Mattia Preti The Adoration of the Shepherds 1660-99
Andreesen
The entirety of the Joe Rogan <> Marc Andreeseen podcast is fascinating, but please, please listen to this part.
The abuse of power within unaccountable (and arguably unconstitutional) federal agencies has become so extreme the stories are almost unbelievable. pic.twitter.com/wwwEifM41U
— Austen Allred (@Austen) November 27, 2024
“Putin said he was even more astonished that Trump’s political opponents had targeted the Republican’s family and children..”
• Trump Is ‘Not Safe’ – Putin (RT)
US President-elect Donald Trump is “not safe,” Russian President Vladimir Putin believes. The Russian president made the remarks on Thursday at a press conference in Astana, Kazakhstan, following a two-day Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) summit. Putin said he was astonished by the way the US election campaign had unfolded, citing the “absolutely uncivilized methods used to battle against Trump, including repeated assassination attempts.” “In my opinion, he is not safe now,” Putin emphasized, noting that “various incidents have happened in US history.” Russia’s president praised Trump as an experienced and intelligent politician, saying he hopes the president-elect is “cautious and understands this.”
Trump survived an assassination attempt on July 13 during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, when a bullet fired from around 150 meters away grazed his ear. The Secret Service responded by taking down the shooter, who was later identified as 20-year-old Thomas Crooks, a resident of a suburb of nearby Pittsburgh. Another would-be assassin, Ryan Routh, was arrested in September after he set up an ambush at a Florida golf course belonging to Trump.
On Wednesday, ABC News reported, citing court documents, that US federal authorities have arrested an Arizona man who allegedly threatened to kill Trump and his family via a series of Facebook videos, which he had been posting on a “near daily basis.” Putin said he was even more astonished that Trump’s political opponents had targeted the Republican’s family and children. He called such behavior “revolting” and indicative of the US political system’s decline, noting that even criminal groups would not resort to such methods. Putin said he couldn’t rule out that the Biden administration has been trying to create difficulties for Trump’s relations with Russia. Nevertheless, Moscow is “ready for dialogue with the United States, including with the future administration,” Putin stressed.
“You know, in Soviet times there was that joke about weather forecasts. ‘The forecast is: Everything is possible today during the day.’”
• Putin: Oreshnik Saved For A Rainy Day (Helmer)
In remarks to Russian journalists on Thursday evening, President Vladimir Putin confirmed that missile and drone strikes against the Ukraine’s military infrastructure and the electricity grid carried out on Thursday, and also earlier in the week, are the retaliation the Defense Ministry foreshadowed for the November 23-25 ATACMS strikes on Kursk. Detailed target and damage reports by Russian military bloggers published between noon and 13:00 Moscow time, indicate that strikes by Kalibr and Kh-101 missiles, drones, and other weapons hit targets across the country’s electricity system, including the western regions of Rivne, Khmelnitsky, Volyn, and Vynnitsa. Power blackouts in the Ukraine were reported to be widespread from the line of combat in the east to the Polish border in the west, with up to eleven hours of power outage in Kiev where the temperature has dropped below freezing.
President Putin followed in remarks to Russian reporters at the conclusion of his two-day meetings in Astana, Kazakhstan, in a session posted by the Kremlin at 17:15. Asked several questions about the use of the Oreshnik missile in Russian retaliation for the ATACMS strikes on Kursk on November 23 and 25, Putin quipped that it is being saved for a rainy day. “It would be futile to target a minor objective with a hypersonic missile; that’s like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. However, we will utilise our entire arsenal against significant targets. As I have previously mentioned, we do not rule out the combat employment of Oreshnik on military-industrial facilities or command centres, including those in Kiev.”
The earlier ATACMS attacks, Putin said, “received a response today. Our Armed Forces have been executing retaliatory strikes over the past couple of days. Today, there was a comprehensive operation: 90 missiles were deployed alongside 100 unmanned strike vehicles. Seventeen targets within Ukraine were struck, encompassing military, military-industrial, and auxiliary facilities which support the armed forces and industrial defence enterprises. I wish to reiterate once more: we will certainly respond to such acts of aggression against the Russian Federation. The timing, methods, and weapons employed will be determined by the General Staff of the Ministry of Defense, as each target necessitates a specific approach and appropriate weaponry.”
Asked again about Oreshnik, “do you think these strikes on the [Kiev decision-making] centres are also possible with Oreshnik because nothing else seems to be able to get it?” Putin replied: “You know, in Soviet times there was that joke about weather forecasts. ‘The forecast is: Everything is possible today during the day.’ ” The president was followed on Thursday evening, Moscow time, by a detailed Defense Ministry bulletin announcing “in response to the strikes of the Kiev regime in the depths of the territory of Russia, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation during this week carried out strikes on the locations of the systems of long-range western weapons of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.” Details of the targets followed, including US and French military personnel reported killed while directing Ukrainian missile operations in bunkers at Kharkov and Odessa.
