Chutkan Archives - The Automatic Earth

PURE FIRE FROM ELON MUSK 🔥

“We want secure borders, we want safe cities.. sensible spending. We want freedom of speech. We want the constitution to be upheld.”

"Anyone who is against those things is fundamentally anti-American and to hell with them!" pic.twitter.com/5WoWnZRJBg

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) October 17, 2024

Barron

Throughout my younger years, I watched as the mainstream media relentlessly attacked the Trump Family, mocking my father's candidacy and insisting he was a joke who could never become president. Their lies and blatant bias were astonishing. Yet, who’s laughing now? The media's… pic.twitter.com/5O7g8ByxqK

— Barron Trump 🇺🇸 NEWS (@BarronTNews) October 16, 2024

Kimbal

Kimbal Musk explains how SpaceX had to fight the US military to allow them to launch satellites for cheaper prices.

The US military didn’t care about price. They were perfectly happy to pay $400 million per launch to Boeing/Lockheed (ULA) instead of $50 million to SpaceX

🔊 pic.twitter.com/D54C3cvpUX

— Wall Street Mav (@WallStreetMav) October 18, 2024

Trump 34
https://twitter.com/i/status/1846987041852346491

RFK

If the government is now the arbiter that it's determining what is misinformation or disinformation, it's not actually looking at the facts. It's looking at things that are critical of them. pic.twitter.com/8e7rXaisYt

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) October 17, 2024

Delaware

WATCH: An election integrity expert in Pennsylvania just revealed to Elon Musk that the state's officials have admitted in court that the voting machines are NOT secure

"Jonathan Marks admitted this in court last week."

Elon: Wow. He did?

"In court on a transcript." – Greg… pic.twitter.com/PwGmdjHYA6

— George (@BehizyTweets) October 17, 2024

AIPAC

WATCH & SHARE

This is John Ehrenberg, a Jewish Professor, exposing the nefarious methods and blatant election meddling employed by Israel’s AIPAC lobby in the U.S.
pic.twitter.com/byKX2CkgUu

— Patrick Henningsen (@21WIRE) October 18, 2024

Apple

WOAH! President Trump just revealed that Apple CEO Tim Cook called him this morning to discuss outrageous fines imposed on Apple by the European Union.

Trump told Cook he needs to be elected first, but that he will take care of it when he gets back in office. It's quite telling… pic.twitter.com/ktm9QQzqQV

— Bad Hombre (@joma_gc) October 17, 2024

“..voting for the rich white man in this election doesn’t make you evil. It makes you wise.”

• Why Women Should Vote for Trump (Tiffany Marie Brannon)

Dear fellow women, You are being played… And falling for this particular confidence scheme won’t just cost you, it’ll cost all of us. I’m an affluent 30-something divorced, white, childless, American woman with multiple postgraduate degrees, and a busy career. I’ve lived abroad in several metropolitan cities and I own my home. According to every single statistic, I should be a J.D. Vance-loathing single cat lady. I should also really hate Donald Trump. But I don’t. Lest we forget, the presidency is not a popularity contest. There seems to be some confusion on that front. You aren’t casting a ballot for Prom Queen, you’re voting for the leader of the free world. It’s why that little thing called the Electoral College exists. I’ve heard other women say they’re voting for Vice President Kamala Harris because “she’s more iconic” than Trump. My response: what about inflation, foreign or domestic policy, war, immigration, education, human trafficking, or any other serious issue?

The truth is, if you actually voted for real pro-women policies, you’d vote for Trump. And the Left knows this. That’s why the Democratic Party has spent untold millions making Abortion the #1 issue for women. White women alone make up 40% of the electoral vote and 89 million American women total are registered to vote, making us the largest voting bloc in the nation. In 2020, swing states like Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania saw women vote at record rates, with Biden winning 57% of female voters.We hold serious power. Hence why Democrats want to convince women that the unrestricted right to abortion is more important than the right to vote, freedom of speech, or any other right you can think of. Make abortion equalitarian with being female and tell them they are physically under attack by the GOP. Oh, and also by the Supreme Court. We can’t forget them.

Democrats have done such a good job with this indoctrination that, in a recent viral video, young women said they would rather have the right to an abortion over the right to vote. What are they teaching girls in schools these days? Yet even if you’re a passionately pro-choice voter, it’s silly to consider abortion as the critical issue at stake in this election. After all, Trump has already said he doesn’t favor a national abortion ban and that he would veto any such bill. According to KFF, only 14% of American women – or 7% of the American population – have had an abortion at some point in their life, 21% being Black, 19% Hispanic, and 11% White women. In contrast, 100% of Americans – women included – have to buy food, pay medical bills, and want to know their tax dollars are going to help them in an emergency. Just ask the victims of Hurricane Helene as they were offered a measly $750 after FEMA gave billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars away to noncitizens and foreign countries under the Biden Harris Administration.

We’ve been inundated with the message that voting for an objectively unpopular and recognized failure of a Vice President because she loves abortion, possesses a female reproductive system, and is of minority ethnicity is more important than anything else that matters. Ladies – don’t be so easily fooled. Trump’s record speaks for itself and is deserving of closer attention by female voters. The former president approved the largest paid parental leave program in history, guaranteeing 12 weeks of paid leave. He directed more than $200 million per year to technology education grants for women and programs that encouraged STEM careers. He founded the Women’s Global Development and Prosperity Initiative, the first-ever government program focused on advancing women’s “full and free participation” in the global economy. Trump also shone a spotlight on under-the-radar domestic women’s issues, establishing a task force for missing and murdered Native American women.

Under the Trump administration, women’s unemployment reached the lowest level in 67 years and women received over 70% of new jobs. Last I checked, those policies affect far more than 14% of the female population. Even Trump recognizes this. He recently observed, “Women want to have safety. They want to have a strong military. They want to have a strong police force… They want to be in their house and they want to be safe. … I hope they like my personality… But to me, it wouldn’t be very important, the personality.” He’s right. This is not a personality contest. It’s not about which candidate is more “iconic.” It is our duty as citizens to vote for the best policies, laws, and chances for us and our loved ones to thrive for years to come. Women voters are no exception to this rule. So, from one would-be single cat lady to a nation of others, consider this: voting for the rich white man in this election doesn’t make you evil. It makes you wise.

“Will the last person hanging around Harris-Walz campaign headquarters please turn off the lights?”

• The Collapse of Kamala Harris (Hammer)

On July 26, in the aftermath of the Democratic Party’s ruthless midsummer coup of their own democratically elected presidential nominee, this column predicted that the elevation of dimwitted cackler-in-chief Kamala Harris to the party’s presidential slot would “spectacularly backfire.” More specifically, I wrote: “Practically, the path to winning 270 Electoral College votes still runs through the Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. It is frankly bizarre for Democrats to swap out the man who talks ceaselessly about his hardscrabble Scranton upbringing for a Californian who boasts the most left-wing voting record of any presidential nominee in modern history.” I’m feeling pretty good these days about that prognosis. Harris recently campaigned in Erie, Pennsylvania—a crucial regional hub in this election cycle’s most important battleground state.

Conspicuously absent from that snoozefest was incumbent Sen. Bob Casey Jr. (D-Pa.). Harris tried to pass off the snub as a nothingburger, suggesting that Casey was doing the more important work of knocking on doors and getting out the vote. This doesn’t pass the laugh test. Facing a spirited challenge from Republican hopeful Dave McCormick, Casey has clearly concluded that Harris’ immense Bay Area lefty baggage—her history of endorsing the Green New Deal, a national fracking ban, and crippling electric vehicle mandates—is an electoral albatross around his neck. It’s tough to blame Casey. Other vulnerable Senate Democratic incumbents, such as Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Jon Tester (D-Mont.), reached the same conclusion a while ago. Such a conclusion makes a great deal of sense: A recent Marist national general election poll, for instance, shows Trump up a whopping 10 points on Harris with registered independents. If that margin ends up being anywhere near accurate, it is extraordinarily difficult to see a scenario in which Trump loses.

Harris has recently been engaging in what the psychology profession calls “projection,” ludicrously criticizing Donald Trump for avoiding the media when it was actually Harris who infamously avoided a single one-on-one sit-down interview for weeks on end following the Biden coup. In reality, Trump recently sat down for two interviews with Time magazine, whose owner is a vocal Harris donor. Harris declined a Time interview nonetheless. Prior to this week’s desperate, last-second change of course, which saw her sit down with Fox News’s Bret Baier, Harris had only deigned to sit down with the most obsequious media imaginable.

One can only wonder how bad the Harris-Walz internal polling must be to impel her to ditch the far-left “Call Her Daddy” podcast and the friendly ladies of “The View” for the considerably more mainstream Baier. Desperate times sure call for desperate measures. Democrats routinely blast Republicans as misogynistic, but their own chronic misandry is so bad that Kamala is apparently considering a sit-down with podcast king Joe Rogan, whose own brand of woke-skeptical irreverence sharply clashes with Harris’ identity politics obsessions and overt race-based pandering. The tables sure have turned. Will the last person hanging around Harris-Walz campaign headquarters please turn off the lights? Snark aside, this race isn’t over yet. But the Harris-Walz camp cannot possibly be feeling too good right now, either.

Democrats have no one to blame but themselves for their predicament. Throughout this interminable campaign season, they have studiously avoided substantive discussion of the four issues that Americans consistently tell pollsters are most important to them this cycle: the economy, inflation, immigration, and crime. Instead, they have repeatedly attempted to shift the electoral terrain back to the few issues that poll in their favor: namely, abortion and the Jan. 6 jamboree at the Capitol. In this, they have completely failed. The American people still care above all about the same four basic quality-of-life issues that they have cared the most about for years now. It is Democrats’ fault that they are so woefully out of touch with the voters’ sentiments on those issues and that the Biden-Harris administration’s track record polls as poorly as it does.

Perhaps if the Harris-Walz ticket does go down in flames, Democrats will pause and take a long, hard look in the mirror. Perhaps they will recognize that promising late-term abortion is a peculiar way to pander to women, that pledging mass amnesty for illegal aliens is a counterproductive way to pander to Hispanics, and that dangling marijuana legalization is an outright offensive way to pander to Blacks. Perhaps. But if history is any indication, they probably won’t.

“Most of all, Mr. Trump has to defeat the sick belief that anything goes and nothing matters.”

