contingent election Archives - The Automatic Earth

Debt Rattle January 22 2024

Jan 222024

January 22, 2024 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:34 am Finance Tagged with: contingent election, DeSantis, ICC, Jan 6, John Kerry, NATO Drills, RFK jr, SCOTUS, Trump, WSJ, Yemen 31 Responses »

Leonardo da Vinci Salvator Mundi 1513

• Supreme Court Action Alters Course of Jan. 6 Defendant Sentencings (ET)

• Russia Must Give Up Its Nuclear Weapons – Ukrainian Officials (RT)

• Frontline Situation ‘Dramatic’ For Ukraine – German Reporter (RT)

• EU Mulls $21 Billion Military Aid to Ukraine Bypassing Hungary’s Veto (Sp.)

• Scale of NATO Drills Marks Return to Cold War-Era Patterns (Sp.)

• NATO Drills Raise Risks of Inadvertent Escalation – Moscow (Sp.)

• US Preparing For ‘Sustained’ Yemen Bombing Campaign – WaPo (RT)

• Mexico And Chile Call On ICC To Investigate Crimes In Gaza (Singh)

• Iran and US Use Saudi Arabia to Swap Messages and Cool Gaza Tensions (MEE)

• American Democracy ‘In Danger’ – Trump (RT)

• RFK Seeks Path to Victory by Forcing House to Elect President (ET)

• WSJ Editor-in-Chief Admits To Davos Elites ‘We No Longer Own The News’ (ZH)

• John Kerry Wants To Remove 1.6 Trillion Tons Of CO2 From The Atmosphere (X)

Paxton

“The water leak story on election night was to pause the count and see how many ballots needed to be applied to the system.”

Ken Paxton would make a great Attorney General pick for Donald Trump. pic.twitter.com/L0KgJehm8N

— Big Fish (@BigFish3000) January 21, 2024

Arabella
https://twitter.com/i/status/1748916334178558434

Tucker Dore

Tucker Carlson: I don't really wanna be on a plane with Larry Fink, he's a pig actually and he's kind of dumb. He's smart in some specific way that's made him a billionaire, but like he's not a great person his wife doesn't respect him that's for sure…I've zero interest in ever… pic.twitter.com/PD3h8Il84G

— Camus (@newstart_2024) January 20, 2024

But she’s white! Next thing you tell me she’s straight too!

Miss America 2024.

This is Madison Marsh who was just crowned as the winner in the Miss America pageant.

She is also a a second lieutenant in the United States Air Force.

pic.twitter.com/WSMGAo9zIS

— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) January 21, 2024

Optics

Optical effect is mesmerising … pic.twitter.com/rfopuqJ4JP

— Figen (@TheFigen_) January 21, 2024

SCOTUS is late.

• Supreme Court Action Alters Course of Jan. 6 Defendant Sentencings (ET)

A recent Supreme Court decision to review a case called Fischer v. United States, which experts say could weaken prosecutors’ hand in hundreds of Jan. 6 cases, including former President Donald Trump’s, is already upending some defendant cases and sentencing proceedings. In December, the Supreme Court decided it would take up the appeal by Jan. 6 defendant Joseph W. Fisher of the Biden administration’s novel use of an Enron-era evidence-tampering law to prosecute hundreds of defendants for obstruction of Congress during the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach. The obstruction of Congress charge—which carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison—is the most widely charged felony in Jan. 6 cases, including against President Trump.

Mr. Fischer was indicted for various alleged offenses for his role in the Jan. 6 incident, including obstruction of law enforcement during a civil disorder, violent entry, and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds—and obstruction of Congress based on 18 U.S. Code Section 1512(c)(2), or “Tampering with a witness, victim, or an informant.” That’s an evidence-tampering provision that’s part of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act, which experts say was conceived largely to curb wrongdoing on Wall Street—but is now used by the Justice Department (DOJ) to prosecute Jan. 6 cases. Mr. Fischer challenged the obstruction charge, claiming that 1512(c)(2) doesn’t prohibit his alleged conduct on Jan. 6. A district court agreed but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit reversed that decision, siding with a broader reading of the provision, namely that it applies other forms of obstructive conduct, not just ones related to investigations and evidence.

While it’s unclear when the Supreme Court will hold the first hearings in Mr. Fischer’s appeal, several legal experts told The Epoch Times in earlier interviews that the high court is likely to find that 1512(c)(2) is being improperly used against Jan. 6 defendants. If the challenge proves successful, the Supreme Court’s decision could have far-reaching consequences, potentially erasing some charges against President Trump and overturning felony convictions for numerous Jan. 6 defendants. The implications extend beyond individual cases to the core strategy employed by the DOJ in securing convictions. Meanwhile, the fact that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear Mr. Fischer’s challenge to the provision is already having an effect on some Jan. 6 cases.

Since the Supreme Court agreed in mid-December to take up the Fischer appeal, a number of Jan. 6 defendants have asked judges to pause their trials and sentencing proceedings pending the outcome of the case. One of these is John Strand, a former underwear model convicted of obstructing Congress on the basis of 1512(c)(2), who describes himself as a “political prisoner.” He was sentenced to 32 months in prison. On Jan. 19, Mr. Strand’s attorneys filed a motion for release pending the Fischer appeal and a motion for reduction of sentence based on the zero-point offender guideline, which gives defendants with no criminal history an extra two points off their sentencing calculations, court filings show. The DOJ has taken the position that Jan. 6 defendants are ineligible for sentence reduction on the basis of the zero-point offender guideline, which has some exceptions, including for violent crimes.

Noteworthy in Mr. Strand’s filing is the singling out of the obstruction charge, which in his case is the only felony he’s been found guilty of. “In particular, a substantial question exists as to whether the statute underlying Strand’s sole felony conviction, 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2), applies to his conduct on January 6, 2021, in light of the Supreme Court’s recent decision to grant certiorari in United States v. Fischer,” it reads. While it’s too early to know whether the judge in Mr. Strand’s case will side with his request to reduce his sentence, several other Jan. 6 defendants have won early release based on the Supreme Court’s decision to review the Fischer case.

How Ukraine prolongs the war:
– Bombing civilians (Donetsk most recently)
– Grossly exaggerate number of Russian victims.
– Make preposterous demands (re: Zelensky “peace plan”, this zinger.)

• Russia Must Give Up Its Nuclear Weapons – Ukrainian Officials (RT)

As President Vladimir Zelensky pushes forward with his so-called “peace formula,” which was already dismissed by the Kremlin as “absurd,” Ukrainian officials continue to come up with additional terms and conditions. The conflict in Ukraine can only end with a “complete liberation” and “restoration of its 1991 borders,” Kiev’s deputy defense minister Ivan Gavrilyuk told the newspaper Der Tagesspiegel last week. Only then Moscow and the pro-Kiev “coalition” will be able to sign a document to “create preventive mechanisms so that Russia will never think about another war against Ukraine or any country in the future.” “This document must include Russia’s renunciation of nuclear weapons, because it poses a threat to the world,” Gavrilyuk claimed. A senior adviser to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, Mikhail Podoliak, voiced a similar idea, claiming that the negotiation should take place only when Moscow “suffers a global defeat,” or at the very least a series of “tactical defeats,” and “internal riots” that would threaten political stability in Russia and force it to “voluntarily give up nuclear weapons.”

“What is a global defeat? The Russian Federation will no longer be able to dominate… will not be able to use its veto right in the UN Security Council,” Podoliak explained. “Then conditions are possible for nuclear weapons, and for the number of carriers of nuclear weapons, including missiles of a certain range, and for cross-border buffer zones, etc.” During the World Economic Forum in Davos, Zelensky once again attempted to promote his so-called ‘peace formula’, which among other things proposes that Russia pay reparations, surrender its officials to face war crimes tribunals, and restore Ukraine’s 1991 borders. It has previously been rejected by the Kremlin as “absurd,” with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov referring to it as a publicity stunt and “a figment of a sick imagination.”

Moscow insists it never closed the door to talks but Kiev itself did, and now bears full responsibility for the situation in which it finds itself, Russian President Vladimir Putin said last week. Putin noted that the head of Ukraine’s negotiation team had recently admitted that Kiev was at one point ready to reach an agreement with Moscow – before then-British prime minister Boris Johnson convinced them to continue fighting. “Are they not idiots?” Putin asked, adding that if Ukraine had simply ignored Johnson, then the violence could be long over by now. “This just proves yet again that they are not independent people.” Even Ukraine’s former top spin doctor, Aleksey Arestovich, recently admitted that Kiev’ had the chance to make peace at the 2022 Istanbul talks but “something” changed Zelensky’s mind, and Moscow is unlikely to offer Kiev such favorable conditions ever again.

“..mobilization isn’t working.”

• Frontline Situation ‘Dramatic’ For Ukraine – German Reporter (RT)

The situation on the front lines is becoming increasingly disadvantageous for Ukraine, a Kiev-based correspondent with German daily Die Welt reported this week. Ukrainian troops severely lack ammunition and personnel to fend off Russian attacks, according to Paul Ronzheimer, citing “generals and soldiers” whom he has “constantly been in contact with.” Kiev’s troops have largely gone on the defensive following the failure of their much-hyped summer counteroffensive. The operation, which began in early June 2023, failed to gain much ground or bring about significant changes to the front lines, despite heavy personnel and equipment losses. Russia’s Defense Ministry has previously estimated Ukraine’s losses during the failed counteroffensive at 160,000.

Moscow also described Kiev’s total losses throughout the conflict as catastrophic, estimating that nearly 400,000 soldiers have been killed or wounded since February 2022. Late last year, Kiev intensified its mobilization efforts in a bid to replenish the troop pool. President Vladimir Zelensky stated earlier that the military wanted up to 500,000 new recruits. According to Ronzheimer, “mobilization isn’t working.” Ukraine has also been flooded with reports about difficult situations at the front lines, the reporter said, without mentioning any particular news pieces. Kiev’s forces were also about to run out of ammunition for its Western-made air defense systems, such as America’s Patriot, he noted, characterizing the situation as a “major concern” for the local population.

Ukrainian “generals and …soldiers” also told the correspondent that the frontline situation “is extremely tense,” particularly near the Donbass city of Avdeevka, a strategic location north of Donetsk that’s seen heavy fighting over the past months. The Ukrainian generals want “more mobilization” efforts, Ronzheimer wrote, adding that they want to “send more soldiers” into the fray. In another report earlier this week, the correspondent noted that Ukrainian troops had taken to the defensive along the entire front line in the East and the South, and were still struggling to hold ground. Moscow’s troops launched “massive attacks” in 80 areas “along several hundred kilometers of the front,” he added.

“We keep hearing the messages from the soldiers, which become more dramatic,” Ronzheimer reported, adding that Kiev’s troops had warned they would hardly be able to defend their current positions with whatever they had in stock as of that moment. It will be “very difficult” for Ukrainian troops to hold Avdeevka in the long term, since Moscow’s forces were making steady progress in that area, Ronzheimer said. “The Russians are on the offensive there and are making progress meter by meter,” he added, while noting that such advances are still quite costly for Moscow.

“..the assets of the extra-budgetary European Peace Facility ..”

• EU Mulls $21 Billion Military Aid to Ukraine Bypassing Hungary’s Veto (Sp.)

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban announced last month that Budapest had vetoed 50 billion euros in the EU macro-financial aid for Ukraine. The European External Action Service (EEAS) is developing a new plan to provide military assistance to Ukraine that will allow EU members to override Hungary’s veto of the bloc’s aid to Kiev, according to The Wall Street Journal. Under the plan, a draft of which was seen by the newspaper, EU members will provide Ukraine with more than 20 billion euros ($21.8 billion) in military aid over the next four years. The EEAS, for its part, is proposing the creation of a special military fund for Ukraine, which would include some 6.5 billion euros ($7 billion) from the assets of the extra-budgetary European Peace Facility (EPF) and provide up to 5 billion euros ($5.4 billion) per year from 2024 to 2027.

The purpose of the project is to reimburse several member states for the joint purchase of military equipment, including ammunition and air defense missiles, to be transferred to Ukraine. The remaining funds will be used to cover the costs of the EU military training program for Ukrainian soldiers. In 2024, the project will offer EU countries around 7.5 billion euros ($8.1 billion) in compensation for military aid. The structure of the new fund will reportedly make it possible to avoid ditches, which are regularly blocked by Hungary or used by Budapest as “leverage” to demand something in return. The proposal will reportedly be discussed by EU leaders at their summit scheduled for February 1, with a final decision likely to take weeks. Brussels has not yet commented on the WSJ report.

