Pablo Picasso Acrobat 1930
Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart kicks off The Daily Show's election coverage with a wellness check on America's two chronologically challenged candidates: Joe Biden and Donald Trump. pic.twitter.com/RPmFodvVAy
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) February 13, 2024
Weinstein
Bret Weinstein Takes On The New World Order in Powerful Interview.
Premiers Wednesday February 14th pic.twitter.com/sT21J5eZLU
— Alex Jones (@RealAlexJones) February 13, 2024
Migration grows 10X
https://twitter.com/i/status/1757258031392280674
Borrell
Wow, logic and reason from Europe, it's been a while! And it comes from "garden v jungle" Borrell, who's unexpectedly proven one of the only sane European voices over Gaza.
Here he states the obvious:pic.twitter.com/NkZqZCAbbS
"Let's be logical: how many times have you heard the…
— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) February 13, 2024
Miller
One of the Most Astonishing Examples of Washington Betraying the American People@StephenM joins @JackPosobiec to discuss how senators can come together with “astonishing speed” to fund a foreign war in Ukraine, but are transformed into “fools and incompetents” with regard to… pic.twitter.com/nPUKNw8OGz
— Real America's Voice (RAV) (@RealAmVoice) February 13, 2024
“..things would really get wild if Biden were to be nominated at the convention only to subsequently die, resign or be disabled..”
• The Nuts And Bolts Of Replacing Candidate Biden, Before/After Convention (ZH)
On Monday, Politico examined avenues by which the Democratic Party might navigate toward a different candidate. First, note that the expiration of most ballot-filing deadlines means it’s too late for a heavyweight to enter the Democratic primary, and the obscure Rep. Dean Phillips challenge campaign — which has emphasized Biden’s weakness as a candidate — hasn’t gained any traction. Politico’s Charlie Mahtesian and Steven Shepard also think it’s unlikely we’ll see a floor revolt by Biden delegates at the Democratic Convention. Rather, they focus on a scenario in which Biden sees the primary process all the way through, and then — under mounting public, media and political pressure — announces he will not seek re-election after all and is releasing his delegates to vote for someone else at the national convention, which will be held in Chicago Aug. 19 to 22. Biden might well endorse a candidate, but his delegates wouldn’t be obliged to vote for his pick.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who’s been running an odd non-campaign of his own — to include debating then-GOP hopeful Ron DeSantis — would be among the top contenders, along with Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. It could all make for great entertainment, writes Politico: The Democrats’ convention, typically a staid affair, would be filled with drama. While Democrats stripped their so-called “superdelegates” of most of their power after 2016, those current and former party leaders and elected officials would get a vote on a potential second ballot at the convention. That would give them significant sway in picking a nominee in a floor fight, but perhaps at the expense of reopening the 2016-era controversy about the role played by party elites in stifling Bernie Sanders’ chances at the nomination
One thing Politico didn’t note is that the convention is already likely to feature high drama, in the form of protests by Democrats and others infuriated by the Biden administration’s blank-check backing of Israel’s unbridled destruction of Gaza in response to the Oct. 7 Hamas invasion of southern Israel. A floor-fight for the nomination could mean there’s chaos both inside and outside Chicago’s United Center. While a Biden pre-convention withdrawal would make for quite a spectacle, things would really get wild if Biden were to be nominated at the convention only to subsequently die, resign or be disabled. In that scenario, party rules direct the party chair to “confer with the Democratic leadership of the … Congress and the Democratic Governors Association” and then report to the approximately 450-member Democratic National Committee, which would then choose a new nominee.
The chaos wouldn’t be confined to the Democratic Party: States would be forced to scramble to produce new ballots. Ballots for overseas military service members are shipped just a couple weeks after the late-August Democratic convention, and in-person voting kicks off on Sept. 20 in Minnesota and South Dakota. None of this is to say that Biden won’t keep mumbling, shuffling, blank-staring and gaffing his way all the way to the Nov 5 general election finish line. However, after last week, fewer people are willing to wager that Biden will be the Democratic nominee:
Line Chart: Price of a contract that pays $1.00 if Biden is the Democratic nominee (via PredictIt)
“It’s a legitimate issue for Trump who’s only three years younger, right? So it’s an issue.”
• Biden Age a ‘Legitimate Issue’ – Hillary Clinton (RT)
Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said President Joe Biden’s advancing age is a “legitimate issue” on the campaign trail, as he seeks to secure a second term in the White House in the election later this year. Speculation about Biden’s cognitive abilities was once again raised last week when the 81-year-old confused the leaders of Egypt and Mexico, shortly after dismissing claims that his mental state is declining. The verbal misstep followed an announcement that Biden will not face criminal prosecution for mishandling classified government documents, after a prosecutor described him as an “elderly man with a poor memory.” According to Clinton, who unsuccessfully ran against Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential race, the debate about Biden’s age is valid.