• The Three Layers of Culpability (Kunstler)

The Great Fright among the elite of the party ruling our country steals across the land chillingly now from sea to shining sea — as if all those ghouls, werewolves, zombies, and tormented wraiths assembled in the front yard Halloween displays send up one mighty wail of despair: Donald Trump will seek revenge against his enemies if you elect him! they scream into the pale moonlight. Well, he ought to, of course, and remember: they are your enemies, too — the FBI thugs battering down your doors at five in the morning, the malicious US attorneys manufacturing phony felonies, the Soros-owned DAs and party-owned judges, and the thousands of spooks from agencies both known and unheard-of surveilling your every move, every purchase, every journey, every thought. Consider that it is not whether Mr. Trump might seek revenge but whether justice, and the mental health of the nation, require an accounting for the real crimes of actual persons against the people of America lo these years of the Woke Jacobin Inquisition.

Finally, as the days dwindle down to November 5, you understand exactly what motivates the three layers of evil heaping America with malice and punishment. Layer one: the officers of the political establishment, a.k.a., “the blob” or Deep State, both current and emeritus. You know now that they are motivated to stay out of courts-of-law (and, ultimately, prison). Figures such as John Brennan, Merrick Garland, Lisa Monaco, Chris Wray, Anthony Fauci, Alejandro Mayorkas, Barack Obama, and many more, exude culpability for doing real harm to US citizens. They do not want to do time. As Dr. Johnson famously said: “When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” They see Donald Trump’s poll number go hockey stick and they tremble in their Beltway mansions. On the Kubler-Ross transect of grief, they are just now wavering between the stages of anger and bargaining.

Second layer: the lawfare lawyer gang deployed to keep the blob safe from investigation and prosecution: Marc Elias (the mail-in ballot fraud genius), Norm Eisen, Andrew Weissmann, Mary McCord (authors of every get-Trump legal brief), and many others who work with them, are motivated by the gigantic fees they command from the Democratic National Committee and other cut-out orgs that funnel payments to them. The Elias Law Group alone is rumored to have raked-in millions from one client, the Kamala Harris campaign. This is apart from whatever lawyerly zeal they exercise so enjoyably in their blood-lust for Mr. Trump and his associates. Remember: Jacobins are sadists who derive pleasure from cruelly punishing their adversaries. It probably motivates them more than the money involved, since ambitious Beltway lawyers can always and easily make bundles of money from the most mundane services to the blob.

Third Layer: the news media. The motives of these birds are the flimsiest: social status and professional stature. They operate within a self-referential reward bubble that provides psychological nourishment as long as they go along with the mumurations of their flock. They will be easiest to turn around as the national mood turns (and is now turning, sharply). A year from now, don’t be surprised if they treat Mr. Trump as a revered hero who saved the country from the malignant blob — and pretend that they never thought otherwise. By then, it will be too late for some, of course, and actual figures such as Lawrence O’Donnell and Rachel Maddow of MSNBC, Maggie Haberman of The New York Times, NBC’s Nicolle Wallace, will be drowning in their own slime trails.

Now, whether Mr. Trump would actively seek revenge is a thing apart from the paranoia of his adversaries. On the one hand, he seems aware that his own place in history will rest not on looking backward to the harms inflicted on him as the sacrificial goat for the sins of “the deplorables” — the many Lawfare cases against him will likely be reversed in higher courts, or just dropped — but on attending to and fixing the many obvious, reality-based problems afflicting the nation: inflation, the horrendous debt, the libido for war induced by military contractors and neocons, the return of productive industry and jobs that pay living wages, sealing the border and expelling dangerous aliens, and stopping the race-and-gender hustles, to name a few things.

In 2016, Mr. Trump floated the idea of defaulting on US debt, or negotiating its terms. Sounded outrageous to some at the time. Now, with the BRICs org meeting to de-dollarize their trade arrangements, might be a ripe time to make such a move. He can reverse “Joe Biden’s” 2021 reversal of his border policies by executive order on day one, put a stop to the “sanctuary city” idiocy, and end all cash incentives to illegals currently inside the USA. He can negotiate a reasonable end to the Ukraine conflict that leaves that country neutral, as everyone knows it should be. He can incentivize the return of factory production with US companies. He knows (and you know) that there is a huge agenda of practical problems to face. Mr. Trump does not need the aggravation of stirring up further grievance and resentment among the defeated Wokesters. He needs them to get aboard a national reclamation project, get their minds right, and lend a hand.

Speaking of hands, on the other hand, remember that the signal weakness of Julius Caesar was pardoning his enemies. Since Mr. Trump is best known as a deal-maker, I believe he will seek to make a deal with the blob. The deal will be for them to cooperate in the prosecution of certain key figures in exchange for not demolishing their agencies altogether. Some of these people — Garland, Mayorkas, Fauci, Brennan, and Wray, for examples — really do need to do some ‘splainin’ in front of juries. That may be sufficient to clarify for history some of the damage the Woke insanity did to our country. We can’t pretend that nothing happened. Most of all, Mr. Trump has to defeat the sick belief that anything goes and nothing matters.

“These days, it’s really a pleasure [to be] anywhere in New York without a subpoena for my appearance..”

• Trump Pokes Fun At His Subpoenas, Kamala’s Absence During Al Smith Dinner (JTN)

Former President Donald Trump on Thursday night poked fun at both himself and rival Vice President Kamala Harris during a speech at the Al Smith charity dinner in New York City. The dinner is a historic night where presidential candidates often make lighthearted jokes about each other while raising money for Catholic charities. Trump, who attended the event alongside his wife Melania Trump, joked about his recent court cases in the Big Apple, and claimed that he was happy to be in New York without a subpoena, The Independent reported. “These days, it’s really a pleasure [to be] anywhere in New York without a subpoena for my appearance,” Trump said. “Anytime I don’t get a subpoena, I’m very happy.”

Trump also teased Harris for not attending the event in person, while also commenting on a recent viral video of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer feeding a woman a chip in the same manner that a Catholic priest gives someone Communion. “I must say, I was shocked when I heard that Kamala was skipping the Al Smith dinner,” Trump observed. “I’d really hoped that she would come, because we can’t get enough of hearing her beautiful laugh. She laughs like crazy. We would recognize it any place in this room … Instead of attending tonight, she’s in Michigan receiving communion from Gretchen Whitmer.” Harris decided to skip the event to campaign in Wisconsin, becoming the first major party presidential candidate to skip the dinner since 1984, but did address the audience in a pre-recorded video.

“In the period after Biden’s debate meltdown, Harris insisted Biden was “sharp as a tack.”

• Harris’ One Answer To Bret Baier That Americans Just Don’t Believe (JTN)

Vice President Kamala Harris largely demurred on tough questions in her interview with Fox News’s Bret Baier, offering a concrete and definitive answer on only one key question. Unfortunately for her, it’s the one answer Americans just don’t buy. Harris’ ties to President Joe Biden have been a double-edged sword for her, as she simultaneously tries to distance herself from him and his unpopular administration while also asserting that she was a major player in the White House over the past four years. Ostensibly justifying her candidacy, however, was Biden’s failing mental health. When asked about Biden’s current mental health situation, she offered an unequivocal answer: Biden is fine. But that answer raised eyebrows. During the interview Baier pressed her on Biden’s cognitive decline, a development that became plain for all to see during his debate with former President Donald Trump and which served as the ostensive reason that top Democrats pressured him to step aside.

“You told many interviewers that Joe Biden was on his game [and] ran around circles on his staff. When did you first notice that President Biden’s mental faculties appeared diminished?” Baier asked her. Harris, for her part, deflected the premise of the question and insisted that “Joe Biden is not on the ballot.” She notably, however, took great care to assert that the president is competent to remain in office. “Joe Biden, I have watched in – from the Oval Office to the situation room, and he has the judgment and experience to do exactly what he has done in making very important decisions on behalf of the American people,” she insisted. Baier pushed back, asking “I understand you met with him at least once a week for three and a half years. You didn’t have any concerns?” “I think the American people have a concern about Donald Trump,” Harris retorted, “which is why the people who know him best, including leaders of our national security community, have all spoken out, even people who worked for him in the Oval Office, worked with him in the Situation Room, and have said he is unfit and dangerous and should never be President of the United States again.”

Harris’s response appears to undercut the premise for her candidacy to some extent, given that public perception of Biden’s mental faculties after the debate largely drove the pressure for him to step aside and permitted her elevation. In the period after Biden’s debate meltdown, Harris insisted Biden was “sharp as a tack.” Her continued insistence that he remains sharp puts her in opposition to the overwhelming majority of the public, who have witnessed a litany of Biden’s awkward gaffes, ramblings, and forays off script. While conservatives had long suggested that Biden suffered from mental and physical decline, the sentiment became the consensus opinion after the presidential debate, during which he often stumbled over his answers and appeared lost on stage. A CBS News/YouGov survey released in late June, after his debate with Trump, found that 72% of registered voters did not believe Biden had the mental and cognitive health to serve as president. Only 27% believed he did.

A Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll after the debate, meanwhile, found that 66% of registered voters had doubts about Biden’s mental fitness while 74% said he had shown he was too old to be president. Fifty-four percent expressed the belief that he was “getting worse.” In explaining his decision to step aside, Biden did not mention internal party pressure or concerns over his mental fitness, but implicitly acknowledged his age by saying “I’ve decided the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation.” The Trump War Room distributed the clip on social media, with many respondents questioning Biden’s decision to leave the race if those close to him genuinely believe he is fit to continue in the White House.

The Baier interview came as part of a major media blitz by the Harris campaign to familiarize voters with the candidate at the 11th hour and to push back on claims she had ducked substantive interviews. The campaign had touted her willingness to appear on Fox News, a generally right-leaning outlet perceived as hostile territory. She has still not held an unscripted, open-question press conference. Indeed, pro-Harris media celebrated the interview as a rebuttal to her critics who fretted over her penchant for softball interviews with friendly news outlets. On the right, Harris attracted considerable mockery over her evasive answers and habit of redirecting questions to permit her to attack former President Donald Trump. While several such clips went viral, her one attempt at a concrete answer may prove the most damaging in that it begs the question: Why isn’t Biden at the top of the ticket?

Too late.