In mid-December, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban announced that his country had vetoed an expansion of the EU’s 2024-2027 budget to include 50 billion euros ($54.5 billion) in macro-financial assistance to Ukraine. “Summary of the nightshift: veto for the extra money to Ukraine, veto for the MFF [Multiannual Financial Framework] review. We will come back to the issue next year in the #EUCO [European Council] after proper preparation,” Orban wrote at the time on X, formerly known as Twitter. Last month, when asked whether Budapest would support a 50 billion euro financing plan for Kiev ahead of the forthcoming summit, Orban told reporters that Budapest supports the provision of more funds to Ukraine by the EU “outside” the bloc’s budget.

“..90,000 servicepeople with the participation of 31 countries..”

• Scale of NATO Drills Marks Return to Cold War-Era Patterns (Sp.)

The scale of NATO exercises Steadfast Defender-2024 marks the final and irrevocable return of the alliance to the Cold War schemes to oppose Russia, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko told Sputnik. On Thursday, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe Gen. Christopher Cavoli said that the alliance would begin Steadfast Defender-2024, “the largest NATO exercise in decades,” next week. About 90,000 servicepeople will be involved in the drills, he added. “These exercises are another element of the hybrid war unleashed by the West against Russia. The exercises of such scale – 90,000 servicepeople with the participation of 31 countries – mark the final and irrevocable return of NATO to the Cold War support schemes, when the military planning process, resources and infrastructure are being prepared for confrontation with Russia,” Grushko said.

He also noted that the preparation for the exercises “takes place in an artificially heated atmosphere of military psychosis.” “Irresponsible statements about a possible war with Russia, for which European citizens ‘should prepare,’ were made by the German defense minister, the Swedish commander-in-chief and the chairman of the NATO Military Committee. The goal is clear: by demonizing Russia, intimidating the average person, to justify the unbridled increase in military spending and the completely failed policy of supporting the Kiev regime with the aim of inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia. And at the same time, force the Europeans to join the arms race even more energetically, to the delight of the American military-industrial complex,” Grushko said.

“..European security is of little concern to the top NATO command, which is too busy trying to keep this tool of US influence relevant in the already lost war for the West’s global dominance..”

• NATO Drills Raise Risks of Inadvertent Escalation – Moscow (Sp.)

NATO’s upcoming military exercise, Steadfast Defender 2024, raises the risk of unintended military confrontation and undermines security in Europe, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko told Sputnik on Sunday. NATO announced Thursday that it would kick off exercise Steadfast Defender 2024 next week. The US-led alliance bills it as the largest NATO exercise in decades, with participation from some 90,000 troops from 31 allies and Sweden. “Any event of this scale significantly increases the risk of military incidents and further destabilizes security. But European security is of little concern to the top NATO command, which is too busy trying to keep this tool of US influence relevant in the already lost war for the West’s global dominance,” Grushko said.

The senior diplomat added that Russia would not be intimidated by what he described as a provocative show of force. He said his country had everything it needed to ensure its security and defense capabilities. The NATO exercise will run through May. NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, Gen. Christopher Cavoli, told reporters on Thursday that the allies planned to test out a conflict scenario against a “near-peer adversary.”

“..Washington is “not trying to defeat the Houthis. There’s no appetite for invading Yemen..”

• US Preparing For ‘Sustained’ Yemen Bombing Campaign – WaPo (RT)

The US is preparing for a “sustained” bombing campaign in Yemen after ten days of airstrikes failed to undermine the ability of Houthi fighters to target ships in the Red Sea, the Washington Post has reported, citing unnamed officials. The administration of President Joe Biden does not expect a protracted operation such as the US campaigns in Iraq or Afghanistan, but at the same time it cannot provide a timeframe for when Houthi military capabilities will be adequately diminished, the newspaper reported on Saturday. Washington’s strategy is to curb the ability of the Shiite militant group to target ships off the coast of Yemen, or at least create safe conditions for shipping companies to resume sending vessels through the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, sources added.

The Houthis have launched dozens of drone and missile attacks on commercial ships in the area in recent months, declaring support for Gaza amid Israel’s military operation in the Palestinian enclave. The militants have also vowed revenge against the US and the UK, who have been carrying out strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen for more than a week. “We are clear-eyed about who the Houthis are, and their worldview. So we’re not sure that they’re going to stop immediately, but we are certainly trying to degrade and destroy their capabilities,” one US official told the Post. Washington is “not trying to defeat the Houthis. There’s no appetite for invading Yemen,” a diplomat familiar with the situation explained.

Instead, the US wants “to degrade their ability to launch these kind of attacks going forward, and that involves hitting the infrastructure that enables these kind of attacks, and targeting their higher-level capabilities,” he added. President Biden ordered the strikes on Yemen for ideological reasons, rather than economic, as the US seeks to maintain its status as the world’s “indispensable nation,” officials claimed. The Washington Post expressed concern that the bombing campaign against the Houthis would become a “setback” for Biden’s goal of preventing the spread of the Israel-Hamas conflict to other parts of the Middle East. It could also end up “undermining his attempt to refocus US foreign policy on Russia and China,” the newspaper argued.

“..believed to be responsible for perpetrating, ordering, planning, and instigating international crimes, including genocide, committed over the past 100 days as well as since 13 June, 2014.”

• Mexico And Chile Call On ICC To Investigate Crimes In Gaza (Singh)

Chile and Mexico have called upon the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate the crimes being committed amid Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza. In the past 105 days, Israel has killed over 24,600 Palestinians in Gaza, with more than 7,000 people missing and presumed dead under the rubble. In a statement released on January 18, Mexico and Chile stated that their referral to the ICC was “due to growing concern about the latest escalation of violence, particularly against civilian targets, and the alleged continued commission of crimes under the jurisdiction of the Court, specifically since the attack on October 7, 2023, carried out by Hamas militants and the subsequent hostilities in Gaza.” The ICC is based at The Hague alongside the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which is the chief judicial organ of the United Nations that adjudicates disputes between states.

Meanwhile, the ICC is a separate legal entity that has been established under the Rome Statute, and is authorized to prosecute individuals. It has jurisdiction over crimes against humanity, war crimes, genocide, and crimes of aggression. The referral filed on Thursday follows after Bolivia, South Africa, Djibouti, and the Comoros approached the court in November, calling on chief prosecutor Karim Khan to investigate the commission of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in Palestine. While Israel is not a State Party to the Rome Statute and does not recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC, Palestine was accepted as a member state of the ICC in 2015. In February 2021, a pre-trial chamber of the court ruled that it had jurisdiction over the “territories occupied by Israel since 1967, namely Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem”.

The following month, the ICC, under former chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, opened an investigation into the “situation in Palestine” covering the period starting from June 13, 2014. This was after Bensouda concluded that there was a “reasonable basis to believe that war crimes “have been or are being committed” in the occupied Palestinian territories. In November, Bensouda’s successor, Karim Khan had stated that the investigation would cover “the escalation of hostilities and violence” since October 7. However, Palestinian human rights organizations and legal representatives of victims have denounced delays and double standards in the investigation under Khan. In early December, Khan visited Israel, however he did not go to the Gaza strip despite the fact that Israel had already killed over 15,000 people by that time. Even prior to the ongoing attacks on Gaza which began on October 7, Palestinian human rights organizations had repeatedly called on Khan to issue preventive statements “to deter the commission of more crimes” by the Occupation. These calls, along with calls to expedite the investigation, were ignored.

These organizations have since urged the Court to issue arrest warrants for Israeli political, security and military officials “believed to be responsible for perpetrating, ordering, planning, and instigating international crimes, including genocide, committed over the past 100 days as well as since 13 June, 2014.” In its statement on Thursday, the Mexican foreign ministry emphasized “the importance of guaranteeing the independence of the ICC prosecutor to investigate crimes committed in the context of the conflict in Gaza.” The submission to the ICC was welcomed by the Palestinian foreign ministry, stating that the move “confirmed the urgent need for the Court to fulfill its mandate, to deter, investigate, and prosecute the most serious crimes of concern for the international community.” “Israeli officials are not deterred as they continue their genocidal war.”

Saudis sitting on the fence.

• Iran and US Use Saudi Arabia to Swap Messages and Cool Gaza Tensions (MEE)

Nine months since Riyadh and Tehran restored ties after years of animosity, Saudi Arabia has assumed a new role as an intermediary between Iran and the United States, three sources in Iran told Middle East Eye. High-ranking officials in Riyadh have been instrumental in relaying messages between the countries and reducing tensions over Israel’s war on Gaza. The process began in November, when Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian attended an emergency summit in Riyadh on the Gaza war attended by leaders from the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and Arab League countries. An Iranian insider familiar with the matter told MEE that Amirabdollahian carried with him a message for the US to give to Saudi officials. It was a response to one recently received from Washington.

The Saudis then conveyed this message to senior officials in Washington, the source said. Another source in Iran’s foreign ministry told MEE that Saudi Arabia has been used as a conduit between the two sides alongside Oman, Qatar and Switzerland, which occasionally represents the US diplomatically in Tehran. The four countries have had to work as go-betweens repeatedly since the 7 October Hamas-led attack on Israel and the war on Gaza. Iran is the Palestinian group’s strongest backer, and other Iranian-associated groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthi movement in Yemen have attacked Israel and Israeli- and US-linked targets as Israel’s assault on Gaza has escalated. According to the foreign ministry source, the communications passed between Iran and the US have primarily focused on curbing tensions and avoiding greater escalation in the region.

The source said Tehran had warned the US about the potential consequences if Israel’s war on Gaza, which has already killed 24,000 people, brings regional tensions to an uncontrollable level. These included Israel being defeated in a broader regional war and increased security pressure on the US military. The first source said Saudi Arabia has been used as a conduit when tensions have ramped up following Israel’s assassination of senior commanders from the “Axis of Resistance”, the Iran-backed group of countries and armed groups in the region. After Israel killed Razi Mousavi, a general in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp’s elite Quds force, on 25 December, a Saudi delegation visited Tehran with a message from Washington that said the US wanted to contain the conflict in Gaza.

According to the first source, the US suggested potential concessions from Israel. One was that the US would not give backing or support to hard-right Israeli officials, which dominate Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. This, the source said, would be contingent on Iran not trying to derail efforts to establish full ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia, a process that was interrupted by the outbreak of the Gaza war. On 8 January, Hossein Akbari, the Iranian ambassador to Syria, said that Iran had received a message from “one of the Persian Gulf countries”. According to Akbari, this country sent a delegation to Iran with a message from the Americans, offering a plan to resolve conflicts for the entire region, rather than solely addressing the Gaza war. MEE understands this Gulf country was Saudi Arabia.

Another Iranian insider told MEE that Washington used Saudi channels to inform Tehran that it was about to strike Yemen’s Houthis, who have been staging attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea to disrupt Israeli supplies and commerce. The message urged Iran to restrain its allied groups during the US strike. It also indicated that the strikes on the Houthis would not initially be too strong, but if Tehran reacted forcefully then a fierce US response would follow.

“..a “deadly combination” of Biden’s “incompetence, radicalism, and weakness.”

• American Democracy ‘In Danger’ – Trump (RT)

Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump has countered claims that his possible reelection to the White House poses an existential risk to the American way of life, telling supporters in the US state of New Hampshire on Saturday that it is Joe Biden’s ‘incompetence’ that represents the real threat to democracy. Trump was speaking in Manchester ahead of primary elections beginning on Tuesday that could further cement his status as the likely GOP candidate to challenge presumptive Democratic nominee Biden in November. But after being accused earlier this month by Biden of being “willing to sacrifice democracy,” the former US president turned the tables on his political rival, saying that Biden’s incapacity for the job is a clear and present danger to the United States. “He is a threat to democracy,” Trump said, his comments delivered under a giant sign reading: ‘Biden attacks democracy.’

He added: “We have to get him out. You know why he is a threat to democracy? A couple of reasons, but you know the first reason? He’s grossly incompetent.” It is an accusation that Trump has repeated on several occasions throughout his bid to return to the White House. In October, he blamed the Hamas attack on Israel on a “deadly combination” of Biden’s “incompetence, radicalism, and weakness.” Trump, who faces 91 charges in a range of criminal cases as he campaigns for the nation’s highest office, also accused Biden’s administration of “weaponizing” the justice system against him. He added that Biden’s efforts to do so are being enabled by his “protectors” in the “fake news” media. The comments appeared to be a reference to claims made by Biden in Pennsylvania earlier this month in which he said that Trump intends to uproot democracy to ensure he wins the election.

