an electoral boost to a corrupt government that continues to help fund Russia’s war machine.” “If we want this war in Ukraine to end, the Trump administration needs to be consistent in holding our allies to the same standards; no one, especially Viktor Orbán, should get a free pass,” she said. While much of the continent has sought to wean itself off Russian oil and gas supplies since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Hungary and Slovakia have increased their dependence on Russian energy… and lucky for them, as now the “rest of the continent” is about to go dry as a result of the Iran war.

Complicating matters, Trump is very close to Orbán and has endorsed his re-election bid. Politico on Wednesday reported preparations were being made for US vice-president JD Vance to visit Hungary days ahead of the elections. Trump has criticized Europe for continuing to buy Russian energy and has urged the continent to take the lead in supporting Ukraine. “They’re buying oil and gas from Russia while they’re fighting Russia,” Trump said in his address to the UN General Assembly in September. The draft text of the bill, which has been seen by the FT, does not mention Orbán explicitly as a target of the sanctions. Therefore, it would fall to the Trump administration to determine which Hungarian officials have been involved in holding up aid to Ukraine and continuing the country’s dependency on Russian energy, a congressional aide said.

Orbán and his foreign minister Péter Szijjártó have long sought close ties with Russia, with Szijjártó meeting his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov more than 20 times since the start of the war in 2022. The ruling Fidesz party has made anti-Ukraine messages the central element of its election campaign and insisted on maintaining Russian oil imports. “If President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy wants to get his money from Brussels, he must open the Druzhba crude pipeline,” Orbán said in a video message to the Ukrainian president last week. “They tell us openly that they don’t want to allow cheap Russian oil through to Hungary, so the situation is very simple. No oil — no money.”

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Why does the American Bar Association.express an opinion?

• Whatever the Ruling on Birthright Citizenship… (Turley)

The Supreme Court will soon hear arguments in the historic birthright citizenship case. It is a hearing that has been over 150 years in the making, since the ratification of the 14th Amendment. It is not just a long-debated question that has divided the nation, but it has divided many lawyers as well. For that reason, there was one brief that stood out before the court: the amicus brief of the American Bar Association. The ABA filed its “friend of the court” brief to argue that the matter is clear: Anyone who gives birth on our soil, even if here illegally or only briefly, may claim U.S. citizenship for their child.


Most nations on Earth, including many of our European allies, reject birthright citizenship, and many of us in this nation believe that it is a foolish policy. Yet, even as someone who opposes birthright citizenship, I have long believed and argued that there are good-faith arguments on both sides of this debate. The sponsors of this language clearly disagreed on the issue at the time of its enactment. Some stated at the time that the language did not allow for birthright citizenship.The debate comes down to six poorly chosen words: “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” Those words were not in the original draft, but were inserted by an amendment. Thus, they were not superfluous or casual verbiage, but an intentional condition. They were placed in the middle of an otherwise clear statement that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States … are citizens of the United States.”

For more than a century, many have argued that the words reflect an intent to limit the amendment to citizens and legal residents who are subject fully to the jurisdiction of the United States. That brings us back to the bar association. Regardless of how one comes out in the fascinating historical and constitutional debate, this is a case one would expect the ABA to sit out. It clearly does not speak for all lawyers on the issue, yet, it filed a strident brief and laid out a parade of horribles about what would happen if the Supreme Court were to reject birthright citizenship.I found the brief to be one of the least compelling submissions to the court. But, once again, the media will portray the brief as speaking for American lawyers, even though the ABA represents less than two out of every ten attorneys.

I previously wrote a column on these pages on “the rise and fall of the American Bar Association,” exploring how the ABA has alienated many lawyers with its partisan advocacy. When it was founded on August 21, 1878, in Saratoga Springs, New York, the 75 lawyers present from 20 states (and the District of Columbia) wanted an organization to create a national system of standards for “the advancement of the science of jurisprudence, the promotion of the administration of justice.” It was created to focus on professional accreditation, education, and training. That changed in 1990, when advocates overrode earlier votes to remain neutral on the constitutional interpretations supporting the right to abortion.

The adoption of a pro-abortion position shocked many and fundamentally changed the culture at the ABA. (It is worth noting that the very arguments embraced by the bar association were later rejected by the Supreme Court in the Dobbs decision.)Since that time, the ABA has become fully captive to partisans who use the organization to support liberal and often Democratic Party positions. The result has been a steady decline in membership.Today, there are roughly 1.3 million lawyers in the U.S. Even if the ABA represented just half of that number, it would have 650,000 members. As recently as 2015, it still had 400,000. But more recently, membership has fallen to 227,000, or just 17 percent of the bar.

Despite complaints that the ABA has become a partisan organization, its leadership has doubled down with positions and programming that are echo chambers for the left. During Trump’s terms, the ABA has uniformly opposed him and his policies. The ABA brief in favor of birthright citizenship is signed by ABA President Michele Behnke. It simply declares the language and history clear and resolved. It then predicts a virtual meltdown of order and due process in this country if birthright citizenship is not upheld. The decline of the ABA to the point where it does not speak for most lawyers has followed a familiar model. The media also abandoned neutrality in covering such stories, with many journalism schools now teaching students that they are advocates for social justice.

Likewise, academia largely purged its departments of Republicans, conservatives, and libertarians, as it increasingly prioritized advocacy over education. All three of these groups have one thing in common beyond their liberal ideological bias and advocacy: They are all increasingly unpopular. Higher education and the media have plummeted in public trust to record lows. Like the ABA, which can no longer claim to speak even for most lawyers, there is little indication that the loss of trust is causing the leadership to do any soul-searching. As memberships and revenues decline, the use of these institutions for advocacy remains personally beneficial. Behnke is leading an organization that is a shell of its former self, but she (like academics and journalists) is lionized for taking these positions.

Ironically, Behnke has a role in two of these areas, as a board member for the University of Wisconsin Law School and the University of Wisconsin Foundation and Alumni Association Board.Faced with an ABA doubling down on these controversial positions, various states are moving to do away with its historical role in bar memberships. The brief reaffirmed for many lawyers that the ABA is no longer a neutral and fair representative for all lawyers. It will continue to represent a dwindling faction of lawyers who look at the association as more of a stridently ideological than a strictly professional organization. That is why, whatever the outcome in Trump v. Barbara, the American Bar Association is likely to be the loser.

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“This sort of derangement is a novel psychopathology in the human species. . . a synthesis of low-IQ feminized brain scramble & neurotic lunacy.” JD Haltigan on X

• Springtime for RINOs (James Howard Kunstler)

Went to the No Kings assemblies in my town and the next nearby town on Saturday. Mental illness as far as the eye could see. Old folks, too, as far as the eye could see, predominately of the female persuasion: the devouring grandmothers. The Democratic Party has marshalled mental illness as its premier campaign strategy, and lately it is winning bigly around the country as mental illness becomes the go-to cope option for the ragged remnants of Boomerdom.


They believe things that are patently insane, for instance, the latest proposal by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) that illegal immigrants deserve reparations on account of being “traumatized” by U.S. immigration enforcement actions. If it feels like the Democratic Party is at war with our country you are not hallucinating. It is every bit as much a jihad as the Death to America crowd in Iran has explicitly pushed since 1979.

The president gets no help whatsoever from his own party, as you see in the disgraceful hijinks around the urgent issue of election reform. You know exactly how the election playbook was written: let x-million foreigners into the country illegally, give them (illegally) social security numbers, driver’s licenses, automatic voter registrations, addresses, mail-in ballots. . . and voila! They don’t even have to mail-in their own mail-in ballots. Lawfare ninja Marc Elias will arrange ballot pick-up service. And the cherry on top is that the census must count all the illegal aliens to add new congressional districts for extra seats in Congress.

So, in the face of that, Republican Majority Leader John Thune could not muster enough votes to save the SAVE Act. Or so he said. Looks more like lack a’wanna. Eerie lack a’wanna. On their tours of cable news, the hapless Republican senators, when asked, would not name their colleagues leaning against the SAVE Act. But you know who they are. Mitch McConnell, Murkowski, Tillis, Collins, Capito.

Leader Thune could not even manage to get Homeland Security funded with the prospect of Iranian sleeper cells awakening around the country. He just threw in the towel at three o’clock in the morning on Friday, and sent the whole crew home to meet the Easter Bunny. Chuck Schumer did an end-zone dance. The brokenness of our politics could not be more in your face. As things shape up this grueling springtime, Mr. Trump might have to go Abe Lincoln on these folks. That is, declare some sort of national emergency to save the election and the country.

Of course, the nation is more than a little distracted just now with doings in Iran. The No Kings folk are unabashedly rooting for everything to go wrong there, and not a few conservatives in the public arena are straining to conjure an Iranian victory in their black-pilled deliriums. Many claim they “have no idea” what we are doing there — can it be that hard? — or else they are rabidly exercised over our alliance with Israel in the operation. You know how that goes. Cue Tucker. He’ll explain.

The truth is we are pounding these savage Shia clerics and their Revolutionary Guard myrmidons to the garden of eternal bliss where the seventy-two virgins wait. Whatever remains of Iran’s legit government is bargaining under cover for an off-ramp now. Pakistan mediates. The parties sit in different rooms and pass notes through the mediators in a third room. Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi pretends that he will not negotiate with Mr. Trump’s envoys, Witkoff and Kushner, both Jews, the horror! But that’s sheer fakery.

To avoid humiliation in the process, Iran is still lobbing missiles and drones around the Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Israel, and they will probably keep doing that until the very moment of capitulation. Anyway, in less than a week, Mr. Trump turns the lights off all over Iran, and then they are back in the twelfth century. . . no command communication, no juice for anything, no money, no food, no water, no nothing . . . and a population getting dangerously desperate to make it all go away. . . to return to some dim memory of what normal life once was in an Iran not ruled by psychotic death cultists.

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“America steps back, and the Alliance starts to wobble ..”

• The Great Illusion of NATO is Fading Fast (Trenin)

One of the more idealistic ambitions of the last Soviet leadership was the simultaneous dissolution of both Cold War blocs, NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Only half of that vision came to pass. The Warsaw Pact disappeared in the spring of 1991. NATO didn’t. Instead, it endured and expanded. Over the following decades, the alliance not only survived but grew from 16 to 32 members. It took part in military campaigns in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Libya, and steadily extended its reach. After the launch of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, back in 2022, NATO expanded further, incorporating Finland and Sweden, while consolidating itself more firmly on an anti-Russian footing than at any time since the Cold War.


For the first time in its history, Russia found itself facing a unified military alliance stretching across Europe and North America. The idea of a “collective West” opposing Moscow ceased to be rhetorical and became a strategic reality. Yet by the mid-2020s, cracks had begun to appear. The return of Donald Trump to the White House marked a shift not in America’s commitment to NATO, but in how that commitment was defined. Trump has abandoned the familiar model of the US as a paternal, often indulgent leader of the alliance. In its place, he presented America as a demanding hegemon, insisting that its allies bear a far greater share of the burden.

Initially, European capitals reacted with unease. For decades, they had relied on Washington to shoulder the lion’s share of NATO’s costs. Yet they have adjusted. Military spending targets rose, even toward Trump’s proposed 5% of GDP. But the real shift went deeper than budgets. Under Trump, Washington’s strategic focus moved decisively away from Europe and toward China. While previous administrations had sought to integrate Beijing into global governance structures, Trump pursued confrontation, both economic and geopolitical. In his second term, containing China has become the central pillar of US foreign policy.

This inevitably required a redistribution of resources. The latest US National Defense Strategy made the logic explicit: Western Europe, with its combined economic and demographic weight, was capable of managing the Russian challenge on its own. America would remain within NATO, but its role would change. It would step back from the front line and expect Europeans to step forward. This recalibration was most visible in Ukraine. Trump, wary of escalation and unconvinced of Ukraine’s strategic value, reduced US involvement without ending support altogether. He shifted the financial and military burden increasingly onto Europe and began engaging Moscow directly, often without consulting European allies.

For Western European elites, this was deeply unsettling. They had invested heavily, politically and economically, in the Ukraine conflict. For some, it had even become a tool for consolidating the European Union and driving militarization as a means of economic stimulus. Then came a further shock. Trump’s remarks on Greenland and Canada in which he questioned the sovereignty of longstanding NATO members struck at the alliance’s core assumptions. Whether or not such ambitions were realistic was beside the point. What mattered was that the leader of NATO had publicly cast doubt on the territorial integrity of its own allies. This was unprecedented.

Taken together, these developments called into question NATO’s foundational principle: collective defense. For decades, Article 5 had been treated as an ironclad guarantee, underpinned by American nuclear power. Yet in reality, that guarantee had always contained ambiguity. When the treaty was ratified, the US Senate ensured that Washington wouldn’t be automatically committed to war.

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“.. if you want ICE to take the mask off, the threat level has to decrease. It’s up 8000 percent increase in threats against ICE officers..”

• Tom Homan Bulldozed Jake Tapper’s DHS Funding Narrative (Matt Margolis)

Border Czar Tom Homan hit the Sunday shows this weekend, and the liberal networks didn’t know what hit them. Over at CNN, he spent the segment repeatedly bulldozing Jake Tapper, and it was awesome. Homan wasn’t there to take any crap, and he repeatedly hammered the same indisputable point to Tapper: fund the Department of Homeland Security, and the problems go away.


For example, Tapper asked why, if the administration had the power to move money around to pay TSA agents without Congress, it took 41 days to act. This is a point many Democrats have been making lately, and Homan crushed it. He responded by broadening the issue beyond TSA, and that TSA pay does not address the larger DHS funding problem. “You’ve got the Coast Guard. You’ve got CISA. You’ve got the men and women of Secret Service. You’ve got a lot of people working at the Department of Homeland Security that isn’t getting paid,” he said. He argued the entire department should be funded because the country is facing a “heightened threat posture.”


The most effective part of Homan’s response was how he turned Tapper’s question back on Congress. He said he did not pretend to be an appropriations expert, but he was clear about the political bottom line. “I’m just glad that President Trump is able to pay the TSA agents. At least that’s a start,” Homan said. “But, again, there’s a lot more, many more, thousands more, tens of thousands more DHS employees who are not being paid that need to be paid.”

Tapper then tried (and failed) to hit Homan on the ICE deployment to airports, asking whether the agents would leave once TSA workers were paid. Homan refused to give him the answer he seemed to want. “We will see,” he said. He explained that the deployment depends on how many TSA workers return, how many have quit, and what each airport needs. He said he was working with TSA and ICE leadership to figure that out, while praising ICE for “plugging those holes” and helping keep airports secure.

When Tapper cited the TSA union’s criticism that ICE replacements were like “a teaspoon of cough syrup” for a patient with pneumonia, Homan fired back that the wait times had already gone down. He said he had seen improvements in Houston and that additional agents were being sent to Baltimore. “Every place we send ICE officers, the lines have decreased,” he said. “They need to decrease more.” Homan also pushed back hard on the idea that ICE was overstepping its role at airports. He said ICE officers were checking IDs and covering exits so TSA screeners could focus on the machines. “We’re doing the job TSA is asking us to do, so their officers can get back to main screening,” he said.

Tapper then moved to the DHS deal and asked why President Donald Trump would oppose a deal that Senate Republicans said was good. Homan did not budge. He said Trump wanted the entire DHS funded and open, and he accused Democrats of trying to change ICE tactics and force the agency to arrest fewer people. “They’re holding the department hostage because they don’t like what ICE is doing,” Homan said. “If they don’t like what ICE is doing, then change the law. That’s your job.” When Tapper brought up warrant changes, mask use, alleged mistaken detentions, and broader criticism of ICE, Homan insisted that the laws had not changed.

“Let’s talk about the masks. You don’t see ICE wearing masks inside the airports because they’re not on the street arresting criminals. You have got the agitators who cross the line and threaten ICE agents,” he said. “The same people in the Democratic Congress that want ICE to take off the mask are the same people who say ICE is going to shoot people inside airports. I mean, they can’t have it both ways. So, if you want ICE to take the mask off, the threat level has to decrease. It’s up 8000 percent increase in threats against ICE officers, and that’s because of a lot of the rhetoric coming from the Hill. Stop calling ICE Nazis and racists. Stop saying they’re going to shoot people inside airports. That’s going to drive the threat level down, and we can talk about masks.”

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Apollo Global Management manages a meager $900 billion in assets…

• This Trillion-Dollar Firm Wants Out of Mamdani’s NYC (Stephen Green)

As New York City’s filthy commie mayor struggles to fill a $5.4 billion budget gap with a massive soak-the-rich-then-soak-them-some-more tax hike, trillion-dollar asset management fund Apollo Global Management says it will open a secondary headquarters in Florida or Texas. “Apollo expects most of its future hiring to be in the second hub rather than Manhattan,” according to the New York Post, surprising literally no one.] “The reality is that you can’t propose budget after budget that vilifies employees and then be surprised when they decide to go somewhere else,” Partnership for New York City CEO Steve Fulop told the paper.


“New York City can’t tax people in sane states,” Your Friendly Neighborhood VodkaPundit sagely added while adding an extra dash of schadenfreude to his Bloody Mary. You know what happens after a huge firm like Apollo builds a second headquarters in a low-tax, liberty-loving state like Florida or Texas, right? Sooner or later, they shrink operations at the old HQ before finally boarding the windows and padlocking the doors. “TAX THIS!” to put it in language New Yorkers understand and enjoy. Before we get deeper into this, I’d like to apologize for the completely over-the-top hyperbole in the lead and in the headline. As it turns out, Apollo Global Management is nothing like a “trillion-dollar firm.” In fact, Apollo manages a meager $900 billion in assets, which is practically nothing, and certainly not even close enough to a trillion dollars for Mamdani and his commie cronies to ever miss it.

On the other hand, $900 billion here, $900 billion there, and pretty soon you’re pining for the days of $5.4 billion deficits. So about that deficit. NYC has an annual budget of about $127 billion, and chronic deficits of $4-6 billion. But that’s nothing for the city’s “Democratic Socialist” mayor, Zohran Mamdani, who wants to throw additional billions of Other People’s Money at public education (already some of the most expensive in the world, and with terrible results), legal services for illegals fighting deportation, city-run grocery stores, Homeless Inc., free buses, and more. NYC lavishes its 8.5 million people (and shrinking) with $127 billion in spending, not including whatever Albany contributes with state spending. That’s just shy of $15,000 per person in city spending alone, but I wonder if you’ll ever meet a New Yorker who feels like they get anything close to $15,000 in services.