“..launched from Chukotka, it may reach Minuteman III silos in Montana in 23 minutes.”
• Trump May Be Oreshniked On Ukraine Even Before He Gets To China (Pepe Escobar)
When it comes to state of the art Russian weaponry, what the inestimable Ray McGovern defines as the MICIMATT – the whole Hegemonic complex – seems to dwell in perpetual stupor. They had no clue about Kalibr, Sarmat, Khinzal, Zircon or Avangard before they were introduced. They had no clue about Oreshnik (‘Hazel”) before the 30-minute protocolar warning by the Russians, stating a missile test was coming, and it was not nuclear. The Americans assumed that would be just another ballistic missile test, as they happen routinely close to the Arctic. Even President Putin didn’t know Oreshnik was ready for its close-up until the last minute. And Kremlin spokesman Peskov confirmed that only an ultra-rarefied circle knew Oreshnik even existed. In a nutshell: the MICIMATT only sees what Russia shows off – and when it happens.
Call it a leak-proof vow of secrecy permeating the Russian military complex – which, by the way, is a massive state, nationalized company, with a few private components. And that offers the Russian government, in practice, better engineering, better physics, better mathematics and better practical, final results than anything across the self-important collective West. Oreshnik – a kinetic weapons system – is a certified game-changer when it comes to military technology and warfare in more ways than one: actually several. Simple physics tells us that by combining enough kinetic force and mass, utter devastation is guaranteed, comparable to a low-to-medium yield nuclear weapon. With the added benefit of no radiation. Oreshnik is an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM), under development by Russia (along with other systems) even before Trump 1.0 pulled the U.S. out of the INF treaty in 2019.
A few concise analyses have pointed out how Oreshnik can be fitted into intercontinental non-nuclear missiles. The Russians are being very diplomatic, not stressing that if Oreshnik is launched from the Russian Far East, it can easily reach most latitudes across the USA. Moreover, applying Oreshnik tech to tactical missiles – Putin late last week said this is already happening – also changes the whole tactical domain. The new game in town is Russia being capable of unleashing ultra-high-velocity kinetic weapons literally anywhere around the world – after warning civilians to abandon the area around the targets. And there’s absolutely no defense against it, anywhere. It’s quite predictable that the woke, arrogant/ignorant MICIMATT, as well as NATO and the whole, brainwashed collective West simply have no idea what just hit them, seemingly out of the blue. To be concise: a system with the destructive power of a tactical nuclear weapon but carrying the precision of a top sniper’s bullet.
Ergo, sitting duck billion-dollar aircraft carriers; the whole, 800-plus Empire of Bases; assorted underground bunkers; ICBM launch platforms; naval shipyards; not to mention NATO’s HQ in Brussels, the Aegis Ashore base in Redzikowo (Poland), the NATO joint force center in the Netherlands, southern NATO command in Naples – all these immensely expensive assets are fair game for non-nuclear Oreshniks capable of reducing them to dust in a flash after flying for mere minutes at over Mach 10. By now multitudes around the world are aware that Oreshnik may reach Berlin in 11 minutes and London in 19 minutes. Also that launched from southern Russia, Oreshnik may reach the U.S. air base in Qatar in 13 minutes; launched from Kamchatka in the Far East, it may reach Guam in 22 minutes; and launched from Chukotka, it may reach Minuteman III silos in Montana in 23 minutes. To quote the epic 1960s Motown hit: “Nowhere to run, baby, nowhere to hide.”
“Russia has several of the weapons systems at its disposal and is building more of them, the president has warned..”
• Oreshnik Missiles Could Be Used To Strike Kiev – Putin (RT)
The Russian military is selecting targets in Ukraine for further possible strikes using the country’s new Oreshnik hypersonic ballistic missiles, President Vladimir Putin warned on Thursday. Potential targets for the missiles could be “decision making centers” in Kiev, the Russian leader warned, during a meeting with Moscow’s key regional allies in Astana, Kazakhstan. Military facilities could also be targeted, along with defense and industrial enterprises – “especially since the Kiev regime has repeatedly attempted to strike at facilities of national importance in Russia,” Putin explained. Moscow already has several Oreshnik missiles at its disposal and has begun the large-scale production of the advanced weapon system, he added.