“I talked to people in the White House all the time, and you know, they know it’s an issue, but as I like to say, ‘look, it’s a legitimate issue,’” Clinton told MSNBC last week. “It’s a legitimate issue for Trump who’s only three years younger, right? So it’s an issue.” But instead of seeking to ignore concerns about his age, Clinton said that the Biden campaign team should expand on his experience as a legislator ahead of November’s election. “I think Biden also should lean into the fact that he’s experienced and that experience is not just in the political arena,” Clinton said. “It’s like, the stuff of, you know, human experience, character, wisdom.” A poll published last week by NBC News found that some 76% of respondents had concerns over Biden’s age and health, should he be reelected to another four-year term. Similar concerns were voiced by 61% regarding Trump, who will be 78 by the time of the election in November.
In October, the Republican frontrunner sparked questions of his own mental acuity when he incorrectly referred to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban as the leader of Türkiye. Meanwhile, Biden’s personal attorney, Bob Bauer, on Sunday described special counsel Robert Hur’s description of the US president’s mental wellbeing as a “shabby work product.” The Republican-led critique of Biden was “misleading,” Bauer told CBS, adding that the report into his retention of classified documents “went off the rails.” According to a YouGov poll of 1,000 US citizens earlier this month, Trump holds a one-point advantage over Biden in a hypothetical match-up between the two likely presidential candidates.
JFK Jr
Who was JFK Jr. Running against in an election before he died in a plane crash? pic.twitter.com/duYIYGVT81
— illuminatibot (@iluminatibot) February 13, 2024
“It’s one thing to say you passed a competency test. But it’s another thing to actually have the American people listen to you debate..”
• Biden And Trump Trying To Hide Their Age – Mitt Romney (RT)
President Joe Biden and his likely election opponent Donald Trump are avoiding debates for fear of showing “how old they are”, Senator Mitt Romney has claimed. Romney, a Republican senator for Utah and 2012 presidential election runner-up, was speaking to the Associated Press on Monday amid widespread public concern over Biden’s advanced age and apparently failing memory. Romney argued that presidential candidates should engage in public debates, calling them a crucial part of the campaign process. “This is a democracy of the United States of America. We need to hear from the people who want to be president and see if they have mental capacity and see what their positions are on issues,” Romney argued.
It’s one thing to say you passed a competency test. But it’s another thing to actually have the American people listen to you debate. I want to hear both President Biden and President Trump. So far, neither Biden nor former President Trump have agreed to take part in any debates. While Biden’s reelection campaign has repeatedly sidestepped media inquiries regarding a televised face-off with Trump, the Republican has feuded with both the party’s National Committee, refusing to join primary debates – and with the nonpartisan commission hosting general election debates, over its rules.
“People always find excuses for why they don’t want to debate. But you got a couple of old guys that don’t want to have people see how old they are,” Romney said. The 76-year-old senator called time on his political career last summer, opting to retire when his current term ends in January 2025 without seeking re-election. “At the end of another term, I’d be in my mid-80s,” Romney said at the time. “Frankly, it’s time for a new generation of leaders. They’re the ones that need to make the decisions that will shape the world they will be living in.”
“..constitutional removal would require more than just memory lapses and “get off my lawn” press conferences…”
• Can Biden Be Removed Under the 25th Amendment? Don’t Bet on It (Turley)
[..] as I wrote with regard to the Trump demands at the time, calls for Biden’s removal ignore the true purpose and standard for removal. The issue of “disability” of a president was briefly raised in the Constitutional Convention in 1787. It was a delegate from Biden’s home state of Delaware who asked how they would respond to a disability, “and who is to be the judge of it?” John Dickinson’s question was left unanswered in the final version of the Constitution. What followed were persistent controversies over succession. This issue came to a head after President Dwight D. Eisenhower suffered a stroke. After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Congress finally addressed the issue in the 25th Amendment. The amendment addresses the orderly succession of power as well as temporary disabilities when presidents must undergo medical treatment or surgeries.
It is Section 4 that allows the removal of a president. One option is what I have called the “mutiny option.” It requires a vice president and a majority of the Cabinet to declare that the president is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” and notify Congress that the vice president intends to take over. If Vice President Kamala Harris could get eight Cabinet officers to go along with a letter to Congress, her status as the “Acting President” would likely be short-lived. Joe Biden (who yesterday declared, “I’m elderly and know what the hell I’m doing”) would only have to declare to Congress that “no inability exists.” Biden would then resume his powers. Harris would have to send another declaration with the Cabinet members within four days to the president pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House, rejecting Biden’s claims.
With that second declaration, Congress would have 48 hours to assemble to debate the issue. It would then have 21 days to vote on the removal. However, that would require two-thirds majorities in both houses. If Congress did not vote within 21 days, the president would resume and keep power. In other words, it is about as likely as François Mitterrand coming forward to say that he faked his death and has indeed been in communication with Biden. The question on the merits is whether “diminished faculties” constitute an incapacity. While the 25th Amendment was written with physical disabilities in mind, it clearly can apply to mental or cognitive disabilities. Yet if Biden’s decline is viewed as a barrier to prosecution, would it necessarily be a barrier to the presidency? The answer is complicated. A study in Psychology Today of the first 37 presidents suggests half of them experienced some form of mental illness. They were still able to perform their duties.