The city’s budget is slightly more than the entire state of Florida ($117.4 billion) spends on the state’s 23.5 million people (and growing). Florida’s budget includes $16.75 billion in reserves and $250 million for debt reduction. But let’s look at Miami, Florida’s largest city, where the local government spends just $3,600 per denizen — or roughly a quarter of NYC’s largess. Yet the Post notes that Mamdani views his city’s deficit as “a crisis that can only be fixed with more taxes to build revenue.”

“Florida has already lured heavyweights like Citadel and Elliott Management,” the Post reminds readers, while “Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan are hunkering down in Texas.” Wealthy individuals and trillion-dollar firms (sorry, I did it again!) like Apollo either have left New York or are eyeing the exits. And Mamdani is just getting started.

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“If he were a king, Senate Democrats would be powerless because if Trump were a king, or acting like one, he’d just be able to do it.”

• Scott Jennings Destroyed the ‘No Kings’ Rallies, CNN Wasn’t Happy (Margolis)

The “No Kings” rallies over the weekend were such a joke, and CNN’s Scott Jennings totally exposed them for what they really are on Sunday’s State of the Union. What happened was that CNN political commentator Ashley Allison argued that the weekend’s protests represented a growing resistance movement — one that had been slow to materialize after the 2024 election but was now picking up steam. She pointed to the crowds, the celebrity appearances, Bruce Springsteen and Jane Fonda lending their star power to the cause. “When you have millions of people peacefully go out, rock stars, Bruce Springsteen, Jane Fonda, all these folks coming out and saying, we don’t like it either, we’re not in isolation, it shows a unifying force that could be powerful,” she said. Snooze…


Anyway, Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.) was even more enthusiastic, boasting about how he attended six rallies over the weekend like it was a badge of honor or something. That’s when Jennings pounced.”That’s a lot of free speech for a country with a king,” he said. Subramanyam tried to brush it off, inviting Jennings to join them next time and offering to get him a T-shirt. But Jennings didn’t let up.”That’s a lot of free speech for a country with a king,” he said again.There’s a reason that Subramanyam tried to ignore that statement.

The entire premise of the “No Kings” movement — that America is somehow living under a monarchy — looks stupid when thousands of people can freely march through major cities with zero consequence on a random Saturday. I would also add that Trump really wants the SAVE America to pass, but Democrats are blocking it in the Senate. If he were a king, Senate Democrats would be powerless because if Trump were a king, or acting like one, he’d just be able to do it. Nevertheless, Subramanyam ignored Jennings and pressed on, saying the rallies showed genuine grassroots energy and that he’d even met a Republican attendee who said the Iran situation would keep him from ever voting Republican again — which I guarantee never happened.

But I digress. The next great moment came when Jennings exposed what the No Kings rallies were really about. “These No Kings rallies actually look pretty representative to me of the Democratic coalition,” he said. “I saw people flying the hammer and sickle in New York City. I saw Hezbollah flags. I saw Hamas flags. I saw Palestinian flags. I saw trans signs. I see weirdo liberal boomers out there. This is pretty representative of the Democratic coalition. And that’s who funds it as well, by the way.” Allison pushed back immediately, insisting that the fringe elements Jennings mentioned didn’t represent what the movement stood for. But Jennings wasn’t buying the “that’s not who we are” defense.”You like hammer and sickle? You like hammer and sickle flags?” he shot back as the table erupted. “They had a bunch of them. They come from somewhere,” he added. They sure did, no matter how uncomfortable that makes the left.

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https://twitter.com/NatCy891/status/2038711644625293539?s=20 https://twitter.com/CRRJA5/status/2038097858428080577?s=20

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle November 14 2024

Nov 142024
 
 November 14, 2024  Posted by at 9:27 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  60 Responses »


Diego Velázquez The Spinners 1655-60

 

• RINOs Keep Senate As Thune Beats Rick Scott To Replace McConnell (ZH)
• Marco Rubio Doesn’t Even Speak MAGA (Marsden)
• Jack Smith To Resign In Defeat Before Trump Takes Office (ZH)
• Advertisers Plan Return To X To Get In “Good Graces Of Elon” (ZH)
• Heritage Picks Up the Pieces With Trump After Project 2025 (Wegmann)
• The Establishment Is Disarming the Trump Insurrection (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Congress Should Fire Jerome Powell (McMaken)
• “Remember, Remember, the 5th of November” (Turley)
• Marc Elias and the Demise of the Faux “Save Democracy” Movement (Turley)
• The Guardian Accuses Musk Of ‘Racism’ And Quits X (RT)
• Trump To Appoint ‘Special Envoy’ To End Ukraine Conflict – Fox (RT)
• Trump Has ‘Deep Disdain’ For Zelensky – The Hill (RT)
• This Is Why Trump’s Approach To Ukraine Is So Different (Lukyanov)
• Ukrainian Defenses ‘Crumbling’ In Donbass – FT (RT)
• Russian Gas Rejecters Will Repent – Serbian President (RT)
• The Truth About Trump’s “24 Hour” Peace Deal In Ukraine (Jay)
• Zelensky Insulated From Truth By His Officials – The Economist (RT)
• Short On Troops, Israel Turns To Mercenaries (Al-Omari)
• The CDC Planned Quarantine Camps Nationwide (Jeffrey A. Tucker)

 

 

 

 

Hegseth

https://twitter.com/i/status/1856507774198292807
https://twitter.com/i/status/1856547051116388693

Elon Rogan

Candace

Alina

Waste

Bash

TMZ
https://twitter.com/i/status/1856542948999012652

CNN

No, not Joe..
https://twitter.com/i/status/1856483019462529468

 

 

 

 

“..a victory for the post-Trump establishment..”

• RINOs Keep Senate As Thune Beats Rick Scott To Replace McConnell (ZH)

President Trump’s mandate just got a little more complicated, as longtime never-Trumper John Thune (R-SD) was just elected Senate majority leader, setting the stage for him to replace Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the longest-serving GOP leader who has held the top spot for the past 18 years. Thune, the Senate GOP whip and the #2 ranking member since 2019, largely managed operation of the Senate floor since McConnell suffered a concussion in 2023. As Axios notes, Thune’s win “is a victory for the post-Trump establishment,” as he’s “not a natural, true-believer Trump guy like Rick Scott and his supporters are.” Several of Trump’s most prominent supporters, including Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson and RFK Jr. had endorsed Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) in the race. John Cornyn, an underdog to Thune, ended up finishing in a close second. Needless to say, things just got more complicated for MAGA…

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“They need a guy who can talk the same language as the neocon desk jockeys at the State Department..”

• Marco Rubio Doesn’t Even Speak MAGA (Marsden)

Of all the people that US President-elect Donald Trump could have picked as America’s chief diplomat, he’s chosen Marco Rubio, Florida senator and neocon talking-point guzzler. Guess it sort of makes sense on one level. They need a guy who can talk the same language as the neocon desk jockeys at the State Department. Kind of like an African Grey parrot who can speak English with humans but also bird language with other birds. The bird-brains at State speak mainly neocon, like Rubio. And he could be the MAGA-to-neocon translator for Trump, packaging the 47th president’s vision in a way that’s palatable enough for them to not spend the entire time trying to regime-change him, like they did last time he was elected. But how well does Rubio even speak MAGA – the language of Trump’s non-interventionist, America First, and pro-peace base? Not very well, if his record is any indication.

Case in point: Back when the Nord Stream pipelines were mysteriously blown up, Rubio was one of the first out of the starting blocks to blame Russia for blowing up their own economic lifeline to Europe. But he quickly tripped over his own shoelaces. “The only people in that region who have both the motive and the capability to have done it are Russian or Russian forces. So I think, for me, it’s not an intelligence matter at this point. It’s a common sense matter,” Rubio said in the wake of the attack. It turns out that even the dumbest establishment fixtures didn’t buy the narrative of “Russia blew up its own pipeline.” Apparently, they consider it to be even less of a viable scenario than some drunken Ukrainians with Aquaman-grade diving skills blasting through concrete and steel in highly monitored waters, despite Zelensky trying to stop them at the behest of the CIA, of course.

And then punishing the general they claim to be responsible for the operation, Valery Zaluzhny, by sending him to… London, where he’s currently Ukrainian ambassador to Britain. Guess Western officials and intelligence sources went to the trouble of making all that up to hide Russia’s involvement. Because that’s the only way that Marco Rubio’s confident assertions could be considered credible. Or maybe the actual responsibility lies with another nation state that has the same kind of capabilities? Who could that possibly be? Rubio is apparently so indoctrinated that he simply can’t imagine. Either that, or he does know and is being deliberately dishonest.

Back in 2021, Rubio was literally calling on Biden and Germany to do something to stop the pipeline. “US Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) sent a letter to President Joe Biden, ahead of his meeting with Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany, asking him to convey to her ‘that there is broad bipartisan support for preventing the completion of yet another pipeline that bypasses Ukraine.’” Rubio also highlighted that “completing the Nord Stream 2 pipeline will only endanger our democratic allies in East and Central Europe and embolden Russian President Vladimir Putin in his aggression towards them,” he wrote. So, Putin, “emboldened” by Nord Stream, according to Rubio, then decided to just blow it up? Yeah, okay.

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“you can’t fire me, I quit!”

• Jack Smith To Resign In Defeat Before Trump Takes Office (ZH)

A defeated special counsel Jack Smith and his team are planning to resign before President-elect Donald Trump takes office, the NY Times reports, citing a source familiar with the matter. The news comes days after Smith moved to pause his J6 case against Donald Trump and vacate all remaining deadlines. According to the new report, Smith’s office has been looking at the best path forward in winding down its work on the two outstanding federal criminal cases against Trump – as the DOJ has a longstanding policy not to charge or prosecute a sitting president with a crime. Smith’s departure is more of a “you can’t fire me, I quit!” after Trump vowed to fire him within “two seconds” of being sworn in. “We got immunity at the Supreme Court. It’s so easy. I would fire him within two seconds. He’ll be one of the first things addressed,” Trump told radio host Hugh Hewitt last month.

Department regulations require Smith to file a report summarizing his investigation and decisions – though it’s not clear how quickly he can finish his work – or whether it could be made public before President Biden leaves office – however several officials told the NY Times that he has no intention of lingering any longer than he has to, and has told career prosecutors and FBI agents who are not directly involved in the case that they can start planning their departures over the next few weeks. On Friday, GOP lawmakers told DOJ officials to preserve all of their communications for investigators – who view Smith and crew as the embodiment of a Democratic effort to use lawfare as part of a weaponized Justice Department. According to Smith, he needs until Dec. 2 to figure out how exactly to wind down his J6 case, as well as another case in which he charged Trump with mishandling classified national security documents after leaving office. The latter case was dismissed by Judge Aileen Cannon of the Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, FL – a decision which is currently under appeal in federal court in Atlanta.

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“Dark money-funded fact-checkers allegedly created false reports to discourage companies from advertising on the platform..”

• Advertisers Plan Return To X To Get In “Good Graces Of Elon” (ZH)

Donald Trump is set to return to the White House in January. Ahead of his return, the former president announced that Elon Musk would lead the new “Department of Government Efficiency” in his second administration. With Musk’s close ties to Trump, advertisers are expected to flock back to X to gain access to the administration. The Financial Times recently spoke with media executives who revealed that some brands are preparing to advertise on X again, particularly due to Musk’s connections with the incoming administration. Lou Paskalis, CEO of the marketing consultancy AJL Advisory and a former media executive at Bank of America, explained that marketers plan to reallocate spending dollars on X as a form of “political leverage.” He noted that some companies are seeking government contracts and trying to get in the “good graces of Elon.”

“It could be seen as an official channel for White House communications,” another advertising agency chief told FT, adding that Trump’s victory has shifted significant power and legitimacy into Musk’s hands. However, only some are optimistic. One media director described X as a “mess,” questioning, “Which brand will take the risk?” Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of X initially triggered chaos in ad monetization. Dark money-funded fact-checkers allegedly created false reports to discourage companies from advertising on the platform, attempting to starve it of ad revenue.

The problem for Soros-funded Media Matters and other far-left organizations was that Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, could support X operations for a long time. Musk famously told brands that pulled their ads to “go f**k yourself” at the DealBook Conference and has since announced plans to sue the so-called advertising censorship cartel. Richard Exon, founder of the ad agency Joint, said, “Trump’s victory may well mean brands give X a second chance in 2025,” though he cautioned that they “will be wise to proceed with extreme caution.” Meanwhile, as X cements its role as a central hub for distributing news to Americans, legacy media outlets like CNN and MSNBC are imploding.

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“There is no door, and there is no key, for Project 2025 into the Trump-Vance transition..”

• Heritage Picks Up the Pieces With Trump After Project 2025 (Wegmann)

As Donald Trump paused briefly to fix his tie in a floor-length mirror at the Palm Beach Convention Center, a thousand miles away inside the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., staff rushed to quickly put out a prepared statement congratulating the president-elect. Exactly 15 minutes before Trump walked on stage, and while most of the television networks were still waiting to project the winner, an email from Heritage landed in the inboxes of political reporters everywhere. “We look forward to this historic term,” wrote Kevin Roberts, “during which President Trump has an opportunity to make America great, healthy, safe, and prosperous once again.” Added the Heritage chief, “the entire conservative movement stands united behind him.” But does Trump need them in his administration? Does Trump want them after the campaign headaches they caused?

As the Republican candidate closed in on 270 electoral votes, Roberts told RealClearPolitics that the drama was in the past. “The political season is behind us, and we’re now in the policy-making season,” he said. After all, added the Project 2025 architect, “Heritage as an enterprise exists for the policy, not the politics.” Ahead of the second Trump season, he believes the relationship with the president-elect has been repaired. “We will leave the political decisions to the smart campaign people, but now that we’re in the policy-making world,” he said, “I don’t see how you have a conservative administration without, not just Heritage, but the 110 other groups that are part of the project.”

Heritage has worked with every Republican president since Ronald Reagan to staff their administrations and stock their libraries with policy proposals. Trump quickly embraced the think tank during his first term, heralding them as “titans in the fight to defend, promote, and preserve our great American heritage.” But the conservative behemoth may have jeopardized that special relationship when liberals turned their efforts to plan for a second Trump term into an effective campaign foil. “Just google Project 2025,” Vice President Kamala Harris said of the thinktank’s blueprint for how Trump ought to govern if returned to the White House. At nearly every campaign stop, the Democratic nominee would urge voters to go “read the plans for yourself.” And voters did. A lot of them. At one point in the home stretch of this campaign, Google searches for “Project 2025” exceeded those for “Taylor Swift.”

The 900-page collection of white papers went viral, and Trump’s campaign was spooked. Denunciations from Republicans followed, including from Howard Lutnick, who declared anyone associated with the Heritage endeavor “radioactive.” “There is no door, and there is no key, for Project 2025 into the Trump-Vance transition,” Lutnick told RCP ahead of the October vice-presidential debate. The CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald would know: Trump named him and Linda McMahon as co-chairs of his transition. She handles the policy. He oversees personnel. “So, if someone tried to send me a resume,” Lutnick said of staff associated with the endeavor, “they’d get an ‘I’m sorry’ back. Radioactive means ‘no thank you.’”

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We’re not there yet.

• The Establishment Is Disarming the Trump Insurrection (Paul Craig Roberts)

It is dangerous for Trump supporters to think that the battle is over with the election victory. The battle has not begun, and it never will if Trump cannot put together a fighting administration. There are about 4,000 political appointees in the Executive branch, 1,200 of which have to be confirmed in office by the Senate. The confirmation power gives the Senate input in controlling staffing in a presidential administration. Trump and his transition team do not know 1,200 people, much less 4,000. Desperate to get a government underway, their inquiries will result in input from many sources, especially from the ruling establishment. At best a president and transition team can only focus on a few key areas where the president’s key agendas are. Even here Trump is not doing a great job.

Let’s start with the war front. Trump has said he can immediately stop the war in Ukraine and the Israeli-Hamas-Hezbollah-Iran war in the Middle East. But Trump’s appointees to US Ambassador to the UN, National Security Advisor, Secretary of State, US Ambassador to Israel, and Secretary of Defense are war hawks. UN Ambassador Elise Stefanik is a warmonger for Israel. National Security Adviser Mike Waltz has called for enforcing the energy sanctions on Russia and taking the handcuffs off long-range missiles provided to Ukraine. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is a warmonger. Trump has appointed Mike Huckabee US Ambassador to Israel to the great delight of Israeli extremists. Huckabee has said that Israel has title to Palestine. Trump has appointed Steven Witkoff Special Envoy to the Middle East. Witkoff who is Jewish is tasked with dealing with the Iranian threat, the Israel–Hamas war, the Israel–Hezbollah fighting, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

For Defense Secretary Trump has chosen Fox News co-host and commentator Pete Hegseth, a non-Woke masculine man without faith in a DEI military. The downside is that he believes in the official narratives constructed by the military/security complex and neoconservatives of America’s Russian, Chinese, and Iranian enemies. He describes Iran as “an evil regime” and wants to modernize the US military so that it is a match for China’s. It seems we are in for a rise in the defense budget and no closed bases, an obstacle to Musk’s plan to cut $2.5 trillion from the budget. Together with Stefanik, Waltz, and Rubio, Hegseth gives Trump a quattro for war. Do any of these Trump appointees have the flexibility to see the Russian, Iranian, Chinese, and Palestinian point of view?

In his comments about John Bolton, Trump indicated that he thinks presenting adversaries with war mongers is what will bring them to concessions. I doubt this will work with Russia, China, and Iran. Let’s now look at the prospects for RFK Jr. and Elon Musk. The UK newspaper, The Telegraph, reports that Trump’s advisors are distancing Trump from Bobby Kennedy. As I predicted would happen, Trump’s advisors are questioning whether Kennedy can be confirmed. The Big Pharma and fluoride lobbies have asserted their muscle, and it looks like Trump’s advisors are backing down. They lack the intelligence to see that Big Pharma’s blocking of Kennedy would play into Trump’s hands. But as we all know, Republicans simply are not fighters. Most in Congress are RINOs and they are not going to burn their bridges with the Establishment.