• Obamas To Hit Campaign Trail With Harris (RT)

Barack Obama and his wife Michelle will join US Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris on the campaign trail in swing states Georgia and Michigan next week, according to media reports. Harris is set to appear with the former president in Georgia on October 24 and with Michelle Obama in Michigan on October 26, the Associated Press reported on Friday, citing a senior official from the Harris campaign, speaking on condition of anonymity. The latest polls put Harris and her Republican rival Donald Trump neck-and-neck nationally, while Trump leads Harris with 52% to 45% in Georgia, and Harris is ahead of Trump 47% to 45% in Michigan. Barack Obama and his wife remain “immensely popular” with supporters of the Democratic Party, Reuters noted. Their appearance could boost Harris’ chances in states where victory margins are thin, the agency added.

The former president recently campaigned for Harris in Pittsburgh, and is scheduled to appear in the coming days in the swing states of Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Michelle Obama is set to campaign for the first time this election cycle. Harris, while serving as district attorney of San Francisco, supported Barack Obama’s successful presidential bid in 2008. The former president also reportedly helped usher President Joe Biden out of the race after the 81-year-old’s disastrous debate against Trump in June. Joe Biden served as vice-president during Obama’s two terms in office from 2009 to 2017. The New York Post claimed earlier this week that Biden and Obama shared a private conversation at a memorial service in Washington, reportedly agreeing that Harris wasn’t as strong as the outgoing president.

The current election race has seen several high-profile endorsements of the rival candidates. Among celebrities to support Harris are singers Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, and Bruce Springsteen, and actors George Clooney, Anne Hathaway and Jennifer Lawrence. Trump has been endorsed by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, rapper 50 Cent, politician and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., commentator Tucker Carlson, retired professional wrestler Hulk Hogan, and actor Jon Voight.

“1,900 pages of documents..”

• Judge Chutkan In Jack Smith’s Trump Probe Unseals More Docs (JTN)

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding over former President Donald Trump’s federal Jan. 6 election interference case, on Friday unsealed nearly 1,900 pages of documents from special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation for the public to view. Trump has said the release of such documents ahead of the election on Nov. 5 is election interference in itself. Trump’s legal team has said the “asymmetric release of charged allegations and related documents during early voting creates a concerning appearance of election interference.” The judge in the case disagreed. “If the court withheld information that the public otherwise had a right to access solely because of the potential political consequences of releasing it, that withholding could itself constitute — or appear to be — election interference,” she argued in her order on Thursday evening.

“..going to the news is an act of extending trust. Now, the thing about trust is that once it’s lost, it’s very difficult to regain.”

• CBS Could Be In Trouble Over Kamala Interview (RT)

The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has grounds to hear a complaint against CBS for deceptively editing an interview with Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, a Republican-appointed commissioner has said. Earlier this month, the broadcaster aired two different answers by Harris to the same question, one in a preview and the other in the actual ‘60 Minutes’ show, prompting accusations of misleading editing to make the sitting vice-president sound more coherent than she actually was. The Center for American Rights (CAR) filed a complaint to the FCC on Wednesday, accusing the network of “deliberate news distortion,” which would be an actionable offense under the regulator’s rules. “What this claim is alleging is that an act of distortion took place,” Commissioner Nathan Simington told Fox News Digital on Friday.

The FCC has “certainly contemplated the possibility of distortionary reporting taking place via splicing,” he explained, noting that in a previous proceeding the commissioners “gave the example of substituting a yes answer to one question or a no answer to an entirely different question.” Simington reminded the audience that the FCC can’t regulate what can be said or written, given that the US has the First Amendment to the Constitution that protects freedom of speech and the press. However, CBS could still find itself in trouble for “abuse of public trust,” he said. “I think everyone agrees that deliberately misleading the public is a bad idea,” the commissioner said, adding that if CBS did so, Americans should be upset, “because people go to the news in order to learn about things that they would never be able to learn about themselves.

In other words, going to the news is an act of extending trust. Now, the thing about trust is that once it’s lost, it’s very difficult to regain.” Simington is one of the two Republicans on the five-member FCC. He was appointed by President Donald Trump in 2020. Trump will face Harris in the November 5 election for the White House, after the Democrats pressured President Joe Biden to drop out of the race in July. Trump accused ‘60 Minutes’ of perpetrating “the greatest fraud in broadcast history” by swapping Harris’ responses. FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democrat, responded by accusing the former president of attacking free speech and democracy itself. “The FCC does not and will not revoke licenses for broadcast stations simply because a political candidate disagrees with or dislikes content or coverage,” she said last week.

The CAR complaint specifically names WCBS-TV in New York, which is owned and operated by CBS Corporation, rather than an affiliate who could assert plausible deniability. While Simington would not speculate about a possible probe, he said the FCC might levy a fine or place conditions on the network’s license renewal, if CBS is found to have deliberately distorted the Harris interview. A day before the CAR complaint was filed, House Speaker Mike Johnson accused CBS of selectively and deceptively editing his own interview. The Louisiana Republican offered proof by posting raw footage recorded by his office, alongside what actually aired, on X (formerly Twitter).

“..We’re not sure whether he is cooperating or not or whether he’s going to watch the Democratic Party go into the wilderness.”

• Could Biden Create Global Upheaval in His Remaining Time in Office? (Sp.)

Though Joe Biden’s presidential term is nearing its end, he can still “make major decisions that can never be overturned” while still in the office, says Professor Joe Siracusa, political scientist and dean of Global Futures at Curtin University. “For example, in the next four months and here we’re talking about January 20th, 2025, he could in this short period of time encourage President Zelensky to negotiate with the Russian Federation about a diplomatic solution of the war in Ukraine,” Siracusa suggests. “He could encourage the Israelis to attack Iran and drag the United States into a conflict that might ultimately involve the Russian Federation,” Siracusa continues.

Aside from affecting global affairs, Biden’s decisions may also affect the outcome of the upcoming presidential election in the US, seeing how Democratic candidate Kamala Harris is Biden’s vice-president and thus “will pretty much have to wear what he does,” Prof. Siracusa points out. For instance, Biden could “give the Ukrainians the green light to use American offensive weapons on their border to hit inside Russia itself” or “encourage the Israelis to attack the oil and gas installations in Iran, threatening world prices.” “In terms of the United States leverage with its allies, and here we’re looking at Israel and Ukraine, allies such as they are, could get the United States in a lot of trouble down the road that would affect the system for a long time,” the scholar remarks.

That said, while Biden still has “plenty of time to get in trouble,” there is “probably not enough time for a major diplomatic breakthrough,” Prof. Siracusa observes, making it unlikely that the 46th POTUS could be aiming for some sort of legacy-defining success in foreign policy. “I think in the next four months, Joe Biden has to decide whether he’s really going to help Kamala Harris become the next president,” Prof. Siracusa adds. “He’s very angry that he was pushed aside, particularly since he seems to have reclaimed his cognitive abilities. We’re not sure whether he is cooperating or not or whether he’s going to watch the Democratic Party go into the wilderness.”

“Who takes seriously the Rupert Murdoch approach to truth – you don’t read the London Times or Fox News to determine what is true.”

• The Debate – General Staff vs Kremlin, Helmer vs Doctorow (Helmer)

“The winners of the war are the Russian General Staff. Everyone in Russia understands that the Russian Army is winning and will win this war…I believe Gilbert is wrong on the history of the negotiations that have gone on since before this war began… It’s [Russian] military protection that guarantees [Ukrainian] permanent neutrality… Second, I think that Gilbert is wrong on the foundation of policy…The US policy does not date when Gilbert has put it from Madeleine Albright [US Secretary of State 1997-2001]…US policy since 1945 has been to destroy Russia and prevent Russia from ever forming a kind of partnership with Germany in Europe. If such a German-Russian partnership post-war were to develop, that would end US control of Europe… This is not a neocon invention. It goes back to non-Ukrainian, non-Jewish decision makers during World War II in the United States…Thirdly, Gilbert is wrong on method…

What Gilbert is saying is that he watches Russian television talk shows… This is an absurd method for understanding either President Putin’s role in the command structure, or the General Staff’s role, or what the future security of Russia is required to be in a settlement…Who takes seriously the Rupert Murdoch approach to truth – you don’t read the London Times or Fox News to determine what is true. Therefore, the notion that we should watch Russian television with that group of talk show presenters as an example of what is the truth of Russian debate is inappropriate.” “I’m sorry, Gilbert is well-meaning but we are not talking about Doctorow — we are talking about Doctor Zero…If we don’t settle the outcome of the war according to Russia’s security needs now, by the time there is the next [Russian] presidential election, there will be more war.”

“The issue isn’t what [President Vladimir] Zelensky says publicly. The major security threat for Russia is in the secret annexes [of the Ukrainian ‘Victory Plan’]…What went into the US secret annex in Greece [1981-87] was the deployment of US nuclear weapons aimed at Moscow…Secret annexes mean secret weapons, secret deployments, and dual-capable bombs, missiles and warheads…We know we are back in the world of nuclear targeting on Russia…That brings us back to the general problem – what’s US policy toward Russia? Can anything, anything a US administration ever offer Russia be trusted unless the Russian Army is in place? And that brings us back to the Gorbachev treason, repeated as the Yeltsin treason. No Russian president — no Russian president can repeat those two things. The Russian Army won’t tolerate it, and neither will the Russian people…Without the Russian Army, the signature of the US on an agreement is worthless.”

“..doing everything imaginable to foment a NATO war and hope to save his life if not his political power..”

• Zelensky ‘Feels Noose Tightening Around His Neck’ (Sp.)

Volodymyr Zelensky’s so-called “victory plan” that was recently unveiled to the public and met with a rather lukewarm reaction from the NATO countries may represent the Ukrainian ex-comedian taking a page from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s playbook, suggests international relations analyst Gilbert Doctorow. Just like Netanyahu, having realized that Israel bit off more than it can chew with its “three front war” and seeing the only chance of victory in dragging the US “into the fight on his side,” so Zelensky seems to be trying to do the same, Doctorow explains to Sputnik. “He knows his armies are suffering a disastrous defeat and that in a matter of a few months all of Ukraine east of the Dnepr will be in Russian hands,” he elaborates.

“His only way to stay in power and to salvage something of Ukraine is to bring NATO into the battle at his side right now. Immediate admittance of Ukraine into NATO, his point one of his 5-point plan, would immediately make NATO a co-belligerent and widen the war to a NATO-Russia war.” Another point of Zelensky’s scheme is involving strikes using Western weapons deep into Russian territory. If implemented, this would “immediately make NATO a co-belligerent and start a NATO-Russia war which NATO and the US in particular absolutely refuses to do,” the analyst notes. “Zelensky feels the noose tightening around his neck and is doing everything imaginable to foment a NATO war and hope to save his life if not his political power,” Doctorow concludes.