Memory problems are not a compelling basis for removal. However, it is a matter of degree. Biden’s cognitive problems are becoming increasingly evident, but the sole question is whether he can carry out the duties of his office. The standard is not whether he can carry out those duties well. There is a difference between Biden confusing names and actually carrying on conversations with dead people. The latter would clearly be grounds for removal. Of course, it is hard for the public to know the degree of Biden’s decline. The White House staff has clearly shielded Biden from the public and the press for years. Even during the 2020 campaign, many suspected that the staff was hiding Biden’s mental struggles. In that sense, the concern over Biden’s fitness is legitimate. However, it will take much more of a showing to establish a case for his removal under the 25th Amendment.
“..no Republican should have ever imagined that giving open-border Democrats everything they asked for was a smart strategic position, but that’s what they very nearly did..”
• The Absurd Border Con (Victor Davis Hanson)
For the past three years of President Biden’s mass influx, the left has applauded open borders. That is, until late last year, when overwhelmed southern border state governors began bussing and flying illegal immigrants en masse to northern sanctuary-city jurisdictions. For years, these sanctuary zones had preened their liberality about open borders. They smeared as “racists” and “xenophobes” any who insisted on legal-only immigration. But now they were subject to the real-life ramifications of their own destructive ideologies. Major blue-state cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington became outraged that they were inundated with tens of thousands of immigrants, all without legality, veritable identification, or background checks. Some proved violent. Others crowded out scarce resources essential to millions of inner-city poor.
The liberal architects of illegal immigration are usually rich and powerful enough to be insulated from the consequences of their utopian policies. But not so their poor or minority constituents. They deal first-hand with spiking crime, appropriation of their parks and civic centers, and restricted access to now-overwhelmed social services. So the once open-border Democrat Party and President Biden are in a quandary. They now fear mass defections of core Latino and black voters in an election year. But how can they square the circle of insisting on open borders with the need to appear to their own voters as determined to close them? We saw the absurd answer this week. Shameless Democrats tried to enlist naive and foolish Republicans to bail them out with a “comprehensive immigration bill.” It was really designed to keep the border open while spending billions of dollars to facilitate more rapid and orderly transits—and more substantial welfare support for millions of illegals here and still to come.
Now Democrats claim that anyone who did not sign on to codify and regulate illegal immigration was responsible for their own deliberate open border policies in the first place! To add insult to injury, they next sought to piggyback their toxic immigration bill onto massive aid for Israel and Ukraine. It was a transparent effort to blame any Republicans for harming Israel and aiding Russian President Vladimir Putin, should they not sign on to a more efficient open border. The real agenda of the bill’s supporters is absolutely no return to President Trump’s legal-only immigration and a secure border. That simple solution requires no new legislation and almost no new spending. But it does imply acknowledgment that the hated President Trump had solved the problem executively—and that admission is apparently taboo.
“If the border can be shut down when more than 5,000 illegal immigrants cross per day, then why can’t it be shut down immediately, right now?”
• The One Border Question Dems Can’t Answer (Miele)
Conservative Republicans have managed to defeat the fake border security bill wrapped in a political ploy inside of a Ukraine bailout bill. Of course, no Republican should have ever imagined that giving open-border Democrats everything they asked for was a smart strategic position, but that’s what they very nearly did. Republicans had already passed a real border security bill within a few months of taking control of the House of Representatives following the 2022 midterm elections. HR-2 actually secured the border – by demanding that the Biden administration finish the border wall, ending Biden’s power to process aliens who don’t enter at ports of entry, and shutting off the federal spigot that funds NGOs who aid and abet illegal aliens (“inadmissible non-U.S. citizens”) by providing lodging and other resources. Moreover, HR-2 shut down the ability of the Biden administration to grant asylum to the millions of migrants who don’t meet the legal criteria for asylum.
But those are just a few of the vital components of HR-2, which is indeed a border security bill. If Democrats really wanted border security, they would have passed HR-2 in the Senate last year. But even if they didn’t want to give Republicans a win with HR-2, Democrats still could have incorporated the language of HR-2 in their grand compromise to prove that they really meant it when they said they wanted to stop the flow of illegal immigrants into the United States. Instead, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell teamed up with his buddy Chuck Schumer to use their fake border security bill as a fig leaf to cover up their real goal – freeing billions of dollars to go to Ukraine and Israel. McConnell sent his sacrificial lamb, Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, into the lions’ den of lean and hungry Democrats as his chief negotiator to craft a “compromise” border bill, but he was apparently instructed not to involve House Speaker Mike Johnson or any other border hawks in his negotiations.
Moreover, the contents of the bill were kept secret until three days before Schumer intended to bring it to a vote in the Senate. By that time, it was obvious what the game was. Democrats and their media allies created a narrative that Trump had ordered Republicans to vote against the bill in order to give him a political issue in November. This is just the latest instance where Democrats have gotten the cart before the horse. Trump does not give anyone orders; he just listens to the people and provides them a voice. It is the people who spoke out against this fake border bill, and any Republicans foolish enough to vote against the people are at risk of following former Speaker Kevin McCarthy out the door. The people’s voice was mocked throughout the process. When details of the border bill were leaked to the media, Lankford characterized them as Internet rumors and dismissed them. “Wait for the text of the bill to be released,” he repeatedly said.