“Whether democracy is still America’s sacred cause is what the 2024 election is all about,” Biden said on January 5. “Donald Trump’s campaign is all about him, not America, not you. Donald Trump’s campaign is obsessed with the past, not the future. He’s willing to sacrifice our democracy to put himself in power.” Meanwhile, GOP-nomination candidate Nikki Haley, whom polling suggests trails Trump by around ten percentage points in New Hampshire, openly questioned her Republican opponent’s mental fitness, following comments in recent days in which Trump appeared to mistake her for former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “When you’re dealing with the pressures of a presidency, we can’t have someone else that we question whether they’re mentally fit to do it,” Haley said on Saturday.

“..contingent election..” We touched on this before.

• RFK Seeks Path to Victory by Forcing House to Elect President (ET)

To win the 2024 election as an independent, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is firstly hoping for an outright win, but the second path to victory is to make sure no other candidate wins 270 electoral votes. If no candidate reaches 270 electoral votes in a presidential election, the winner is decided in a contingent election by the House of Representatives, where each state votes as a bloc. The House has picked the president twice in American history. In 1800, Aaron Burr and Thomas Jefferson were deadlocked after the electoral votes were counted. The House cast their ballots to elect President Jefferson, who received 61 percent of the popular vote. When none of the four presidential candidates received an electoral vote majority in 1824, the House elected John Quincy Adams on Feb. 9 the following year.

“People are starting to realize that Bobby can win, with where he is in the polls,” Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, the campaign manager of Mr. Kennedy, told The Epoch Times. “They are starting to see that, for the first time in their lifetime, the two-party system can be broken and they can vote for somebody who excites them rather than having to vote for the lesser of two evils,” she said. Ms. Kennedy is also the candidate’s daughter-in-law. Ms. Kennedy said Mr. Kennedy could be considered a preferred candidate over former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden, the likely Republican and Democrat nominees.

The prospect of Mr. Kennedy winning as a compromise candidate is relatively slim because a contingent United States election is decided by state delegations. Republicans currently hold a four-vote delegation lead, according to a tally maintained by ProPublica. The next House of Representatives, composed of lawmakers elected in 2024, would vote in a contingent election. A consensus forecast by 270toWin based on an aggregate of forecasts by five major analytics firms sees Republicans keeping their delegation majority in the House in 2024.

“..We were the gatekeepers, and we very much owned the facts as well.”

• WSJ Editor-in-Chief Admits To Davos Elites ‘We No Longer Own The News’ (ZH)

Thanks to the internet and (shrinking) press freedoms, legacy media outlets no longer have a monopoly on information and narratives. Case in point, during a WEF discussion at Davos entitled “Defending Truth,” Wall St. Journal EIC Emma Tucker lamented this loss of control over ‘the facts,’ as Modernity.news reports. “I think there’s a very specific challenge for the legacy brands, like the New York Times and like the Wall Street Journal,” Tucker said, adding “If you go back really not that long ago, as I say, we owned the news. We were the gatekeepers, and we very much owned the facts as well.” “If it said it in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, then that was a fact,” she continued, adding “Nowadays, people can go to all sorts of different sources for the news and they’re much more questioning about what we’re saying. “Russia, Russia, Russia!

At a discussion titled 'Defending Truth,' the WSJ editor-in-chief admitted to #Davos2024 #WorldEconomicForum elites that the legacy media no longer 'own the news', lamenting "We were the gatekeepers, and we very much owned the facts as well." Report here: https://t.co/FO3ASOIyuM pic.twitter.com/ukZKP4esNs

— m o d e r n i t y (@ModernityNews) January 19, 2024

European Commission VP Vera Jourova also piped up during the same discussion, calling the rise of “disinformation” a “security threat,” and suggesting that “It was part of the Russian military doctrine that they will start information war, and we are in it now.” Like when the Hillary Clinton campaign used a former (?) British spook’s Russian source to fabricate a hoax against Donald Trump, which was peddled through the Wall Street Journal and every single other legacy media outlet? That kind of information war? Or when 51 former US intelligence officials used disinformation to influence the 2020 election, suggesting the NY Post’s Hunter Biden laptop bombshell was Russian meddling? “Disinformation is a very powerful tool,” Jourová continued, adding that “In the EU we are focusing on improving of the system where the people will get the facts right. We don’t speak about opinions. We are not correcting anyone’s opinions or language. This is about the facts.” Bitch please.

X thread from Wall Street Apes.

“Estimated Cost For Tax Payers: $1.6 Quadrillion Dollars..”

• John Kerry Wants To Remove 1.6 Trillion Tons Of CO2 From The Atmosphere (X)

John Kerry Told The Washington Post He Wants To Remove 1.6 Trillion Tons Of Carbon Dioxide From The Atmosphere Via Direct Air Capture. Estimated Cost For Tax Payers: $1.6 Quadrillion Dollars That’s $1,600,000,000,000,000 (This isn’t a joke, he’s serious). “The lowest periods of carbon in the atmosphere and not only recorded history, in the history of life existing on the planet. In December of 2022, you told the Washington Post we need to remove 1,600,000,000,000 tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere via direct air capture. The cost for that is about $1,000 per ton or 1.6 quadrillion dollars. Now I said you said you didn’t know, But since 2015, since the last El Nino, about 500,000,000,000 tons have been have been emitted into the atmosphere. During that same period of time, 2015, if you look at the temperature graph, this is from NOAA.

The temperature has gone down. Show the next slide. This is from NASA satellite data. Temperature has gone down. You wanna have the Have the American taxpayers, my constituents that are having a hard time afford their groceries, pay for a car, buy a new home, Spend 1.6 quadrillion dollars to fix a problem that, a, doesn’t exist. And as a matter of fact, You might be exacerbating because it’s unknown. It is unknown at this time the low level that of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that might actually destroy life, because plant life all depends. As you know, secretary, Plant life all depends on CO2. And when we kill it, then we’re done too. I yield the ballots.”

John Kerry Told The Washington Post He Wants To Remove 1.6 Trillion Tons Of Carbon Dioxide From The Atmosphere Via Direct Air Capture

Estimated Cost For Tax Payers: $1.6 Quadrillion Dollars

That’s $1,600,000,000,000,000
(This isn’t a joke, he’s serious)

“The lowest periods of… pic.twitter.com/8u0uyi0HDH

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) January 21, 2024

Eagle

The size of this Steller's sea eagle

IG birdsjadepic.twitter.com/p2LoMxjL2O

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) January 22, 2024

Python

Reticulated python climbing a tree
pic.twitter.com/VBcVGfBzgu

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) January 20, 2024

Lions

Up close and personal pic.twitter.com/64wkQgOYZX

— Crazy Clips (@crazyclipsonly) January 20, 2024

Peacock
https://twitter.com/i/status/1749016505549758854

Murmuration
https://twitter.com/i/status/1749313443151376779

Bears

The way all the bears climbed up this tree
pic.twitter.com/D5ja9hEmBN

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) January 21, 2024

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Debt Rattle January 2 2024

Jan 022024

January 2, 2024 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:44 am Finance Tagged with: ballot, Bibi, Bill Clinton, contingent election, Jack Smith, Jeffrey Epstein, John Pilger, Trump 50 Responses »

Joan Miro The tilled field 1924

• How Congress May Select Our Next President In 2024 (Laura Loomer)

• Secretary Of State That Kicked Trump From Ballot Wants ‘Better Leaders’ (ZH)

• Who Are the Real Insurrectionaries? Part One (Victor Davis Hanson)

• Jack Smith: Trump’s Immunity Defense Could Allow President To Murder (JTN)

• Jack Smith Disputes Trump’s Claims in Appeals Court (ET)

• Israel’s Genocide Betrays the Holocaust (Chris Hedges)

• Israeli Supreme Court Strikes Down Bibi’s Judicial Overhaul Law (Axios)

• How Russia and The Arab World Defied Western Pressure In 2023 (Sadygzade)

• Zelensky is ‘Scum’ – Medvedev (RT)

• Congressional Nincompoops Saddle The US With NATO Forever (CP)

• Britain’s Arms Stockpile Reduced To ‘Nothing’ – The Times (RT)

• Pushback to Tyranny & Control Increases in 2024 – Catherine Austin Fitts (USAW)

• Bill Clinton To Be Identified Over 50 Times In Jeffrey Epstein Doc Dump (PM)

• The Great Clarification (Kunstler)

• 10 Vital Quotes From The Late John Pilger (Vitacchi)

John Oliver
https://twitter.com/i/status/1741677557810880580

Count the vote

JOE BIDEN: "We have put together the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics."

"I don't need you to get me elected."

"It's no longer just who gets to vote or making it easier for eligible people to vote."

"It's about who… pic.twitter.com/sx7gGqEvdH

— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) January 1, 2024

January is named after the Roman god Janus, protector of gates and doorways. Janus is depicted with two faces, one looking into the past, the other into the future.

X thread. ” If there are more than two candidates and no one hits 270, that triggers a contingent election..[..] where the House of Representatives selects a president and the Senate selects a vice president.”

• How Congress May Select Our Next President In 2024 (Laura Loomer)

Did you know that a winner of the 2024 Presidential election may not come to fruition due to a “contingent election”, which would then let Congress select the next President and Vice President? This is what @RobertKennedyJr is trying to accomplish by running as an Independent. He’s trying to create a contingent election in which neither candidate gets 270 electoral votes. RFK’s plan is to create a contingent election, as was admitted by his own PAC. An article outlining the PACs $15 million plan said, “A statement outlining the new plan also said it’s confident that Kennedy could win a contingent election, a possible scenario where no presidential candidate gets 270 electoral college votes.” This is why RFK switched from running as a Democrat to an Independent.

Recently, it was announced that “American Values” @AmValues2024, a Super PAC which was created to support RFK’s presidential campaign, is planning to spend $15 MILLION to get him on the ballot in 10 key states that collectively carry 210 electoral votes that are needed to win the 2024 election, including: Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Nevada, New York, and Texas. If RFK is able to pick up enough electoral votes to the point where neither Trump or Biden gets 270, then under the US Constitution, we would have what is called a “contingent election”, which is what happens if no candidate gets a majority in the Electoral College. To win the Electoral College, a candidate needs a majority — at least 270 electoral votes. If there are more than two candidates and no one hits 270, that triggers a contingent election, a fallback process created by the Twelfth Amendment where the House of Representatives selects a president and the Senate selects a vice president.

HOW WOULD THIS HAPPEN? House members vote as state delegations. Each state delegation gets a single vote, and a candidate becomes president with the support of a majority (26) of state delegations. If no candidate wins 26 state delegations by January 20th, then the vice president-elect becomes acting president. And if the Senate fails to select a vice president, then under the Twentieth Amendment and the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, the next eligible person in the presidential line of succession (potentially the speaker of the House) becomes acting president.

This could be disastrous, given the fact that Republicans only hold a 1 seat majority in Congress right now with the early retirement of @SpeakerMcCarthy, several other GOP members of Congress, and the ousting of George Santos @MrSantosNY. It will only take one more House GOP rep to retire early, and then Dems will have control of the House again before the 2024 election. I predict Dems take control of the House by March, and when they do, we will be one step closer to having a contingent election. This is all part of their plan to make sure Trump and Biden aren’t the next President. Congress would then be able to install their own President and Vice President if this happens. Hopefully you now see why @RobertKennedyJr is so dangerous. This could very well happen.

“Isn’t it the job of the American public to decide what leaders are “better leaders?”

• Secretary Of State That Kicked Trump From Ballot Wants ‘Better Leaders’ (ZH)

The precedent being set by states like Colorado and Maine could change the political landscape of America forever if allowed to go unchallenged. Removing presidential candidates from the ballot based on unilateral opinion rather than any kind of legally arbitrated decision or criminal conviction is the most slippery of slopes for a number of reasons. The most dangerous implication being that a handful of officials can decide for the entire population of their states (or the entire population of the country) what leaders they are allowed to vote for based on a “guilty until proven innocent” ideology. Meaning, all they have to do is make accusations of criminal behavior or criminal intent and then remove a candidate based on those accusations alone. No person or group should have that power.

“One could argue that this is already the case and that the two party system filters out candidates on a regular basis. However, the notion of state ballot removal is a decidedly leftist/Democrat affair clearly engineered to benefit the progressive power structure for many years to come. It’s not only about Donald Trump – Woke bureaucrats could use this trend in the future to deny ballot access to any conservative candidate on the grounds that they “might” represent a “threat to Democracy.” This is essentially the message conveyed by Secretary of State Sheena Bellows, now well known as the person responsible for single-handedly removing Trump from the 2024 election ballot in Maine. She argues “better leaders” must be put in positions of power to prevent “election sabotage” and the end of Democracy. The hypocrisy is mind blowing, and of course we have to ask: Isn’t it the job of the American public to decide what leaders are “better leaders?”