“There must be an end to the ideological disease if the world is ever to establish lasting peace.”

• Zelensky’s Victory Plan A Delusional Distraction From Diplomacy And Peace (SCF)

After weeks of touting a so-called victory plan, the former comedian and illegitimate Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky finally revealed his big idea. It is a bad joke indeed. Zelensky, who outlived his electoral mandate months ago and then cancelled scheduled elections, is not even a legally elected leader. He is the head of a junta that is running a war racket and milking Western taxpayers for hundreds of billions of dollars. Last month, he began briefing U.S. president Joe Biden about a “victory plan”. Zelensky also lobbied the presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. All was kept secret about the plan – although Trump did not seem impressed at the time. This week, the military-fatigue-wearing former comic met with the heads of the European Union to unveil how the NATO-backed Kiev regime would defeat Russia. Seeing him sitting at a big round table with European politicians has become farcical. This is while Russian forces are grinding down remnants of Kiev’s foot soldiers and NATO mercenaries in the eastern region of former Ukraine.

The Kiev regime’s puppet has nothing new to offer. It all boils down to begging for more weapons and money and desperate wishlists of long-range missiles to hit Russian territory with, joining the NATO alliance – and the ultimate insanity, giving the neoNazi regime nuclear warheads. Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban called Zelensky’s latest star-turn ludicrous and a frightening, desperate gamble to start World War Three. The game is up for the Ukrainian conman and his corrupt regime. Ukraine has been destroyed with over 600,000 Ukrainian soldiers having perished for no good reason – only for a proxy war that the U.S.-led NATO axis wanted in a delusional attempt to somehow defeat Russia. Zelensky and his cabal went along for the ride, making money from the war racket. Even in the Western media, there are sobering admissions that the proxy war has turned out to be a disastrous defeat for the NATO-backed side.

This conflict should never have happened. Russia had offered a comprehensive set of proposals at the end of 2021 to address its long-term security concerns about NATO’s expansion and its relentless promotion of a NeoNazi front in Ukraine on its doorstep. Moscow’s reasonable attempt at diplomacy was dismissed by an arrogant U.S. and NATO, thinking that a military strategic defeat could be achieved against Russia. It was the Western powers that opted for war instead of diplomacy. Through their criminal recklessness, many Ukrainian military lives have been wasted and the former Soviet republic has been shattered. The lands that Russia took were historic Russian territories and they will not be given back. The Kiev regime has forfeited any right to negotiate. It’s remorseless aggression and Russophobia means that the only solution is its complete eradication. Russia is dismantling the regime and its NATO pretensions by force.

Ultimately, the United States and its NATO accomplices will have to recognize that their criminal machinations in Ukraine have been vanquished. The war must come to an end by accepting Russia’s rightful demands for security on its terms. It could have been done the easy way through diplomacy. But the West chose the hard way. The Kiev regime is a sordid residue that must be discarded like its former Nazi forebears was. Talk about a “victory plan” is nothing but a cruel joke that prolongs the agony of the Ukrainian people. American and European leaders need to understand that their war fantasies are finished. Sooner rather than later, the work of diplomacy and reason must begin. That means treating Russia with the respect that it deserves.

The trouble is the Western political elites are so ingrained with arrogance and ideological animosity towards Russia, it is hard to see how they will sober up to begin the task of genuine peace negotiations. Until that happens, Russia has every right to smash the enemy and ensure that NATO never threatens its nation. When the Soviet Union defeated Nazi Germany in 1945 it was a tremendous victory and blow against fascist aggression. However, tragically, as history has shown, the cause for world peace was not secured. Because it wasn’t the end of Western imperialism. The beast returned over and over again. There must be an end to the ideological disease if the world is ever to establish lasting peace.

“..on the one hand, [Zelensky] sold all the land and the valuables that it holds, and on the other hand, offered up his country as a private military company..”

• Zelensky’s Plan Sells Ukraine to West – Lavrov (Sp.)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s so-called victory plan suggests that Ukraine will hand over its natural resources to Western allies in exchange for weapons and turn the Ukrainian army into a private military company, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Friday. “Zelensky, in these points of his, spoke so veiledly about the economic side of the issue. According to the leaks, the secret annexes… stipulate that he is ready to place all of Ukrainian natural resources under the management of his Western masters, hand over controls over them, effectively to sell Ukraine,” Lavrov told reporters after a foreign ministers’ meeting on the South Caucasus.

Some leaks suggest that Zelensky’s main purpose is to get weapons no matter what, Lavrov added. He said that Western countries had already made it clear this was an “unacceptable scenario” that increased risks for the West.
“According to the leaks, also accompanied by a secret annex, the Ukrainian army will be ready to defend Europe and deploy its soldiers under a contract … maybe even replacing US contingent that is already in Europe after it wins. So just, on the one hand, [Zelensky] sold all the land and the valuables that it holds, and on the other hand, offered up his country as a private military company,” Lavrov said.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova brushed off Zelensky’s “victory plan” as a set of incoherent slogans that would push NATO into a direct conflict with Russia. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday that the conflict would end when Kiev realized the futility of its policy. Zelensky presented the three-point plan, which also includes three secret additions, in parliament on Wednesday. He proposed that allies invite Ukraine to join NATO, lift restrictions on strikes deep into Russia and deploy a “comprehensive non-nuclear deterrence package” on Ukrainian soil to contain Russia. The plan envisions an end to the conflict no later than 2025.

“..it is currently considering whether sales from his other businesses, namely SpaceX, Neuralink, xAI and The Boring Company, should be included in determining potential fines against X.”

• EU Looking To Expand Fines Against Musk (RT)

The EU could target all of Elon Musk’s private businesses when calculating fines for X (formerly Twitter), Bloomberg reported on Thursday, citing anonymous sources familiar with the matter. Brussels has been considering fines against X since the bloc’s former tech czar, Thierry Breton, accused the platform of failing to properly police illegal content and violating the EU’s 2022 Digital Services Act (DSA). The decision on whether to penalize X now lies with the EU commissioner for competition, Margrethe Vestager. According to Bloomberg, Brussels recently warned Musk that it is currently considering whether sales from his other businesses, namely SpaceX, Neuralink, xAI and The Boring Company, should be included in determining potential fines against X.

The outlet’s sources noted that Tesla Inc’s sales would not be included in such calculations because it is a publicly traded company and not under the billionaire’s full control. Under the DSA, the EU can slap online platforms with fines of up to 6% of their yearly global revenue for failing to combat illegal content and disinformation and follow the bloc’s transparency rules. Bloomberg’s sources noted, however, that no final decision to penalize X has yet been made and that the size of any potential fine is still under deliberation. They also stated that the platform may avoid penalties altogether if it complies with the bloc’s demands.

While X has not officially responded to the report, Musk previously vowed to appeal any potential DSA fines through a “very public battle in court, so that the people of Europe can know the truth.” In August, ahead of his interview with former US President Donald Trump, Musk was also threatened by Breton with facing a “full toolbox” of legal repercussions if he did not step up censorship of “harmful content.” In response, the billionaire posted a meme, telling the EU commissioner to “take a big step back and literally, f**k your own face.” Since purchasing Twitter in 2022, Musk has pledged to turn the platform into a more transparent space that is committed to free speech and is devoid of censorship.

“.. about 85% of the water that flows into the Nile comes from the Ethiopian highlands, yet Ethiopia can use only 1% of that volume of water.”

• Colonial Legacy Of The Nile Threatens Peace In Africa And Beyond (Ryzhenkova)

This past summer, a significant and somewhat unexpected development occurred when the parliament of South Sudan ratified the Nile Basin Cooperative Framework Agreement (CFA), also known as the Entebbe Agreement. Some 14 years after several East African countries initially signed the agreement, the ratification of the document officially called into question Egypt and Sudan’s historic rights to the water of the Nile. The Entebbe Agreement was originally signed in 2010 by Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, and Burundi. South Sudan joined the agreement in 2012. However, a key provision required the document to be ratified by the parliaments of at least six countries in order to establish a special commission that would be permanently headquartered in Uganda. After South Sudan ratified the document, the necessary quorum was finally achieved.

On October 13, Ethiopia officially announced that the agreement had entered into force. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed described this moment as a “historic milestone” in the collective efforts of the signatory countries to “foster genuine cooperation in the Nile Basin.” The Entebbe Agreement nullifies the historical water allocations to Egypt and Sudan (55.5 billion cubic meters annually for Egypt and 18.5 billion cubic meters for Sudan), determined by colonial-era agreements from 1929 and the 1959 Agreement “for the full utilization of the Nile waters” between the two countries. A total of 12 African countries are located in the Nile Basin: Burundi, Egypt, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Sudan, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, the Central African Republic, Eritrea, and Ethiopia. Together, these nations are home to 40% of Africa’s total population.

Known as the longest river in Africa (and possibly in the world), the Nile competes only with the Amazon in terms of length. It stretches approximately 5,600km from Lake Victoria, where the White Nile originates, to the Mediterranean Sea. The Nile Basin covers an area of 3.4 million square kilometers. The Blue Nile, which begins in Ethiopia, merges with the White Nile in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, before flowing into the Mediterranean Sea via Egypt. Since ancient times, the waters of the Nile have been used for irrigation and, today, they play a crucial role in electricity generation. The Nile is particularly important for Egypt – 95% of its population resides along the banks of the river and in the Nile Delta. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus famously referred to Egypt as “the gift of the Nile.” Major Egyptian cities, including the capital Cairo and Alexandria, are situated along the banks of this river.

Currently, official statistics indicate that Egypt faces a water deficit of up to 20 billion cubic meters per year, while its total annual water requirements reach 80 billion cubic meters. The country’s economy relies heavily on the Nile, with approximately 97% of its water supply coming from this river. Though Egypt lies downstream, colonial-era agreements still grant it not only a larger share of the river’s water but also the authority to oppose the construction of dams and other water projects in upstream states. As a result, economic development in these countries poses a threat to Egypt’s water needs. Interestingly, about 85% of the water that flows into the Nile comes from the Ethiopian highlands, yet Ethiopia can use only 1% of that volume of water.

Maps

Why maps lie

[🎞️ geoallday]pic.twitter.com/8ehBjjgFXX

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) October 18, 2024

Crossing
https://twitter.com/i/status/1846592234868601199

Mudfish

The African mudfish, or lungfish, can live out of water for many months in its burrow of hardened mud beneath a dried-up streambed.

