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Debt Rattle October 15 2024

Oct 152024
 
 October 15, 2024  Posted by at 8:29 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  60 Responses »


Andrea Pozzo Ceiling Fresco, Church of St. Ignazio, Rome (entire ceiling is flat) 1685-94

 

• Lawfare is Jihad Against Our Country (James Howard Kunstler)
• ‘Something Very Wrong’ With Kamala Harris – Trump (RT)
• Kamala Harris Has A Major Problem With Male Voters (ZH)
• Trump Plans To Expand Border Patrol By 10,000, Reward Existing Agents (JTN)
• Liberals Are Losing their Minds over Elon Musk (Turley)
• Whoever Wins This Pennsylvania County Is Expected To Win The White House (ET)
• Military Intervention in US Domestic Affairs? (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Young Men in US Are Shifting Right, as Many Feel ‘Left Behind’ (Manley)
• Speaker Johnson Says FEMA Spent Just 2% Of $20 Billion In Disaster Aid (JTN)
• US Emergency Workers ‘Hunted By Militia’ – WaPo (RT)
• US Sets Stage for Direct Participation in Middle East War (Miles)
• Imperial Israel (Miles)
• Israel Does What It Does; It Was Always Planned This Way (Alastair Crooke)
• Germany Is Committing ‘Economic Suicide’ – Who’s To Blame? (Amar)
• UK Police Officers Resigning in Droves as Country Roiled by Protest (Miles)
• Ukraine’s Battlefield Situation ‘Critical’ – ex-NATO Official (RT)

 

 

 

 

SNL

 

 

Bill ad

Jennings

Kamala

O’Reilly

Cost cutting

Orban

Kash Patel
https://twitter.com/i/status/1845476000596971736

60m

Jan 6

3rd attempt

 

 

 

 

Jim in fine form. “It’s a tragic turn of fate for our country that the law, and language with it, have been turned into weapons for national suicide.”

• Lawfare is Jihad Against Our Country (James Howard Kunstler)

Marc Elias was the original expeditor of the RussiaGate hoax in 2016 from his perch at Perkins Coie, then Hillary Clinton’s campaign law firm, which laundered payments to Christopher Steele, front-man for Glenn Simpson’s Fusion GPS political PR shop, which concocted the fraudulent “dossier,” and set in motion a train of DC intel blob legal shenanigans aimed at defenestrating Donald Trump from the White House — the Mueller Investigation, impeachment, etc. While all that was going on through the Trump term, and with the Covid-19 Op providing cover, Mr. Elias engineered the 2020 changes in many states’ election laws and bylaws to permit large-scale mail-in voting, organized ballot-harvesting activities, and the use of drop-boxes for receiving bundled votes. He and his George Soros-financed staff lawyers sued states that attempted to require voter-identification, and provided legal protection for Mark Zuckerberg’s $419-million-dollar assault on election precinct staffing in swing states.

When the 2020 election concluded suspiciously, Mr. Elias and his gang joined lawsuits in every case where the balloting was contested and got more than sixty of them dismissed on the basis of “standing,” without the merits of the cases being heard. This is Lawfare. This time around, 2024, Mr. Elias has done everything possible to ensure that millions of illegal aliens stuffed into swing states will have their putative identities attached to harvested mail-in ballots from addresses such as Walmart parking lots and storage units, and has filed lawsuits wherever a state threatens to require proof of citizenship for voting. He has also filed sixty peremptory lawsuits to obstruct attempts to audit any election count after November 5 — as if it is an affront to democracy to even ask questions about official misconduct. A parallel Lawfare scam underway is the Democratic Party-sponsored 65 Project that seeks to disbar Trump-adjacent lawyers who attempt to challenge any voting irregularities in this year’s election. It’s mission statement reads:

“The 65 Project is a bipartisan effort to protect democracy from these once-and-future abuses by holding accountable Big Lie Lawyers who bring fraudulent and malicious lawsuits to overturn legitimate election results, and by working with bar associations to deter future abuses by establishing clear standards for conduct that punish lies about the conduct or results of elections.” Notice the term “Big Lie” to foreclose any inquiry at all into election fraud. That half the people in this country accept such an Orwellian con tells you the vital role played by the perversion of language in the Democratic Party’s war against the citizens of this land. Exactly who is to say, in advance of the event, that any objection to a vote count is fraudulent and malicious? Answer: the people who have maliciously committed fraud. The Democrats have been grooming the public for years with that phrase, the Big Lie, in exactly the same way that pedos groom innocent pubescents who accept the authority of any grown-up, no matter what debauchery they are subjected to.

It’s a tragic turn of fate for our country that the law, and language with it, have been turned into weapons for national suicide. The net result is a nation that can’t think straight anymore and cannot construct any coherent set of rules to live by. So we find ourselves in a society where stealing is no longer a crime, where border-jumping has been downgraded to a clerical error (“undocumented”), where little children are allowed to decide whether they are male or female, where speech that disagrees with the authorities agenda is “misinformation” subject to censorship and prosecution, where candidates for the highest office get selected “democratically” without any votes cast, and where you can be run-over and ruined financially in court by the bottomless legal resources of the Deep State for just speaking your mind.