Bellows laces her argument with social justice platitudes about protecting minority voting rights, which she insinuates are under threat from “white supremacy.” This is a common claim among Democrats when referencing Republican efforts to require proof of citizenship for voters, which has nothing to do with “intimidation” or race. The diatribes of woke officials are not as random as they seem. Each buzzword is carefully chosen to elicit an emotional knee-jerk response and to create false associations. In this case, Bellows is falsely associating voter suppression with Republicans while Democrats are, in fact, engaging in voter suppression.

Not only that, but she is connecting Republican election suppression (which isn’t happening) to racial motivations (that don’t exist). It’s not surprising to discover that this effort is being headed by people with career ties to far-left organizations like the SPLC and ACLU. It has become exceedingly obvious in recent years that progressive institutions are a driving force behind national division, but they are also directly attempting to manipulate election outcomes. It’s no longer a matter of influencing citizens with arguments or propaganda, they want to dictate the mechanics of the system; elevating themselves as the arbiters of who is acceptable as a candidate and who is not.

X thread. “Bellows has no law degree. She was appointed by a majority vote of the Democratic-controlled Maine legislature, not through a popular ballot.”

• Who Are the Real Insurrectionaries? Part One (Victor Davis Hanson)

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows just ordered Trump’s name removed from the primary ballot in May. She claimed he is guilty in her view of “insurrection”—a crime Trump has never been charged with, much less convicted of. Her evidence, mostly gleaned from popular news accounts and video reports, would not stand up in a court of law. Bellows has no law degree. She was appointed by a majority vote of the Democratic-controlled Maine legislature, not through a popular ballot. Her legal expertise seems to be derived from years of political activism with the ACLU. We can see where the ultimate trajectory of this usurpation is going—once a single official decides to remove the leading primary and general election candidate of the opposition from the ballot by fiat. Tit-for-tat will likely follow and would unwind the republic.

Take Bellows’ action and then apply it to any future candidacy of Hillary Clinton. And by these new rules she surely would fail to qualify to have her name on a state ballot. Remember, in 2016 Hillary Clinton illegally hired a foreign national (by law forbidden to work in presidential campaigns), Christopher Steele, to create a “dossier” of smears and fake-news accounts, aimed at destroying her presidential opponent Donald Trump by extra-legal means. Clinton hid her illicit payments to Steele behind the paywalls of the DNC, the Perkins-Coie law firm, and Fusion GPS. Her leftwing associates and partisans in the waning Obama administration, the DOJ, State Department, FBI, and CIA worked hard to brand the slurs as credible, as they variously passed them off and leaked to the media on the eve of the election.

They and Democrats in congress later engineered the appointment of a special counsel, whose investigations consumed two years of the Trump administration’s term, before finding no “collusion”. Even three years after the election in 2019 and the special counsel’s findings, Clinton could still persist that Trump was an “illegitimate” president: “He knows he’s an illegitimate president”. She also declared that year that the 2016 election had been “stolen”: “I think it’s also critical to understand that, as I’ve been telling candidates who have come to see me, you can run the best campaign, you can even become the nominee, and you can have the election stolen from you”—de facto asserting the balloting was fraudulent. She was prepping the battlefield for 2020. So Clinton continued her denialism right up to the eve of the 2020 election, further claiming the 2016 election was rigged, “There was a widespread understanding that this election [in 2016] was not on the level.” To be continued…

Two articles on the same topic, but very different.

• Jack Smith: Trump’s Immunity Defense Could Allow President To Murder (JTN)

Allowing former President Donald Trump to use the presidential immunity defense could pave the way for a president to claim immunity from numerous charges such as murder and the sale of nuclear secrets so long as it was done under the claim of official activities, according to special counsel Jack Smith. Trump has argued that he is immune from criminal prosecution for activities that fall under his official presidential responsibilities, but Smith’s office, which charged Trump with allegedly attempting to overturn the 2020 election in his favor, vehemently denied such claims in an 82-page court filing Saturday.

Trump’s “approach would grant immunity from criminal prosecution to a President who accepts a bribe in exchange for directing a lucrative government contract to the payer; a President who instructs the FBI Director to plant incriminating evidence on a political enemy; a President who orders the National Guard to murder his most prominent critics; or a President who sells nuclear secrets to a foreign adversary,” Smith argued. Prosecutors said that in all of those examples, “the President could assert that he was simply executing the laws,” and thus be immune from prosecution. Smith made the filing in the D.C. Court of Appeals after the Supreme Court earlier this month rejected his request to rule on Trump’s immunity claims before an appeals court made a decision on the arguments.

If Trump prevailed on presidential immunity claims, the case against him still should not be dismissed because the charges against him fall beyond his official responsibilities, Smith also argued. “Even if a former President could claim immunity from criminal prosecution commensurate with his immunity from civil damages liability for official conduct, dismissal would be unwarranted because the indictment contains substantial allegations of a plot to overturn the election results that fall well outside the outer perimeter of official Presidential responsibilities,” prosecutors wrote.

The double jeopardy claim is crucial.

• Jack Smith Disputes Trump’s Claims in Appeals Court (ET)

Special Counsel Jack Smith Saturday urged the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to reject President Donald Trump’s immunity and double-jeopardy claim that he will be retried for similar charges on which he has already been acquitted. President Trump is not entitled to immunity in the election case and the criminal charges against him also didn’t violate the principle of double jeopardy, the prosecutors argued. Immunity for a U.S. president applies to civil liability only and not criminal, the special counsel’s office claimed. “The defendant, a former President, does not enjoy immunity from federal prosecution for the offenses charged in this case. Under separation-of-powers analysis, the President’s unique constitutional status provides immunity from civil liability for official conduct … but it does not render a former President immune from criminal liability when charged with violations of generally applicable federal criminal statutes,” reads the filing.

Meanwhile, although President Trump has been acquitted after being impeached over an event connected to Jan. 6, the special counsel’s office argued that its criminal charges filed against him don’t violate the principle of double jeopardy because the only remedies in an impeachment proceeding are removal from the office and disqualification. Mr. Smith argued those likely don’t meet the term “jeopardy.” Even if President Trump was put into jeopardy during the impeachment proceeding, the indictment charges filed by his office are different from what President Trump was impeached for, the special counsel argued.

Accordingly, Mr. Smith asked the appeal court to reject President Trump’s immunity and double-jeopardy defenses and affirm the district court’s ruling. Mr. Smith also pushed the court to rule on this promptly. “For the foregoing reasons, the Court should affirm the district court’s order denying the defendant’s motions to dismiss on Presidential-immunity and double-jeopardy grounds,” the prosecutors wrote. “The Government respectfully requests the Court to issue the mandate five days after the entry of judgment. Such an approach would appropriately require any party seeking further review to do so promptly.”

“..In the Warsaw Ghetto, the Germans handed out three kilograms of bread and one kilogram of marmalade to anyone who “voluntarily” registered for deportation..”

• Israel’s Genocide Betrays the Holocaust (Chris Hedges)

Israel’s lebensraum master plan for Gaza, borrowed from the Nazi’s depopulation of Jewish ghettos, is clear. Destroy infrastrutrue, medical facilities and sanitation, including access to clean water. Block shipments of food and fuel. Unleash indiscriminate industrial violence to kill and wound hundreds a day. Let starvation — the U.N. estimates that more than half a million people are already starving — and epidemics of infectious diseases, along with the daily massacres and the displacement of Palestinians from their homes, turn Gaza into a mortuary. The Palestinians are being forced to choose between death from bombs, disease, exposure or starvation or being driven from their homeland. There will soon reach a point where death will be so ubiquitous that deportation – for those who want to live – will be the only option.

Danny Danon, Israel’s former Ambassador to the U.N. and a close ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told Israel’s Kan Bet radio that he has been contacted by “countries in Latin America and Africa that are willing to absorb refugees from the Gaza Strip.” “We have to make it easier for Gazans to leave for other countries,” he said. “I’m talking about voluntary migration by Palestinians who want to leave.” The problem for now “is countries that are willing to absorb them, and we’re working on this,” Netanyahu told Likud Knesset members. In the Warsaw Ghetto, the Germans handed out three kilograms of bread and one kilogram of marmalade to anyone who “voluntarily” registered for deportation. “There were times when hundreds of people had to wait in line for several hours to be ‘deported,’” Marek Edelman, one of the commanders of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, writes in “The Ghetto Fights.”

“The number of people anxious to obtain three kilograms of bread was such that the transports, now leaving twice daily with 12,000 people, could not accommodate them all.” The Nazis shipped their victims to death camps. The Israelis will ship their victims to squalid refugee camps in countries outside of Israel. Israeli leaders are also cynically advertising the proposed ethnic cleansing as voluntary and a humanitarian gesture to solve the catastrophe they created. This is the plan. No one, especially the Biden administration, intends to stop it. The most disturbing lesson I learned while covering armed conflicts for two decades is that we all have the capacity, with little prodding, to become willing executioners. The line between the victim and the victimizer is razor thin.

The dark lusts of racial and ethnic supremacy, of vengeance and hate, of the eradication of those we condemn as embodying evil, are poisons that are not circumscribed by race, nationality, ethnicity or religion. We can all become Nazis. It takes very little. And if we do not stand in eternal vigilance over evil — our evil — we become, like those carrying out the mass killing in Gaza, monsters. The cries of those expiring under the rubble in Gaza are the cries of the boys and men executed by the Bosnian Serbs at Srebrenica, the over 1.5 million Cambodians killed by the Khmer Rouge, the thousands of Tutsi families burned alive in churches and the tens of thousands of Jews executed by the Einsatzgruppen at Babi Yar in Ukraine. The Holocaust is not an historical relic. It lives, lurking in the shadows, waiting to ignite its vicious contagion.

[..] The German playwright and revolutionary Ernst Toller, unable to rouse an indifferent world to assist victims and refugees from the Spanish Civil War, hanged himself in 1939 in a room at the Mayflower Hotel in New York City. On his hotel desk were photos of dead Spanish children. “Most people have no imagination,” Toller writes. “If they could imagine the sufferings of others, they would not make them suffer so. What separated a German mother from a French mother? Slogans which deafened us so that we could not hear the truth.” Primo Levi railed against the false, morally uplifting narrative of the Holocaust that culminates in the creation of the state of Israel — a narrative embraced by the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. The contemporary history of the Third Reich, he writes, could be “reread as a war against memory, an Orwellian falsification of memory, falsification of reality, negation of reality.” He wonders if “we who have returned” have “been able to understand and make others understand our experience.”

Raw power fight.

• Israeli Supreme Court Strikes Down Bibi’s Judicial Overhaul Law (Axios)

Israel’s Supreme Court on Monday narrowly struck down a controversial law that’s part of the Netanyahu government’s judicial overhaul and limited the court’s ability to review government decisions. The dramatic ruling could thrust Israel back into a constitutional and political crisis amid the war in Gaza and concerns about a potential war with Lebanon. A strong reaction by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his radical right-wing political allies could push former Defense Minister Benny Gantz to leave the emergency unity government that was formed after the Oct. 7 attack. If Gantz, who is part of the opposition National Unity alliance, left the war cabinet, it would leave Israel with a radical right-wing government to make decisions about the war, which could have implications for U.S. support of the war in Gaza.

Netanyahu’s Likud Party said in a statement that it is “unfortunate” that the court decided to publish a ruling that deals with a central disagreement in Israeli society amid the war in Gaza. “The court’s ruling is opposed to the people’s will for unity, especially in times of war,” the party said. Gantz said in a statement that everyone must abide by the court’s ruling. “There are no winners and losers today. We have one mutual goal – to win the war,” he said. “After the war we will need to settle the relationship between the different branches of power through dialogue and broad consensus.”. Opposition leader Yair Lapid said the court upheld its duty to protect the citizens of Israel. “If the government resumes the fight over the Supreme Court it will show they didn’t learn anything from Oct. 7,” Lapid said

The legislation the court struck down was passed last July. It limits the Supreme Court’s oversight of government actions and policies and ends the court’s ability to strike down government decisions and appointments on the basis of “reasonability.” The law was the first piece of legislation of Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul — a plan that destabilized Israel’s economy, military and foreign relations. The Supreme Court struck down the law in an 8-7 vote. The court ruled that the law should be canceled because it seriously and unprecedentedly damages Israel’s democratic character. Twelve out of 15 Supreme Court judges ruled that the court has the authority to conduct judicial oversight on basic laws and intervene in extreme cases when the Knesset oversteps its legislative authority.