This footage from 1935 shows how one is awakened.

[🎥 British Pathé] pic.twitter.com/tD82SVcXo0

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) October 18, 2024

Snoop

obsessed with Al Roker giving Snoop Dogg the weather report duties, with towns that have weed affiliated names. pic.twitter.com/wp3obpqsEv

— Sassington, M.C. (@MissSassbox) October 17, 2024

Pippillota

Little Pippilotta has come so far. And she isn't one bit angry. Given what has happened to her she is one of the most gentle souls you'll ever meet.

My friend Sybille has done all the hard rescue and we @wearehappydoggo are finding her perfect home 🥰🙏 pic.twitter.com/mikfBRDQ2x

— Niall Harbison (@NiallHarbison) October 18, 2024

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Debt Rattle August 4 2024

Aug 042024

August 4, 2024 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:00 am Finance Tagged with: Chutkan, derivatives, détente, Elon, gender-bending, Kamala, Maduro, NASA, SpaceX, Trump 36 Responses »

Pablo Picasso Seated woman 1903

• Harris Refuses Fox News Debate With Trump (RT)

• Judge Chutkan Denies Trump’s Motion to Dismiss Election Case (ET)

• Are Americans a Totally Conquered People? (Paul Craig Roberts)

• Scott Ritter: Some Swapped Prisoners Were Likely ‘On CIA Payroll’ (Sp.)

• Israel Assassinates Chief Negotiator Across The Table (Cradle)

• Israel Isn’t Crazy, It’s Just MAD (Cradle)

• Europe’s Recipe for Disaster: The Von der Leyen Program (Godefridi)

• Hungary and Slovakia Consider Cutting Electricity Supply To Ukraine (RMX)

• A New Détente: Can Putin and Biden Make A Deal? (Drize)

• Venezuela Could Hand Energy Rights To BRICS – Maduro (RT)

• SpaceX May Save Stranded Boeing Starliner Crew At ISS (ZH)

• Gender-Bending Is The New Doping (Marsden)

• How Unelected Regulators Unleashed the Derivatives Monster (Ellen Brown)

Watters SS

The @SecretService admitted today that Trump wasn’t given counter-sniper teams at his campaign rallies for the last two years. Why after years of no Secret Service counter-snipers, did they show up in Butler? When he finally was given counter-snipers in Butler, the snipers only… pic.twitter.com/1P6SP2N9jp

— Jesse Watters (@JesseBWatters) August 3, 2024

Bidenomics

NEW: Trump campaign just released this Kamala Attack Ad.

It would be a shame if this was shared far and wide…pic.twitter.com/iykHWc3lLg

— Ryan Fournier (@RyanAFournier) August 2, 2024

Shapiro
https://twitter.com/i/status/1819409849694015608

Lemon

Remember that time that Don Lemon argued Kamala isn't African American? pic.twitter.com/JfMDBeeJGf

— Tim Young (@TimRunsHisMouth) August 2, 2024

Elon Matrix

"I have discussed with Trump the idea of a government efficiency commission"

-Elon Musk on garbage collection for rules and regulations pic.twitter.com/RjBF1mASYU

— Adrian Dittmann (@AdrianDittmann) August 2, 2024

Maduro

“Elon Musk is nothing but a PRODUCT of the PENTAGON!”

“The story about how he is intelligent, and how he created the rocket technology, they can tell that tale to SOMEONE ELSE!”

– Venezuelan President Maduro speaks to Jackson Hinkle on the TRUTH about Elon Musk!… pic.twitter.com/TokV52Ozn9

— The Saviour (@stairwayto3dom) August 3, 2024

Disturbed yet?

Hahaha. What a surprise. They want control.

• Harris Refuses Fox News Debate With Trump (RT)

US Vice President Kamala Harris has declined former President Donald Trump’s invitation to take part in a televised debate on Fox News next month, insisting that her presidential opponent stick to a previously agreed showdown on ABC News. In a post on his Truth Social platform on Friday, Trump accepted Fox’s proposal that he debate Harris on September 4 in the battleground state of Pennsylvania. Trump was scheduled to debate President Joe Biden on ABC News on September 10, before Biden suspended his reelection campaign and endorsed Harris to run in his place late last month. The ABC debate has been “terminated,” Trump explained, citing Biden’s decision to step down, and his pending litigation against ABC host George Stephanopoulos, which he claimed created “a conflict of interest.”

In a statement on Saturday, Harris’ campaign accused Trump of “running scared and trying to back out of the debate he already agreed to.” “He needs to stop playing games and show up to the debate he already committed to,” the statement continued. “The vice-president will be there one way or the other to take the opportunity to speak to a prime-time national audience. We’re happy to discuss further debates after the one both campaigns have already agreed to.” Fox News is generally seen as more sympathetic to Trump, while ABC is perceived as more sympathetic to Harris. Trump debated Biden in June, in a CNN-hosted faceoff in Atlanta, Georgia. Biden appeared frail during the debate and lost his train of thought on multiple occasions, and his lackluster performance set off a crisis within the Democratic Party that ultimately concluded with him suspending his campaign.

Trump maintains that senior Democrats staged a “coup” against Biden, and that former President Barack Obama was instrumental in forcing the president to step aside. “They all dumped him, and they said, ‘Either you get out nice or we’re going to go after you.’ And that’s what happened. And he had no choice. There’s no question about it,” he told the New York Post last month. Writing on Truth Social, Trump explained that he prefers Fox News’ chosen date of September 4, as early voting begins in some states two days later. “I spent hundreds of millions of dollars, time, and effort fighting Joe, and when I won the debate, they threw a new candidate into the ring,” he declared. “Nevertheless, different candidate or not, their bad policies are the same, and this will be strongly revealed at the September 4th debate.”

I love how the new MSM narrative is that Trump is “afraid to debate Kamala”.

Meanwhile, in reality, the last time Trump debated, he ended Biden’s career, and sparked the implosion of the Democrat Party…

And Trump did it while hosted by hostile Dem outlet CNN, with no crowd.… pic.twitter.com/VELxZnmpkh

— Clandestine (@WarClandestine) August 3, 2024

3 months before the election, she tries to restart the whole thing. A joint status report by Aug. 9, status conference set for Aug. 13. Next she’ll demand he shows up in person?

• Judge Chutkan Denies Trump’s Motion to Dismiss Election Case (ET)

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan has scheduled a mid-August status conference in the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump, while denying his legal team’s motion to dismiss the indictment. The status conference, set for Aug. 13 in a Washington, D.C., federal courthouse, will address procedural matters and help determine the next steps in the proceeding, reads an order signed by Chutkan on Aug. 3. Chutkan ordered both the prosecution and the defense to submit a joint status report by Aug. 9, which will update the court on the progress of the case and can include such information as any agreements or disputes between the parties, as well as completed tasks and upcoming deadlines.

In the same order, Chutkan granted a brief stay on the briefing deadlines for special counsel Jack Smith’s motion seeking to limit the evidence and arguments that Trump’s legal team can introduce during the trial, particularly those that prosecutors argue are irrelevant or prejudicial. Specifically, the government’s motion seeks to exclude evidence related to Trump’s claims of selective prosecution, alleged investigative misconduct, and speculative theories about foreign influence or undercover agents during the Jan. 6, 2021 breach of the U.S. Capitol. Smith has also asked the judge to disallow arguments meant to sway the jury with political rhetoric or potential consequences of a conviction, and to impose limits on cross-examination by the defense, including potential testimony on Trump’s state of mind or belief that the 2020 election was stolen.

Chutkan’s order also denied without prejudice Trump’s motion to dismiss the indictment, which was filed on statutory grounds. Trump attorneys claim in their motion that Smith’s indictment improperly applied legal statutes, while arguing that the charges filed failed to demonstrate any acts of deceit or trickery necessary to establish conspiracy to defraud the United States, a key charge leveled against the former president in the case. Smith’s team charged Trump with four counts, including conspiracy to defraud the United States and to obstruct an official proceeding, in a case that centers on the former president’s actions after the 2020 election. Trump has pleaded not guilty, arguing that the case is motivated by political animus against him and is designed to thwart his 2024 presidential campaign.

Trump counsel also argued in the motion to dismiss that Trump’s public comments and actions to contest the results of the 2020 election were lawful exercises of his First Amendment rights and do not amount to obstruction of a government function. They also claimed that the indictment lacked the specificity required to support claims of corrupt intent, while arguing that the legal statutes cited by Smith’s team in the indictment should be interpreted more narrowly to avoid criminalizing legitimate political activity. A request for comment sent to Trump counsel regarding Chutkan’s rejection of the motion to dismiss was not immediately returned.

The renewed activity in the case, which had been put on hold pending Trump’s appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court on arguments he was immune from prosecution, occurred after the case was returned to Chutkan on Aug. 2, paving the way for further motions and hearings. The Supreme Court ruled on July 1 that Trump is entitled to some immunity, based on the high court’s finding that presidents have absolute immunity for actions within their “conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority,” presumptive immunity for official acts, and no immunity for unofficial acts. The Supreme Court justices sent the case back to district court, leaving it up to Chutkan to decide how to apply the ruling to the case.

“When people see that there is no limit on the power of corrupt prosecutors, they fear to go against the system.”

• Are Americans a Totally Conquered People? (Paul Craig Roberts)

The various “investigations” of the Secret Service’s failure to protect Trump are focused on operational and communication failures. The fact that the Secret Service did hardly anything normal procedures required has not yet raised the question whether elements of the Secret Service were involved. The failure is too large to be dismissed without investigation as nothing but a result of a collection of mistakes. The investigation that is needed is one that investigates whether elements in the Secret Service were involved in an assassination attempt on Trump, who is considered to be an existential threat to the ruling establishment. The investigation cannot be conducted by the Secret Service, Homeland Security, and the FBI, because if the assassination attempt was a deep state plot, all else against Trump having failed, these three agencies are the likely ones involved in the plot. A real investigation would have to answer these questions:

1. Was the acoustic evidence examined? 2. Were the fired bullets collected? Did they all come from the same rifle and was it the rifle found 7 feet away from Crooks dead body? Why was the rifle 7 feet away from the person alleged to have shot at Trump? 3. Why was Trump allowed to go on stage when the Secret Service knew Crooks was positioned on the building? 4. Why was the urgent information sent by the Pennsylvania police on the scene to the Secret Service not acted on and shared with Trump’s security detail? 5. Do such unprecedented operational and communicative failures of this magnitude suggest Secret Service complicity in an attempt on Trump’s life? 6. Was Crooks just a patsy whose presence was ignored because the plotters needed a patsy in place? It is unclear that the investigation can be conducted by a Congressional committee as members are dependent on ruling elites for campaign contributions and are vulnerable to threats from executive branch agencies.