Addressing his counterparts from the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), Putin reiterated that the first Oreshnik launch last week had been Moscow’s response to Western countries granting permission for Kiev to fire long-range weapons deep inside Russia. This made NATO member states directly involved in the conflict, he added. Last night, Russia launched around 90 missile and 100 drone attacks against military targets in Ukraine, he said. It came in response to Kiev’s continued attacks using Western weapons. More Oreshnik strikes may follow, he warned. “Oreshnik has no counterparts in the world, of course, and I believe none will appear anytime soon,” he said. “[The system has] dozens of homing warheads that attack their targets at Mach-10 speed… Their temperature reaches 4,000 degrees,” the president added. “Anything located in the strike center is obliterated into elemental particles, reduced to dust.”
Oreshik can destroy highly fortified targets buried deep underground, Putin said. A massive strike with such missiles would be comparable to a nuclear strike in its force, he added. We have several units ready for use now. Certainly, should the strikes with Western long-range weapons on our territory continue, we will respond, including by launching more combat tests of Oreshnik systems. Speaking at the CSTO meeting, Putin compared Russian systems with similar specifications to US ATACMS missiles and French/British SCALP/Storm Shadow missiles, which Kiev has used against Russia. Moscow’s weapons are superior in some aspects, and the country produces significantly more of them that the entire NATO bloc can, he claimed.
“..if a civilian evacuation warning is also issued, as Putin has foreshadowed, then one hour on Friday or Saturday will be what Putin has called the “danger zone”.
• Russian General Staff Prepares Retaliation Friday-Saturday (Helmer)
On Tuesday afternoon, November 26, the Russian Defense Ministry issued an unusual bulletin revealing that since the Oreshnik strike on November 21, the US had launched two ATACMS attacks across the Ukrainian border on Russian military targets in the Kursk region. The first of these on an S-400 air defence unit on November 23 had not been disclosed before. Both the November 23 and November 25 ATACMS strikes, totalling 13 missiles in all, had been partially intercepted. Russian casualties were suffered, including several fatalities. The Defense Ministry also telegraphed its punch. “Retaliatory actions are being prepared,” the bulletin concluded. Earlier that same morning, November 26, the airspace around the Oreshnik launch site at Kapustin Yar — east of Volgograd in the north of Astrakhan region — was identified for closure to civilian flights by an international notice to airmen (NOTAM).
The notice said the no-flight zone would start at 04:00 on Thursday, November 27, and continue until 20:00 on Saturday, November 30. Kapustin Yar was the launch pad for the first Oreshnik strike on the Yuzhmash plant at Dniepropetrovsk on November 21. The flight distance for that Russian missile from launch to target was 800 kilometers. If a second Oreshnik strike is being prepared at Kapustin Yar, the range to US and Ukrainian military bunkers at Kiev is within 1,100 kms; to the comparable military targets in Lvov, 1,600 kms; to the US-Ukrainian base at Rzeszów, on the Polish side of the border, 1,750 kms. The Oreshnik can strike targets at up to 5,000 kms, making it an “intermediate range”, not an “intercontinental range” missile.
On the afternoon of Wednesday, November 27, President Vladimir Putin arrived in Astana, Kazakhastan, for two days of talks. He is due to return from Kazakhstan on the evening of Thursday, November 28. Once the president is in Moscow, he will be in position to order, direct, and follow a retaliation strike by the General Staff against US and Ukrainian targets. If the strike flies at Oreshnik speed of Mach 10 to Mach 12, the operation will run from 5 to 9 minutes. If a 30-minute advance warning is sent to the US, and if a civilian evacuation warning is also issued, as Putin has foreshadowed, then one hour on Friday or Saturday will be what Putin has called the “danger zone”.
“In case of an escalation of aggressive actions,” Putin has said, “we will respond decisively and in mirror-like manner…It goes without saying that when choosing, if necessary and as a retaliatory measure, targets to be hit by systems such as Oreshnik on Ukrainian territory, we will in advance suggest that civilians and citizens of friendly countries residing in those areas leave danger zones. We will do so for humanitarian reasons, openly and publicly, without fear of counter-moves coming from the enemy, who will also be receiving this information.” The Defense Ministry has now confirmed the escalation by the US on November 23 and 25. Putin will decide his retaliation before Saturday evening.
She denies.
• Did Trump Just Solve The US-Mexico Border Crisis? (ZH)
Did Trump solve the border crisis two months before even being sworn in as the 47th president? Two days after surprising markets – and sending the peso plummeting – by announcing he would enact 25% import duties on Mexican goods if the country doesn’t stop the flow of drugs and migrants across the border.[..]? tariffs on Mexican goods in response to the flood of drugs across the porous southern border, best known for allowing millions of illegal immigrants to enter the US in the past four ears, Trump’s unexpected gambit may have already paid off. In a post on Truth Social network, Trump announced that after a “wonderful” conversation with Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum, she “agreed to stop Migration through Mexico, and into the United States, effectively closing our Southern Border.”