A draft ruling was leaked a few days ago to Israel’s Channel 12 in an unprecedented way that resembled the leak of the 2022 Roe v. Wade ruling in the U.S. After the leak, Netanyahu and his political allies called on the court not to publish the ruling, claiming it would be divisive if it happened in the middle of the war in Gaza. Some also hinted that they believed the ruling would be illegitimate because two of the judges who supported striking down the law had already retired. President Biden called for the Israeli government to come to a broad consensus on judicial reform instead of pushing the plan unilaterally.

“..at the global level the situation is aggravated by the fact that the escalation in Gaza has become another fault line in the confrontation between the West and the world majority..”

• How Russia and The Arab World Defied Western Pressure In 2023 (Sadygzade)

On October 7, media around the world reported on Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, which was initiated by the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigade, a radical paramilitary group affiliated with Hamas. The horrific attack on Israeli territory left many civilians dead and more than 250 others taken hostage. In response, the Israeli government announced the launch of a ground anti-terrorist operation in Gaza, which was aimed at completely eliminating Hamas and other groups in the Palestinian exclave. This new escalation in the Middle East is still ongoing, and judging by the statements of Israeli officials and the scale of the clashes, the conflict will be long. Already the number of dead in Gaza has exceeded 21,000, while on the Israeli side the death toll is around 1,200.

The military action has shaken the already troubled region, disrupting the emerging normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, as well as leading to a diplomatic “cooling” of relations between the Jewish state and Türkiye, as well as a number of other states in the region. Russia, which has traditionally been a mediator and a member of the quartet on Middle East settlement together with the EU, US, and UN, has not stood aside. Since the first days of the escalation, Moscow has been calling on the parties to stop the violence and resume diplomatic negotiations on the basis of UN General Assembly resolutions. Moscow believes that a solution to the conflict is possible only through the establishment of an independent Arab state of Palestine and full recognition of the Jewish state of Israel by the Palestinians and other Arab states.

While Western countries and representatives of the Kiev authorities blamed Russia for instigating the hostilities, Moscow was actively consulting with the parties to the conflict and the main regional players. Russian diplomacy was also active within the UN, trying to initiate in the Security Council a resolution on the situation and calling for an immediate ceasefire, but all such attempts were blocked by Western countries. The conflict is still not over – there will be many more casualties on both sides – but at the global level the situation is aggravated by the fact that the escalation in Gaza has become another fault line in the confrontation between the West and the world majority. Moscow’s actions are viewed positively by the Arab Street and states that consider Russia to be the most unbiased and decisive player in the case. There are not many opportunities for settlement in the current situation, but Russian diplomacy will continue to try to bring the parties to the negotiating table one way or another.

“.. probably some scum like Zelensky is dreaming of our armed forces turning Kiev city center into some semblance of the Gaza strip.”

• Zelensky is ‘Scum’ – Medvedev (RT)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky is “scum” who would love to see his own civilian population killed, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has claimed. The official, who currently serves as deputy chairman of the Security Council, was commenting on a deadly strike on Belgorod, insisting that Moscow’s forces only hit military targets, in contrast to Kiev’s army. On Saturday, Ukraine unleashed an artillery barrage on the Russian city, which is located around 40km from the border. The attack came shortly after a Russian bombardment of multiple Ukrainian cities, and left 24 people dead and 108 injured, Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov reported. In a post on the Russian VK social media platform on Saturday, Medvedev wrote: “It is obvious that the terrorist strike on Belgorod and the death of our citizens is a bloody crime at the hands of the Banderite bastards [caused by their] powerlessness to change anything on the front line.”

He went on to say that “probably some scum like Zelensky is dreaming of our armed forces turning Kiev city center into some semblance of the Gaza strip.” Medvedev suggested that the Ukrainian leadership might be secretly wishing for such an attack by Moscow, as it would make it easier for them to “beg their masters” for more weapons. The office of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the Ukrainian strike as a “violation of international humanitarian law,” as quoted by RIA Novosti. An anonymous Moscow security source told RT’s Russian-language service that Zelensky had personally ordered his forces to target the Russian city.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Saturday that “Britain is behind the terrorist act,” with the US and EU also bearing responsibility. Ukrainian defense officials claimed that their forces had targeted exclusively military facilities, with any destruction of civilian infrastructure resulting from the “inefficient work of Russian air defenses.” Apart from condemning Kiev’s actions on Saturday, Medvedev wrote in his VK post that a day before, the “Russian army inflicted considerable damage on the Nazi regime’s military and other infrastructure.” According to the Ukrainian authorities, the Russian bombardment of several major cities, including the capital, Kiev, left 39 people dead and nearly 160 injured. The Russian Defense Ministry insisted that its drones and missiles strictly targeted “military facilities and infrastructure.” Any civilian casualties were attributable to the unprofessional performance of Ukrainian air defense forces, Moscow explained.

This made it through a GOP controlled House…

“..It’s aimed at Trump and one of the few decent things he might do if elected president..”

• Congressional Nincompoops Saddle The US With NATO Forever (CP)

Nobody in their right mind wants to be obliged to send their kid off to war in Eastern Europe if Romania and Moldova start bombing each other. Yet NATO membership requires just that. And courtesy of the best congress money can buy, now power to withdraw from NATO has been removed from the U.S. president and enshrined in the well-greased palms of our legislators. More specifically, on December 16 congress approved a bill barring the president from unilaterally exiting NATO without legislative approval. This is a disaster. It’s aimed at Trump and one of the few decent things he might do if elected president, namely ditch that trouble-making albatross, NATO. Naturally president Joe Biden did not delay signing the National Defense Authorization Act, which includes this new NATO provision; so we’re stuck with it.

You doubt this is bad news? Just look at NATO’s track record: bombing Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya and currently the abattoir NATO has made of Ukraine – or rather the disaster caused by NATO’s promise to absorb Ukraine. In Afghanistan, NATO performed with its usual, incomparable mediocrity, so the U.S. withdrew, convinced its puppet regime could hold off the Taliban for months. After all, the U.S. and NATO had bombed the country and the Taliban to smithereens – right? Well, it turned out our puppet couldn’t restrain the Taliban long enough for retreating U.S. jets to lift off from the tarmac. And what was NATO doing in Afghanistan for 20 years anyway? Don’t ask any of our military geniuses like David Petraeus, who kept telling us victory was just around the corner, and who even argued in the Atlantic, August 8 2022, that “we could have won.” Ha!

As for NATO’s 2011 military intervention in Libya, that was a debacle that transformed Africa’s most prosperous nation into a stone-age pit with open-air slave markets. The NATO 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia wasn’t much better, in that it should never have happened and arguably the only reason it did was so then President Bill “NATO Uber Alles” Clinton could distract the public from the lurid details of a sex scandal and impeachment. Thus the noble enterprises in which NATO has engaged, spreading mayhem, misery and murder across the globe in the name of freedom and democracy. What has NATO learned from these fiascos, seriatim? Arguably nothing.

Take NATO’s plans for the South China Sea and for Finland, plans which slate Taiwan for the cemetery and leave Finland bristling with U.S. bases from Helsinki in the south to Utsjoki in the north. You disagree that Taiwan’s headed for the grave? Well, numerous U.S. bigwigs have bandied about the notion of bombing Taiwan’s computer chip industry, rather than letting it fall into China’s hands. That’s American homicidal love for Taiwan. Meanwhile, back in July, NATO infuriated Beijing by portraying China as a major challenge to…you got it, NATO! What is NATO doing in the China Sea, you ask? Whatever Washington tells it to do. Lately, that means stirring up trouble and painting Beijing in the garish colors of a supervillain. NATO did so by announcing, according to Al Jazeera July 12, that China “challenged the alliance’s interests, security and values with its ‘stated ambitions and coercive policies.’”

The industry is salivating..

• Britain’s Arms Stockpile Reduced To ‘Nothing’ – The Times (RT)

Britain’s weapons stockpiles have been nearly completely emptied out by almost two years of deliveries to Ukraine, The Times has claimed. The British newspaper also reported that the UK, together with other European nations, is scrambling to ramp up arms production ahead of the 2024 presidential election in the US. While London has spent more than £4.6 billion ($5.7 billion) on arming Kiev since February 2022, NATO’s deputy supreme allied commander for Europe, Gen. Tim Radford, warned in July that the UK was running the risk of losing its status as a major power within the US-led bloc. The general cited personnel shortages, among other issues. In its article on Sunday, The Times quoted an anonymous Ukrainian military source as saying that Britain had “nothing” left in terms of weapons it could donate.

The unnamed official added, however, that London was still playing a crucial role in persuading other nations to ship their own arms to Kiev. According to the newspaper, citing an unnamed staffer from Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s office, Britain and several other European countries are “cranking through the gears” to make sure Ukraine has enough military supplies to fall back on in case a new US administration decides to withhold or drastically diminish defense aid. Britain and other Western nations are allegedly seeking to extend the conflict into 2025, and possibly beyond, the source said, in the hope of stretching Russia’s resources and forcing it to eventually relent. The Times also claimed that a growing number of Ukrainians are becoming weary of the conflict, with the idea of sealing a truce with Russia presumably gaining traction among the population.

This sentiment is in part fueled by the political impasses in the US and the EU, which have left a massive amount of aid for Kiev hanging in limbo, the paper reported, citing an anonymous Ukrainian military source. A similar report was published back in early October by the Telegraph, which at the time quoted an unnamed senior British military official as warning that the UK had “given away just about as much as we can afford.” Meanwhile, back in August, British MP Andrew Murrison, who serves as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence People and Families, floated the idea of allowing the British military to recruit candidates with such conditions as autism, Asperger’s, and ADHD. The lawmaker cited “serious” staffing shortages, adding that to tackle the problem London may also want to extend the retirement age for military personnel.

“..We have to push back because there is no going along with this. They are trying to kill us, number one. Then they are trying to take all of our stuff, and we can’t let them..”

• Pushback to Tyranny & Control Increases in 2024 – Catherine Austin Fitts (USAW)

Catherine Austin Fitts (CAF), Publisher of The Solari Report, financial expert and former Assistant Secretary of Housing (Bush 41 Admin.), says the top story (out of 20 top stories) of 2023 was massive, documented pushback to tyranny and control by the evil Deep State globalists. CAF explains, “Our top story of 2023 is ‘The Year of Pushback.’ It was so long, and it was so big, we had to make a special page and move the other 19 top stories to a whole different section on another page.” Just a few of the 2023 stories that documented this massive pushback, according to CAF, are, “Stories on Constitutional protections, different litigations on the First Amendment and the Second Amendment, and we have one on information sovereignty and infrastructure. We have stories on all the pushback against the media, including litigation to hold people accountable and stopping emergency powers. We have culture wars about saying no to international organizations.

Woke capital controls and ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance investing) is toast. The state AGs have gone after ESG and Larry Fink (BlackRock CEO), and he’s had to publicly backpedal. They are steamrolling him. We had another story about taking it to the streets and have a whole section on ‘Pushback Heros.’ . . . In 2023, people started to realize that it is kill or be killed. We have to push back because there is no going along with this. They are trying to kill us, number one. Then they are trying to take all of our stuff, and we can’t let them. CAF also talks about what she calls “massive collateral fraud.” CAF goes on to say, “The collateral fraud is enormous, and we have talked about the money (trillions of dollars) that has gone ‘missing’ for years from the federal government.

This is what’s been going on in the United States and around the world for years. You issue debt, you get a whole bunch of money, and then the money disappears. . . . So, there is an extraordinarily fraudulent system going on around the debt markets. The reality is if you are going to run a bubble like that, you need very strict control of the collateral. This is what “The Great Taking” is all about. 2024 is the year the pushback can put us over the top.” CAF thinks gold is a “must have” investment for the coming years. The US dollar is being weakened, but it is still “dominant and dangerous.” In closing, CAF says, “I think we are going see collisions at a spiritual, legal, financial and physical level increasing all over the planet. This is a real war, and we are in World War III now. The US is going to defend the dollar. . .”

“..Clinton has denied ever being on the island..”

• Bill Clinton To Be Identified Over 50 Times In Jeffrey Epstein Doc Dump (PM)

In an upcoming release of court documents related to the late Jeffrey Epstein, former President Bill Clinton will reportedly be identified as “John Doe 36,” as disclosed in a recent report by ABC News. The documents, pertaining to a 2015 lawsuit filed by Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre, mention Clinton over 50 times, with speculations suggesting that these references are linked to Giuffre’s efforts to compel the ex-president to testify against Epstein and his alleged accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell. Some mentions of Clinton are also anticipated to involve joint endeavors by Maxwell and Giuffre to press Epstein to disclose information in 2016, following his repeated invocations of the Fifth Amendment during a deposition in the same lawsuit.