The Founding Fathers made Congress weak because they feared “mob democracy.” But the consequence was to leave Congress too weak to hold the executive branch accountable. A real investigation would have to be conducted by credentialed independent experts, but even here independence can be hard to find. So many people rely on government contracts that it is difficult for many to speak freely. The fact that physics departments and universities are dependent on federal money explains why academic physicists avoided taking issue with the 9/11 narrative. Money speaks, and in the corrupt America of the 21st century, money is all that speaks. To understand the difficulty of private expert examination, consider the fate of the experts who proved beyond all doubt that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. That the election was stolen is as clear as day, but those who brought forward the evidence have been ridiculed as “conspiracy theorists,” sued, prosecuted or threatened with prosecution, and some sentenced, if memory serves, to prison for “interfering with an election.”

Even those who merely protested the stolen election were arrested, indicted, and imprisoned as “insurrectionists.” Any who survived the vendetta were bankrupted by their legal bills. Some of Trump’s lawyers were indicted along with him in a RICO indictment by a corrupt black female Atlanta prosecutor, apparently put in office with George Soros’ money and currently under investigation herself for going on vacations with money she paid her lover who she paid $700,000 to prosecute Trump. When people see that there is no limit on the power of corrupt prosecutors, they fear to go against the system.

Even if somehow an objective investigation could be conducted, if the conclusion was unacceptable to the ruling elite, the media would discredit it. The proven charges would lead nowhere. Look how long the US Department of Justice has been able to protect Hunter Biden from the perfectly clear evidence he provided on his laptop. In America today the main result achieved by the enormous sums poured into universities and public schools by taxpayers, corporations, philanthropic foundations such as the Ford and Rockefeller foundations, and by ego-driven businessmen, who want their name to live on forever on a university building, is to teach guilt to white students and to teach hatred of “white racist scum,” one of the most common terms used in American university classes.

The position of white people in American Society today is such that whatever they say, even if fact-based, is dismissed as “white supremacy speaking.” In other words, as white people are “aversive racists,” nothing they say, despite the evidence, can be believed. So, the conclusion in front of our face is that the ruling elite can do whatever it wants, because any challenge to it is impotent and results in the destruction of the challenger by the media, rejection by his family and friends, and if he is a business person the withdrawal of his financing, or his financial destruction by a Democrat prosecutor bankrupting him with the cost of endless producing of documents, as the corrupt NY prosecutor did to the website Vdare. It seems that what we are confronted with is the American people are whatever the ruling elite want them to be, which is insouciant sheep, totally incapable of protecting their freedom and independence. In effect, a totally conquered people.

“I don’t think US-Russia relations are going to be in a position where such a prisoner swap could have occurred in the next year, maybe the next two years..”

• Scott Ritter: Some Swapped Prisoners Were Likely ‘On CIA Payroll’ (Sp.)

The operation to swap 26 prisoners from seven countries took place in Ankara (Turkiye) on Thursday. As a result, eight Russian citizens, detained and imprisoned in several NATO countries, along with their minor children, were returned to their homeland. All implications are that some of the people involved in the recent prisoner swap between Moscow and several Western countries were CIA espionage assets, Scott Ritter has told Sputnik. The exchange that occurred on August 1 appears to have been “a deal hashed out between the Russian secret services and the American CIA,” noted the former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and ex-UN weapons inspector. Commenting on what is being called the biggest such swap since the Cold War, Ritter pointed out that among the 16 prisoners released by Russia was Evan Gershkovich, “caught red-handed receiving Russian secrets.” The Wall Street Journal reporter was subsequently charged with espionage, found guilty at trial, and meted out a lengthy sentence.

US Marine veteran Paul Whelan was likewise charged with espionage, while self-described Russian political figure Vladimir Kara-Murza, as it turns out, had a US green card. “This implies there was a special relationship between him [Kara-Murza] and the US government that maybe the US government doesn’t want to talk about in public,” Ritter said. Kara-Murza “appears to have been on the CIA payroll as well,” he noted. As for the Russian side, among the eight people released by the US in Thursday’s prisoner swap was Vadim Krasikov, recalled Scott Ritter. The former Russian intelligence officer was arrested in Germany in 2019 and accused by Berlin of terminating Chechen terrorist Zelimkhan Khangoshvili on German soil.

Krasikov was given a life-sentence in German prison for wiping out a warlord, “somebody who had butchered, murdered Russian prisoners of war during the Chechen conflict and, accordingly, was hunted down and killed in Berlin,” Ritter underscored. Looking ahead, the pundit suggested that the latest prisoner exchange taking place in the twilight of Joe Biden’s presidency “may be the best that US-Russian relations are gonna be for some time now.” “I don’t think US-Russia relations are going to be in a position where such a prisoner swap could have occurred in the next year, maybe the next two years. So it needed to happen now, and that’s why it did. The largest prisoner swap since the end of the Cold War. Who knows what the future will hold… Hopefully this is the beginning of a trend of good relations, but probably not,” Ritter concluded.

The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) stated on Thursday that eight Russian citizens, who were detained and imprisoned in several NATO countries, have been returned to Russia. The exchange took place at Ankara airport (Turkiye) on August 1, 2024, and also included the repatriation of minor children. The security service added that the recently returned Russians were exchanged for a group of individuals who had been acting on behalf of foreign states, compromising Russia’s security.

“..Today, it is the unifying, pro-resistance qualities of leaders like Haniyeh and Arouri that pose a far bigger threat to Israel.”

• Israel Assassinates Chief Negotiator Across The Table (Cradle)

The assassination of Hamas Political Bureau leader Ismail Haniyeh has killed any chance for a lasting ceasefire in Gaza – on terms favorable to Palestinians – and leaves a huge political vacuum within the resistance movement. The assassination, which took place during an official visit to Tehran for the inauguration of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, coincided with 300 days of Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip. Haniyeh was the chief Palestinian negotiator in indirect months-long ceasefire talks with the Israeli delegation, among them Mossad Chief David Barnea, whose organization reportedly executed the shocking kill operation. This targeting of the head of the political movement reflects Israel’s systematic policy of assassinating leaders who can unify ranks and deepen relations with regional and international powers. This also explains the reasoning behind Israel’s 2 January assassination of Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut, the key Hamas figure managing relations between Tehran, Ankara, Lebanon, and Doha.

Haniyeh, too, was distinguished not only by his ability to bridge the vision gap between Hamas’ military and political wings but also by successfully liaising with various regional and international powers and playing a major role advancing the interests of the resistance group in its three target regions – Gaza, the occupied West Bank, and abroad. Haniyeh’s assassination has created an urgent need to reorganize Hamas’ internal house – particularly urgent given Israel’s ongoing genocidal war on Gaza – and reconcile the disparate views of its leaders, such as Yahya Sinwar in Gaza and Khaled Meshaal abroad. Today, nothing would suit Israel more than seeing Meshaal, in particular, regain the reins at Hamas. The former Hamas politburo chief, after all, controversially split up Tel Aviv’s biggest regional adversaries – the Resistance Axis – at the start of the Syrian war by turning his back on the only Arab state member of the Axis, Syria.

It has taken Hamas years to fully reintegrate into the Axis after that betrayal, which is often blamed on Meshaal and his cohorts who decamped from Damascus to Doha. It was only through tireless efforts by leaders like Haniyeh and Arouri that Hamas’ relations with the regional resistance were publicly mended. Meshaal has since suffered the indignity of being spurned by Syrian, Iranian, and Hezbollah leaders, so his return to the top would be manna to Israeli ears – even though Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had, almost successfully, undertaken to kill Meshaal in 1997. Those were different times, though, and alliances and interests in the region have shifted many times since. Today, it is the unifying, pro-resistance qualities of leaders like Haniyeh and Arouri that pose a far bigger threat to Israel.

“Today, Israel employs the full spectrum of its MAD strategy in its attacks on Palestinians in Gaza and across the West Bank – rape, murder, amputations, beheadings, torture – with impunity..”

• Israel Isn’t Crazy, It’s Just MAD (Cradle)

During the night hours between 30 and 31 July, Israel targeted two top Resistance Axis officials for assassination, both unprecedented in seniority during this round of conflict. First, top Hezbollah war commander Fuad Shukr was killed in an Israeli air attack on his residential building in the densely populated Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh, leaving several civilians dead and over 70 injured. The second target, at 2 am on 31 July, was Hamas political bureau leader Ismail Haniyeh – a central figure in ceasefire negotiations – who was in Tehran to attend the inauguration ceremony of Iran’s incoming President Masoud Pezeshkian. Within the course of a few hours, Israel managed to strike at three Resistance Axis members: Lebanon, Palestine, and Iran. In doing so, Tel Aviv violated a whole slew of international laws, diplomatic conventions, and customary practices that prohibit political assassinations while glaringly violating the territorial integrity of two UN member states.

Since its war on Gaza, Israel has rapidly gained global pariah status, not just because of its live-streamed genocide that has killed at least 39,000 Palestinian civilians – over 16,000 of them children – but also because of the unprecedented rulings and deliberations still underway at the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) over Israel’s war crimes. Thus, Tel Aviv’s incendiary actions last night beg the question, is Israel just crazy? Does it not see the global censure brewing, the boycotts expanding, its alliances dwindling, the social media rage, and its growing and glaring isolation? The simple answer is no. Successive Israeli governments have been entirely rational, depending on a single overriding strategy from which the state has not veered. Recognizing its geographic, population, political, and economic shortcomings from the get-go, the Zionist project – very calculatingly – implemented something we can call the ‘MAD strategy’ to attain its objectives and then punch well above its geopolitical weight class.