He added that the two also talked about “what can be done to stop the massive drug inflow into the United States” concluding that it was a “very productive” conversation which of course, it would be, if indeed Trump – who again is still two months away from inauguration – managed to solve the US border crisis just 48 hours after using targeted tariffs as a bargaining chip. While it remains to be confirmed on the Mexican side if Trump’s recollection of the conversation is accurate, Trump’s announcement comes just hours after the legacy media reported that Mexico would take on a more aggressive posture, with the AP reporting that Sheinbaum had suggested that “Mexico could retaliate with tariffs of its own” and that while she was willing to engage in talks on the issues, drugs were a U.S. problem. “One tariff would be followed by another in response, and so on until we put at risk common businesses,” Sheinbaum said, referring to U.S. automakers that have plants on both sides of the border.
She said Tuesday that Mexico had done a lot to stem the flow of migrants, noting “caravans of migrants no longer reach the border.” However, Mexico’s efforts to fight drugs like the deadly synthetic opioid fentanyl – which is manufactured by Mexican cartels using chemicals imported from China – have weakened in the last year. Amusingly, Sheinbaum also said Mexico suffered from an influx of weapons smuggled in from the United States, and said the flow of drugs “is a problem of public health and consumption in your country’s society” which judging by the libs ongoing reaction to Trump’s victory is pretty much spot on.As noted, there is still no official confirmation or full context of the agreement from President Sheinbaum’s side, but the market certainly reacted with the peso surging, and almost wiping out all losses from the past 48 hours after Trump’s first unveiled his 25% tariff threat.
If confirmed, this would be the second time Trump has managed to convince Mexico to suspend migrants from crossing its territory to enter the US. Back in 2018, former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador – a charismatic, old-school politician – developed a chummy relationship with Trump. The two were eventually able to strike a bargain in which Mexico helped keep migrants away from the border – and received other countries’ deported migrants – and Trump backed down on similar threats. While Sheinbaum, who took office Oct. 1, has been seen as a stern leftist ideologue trained in radical student protest movements, and appeared less willing to pacify or mollify Trump, it seems she too has capitulated just 48 hours after Trump unveiled what was coming.
Insanity on steroids.
• Marc Andreessen Describes “Alarming” Meeting With Biden Admin (ZH)
Marc Andreessen, the billionaire investor and co-founder of the influential Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, revealed in a new episode of Joe Rogan’s podcast that after an “alarming” meeting with Biden administration officials earlier this year was the moment he would have no other choice but to support Donald Trump. For decades, Andreessen has supported Democrats, including Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton. However, a troubling spring meeting with Biden administration officials caused major concerns. During the meeting, officials explained their plan to control AI through government regulatory capture—a strategy reminiscent of Communist policies in China.
“We had meetings [Biden officials] this spring that were the most alarming meetings I’ve ever been in. Where they were taking us through their plans, and it was – basically just full government – full government control – like this sort of thing, there will be a small number of large companies that will be completely regulated and controlled by the government, they told us. They said don’t even start startups – there’s just no way that they can succeed – there’s no way that we’re going to permit that to happen.”
In mid-July, Axios reported that Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz had donated to President-elect Trump’s campaign. At the time, their support was attributed to Trump’s pro stance on crypto and AI regulation. It’s another telling example of just how far-left Democrats in the White House spooked Silicon Valley heavy hitters, such as Elon Musk. Back to the podcast, Rogan asked Andreessen: “When you leave a meeting like that, what do you do?” Andreessen responded: “You endorse Donald Trump.”
Biden's administration laid it all out:
Only 2-3 AI companies would be allowed to exist.
Complete control over development. pic.twitter.com/HEz8pAWXq5
— Ben Averbook (@benaverbook) November 26, 2024
Andreessen told Rogan about the federal government’s rogue “Operation Choke Point.” He described it as a move by the Department of Justice that initially targeted marijuana businesses and gun manufacturers. He said under Biden, it was then weaponized to destroy political opponents, tech founders, and the crypto community.
They’ve uncovered a new way to destroy companies:
30 tech founders were secretly debanked.
No warning. No explanation. No appeals.
Pure, silent government power. pic.twitter.com/iKPn9XmI82
— Ben Averbook (@benaverbook) November 26, 2024
“There are too many duplicative regulatory agencies..”