“U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska ruled earlier this month there was no legal justification for continuing to conceal the ex-president’s name and more than 150 names other ‘John and Jane Does’ mentioned in the records. Preska ordered the unsealing to begin after Jan. 1” ABC reports. Individuals mentioned in the documents have already had their connections to Epstein and his abhorrent sex-trafficking network revealed. The forthcoming release is anticipated to disclose the identities of numerous accusers, alleged victims, former associates of Epstein, members of his inner circle, and individuals purportedly involved in his criminal activities. Among those mentioned is Prince Andrew, who, according to allegations, Giuffre was instructed by Maxwell and Epstein to engage in sexual activities with on multiple occasions.

Giuffre sought to issue a subpoena for Clinton’s testimony in her legal proceedings, asserting that she encountered the ex-president on Epstein’s secluded Caribbean island, Little St. James. Clinton has denied ever being on the island. The impending release is set to unveil the identities of more than 170 individuals, previously known as John and Jane Does, connected to Epstein. Judge Preska ruled for the unsealing of these documents just before Christmas, and they are slated to be made public starting January 2, after the New Year’s Day holiday.

“..The election of 2024, whether it is actually allowed to happen or not, will probably commence the extinction of the DC blob..”

• The Great Clarification (Kunstler)

I’m already liking 2024. Consequence is itching to return to the American scene. Somewhere around 2016, cause and effect got a divorce. After that, things just happened or unhappened with no further orders of effect, like some brute existence without purpose, meaning, or even awareness, except for the feeling of the lash on your back. After a long journey through a dark place, treading ever-deeper into the unknown, knowing you are in the presence of demons from one footstep to the next, worrying incessantly that God has abandoned you. . . the alarm bell is ringing, the light is shining through, your eyes roll up like window-shades, and it’s time to get your mind right! Yes, even nations have bad dreams. Welcome to the Great Clarification.

We are waking to the stupefying criminality of public life, to the immersive obvious bullshit of people in charge who don’t deserve your respect or compliance. How they got into these positions is only another feature of that totalistic criminality. What was hidden in plain sight will be revealed to those suffering mere hysterical blindness. It was fitting that the last extravagant political act of ’23 was Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows chucking Mr. Trump off the ballot there because. . . she felt like it. To save our democracy, you understand. That might be the terminal absurdity of the derangement we are leaving behind, the signature for much that has gone down in this country the past three years: women on the verge of a nervous breakdown throwing the crockery of law around the room at Daddy.

All this accomplishes, of course, is to disgrace authority in general and to turn America into one big broken home, making us a population of frightened runaways clinging desperately to a few square feet of ground, alone under the freeway ramp in the rain. That is no way to live. The way to live is to make yourself useful to your fellow humans and to get paid for it, and to find some joy and meaning in that human fellowship based on fair, consensual transactions — a pretty simple formula that has been supplanted by the evil idea that life is nothing but a shakedown. The election of 2024, whether it is actually allowed to happen or not, will probably commence the extinction of the DC blob. This entity has made itself malignantly inimical to the proper functioning of self-governing people, and everybody knows it. The blob will die of irrelevance and impotence as the “trust horizon” devolves downward and we are thrust back into the awesome task of reconstructing our local communities. There is so much to do.

X thread.

“Journalism is nothing if it’s not about humanity – it has to be about people’s lives.”

• 10 Vital Quotes From The Late John Pilger (Vitacchi)

John Pilger, the investigative anti-war journalist who spoke up for China and humiliated the western corporate media, had died—and every single report on this in the western media I have seen has carefully omitted this fact. Here are ten things he said that the world needs to know about the legendary journalist who died in London on Saturday, at the age of 84.

1) The west demonizes China to punish it for being good at business, Pilger said in a documentary, The Coming War Against China. Standing in modern Shanghai, he says to the camera: “Today, China has matched America at its own great game of capitalism – and that is unforgivable.”

2) After his film was shown in 2016, he said: “The true story of China and America needs to be told, especially in Australia, where, fuelled by America, an anti-China propaganda campaign seems to be inviting a military reaction.” However, the western corporate media refused to follow his lead, instead choosing to double down on their part in what he saw as a global scam in which the US stirs up conflicts in places such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the South China Seas, while the western media makes sure China is blamed for everything.

3) The Sinophobia of journalists and politicians in the global west was rooted in racism, he said. “The elite salivates for a deeply racist war against China,” he tweeted on a visit to Australia in March, 2023.

4) His main message in recent years has been about the importance of people developing scepticism about the narrative that the world is fed, and instead, realise we are being taught to hate the people America wants us to hate. “The United States dominates the Western world’s media. All but one of the top ten media companies are based in North America. The internet and social media – Google, Twitter, Facebook – are mostly American owned and controlled,” he told a conference audience in Norway on 6 September, 2022. Pilger regularly said that it was vital that the world’s public abandoned the western corporate media and turned to the new, small, independent voices rising up, using the internet to tell the truth about the world.

5) The Australia-born journalist was a major supporter of Julian Assange, whose Wikileaks organization in 2011 revealed a set of diplomatic cable messages which showed that there was no Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing in 1989. While fighting occurred elsewhere in the city, the protesters left the square peacefully, diplomats on site reported to their masters. Pilger regularly reminded the world how western leaders reacted when Assange revealed a series of important truths that punctured the “official” narrative. “Vice President Biden called him a ‘hi-tech terrorist’,” Pilger noted. “Hillary Clinton asked, ‘Can’t we just drone this guy?’”

6) In the 2022 speech, Pilger explained how the real China, an industrious community focused on itself, had been turned by the media into a fantasy-based monster trying to take over the world. “In less than a decade, a ‘good’ China has been airbrushed and a ‘bad’ China has replaced it: from the world’s workshop to a budding new Satan.”

7) He warned that journalists were leaving the most important elements out of their reports about China. “News about China in the West is almost entirely about the threat from Beijing. Airbrushed are the 400 American military bases that surround most of China, an armed necklace that reaches from Australia to the Pacific and south east Asia, Japan and Korea. The Japanese island of Okinawa and the Korean island of Jeju are loaded guns aimed point blank at the industrial heart of China. A Pentagon official described this as a ‘noose’,” Pilger said.

8) The independent Australian journalist railed against the fact that the astonishing story of China’s successful battle to lift its people from extreme poverty was almost never mentioned in the mainstream narrative, a fact that left him disgusted. “Epic achievements, such as the eradication of abject poverty in China, are barely known. How perverse and squalid this is,” Pilger said in his 2022 speech in Norway. He told a UK radio interviewer: “Journalism is nothing if it’s not about humanity – it has to be about people’s lives.”

9) The problem was not just that the media was pushing a false narrative about countries in the east, like China and Russia, but that it was doing so at the behest of the world’s most dangerous nation. “In my lifetime, the United States has overthrown or attempted to overthrow more than 50 governments, mostly democracies,” he told a conference audience. “It has interfered in democratic elections in 30 countries. It has dropped bombs on the people of 30 countries, most of them poor and defenceless. It has attempted to murder the leaders of 50 countries. It has fought to suppress liberation movements in 20 countries.” And yet the western corporate media still shoehorns every story to reinforce the “west is best” narrative.

10) In one of his last major speeches, in Sydney in March 2023, Pilger railed against the ridiculous diversion of hundreds of billions of dollars of Australian public money to the US war machine to protect the country against a non-existing invader. “China as the Yellow Peril fits Australia’s history of racism like a glove,” he said. True to form, the very western media groups he condemned for leaving out key facts, are this week printing obituaries about his death—and leaving out the very insights that made him respected by the public as a man not afraid to speak truth to power.

John Pilger will be missed. But his mission will be carried on by a thousand independent voices.

Rad
https://twitter.com/i/status/1741749165481173214

DNA

There is enough DNA in your body to stretch from the Sun to Pluto and back — 17 times.

There are about 37.2 trillion cells in the human body whose DNA sums to a total length of 2×10¹⁴ meters — enough for 17 Pluto round-trips.pic.twitter.com/3G8Tq4Yq5I

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) December 31, 2023

Kudu

Perspectives

Perspectives

📹birdbox studio
pic.twitter.com/46EMEc3qJy

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) January 1, 2024

Bottle cage

Bottle Cage Lagerstroemia Indica, several plant stems woven to make a vase. The plants are still alive in this shape pic.twitter.com/qkQgvcJpZA

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) January 1, 2024

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Debt Rattle November 15 2020

Nov 152020

November 15, 2020 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:56 am Finance Tagged with: Biden, contingent election, Covid19, foodbank, housing bubble, lockdowns, Trump, vaccine, war profiteers, warhawks 28 Responses »

Pablo Picasso Les femmes d’Alger Version 0 1955

• New US Defense Chief Tells Troops ‘Time To Come Home’ (F24)

• Biden’s Transition Team: War Profiteers, Beltway Chickenhawks (GZ)

• The Filthy Rich War Hawks That Make up Biden’s New Foreign Policy Team (MPN)

• Cecilia Muñoz Defended Family Separations Under Obama, Joins Biden Team (DN)

• Biden Will Fail To Bring Back ‘Normal’ Politics (Cook)

• How Pence & GOP Senators Could Try To Steal The Election (DP)

• Donald Trump’s Likeliest Path To Staying In Office (du Quenoy)

• Everybody Knows the Fight was Fixed (Curtin)

• Lockdowns Haven’t Brought Down COVID Mortality, But Killed Millions Of Jobs (Mises)

• COVID19 Vaccines May Have Potentially Unpleasant Side Effects (Kaiser)

• Australia Revels In Covid-free Days (G.)

• The Huge New Trade Deal ‘Western’ Media Do Not Like To Talk About (MoA)

• The Housing Bubble is Even Bigger Than the Stock Market Bubble (Mish)

• The EU Funds Global iPhone And Facebook Surveillance (F.)

• Bay Area Food Bank Now Serves 500k Working-Poor As Demand “Doubles” (ZH)

Great War of 2020
https://twitter.com/i/status/1327831816313704448

“We are not a people of perpetual war — it is the antithesis of everything for which we stand and for which our ancestors fought. All wars must end,” the memo reads. “Ending wars requires compromise and partnership. We met the challenge; we gave it our all. Now, it’s time to come home.”

• New US Defense Chief Tells Troops ‘Time To Come Home’ (F24)

Newly appointed Pentagon chief Christopher Miller signaled Saturday that he could accelerate the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan and the Middle East, saying, “It’s time to come home.” “All wars must end,” Miller, named acting defense secretary by President Donald Trump on Monday, said in his first message to the US armed services. He said that the US is committed to defeating Al Qaeda, 19 years after the September 11 attacks on the United States, and is “on the verge of defeating” the group. “Many are weary of war — I’m one of them,” he wrote in the message, dated Friday but posted early Saturday on the Defense Department’s website. “But this is the critical phase in which we transition our efforts from a leadership to supporting role,” he said.

“Ending wars requires compromise and partnership. We met the challenge; we gave it our all. Now, it’s time to come home.” Miller did not mention specific US troop deployments, but the reference to Al Qaeda appeared to single out Afghanistan and Iraq, where US troops were deployed after the September 11 attacks. The former US special forces officer and counterterrorism expert was named to lead the Department of Defense after Trump fired Mark Esper. Trump, who lost to Democrat Joe Biden in the November 3 election, has been pressing to pull US forces out of both countries since he came into office four years ago. Any such action would have to come in the 67 days before Biden takes office on January 20.

Esper cut US forces in Afghanistan by nearly two-thirds in the wake of the February 29 US-Taliban peace deal. But, drawing a line, he said he would hold troop numbers at 4,500 after this month until the Taliban, as they negotiate with the government in Kabul, follow through on pledged reductions in violence. Trump, however, has pushed for continued cuts, tweeting that he wants the troops “home by Christmas,” December 25. His national security advisor Robert O’Brien has said the goal is to cut to 2,500 by February.

It’s a long list.

• Biden’s Transition Team: War Profiteers, Beltway Chickenhawks (GZ)

A glance at the Biden-Harris agency review teams should provide a rude awakening to anyone who believed a Biden administration could be “pushed to the left” An eye-popping array of corporate consultants, war profiteers, and national security hawks have been appointed by President-elect Joe Biden to agency review teams that will set the agenda for his administration. A substantial percentage of them worked in the United States government when Barack Obama was president. The appointments should provide a rude awakening to anyone who believed a Biden administration could be pressured to move in a progressive direction, especially on foreign policy. If the agency teams are any indication, Biden will be firmly insulated from any pressure to depart from the neoliberal status quo, which the former vice president has pledged to restore.