The Telegraph is an unreliable newspaper as its totally incorrect coverage of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict demonstrated. The Telegraph’s report could be a Big Pharma plant that seeks to raise questions in the minds of those on the transition team about Bobby Kennedy. Trump transition team member Howard Lutnick had already announced that Bobby would not be getting a job. Instead of having executive authority as Secretary of Health and Human Services or as Director of the Food and Drug Administration, Bobby will collect data on vaccines. It seems Big Pharma and agri-business have killed any improvement in the safety of medicines and food during Trump’s second term.

It seems that Elon Musk also is to be denied a position of executive authority. Initial reports were that the person ideally suited to be Director of the Office of Management and Budget was to be made head of a Commission on Government Efficiency. The commission has now become a new cabinet department, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) jointly led by Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. Trump says that “these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies.” How are they going to do that if they have no executive power over spending? It is paradoxical that Trump begins his assault on government bureaucracy and waste by creating a new bureaucracy. The way to control the budget is to appoint Musk Director of the Office of Management and budget. What Trump has done is to create a new government bureaucracy that will grow and grow and grow.

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“Trump could leave Powell in his position on the Fed’s 7-member Board of Governors but demote him from his role as chair [..] “That’s a subtle question that has never been tested,”

• Congress Should Fire Jerome Powell (McMaken)

There were a few seemingly tense moments at the FOMC press conference on Thursday when two reporters asked Jerome Powell about the prospect of Donald Trump asking Powell to resign. The first reporter asked “would you resign if asked to do so by Donald Trump?” To this, Powell responded with a resounding “no” followed by silence. A few moments later, Powell was asked by another reporter if it was lawful for Trump to either remove or “demote”—that is, remove Powell as chairman, but leave him on the Board of Governors—Powell. To this, Powell responded with a forceful “not permitted under the law.” Apparently, Powell wished to leave no ambiguity whatsoever about this position that he cannot be removed or demoted by a sitting president. It would agree that the spirit of the law here is that a president not be able to remove a Fed chairman, except for some kind of misconduct. But, ambiguity remains.

Even Alan Blinder, a proponent of the myth of “Fed independence,” admits that in the world of political reality, Trump could potentially remove Powell: “Experts who spoke to ABC News acknowledged that some legal ambiguity looms over what type of conduct warrants sufficient cause for removal, but they said a policy dispute is unlikely to meet such a standard. Still, Trump could attempt to push out Powell and test how courts interpret the law, experts added, noting that the case could end up with the conservative-majority Supreme Court. “Trump could try and he might try,” Alan Blinder, a professor of economics at Princeton University and former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve. “It’s very unlikely that he has that authority, but if he takes this to the Supreme Court, I don’t know what to think of the Supreme Court.” Instead, Trump could leave Powell in his position on the Fed’s 7-member Board of Governors but demote him from his role as chair, Blinder said. “That’s a subtle question that has never been tested,” Blinder said, acknowledging a lack of clarity about whether it would be allowed. “We can’t answer that quite as definitively.”

In any case, Trump would likely have to expend some serious political capital if he wants to remove Powell via presidential power. Yet, Powell’s defiance ought to provoke us to ask why wealthy, pampered, out-of-touch technocrats like Jerome Powell get to act like their removal constitutes some sort of transgression. Central bankers are just bureaucrats, and their removal ought to be regarded with no more trepidation than the removal of an undersecretary of agriculture. Regardless of what Trump’s legal powers may be, it is clear that Congress has the power to remove Powell, just as Congress has the power to abolish the central bank altogether. The Congress ought to abolish the Fed entirely, of course, but if members lack the stomach for that heroic act, Congress can begin with amending the Federal Reserve Act to make it clear that the chairman of the Fed is not a Holy Person, untouchable by the mere mortals who are actually elected to run the federal government.

There are many ways Congress could approach this issue. For example, Congress could rewrite the law to allow Congress to remove the Fed chairman with a majority vote in either house. It doesn’t really matter, so long as central bankers get the message that they’re not special. While Congress is at it, it could make a few other crucial changes as well. Congress should prohibit the Fed from buying any assets of any kind. This would end the Fed’s habit of buying up mortgage-backed securities and government securities to prop up the banker class and Powell’s buddies—i.e., Janet Yellen—at the Treasury. It would also end the Fed’s ability to manipulate interest rates since the Fed’s main tool here is its “open market operations.” A second key change that is very necessary is removing the Fed’s so called “dual mandate.” As the Fed likes to often mention, the Fed has a dual mandate of both “stable prices” and “maximum employment.”

Congress should immediately abolish the mandate for “maximum employment” because the only purpose this has ever served has been as an excuse for the central bank to inflate the money supply. As is abundantly clear from Fed press conferences and publications, the Fed routinely justifies its dovish policy in terms of fulfilling its mandate to maximize inflation. That is, the Fed often says something to the effect of “we’re embracing easy-money policy because our dual mandate to maximize employment says we have to.” Congress should just delete the mandate. (By the way, the Fed actually has a third mandate. It’s to ensure “moderate long-term interest rates.” Getting rid of the Fed’s power to purchase assets probably nullifies this mandate in any case, but Congress might as well remove any doubt and totally prohibit the Fed from manipulating interest rates of any kind.)

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All they had to run on was abortion. And still:

“Trump won white women voters by eight points at 53 percent..”

• “Remember, Remember, the 5th of November” (Turley)

Democracy appears to be losing its appeal on the left. After campaigning on panic politics and predicting the imminent death of democracy, some on the left are now calling to burn the system down in light of Republicans not only taking both houses and the White House but Trump likely winning the popular vote. Some seem to believe that what happened on November 5th is a license to become a modern version of Guy Fawkes (“Remember, remember, the 5th of November; Gunpowder, treason and plot; I see no reason; Why gunpowder treason; Should ever be forgot”). Protesters after the election called for tearing down the system as a whole, insisting that “Trump is not an individual. He’s a figurehead of a system that’s rotten.” Even before the election, law professors and law deans called for a break from the Constitution. Those voices will likely be amplified after the massive electoral loss by Democrats.

Others are seeking to evade the results of the election to still bring Harris to power. CNN’s Bakari Sellers wants to pressure Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor to resign and replace her with Harris. Former Harris aide Jamal Simmons wants Biden to resign to allow Harris to become president despite the vote of the majority. It is an ironic twist after Democratic politicians and pundits repeated the mantra that, if we did not elect Harris, this might be our last election. After losing that election, democracy appears to be the problem. The majority of Americans voting for Trump have been called “anti-American” by Gov. Hochul. Other politicians and pundits have called them racists, misogynists, or weaklings seeking domination by strongmen and bullies. The problem is now with young and minority voters. Trump won white women voters by eight points at 53 percent. Harris actually fell slightly in the support of women overall.

Conversely, roughly 43 percent of men voted for Harris. Forty percent of women under 30 voted for Trump. Even CNN reports that Trump’s performance was the best among young people (18-29 years old) in 20 years, Black voters in 48 years, and Hispanic voters in more than 50 years. So, it appears that it is time to move on. The call for Biden to simply do what the public did not want to do (in making Harris president) is particularly ironic. Many voters were repulsed by the Democrats simply making Harris the nominee after all the primaries were over. This was the candidate who could not garner any appreciable votes in the prior presidential primaries before being made Vice President by Biden. Now, the idea is that she would be elevated by the unilateral act of Biden.

Without a hint of self-awareness or recognition of the hypocrisy, Simmons insisted that this would “Fulfill [Biden’s] last promise — to be transitional.” Most people understood that to mean democratically transitional in opening the way for the election of new leadership. He did so after he was forced to step aside after winning every Democratic primary and tens of millions of votes. Nevertheless, Simmons argued that “Democrats have to learn drama and transparency and doing things that the public wanna see is the time.” That would certainly be dramatic as well as anti-Democratic. Yet, Simmons explained that “this is the moment for us to change the entire perspective of how Democrats operate.” Indeed, it would. It would confirm that the Democratic Party is an effective oligarchy, the very thing that they just campaigned against.

Sellers is more modest. He just wants Harris on the Supreme Court. At no point in history has anyone suggested that Harris was a leading legal mind. Nothing in her history suggests that she is a competent, let alone promising, candidate for the highest court. Harris has previously suggested her support for possible radical changes on the Court, including court packing. She is also a decidedly anti-free speech figure in American politics. None of that matters any more than the results of the election. Harris would be put on the Court not due to any specific talents or skills but because it would be “consequential.” He wrapped up by saying “let Republicans go crazy, ape, I’m even mentioning that option.”

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“..not only rejected but ridiculed the Elias Law Group for one of its challenges. Judge James Peterson (an Obama appointee) said that the argument “simply does not make any sense.”

• Marc Elias and the Demise of the Faux “Save Democracy” Movement (Turley)

Marc Elias is back and that is not good news. Despite the Pennsylvania race being called by the AP almost a week ago, Elias is working with Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) to try to change that outcome. It is not surprising that Casey was left with Elias. For many, Elias is a notorious figure who captures the hypocrisy of the “save democracy” crowd. Elias is an attorney who has been sanctioned in court and denounced by critics as a Democratic “dirty trickster” and even an “election denier.” Despite his checkered history, Elias remains the go-to lawyer for many Democratic campaigns. It was Elias who was the general counsel to the Clinton presidential campaign when it funded the infamous Steele dossier and pushed the false Alfa Bank conspiracy. (His fellow Perkins Coie partner, Michael Sussmann, was indicted but acquitted in a criminal trial.)

During the campaign, reporters asked about the possible connection to the campaign, but Clinton campaign officials denied any involvement in the Steele Dossier. When journalists discovered after the election that the Clinton campaign hid payments for the Steele dossier as “legal fees” among the $5.6 million paid to Perkins Coie, they met with nothing but shrugs from the Clinton staff. New York Times reporter Ken Vogel said at the time that Elias denied involvement in the anti-Trump dossier. When Vogel tried to report the story, he said, Elias “pushed back vigorously, saying ‘You (or your sources) are wrong.’” Times reporter Maggie Haberman declared, “Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year.” Elias was back when John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, was questioned by Congress on the Steele dossier and denied categorically any contractual agreement with Fusion GPS.

Sitting beside him was Elias, who reportedly said nothing to correct the misleading information given to Congress. The Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee were ultimately sanctioned by the FEC over the handling of the funding of the dossier through his prior firm. (I previously discussed the comparison to the criminal charges against Trump for treating the mislabeling of payments as “legal expenses.”). The Democratic National Committee reportedly later cut ties with Elias. Nevertheless, other Democrats continued to hire Elias despite his checkered past. He unsuccessfully led efforts to challenge Democratic losses. Elias also was the subject of intense criticism after a tweet that some have called inherently racist. Elias continued to be accused of not defending but thwarting democracy.

In Maryland, Elias filed in support of an abusive gerrymandering of the election districts that a court found not only violated Maryland law but the state constitution’s equal protection, free speech and free elections clauses. The court found that the map pushed by Elias “subverts the will of those governed.” His work for New York redistricting was ridiculed as not only ignoring the express will of the voters to end such gerrymandering but effectively negating the votes of Republican voters. His work for New York redistricting was ridiculed as not only ignoring the express will of the voters to end such gerrymandering but effectively negating the votes of Republican voters. In 2024, the Chief Judge of the Western District of Wisconsin not only rejected but ridiculed the Elias Law Group for one of its challenges. Judge James Peterson (an Obama appointee) said that the argument “simply does not make any sense.”

The point is that it does not have to make sense. Democratic campaigns fund Elias and his various profitable enterprises to seek to change the outcome of called elections. That is the case with Casey. Trump won Pennsylvania’s presidential election, and Dave McCormick received tens of thousands more votes. With 99 percent of the votes counted, even Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer relented in reversing his decision to bar McCormick from the orientation for new senators. What is most striking is the strategy of Elias. The state has roughly 87,000 provisional ballots to count, but those ballots were generally challenged for defects or suspected invalidity. Even if they were to count, it is unlikely that they will break so overwhelmingly for Casey to overturn the result. Indeed, only about 30,000 were coming from Casey strongholds in Philadelphia and Allegheny County. However, Elias just wants to get within .5% to trigger a mandatory recount.

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“Its journalists will still use the platform for “news gathering purposes” and X embeds will still appear in Guardian articles..”

• The Guardian Accuses Musk Of ‘Racism’ And Quits X (RT)

The Guardian has announced that it will no longer post on X, calling Elon Musk’s social media platform a “toxic” source of “far-right conspiracy theories and racism.” Conservative users accused the liberal British newspaper of “throwing in the towel” when confronted with free speech. In an explanation to readers on Wednesday, the paper said that “the benefits of being on X are now outweighed by the negatives and that resources could be better used promoting our journalism elsewhere.” The Guardian said it had considered the decision for some time, “given the often disturbing content promoted or found on the platform, including far-right conspiracy theories and racism.” X “is a toxic media platform,” the newspaper declared, claiming that the decision to quit was finally made after the US presidential election, in which Elon Musk used the site’s influence “to shape political discourse.”

The Guardian has more than 80 accounts on X with approximately 27 million followers. Its journalists will still use the platform for “news gathering purposes” and X embeds will still appear in Guardian articles, the paper said. Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion in 2022, rebranding it as X and rolling back most of its censorship policies. Pro-censorship activists and NGOs have claimed that this losing of restrictions has allowed so-called “hate speech” to flourish on the platform, a claim denied by the billionaire. Last month, journalists Matt Taibbi and Paul Thacker revealed that one of these NGOs – the Center for Countering Digital Hate – was lobbying top Democrats in Washington to “kill” X, and pressuring regulators in the UK and EU to “impose consequences for harmful content” shared on the platform.

The Guardian’s announcement came three months after several Labour Party lawmakers in the UK quit X, accusing Musk’s platform of inciting a spate of nationwide rioting after a teenager of Rwandan descent stabbed three children to death and injured ten others in the town of Southport, near Liverpool. The newspaper’s decision has been mocked by conservatives and right-wingers on X. “The Guardian didn’t have a problem with the previous Twitter regime censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story to ‘shape political discourse’ and interfere in an election,” commentator Paul Joseph Watson wrote. “Elon allows free speech, and they have a tantrum.” Under X’s previous management, “many of us would get banned weekly (in some cases, daily) but we never left. As soon as Elon turns the tables a little bit, leftists throw in the towel,” another commenter wrote.

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Seems to make sense.

• Trump To Appoint ‘Special Envoy’ To End Ukraine Conflict – Fox (RT)

US President-elect Donald Trump will appoint a special envoy to lead negotiations on resolving the Ukraine conflict, Fox News reported on Wednesday. Trump had previously said he would speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the near future. “You’re going to see a very senior special envoy, someone with a lot of credibility, who will be given a task to find a resolution, to get to a peace settlement,” an anonymous source told Fox, adding: “You’re going to see that in short order.” In the week since he defeated Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump has announced a flurry of names that he intends to appoint to senior cabinet and advisory positions. The incoming president announced earlier this week that he would appoint real estate developer Steven Witkoff as his special envoy to the Middle East, saying Witkoff would be “an unrelenting voice for peace” in the region.

Throughout his campaign, Trump repeatedly promised to end the Ukraine conflict “in 24 hours” if elected. He has not explained how he would do this, although he has claimed that he would use his “great relationship” with Putin, and with Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, to broker a peace deal. Trump spoke to Zelensky last week, and told NBC News that he would likely speak to Putin in the near future. Putin congratulated Trump on his electoral victory last Thursday, telling reporters that he was ready to speak to the president-elect. While the Kremlin has repeatedly downplayed suggestions that Trump could easily end the conflict with Kiev, Putin said Trump’s statements on the matter “deserve attention, at the very least.”

It is unclear what kind of resolution Trump will push for in the conflict. On the campaign trail, Vice President-elect J.D. Vance suggested that a ceasefire could be declared and a demilitarized zone established along the current 1,300km front line, with Ukraine being denied NATO membership. According to a Wall Street Journal report last week, Trump’s advisers support some version of this plan, and are encouraging the president-elect to present it to Zelensky and Putin. Moscow maintains that any settlement must begin with Ukraine ceasing military operations and acknowledging the “territorial reality” that it will never regain control of the Russian regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye, as well as Crimea. In addition, the Kremlin insists that the goals of its military operation – which include Ukrainian neutrality, demilitarization, and denazification – will be achieved.

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“..he said the Russian president was among the world leaders who are at the “top of their game,” adding that this is something that the US “does not have.”

• Trump Has ‘Deep Disdain’ For Zelensky – The Hill (RT)

US President-elect Donald Trump despises Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, while showing “affinity” with Russian President Vladimir Putin, The Hill’s columnists have claimed. Trump’s return to the White House in January 2025 could have “huge” implications for international politics, with the “most dramatic change” likely affecting Washington’s policy on the conflict between Moscow and Kiev, the outlet’s opinion contributors, Robert Hamilton and Dan Perry, suggested in an article on Tuesday. Hamilton is a retired colonel, who now heads Eurasia research at Philadelphia-based think tank, the Foreign Policy Research Institute. The article’s co-author, Perry, is AP’s former chief editor in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. The administration of outgoing US President Joe Biden has “backed Ukraine’s sovereignty,” but Kiev was still “frustrated” by Washington’s reluctance to allow it to use Western long-range weapons to strike deep inside Russian territory, they said.

But Trump “will likely be far worse” for Ukraine, Hamilton and Perry warned. The president-elect “has long demonstrated affinity for Vladimir Putin, while harboring deep disdain for Ukraine’s President Vladimir Zelensky,” they claimed. According to the columnists, Trump’s hostility towards the Ukrainian leader stems from his first term in office, when the Republican was impeached in 2019 after allegedly pressuring Zelensky to investigate the activities of Biden and his son Hunter in Ukraine. “The stage could be set for Trump to reduce aid to Ukraine to push Zelensky into negotiations with Russia,” they suggested. The possible abandonment of Ukraine by the new US administration “risks Putin perceiving a green light to pursue further expansions,” and could “trigger an earthquake in European politics,” Hamilton and Perry suggested.