• Musk Floats Slashing IRS Budget, Regulatory Agency In X Posts (JTN)
Billionaire Elon Musk, who will play a role in the new Trump Administration as a co-head of the newly planned, informal Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) commission, has often floated proposals on his social media platform, X. On Wednesday, the entrepreneur asked his millions of followers if Congress should grant a recent $20 billion dollar funding request from the Internal Revenue Service by Biden Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo, who said the extra funds were vital for running the tax collection agency. “The IRS just said it wants $20B more money,” Musk wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “Do you think its budget should be: Increased, Same, Decreased, Deleted,” he asked, in an attached poll. More than 60% of the users who voted in his poll called for the IRS’s budget to be “deleted.”
This is just the latest instance of Musk asking for public feedback on his policy proposals on X, which he acquired in 2022. Adeyemo’s plea for extra funding comes after Republican lawmakers were able to include a $20 billion cut to the agency’s budget in a federal funding stopgap bill in September, which is keeping the government funded until Dec. 20. Musk also called for slashing government regulations by eliminating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is responsible for protecting consumers in the financial sector. “Delete CFPB. There are too many duplicative regulatory agencies,” Musk posted to X. The agency was created by the 2010 Dodd-Frank law passed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis to regulate the sector.
“..to “remove Meta’s ability to remove or censor political content.”
• Trump-Zuckerberg’s Mar-a-Lago Chatter Suggests Imminent Changes in Meta (Sp.)
President-elect Donald Trump met with Meta* CEO Mark Zuckerberg face-to-face in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, on November 27, the New York Times reported, citing people with knowledge of the matter. “Zuckerberg is attempting to curry favor with the incoming Trump administration in order to avoid criminal prosecution,” Ryan Hartwig, a Facebook* whistleblower and co-author of “Behind the Mask of Facebook: A Whistleblower’s Shocking Story of Big Tech Bias and Censorship”, tells Sputnik. Trump has long been critical of Zuckerberg over reportedly restraining him and other conservatives on social media, withholding the Hunter Biden “laptop from hell” story, and orchestrating a “plot” against him in the 2020 election. Nonetheless, the two exchanged pleasantries during the recent encounter, according to the NYT.
“I think there may be some closed-door negotiations, however, given that Meta is a valuable tool for national security and surveillance of foreign countries, we may see a slight decrease in Trump’s rhetoric,” the pundit continues. “Hopefully there are penalties for Meta and Zuckerberg beyond just monetary fines. Influencing other countries’ elections is one thing, but domestic election interference is a very serious matter.” Hartwig expects Trump to proceed with social media regulations under section 230 during his second term in order to “remove Meta’s ability to remove or censor political content.” He also suggests possible changes in Meta’s executive leadership and even relocation of the company’s headquarters to Texas or another state “that isn’t an echo chamber for certain viewpoints.”
“These policy changes would include not removing any political speech and gutting most of its community standards,” the pundit highlights. And “more importantly, taking a stricter stance against minors on the platform and enforcing strict age verification,” Hartwig adds in an apparent reference to X owner Elon Musk lambasting Meta for “a massive child exploitation problem.”
+ Lindsey Graham.
• White House Pressing Ukraine To Draft 18-Year-Olds for War (Antiwar)
The White House is pressuring Ukraine to increase the size of its military by lowering the minimum age of conscription from 25 to 18, The Associated Press reported on Wednesday. A senior Biden administration official said the outgoing administration wants Ukraine to start drafting 18-year-olds to expand the current pool of fighting-age males. The pressure from the US comes as polling shows the majority of Ukrainians want peace talks with Russia to end the war. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan recently hinted that the US was pressuring Ukraine to expand conscription, saying Ukraine’s biggest problem in the war was the lack of manpower.
“Our view has been that there’s not one weapon system that makes a difference in this battle. It’s about manpower, and Ukraine needs to do more, in our view, to firm up its lines in terms of the number of forces it has on the front lines,” Sullivan said on PBS News Hour last week. Last month, Serhiy Leshchenko, an aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said Ukraine was under pressure from US politicians to lower the conscription age. “American politicians from both parties are putting pressure on President Zelensky to explain why there is no mobilization of those aged 18 to 25 in Ukraine,” he said. Zelensky signed a mobilization bill into law back in April that lowered the conscription age from 27 to 25.
A few weeks before the mobilization bill became law, Zelensky received a visit from US Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who complained that not enough young Ukrainian men were being sent to the frontline. “I would hope that those eligible to serve in the Ukrainian military would join. I can’t believe it’s at 27,” Graham said. “You’re in a fight for your life, so you should be serving — not at 25 or 27. We need more people in the line.” The Biden administration’s push for Ukraine to draft younger men comes as it is doing everything it can to escalate the proxy war before President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated on January 20. President Biden is seeking another $24 billion to spend on the conflict even though it’s clear there’s no path to a Ukrainian military victory.