A weird but effective strategy, MAD actually derives from textbook deterrence theory: Creating a threatening presence by having an aggressive reputation with the touch of madness will prevent your enemies from attacking you. They would not attack a person who takes his enemy with him if he falls. This is the essence of Israel’s strategy with friends and foes alike, and once understood, it is hard to unsee these tactics in all the state’s dealings.After the Palestinian resistance’s 7 October military operation last year – and just as US President Joe Biden was en route to Tel Aviv to lend his support to Israel – the occupation army struck Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital, killing hundreds of civilians seeking shelter and medical attention. The hit was by no accident. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu deliberately sought those optics. He wanted to corner the US president into displaying support for his policies, no matter how awful the atrocity.

This is a long-practiced Zionist tactic to tame and groom targets to accept and expect Israeli bad behavior. Netanyahu also played this dangerous game with Russian President Vladimir Putin during the Syrian war. After every meeting with the powerful Russian head of state, the Israeli premier would launch hard strikes against Syria – again, to tame and groom the Russians to accept and expect Israeli bad behavior. Today, Israel employs the full spectrum of its MAD strategy in its attacks on Palestinians in Gaza and across the West Bank – rape, murder, amputations, beheadings, torture – with impunity. Allies, foes, and global populations are expected to accept the images and data and be ready for even worse scenarios. It is untrue that Tel Aviv acts irrationally. Implementing the MAD strategy is a rational decision for a small entity that needs to impose its oversized will on not only its neighbors but on global powers and international institutions, too.

“By refusing on principle ever to govern with real right-wing parties, the center-right guarantees that the left remains forever in power..”

• Europe’s Recipe for Disaster: The Von der Leyen Program (Godefridi)

Calculated in terms of purchasing power parity – meaning disregarding the strength of the dollar — the average GDP per capita in the EU as of 2022 is 72% of the average GDP per American. Given that economic growth is higher every year in the United States than in the EU, this gap will only widen. This backwardness is confirmed by the innovation vitality of the American economy. In just one example, compare artificial intelligence, essentially an American innovation, to the lack of creativity in the European economy. NVIDIA’s success is unthinkable in Europe.

Three factors might help to explain Europe’s economic backwardness compared to the United States: the cost of energy, which is five to ten times higher in Europe than in the US; the greater difficulty in Europe of concentrating private capital to invest in R&D and finally, the pull of the “mad legislator”, which is even worse in Europe than in the US. For example, Apple recently settled an EU investigation regarding its restriction on third-party developers accessing its payment technology, which could have led to a fine of 10% of its annual revenue for non-compliance. Apple’s total net sales in 2023 were $383.3 billion, so a 10% fine would amount to $38.3 billion. Given Apple’s operating income in Europe is $36.1 billion, non-compliance with EU regulations could result in fines exceeding its regional earnings.

How is it, when all these facts are known, that von der Leyen was reappointed to her post, while the Greens lost the European Parliament elections, and the right-wing parties of all persuasions won them by a wide margin? Perhaps this seeming paradox can be explained by the fact that the center-right, the largest party bloc in the European Parliament, is ideologically subservient to the left, on two levels: 1) by adhering to most of the dogmas of the left, starting with environmentalism, and 2) by refusing on principle any coalition with real right-wing parties such as Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy or, in France, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN).

This ensures that, while losing elections, the left can stay in power. The new von der Leyen majority consists of four parliamentary groups: the center-right, the socialists, the left-wing liberals and the far-left environmentalists. Of these groups, the center-right is by far the largest. It would therefore be logical for them to dominate von der Leyen’s program. But that is not what takes place. It is the demands of the smallest group — environmentalists — that dominate: continuation of the Green Deal, total decarbonization by 2050.

European power is a mirror image of its two driving forces — France and Germany — where the center-right parties behave in the same way: ideological submission to the left and a ban on the right governing. In Germany, the right-wing political party Alternative for Germany (AfD), finds itself in a position to govern several regions with the center-right. But everywhere in Germany, the center-right prefers to ally with the left, the environmentalists, sometimes even the communists, than to govern with the AfD. In France, Le Pen’s RN clearly won the European elections, then the first round of legislative elections. The center-right immediately announced that it preferred a victory for the far left and the communists to a victory for Le Pen.

The post-war European citizen has never voted so far to the right. He is harvesting a program that has never been so extremely left-wing. The von der Leyen program owes more to the Greens (53 MEPs) than to the center-right (188 MEPs). By refusing on principle ever to govern with real right-wing parties, the center-right guarantees that the left remains forever in power. When voting no longer serves any purpose, democracy dies.

“The proportion of electricity coming through Hungary in terms of Ukrainian imports exceeded 40-42 percent during several periods..”

• Hungary and Slovakia Consider Cutting Electricity Supply To Ukraine (RMX)

Roughly 40 percent of Ukraine’s electricity imports pass through the Ukrainian-Hungarian border, which means Hungary is not entirely powerless in the face of a Ukrainian blockade on oil supplies. In fact, Hungary may be forced to cut electricity to its neighbor if push comes to shove. Olivér Hortay, head of Századvég’s climate and energy policy department, noted that Ukraine’s biggest energy problem is the electricity system. Since the start of the war, the country has lost three-quarters of its own electricity generation capacity, leading to Ukrainians having to deal with prolonged blackouts and cuts to production due to a lack of electricity. To deal with Ukraine’s faltering electricity network, the country has been importing energy from neighboring countries. “The proportion of electricity coming through Hungary in terms of Ukrainian imports exceeded 40-42 percent during several periods,” said Hortay, while speaking to Hungarian television channel M1.

As a result, Ukraine may suffer “serious consequences” due to its oil blockade. He notes that the MAVIR station in Szabolcsbáka is one of the main hubs of the European and Ukrainian electricity systems. This is the only Hungarian and EU substation with 750 kV system components. Roughly 40 percent of Ukraine’s electricity imports pass through here. Hungary and Slovakia have both sounded the alarm to Brussels about Ukraine’s action of cutting oil supplies from Russia, which flow through the Friendship pipeline. However, the EU, which is well known for its opposition to the governments in Hungary and Slovakia, has responded cooly to the complaints, saying that Ukraine does not endanger the energy supplies of the two countries. Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó has rejected the EU’s argument and called Croatia, which is supposed to increase supplies in response to the Ukrainian blockade, an unreliable transit country.

Both Hungary and Slovakia rely on Russia for up to 80 percent of their oil supply, underlining the threat to both economies. Olivér Hortay explained that Russia’s Lukoil provides a third of the oil demand of the Hungarian Száhahalombatta refinery and 45 percent of the demand of the Bratislava refinery in Slovakia. Gergely Gulyás, the minister in charge of the Prime Minister’s Office, called it unfair and contrary to EU agreements that Ukraine is blackmailing Hungary and Slovakia because of its pro-peace stance. Hortay points to an existing association agreement, based on which Hungary and Slovakia initiated proceedings at the European Commission , where “literally it is stated that the parties cannot limit each other’s imports, exports and transit.”

“..theoretically we can assume that this is the beginning of the process of realigning relations between Russia and the West..”

• A New Détente: Can Putin and Biden Make A Deal? (Drize)

Russia is delighted with Thursday’s prisoner exchange in Ankara, Western media outlets report, citing sources in their countries’ respective agencies. Meanwhile, in Washington and in Western European capitals, the event is being presented as a major diplomatic breakthrough. It may even be a prelude to further talks between Moscow and Washington. It was the largest swap in modern Russian history, not only in terms of the number of people involved, but also in their status. This time, not only foreigners convicted in our country, but also Russian citizens – let’s say critics of the existing state system and its leadership – were released from prison. We don’t need to list them all again. That information is everywhere in news stories and has been repeated many times.

It’s worth repeating that the last time anything like this happened was during the Cold War. So we have yet another indication that history is repeating itself more or less: missiles being placed in Western Europe, nuclear exercises in Russia, the decline in diplomatic relations….. all the signs are there. Nevertheless, this event is positive in terms of the prospect of defusing international tensions and perhaps encouraging a detente. Incidentally, this was a buzz word in the 1970s. Top US officials were in a festive mood. Joe Biden spoke at the White House, surrounded by the families of those transferred. The Democratic presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, flew from Houston to Washington to meet them. So, they were received at the highest level.

It also seems that the Kremlin has a lot of doubts about Donald Trump’s chances of victory. That’s the first thing. And secondly, it is no big secret that it’s much easier to come to an agreement with the Democratic Party in general and the Biden-Obama-Harris faction in particular. This is what we are witnessing. We can also recall that one of Biden’s first executive orders after taking office in 2021 was to extend the START treaty. As we know, ‘dear Donald’ refused to sign the document. But ‘Bad Joe’ took it and approved it, and immediately at that. So betting on this team seems quite logical. By the way, it’s also believed that both Iran and China believe it’s better to deal with bad than “very bad,” and they also don’t want Trump to return. But let’s not get sidetracked.

Anyway, an unprecedented agreement has been reached. And often when you manage to make one, it’s followed by a second. That is to say, theoretically we can assume that this is the beginning of the process of realigning relations between Russia and the West. Of course, the main stumbling block here is Ukraine, but it’s not the only one. And this process should take place before the election in the US, i.e. in the shortest possible time frame. The reason is obvious: Trump could win and then we’ll have to start all over again. Some will say: but what about all the hopes and assumptions pinned on him, and why are they being forgotten? Yes, we should not be naive. But events are moving, and moving fast. And time is running out. So what can we do? We can hope for the best, or rather, hope for the prudence of all parties. We don’t want the planet to burn in a fiery hell. So it makes sense to try to somehow avoid that scenario.

Do it quickly.

• Venezuela Could Hand Energy Rights To BRICS – Maduro (RT)

Venezuela could transfer the development rights to its vast oil and gas fields that are currently operated by American energy companies to entities from BRICS nations, President Nicolas Maduro warned on Friday during a press conference in Caracas. BRICS originally comprised Brazil, Russia, India, and China before subsequently adding South Africa and, at the beginning of this year, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates. Numerous other countries, including Venezuela, have expressed interest in joining the group. “If these people up north and their partners in the world make the mistake of their lives, then those oil blocks and those gas blocks that were already signed up [for US companies] will go to our BRICS allies,” Maduro said, adding that Washington was at the forefront of plans to destabilize his country.

With an estimated 303 billion barrels, Venezuela accounts for approximately 17% of global reserves of crude oil, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), which lists the Bolivarian republic as having the world’s largest proven oil reserves. Chevron, the only American energy major still operating in Venezuela, scored a license to pump oil in the country in November 2022, a month after a sanctions waiver was implemented. This came in exchange for the unblocking of some of Caracas’ oil proceeds that had been frozen by US sanctions. Chevron is currently involved in four onshore and offshore projects in Venezuela through a partnership with state-controlled oil giant Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA). Earlier this year, the US company announced the goal of increasing output by 35% year-on-year by bringing new wells online.