But when the text was released, it was just as the people had feared. Most importantly, the centerpiece of the bill was a provision that ordered the president to shut down the border if illegal entries exceeded 5,000 a day on average for seven days. Our masters in the media tell us that doesn’t mean up to 5,000 illegal entries per day would be allowed, but let’s be realistic. First of all, the U.S.-Mexican border is not controlled by the Border Patrol; it is controlled by the Mexican cartels. If the human traffickers need to keep border crossings under 5,000 a day in order to keep doing business, then they will do just that. But there is one question that completely destroys the Democrat and globalist Republican talking point that the “5,000 a day” number is somehow being misunderstood by Harvard Law School graduates like Sens. Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton.
Here’s how NBC described the provision: “DHS could close the border if Border Patrol encountered 4,000 or more migrants on average over seven days. The border would have to be shut down if those encounters reached a seven-day average of 5,000 or if they exceeded 8,500 in a single day.” Now, here’s the question that Democrats have no answer to: If the border can be shut down when more than 5,000 illegal immigrants cross per day, then why can’t it be shut down immediately, right now? The answer is obvious – because Joe Biden and the Democrats don’t want to shut down the border. Instead, they have sanctioned the invasion of our country by millions of non-citizens. With this bill, they attempted to codify that invasion and they thought they could get Republicans to just look the other way. Maybe a few years ago, that would have worked. But this is the new Republican Party, tired of playing Charlie Brown and being humiliated time and again by Democratic Party Lucys.
“In the absence of having received any single border policy change from the Senate, the House will have to continue to work its own will on these important matters..”
• House Speaker Says Will Not Take Up Senate’s $95B Ukraine-Israel Aid Bill (Sp.)
US House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Monday that he will not bring the Senate’s $95 billion foreign aid bill to the House floor for consideration if it reaches the lower chamber. The Senate could pass the foreign aid bill as early as Wednesday. “In the absence of having received any single border policy change from the Senate, the House will have to continue to work its own will on these important matters,” Johnson said in a statement. Johnson said the Senate’s foreign aid bill fails to address the United States’ most pressing issue: border security.
The House Speaker added that the Senate should have pushed to include meaningful border security measures in the $95 billion foreign aid bill, which includes approximately $60 billion for Ukraine, $14 billion for Israel and additional funding to address US national security concerns in the Indo-Pacific region. Last week, Senate Republicans blocked a $118 billion national security supplemental package that includes $60 billion for Ukraine, $14 billion for Israel and border policy reforms. Republicans claim the reforms in the bill would not do enough to deter illegal immigration on the US southern border. The House Speaker also said that the bill would be “dead on arrival” if it reached the House of Representatives.
Rand Paul
https://twitter.com/i/status/1757431948329275630
“..it would bring the total amount of US aid to Kiev to almost $200 billion..”
• Putin and Xi Will Regret Challenging America – Schumer (RT)
American senators from both parties coming out in support of aid for Ukraine and Israel is a powerful signal to Russia and China, as well as Washington’s allies, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Tuesday. The 100-member chamber approved the $95 billion “national security” funding bill with 70 votes in favor and 29 opposed. Eight Republican senators spent most of the night filibustering against the proposal. “Today we make [Russian President] Vladimir Putin regret the day he questioned America’s resolve, and we make clear to others, like China’s President Xi [Jinping], not to test our determination,” Schumer said in a speech after the vote. “And we send a clear, bipartisan message of resolve to our allies in NATO.” Schumer also praised the passage of the bill as greatly impacting “the security of Western democracy.”
The Senate bill would give Ukraine $61 billion in aid, as well as $14 billion to Israel for its war against Hamas, and almost $5 billion for arming Taiwan. The White House originally bundled it with a “border reform” proposal but proceeded with foreign aid only after Democrats and Republicans could not agree on immigration. Republicans opposing the Ukraine funding bill have pointed out that it would bring the total amount of US aid to Kiev to almost $200 billion. Democrats have countered that it was good for the US weapons industry and that not continuing to send money to Kiev would damage Washington’s reputation and “resolve” in the world. Their arguments ended up swaying 22 of the Republicans.
Though it has passed in the Senate, the bill now needs the backing of the House of Representatives, where Republicans have a razor-thin majority. “The bill before us today… will never pass in the House, will never become law,” Senator Rick Scott, a Florida Republican, said in a floor speech on Tuesday morning. House Speaker Mike Johnson has previously described the proposal as “dead on arrival.” With so many Republicans willing to cross the aisle to back the Democrats when it comes to funding Ukraine, it is entirely possible the bill might pass and make its way to President Joe Biden’s desk.
“..Carlson could face sanctions for giving the interview. “For what sin?” Ritter asked. “For the sin of letting a Russian president speak?”
• Scott Ritter: Tucker-Putin Interview Shows Americans ‘Hungry for Information’ (Sp.)
The success of the Tucker-Putin interview was the result of Americans being “hungry for information about what Russia is thinking,” former US Marines Corps intelligence officer and author Scott Ritter told Sputnik’s The Critical Hour on Monday. “They are worried about the consequences of condemning Russia out of hand and rushing to a war based upon words Russia is not allowed to say for us to consider,” he added. Earlier, Ritter spoke about attempts to punish Tucker for giving the interview, including former Belgian prime minister and current member of the European Parliament who suggested Carlson could face sanctions for giving the interview. “For what sin?” Ritter asked. “For the sin of letting a Russian president speak?” The interview has over 198 million views on X, more than 15 million views on YouTube, plus an unknown amount across other platforms including Carlson’s website.