“..the use of motivated judges in favorable jurisdictions for political advantage. These same figures claim to be “saving democracy.”
• Lawfare Warriors Express Regret But Not Remorse After Election (Turley)
The reaction to the reelection of Donald Trump in the media has ranged from histrionic to outright hysteria. MSNBC analyst and former Sen. Claire McCaskill wept openly on television as CBS News anchor John Dickerson got choked up on national television in an interview on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, still struggling to discuss the news days after the election. However, arguably the most perplexing responses came a few days ago when the New York Times ran a column from one of the advocates of the lawfare used against Trump since 2016. Yale Law Professor Samuel Moyn has long been a favorite of the New York Times as part of what I have previously described as a counter-constitutional movement in higher education. As I discuss in my book, The Indispensable Right, Moyn and others have insisted that the constitution itself may be the problem with America. In a previous New York Times op-ed, “The Constitution Is Broken and Should Not Be Reclaimed,” Moyn and Harvard Professor Ryan D. Doerfler called for liberals to “reclaim America from constitutionalism.”
While the New York Times publicly condemned a U.S. senator for writing about the use of the National Guard to stop violent protests (as would be done at both the White House and the Capitol), it has published a long line of figures who have engaged in violent or extremist rhetoric from the left. However, this particular column may be worth the ink and hypocrisy needed to publish it. The New York Times long lionized those who brought raw partisan prosecutions against Trump and his allies, including efforts to cleanse ballots to deny citizens the opportunity to vote for the man who just won the popular vote. In his new column “Liberals Bet They Could Beat Trump With the Law, Moyn regrets the lawfare, not because it distorted the law and weaponized the legal system, but because it did not work. He even quotes Benjamin Wittes, who helped create the Lawfare website, which was used, in Moyn’s words, “to hem in Mr. Trump.” Wittes wrote, “I have no interest in recriminations.” Perhaps, but the public does.
The election—which handed both houses of Congress and the White House to the GOP—was arguably the largest verdict in history. However, it was not necessarily a verdict for Trump as much as it was against the lawfare and advocacy journalism that had been used openly for years. After all, the “Let’s Go Brandon!” movement developed at the start of the Biden Administration and was as much a criticism of the media and political establishment as it was Joe Biden — a type of “Yankee Doodling” of the governing elite. For years, these figures ignored the “recriminations” of some who objected to using the legal system for political purposes, particularly in the New York cases. To his credit, Moyn now admits that “the more uncomfortable truth is that our search for political salvation primarily through the law has backfired.”
However, he remains remarkably uncritical of such tactics in the first place. Instead, he insists that these losses were due to simply “legalistic tactics.” Some of us call that the law. Moyn plays Shakespeare’s Othello in claiming to be “one that lov’d not wisely but too well.” The problem, he explains to the fragile Times readership is that they “rooted their opposition to Mr. Trump in the law since his first month in office.” He even refers to efforts early on to block Trump’s immigration policies. As soon as Trump came into office, he faced an acting Attorney General, Sally Yates, who ordered the department to stand down and not assist the new president in his immigration orders. I wrote at the time that the order was an outrageous and partisan act by Yates, who was planning on leaving in a matter of days.
While I criticized the initial Trump orders as poorly crafted (perhaps due to the lack of legal support) and in need of revision, I noted that he was likely to prevail on his claimed underlying authority. He ultimately prevailed after revising the orders. Yet, the New York Times and other publications again lionized Yates for an act that some of us view as unprofessional and arguably unethical. The problem with the lawfare campaign is that it did not just treat the law as an extension of politics, but treated the public as chumps. A large part of the public saw these cases for what they were: the use of motivated judges in favorable jurisdictions for political advantage. These same figures claim to be “saving democracy.”
“Russian weapon, Russian crime, Russian culprits, Russian responsibility – those are the Hughes orders.”
• Either The Most Corrupt Judge In England, Or The Stupidest (Helmer)
The story the British government began telling in March 2018 on the road to the war, which the British and their allies are now losing in the Ukraine, is that Russian assassins, on a mission approved by President Vladimir Putin, tried to kill Sergei and Yulia Skripal with a poison weapon they left behind. As story-telling goes, this one has been extraordinarily successful. Much more successful than the Anglo-American war against Russia. Most British people, all United Kingdom media reporters, and about one-quarter of the black cab drivers of London believe the story. This large group of people are being persuaded by a retired Court of Appeal judge named Anthony Hughes (titled Lord Hughes of Ombersley) not to notice that between the allegation of an unwitnessed attempt at murder by poison sprayed on a door handle on March 4, 2018, and the allegation of a death by poison sprayed from a perfume bottle on June 30, 2018, there is a gap of more than four months in time, and of almost fifteen kilometres in space.