Earlier this week, the White House recognized Western-backed opposition figure Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia as the winner of Venezuela’s presidential election on Sunday, despite the official results showing incumbent Maduro having won. The Venezuelan leader has urged Washington to “keep its nose out of Venezuela,” saying that the protests that erupted in the country after the results were announced were an attempted “coup.” Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated Maduro earlier this week on being reelected. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday that Venezuela’s opposition should admit defeat and congratulate the winner. He added that it is important for Venezuela to avoid attempts at destabilization orchestrated by third countries, and to remain free of outside meddling. Earlier this week, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil Pinto confirmed that Maduro had received an invitation to take part in the BRICS summit scheduled for October in the Russian city of Kazan.

“Boeing is not allowed to ask Elon to save them in an election year.”

“..stranded in space for 2 months, on what was supposed to be a 1 week trip. They were not allowed to take any luggage or change of clothes or personal items, since it was such a short stay.”

• SpaceX May Save Stranded Boeing Starliner Crew At ISS (ZH)

Boeing’s crewed Starliner spacecraft mission to the International Space Station was initially expected to last just a few days, but it has stretched into weeks and now two months. The two astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, have been stranded on the ISS following Starliner’s helium leaks and failing thrusters in early June. NASA and Boeing have been working to resolve Starliner’s issues, but progress has been limited. The big story here is that, after two months, Boeing has yet to publicly ask Elon Musk’s SpaceX for help. Optically, this would be a major blow to Boeing’s image, especially considering the series of mid-air mishaps involving its 737Max commercial jets. Additionally, it’s an election year for the Biden administration, which has been on a crusade against Trump and his supporters, but also is very anti-Musk. Any rescue mission by SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft is undesirable news flow for Democrats.

However, a new report from Ars Technica, citing various sources, indicates SpaceX could be publicly called up to save the day. Here’s more from Ars Technica: “For a long time, it seemed almost certain that the astronauts would return to Earth inside Starliner. However, there has been a lot of recent activity at NASA, Boeing, and SpaceX that suggests that Wilmore and Williams could come home aboard a Crew Dragon spacecraft rather than Starliner.” The report continued: “One informed source said it was greater than a 50-50 chance that the crew would come back on Dragon. Another source said it was significantly more likely than not they would. To be clear, NASA has not made a final decision. This probably will not happen until at least next week. It is likely that Jim Free, NASA’s associate administrator, will make the call.”

On Thursday evening, NASA spokesperson Josh Finch told Ars, “NASA is evaluating all options for the return of agency astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams from the International Space Station as safely as possible. No decisions have been made and the agency will continue to provide updates on its planning.” X users are wondering why the stranded Starliner story is not huge news.

“..there are at least two countries already – Canada and the US – that permit anyone to freely decide the gender that gets listed on their passport.|”

• Gender-Bending Is The New Doping (Marsden)

Ever since the Paris Olympics triggered culture warriors by dumping drag queens all over the opening ceremony like fleur de sel with a faulty cap, they’ve been on high alert for any perceived attempts by the organizers to further a woke, gender-bending agenda. When Algerian boxer Imane Khelif defeated Italian Angela Carini in a fight that lasted just 46 seconds, with Carini taking a punch to the head and reeling from a suspected broken nose, it didn’t take long for social media to pick up on Carini’s cry that the match wasn’t fair. Nor would it take long for a debate to emerge along the usual fault lines around Khelif’s gender and for Khelif to become a Rorschach test. Former competitive swimmer Riley Gaines tweeted that “men don’t belong in women’s sports,” to which X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk replied, “Absolutely.”

Gaines has become an activist against men competing in women’s sports as a result of having to face off against transsexual swimmer Lia Thomas in the NCAA college swimming championships. And Musk has recently expressed upset over one of his children’s own gender transitioning. “The idea that those objecting to a male punching a female in the name of sport are objecting because they believe Khelif to be ‘trans’ is a joke. We object because we saw a male punching a female,” ‘Harry Potter’ author and frequent transsexual issue commentator J.K. Rowling wrote. Yet there isn’t any credible evidence that Khelif has ever undergone any kind of gender transitioning – something that would be unheard of in Khelif’s native Algeria. “This is the purest form of evil unfolding right before our eyes,” boxer and influencer Logan Paul said. “A man was allowed to beat up a woman on a global stage, crushing her life’s dream while fighting for her deceased father. This delusion must end.”

But then Paul deleted the posts. “OOPSIES,” he wrote. “I might be guilty of spreading misinformation along with the entirety of this app.” It’s no wonder everyone’s confused. Two sports governing bodies have faced off over Khelif and another athlete competing in women’s boxing, China’s Lin Yu-Ting. According to the International Boxing Association, the worldwide match sanctioning entity which disqualified both athletes in the 2023 World Championships where they won bronze and gold respectively, “the athletes did not undergo a testosterone examination but were subject to a separate and recognized test, whereby the specifics remain confidential. This test conclusively indicated that both athletes did not meet the required necessary eligibility criteria and were found to have competitive advantages over other female competitors.” Regulations stipulate that proof could be in the form of a DNA test, but no further evidence has been provided to confirm the results – perhaps due to concerns around privacy violations.

In the other corner, the International Olympic Committee calls the IBA’s ruling “sudden and arbitrary,” which can also be true without the results themselves being illegitimate. Accusing its CEO, Chris Roberts (an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to British army boxing), of a unilateral decision, the IOC issued a statement related to the latest controversy, stipulating that “as with previous Olympic boxing competitions, the gender and age of the athletes are based on their passport.” That’s hardly a rigorous test, particularly when there are at least two countries already – Canada and the US – that permit anyone to freely decide the gender that gets listed on their passport.

Arguably, the most levelheaded take came from transsexual former Olympic decathlon champion Caitlyn Jenner, who explained in a recent Netflix documentary about Jenner’s sporting career and life that it was Bruce Jenner who won those accolades, not Caitlyn. Bruce also had the integrity to keep the dresses at home and not show up in one to compete in the women’s decathlon – and Jenner does not now support any man who would. Jenner has described Khelif as “the Algerian competitor with XY chromosomes,” referencing the IBA test results, and has argued that the IOC has a duty to protect the integrity of women’s sports. The IOC doesn’t seem too interested in actively doing so, however, preferring instead to just take participants’ and countries’ word for it.

“.. financial commentators have put it as high as $2.3 quadrillion or even $3.7 quadrillion, far exceeding global GDP, which was about $100 trillion in 2022..”

• How Unelected Regulators Unleashed the Derivatives Monster (Ellen Brown)

“It was not the highly visible acts of Congress but the seemingly mundane and often nontransparent actions of regulatory agencies that empowered the great transformation of the U.S. commercial banks from traditionally conservative deposit-taking and lending businesses into providers of wholesale financial risk management and intermediation services.” – Professor Saule Omarova, “The Quiet Metamorphosis, How Derivatives Changed the Business of Banking” University of Miami Law Review, 2009

While the world is absorbed in the U.S. election drama, the derivatives time bomb continues to tick menacingly backstage. No one knows the actual size of the derivatives market, since a major portion of it is traded over-the-counter, hidden in off-balance-sheet special purpose vehicles. However, when Warren Buffet famously labeled derivatives “financial weapons of mass destruction” in 2002, its “notional value” was estimated at $56 trillion. Twenty years later, the Bank for International Settlements estimated that value at $610 trillion. And financial commentators have put it as high as $2.3 quadrillion or even $3.7 quadrillion, far exceeding global GDP, which was about $100 trillion in 2022. A quadrillion is 1,000 trillion. Most of this casino is run through the same banks that hold our deposits for safekeeping. Derivatives are sold as “insurance” against risk, but they actually add a heavy layer of risk because the market is so interconnected that any failure can have a domino effect. Most of the banks involved are also designated “too big to fail,” which means we the people will be bailing them out if they do fail.

Derivatives are considered so risky that the Bankruptcy Act of 2005 and the Uniform Commercial Code grant them (along with repo trades) “super-priority” in bankruptcy. That means if a bank goes bankrupt, derivative and repo claims are settled first, drawing from the same pool of liquidity that holds our deposits. A derivatives crisis could easily vacuum up that pool, leaving nothing for us as depositors — or for the “secured” creditors who are junior to derivative and repo claimants in bankruptcy, including state and local governments. As detailed by Pam and Russ Martens, publisher and editor, respectively of Wall Street on Parade, as of Dec. 31, 2023, Goldman Sachs Bank USA, JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A., Citigroup’s Citibank and Bank of America held a total of $168.26 trillion in derivatives out of a total of $192.46 trillion at all U.S. banks, savings associations and trust companies. That’s four banks holding 87 percent of all derivatives at all 4,587 federally-insured institutions then in the U.S.

In June 2024, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Federal Reserve Board jointly released their findings on the eight U.S. megabanks’ “living wills” – their resolution or wind-down plans in the event of bankruptcy. The Fed and FDIC faulted all of the four largest derivative banks on shortcomings in how they planned to wind down their derivatives. Banks are not just middlemen in the derivatives market. They are active players taking speculative positions. In this century, writes Professor Omarova, the largest U.S. commercial banks have emerged “as a new breed of financial super-intermediary—a wholesale dealer in financial risk, conducting a wide variety of capital markets and derivatives activities, trading physical commodities, and even marketing electricity.” She notes that the Federal Reserve has allowed several financial holding companies to purchase and sell physical commodities (including oil, natural gas, agricultural products and electricity) in the spot market to hedge their commodity derivative activities, and to take or make delivery of those commodities to settle the transactions.

It was not Congress that authorized that expansive definition of permitted banking activities. It was the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), part of the “administrative deep state,” that permanent body of unelected regulators who carry on while politicians come and go. As Omarova explains: Through seemingly routine and often nontransparent administrative actions, the OCC effectively enabled large U.S. commercial banks to transform themselves from the traditionally conservative deposit-taking and lending institutions, whose safety and soundness were guarded through statutory and regulatory restrictions on potentially risky activities, into a new breed of financial “super-intermediaries,” or wholesale dealers in pure financial risk. … Moreover, some of the most influential of those decisions escaped public scrutiny because they were made in the subterranean world of administrative action invisible to the public, through agency interpretation and policy guidance.