“The EU would face a difficult choice: step in to fill the void left by the US and rapidly bolster its own defense and aid mechanisms for Ukraine, or risk Russian expansionism moving unchecked,” they wrote. Moscow has repeatedly denied claims that it is planning to attack NATO countries, with Putin recently describing warnings about Russian aggression towards the EU as “nonsense” aimed at alarming citizens and raising defense budgets in the West. During his reelection campaign, Trump stated on several occasions that he had “good” relations with Putin. In late October, he said the Russian president was among the world leaders who are at the “top of their game,” adding that this is something that the US “does not have.” Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un are “tough, smart, streetwise” people, the Republican said.

Last week, the Russian president congratulated Trump on winning a second term. Putin said he had been “impressed” by his behavior during an attempt on his life in July, when then-candidate Trump rose to his feet and raised his fist after a bullet grazed his ear. “He is a courageous person,” he said. Speaking of Trump’s claims that he would swiftly end the conflict between Moscow and Kiev if he were reelected, Putin said such statements “deserve attention, at the very least.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Sunday that, compared to Biden, Trump is “less predictable” and it’s unclear whether he will follow through on his election promises.

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Fyodor Lukyanov, the editor-in-chief of Russia in Global Affairs, chairman of the Presidium of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, and research director of the Valdai International Discussion Club.

• This Is Why Trump’s Approach To Ukraine Is So Different (Lukyanov)

Donald Trump formulates his political course using memes. Strategies, programs and action plans are then drawn up by people around him. But the impetus comes from the main character’s pronouncements. That’s why we hear the US president-elect promise to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. It sounds unrealistic, to say the least, but it reflects his desire. Which is obviously a conscious one. Which means it shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand. It’s a pointless exercise to speculate on the basis of leaks and anonymous comments from people – supposedly – close to Trump about what he really has in mind. In all likelihood, he doesn’t yet know himself what he will do. What matters is something else: how Trump’s approach to Ukraine will differ from that of the current presidential administration, and whether he even understands rapprochement.

With regards to the first of these, the difference is stark. President Joe Biden and his team represent a cohort of politicians whose views were shaped by the end of the Cold War. America’s ideological and moral righteousness – and its unquestioned power superiority – determined not even the possibility, but rather the necessity of world domination. The emergence of rival powers that could challenge certain elements of the liberal world order has been met with fierce resistance. That’s because this setup didn’t allow for any deviation from its basic principles and refused to allow for compromise on fundamental issues. Russia’s actions in Ukraine are seen as an encroachment on the very essence of the liberal order. Hence the call for Moscow’s “strategic defeat.” Trump stands for a change in positioning. Instead of global dominance, there will a vigorous defense of specific American interests. Priority will be given to those that bring clear benefits (not in the long term, but now).

Belief in the primacy of domestic over foreign policy, which has always characterized Trump’s supporters and has now spread throughout the Republican Party, means that the choice of international issues is going to be selective. Preserving the moral and political hegemony of the US is not an end in itself, but a tool. In such a system of priorities, the Ukrainian project loses the destiny it has in the eyes of the adherents of the liberal order. It becomes a pawn in a larger game. Another peculiarity of the president-elect is that even his detractors largely admit that he doesn’t see war as an acceptable tool. Yes, he’ll use hard bargaining, muscle-flexing and coercive pressure (as practiced in his usual business). But not destructive armed conflict, because that is irrational. Trump doesn’t seem to have a twisted heart when he talks about the need to stop the bloodshed in Ukraine and Gaza. Now let’s look at his methods. Trump’s previous term offers two examples of his approach to regional conflicts.

One was the ‘Abraham Accords’, an agreement that facilitated formal relations between Israel and a number of Arab countries. The second was the meetings with Kim Jong-un, including a full-fledged summit in Hanoi. vThe first was the result of shuttle diplomacy by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. The powerful financial interests of America, the Gulf monarchies and Israel led to a series of shady political deals. The current situation in the region is many times worse than it was then, but it cannot be said that the arrangements have collapsed. The framework is still in place. But such a foundation can hardly be considered a model. The system of relations in the Middle East is very special, and the scale of the Ukraine conflict is incomparably greater. The second example is negative. Trump hastily tried to shift the systemic confrontation by resorting to a spectacle. The bet was on pleasing the ego of the interlocutor – the first North Korean leader to meet with a US president. It didn’t work, because beyond that there was no idea how to solve the real complex problems.

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“Moscow’s forces are now advancing at a faster rate than at any point since the escalation of the conflict in 2022..”

• Ukrainian Defenses ‘Crumbling’ In Donbass – FT (RT)

Ukrainian officials admit that Russian forces are advancing in Donbass faster than at any time since the escalation of the conflict, and Kiev says its defenses are collapsing due to manpower shortages, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday. Ukrainian military officials as well as international experts expect the conflict to enter a critical phase in the coming months, according to the newspaper, as both sides are fighting for territorial advantage ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration. The article suggested that a “key battle is also shaping up in Russia’s Kursk Region,” parts of which Ukraine invaded in August, deploying some of its best-equipped units. The invading force was ultimately contained by Russian troops and is currently being beaten back, according to Moscow. While Kiev is channeling resources to reinforce its incursion into Kursk Region, the country’s defenses in Donbass are “crumbling” due to manpower and ammunition shortages, the outlet noted.

The Russian forces have intensified attacks in the east in recent months, where Ukrainian troops have been unable to hold the line. “The average age is already above 40 in various brigades and there doesn’t seem to be enough reinforcements arriving on the front line,” Franz-Stefan Gady, a military analyst and fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London who recently visited Ukraine, told the FT. Moscow’s forces are now advancing at a faster rate than at any point since the escalation of the conflict in 2022, the newspaper said. They have been making great strides in Donbass over the past few weeks, taking over a significant number of villages and key settlements, such as the heavily fortified mining town of Ugledar, according to Russia’s Defense Ministry.

A commander of an artillery unit told the FT this week that Ukraine’s troops are facing a severe push back in the Donetsk region as the Russian forces are “attacking from three sides.” The commander said his troops “are ready to pull back… but we do not have the order from the top yet.” To make up for the shortage of soldiers, Kiev is sending air force pilots, engineers, medics and surgeons to the front line as manpower, especially infantry, remains Ukraine’s biggest challenge, the outlet said, citing commanders and analysts. More than a million Ukrainians have been reportedly drafted since the start of the conflict, and another 160,000 are expected to be mobilized over the next three months. Moscow has repeatedly accused the Ukrainian government of sacrificing its citizens to serve the interests of its Western backers, while also describing the conflict as a US-triggered proxy war against Russia, which Washington intends to wage “to the last Ukrainian.”

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“..those who have banned Russian gas “will stand in line before Moscow to ask: ‘give us back gas so we can survive the winter.’”

• Russian Gas Rejecters Will Repent – Serbian President (RT)

Countries that have banned Russian natural gas could soon have to beg Moscow to resume deliveries after Washington stops sending its liquefied natural gas (LNG), Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic predicted on Tuesday. Speaking at the UN Climate Change Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, Vucic suggested that in three or four years, the US could completely stop its LNG exports to meet its own increased demand, caused by energy-hungry artificial intelligence and the rapid spread of charging stations for electric vehicles. The Serbian leader claimed that if such a thing happens, those who have banned Russian gas “will stand in line before Moscow to ask: ‘give us back gas so we can survive the winter.’” Vucic noted that since the victory of Donald Trump in the US presidential election last week, the oil price has dipped, while gas prices have surged.

After the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, the EU moved to ban cheap Russian pipeline gas and replaced it with much more costly LNG. Last year, the US was the largest LNG supplier to the EU, representing almost 50% of its total LNG imports, having tripled the supply volume since 2021, according to European Council data. Previously, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed that the EU “lacks brains” and that its leaders continue to take “politicized” and “ill-considered” steps that “work to the detriment of their own interests and only benefit US politics and economy.”

Putin specifically criticized EU politicians for abandoning Russian gas amid sanctions linked to the Ukraine conflict. He described such policies as “incomprehensible”, particularly as the same officials have “made so much noise” about green goals while restarting coal plants to offset the energy crisis that they themselves had caused. The Financial Times warned last week that the EU’s decision to ban Russian pipeline gas and increase its reliance on LNG could put the bloc’s energy supplies at risk this winter. “Anything can happen. You just need a few supply disruptions and things could go horribly wrong,” one analyst told the paper.

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“Trump will not hesitate to pull the U.S. out of NATO, albeit temporarily to make his point. Trump will also insist that the 300 billion dollars of Russian assets that the EU holds should be unfrozen and given back to its rightful owner..”

• The Truth About Trump’s “24 Hour” Peace Deal In Ukraine (Jay)

The cat is finally out of the bag. As the EU now comes to terms with a Trump win in Washington, it has to face its hardest dilemma to date: whether to continue supporting President Zelensky in Ukraine and keep the war going there, or face realities and shut down the racket and work on a peace deal. It really comes down to two relationships. One with the U.S. itself and its administrations; and two, with Trump himself. Trump has claimed that he will stop the Ukraine war in 24 hours. Contrary to many reports he has even explained how we would do it, by simply shutting off all military aid to Zelensky. This move throws a spotlight on a prickly subject once again of how EU countries play such a minor role to the U.S. The former gets a free ride on being part of a global defence bloc, while the latter picks up most of the bill.

It is little secret that most of the weapons which are keeping the war going on the Ukraine side are from the U.S. If that supply is abruptly halted, then the world’s media will be forced to look at the equation and report on Trump’s chief complaint that the deal between the U.S. and EU countries is unfair and needs rejigging. The minimum spending of 2% of countries’ GDP is probably unrealistic and would need to be hiked to 4 or even 5 percent if there were to be some sort of balance on defence spending and equal responsibility for the so-called “peace keeping” initiatives that the West indulges itself with, which in all cases always ends in troubled hotspots around the world becoming even more of a threat than they were before U.S.-led intervention.

Who could have imagined that the Taliban would be in power now in Afghanistan after the U.S.-led NATO coalition (plus a few others like Australia) cost over 2 trillion USD and 2500 dead U.S. soldiers? Biden may be gone, but the news archive clip of Afghans running alongside a U.S. air transport plane as it takes off will be remembered and watched perhaps in decades to come as a chilling reminder how U.S. intervention usually fails. However, Old Europe has its own ideas about Ukraine and Trump. EU leaders, leading up to the U.S. election, quickly patched together and passed a number of aid packages for Ukraine which a number of experts, like Ian Proud, the former UK diplomat, claim would keep the war going for about a year with or without the U.S. lifeline.

This, once it is realized in the coming days, will anger Trump even more and put him in a position where his first contacts with the EU and its leaders will be a confrontational one. His chief task to keep his word on the 24 hours claim, will be to tell the EU to cancel its own pledges to Zelensky which will immediately remind the entire world who is still calling the shots in the West. If they resist, Trump will not hesitate to pull the U.S. out of NATO, albeit temporarily to make his point. Trump will also insist that the 300 billion dollars of Russian assets that the EU holds should be unfrozen and given back to its rightful owner. As part of a new deal to get peace in Ukraine, the U.S. will have to show some good will on its part and it will be Trump who will be the guarantor for the Europeans, making sure that they don’t “do a Minsk” and sign papers only to double cross those who are on the other side of the negotiating table.

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“It’s not even that he’s being kept in a warm bath,” he said. “He’s being kept in a sauna.”

• Zelensky Insulated From Truth By His Officials – The Economist (RT)

The Ukrainian military and civilian leadership are keeping Vladimir Zelensky in the dark about the desperate situation of his country in the conflict with Russia, The Economist reported on Tuesday, citing sources. As Kiev is forced to gradually yield to Russian troops, and with the prospects of continued US military aid unclear following Donald Trump’s election victory, the “deteriorating situation on the front lines is already rippling through society,” the outlet reported. According to The Economist, to avoid spreading panic and defeatism, the Ukrainian military is attempting to censor the most negative news from the front line. One unnamed senior military official confirmed this, telling the magazine that some Ukrainian leaders are seeking to insulate Zelensky from the hard truth. “It’s not even that he’s being kept in a warm bath,” he said. “He’s being kept in a sauna.”

Military chaplain Dmitry Povorotny also told The Economist that many newly arrived soldiers are reluctant to continue the struggle. “There are a lot of unmotivated men. They are fighting because that’s the only way they stay alive,” he remarked. The outlet noted that many in Kiev are paying particular attention to two dates – January 20 and May 25. The first is the day of Trump’s inauguration, which could potentially pave the way for a ceasefire, while the second is the earliest potential date for an election. The presidential election in Ukraine was supposed to take place in the spring but was canceled by Zelensky, who cited the conflict with Russia. His term officially expired in May, with Moscow questioning his legitimacy.

Ukraine has denied making any preparations for a vote, although The Economist reported that “some groundwork appears to have begun,” with local officials purportedly seeking to keep it under wraps to avoid Kiev’s wrath. Meanwhile, media reports have indicated that Trump, who has claimed he could swiftly end the Ukraine conflict upon taking office, plans to push Kiev to suspend its NATO ambitions and freeze the hostilities along the current front line. Ukrainian media reports have suggested that if this were the case, and Russia were to agree, Zelensky would have little choice other than to accept the deal. Russian officials, however, have ruled out the freezing of the conflict. President Vladimir Putin has said that any peace talks with Kiev could begin once it withdraws its troops from Russia’s Donbass as well as Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions, which overwhelmingly voted to join the country in the autumn of 2022.

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“Offered monthly salaries ranging between €4,000 to €5,000 and fast-tracked German citizenship, many have joined the fight.”

• Short On Troops, Israel Turns To Mercenaries (Al-Omari)

Facing increasing domestic pressure to reveal the true extent of their military losses in Gaza and Lebanon, Israeli officials have released figures that are likely to only reveal minimal numbers. The data claims that since the beginning of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on 7 October 2023, around 12,000 soldiers and officers have been injured or forced into rehabilitation under the occupation state’s Ministry of Defense. This includes 910 wounded during what Israel calls a “limited ground maneuver” launched by Tel Aviv on the Lebanese border, in addition to the deaths of over 760 officers and soldiers and 140 left completely disabled. These admissions, although selective, have stirred growing skepticism within Israeli society, already at its most politically divided since the inception of the state in 1948. Following the sacking of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, questions are mounting: how does Israel plan to sustain its fighting force amidst the Lebanese resistance’s deadly daily attacks on them?

Opposition against compulsory military service from religious groups, particularly the Haredim, has compounded the army’s challenges – so has the removal of Gallant, an army dropout rate soaring above 17 percent, a wave of reverse immigration that has reached one million people in a single year, the highest since 1948, and increasing reluctance among shell-shocked reservists to return to the horror of battlefields in Gaza and the Lebanese border. The treacherous northern front, especially, has become a symbol of perpetual fear for Israeli soldiers stationed there against Hezbollah, as history repeats itself in south Lebanon. The “huge shortage” of capable fighters has forced Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to explore a range of unconventional options, especially after the Haredim conscription law passed in mid-July proved insufficient in addressing the manpower gap.

Many of these options are centered around utilizing tens of thousands of mercenaries, drawing on assistance from western intelligence agencies, and enlisting unconventional fighters, including Jewish militias. For the past seven decades, successive Israeli administrations have been reluctant to encourage a wholesale migration or naturalization of African Jews – the ‘Falasha’ from Ethiopia – to an Israel rife with racism, citing their ‘lower status’ to Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews. As a result, only around 80,000 Ethiopian Jews, 20,000 of whom were born in the occupation state, hold Israeli citizenship. But today, desperate for manpower, the Ministry of Defense has begun granting amnesty to Falasha currently imprisoned for attempting illegal entry into Israel or for overstaying their visas.

These men, aged between 18 and 40, are being fast-tracked for citizenship on the condition that they enlist. The Zionist organization ‘Al-Harith’ has also been active in Ethiopia, recruiting and training Ethiopian Jews with promises of citizenship, job opportunities, and residence within Israel after the war. It is estimated that by October 2024, more than 17,000 Falasha, including only 1,400 women, have been recruited. Another initiative by the Netanyahu administration involves cooperation with German intelligence and Zionist organizations in Germany to recruit asylum seekers from Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria. Over the past seven months, the Values Initiative Association and the German–Israeli Association (DIG) have worked to enlist these refugees from war-torn Muslim-majority countries as mercenaries for Israel.

Offered monthly salaries ranging between €4,000 to €5,000 and fast-tracked German citizenship, many have joined the fight. Reports suggest that around 4,000 immigrants were naturalized between September and October alone. This shift highlights a significant change in Berlin’s position – which once served as a mediator in prisoner exchange deals between Israel and Palestinian or Lebanese factions, but now vocally and materially leads global support of Israeli military objectives, under the guise of a moral obligation toward the occupation state. Germany’s policy of supporting genocide in Gaza and terror in Lebanon was expressed by none other than Berlin’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her recent visit to Lebanon and then in her speech in the German Parliament, the Bundestag, in late September:

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“..physically separating high-risk individuals from the general population” allows authorities “to prioritize the use of the limited available resources.”

• The CDC Planned Quarantine Camps Nationwide (Jeffrey A. Tucker)

Consider the vaccine passports alone. Six cities were locked down to include only the vaccinated in public indoor places. They were New York City, Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, Washington, D.C., and Seattle. The plan was to enforce this with a vaccine passport. It broke. Once the news leaked that the shot didn’t stop infection or transmission, the planners lost public support and the scheme collapsed. It was undoubtedly planned to be permanent and nationwide if not worldwide. Instead, the scheme had to be dialed back. Features of the CDC’s edicts did incredible damage. It imposed the rent moratorium. It decreed the ridiculous “six feet of distance” and mask mandates. It forced Plexiglas as the interface for commercial transactions. It implied that mail-in balloting must be the norm, which probably flipped the election. It delayed the reopening as long as possible. It was sadistic.