The question for the judge is an obvious one: how did the murder weapon get from the one crime scene to the other without the murderer’s movement, presence or action; without leaving a single circumstantial clue; and without causing collateral damage, let alone poisonous contamination of anyone over such a long interval. In testimony to answer this question this week in a London meeting hall made up like a court, Hughes listened to the chief investigator of the crimes at the Metropolitan Police repeatedly admit he didn’t know how to explain the gap. In ten accompanying evidence exhibits, Hughes also accepted that the only way the sole witness called to explain the gap could do so was to coach him through ten separate police interviews, eight of them in just three weeks following the death of Dawn Sturgess, his girlfriend.
The witness Charles Rowley, according to his police record, is a criminal with multiple heroin possession convictions, a suspect in dealing Class A drugs, and a drug addict on methadone prescription. Para 31. Rowley was also on the press record as hustler for a million-pound payout. Rowley, the judge was told by the police, was classified by the MET as a Section 18 witness. That is to say, according to the exhibit of the police “Witness Interview Strategy – Charlie Rowley”, dated July 12, 2018, he was a witness “whose quality of evidence is likely to be diminished by reason of fear or distress”. Hughes made a record of accepting as admissible Rowley’s changing and contradictory explanations of how he came by the poison weapon. The judge also accepted as admissible the MET’s acknowledgement that they don’t know with confidence how the poison weapon had gone from one place to the other.
Their confidence was so low, the chief MET investigator told the judge, “we have not managed to secure sufficient evidence yet to present to the CPS [Crown Prosecution Service], sir, that allows them to charge with any offences linked to Dawn and Charlie’s poisoning,” — Page 6. Hughes’s counsel replied: “Yes, thank you. Moving on just a little bit.” . The policeman, Commander Dominic Murphy, also said: “I don’t think we will ever actually know and the reality is there are of course several hypotheses for where the Novichok could have been and where Charlie could have found it”; “I think it’s worth acknowledging, sir, that there are of course many possibilities still for where the Novichok would have been and how Charlie found it”; “I don’t think we can discount the box being anywhere during those periods, no. We cannot evidence where the box was from 4 March right through to the point at which it was in Muggleton Road [Dawn Sturgess’s home]”; “I should say as the SIO [Senior Investigating Officer] for Operation Caterva I have seen no information or evidence to suggest that this is the case, but yes, of course it absolutely remains a possibility.”
“Thank you,” Hughes said. Hughes tried telling the policeman how to say what he wasn’t sure he saw. “He [Rowley] is coming from the direction of the bins. What is he carrying, do you think? A [Murphy]. I would imagine items he has recovered during the process. LORD HUGHES: Well, don’t imagine, Mr Murphy, come on. What does it look like?” The judge was so angry with the police officer, he stripped him of his commander rank. In the Anglo-American jurisprudence of murder trials, when the judge coaches the witness in front of the jury, the defence lawyer rises and objects. He then asks for the jury to be excused while he demands the judge retract, recuse himself, or dismiss the charges because the prosecution has failed to present a case to answer.
Hughes, however, is following the orders of the British Government, not English law. The orders are to fabricate the appearance of the case which the prosecution cannot make, in order to “identify, so far as consistent with section 2 of the Inquiries Act 2005, where responsibility for the death lies.” Russian weapon, Russian crime, Russian culprits, Russian responsibility – those are the Hughes orders.
Britain is in deep.
• Sky News Is The Limit For Fake News In The UK From Israeli Lobby Cash (Jay)
The European Union and a number of its member states’ governments are continuing in their quest to control media even more. The most recent move from the UK – to give an on screen seal of approval from the state in the form of a ‘Kitemark’ – was actually rejected by the House of Lords recently. This institution, made up of octogenarian buffoons – who mostly employ assistants to deal with their email boxes, such is the condition of their digital awareness – produced a report recently which they themselves ultimately rejected. The idea floated was that there would be some sort of regulator who would approve broadcast content with an on screen icon allowing viewers to see that the state had given it the thumbs up for being objective, unbiased and accurate.
At this point you might have fallen off your seat laughing at this notion, given that practically all of the UK’s entire fourth estate – large players as well as individual journos – are the most bigoted, biased and, at best, ill-informed group of media folk you are ever likely to meet in your lifetime, given what he have seen in Ukraine and Gaza. But the joke gets funnier. While we see over the last two years how out of touch the state is with how it is perceived, let alone its decisions to support the IDF in Gaza murder children and women or how it blindly supports Ukraine in its war against Russia, this idea that the humble citizens of the UK would place their trust in the government to direct them on the validity of media’s offerings is beyond parody.