Instead, he is likely to be pushed in an opposite direction, towards an interventionist foreign policy dictated by elite Beltway interests and consumed by Cold War fever. A prime example of the interventionist-minded establishment-oriented figures filling the Biden-Harris Defense Department agency team is Lisa Sawyer. She served as director for NATO and European strategic affairs for the National Security Council from 2014 to 2015, and worked for Wall Street’s JPMorgan Chase as a foreign policy adviser. Sawyer was part of the Center for a New American Security’s “Task Force on the Future of US Coercive Economic Statecraft,” which essentially means she participated in meetings that focused on methods of economic warfare that could be used to destabilize countries that refused to bow to American empire.

Sawyer believes the US government is not doing enough to deter Russian “aggression,” US troop levels in Europe should return to the levels they were at in 2012, and offensive weapons shipments to Ukraine should continue and increase in violation of the Minsk Agreements. “Instead of saying we will lift sanctions when Russia decides to comply with the next agreement, say that we will raise them until they do. Instead of kowtowing to Russia’s supposed spears of influence, provide Ukraine the lethal assistance it so desperately needs and increase US support to vulnerable nations in the gray zone,” Sawyer declared when testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2017.

US assistant secretary of state for African affairs Linda Thomas-Greenfield was appointed leader of the Biden-Harris State Department team. She is a stalwart ally of former US national security adviser Susan Rice, who pushed for war in Libya, supported the invasion of Iraq, and was involved in the decision to remove peacekeepers from the United Nations which enabled Rwanda genocide. As a developer and manager for US policy toward sub-Saharan Africa, she cheered President George W. Bush’s Millennium Challenge Account, a neocolonialist policy designed to privilege US corporations and facilitate the economic exploitation of so-called emerging African economies.

And then there’s more. Enjoy your cabal.

• The Filthy Rich War Hawks That Make up Biden’s New Foreign Policy Team (MPN)

Biden is no stranger to the rich and powerful. He kicked off his presidential campaign last year with a dinner for ultra-rich patrons at a Manhattan hotel, insisting that “nothing would fundamentally change” if he were elected, reassuring them that he would never demonize the rich and that they were not at fault for growing inequality. “I need you very badly,” he concluded. The former vice-president’s team is also looking to be made up of extremely wealthy individuals as well. His transition task squad has been, in his website’s words, crafted to ensure they “reflect the values and priorities of the incoming administration,” and includes executives from Lyft, Amazon, Capital One, Uber, Visa, and JP Morgan.

One name being strongly floated for a cabinet position is former mayor of Chicago Rahm Emanuel, a move being met with vocal opposition from the left. Emanuel’s first tour of duty in the White House came under President Bill Clinton, where he was one of the key architects of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a deal that decimated manufacturing in the Midwest, hobbled union power, and sent well paying blue-collar jobs to Mexico. In 2016, Trump constantly brought up NAFTA as a weapon to attack Hillary Clinton, winning him votes (and states) across the region. Emanuel also pushed through welfare “reform” bills that sharply reduced benefits for the poor and worked with Biden on the now-infamous 1994 Crime Bill, a key accelerator of mass incarceration.

He then left politics to pursue a lucrative career in finance — something that quickly netted him a reported $16 million fortune — before returning and becoming President Obama’s advisor and enforcer. Many of the president-elect’s potential picks for foreign policy positions — including Susan Rice and Michele Flourney — have onlookers worried. “With a Biden administration, we can expect a continuation of the Middle East wars and possible escalations in places like Syria. Biden could be better than Trump on Iran and Yemen, but judging by his potential cabinet picks, that should not be expected without significant pressure from antiwar activists and lobbyists in Washington,” Dave DeCamp, assistant news editor of AntiWar.com told MintPress.

“His administration will likely be more successful than Trump at expanding the empire, with a more diplomatic and coherent approach at building alliances to face Russia and China.” Rice, who was the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and National Security Advisor under Obama, has amassed a fortune of around $40 million. After leaving office, she was given a spot on the board of Netflix, being paid $366,666 as a base salary. On top of that, she was given $2.3 million worth of the company’s stock. However, it is her husband, former ABC News executive producer Ian O. Cameron (whose father was a super-wealthy industrialist), who is the prime source of her wealth. She was a key driver in U.S. action in Libya, and also successfully lobbied Obama to place harsher sanctions on North Korea and Iran.

Unpossible, that was all Trump, remember?

• Cecilia Muñoz Defended Family Separations Under Obama, Joins Biden Team (DN)

Joe Biden has named President Obama’s former top immigration adviser Cecilia Muñoz to his transition team. During her time in the White House, Muñoz often justified Obama’s harsh immigration enforcement policies, including the administration’s deportation of thousands of Central American children and its decision to kill an executive order that would have halted deportations. In 2011, Muñoz was interviewed by PBS’s Maria Hinojosa. Cecilia Muñoz: “At the end of the day, when you have an immigration law that’s broken and you have a community of 10 million, 11 million people living and working in the United States illegally, some of these things are going to happen, even if the law is executed with perfection. There will be parents separated from their children. We don’t have to like it, but it is a result of having a broken system of laws. And the answer to that problem is reforming the law.”

“Those now bleating about how dangerous his current assertions of election fraud are should remember they were the ones who smashed that particular glass house..”

• Biden Will Fail To Bring Back ‘Normal’ Politics (Cook)

The narrowly averted Trump second term has at least prompted liberal pundits to draw one significant lesson that is being endlessly repeated: Biden must avoid returning to the old “normal”, the one that existed before Trump, because that version of “normal” was exactly what delivered Trump in the first place. These commentators fear that, if Biden doesn’t play his cards wisely, we will end up in 2024 with a Trump 2.0, or even a rerun from Trump himself, reinvigorated after four years of tweet-sniping from the sidelines. They are right to be worried. But their analysis does not properly explain the political drama that is unfolding, or where it heads next. There is a two-fold problem with the “no return to normal” argument.

The first is that the liberal media and political class making this argument are doing so in entirely bad-faith. For four years they have turned US politics and its coverage into a simple-minded, ratings-grabbing horror show. A vile, narcissist businessman, in collusion with an evil Russian mastermind, usurped the title of most powerful person on the planet that should have been bestowed on Hillary Clinton. As Krystal Ball has rightly mocked, even now the media are whipping up fears that the “Orange Mussolini” may stage some kind of cack-handed coup to block the handover to Biden. These stories have been narrated to us by much of the corporate media over and over again – and precisely so that we do not think too hard about why Trump beat Clinton in 2016.

The reality, far too troubling for most liberals to admit, is that Trump proved popular because a lot of the problems he identified were true, even if he raised them in bad faith himself and had no intention of doing anything meaningful to fix them. Trump was right about the need for the US to stop interfering in the affairs of the rest of the world under the pretence of humanitarian concern and a supposed desire to spread democracy at the end of the barrel of a gun. In practice, however, lumbered with that permanent bureaucracy, delegating his authority to the usual war hawks like John Bolton, and eager to please the Christian evangelical and Israel lobbies, Trump did little to stop such destructive meddling. But at least he was correct rhetorically.

Equally, Trump looked all too right in berating the establishment media for promoting “fake news”, especially as coverage of his presidency was dominated by an evidence-free narrative claiming he had colluded with Russia to steal the election. Those now bleating about how dangerous his current assertions of election fraud are should remember they were the ones who smashed that particular glass house with their own volley of stones back in 2016.

Steal? You sure?

• How Pence & GOP Senators Could Try To Steal The Election (DP)

Since Donald Trump lost the election, he and GOP state legislators have suggested that the race was marred by voter fraud, and Trump administration officials have been publicly talking about Trump remaining president. On Friday, Vice President Mike Pence reportedly told a conservative group that there is already a “plan” for a second Trump term. Though Republicans have not produced any evidence to substantiate the fraud claims, they have continued to promote the fraud allegations — which could serve as a rationale for state legislatures, Republican electors and Mike Pence to try to use the Electoral College system to hand Trump a second term.

The unlikely-but-possible scenario revolves around the prospect of competing slates of electors. That situation has only arisen once in the modern era, when in 1960 then-vice president Richard Nixon faced a decision on whether to recognize Hawaii’s Republican or Democratic electors during the joint session of Congress to certify that year’s election results. The mini controversy spotlighted the pivotal role that the vice president can potentially play in the Electoral College system — and according to Harvard University law professor Larry Lessig, it should worry everyone right now.

In an interview with The Daily Poster, Lessig explained how Vice President Mike Pence could try to recognize slates of Republican electors sent to Congress from five Biden states where GOP legislators have started voicing allegations of voter fraud. In that situation, the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate would be in a position to decide on Pence’s move — and if they backed him up, Lessig says they could potentially throw the presidency to Trump. So far, GOP leaders in four of those states are saying they will not try to replace Biden electors with Trump electors in defiance of certified election results. Lessig’s group Equal Citizens is launching a petition on its website that calls on Republican U.S. senators to commit right now to uphold elector slates that represent the will of the popular vote in all states.

“26 out of the 50 state delegations are majority Republican. Assuming they deliver strict party-line votes, Trump would win the contingent election and be constitutionally re-elected..”

• Donald Trump’s Likeliest Path To Staying In Office (du Quenoy)

So far, the media debate revolves almost entirely around the final tabulation of votes. If enough evidence of fraud surfaces, and if court rulings based on that evidence favour Trump decisively, it is possible that he could win by court decision. Another scenario, however, lies in the recesses of the American Constitution. A significant part of Trump’s legal strategy is oriented toward preventing crucial states from certifying results that would be averse to him. All states require vote certification before electors are dispatched. Two states, Maine and Nebraska, allow slates of electors to be split in their support of candidates, but neither is among the states in contention. If Trump can throw sufficient dirt on the electoral process to convince the courts to issue injunctions against certification in just enough states, neither candidate would win the majority of 270 electoral votes needed to triumph in the Electoral College.

In that scenario, Article Two of the US Constitution, as modified by the Twelfth Amendment, provides for a “contingent election” in which the president is chosen by the House of Representatives from among the top three electoral vote winners, while the vice president is chosen by the Senate (recall that the electoral voting for president and vice president are separate). A “contingent election” provides for the vice president to be elected by a simple majority of votes cast by individual Senators. With a Republican Senate majority in the current Congress, Mike Pence would presumably win re-election as vice president. In the bigger contest, however, the House’s vote for president is not by individual ballot, but rather by state delegation en bloc. That means that all the Representatives from each state would cast one collective vote for president.

In the current Congress, 26 out of the 50 state delegations are majority Republican. Assuming they deliver strict party-line votes, Trump would win the contingent election and be constitutionally re-elected. This procedure is obscure, but not unprecedented in choosing American presidents. Thomas Jefferson was elected president in a contingent election in 1801, when the electoral vote in the previous year’s election resulted in a tie between him and incumbent president John Adams. In 1825, Adams’s son John Quincy Adams also won the presidency in a contingent election, in which four candidates split the Electoral College vote that resulted from the election of 1824. The younger Adams prevailed over Andrew Jackson, who had won large pluralities in both the popular and electoral votes.

“Neither has the guts or the intelligence. They are nowhere men who fear the fate that John Kennedy faced squarely when he turned against the CIA and the war machine.”

• Everybody Knows the Fight was Fixed (Curtin)

At the end of Henrik Ibsen’s classic play, A Doll’s House, Nora, the aggrieved wife, leaves her husband’s house and all the illusions that sustained its marriage of lies. She chooses freedom over fantasy. She will no longer be played with like a doll but will try to become a free woman – a singular one. “There is another task I must undertake first. I must try and educate myself,” she tells her husband Torvald, a man completely incapable of understanding the social programming that has made him society’s slave. When Nora closes the doll’s house door behind her, the sound is like a hammer blow of freedom. For anyone who has seen the play, even when knowing the outcome in advance, that sound is profound. It keeps echoing. It interrogates one’s conscience.

The echo asks: Do you live inside America’s doll house where a vast tapestry of lies, bad faith, and cheap grace keep you caged in comfort, as you repeat the habits that have been drilled into you? In this doll’s house of propaganda into which America has been converted, a great many of our basic assumptions are totally illusory. Americans who voted for either Trump or Biden in the 2020 election are like Torvald clones. They refuse to open that door so they might close it behind them. They live in the doll’s house – all 146+ million of them. Like Torvald, they are comforted. They are programmed and propagandized, embracing the illusion that the electoral system is not structured and controlled to make sure no significant change can occur, no matter who is president. It is a sad reality promoted as democracy.