Ritter noted that Tucker’s interview is protected by free speech, which “does not automatically equate to wise speech,” he argued. “But the thing about free speech is that the antidote to bad speech is better free speech,” Ritter explained. “Meaning, that if you have a problem with what somebody’s saying […] come up with better ideas and put them out there.” While Ritter called Tucker an “idiot” for not being better prepared for the interview, he said that the important thing is that Putin got to speak to the American people through their own lens. “[Putin’s] words are resonating because [Americans are] going, ‘Wait a minute. I was told that this guy is the personification of evil. I was told he doesn’t want a negotiated settlement. I was told that he deliberately invaded, that he wants to invade NATO,’”
Ritter explained. “And [Putin is] saying that he is more than happy to sit down at the table and talk if anybody will talk, that the problem here isn’t Putin, the problem is the United States […] and the light bulb is going off around America.” Earlier, despite his criticisms, Ritter said he hopes a future President will recognize the service he [Tucker Carlson] did for the world and “[bring] him to the White House and put the Presidential Medal of Freedom around his neck.”
What radicalised Tucker Carlson:pic.twitter.com/WTRy8qu76t
— Robin Monotti (@robinmonotti) February 12, 2024
Oleksiy Arestovych is Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s former advisor and spokesman.
• Tucker’s Interview Reveals An Increasingly Formidable Putin (Arestovych)
I watched Putin’s interview. Alas, I do not share (thank God) the general opinion about “…a worthless grandfather.” And now I will try to massage your tailbone, because you don’t want to think for yourself, but want to repeat other people’s mantras, not wanting to analyze the consequences of what you saw. Putin is completely adequate. He understands what he is doing very well and is in good physical, mental and emotional shape. Hello to those who buried him a year ago. Putin sets out a coherent system of views that he himself believes in (hello, jokes about the Merovingians and Ladoga). Putin is psychologically increasingly getting rid of his pro-Western orientation – the only thing that was holding him back from within. “Oh, this is a mythology divorced from real history!..” the average person puffs on social networks and runs to hide in the bathroom from Putin’s missiles flying at him.
I have a simple question: — When will you start thinking – at least about the reasons that directly determine your life? Myth. Come on, name me at least one state ideology that is not based on mythology, which to one degree or another does not correspond to real history? Who and when did this prevent them from acting in the present? Let’s say it’s good: the villain Putin is the only one who relies on a fictitious ideology and mythology. So what if, in view of this mythology, he takes completely material actions? “An idea, taking possession of the masses, becomes a material force”–remember that? A specific mythology has taken hold of the masses and forty thousand volunteers come to Russian military registration and enlistment offices every month. And they are not going to stop.
And how many volunteers come to our military registration and enlistment offices every month, dear real historians? Ahh? What kind of true stories do we tell if our “volunteers” have to be grabbed by force on the street? And what stories does the West tell that it cannot collectively produce a million shells a year, in a situation where North Korea produces one and a half? Putin will not stop. He will carry out his tasks, which are dictated to him by the picture of the world, to the end. Moreover, judging by his statements, he is improving in his picture of the world, in the sense of acquiring more and more motivation. Yes, he lies a lot and deliberately, distorts, manipulates. Okay, we have defeated funny Putin with his stupid myths. — Maybe someone can name our clever myths: ours and the West? Our truth, lack of manipulation, directness? — And what is this so-called “world system” of yours worth, so reasonable, so strong, so free, if “… one funny, out-of-touch pseudo-historian” managed to render it inoperative?
“..the recent expansion of Israel’s ground operation further into the Gaza Strip dramatically undermines a potential resolution to the ongoing conflict..”
• US Pushing Israel and Palestine Towards Catastrophe – Lavrov (Sp.)
Russia’s top diplomat Sergey Lavrov has addressed attendees of the 13th annual Middle East Conference of the Valdai Discussion Club. The event entitled Time for decisive action: a comprehensive settlement for the sake of stability in the region is supported by the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In his speech, Lavrov touched upon a variety of pressing issues about the unraveling developments in the Middle East. No Prospects for Palestine-Israel Settlement at the Moment The minister emphasized that the recent expansion of Israel’s ground operation further into the Gaza Strip dramatically undermines a potential resolution to the ongoing conflict. “Taking into account the uncompromising attitude of the Israeli leadership to continue the military operation in Gaza, now extending it to Rafah, we do not see prospects for the rapid stabilization of the situation in this sector,” Lavrov noted.
It is necessary to look for a way out of this catastrophic situation, the minister said, adding that it is the US that is “pushing Palestine, Israel and the entire Middle East into a catastrophe.” Washington intends to exclude Moscow from international efforts for a Middle East crisis settlement, as the US is betting on its own dominance in the region, Lavrov added. “The Americans have chosen to bet on their dominance in the region and already work on excluding Russia from various international efforts aimed at creating conditions for lasting peace and stability,” he underlined. The FM recalled that Washington effectively “blocked the work of international mediators on the Middle East settlement, consisting of Russia, the US, the UN and the EU.”