Even with all that, worse was planned. On July 26, 2020, with the George Floyd riots having finally settled down, the CDC issued a plan for establishing nationwide quarantine camps. People were to be isolated, given only food and some cleaning supplies. They would be banned from participating in any religious services. The plan included contingencies for preventing suicide. There were no provisions made for any legal appeals or even the right to legal counsel. The plan’s authors were unnamed but included 26 footnotes. It was completely official. The document was only removed on about March 26, 2023. During the entire intervening time, the plan survived on the CDC’s public site with little to no public notice or controversy. It was called “Interim Operational Considerations for Implementing the Shielding Approach to Prevent COVID-19 Infections in Humanitarian Settings.”

“This document presents considerations from the perspective of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) for implementing the shielding approach in humanitarian settings as outlined in guidance documents focused on camps, displaced populations and low-resource settings. This approach has never been documented and has raised questions and concerns among humanitarian partners who support response activities in these settings. The purpose of this document is to highlight potential implementation challenges of the shielding approach from CDC’s perspective and guide thinking around implementation in the absence of empirical data. Considerations are based on current evidence known about the transmission and severity of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and may need to be revised as more information becomes available.”

By absence of empirical data, the meaning is: nothing like this has ever been tried. The point of the document was to map out how it could be possible and alert authorities to possible pitfalls to be avoided. The meaning of “shielding” is “to reduce the number of severe Covid-19 cases by limiting contact between individuals at higher risk of developing severe disease (‘high-risk’) and the general population (‘low-risk’). High-risk individuals would be temporarily relocated to safe or ‘green zones’ established at the household, neighborhood, camp/sector, or community level depending on the context and setting. They would have minimal contact with family members and other low-risk residents.” In other words, this is what used to be concentration camps.

Who are these people who would be rounded up? They are “older adults and people of any age who have serious underlying medical conditions.” Who determines this? Public health authorities. The purpose? The CDC explains: “physically separating high-risk individuals from the general population” allows authorities “to prioritize the use of the limited available resources.” This sounds a lot like condemning people to death in the name of protecting them.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

3D

 

 

PuppyKitten

 

 

Thank you
https://twitter.com/i/status/1856361314349920342

 

 

Taxi
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Sea horse

 

 

Dog flood
https://twitter.com/i/status/1856408879699014011

 

 

Kangal

 

 

Bowling
https://twitter.com/i/status/1856659212492833107

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle October 17 2023

Oct 172023
 
 October 17, 2023  Posted by at 8:52 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  42 Responses »


Henri Matisse Sorrow of the King 1952

 

• Pulling the Roof Down on Today’s Paradigm (Alastair Crooke)
• This Way for the Genocide, Ladies and Gentlemen (Chris Hedges)
• US Faces Defeat In Geopolitical War In Gaza (Bhadrakumar)
• Lindsey Graham Threatens To Force Iran ‘Out Of Oil Business’ (RT)
• Survivor Of Hamas Assault: Israeli Army Killed Their Own Civilians (Cradle)
• US Sending 2,000 Marines To Israeli Coast (RT)
• US Military Getting Extremely Weak Due to Ukraine Aid – American General (Sp.)
• Ukraine Is Not A US Ally – Ex-Pentagon Strategist (RT)
• Who Do They Think They’re Kidding? (Kunstler)
• Judge Bars Trump From Making Statements About Court Case (ZH)
• Trump Files Lawsuit in UK Court to Discredit ‘Scandalous’ Steele Dossier (Sp.)
• Don’t Forget Washington’s War Against Julian Assange and Donald Trump (PCR)
• The Republicans Will Not Help Us (PCR)
• Biden Devalues American Citizenship (PCR)

 

 


Spain’s minister for social rights, Ione Belarra, urged the coalition government of her nation to request that the International Criminal Court launch an investigation into war crimes committed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

 

 

“Colombia has EXPELLED the Israeli ambassador and told the ambassador to “apologize and leave the country.” “If we have to suspend foreign relations with Israel, we will suspend them. We do not support genocides. The president of Colombia will not be insulted.”

 

 

Trump Carson

 

 

 

 

Celente

 

 

 

 

mtracey: “..the US, UK, France, and Japan just voted *against* a UN Security Council resolution on Gaza calling for:
— “An immediate, durable, and fully respected humanitarian ceasefire”
— “Secure release of all hostages”
— “Safe evacuation of civilians”
— “Unimpeded provision and distribution of humanitarian assistance”

The resolution further emphasizes that both “the Israeli and Palestinian civilian population must be protected,” and “strongly condemns all violence and hostilities directed against civilians and all acts of terrorism”.

But, it was drafted by Russia and supported by China – so of course had to be intrinsically Bad.”

 

 

 

 

3 key pledges: “.. the Judaification of al-Aqsa; the founding of the State upon the biblical ‘Land of Israel’ and the ending of secular Basic law – Palestine and the Palestinian people simply are erased..”

• Pulling the Roof Down on Today’s Paradigm (Alastair Crooke)

Today, all eyes are focussed on the widening ‘war’ in the Middle East. Many questions are asked, but the principal one is ‘Why?’ Here, we find the issues are eerily similar. At the end of WW2, the West wanted its European Jews to have a ‘homeland’, and so in 1947, Palestine was peremptorily divided between Jews and Arabs. The predominant narrative in the West has been that the travails and wars that segued from that event – particularly today’s confrontation in Israel/Palestine – result simply from Arab States’ perverse inability to come to terms with the existence of the State of Israel. Many in the West see this as irrational at the least – or as a fundamental cultural flaw, at worst. Well, as was the case in respect to the European post-war military situation, nothing was formally agreed in respect to Jews and Arabs living on the one plot of land.

The 1993 Oslo Accords were an attempt at some agreement, but again everything was vague, and the crucially master security ‘key’ to the whole Accord rested wholly at the discretion of the Israelis. Plainly, this was intended to give Israel maximum room for manoeuvre. More than that, it was intended that Israel should have the strategic ‘edge’ – not just the political ‘edge’, but the U.S. had pledged to ensure that Israel would have the military ‘edge’ over its neighbours too. Put bluntly, the objective of bringing Arab States to accept Israel’s presence was never pursued, or else it was compelled by military and financial measures (Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Iran). Except in the case of Egypt, through returning the Sanai to Cairo. The current iteration of the ‘Abraham normalisation’ (coming to terms with Israel) however, effectively throws the Palestinians ‘under the bus’ for the sake of Saudi compliance to normalization.

Just as NATO surging forward was intended to put Asia under the U.S. sway, so Greater Israeli’s cultural hegemony in the Middle East – it was believed in U.S. Beltway circles – would place the Middle East under western sway also. What lies behind the present outpouring of Palestinian violent resistance is precisely rooted in a converse understanding to that held in the Beltway. The converse ‘reality’ is that, over the last decade, Israel has been departing further and further away from the foundations on which any sustainable regional peace might have been built. Israel, perversely, has been moving in the opposite direction – striking down the pillars by which a regional rapprochement might have been possible.

Netanyahu, over the last decade, has taken the Israeli electorate far to the Right, leveraging Iran as the Phantasm by which to frighten the public. (It was not always like that: After the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Israel had allied with Iran, against the Arab ‘near neighbourhood’). Netanyahu also propagated ‘the message’ to his electorate that, thanks to the ‘success’ of the Abraham Accords, the world cares ‘zilch’ for the Palestinians. That they are “yesterday’s news”. This performance has distracted the western world from understanding fully what radical ministers in Netanyahu’s government have been planning: One key commitment of Netanyahu’s Cabinet colleagues is to build the Jewish (Third) Temple on Temple Mount, where al-Aqsa Mosque presently stands. Plainly put, this implies a commitment to demolish al-Aqsa and build a Judaic Temple in its stead.

The second key pledge is to found Israel on the biblical ‘Land of Israel’. Again, plainly put, this would dispossess Palestinians in the West Bank; as National Security Minister Ben Gvir made clear, they would face a choice: leave or live under subservience in a Jewish supremacist state. The third is to institute Jewish law (Halakha) in the stead of secular law. This would divest non-Jews in Israel of their legal status. Put together – the Judaification of al-Aqsa; the founding of the State upon the biblical ‘Land of Israel’ and the ending of secular Basic law – Palestine and the Palestinian people simply are erased. Three weeks ago, Netanyahu waved a map of Israel as he gave his address at the UN General Assembly; have a look: Gaza and the Palestinian territories do not appear on it at all. They are erased. The situation is as existential as that.

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“Gaza is being leveled, flattened, destroyed, reduced to rubble. Hundreds of thousands of its impoverished residents will be killed, wounded or left homeless without food, fuel, water and medical help.”

• This Way for the Genocide, Ladies and Gentlemen (Chris Hedges)

I have been in urban warfare in El Salvador, Iraq, Gaza, Bosnia and Kosovo. Once you fight street by street, apartment block by apartment block, there is only one rule — kill anything that moves. The talk of safe zones, the reassurances of protecting civilians, the promises of “surgical” and “targeted” air strikes, the establishment of “safe” evacuation routes, the fatuous explanation that civilian dead were “caught in the crossfire,” the claim that the homes and apartment buildings bombed into rubble were the abode of terrorists or that errant Hamas rockets were responsible for the destruction of schools and medical clinics, is part of the rhetorical cover to carry out indiscriminate slaughter.

Gaza is such a small area — 25 miles in length and about 5 miles wide — and so densely populated that the only outcome of an Israeli ground and air assault is the mass death of those Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant calls “human animals” and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calls “human beasts.” Israeli Knesset member Tally Gotliv suggested dropping “doomsday weapons” on Gaza, widely seen as a call for a nuclear strike. Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Friday dismissed calls to protect Palestinian civilians. “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible … this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved, it’s absolutely not true,” Herzog said. “They could’ve risen up, they could’ve fought against that evil regime that took over Gaza in a coup d’etat.” He added, “We will break their backbone.”

The demand by Israel that 1.1 million Palestinians — nearly half of Gaza’s population — evacuate northern Gaza, which will become a free fire zone, within 24 hours, ignores the fact that given the overcrowding and sealed borders there is no place for the displaced to go. The north includes Gaza City, the most densely populated part of the strip, with 750,000 residents. It also includes Gaza’s main hospital and the Jabalia and al-Shati refugee camps. Israel, by employing its military machine against an occupied population that does not have mechanized units, an air force, navy, missiles, heavy artillery and command-and-control, not to mention a U.S. commitment to provide a $38 billion military aid package for Israel over the next decade, is not exercising “the right to defend itself.” This is not a war. It is the obliteration of civilians trapped for 16 years in the world’s largest concentration camp.

Gaza is being leveled, flattened, destroyed, reduced to rubble. Hundreds of thousands of its impoverished residents will be killed, wounded or left homeless without food, fuel, water and medical help. Nearly 600 children are already dead. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has been forced to close 14 food distribution centers leaving half a million people without food relief. Gaza’s only power plant has run out of fuel. The United Nations says 12 of its staff have been killed by Israeli air strikes, 21 out of 22 UNRWA health facilities in Gaza have been damaged and hospitals lack basic medicines and supplies. Israel, as it has in the past, will block the dissemination of independent reporting and images once some 360,000 soldiers launch a ground assault. It cut internet service in Gaza on Saturday. The brief glimpses of Israeli atrocities that make it out will be dismissed by Israeli leaders as anomalies or blamed on Hamas.

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The Arab world is gathering together.

• US Faces Defeat In Geopolitical War In Gaza (Bhadrakumar)

One hundred years after the Arab Revolt (1916-1918) against the ruling Ottoman Turks amidst the impending defeat of Germany and the Triple Alliance in World War I, another armed uprising by the Arabs has erupted — this time around, against Israeli occupation, in the backdrop of the looming defeat of the United States and the NATO in Ukraine War — presenting a thrilling spectacle of history repeating unabridged. The Ottoman Empire disintegrated as a result of the Arab Revolt. Israel too will have to vacate its occupied territories and make space for a state of Palestine, which of course, will be a crushing defeat for the US and marks the end of its global dominance, reminiscent of the Battle of Cambrai in Northern France (1918) where Germans — surrounded, exhausted and with disintegrating morale amidst a deteriorating domestic situation — faced the certainty that the war had been lost, and surrendered.

The torrential flow of events through the past week is breathtaking, starting with a phone call made by Iran’s President Sayyid Ebrahim Raisi to the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Wednesday to discuss a common strategy toward the situation following the devastating attack by the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, against Israel on October 7. Earlier on Tuesday, in a powerful statement, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had emphasised that “From the military and intelligence aspects, this defeat (by Hamas) is irreparable. It is a devastating earthquake. It is unlikely that the (Israeli) usurping regime will be able to use the help of the West to repair the deep impacts that this incident has left on its ruling structures.”

A senior Iranian official told Reuters that Raisi’s call to the Crown Prince aimed to “support Palestine and prevent the spread of war in the region. The call was good and promising.” Having forged a broad understanding with Saudi Arabia, Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian held discussion with his Emirati counterpart, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed, during which he called upon Islamic and Arab countries to extend their support to the Palestinian people, emphasising the urgency of the situation. On Thursday, Amir-Abdollahian embarked on a regional tour to Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Qatar through Saturday to coordinate with the various resistance groups. Notably, he met Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Doha. Amir-Abdollahian told the media that unless Israel stopped its barbaric air strikes on Gaza, an escalation by the Resistance is inevitable and Israel could suffer a “huge earthquake,” as Hezbollah is in a state of readiness to intervene.

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Threatening only Iran is no use. Iran is no longer isolated.

• Lindsey Graham Threatens To Force Iran ‘Out Of Oil Business’ (RT)

US Senator Lindsey Graham has warned Iran that the American military could target its oil industry in response to any escalation in the Middle East. The lawmaker said he would put forward a resolution to this effect, citing concerns that the Tehran-backed Hezbollah could join the fighting between Israel and Hamas. Appearing on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ on Sunday, Graham described Hezbollah as a “proxy of Iran” and claimed that a “massive attack on Israel” by the Lebanon-based militant group would pose an “existential” threat to the Jewish state. The Republican foreign policy hawk warned that he could introduce a resolution in the Senate “to allow military action by the United States in conjunction with Israel to knock Iran out of the oil business.”

“Iran, if you escalate this war, we’re coming for you,” Graham concluded. Appearing on Al Jazeera on Sunday, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian cautioned that “it is highly probable that many other fronts will be opened” unless Israel stops striking Gaza. He also urged Muslim nations to support the Palestinian cause, echoing earlier calls by Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. On Saturday, Amir-Abdollahian hinted that Hezbollah could strike northern Israel, causing a “huge earthquake.” According to two diplomatic sources cited by Axios, Iran will respond if Israel goes ahead with a ground offensive in Gaza. However, Reuters on Sunday quoted Iranian representatives at the UN as clarifying that “Iran’s armed forces will not engage” unless directly attacked by Israel first.

On Saturday, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced the deployment of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower as well as two guided-missile destroyers and a guided-missile cruiser to the Eastern Mediterranean, in addition to the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier group already in the region. Austin explained that the move was aimed at deterring “any state or non-state actor seeking to escalate this war.” sAt the same time, US President Joe Biden has acknowledged that “at this point” there is “no clear evidence” that Tehran helped Hamas carry out its attack on Israel on October 7.

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She sounds convincing.

• Survivor Of Hamas Assault: Israeli Army Killed Their Own Civilians (Cradle)

A survivor from the Palestinian resistance offensive on Israeli settlements on 7 October says the Israeli army is “undoubtedly” responsible for killing many of their civilians. “They eliminated everyone, including the hostages, because there was very, very heavy crossfire,” 44-year-old mother of three Yasmin Porat told the Haboker Hazeh radio program on Israeli Kan radio last week. When the interviewer asked if Israeli troops were responsible for civilian deaths, Porat said, “Undoubtedly.” Her interview has been scrubbed from the online version of Haboker Hazeh and the Kan website; however, Electronic Intifada procured a copy and translated it from Hebrew. “There are five or six hostages lying on the ground outside. Just like sheep to the slaughter, between the shooting of our commandos and the terrorists,” Porat describes.

Porat says that, before the arrival of Israeli troops, she and other civilians had been held by the Palestinians “for several hours” and treated “humanely.” “They did not abuse us. They treated us very humanely,” Porat said, adding, “They give us something to drink here and there. When they see we are nervous, they calm us down. It was very frightening, but no one treated us violently.” She recalled one Palestinian fighter who spoke Hebrew saying: “Look at me well, were not going to kill you. We want to take you to Gaza. We are not going to kill you. So be calm, you’re not going to die.” “I was calm because I knew nothing would happen to me,” she added.

Furthermore, during a lengthy interview on Israel’s Channel 12, Porat speaks of intense gunfire after Israeli forces arrived and elaborates that, although the resistance fighters were heavily armed, she never saw them shoot captives or threaten them with their guns. She also highlights that the Israeli army announced their arrival at the settlement “with a hail of gunfire,” catching the resistance fighters and their captives by surprise. Her account echoes that of another Israeli settler who spoke with Channel 12 last week about her experience as a prisoner of war (POW) of Hamas. The accounts from survivors stand in stark contrast to the widespread claims found in western media outlets that say Hamas forces did everything from “beheading babies” to torturing and raping settlers.

Salah al-Aruri, Deputy Head of Hamas’ Political Bureau, last week addressed claims that resistance fighters were ordered to deliberately kill as many Israeli settlers as possible, telling Al Jazeera TV that fighters from the Qassam Brigades – the military wing of Hamas – were “under strict protocol to not harm civilians.” He also said that after Israel’s Gaza division disintegrated in the face of the Gaza factions, others rushed the border, “causing chaos.” Furthermore, he notes that some of the deaths of Israeli settlers are a result of the so-called ‘Hannibal Directive,’ which is a protocol that allows Israeli soldiers to use overwhelming force to kill one of their own captured soldiers rather than allow them to be taken, prisoner.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1714019234680832369

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+ 2,000 already there.