They will prattle on and give all sorts of reasons why they voted, and for whom, and how if you don’t vote you have no right to bitch, and how it’s this sacred right to vote that makes democracy great, blah blah blah. It’s all sheer nonsense. For the U.S.A. is not a democracy; it is an oligarchy run by the wealthy for the wealthy. This is not a big secret. Everybody knows this is true; knows the electoral system is sheer show business with the presidential extravaganza drawing the big money from corporate lobbyists, investment bankers, credit card companies, lawyers, business and hedge fund executives, Silicon Valley honchos, think tanks, Wall Street gamblers, millionaires, billionaires, et. al. Biden and Trump spent over 3 billion dollars on the election. They are owned by the money people.

Both are old men with long, shameful histories. A quick inquiry will show how the rich have profited immensely from their tenures in office. There is not one hint that they could change and have a miraculous conversion while in future office, like JFK. Neither has the guts or the intelligence. They are nowhere men who fear the fate that John Kennedy faced squarely when he turned against the CIA and the war machine. They join the craven company of Johnson, Ford, Carter, Reagan G.H.W. Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama. They all got the message that was sent from the streets of Dallas in 1963: You don’t want to die, do you?

But it’s easy to find the exact opposite view as well.

• Lockdowns Haven’t Brought Down COVID Mortality, But Killed Millions Of Jobs (Mises)

[..] many proponents of lockdowns still contend that every covid infection is a failure of public policy. But this position is largely a luxury of white-collar workers who can afford to work from home. Lockdowns have been described as “the worst assault on the working class in half a century.” Martin Kulldorff, a biostatistician, says, “the blue-collar class is ‘out there working, including high-risk people in their 60s.” Kulldorff’s colleague Jay Bhattacharya notes that one reason “minority populations have had higher mortality in the U.S. from the epidemic is because they don’t often have the option…to stay at home.” In effect, top-down lockdown policies are “regressive” and reflect a “monomania,” says Dr. Bhattacharya. With this in mind, it is easy to see why more affluent Americans tend to view restrictive measures as the appropriate response.

For many Americans, prolonged periods of time without gainful employment, income, or social interaction are not only impossible but potentially deadly. Martin Kulldorff notes that covid-19 restrictions do not consider broader public health issues and create collateral damage; among the collateral damage is a “worsening incidence of cardiovascular disease and cancer and an alarming decline in immunization.” Dr. Bhattacharya correctly notes that society will be “counting the health harms from these lockdowns for a very long time.” Bhattacharya emphasized the politicization of these restrictions: “When Black Lives Matter protests broke out in the spring, ‘1,300 epidemiologists signed a letter saying that the gatherings were consistent with good public health practice,’” while those same epidemiologists argued that “we should essentially quarantine in place.”

Such a contradiction defies logic and undercuts arguments about the lethality of this virus. If this novel virus truly were as devastating to the broader public as advertised, then political leaders supporting mass protests and riots during a pandemic seem to be ill founded. This contradiction has been cited in countless lawsuits challenging the validity and constitutionality of covid-19 restrictions. Separately, these often heavy-handed restrictions have targeted constitutionally protected rights like the freedom of religion. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito criticized the Nevada governor’s restrictions saying, “that Nevada would discriminate in favor of the powerful gaming industry and its employees may not come as a surprise…We have a duty to defend the Constitution, and even a public health emergency does not absolve us of that responsibility.” This scathing criticism, however, did not gain the support of the Supreme Court as a 5–4 majority deferred to the governor’s “responsibility to protect the public in a pandemic.”

“We are asking people to take a vaccine that is going to hurt..”

• COVID19 Vaccines May Have Potentially Unpleasant Side Effects (Kaiser)

Pfizer is expected to seek federal permission to release its Covid-19 vaccine by the end of November, a move that holds promise for quelling the pandemic but also sets up a tight time frame to make sure consumers understand what it will mean to get the shots. The vaccine, and likely most others, will require two doses to work, injections that must be given weeks apart, company protocols show. Scientists anticipate that the shots will cause enervating flu-like side effects — including sore arms, muscle aches and fever — that could last days and temporarily sideline some people from work or school. And even if a vaccine proves 90 percent effective, the rate Pfizer touted for its product, 1 in 10 recipients would still be vulnerable. That means, at least in the short term, as population-level immunity grows, people can’t stop social distancing and throw away their masks.

[..] Pfizer and its partner, the German company BioNTech, said Monday that their vaccine appears to protect 9 in 10 people from getting Covid-19, although they didn’t release underlying data. It’s the first of four Covid-19 vaccines in large-scale efficacy tests in the U.S. to have posted results. Data from early trials of several Covid-19 vaccines suggest that consumers will need to be prepared for side effects that, while technically mild, could disrupt daily life. A senior Pfizer executive told the news outlet Stat that side effects from the company’s vaccine appear to be comparable to those of standard adult vaccines but worse than those of the company’s pneumonia vaccine, Prevnar, or typical flu shots.

The two-dose Shingrix vaccine, for instance, which protects older adults against the virus that causes painful shingles, results in sore arms in 78 percent of recipients and muscle pain and fatigue in more than 40 percent of those who take it. Prevnar and common flu shots can cause injection-site pain, aches and fever. “We are asking people to take a vaccine that is going to hurt,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine and health policy at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. “There are lots of sore arms and substantial numbers of people who feel crummy, with headaches and muscle pain, for a day or two.”

For how long?

• Australia Revels In Covid-free Days (G.)

When the premier of Queensland held her regular Covid-19 update on Friday she couldn’t help letting a smile creep across her face. “Now, here’s a good one,” Annastacia Palaszczuk told reporters. “I think all Queenslanders are going to be happy about it.” She went on to announce that Brisbane’s Suncorp stadium would host a capacity 52,500 crowd for the forthcoming State of Origin rugby league decider against New South Wales next week. “The cauldron can be filled to 100% capacity,” she said. In the midst of the pandemic, the idea of responsible leaders encouraging citizens to gather in large crowds to sit or stand shoulder to shoulder with strangers might seem to be a case of extreme recklessness.

But in Australia, where the Covid-19 pandemic has largely been controlled after months of lockdowns, border closures and strict limits on gatherings, moments like these are becoming more and more common. Last month, footage from a packed nightclub in Western Australia went viral, offering a surreal image of pre-Covid normality even as countries in the northern hemisphere began to return to lockdowns amid surging case numbers. In Sydney, about 40,000 fans were present for the rugby league grand final last month. The country has reason to be bullish about its successes. On Friday, Australia recorded no new cases of the virus for the fifth day in a row. In Victoria, where a second-wave spike of the virus forced Melbourne into a months-long lockdown and left hundreds dead, Friday marked the 14th day in a row with no new cases.

Includes Australia, South Korea and New Zealand.

• The Huge New Trade Deal ‘Western’ Media Do Not Like To Talk About (MoA)

Tomorrow a new trade agreement between 15 Asian states will be signed. It will soon be seen as a milestone in the global economic history. But only very few ‘western’ media have taken note of it or of the huge consequences the new agreement will have. The agreement is also a huge victory for China over U.S. hegemony in Asia: Fifteen Asia-Pacific nations including China and Japan plan to sign the world’s biggest free trade deal this weekend. The FTA will cut tariffs, strengthen supply chains with common rules of origin, and codify new e-commerce rules. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is expected to be announced at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit, which Vietnam is hosting virtually.

It will involve the ten member states of the ASEAN bloc – Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam – as well as their trade partners Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea. The new economic bloc will thus represent around a third of the world’s gross domestic product and population. It will become the first-ever free trade agreement to include China, Japan, and South Korea – Asia’s first, second and fourth-largest economies. The economies of the RCEP members are growing faster than the rest of the world. The agreement is likely to accelerate their growth. India is the only country that was invited but is missing in the deal. Its Hindu-fascist Modi regime had bet on the U.S. led anti-Chinese QUAD initiative pressed for by Trump and Pompeo and thereby lost out in trade terms.

Bubbles “R” The Economy

• The Housing Bubble is Even Bigger Than the Stock Market Bubble (Mish)

Stocks may be expensive based on historical measures, but it’s nothing compared to skyrocketing home values says Robert Shiller.

“Consider that the Case-Shiller National Home Price index has gained in excess of 6% per year on average since January 2012, while net rental income has barely kept up with inflation, increasing just less than 2% per year. The result is that home prices seem as overvalued as they were in the spring of 2005, nine months before the peak. One way to measure home valuations is with a cyclically adjusted price to earnings (CAPE) ratio developed by Yale University professor and Nobel Laureate Robert Shiller for stocks. The concept can be applied to a broad swath of assets by dividing the current price of an asset by the average annual inflation-adjusted earnings over the prior 10 years. The chart above shows CAPE for U.S. home prices and the S&P 500 Index since 1996.

The bad news is all previous history came at higher mortgage rates. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate fell below 3% for the first time in August 2020, and rates are close to the lowest possible levels given the credit risk and costs of writing mortgages. It’s one thing to be a peak valuation, it’s another to be at peak valuation with no discernable upside.” Shiller compared home prices to stocks based on CAPE. To compute the CAPE for housing he used rent. My chart looks at household income vs the Case-Shiller Home Price Index. Both indexes have a base year of 2000. Household income is annual and the latest year available is 2019. I used Case-Shiller quarterly data. Since 2000, median household income is up about 64%. Home prices are up 118%. Robert Shiller calls this a bubble and so do I.

Just lovely.

• The EU Funds Global iPhone And Facebook Surveillance (F.)

Police across the world are getting special training from a little-known European Union agency on how best to snoop on Facebook and Apple iPhones, according to documents obtained by nonprofit Privacy International. The files reveal that CEPOL, the EU’s law enforcement training agency, instructed officers across the globe, from within Europe and in Africa, on how to use malware and other tools to gain access to citizens’ phones and monitor social networks. In some cases, the training was funded by EU aid coffers and went to countries with histories of human rights abuses, Privacy International warned. Furious about the previously secret initiatives that are aiding surveillance rather than protecting people from it, Privacy International and fellow human rights organizations are calling for reform, demanding that aid money going to intelligence training be diverted to more altruistic programs.

The revelations land just days after the EU Parliament announced plans to curb spy tool exports where human rights abuses were possible. “Today’s revelations confirm our worst fears about the diversion and securitization of EU aid,” said Edin Omanovic, advocacy director of Privacy International. “Instead of helping people who face daily threats from unaccountable surveillance agencies, including activists, journalists and people just looking for better lives, this ‘aid’ risks doing the very opposite. “The EU as the world’s largest provider of aid and a powerful force for change must enact urgent reforms to these secretive and unacceptable programmes. Failure to do so is a betrayal not just of the purpose of aid and the people it’s supposed to benefit, but of the EU’s own values.”

Silicon Valley.

• Bay Area Food Bank Now Serves 500k Working-Poor As Demand “Doubles” (ZH)

The virus pandemic is threatening another lost decade, similar to the Great Recession of 2007-2009, or even the Great Depression of the 1930s, for America’s working poor. Widespread permanent job loss and the collapse of small and medium-sized enterprises have become a severe risk to the broader recovery – as the economic fallout from the virus-induced downturn could linger for years. Case in point, the San Francisco Bay Area has lost 350,000 jobs this year – leaving many households with food and housing insecurity problems ahead of the holiday season. Local news station KQED offers a sobering reminder of the economic devastation left behind from the virus – and one that will likely continue to intensify as virus cases explode to new highs, forcing state officials to reimpose new social distancing restrictions.

KQED said, “food banks are racing to keep up with increased demand for food — and volunteers.” One of the top food banks in the state, called Second Harvest of Silicon Valley, has “literally doubled the amount of food we’re distributing,” said CEO Leslie Bacho. Bacho continued: “We already serving a quarter-million people. Now we’re serving a half million people.” She said many of the folks picking up care packages at food banks across the Bay Area are coming for the first time. “This is a testament to how the pandemic-induced economic crisis is disproportionately impacting low-wage workers,” she added.

“We are seeing so many people who are already just living on the edge, having to then burn through their savings,” Bacho said. “More than half the people we’re serving now have never sought food assistance before.” Someone named “Gabriel” sent Second Harvest of Silicon Valley a donation of around $1,300 – the letter Gabriel received from the food bank outlines the dire situation playing out in the Bay Area.

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Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.
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This is extremely dangerous to our democracy
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