Lavrov added that in the current situation, the US applies “its recipes that are divorced from reality and one-sided solutions that ignore the specifics of either countries or the region as a whole.” Russia Suggests Holding Intra-Palestinian Dialogue According to the Russian foreign minister, Moscow plans to hold an inter-Palestinian meeting in the “foreseeable future” with the support of the Palestinians themselves. “We propose holding an inter-Palestinian meeting with the participation of all leading factions to overcome the internal division,” the minister shared. Lavrov also pointed out that at the UN, Russia had drawn attention to the long-standing Russian initiative to hold consultations involving key countries in the region in order to harmonize their approaches and support the creation of a Palestinian state.
Lavrov also noted that Russia continues to try to evacuate citizens of the Russian Federation and other countries from the Gaza Strip. “We continue to work on the evacuation of citizens of Russia, Israel and other countries from the combat zone. We cooperate with Egypt, Israel, and the Palestinians from Gaza. We have evacuated about 1,200 of our compatriots and their families, including citizens of other countries… We keep pursuing these efforts,” he concluded.
“Joe Biden was aware of the CEFC transaction, enabled it, and had a constitutional responsibility and obligation to the American people to shut it down before it began..”
• Bobulinski Says China Successfully Sought To Infiltrate And Compromise WH (NYP)
A former Biden family business associate-turned-whistleblower alleged in explosive testimony before House impeachment probers Tuesday that the president was “the Brand” being sold by relatives in their lucrative dealings in countries such as China and Ukraine. Tony Bobulinski — a former Navy officer who worked with first son Hunter Biden and first brother James on a venture with CEFC China Energy — is considered one of the Republicans’ best hopes of scoring damning new details confirming the president’s ties to his relatives’ Chinese government-linked relationships. “For nearly four years, I have tried to tell the American people the truth about serious corruption at the very top of their government,” Bobulinski said in opening statements to House probers from both sides of the political aisle in the closed-door session. “The Biden family business was Joe Biden, period,” Bobulinksi alleged. “It is clear to me that Joe Biden was ‘the Brand’ being sold by the Biden family.
“The Chinese Communist Party through its surrogate, China Energy Company Limited, or ‘CEFC’ — a CCP-linked Chinese energy conglomerate — successfully sought to infiltrate and compromise Joe Biden and the Obama-Biden White House. “Joe Biden was aware of the CEFC transaction, enabled it, and had a constitutional responsibility and obligation to the American people to shut it down before it began,” Bobulinski said. CEFC, a since-defunct reputed cog in Beijing’s “Belt and Road” foreign influence campaign, paid Hunter and James Biden more than $7 million in 2017 and 2018 for largely unknown business services, according to reports from congressional Republicans. A different former Biden family associate, Rob Walker, testified on Jan. 26 that the Bidens’ business relationship with CEFC began in 2015 when Joe Biden was still vice president and that Joe Biden himself attended a meeting at the Four Seasons hotel in or around March 2017 with CEFC chairman Ye Jianming, who has since gone missing in China amid corruption allegations.
Walker disbursed an initial tranche of more than $1 million to the Bidens beginning in March 2017 — after Joe Biden left office as vice president that January — and did not dispute in his deposition new evidence of emails in March 2016, while Joe Biden was VP, among himself, Hunter Biden and CEFC officials. Bobulinski is expected to face tense grilling from Democrats in the closed-door session after infuriating them in 2020 by sandbagging Biden moments before his final debate against then-President Donald Trump. At the time, Bobulinski publicly corroborated details from Hunter’s abandoned laptop about Hunter and first brother James Biden’s lucrative relationship with CEFC China Energy. CEFC transferred $5.1 million to bank accounts linked to Hunter and James Biden within 10 days of Hunter writing to a China-based CEFC associate that he was “sitting here with my father” and warning of retribution if an agreed-upon deal was not executed.
“With your callsign, inscribed in your heart./ From the war, as a small souvenir:/Far away, but eternally near..”
• Life During Wartime – On the Road in Donbass (Pepe Escobar)
You are given a name by the War:/it’s a call sign, not nickname – much more./Lack of fancy cars here and iPads,/But you have APC and MANPADS./Social media long left behind,/Children’s drawings with “Z” stick to mind./’Likes” and “thumbs up” are valued as dust,/But the prayers from people you trust./Hold On, Soldier, my brother, my friend,/The hostility comes to an end./War’s unable to stop its decease,/Grief and suffering will turn into peace./Life returns to the placid format,/With your callsign, inscribed in your heart./ From the war, as a small souvenir:/Far away, but eternally near.
Inna Kucherova, Call Sign, in A Letter to a Soldier, published December 2022It’s a cold, rainy, damp morning in the deep Donbass countryside, at a secret location close to the Urozhaynoye direction; a nondescript country house, crucially under the fog, which prevents the work of enemy drones. Father Igor, a military priest, is blessing a group of local contract-signed volunteers to the Archangel Gabriel battalion, ready to go to the front lines of the US vs. Russia proxy war. The man in charge of the battalion is one of the top-ranking officers of Orthodox Christian units in the DPR. A small shrine is set up in the corner of a small, cramped room, decorated with icons. Candles are lit, and three soldiers hold the red flag with the icon of Jesus in the center. After prayers and a small homily, Father Igor blesses each soldier.