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Am I allowed to find this funny?

”Joe Biden became mentally impaired. Kamala was born that way..”

• ‘Something Very Wrong’ With Kamala Harris – Trump (RT)

Former US President Donald Trump has called on Vice President Kamala Harris to take a cognitive test, calling her “slow and lethargic.” Harris urged Trump to release his medical records over the weekend, questioning “whether he is fit to be president of the United States.” In a post on his Truth Social platform on Monday, Trump declared that “it is very important that Kamala Harris pass a test on cognitive stamina and agility.” “Her actions have led many to believe that there could be something very wrong with her,” he continued. “Even 60 Minutes and CBS, in order to protect Lyin’ Kamala, illegally and unscrupulously replaced an answer she had given, which was totally ‘bonkers’, with another answer that had nothing to do with the question asked.” “Also, she is slow and lethargic in answering even the easiest of questions,” Trump continued. “We just went through almost four years of that, we shouldn’t have to do it again!”

Last week, CBS News broadcast an interview with Harris that had been heavily edited, with the vice president’s lengthy and rambling answers – seen in a preview released before the final broadcast – cut and replaced with completely different responses. Trump initially focused his anger on CBS, declaring that the network should be shut down and sold “to the highest bidder.” However, his latest attack on Harris came after the Democratic candidate questioned his physical and mental fitness. After releasing a statement from her doctor describing her health as “excellent,” Harris called on Trump to follow suit, claiming that his unwillingness to do so demonstrates that he does “not want the American people to see what he is doing and whether he is fit to be President of the United States.” At 78, Trump is 19 years Harris’ senior, and is currently the oldest nominee for president by a major party in US history. Trump released a letter from his doctor last November which stated that his “overall health is excellent” and that his “cognitive exams were exceptional.”

Dr. Bruce Aronwald, Trump’s personal physician since 2021, said his cancer screening tests were all negative, cardiovascular tests were normal, and he had reduced his weight through daily physical activity and an “improved diet.” Trump repeatedly attacked President Joe Biden over his mental and physical fortitude until July, when Biden suspended his reelection campaign after appearing confused during a debate with the former president. With Harris replacing Biden atop the Democratic ticket, Trump repurposed his repertoire of insults and jibes to fit his new opponent. ”Joe Biden became mentally impaired. Kamala was born that way,” Trump said at a campaign rally last month. “She was born that way. And if you think about it, only a mentally disabled person could have allowed this to happen to our country,” he continued, going after Harris for her lax border security performance.

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Less popular among men than Trump is among women. Wow.

• Kamala Harris Has A Major Problem With Male Voters (ZH)

It’s no secret that men aren’t fans of Kamala Harris – and the Democrat party is in full panic mode over it. Look no further than their recent cringe-fest commercials, Tim Walz awkwardly trying to load a shotgun with his balls, and Barack Obama lecturing black men for their lack of support. They’ve even resorted to oversampling women in polls to achieve the desired result. And who could forget Hillary Clinton suggesting that women who voted for Trump only did so because their husbands pressured them.

This weekend, New York Times opinion podcaster Lulu Garcia-Navarro’s reaction to JD Vance encapsulated the situation. When asked whether expelling illegal immigrants would exacerbate the housing crisis due to a lack of construction labor, Vance suggested that “You could re-engage men to enter the labor market.” Garcia-Navarro was taken aback – clearly unable to grasp the notion that modern men would want to fill those positions.

Breaking it down in a viral post on X is John Konrad, CEO of maritime news website gCaptain. “Listen to her shock—her disbelief. She doesn’t get it. She thinks men wouldn’t want to work in construction, that we’d rather sit in cushy office jobs, sipping $6 lattes in front of Zoom calls,” Konrad says of Garcia-Navarro. He then lays out one of the major problems with men building things in America – red tape, which Democrats apply liberally to anything they can’t directly control. Why not build ships here? Because our shipyards are buried in OSHA regulations, HR policies, union rules—everything moves at a snail’s pace. I don’t want to build slowly with tons of paperwork and red tape—I want to BUILD. They don’t get it. They don’t see how hard it is to build in this country while making progress, earning a decent living, and having freedom. In South Korea, I had all three, but it wasn’t home.

I could get a shipyard job here but I’d make half what I made in South Korea with four times the paperwork and it would take years to build one ship. No thanks. Lulu is shocked I’d give up my “thinking job.” For construction. Sure, I LOVE my job now—but I’d throw it all away to build again. To construct. It’s like the movie Office Space. My wife said it’s a “guy movie,” and she’s right. Most people think it’s just an office comedy – or think the stapler guy “won” because he’s now rich. But to guys – real men- it’s a hero’s story. The main character leaves it all behind… and ends up working construction! That’s the happy ending. Listen to her voice. Hear the contempt: “They’d work construction?” YES, I WOULD, LULU. And I wouldn’t just build condos. Turn us loose, and we’d build grand ships, towering bridges, and homes with character and strength.