• US Sending 2,000 Marines To Israeli Coast (RT)

The Pentagon has sent 2,000 marines and sailors to waters off Israel’s coast as part of a “show of force” in the region, CNN reported, citing unnamed US officials. The move comes amid continued fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants, which has claimed thousands of lives this month. Led by the elite 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, the “rapid response force” is headed toward Israel on board the USS Bataan, an amphibious assault ship previously stationed in the Gulf of Oman, officials told the outlet on Monday. They did not specify the unit’s exact destination, or say if it would join two US carrier strike groups parked in the Eastern Mediterranean. The naval deployments are reportedly meant to “send a message of deterrence to Iran and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah,” and some of the US warships have recently patrolled waters near the Islamic Republic.

Separately, on Sunday Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered another 2,000 troops to gear up for a potential “medical and logistical support” mission in Israel, according to multiple news agencies. However, Pentagon staffers stressed that the order does not guarantee direct US involvement in the conflict with the Gaza Strip-based militant group Hamas, noting that the White House “does not want to give the impression that American troops could become embroiled in a hot war.” The Wall Street Journal, which first reported on the preparations, also stated that the troops would be tasked with “advising and medical support” and “aren’t intended to serve in a combat role.” The 2,000 soldiers are now stationed across a wide area, including in the Middle East and Europe, but have been placed on notice to deploy within 24 hours if needed.

Though officials said the move would be aimed at “forestalling a wider regional war,” the planning comes as some US lawmakers push for direct military action in the Middle East. During a sit-down with CNN last week, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham declared “If there’s an escalation of this war against Israel, I’m blaming Iran, and it is now time to put them on notice.” Asked whether Washington should “bomb Iran,” even without evidence the country aided Hamas’ deadly October 7 terrorist attack on Israel, Graham simply replied: “Yeah.” The surprise rocket and ground assault from Gaza on Israeli cities has triggered weeks of fighting, with the Israel Defense Forces launching retaliatory airstrikes on the Palestinian enclave. Around 1,400 people have been killed in Israel in the latest flare-up, according to local authorities, while Palestinian officials have reported over 2,800 fatalities in Gaza.

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“We [Washington] can’t kid Americans about this. We need to start telling them the truth, which we haven’t been doing in a very long time.”

• US Military Getting Extremely Weak Due to Ukraine Aid – American General (Sp.)

The US has already funneled around $46 billion worth of military assistance to Kiev amid Russia’s repeated warnings that doing so will prolong the conflict in Ukraine. The Biden Administration’s relentless Ukraine aid has plunged the US military into becoming overstretched, which affects the White House’s push to shore up other allies, retired Brigadier General Don Bolduc told an American broadcaster. “I think it’s a wake-up call to the American people that you know during the Biden administration our military has become extremely weak. We’ve become overstretched. Logistically, we could not support really a lot of things that would go on simultaneously in this world,” Bolduc said. He described the situation as “a very serious problem for America and its national security apparatus,” adding he is “very concerned about that.”

According to the retired general, “We [Washington] can’t kid Americans about this. We need to start telling them the truth, which we haven’t been doing in a very long time.” Earlier this month, US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted by his own party for cutting a deal with President Joe Biden to continue funding the Kiev regime. This came after the Republican-controlled House of Representatives introduced a bill to extend government funding for 45 days and avoid a shutdown, a document that does not stipulate further assistance to Ukraine. Biden, at the same time, made it clear that the US “will not walk away” from Ukraine as far as aid goes.

America and its allies ramped up their military assistance to Kiev shortly after Russia launched its special military operation in Ukraine. Moscow has repeatedly warned that NATO countries are “playing with fire” by supplying arms to the Kiev regime, which the Kremlin said adds to prolonging the conflict in Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, for his part, underscored that any cargo with weapons for the Zelensky regime will become a legitimate target for Russian forces.

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“..the number of Americans in favor of giving Ukraine more aid had dropped to 41%, 24 percentage points down from the figure recorded in June..”

• Ukraine Is Not A US Ally – Ex-Pentagon Strategist (RT)

Ukraine has never enjoyed the status of a US ally, meaning that Washington has no obligation to defend it per se, Elbridge Colby has argued. The former official, who now heads The Marathon Initiative, a think-tank, put the leadership in Kiev on the same level as the now-defunct Afghan government, which was overthrown by the Taliban back in 2021. In a message on X (formerly Twitter) published on Saturday, Colby, who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development from 2017 till 2018, wrote that “Ukraine was not and is not an ally, and we had never committed to defend it.” He noted that “US alliance credibility wasn’t in play” when Russia launched its military operation against the neighboring state last February.

The post came in response to an assertion by another X user, who claimed that the botched US withdrawal from Afghanistan had emboldened Russia to start its military action less than six months later. In a previous thread of messages, Colby defended the position that the “debacle of the Afghanistan withdrawal” had damaged America’s credibility to a lesser extent than some contend. The former top Pentagon staffer went on to argue that the US kept standing by its real allies in Europe and Asia, while the Afghan government was somewhat dispensable. “Our relationship with our established allies was different than with Afghanistan and the threat posed by China or Russia greater than the Taliban,” he wrote, adding that it is for this reason that “NATO and our NE Asian alliances didn’t collapse. Nor did our opponents assault them.”

Last Wednesday, commenting on the impasse in the US Congress following the ouster of Kevin McCarthy earlier this month, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby warned that while Washington would “keep that aid going as long as we can,” it is “not going to be indefinite.” A growing number of Republican lawmakers have been voicing skepticism over the continuation of US aid for Ukraine. The issue lay at the heart of McCarthy’s removal, as some fellow GOP congress members suspected he had cut a secret deal with the administration of President Joe Biden to approve more funding for Kiev. Meanwhile, an opinion poll by Reuters-Ipsos published earlier this month indicated that the number of Americans in favor of giving Ukraine more aid had dropped to 41%, 24 percentage points down from the figure recorded in June. The survey showed that the trend was noticeable both among Democrats and Republicans.

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“In this particular case, it led to putting “Joe Biden,” with his handlers and movers, in a position to destroy the country, and they are getting it done.”

• Who Do They Think They’re Kidding? (Kunstler)

Since the FBI has been so preoccupied the duration of the “Joe Biden” regime tracking down every native-born living soul who attended the 1/6/21 riot at the US Capitol, instead of using the agency’s assets to monitor alien networking, you have to wonder why Mr. Wray even bothers to comment on the current situation. He can only embarrass (or incriminate) himself more deeply. One thing for sure is not happening: any effort by Mr. Mayorkas and his 260,000 employees to make the US/Mexico border any less porous. If it hadn’t occurred them yet, they might consider closing down the US-funded United Nations operation in Central America (with help from several international NGOs) that is running way-stations to transport aliens north to our border in hundred-plus bus fleets at a time, taking every possible advantage to accelerate the flow. I guess we’ll just have to stand by and see what happens.

Speaking of mind-blowing bullshit, emanating from a different pseudopod of the DC blob, former CIA Director Leon Panetta chimed in with Fox News’s Bret Baier last week to declare he still thinks that Hunter Biden’s laptop was a Russian dis-info operation. Mr. Panetta was a co-signer of the notorious letter from 50 other former US Intel bigwigs in October, 2020, a few weeks before the election, organized by former Acting CIA Director Mike Morell to gaslight voters after The New York Post published the existence of the Laptop from Hell and some of its sordid contents tending to incriminate the Biden family for foreign influence-peddling.

As with so many blobsters infesting government and its nether regions, Leon Panetta likes to demonstrate that his contempt for the people of this land is boundless. He can’t possibly believe what he is saying. Everyone from the FBI to The New York Times has declared Hunter’s laptop authentic. Therefore, Leon Panetta is either a fool, a lying scoundrel, or insane. This kind of self-satisfied dishonor is a new thing in the USA, at least at the colossal scale it has achieved the past decade. In 2023 it is the order-of-the-day. In this particular case, it led to putting “Joe Biden,” with his handlers and movers, in a position to destroy the country, and they are getting it done.

Yet, events are still in motion, and decades are happening in days now. We’ll learn this week whether escalation of the war involving Israel and its enemies can be averted without giving Hamas a pass on consequences for its recent murder spree. We’ll learn whether a meaningful opposition against the Party of Chaos can organize around a new House speaker. We’ll learn whether that same assembly can begin the process of laying out a president’s crimes for all in the nation to see, including the sizeable cohort of citizens who relish official lying and being lied to.

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“..he does not have the right to say and do exactly what he pleases..”

Let’s check with the Constitution, shall we?

• Judge Bars Trump From Making Statements About Court Case (ZH)

Judge Tanya S. Chutkan ruled on Monday that former President Trump cannot make comments regarding his ongoing case brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith regarding Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election. According to the ruling, Trump is barred from making statements about witnesses, testimony, court staff, or Special Counsel Jack Smith. The decision comes after Smith requested as “narrowly tailored” gag order in September in order to limit what the former president can say about the case. Smith argued that Trump’s public remarks threatened to “undermine confidence in the criminal justice system and prejudice the jury pool.”

Trump’s lawyers argued that the gag order would violate Trump’s First Amendment rights, and “unconstitutionally silence” him during his bid for presidency in 2024. Chutkan said that Trump must “follow the conditions of release,” and that “he does not have the right to say and do exactly what he pleases,” to which Trump attorney John Lauro agreed, CNN reported earlier. Of note, Chutkan is an Obama appointee who was formerly a partner at liberal law firm Boies Schiller & Flexner (BSF). BSF attorney Karen Dunn notably prepped Hillary Clinton for debates in 2016, and worked in the Obama White House. Another BSF attorney, Dawn Smalls, was John Podesta’s assistant.

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“Steele has insisted his dossier has not been discredited and claims its “main tenets continue to hold up well,” although he admits he cannot provide evidence for the outlined claims.”

• Trump Files Lawsuit in UK Court to Discredit ‘Scandalous’ Steele Dossier (Sp.)

Former US President Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit in a UK court against the company behind the infamous Steele Dossier, which included a variety of sensational claims targeting the then-presidential candidate during the 2016 US election. The dossier, created by the company founded by former British spy Christopher Steele at the behest of the Hillary Clinton campaign, was published by US media days before Trump’s inauguration. It made unsubstantiated and salacious allegations about the soon-to-be US president and was the basis for much of the so-called “Russiagate” controversy that hung over his presidency. Much of the document was contradicted by the Mueller and Horowitz reports, with the Durham report criticizing the FBI for leaning on the dossier in its investigations into Trump when it couldn’t corroborate anything in the report. It is now largely accepted to be a discredited document by most major media outlets.

Hugh Tomlinson, Trump’s lawyer working on the recent legal case, has said Orbis Business Intelligence – the company founded by Christopher Steele and the creator of the document, violated Trump’s data protection rights causing “personal and reputational damage and distress.” A lawyer for Orbis has called for the case to be dismissed, arguing the report was never meant to be made public and was published without authorization. They further argue it is too late to make a claim. Tomlinson says people still believe the false allegations in the report, and that Trump plans to vindicate himself by proving the allegations false in court. “Until there is such a judgment, I continue to suffer damage and distress as a result of people wrongfully believing that the data in the dossier is accurate,” the former US president wrote in his witness statement.

The Steele Dossier included salacious and at-times bizarre claims about Trump, including the infamous “pee tape,” and that the Russian government had been collaborating with Trump when he was the host of a reality TV show. It also accused Trump of bribery, among other crimes. Steele has insisted his dossier has not been discredited and claims its “main tenets continue to hold up well,” although he admits he cannot provide evidence for the outlined claims. Trump previously tried to sue Steele, Clinton and her advisers and top FBI officials for allegedly working together to concoct the Russiagate conspiracy; however, that case was thrown out. By 2020, a British judge ordered Steele to pay $23,000 in damages to a Russian bank that was falsely named in the dossier. The judge presiding over the latest legal filing has indicated that she would rule at an undetermined date if the case can move forward after hearing arguments in London’s High Court.

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When Paul Craig Roberts (PCR) gets angry, he writes 3 pieces in one day…

“On top of the stress of the job as President of the US, Trump simultaneously endured Russiagate accusations, two impeachments, strippergate charges, insurrection charges, document gate charges, rape charges, and now faces 4 separate felony trials while he campaigns for reelection..”

“In the Midst of the Wars Against Russia and Palestine, …”

• Don’t Forget Washington’s War Against Julian Assange and Donald Trump (PCR)

One war is not over and another bloody one has started. War is the history of the 21st century, and Washington is behind them all–Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, South Ossetia, Yeman, Ukraine, Palestine. All the while Washington proceeds with its murders of Julian Assange and Donald Trump. Assange has been imprisoned for a decade in one form or another. He has spent recent years in solitary confinement, despite never being tried or convicted. The British who gave the world habeas corpus have denied the protection of law to Assange. An utterly corrupt media has falsely presented Assange as a traitor to America, a ridiculous charge as he is not an American citizen.

How can a non-citizen be a traitor to a country? Habeas corpus prevents a ruler from holding a person in prison without due process of law. But Assange has been held indefinitely without presentation of evidence against him. He is held on Washington’s demand alone. As Washington has no evidence against Assange, this is Washington’s way of killing him. Washington is relying on the stress from years of frustration from being denied due process to kill Assange. It is nothing but an act of vengeance because Wikileaks published leaked documents that embarrassed Washington.

Donald Trump is also being murdered. Again, Washington is relying on stress. Trump is 77 years old. On top of the stress of the job as President of the US, Trump simultaneously endured Russiagate accusations, two impeachments, strippergate charges, insurrection charges, document gate charges, rape charges, and now faces 4 separate felony trials while he campaigns for reelection, and a crooked Democrat court has convicted him on the false charge that he overstated the value of his real estate holdings and is attempting to confiscate his properties. All of this is likely also stressing his marriage and his relationship with his daughter. The Republicans in Congress are part of the one party state and do not support their own President.

Trump is a man who has been pounded unjustly for 7 years with the worst yet to come. Clearly, Washington having no evidence against him is relying on a stroke or heart attack induced by the stress that Washington is applying. The intention of the massive persecution of Donald Trump is to teach all future presidential candidates that they will be destroyed if they go against the Establishment’s agendas, try to give government back to the people or to normalize relations with an enemy that the military/security complex needs in order to remain profitable. This extraordinary demonstration of power against the American people goes unnoticed, which reinforces my question: Do the American people have enough intelligence to survive?

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“If they fail to elect Trump President in the next election, they will have committed themselves and all future Americans into tyranny, or, perhaps, civil war..”

• The Republicans Will Not Help Us (PCR)

All that differentiates Republicans from Democrats is that Republicans are not anti-white Americans determined to turn a white nation into a tower of babel. Republicans don’t do much to prevent the destruction of white America, but it is not the driving motivation of their politics. With no ideology or principle other than self-gain, the Republican Party is a weak force to stand against the Democrats’ program of “multiculturalism” in order to rectify “white racism.” “Patriotism” and campaign donations from the military/security complex insure that Republicans are for war–all wars. Not even the neoconservatives are more vociferous supporters of war than Nikki Haley, Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio. Almost every Republican in Congress subordinates America’s interests and morality to Israel’s demands.

Even Republican presidential contender Ron DeSantis calls for Israel not to hold back in the destruction of Hamas, which, of course, means Palestine, and orders Florida to Assist Israel. So not only the federal government in Washington but also state governments are rushing to Israel’s support in the destruction of Palestine. This pandering to Israel is standard procedure for American politicians. DeSantis sees only Israeli deaths, not Palestinian ones. He thinks that in the past Israel hasn’t used enough force against Palestinians. DeSantis was a good governor. He stood up for the normal moral people in Florida against Woke ideologues intending to brainwash Florida’s children that they are white racists and born into the wrong body, and he prevented mandated Covid jabs, lockdowns, and masks.

If he had come out in support of Trump, he would have been the vice presidential nominee and a future president. Now he, like Mitch McConnell and the rest of the Rinos, has alienated the majority of Republican voters by coming out against Trump. He is now accusing Trump of being anti-semitic. It was Trump who broke from the world and served Israel by moving the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. The Rinos prevent Republicans from having principled leaders. Once Jim Jordan secured the nomination for Speaker of the House, the Rinos quickly pushed forward a non-entity as a rival. Now the Rinos by cooperating with Democrats can block the election of an effective Republican leader who is principled and would try to shape the Republican Party into more of an opposition party instead of the go-along-get-along entity that it is. The Republican Party is an extremely weak force.

The party stands aside as their President is falsely accused and prosecuted and as Trump appointees, such as General Flynn, and lawyers who defend Trump are falsely accused and indicted. Even the lawyers who are defending the falsely indicted 18 Trump attorneys are feeling pressure. The Republican Party is doing nothing to prevent the kangaroo trials of the few principled Republicans who exist. As the Republican Party will do nothing, the problem is in the hands of the American people. If they fail to elect Trump President in the next election, they will have committed themselves and all future Americans into tyranny, or, perhaps, civil war. The American people have been failing in their duty to protect their liberty for many years, due in part to patriotic blindness that sees enemies only abroad and never at home. Can we have any confidence that Americans will wake up, perceive the real threat, which is not Russia, China, Iran, and Hamas, and arouse themselves to the task of holding on to their liberty?

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“The person twice elected president is considered a threat to America but not the occupation of the US by immigrant-invaders who do not in any way share the history, culture, or belief system of Americans.”

• Biden Devalues American Citizenship (PCR)

President Biden is a traitor to the United States. He is doing everything possible to make illegal immigrant-invaders identical in their rights to US citizens. The Biden regime has sued Elon Musk’s SpaceX for hiring Americans instead of immigrant-invaders. The Biden regime has extended the protection of US law to illegal immigrant-invaders. Last Thursday the Biden Justice (sic) Department and Biden Consumer Financial Protection Bureau told banks that refusal to lend money to immigrant-invaders amounts to illegal discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin and thereby constitutes grounds for federal action against the offending financial institution. The Biden regime gives Federal ID cards to illegal immigrants and releases them into the population. The Federal ID provides the illegals with access to benefits, housing, transportation, jobs, and bank loans.

Once they are on payrolls, they pay Social Security and Medicare tax and become eligible for these benefits. The presstitutes lie for the Biden regime, claiming it is not really an official ID, only something to help the Department of Homeland Security keep check on those who might pose a security risk. I remember when they said Social Security numbers could not be used for identification purposes. My original card says: ‘Not For Identification Purposes.” Today your Social Security number is your identification. You cannot do anything without it. You tell me, what is the difference between an illegal immigrant-invader and an American citizen? You might think that the only remaining difference is the right to vote, but the Democrats already vote illegal immigrants, and NY City permits illegals to vote on local matters.