This is yet another stop in a sort of itinerant icon road show, started in Kherson, then Zaporozhye and all the way to the myriad DPR front lines, led by my gracious host Andrey Afanasiev, military correspondent for the Spas channel, and later joined in Donetsk by a decorated fighter for the Archangel Michael battalion, an extremely bright and engaging young man codename Pilot. There are between 28 and 30 Orthodox Christian battalion fighting in Donbass. That’s the power of Orthodox Christianity. To see them at work is to understand the essentials: how the Russian soul is capable of any sacrifice to protect the core values of its civilization. Throughout Russian history, it’s individuals that sacrifice their lives to protect the community – and not vice-versa. Those who survived – or perished – in the siege of Leningrad are only one among countless examples. So the Orthodox Christian battalion were my guardian angels as I returned to Novorossiya to revisit the rich black soil where the old “rules-based” world order came to die.
This is yet another stop in a sort of itinerant icon road show, started in Kherson, then Zaporozhye and all the way to the myriad DPR front lines, led by my gracious host Andrey Afanasiev, military correspondent for the Spas channel, and later joined in Donetsk by a decorated fighter for the Archangel Michael battalion, an extremely bright and engaging young man codename Pilot. There are between 28 and 30 Orthodox Christian battalion fighting in Donbass. That’s the power of Orthodox Christianity. To see them at work is to understand the essentials: how the Russian soul is capable of any sacrifice to protect the core values of its civilization. Throughout Russian history, it’s individuals that sacrifice their lives to protect the community – and not vice-versa. Those who survived – or perished – in the siege of Leningrad are only one among countless examples. So the Orthodox Christian battalion were my guardian angels as I returned to Novorossiya to revisit the rich black soil where the old “rules-based” world order came to die.
The traveling priesthood exits the digs of the Archangel Gabriel battalion and heads to a meeting in a garage with the Dmitry Donskoy orthodox battalion, fighting in the Ugledar direction. That’s where I meet the remarkable Troya, the battalion’s medic, a young woman who had a comfy job as a deputy officer in a Russian district before she decided to volunteer. Onwards to a cramped military dormitory where a cat and her kittens reign as mascots, choosing the best place in the room right by the iron stove. Time to bless the fighters of the Dimitri Zalunsky battalion, named after St. Dimitri of Thessaloniki, who are fighting in the Nikolskoye direction. At each successive ceremony, you can’t help being stricken by the purity of the ritual, the beauty of the chants, the grave expressions in the faces of the volunteers, all ages, from teenagers to sexagenarians. Deeply touching. This in so many aspects is the Slavic counterpart of the Islamic Axis of Resistance fighting in West Asia. It is a form of asabiyya – “community spirit”, as I used it in a different context referring to the Yemeni Houthis supporting “our people” in Gaza.
“Expect all of us to feel a renewed sense of gratitude for being here instead of rage, resentment, and grievance, because it’s likely there will be far fewer of us around..”
American oil production may be at an all-time peak now at about 13-million barrels-a-day, but most of that — about 8-million — is shale oil, which is a manifestation of our tremendous debt roll-up since 2009. Now that we’re at the absolute limits of debt, we’re also at the limits of shale oil. The production of shale oil paralleled the accumulation of all that debt both in size and rate of increase, and as the debt goes bad — meaning, unpayable — the organized capital sector will blow and shale oil production will fall as sharply as it rose. It is also a fact that shale oil is subject to natural limits — we’re out of “sweet spots” to drill.
That’s America. Europe is way worse because aside from whatever oil is left in the North Sea (not much), Europe has no oil. Europe’s largest gas field — Groningen in the Netherlands — is scheduled to cease operations in October of this year. You all know what happened to the Nord Stream pipelines. And then Germany, in some psychotic fugue state, shut down its entire nuclear power industry, while France is just not replacing its nuke plants as they age-out. Europe is completely screwed. They won’t have anything we might call modern industry. In the meantime, the WEF is playing them like a flugelhorn, keeping them distracted with “green” politics, an unchecked immigrant invasion, and sexual confusion.
A lot of the same nuttery afflicts us in the USA, of course, but none of that alters the real macro trends. Our federal government is not really getting more powerful, it’s cracking up, starting from the very top, with a mentally incompetent president — the secret that everybody knows. Agencies like the DOJ and Homeland Security may seem more tyrannical for the moment, but they are actually breaking as institutions because in their lawlessness they’ve lost the trust of the people — and nothing is more fundamental to a civilized society than trust in the law. That’s what consent of the governed means.
So, the period of disorderly transition we’re in is not moving toward greater dominance by giants, but to the survival of the small and nimble. We will not see capital formation like the orgy of recent times; rather the vanishing of things falsely presumed to be capital, contraction not expansion. You’ll be struggling to identify and preserve real wealth, which you’ll find in unexpected places, like the friends you can count on, your reputation for honesty, your dependability, acquired skills, and your health, physical and psychological.