How did the House of Lords even get to have a hand in all of this is remarkable in itself, but the idea of the Kitemark gives you an idea of the direction of where a further media crackdown is heading. Perhaps the old buffers, before their afternoon nap, were onto something when they rejected it, thinking that maybe it would open up a Pandora’s box and backfire on those who created it. Take the EU for example. What no British MEP, let alone Nigel Farage, who became an multimillionaire on the back of the Brussels beast he pretends to loath, is that this organization itself already spends hundreds of millions of its own taxpayers’ money on funding the biggest fake news operation for television ever known. Virtually all TV reporting which comes from Brussels is down with the production costs paid for by the EU, via is impressive state of the art studios and production teams all on hand to support the hapless Brussels correspondent.
If this grotesque subsidy were to be taken away, there would be almost no reporting on the EU at all, which would of course be a fine thing as what the so-called journalists are doing to show their gratitude to the brown envelope of course is very complimentary to the project. But back to the Kitemark. If we had such on screen logos to ‘direct’ viewers, how long would it be before the new eurosceptics in the bloc – Hungary, under the leadership of Viktor Orban – would insists that a new on screen logo should be seen by every report which comes from Brussels whose team have benefited from their entire report being paid for by the EU? If even the most supportive of EU voters were to see such a symbol they might ask themselves a perfectly reasonable question: how objective can these reports actually be? The House of Lords rejecting the on-screen Kitemark idea are thinking ahead of the game.
They are assuming that most people will switch off altogether watching those reports and move entirely to social media for their information. In reality, this has already happened on a large scale as any journalist will tell you if you want to know what’s really going on in Gaza or in Kursk, it’s going to be social media where you will go. The problem is the UK media model, once a respected beacon of its time which stood as an example to the rest of the world, is now entirely corrupted. It is rotten to the core and only serves one real purpose which is to keep the narrative from firstly, the U.S. and secondly the British government alive. Perhaps even funnier is the role of Sky News which has shown particularly on Gaza that it is the champion of fake news with its interpretation of the events entirely projected through the prism of the Zionists behind the genocide and their own depraved false narratives cooked up for western media, rather than for anything which comes close to raw, objective reporting of the events.
Wokeists know better than those they “protect”.
• “Good Faith” Discussions Underway To Un-Cancel NFL Redskins Logo (ZH)
In a recent X post by Republican Montana Sen. Steve Daines, the senator wrote, “The censorship of the former Commander logo was a classic case of woke gone wrong. I applaud the Commanders & the NFL for their commitment to never censor the logo again.” Speaking to Fox News, Daines said, “The irony – they [woke left] were canceling Native American culture, as in the DEI [Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion] movement went way too far …” At a recent Energy & Natural Resources Committee meeting on Capitol Hill, Daines stated that there had been “good faith negotiations” with the NFL team to restore the logo of Blackfoot Chief John Two Guns White Calf, which had been in use for half a century.
In 2020, the NFL team succumbed to pressure from the radical left, promoting woke culture and forcing a name change from the Redskins to the “Washington Commanders.” Before the woke left unleashed cancel culture, the NFL franchise used Native American artist Walter “Blackie” Wetzel’s artwork of the Blackfoot chief as the inspiration for the team’s logo from 1972 to 2020.
[…] And just like that, the iconic logo, celebrating Indian Country, was memory-holed, as were many other logos. The nation is waking up from a terrible decade of toxic and nation-killing wokeism nightmare. As we’ve previously noted, the ‘Overton Window’ has shifted. For the sake of humanity, let us hope the woke mind virus—destructive by nature and detrimental to the nation—comes to an abrupt end. Woke ideology was never intended to succeed; its true purpose is to destroy. Even The New York Times and Bloomberg acknowledged a new Rutgers study showing that DEI initiatives transform individuals into being “hostile.”
Hotel
Zelensky has purchased €88 million hotel in Courchevel ski resort in France.
Courchevel is known to be wildly popular with billionaires, Hollywood celebrities and British royals.
In case you were wondering how your tax dollars are being spent. Repost this So THEY KNOW that we… pic.twitter.com/8KNt2QrJDQ— Johnny Midnight ⚡️ (@its_The_Dr) November 29, 2024
Jump
This cat making the most precise jump ever!! pic.twitter.com/vMYyhpEIcZ
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) November 28, 2024
Nap
https://twitter.com/i/status/1861719390628311086
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