We now have a Somali immigrant-invader, Ilhan Omar, elected to the US Congress. Somali immigrant-invaders have been elected to American city councils, school boards and to the Minnesota state legislature. The Somali immigrants to the US were the direct result of Washington’s military intervention in Somalia. The Muslin immigrants to the US from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya are also the direct consequence of Washington’s wars against those countries. It seems that Washington goes to war for the purpose of flooding America with refugees, people of color who have preferential legal standing in US law. What we are experiencing is the first time in human history that a government intentionally destroyed the ethnic basis of a country. Nothing is done to stop the constant march across the border from Mexico of people from numerous countries. Open borders is the Biden regime’s immigration policy.

Allegedly, these many millions of immigrant-invaders are refugees from political persecution in their own countries. Perhaps a few are, but this excuse is used for the intentional overrunning of a white nation, because the Democrats got a law passed that says the US has to accept refugees from political persecution. The Refugee Act of 1980 resulted from Democrat President Johnson’s Vietnam War. The Carter Administration sponsored the Act. The law changed the definition of “refugee” to a person with a “well-founded fear of persecution.” In other words, people who took Washington’s side in a war that Washington lost, as in Vietnam, had to be rescued by being brought to America. Ever since, anyone from all over the world, as long as they are not white, can walk in to America unopposed. Who knows whether they have a “well-founded fear of persecution.”

Every white American should understand that “their” government has betrayed them. The Biden Regime that allows the US to be overrun with immigrant-invaders has declared President Trump and his 85 million members of the electorate to be dangerous domestic terrorists. The FBI has created a new division to monitor these “domestic extremists who constitute the greatest threat to the United States.” Consider what this means. The person twice elected president is considered a threat to America but not the occupation of the US by immigrant-invaders who do not in any way share the history, culture, or belief system of Americans.

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Skull And bones
https://twitter.com/i/status/1713929464646672405

 

 

Macaw
https://twitter.com/i/status/1713868274352411122

 

 

Tongue

 

 

 

 

Fungi

 

 

Gecko
https://twitter.com/i/status/1713923345589096650

 

 

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Debt Rattle July 15 2023

Jul 152023
 
 July 15, 2023  Posted by at 8:08 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  54 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh July 14th in Paris1886

 

• ‘NATO Is The Real Troublemaker’ – China (RT)
• Why Doesn’t Moscow Try This Instead? (Zuesse)
• US Could Stop Ukraine Conflict Instantly – Orban (RT)
• Inviting Ukraine To Join NATO Would Have Triggered WWIII – Orban (TASS)
• A Fun Day (James Howard Kunstler)
• Biden Could Risk WW3 to Bail Out Ukraine – Larry Johnson (Sp.)
• Poland Seeks The Nuclear Option (Scott Ritter)
• Vilnius Summit Locks Ukraine in Servile Status, Brutal War With No Way Out (Sp.)
• Enlisting to Fight for Ukraine Would Be ‘Suicide’, Brazilian Soldier Warns (Sp.)
• What Lies Behind Zelensky’s ‘Nervous Response’ to NATO Summit? (Sp.)
• Sweden’s NATO Membership Not A Done Deal – Erdogan Aide (RT)
• Kiev Bans ‘Russian Culture’ (RT)
• Mike Pence, Tucker Carlson Quarrel Over Ukraine Policy (Sp.)
• Nobel Physics Laureate 2022 Slams ‘Climate Emergency’ Narrative (DS)

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1679940482162360320

 

 

Vivek

 

 

 

 

RFK
https://twitter.com/i/status/1678799348451229696
https://twitter.com/i/status/1679906021051965440

 

 

 

 

Macgregor

 

 

 

 

“..France opposed the plan for a liaison office, fearing that the move would further antagonize Beijing.”

• ‘NATO Is The Real Troublemaker’ – China (RT)

NATO is “the real troublemaker” that has fully embraced “Cold War thinking and ideological prejudice” as it continues to generate global tensions, China’s permanent representative to the UN has said. In a statement on Thursday, Zhang Jun hit back at the communique issued by NATO members at the Vilnius summit earlier this week, which accused China of pursuing “coercive policies” that challenge the bloc’s interests. It also claimed that Beijing uses a wide array of tools to increase its global footprint and undermine the alliance’s security. The envoy rejected this as “slander” and the “smearing” of China, claiming that the US-led military bloc is still trapped in a Cold War mentality.

He recalled that, while NATO claims to be a regional organization, it violates this principle by entering the Asia-Pacific region and “bringing more negative impacts and destructive factors on regional and global security.” Zhang said that, although NATO claims to be a defensive alliance, it encourages its members to increase military spending, continue to cross borders, and provoke confrontation. The bloc, he added, portrays itself as the champion of the ‘rules-based international order,’ but “has repeatedly violated international law…, interfered in the internal affairs of other countries, provoked many wars, bombed diplomatic facilities, [and] killed innocent civilians.” Individual NATO members pursue double standards, promote nuclear sharing, ‘nuclear alliance’, and further exacerbate regional tensions. Numerous facts have proved that NATO is the real troublemaker.

“China does not cause trouble, but it is not afraid of trouble,” Zhang warned, adding that Beijing will resolutely oppose any encroachment on China’s territorial integrity and national interests. Zhang’s remarks come after China’s foreign ministry warned NATO against opening a liaison office in Japan, the first of its kind in the Asia-Pacific region. However, while Tokyo signaled that it was considering the idea, it was not mentioned in the NATO communique. According to Nikkei Asia, the relevant statement was removed from the final version of the document, with a decision on the matter deferred to a later date. The apparent reversal came after France opposed the plan for a liaison office, fearing that the move would further antagonize Beijing.

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“The offer should be made only privately to each US-allied country. If any government concerned privately says no, Russia should then offer the deal publicly. Public opinion might then force that government – whose prior rejection of the deal would not yet be publicly known – to agree to it. ”

• Why Doesn’t Moscow Try This Instead? (Zuesse)

Putin has thus far responded to the West’s aggressive expansion of NATO right up to Russia’s borders by targeting missiles against new member states, and not by offering each of them individually a bilateral treaty-proposal and guarantees for peace, including mutual weapons-inspections. Instead, it seems that a NATO nation cannot quit the anti-Russia bloc and manage its own peaceful relations with Moscow, plus increased trade, and other mutual bilateral benefits. However, by abandoning alliances with the world’s most aggressive nation, the US, and agreeing with Russia directly, a future of peace and mutual economic benefit could prevail across Europe. Putin ought to make this offer now. It might prevent World War Three. The historical background explains why:

I agree with Dr. Karaganov that a fundamental change is needed in Russia’s relations with the other countries of Europe, but I propose that the first step in this regard MUST be the following Russian offer to each one of them: The offer should be made only privately to each US-allied country. If any government concerned privately says no, Russia should then offer the deal publicly. Public opinion might then force that government – whose prior rejection of the deal would not yet be publicly known – to agree to it. Thus, there would be two chances to obtain an agreement, and this would greatly increase the odds of success in each case.

The substance of the agreement would be as follows: Russia will announce that its nuclear missiles will be targeted ONLY against the US and its allies, including all NATO member-nations, but not neutral or unaligned nations. In other words, any new NATO member-nation will thereby become a target added to Russia’s list for destruction in any World War III scenario that might transpire between the United States and Russia. Any existing NATO nation that accepts the offered treaty would no longer threaten Russia and would consequently no longer be targeted by Russia. Furthermore, Moscow should simultaneously announce that if any nation wishes to have an assurance that Russia will never, under any circumstance, invade it, then it will welcome from that nation a request for such an assurance from Russia.

Moscow will include in that announcement explicit invitations to all nations which have, at some time, expressed an intention or a possible future intention to join NATO. In this regard, it will also state, in advance, that if ever Russia were to provide to a nation such an assurance and subsequently to violate it, then it would be violating its own tradition of rigidly adhering to international treaties that it has signed. Additionally, it would also thereby be forfeiting to the country it had thereby broken its commitment to and violated, any and all of its rights under international law. Consequently, under the arrangement that is being proposed here, there would be no nation in the entire world that has, or ever did have, so strict an international treaty legal obligation as Russia would be beholden to under this proposed arrangement. It would be much clearer than what the international law-breaking US government ever did or can offer in the NATO treaty or any other. Russia’s record of strictly abiding by its agreements speaks for itself. So does America’s record of violating agreements.

Finally, this proposed arrangement would offer, to all existing members of NATO, a promise that if and when any such existing member-nation will quit that anti-Russia military alliance, Moscow will be happy to – at the moment that this is done – automatically provide to that nation the same legal commitment never to invade that nation, as has just been described here. In other words, the proposed arrangement will offer, to the entire world, a stark and clear choice between peace with Russia or being allied with the most aggressive nation in the world’s history. One that places illegal sanctions, organizes coups, and even invades states that fail to cooperate with its goal to replace the United Nations as being the ultimate arbiter of international laws. A country seeking to be the ultimate arbiter of what it calls “the rules-based international order” in which all of those ‘rules’ come ultimately from whomever rules the US government.

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“If the Americans wanted it, peace would come the next morning. Why Americans don’t want that is a question that puzzles the entire world..”

• US Could Stop Ukraine Conflict Instantly – Orban (RT)

The US wants the conflict in Ukraine to continue and has failed to explain its reasons to NATO allies, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said. He told a radio station that if Washington wished, it could stop the fighting at a moment’s notice, as Kiev is fully dependent on the West in the fight against Russia. The Hungarian leader was interviewed by Kossuth Radio on Friday morning, after returning from the NATO summit in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius. During the event, the US-led military bloc declined to extend to Kiev a roadmap for membership. Hungary has stood out among members of the alliance by consistently criticizing Western policies on the Ukraine crisis.

“If the Americans wanted it, peace would come the next morning. Why Americans don’t want that is a question that puzzles the entire world,” Orban said. “We didn’t get an answer at the NATO summit.” At this point, “Ukraine has lost any real sovereignty,” Orban claimed, citing Kiev’s devastated economy, and heavy dependence on Western allies for funding and weaponry. Justifying its support for Ukraine, Washington has accused Russia of launching an “unprovoked war of aggression” against Kiev. US officials have said that inflicting a “strategic defeat” on Moscow is a primary goal. bMoscow, in turn, has accused the US of triggering the crisis by ignoring Russia’s long-running concerns over NATO expansion in Europe, while fostering a regime in Kiev that is hostile to Moscow.

The Kremlin perceives the conflict as part of a US-led proxy war against Russia. Orban went on to warn that if NATO were to admit Ukraine now, it would trigger a world war. He also highlighted the risks incurred by Western states sending increasingly sophisticated military hardware to Kiev. The Hungarian leader also accused Kiev of using moral blackmail to receive Western support, but added that he does not blame Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky for acting the way he does, as he is “fighting for the survival of his people.” The prime minister predicted that the conflict will drag on, and EU nations – including Hungary – will bear the economic cost, including high inflation.

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“Had we accepted Ukraine into NATO, this would have meant immediate world war..”

• Inviting Ukraine To Join NATO Would Have Triggered WWIII – Orban (TASS)

Extending an invitation to Ukraine to join NATO would have triggered the outbreak of a new world war, and thus the North Atlantic Alliance’s leaders did the right thing by refraining from taking this step at the Vilnius summit, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Friday. “Had we accepted Ukraine into NATO, this would have meant immediate world war,” he told the Kossuth radio station. That said, he lamented that belligerent attitudes in favor of prolonging the Ukrainian conflict still predominate in public opinion across Western countries.


“Residents of Western countries want the war” in Ukraine, Orban noted, adding that “the Ukrainians are being aggressive” by constantly demanding certain benefits for themselves. Given this, the prime minister stated that the conflict in Hungary’s eastern neighbor would last for a while longer and, thus, the Hungarian government should be ready for this.

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“After “Joe Biden” got “elected” in 2020, and news of his family’s sketchy business activities in Ukraine and elsewhere finally dribbled out, Ukraine was turned into a giant grenade and “JB” (or persons acting on his behalf) pulled the pin.”

• A Fun Day (James Howard Kunstler)

Somebody in the “Joe Biden” White House apparently thinks that the operations already underway are not enough to destroy our country fast enough, so a little extra push, such as nuclear annihilation, might get’er done. By operations underway I mean things like mRNA vaccines stealthily deleting kin, friends, and public figures from the scene… decriminalizing crime… undermining the oil industry by a thousand cuts… liquidating small business… making little children insane over sex… flooding the land with illegal immigrants… devaluing the currency… queering elections — all of these things done on purpose, by the way. And if you complain about any of it, here comes the FBI or the IRS knocking on your door.

So, to make sure that a collapse of the USA comes on-schedule, there is the useful fracas created by our government geniuses over in Ukraine that creeps day-by-day toward a quick American assisted suicide. Just to remind you, here’s how that started: In 2014, the US fomented a coup against Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych. In short order, the Russian language was banned (despite the fact that Most Ukrainians speak Russian). A piqued Russia re-po’d the Crimean Peninsula. When ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine (the Donbas provinces) tried to go their own way, Ukraine shelled and rocketed them for eight years. That was the setup. All of the above was absolutely unnecessary, you understand.

Ukraine had been going about its business the best it could since 1991 as a shlub nation with an aged-out Soviet infrastructure, some US-sponsored bioweapons labs, and no energy resources. It had been collecting royalties for allowing Russia to run oil pipelines across its fruited plain — of which, a lot of gas was siphoned off in transit by bandits. Ukraine attempted to compensate for its disadvantages by being an international money laundromat, though that only benefited its oligarch class (and the extended “Joe Biden” family). After “Joe Biden” got “elected” in 2020, and news of his family’s sketchy business activities in Ukraine and elsewhere finally dribbled out, Ukraine was turned into a giant grenade and “JB” (or persons acting on his behalf) pulled the pin. NATO was dragooned into the quarrel as backup against its better judgment.

If the objective was to weaken Russia, as stated by one of our strategic geniuses, SecDef Loyd Austin, it didn’t work out. Rather, it exposed the USA as a reckless global psychopath bent on wrecking every country it pretends to help — including the major countries in NATO. Two-thirds of the world’s other nations then started backpedaling away from the US and its protective services to form an economic and security coalition around the BRICs group, as led by Russia and China. The Ukraine campaign itself was a loser from the get-go, relying utterly, as it did, on US and NATO support. This week’s NATO meet-up in Vilnius, Lithuania, showed how that’s going now: Not too well. The Ukraine army is shredded. It’s out of munitions. The US is also out of those very artillery shells most in demand. What to do?

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“The US is amassing troops in Europe at the time Ukraine’s military capability of taking on the Russian troops is waning.”

• Biden Could Risk WW3 to Bail Out Ukraine – Larry Johnson (Sp.)

US President Joe Biden signed an Executive Order increasing Operation Atlantic Resolve in Europe with 3,000 reserve personnel on July 13. Since February 2022, the Pentagon has deployed over 20,000 additional forces to Europe, bringing its current total to over 100,000 across the Old Continent in the wake of the beginning of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine.”The United States is giving every indication that it is prepared to have a confrontation with Russia,” Larry Johnson, a veteran of the CIA and the State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism, told Sputnik “And Russia is taking that seriously. I mean, just given their history, they have no alternative but to take it seriously.” The US is amassing troops in Europe at the time Ukraine’s military capability of taking on the Russian troops is waning.

The Ukrainian military is suffering from a manpower deficit, according to the expert. He cited the fact that the Ukrainian Army trained by NATO over the past several years for a proxy war against Russia was destroyed during the first phases of the special military operation. The “second version” of the Ukrainian Army was involved in taking Kherson and Kharkov in September 2022; but again, that army was obliterated. Now Ukraine is on the “third version,” which has been part of the ongoing counteroffensive, as per Johnson. The provision of sophisticated weaponry and training to the Ukrainian military cannot save the day for Kiev. The crux of the matter is that the training provided by NATO member states is insufficient, the CIA veteran explained.

“A lot of these soldiers that the Ukrainians throw into the front lines have had two to three months of training, period,” Johnson said. “And they’re not even following a standard training regimen: some are being trained in England; some are being trained in Germany, some in Poland, some in Italy, some in France. It’s like a patchwork quilt then. There’s a reason in the military they use that term – uniform – to describe something that everybody’s doing the same way. When you have six, seven, 30 different countries doing training for, you know, thousands of different Ukrainians, you’re not getting any kind of standard uniform training. So, all of that put together means that anybody with just a minimal education in the military sciences would know this was a failed effort to them from the start.” In addition, three-to-five months of training does not allow the Ukrainian military to master operating NATO-grade weapons efficiently enough.

“The requirement to train a soldier to be able to operate effectively in a combat theater is not to get basic training. Well, that’s about 13 weeks (…) That just gives you the basics,” Johnson said. “Then you go into what they call advanced individual training. And that again, could be another two-to-three month process just to get basic skills. And If you’re going to be driving a tank, if you’re going to be shooting an M777 artillery piece, but that’s just you individually learning so that you are competent and that doesn’t begin to address how you will interact in carrying out operations. So when we talk about a company level, we’re talking about 150 people roughly, then that jumps up to a battalion level. And then when you get to a brigade, you could be dealing with 5,000 people. And so how are you people learning how to move with a large group of people to interact, to respond to commands, to know where you’re located. You know, it becomes very complex. That takes time.”

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“..an outcome no rational actor could ever view as contributing to the collective peace and security of Europe.”

• Poland Seeks The Nuclear Option (Scott Ritter)

The issue of Poland joining NATO’s nuclear sharing arrangement resurfaced in October 2022 when Polish President Andrzej Duda, alarmed by the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, publicly appealed for the US to station B-61 nuclear bombs on Polish soil. This request, however, failed to gain any traction in either the US or NATO. Duda’s request, however, was not beyond the pale. In April 2022 the director of the NATO nuclear policy directorate, Jessica Cox, announced that NATO military planners were updating the mechanics of NATO’s nuclear sharing program to take into account the acquisition by many NATO members of the F-35A fighter. Four of the five nations involved in this nuclear sharing arrangement (Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, and Germany) had agreed to transition to the F-35A (Turkey was supposed to but ran afoul of US sanctions over its purchase of Russian S-400 surface-to-air missiles.)