The WEF won’t be able to impose its Globalist nightmare of elite transhumanism and surveilled bug-eating serfs, and they know it now. They’re running scared. The vile Yuval Noah Harari has even said so publicly. The political figures and agents serving that cabal will be lucky if they are not hanged in the public squares. The political criminals here in America, the hoaxsters, the grifters, the seditionists, the Lawfare agents, the election fraudsters, know very well the danger of their looming prosecutions, and that’s exactly why the Democratic Party and its blob henchmen and flunkies are acting like desperate lunatics.
Expect: failed national governments, maybe even state governments; failed supply lines; failed electric supply, failed trucking, failed big box stores, failed supermarkets, failed giant companies; failed banks, failed investments, failed money, failed news orgs, failed airlines, failed car dealers, failed hospitals, failed colleges, and much more. But don’t discount human ingenuity and resourcefulness, our ability to work-around and reinvent systems for daily life, even if it’s on a downscaled and more modest level.
Expect rebuilt local economies from production to wholesale to retail. Expect smaller stores, fewer things to buy but much of it better quality. Expect a lot less long-distance travel but a lot more happening in your locality. Expect the rebirth of local culture — theaters, live music, news-sheets, dances — to replace all the canned entertainments we’re used to. Expect small private academies to rise to replace the shuttered central schools. Expect small, local clinics to appear from the ashes of the medical conglomerates. Expect Americans to return to churches as an organizing mechanism for community relations. Expect more formality and less slobbery in public. Expect all of us to feel a renewed sense of gratitude for being here instead of rage, resentment, and grievance, because it’s likely there will be far fewer of us around.
“And we realized, if this could happen in Texas, the energy capital of the world, then the electric grid is really being undermined.”
• Net-Zero Is Pulling the Plug on America’s Electrical Life Support System (ET)
Electricity is among the most essential sources of America’s unparalleled prosperity and productivity; it is also the greatest vulnerability. The United States has become so utterly dependent upon an uninterrupted supply of affordable electricity that, as our grid becomes ever more fragile American society has become fragile along with it. Former CIA director James Woolsey testified before the U.S. Senate in 2015 that, if America’s electric grid were to go down for an extended period, such as one year, “there are essentially two estimates on how many people would die from hunger, from starvation, from lack of water, and from social disruption. “One estimate is that within a year or so, two-thirds of the United States population would die,” Mr. Woolsey said. “The other estimate is that within a year or so, 90 percent of the U.S. population would die.”
Chris Keefer, president of Canadians for Nuclear Energy, concurred. “The energy grid is a civilizational life support system, and without it, modern society collapses very quickly,” he said. Mr. Keefer is one of the experts featured in energy analyst, author, and documentarian Robert Bryce’s new film, “Juice: Power, Politics and the Grid.” This five-part docuseries looks at how and why America is now “fragilizing” and destabilizing the engineering marvel that is the central pillar of our society. “We are seeing the grid’s reliability, resilience, and affordability all declining,” Mr. Bryce told The Epoch Times. “We wanted to get people and policy makers to understand that our most important energy network is being fragilized, and we ignore this danger at our peril,” Mr. Bryce said.
He has been fixated on America’s electric grid for decades and authored the 2020 book, “A Question of Power,” one of the more comprehensive studies of how electricity grids work and why they may not work as well in the coming years. Steven Pinker, author and Harvard psychology professor, wrote in a review of the book that “energy is our primary defense against poverty, disorder, hunger, and death.” And yet, many nations in the West have engaged in a game of Russian roulette with their power grids, in an attempt to reduce global temperatures. The warnings don’t just come from the analysts featured in the documentary; electricity regulators are becoming more vocal in sounding the alarm as well. In a May 2023 report, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), charged with overseeing grid reliability, stated that a majority of America’s grid is now at heightened risk levels for outages.
“This report is an especially dire warning that America’s ability to keep the lights on has been jeopardized,” National Rural Electric Cooperative Association CEO Jim Matheson stated. It was the near-collapse of Texas’s power grid during winter storm Yuri in 2021 that compelled Mr. Bryce to make the documentary. He partnered with film director Tyson Culver, who along with Mr. Bryce, experienced the crisis first-hand while living in Austin. “I didn’t plan to make another documentary after we made our first film that we released in 2019,” he said. “I just thought, ‘I can’t do this; it costs too much and takes too long.’ “But then we learned that the [Texas] grid nearly failed, and if it had failed, tens of thousands of people would have died,” he said. “And we realized, if this could happen in Texas, the energy capital of the world, then the electric grid is really being undermined.”
NY
Evolution of New York (1540-2023) pic.twitter.com/sRKDDUUiJ7
— Historic Vids (@historyinmemes) February 13, 2024
Kaku
Michio Kaku explains why the scientific arena does not collapse despite the USA's poor educational system. HB1 visas are the secret weapon used to take all the geniuses from around the world, but now they are returning to China and India. pic.twitter.com/NppR7ZOh7G
— Johannes Maria (@luo_yuehan) February 12, 2024
Manta
https://twitter.com/i/status/1757263351959224399
Belly
A big cat belly is very big pic.twitter.com/Y1b0TIwApO
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) February 13, 2024
Kindness
https://twitter.com/i/status/1757371139557634393
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