Cox indicated that NATO planners were looking at the possibility of integrating F-35A aircraft scheduled to be purchased by Poland, Denmark, and Norway into the nuclear sharing mission (it is assumed that Finland, which recently joined NATO and is purchasing F-35A aircraft, would be part of this integration as well.) Cox’s plans did not call for the deployment of nuclear weapons onto the soil of these nations, but rather the use of their aircraft in a nuclear role. Morawiecki’s request was linked to Poland’s future acquisition of F-35A aircraft, leading to the possibility that a compromise could be agreed-to that would see US nuclear bombs remain on German soil but turned over to Polish aircrews in time of war. Poland recently inked a $6.5 billion deal with the US for the purchase of 32 of its F-35A fighters, the delivery of which is scheduled to begin in 2024.

While the Polish request to enter the NATO nuclear sharing arrangement was not publicly addressed during the Vilnius Summit, the NATO communique issued at its conclusion hinted at what the future may look like for both Poland and the NATO nuclear deterrent. NATO, the communique noted, “will take all necessary steps to ensure the credibility, effectiveness, safety and security of the nuclear deterrent mission. This includes continuing to modernize NATO’s nuclear capability and updating planning to increase flexibility and adaptability of the Alliance’s nuclear forces, while exercising strong political control at all times. The Alliance reaffirms the imperative to ensure the broadest possible participation by Allies concerned in NATO’s nuclear burden-sharing arrangements to demonstrate Alliance unity and resolve.”

While it is unlikely that either the US or NATO will, in the future, accede to the Polish Prime Minister’s request to station US B-61 bombs on Polish soil, the NATO communique appears to pave the way for Poland’s F-35A fleet to be integrated into the pool of aircraft available to NATO to deliver those bombs if a nuclear conflict were to ever break out between NATO and Russia. While the alliance may view such an outcome as contributing to the viability of the NATO nuclear deterrent, the reality is all it does is guarantee that Russia will be compelled to view every F-35A in the NATO arsenal as a potential nuclear threat going forward and to adjust its own response accordingly. This puts NATO and Russia closer to the possibility of nuclear conflict, an outcome no rational actor could ever view as contributing to the collective peace and security of Europe.

Ritter

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“The US and other NATO leaders “never gave a damn about Ukraine itself. They’ve used it since 1991 to permanently and gravely weaken Russia. Zelensky, for his part, never has given a damn about Ukrainians..”

• Vilnius Summit Locks Ukraine in Servile Status, Brutal War With No Way Out (Sp.)

University of Pittsburgh Professor of International Affairs Michael Brenner believes that continuation of the conflict would result in the total destruction of Ukraine as an independent state, not Russia. “Ukraine as we know it will never enter NATO because it won’t exist. The Russians will never accept a partition – de facto or de jure – that leaves the rump Ukraine free to rearm as a NATO partner,” he said. It had always been logically absurd to imagine that the United States and NATO could grant Kiev a commitment of any sort while the Zelensky regime was engaged in a war since that risked a military confrontation with Russia, Brenner explained. At the Vilnius summit, “Zelensky was played in the sense that Biden [and the other NATO leaders] held out the prospect of some sort of NATO relationship if the so-called counter-offensive were so successful that the West could give Putin an ultimatum to cease and desist or face humiliating defeat – And if he did surrender,” he said.

However, US, NATO and Ukrainian leaders are still chasing dreams that are impossible to realize, Brenner warned. The US and other NATO leaders “never gave a damn about Ukraine itself. They’ve used it since 1991 to permanently and gravely weaken Russia. Zelensky, for his part, never has given a damn about Ukrainians,” he said. Zelensky could and should have insisted on proceeding with the tentative agreement reached with Moscow to end the conflict in April 2022, only two months after it began. But instead, he gave in to the Washington ultimatum to fight on, Brenner said. “Nor would he [Zelensky] have sacrificed 200,000 dead soldiers in a lost cause,” he said.

Meanwhile in Washington, the White House priority remains to keep the conflict going until the 2024 election is over and won, Brenner believes. However, “given the state of affairs on the battlefield that would require some sort of major escalation,” he warned. Biden on Thursday approved an executive order authorizing 3,000 US military reserve personnel to augment Operation Atlantic Resolve, which provides rotational deployment of combat-credible forces to Europe as part of the United States’ commitment to NATO. The move does not change current US force posture levels in Europe, the US European Command said in a statement.

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“The Global South is Kiev’s and NATO’s latest bet in a quest for manpower to feed the long-term war..”

• Enlisting to Fight for Ukraine Would Be ‘Suicide’, Brazilian Soldier Warns (Sp.)

Having wasted the lives of thousands of Ukrainians by press ganging them and sending them to their deaths in suicide attacks against Russian troop positions, Kiev now seeks to replenish its stocks of cannon fodder with mercenaries from foreign countries such as Brazil. Earlier this week, Russia’s Ministry of Defense warned that Kiev has intensified its campaign to recruit Brazilians to fight for Zelensky in the Ukrainian conflict. This campaign is apparently meant to make up for large personnel losses sustained by Ukrainian forces during their so-called “counter-offensive” that was launched last week and has so far resulted in the deaths of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and the destruction of large quantities of NATO military hardware provided to Kiev by its Western backers.

Several Western private military contractors with ties to the CIA, such as the infamous Academi (formerly known as Blackwater) are apparently involved in this recruitment drive, the defense ministry noted, adding that Kiev seeks to enlist mercenaries from Asia, Latin America and the Middle East amid the “failure of the latest mobilization effort in Ukraine.” According to Brazilian journalist Lucas Leiroz, Ukraine and its NATO sponsors no longer have enough manpower to conduct aggressive military operations against Russia, considering the fact that NATO is not officially at war with Russia and thus cannot officially commit its forces to the Ukrainian conflict. “Ukraine is weakened, its armed forces are weakened, the [Ukrainian] neo-Nazi units that played an important role in combat operations are practically neutralized,” Leiroz told Sputnik.

Thus, he argued, Kiev and its sponsors now seek a “source of manpower needed to wage an aggressive war against Russia in the long-term perspective,” as Ukraine’s efforts to press gang more citizens into military service have produced questionable results. “The Global South is Kiev’s and NATO’s latest bet in a quest for manpower to feed the long-term war,” the journalist said. “Extensive propaganda efforts are being aimed not just at the groups sympathetic to Kiev – such as extremists, neo-Nazi networks and neo-fascist movements – but also at ordinary people who are being seduced with propaganda and promises of Ukrainian citizenship.”

A Brazilian ex-officer named Fabio Júnior de Oliveira, 42, told Brazilian media earlier this year that the legion suffers from a constant lack of military equipment and rations, complaining that even the body armor issued there does not meet the requirements. Out of the 30 members of his unit, 27 asked for discharge due to poor conditions in the legion, Oliveira reportedly said. Leiroz also pointed out that Brazilian media often neglect to mention in their reports the data about casualties sustained by foreign mercenaries operating in the Ukrainian conflict zone, with Leiroz suggesting that these media outlets are partially responsible for the deaths of Brazilian fighters on the battlefield. “This is very dangerous, because the real situation on the front differs from the picture painted by media: Ukraine has no advantage, it is losing the war, a lot of Ukrainian soldiers are being killed and Brazilians risk sharing their fate,” he said, apparently referring to the Brazilians who would travel to Ukraine to fight.

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“..everyone involved essentially “plays their role.”

• What Lies Behind Zelensky’s ‘Nervous Response’ to NATO Summit? (Sp.) s

The results of the NATO summit in Vilnius this week were apparently not to the Ukrainian leadership’s satisfaction, as Kiev essentially received only vague promises to maybe join the alliance sometime in the future. Volodymyr Zelensky has complained about the NATO summit on Twitter, lamenting that the lack of a timeframe for Ukraine’s admission to NATO was “unprecedented and absurd.” Commenting on this situation, Tiberio Graziani, chairman at Vision & Global Trends International Institute for Global Analyses, told Sputnik that one should look “beyond the skirmishes between the statements of the representatives of the various countries, the NATO secretariat and Zelensky,” as everyone involved essentially “plays their role.”

“The representatives of the member countries, as well as those in charge of NATO, aware that giving timescales for Kiev’s entry into the Alliance – in wartime – would constitute a mortgage on the future of the course of the ongoing conflict, try to postpone time for a certain decision,” Graziani explained At the same time, he added, “Zelensky’s nervous response is a due act: he must in fact give a signal of coherence to his own leadership group and to his Armed Forces.” Graziani also argued that any concerns about how much unity there may be within NATO – seeing how no joint agreement on security guarantees has emerged by the summit’s end – are irrelevant since that military bloc is “hegemonic” in nature, with all of its members – except for the UK, Australia and Canada – having an “ancillary role” with respect to the “hegemonic role of Washington.”

“Internal NATO problems disappear instantly if and when the US wants it,” Graziani surmised. He also addressed the remarks made recently by UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace who complained about Ukraine’s apparent lack of gratitude for the weaponry it receives from abroad, reminding Kiev that London is “not Amazon.” “It seems to me that Wallace posed the problem at NATO level to push other countries to increase the amount of military aid with the consequence of further depleting the military arsenals of the Old Continent,” Graziani mused. “In the long run, the only countries that will strengthen in terms of their armaments capacity will be the USA and Great Britain.”

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Holding out for more IMF loans?

• Sweden’s NATO Membership Not A Done Deal – Erdogan Aide (RT)

Türkiye has opened the door to the process of Sweden joining NATO but has not yet given its approval, Omer Celik, spokesman for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling AK Party, said on Friday. In a live broadcast on Haberturk TV, Celik said there was a tripartite memorandum between Türkiye, Sweden and NATO about the preconditions for membership, in which Stockholm pledged to undertake certain steps. If the Turkish parliament is told that Sweden has produced “a strong satisfactory result” by complying with its obligations, AKP deputies will vote to ratify its membership of the US-led military bloc, Celik told Haberturk. Asked when this might happen, Celik said “at the next session” of the parliament, meaning not before October or November. Earlier this week, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Türkiye had agreed to support Sweden’s application after a months-long delay.


Erdogan had reportedly attempted to tie his approval of Sweden’s membership bid to Türkiye being admitted to the European Union. In return, the US has signaled willingness to unblock a sale of F-16 fighters to Ankara. Commenting on Türkiye’s relations with the US, Celik said the meeting between Erdogan and US President Joe Biden promised “a new page,” but that remained to be seen. Relations could improve much faster if the US would change its mind about supporting Kurdish-led militants in Syria, Celik noted. NATO had hoped to admit Sweden and Finland together before the bloc’s summit in Vilnius, Lithuania this week. Finland eventually joined on its own, after Türkiye held up Sweden’s application over concerns that Stockholm was protecting Kurdish organizations that Ankara has labeled as terrorists. The US-dominated bloc technically requires the consensus of all 31 members before admitting new ones.

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That’s half the country, including its president.

• Kiev Bans ‘Russian Culture’ (RT)

The Kiev city council has voted to impose a broad moratorium on public displays of “cultural products” made using the Russian language, citing the armed conflict with Moscow. “We must once and for all restrict the Russian-language cultural products on the territory of Ukraine’s capital,” Vadim Vasilchuk, chair of the council’s education and culture commission, said on Thursday. He labeled Russian “the language of the aggressor state that has no place in the heart of our capital.” Vasilchuk explained that the decision means an effective ban on “books, artwork, audiovisual products, musical recordings, arts and crafts, stage and circus performances, concerts and services.”

The ruling is part of a wider state-sponsored campaign to eradicate historical and cultural ties with Russia that began in Ukraine after in 2014, when Crimea voted to join Russia following the Western-backed coup in Kiev. The movement escalated in 2022, when Moscow launched its military operation in Ukraine. In 2015, Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, passed a law on “decommunization” aimed at removing the legacy of the Soviet Union from public spaces such as monuments as well as street and city names. In practice, the campaign has targeted everything remotely Russian, from films and TV shows to individual artists.

In April 2023, President Vladimir Zelensky signed a law that banned names and symbols associated with “Russian imperial policies.” Moscow has repeatedly condemned Kiev’s attempts to target the centuries of shared history. President Vladimir Putin cited “the de-Russification and forced assimilation” of ethnic Russians and Russian-speakers in Ukraine and Donbass as one of the causes of the current conflict. Putin has also blasted attacks on Russian culture in Ukraine and the West, stressing that it has been an inalienable part of European culture. “When someone is trying to destroy Russian culture, it is a suicide attempt, because they are destroying themselves,” he said earlier this month.

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Tucker did 6 hours, umasked all RINOs, ended a few careers.

• Mike Pence, Tucker Carlson Quarrel Over Ukraine Policy (Sp.)

Former US Vice President and 2024 presidential hopeful Mike Pence and journalist Tucker Carlson quarreled on Friday over Pence’s stances with regard to Ukraine, including on the issues of religious persecution of Christians and prioritizing Ukraine aid over domestic spending. “I did raise the issue when we were there,” Pence said during an interview with Carlson, when asked whether he raised the religious persecution of Christians while on a recent trip to Ukraine. “I raised it with the leader of the Orthodox church [of Ukraine] when I was visiting Kiev.” The church leader assured Pence that the Ukrainian government respects religious liberty, while admitting that certain elements of the Russian Orthodox Church were being targeted, Pence said.

However, Carlson pressed Pence on the issue, asking how the self-avowed Christian leader could support the arrest of Christian for having different viewpoints. “You spoke to one person who’s clearly on one side of it,” Carlson said, pointing to reports of clergy facing persecution by the Kiev regime. Pence affirmed that he would not support religious persecution, but highlighted what he was told by the Ukrainian church official. Both figures also argued over the issue of US aid to Ukraine and whether to prioritize the foreign conflict over pressing domestic issues. Pence said it is in the interest of the United States to continue to give Ukraine equipment to fight Russia, which was met with mixed of booing and clapping from the audience.

Pence reiterated that the US needed to continue its military aid packages, all while doubling down on rhetoric that Ukraine should be granted NATO membership once the current conflict is settled. “I’m sorry Mr. Vice President… you are distressed that the Ukrainians don’t have enough American tanks? Every city in the United States has become much worse over the past three years,” Carlson said. “Your concern is that the Ukrainians, a country most people can’t find on a map, who have received tens of billions of US tax dollars, don’t have enough tanks? I think it’s a fair question to ask: where’s the concern for the United States in that?” In response, Pence called Tucker’s remarks a “routine” and said “it’s not my concern.” The two men ended the interview shortly after the exchange.

The interview took place as part of a forum for Republican 2024 presidential candidates, hosted by Blaze Media and the Family Leadership Summit. Carlson also interviewed other candidates including South Carolina Senator Tim Scott and Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson. Former US President Donald Trump leads the pack of Republican candidates at 49.7% support, followed by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis at 21% and Pence at 7.4%, according to FiveThirtyEight poll averages published Friday.

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“..dangerous corruption of science that threatens the world’s economy and the well-being of billions of people..”

• Nobel Physics Laureate 2022 Slams ‘Climate Emergency’ Narrative (DS)

The co-winner of the 2022 Nobel Physics prize has launched an excoriating attack on the ‘climate emergency’ narrative, calling it a “dangerous corruption of science that threatens the world’s economy and the well-being of billions of people”. Dr. John Clauser notes that misguided climate science has “metastasised into massive shock-journalistic pseudoscience”. Dr. Clauser is one of the world’s leading authorities on quantum mechanics, the study of matter and light at a sub-atomic and atomic level. In 2010 he was awarded the Wolf Prize in Physics, considered the second most prestigious physics award after the Nobel. His comments will help cast further doubt on the obvious falsehood that 99% of scientists believe humans cause all or most climate change. Physicists along with chemists play a dominant role in investigating the science surrounding climate, which at its core focuses on heat exchange and the behaviour of atmospheric gases.

In turn, continued Clauser, the climate pseudoscience has become a scapegoat for a wide variety of other unrelated ills. It has been promoted and extended by similarly misguided business marketing agents, politicians, journalists, government agencies and environmentalists. “In my opinion, there is no real climate crisis. There is, however, a very real problem with providing a decent standard of living to the world’s largest population and an associated energy crisis. The latter is being unnecessarily exacerbated by what, in my opinion, is incorrect climate science,” he added. Dr. Clauser is not the first Nobel physics prize-winner to challenge the ‘settled’ scientific and political narrative of climate change. The World Climate Declaration has been signed by around 300 climate professors, and declares: “There is no climate emergency.”

The lead signatory is the Nobel laureate Professor Ivar Giaever. Climate models are said to be “not remotely plausible as global policy tools”. They exaggerate the effect of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, but ignore any beneficial effect, the Declaration states. Climate science has degenerated into a discussion based on beliefs, not on sound self-critical science, it says. Professor Antonino Zichichi is the holder of Italy’s highest merit order, the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic, awarded for a lifetime of distinguished scientific work including several discoveries in the field of sub-nuclear physics. In 2019 he led a group of 48 Italian science professors in stating that human responsibility for climate change is “unjustifiably exaggerated and catastrophic predictions are not realistic”. In their scientific view, “natural variation explains a substantial part of global warming observed since 1850”.

Recently, four Italian scientists, including three physics professors, undertook a major review of historical climate trends and concluded that declaring a ‘climate emergency’ is not supported by the data. Over many meteorological categories there was “no clear positive trend of extreme events”. Of course, cherry-picking single bad, or ‘extreme’, weather events provides the main fire power for convincing populations that a global and collectivist de-industrialisation must take place within less than 30 years. Last September, the leading nuclear physicist Dr. Wallace Manheimer warned that Net Zero would end modern civilisation. He observed that the new wind and solar infrastructure would fail, cost trillions, trash large portions of the environment “and be entirely unnecessary”.

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EP WHO
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Russia continent

 

 

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Vivian Maier

 

 

 

 

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