American men are the best builders in the world. But we’re shackled by HR, red tape, DEI, lawyers and endless regulations. All the bullshit the NYTimes constantly advocates for. We are sick of it. We are sick of the Times. We are sick of you Lulu. Sick of you telling us what we want. We want to build… and not build for ourselves but build great things for YOU. Yes YOU Lulu. Great things for women and men and children of all colors and religions and backgrounds. Big great things that advance all of us together. That’s why we look up to @elonmusk —he’s out there building rockets and robots. – ROCKETSHIPS AND ROBOTS!

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“..a 10% raise for all agents, and a $10,000 dollar each retention and signing bonus..”

• Trump Plans To Expand Border Patrol By 10,000, Reward Existing Agents (JTN)

Visiting an Arizona border front exhausted by the Biden-Harris migrant crisis, former President Donald Trump on Sunday unveiled a plan to expand the U.S. Border Patrol by 10,000 employees and reward existing agents with raises and bonuses if he is elected. “I will always stand with the incredible men and women of Border Patrol,” Trump told a rally in Prescott, Ariz., where he was surrounded by frontline Customs and Border Patrol employees. The union representing the 16,000 border agents also endorsed Trump at the event before he laid out his plan.

The former president said Border Patrol agents were suffering from a morale crisis because of the policies of the Biden-Harris administration had let millions slide across the border, and because false accusations earlier in the administration that agents had mistreated migrants. “They have a tremendous shortage because they haven’t been treated right. They want to do their jobs. You know, they consider it bad treatment when you’re not allowed to do your jobs,” Trump said. “I will be asking Congress to approve immediately a 10% raise for all agents, and a $10,000 dollar each retention and signing bonus,” he added.

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“The intense hatred for Musk is due to the fact that he was the immovable object in the path of their formerly unstoppable force.”

• Liberals Are Losing their Minds over Elon Musk (Turley)

This week, Elton John publicly renounced the Rocket Man — no, not the 1972 song, but Elon Musk, whom he called an “a**hole” in an awards ceremony. Sir Elton, 77, is only the latest among celebrities and pundits to denounce Musk for his support of former president Donald Trump and his opposition to censorship. Musk-mania is so overwhelming that some are calling for his arrest, deportation and debarment from federal contracts. This week, the California Coastal Commission rejected a request from the Air Force for additional launches from Vandenberg Air Force Base. It is not because the military agency did not need the launches. It was not because the nation and the community would not benefit from them. Rather, it was reportedly because, according to one commissioner, Musk has “aggressively injected himself into the presidential race.” By a 6-4 vote, the California Coastal Commission rejected the military’s plan to let SpaceX launch up to 50 rockets per year from the base in Santa Barbara County.

Musk’s SpaceX is becoming a critical part of national security programs. It will even be launching a rescue mission for two astronauts stranded in space. The advances of SpaceX under Musk are legendary. The Air Force wanted to waive the requirement for separate permits for SpaceX in carrying out these critical missions. To the disappointment of many, SpaceX is now valued at over $200 billion and just signed a new $1 billion contract with NASA. Yet neither the national security value nor the demands for SpaceX services appear to hold much interest for officials like Commissioner Gretchen Newsom (no relation to California’s governor, Gavin Newsom): “Elon Musk is hopping about the country, spewing and tweeting political falsehoods and attacking FEMA while claiming his desire to help the hurricane victims with free Starlink access to the internet.”

Newsom is the former political director for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 569. It did not seem to matter to her that increased launches meant more work for electrical workers and others. Rather, it’s all about politics. Commission Chair Caryl Hart added “here we’re dealing with a company, the head of which has aggressively injected himself into the presidential race and he’s managed a company in a way that was just described by Commissioner Newsom that I find to be very disturbing.” In my book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I discuss how Musk became persona non grata when he bought Twitter and announced that he was dismantling the company’s massive censorship apparatus. He then outraged many on the left by releasing the Twitter Files, showing the extensive coordination of the company with the government in a censorship system described by a federal court as “Orwellian.”

After the purchase, former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton called upon Europeans to force Musk to censor her fellow Americans under the notorious Digital Services Act. Clinton has even suggested the arrest of those responsible for views that she considers disinformation. Silicon Valley investor Roger McNamee called for Musk’s arrest and said that, as a condition of getting government contracts, officials should “require him to moderate his speech in the interest of national security.” Former Clinton Secretary of Labor Robert Reich wants Musk arrested for simply refusing to censor other people. Former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann called for Musk to be deported and all federal contracts cancelled with this company. As with many in the “Save Democracy” movement, Olbermann was unconcerned with the denial of free speech or constitutional protections. “If we can’t do that by conventional means, President Biden, you have presidential immunity. Get Elon Musk the F out of our country and do it now.”

Of course, none of these figures are even slightly bothered about other business leaders with political opinions, so long as, like McNamee, they are supporting Harris or at least denouncing Trump. Musk has failed to yield to a movement infamous for cancel campaigns and coercion. The usual alliance of media, academia, government and corporate forces hit Musk, his companies and even advertisers on X. Other corporate officials collapsed like a house of cards to demands for censorship — see, for example, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. Musk, in contrast, responded by courageously releasing the Twitter Files and exposing the largest censorship system in our history. That is why I describe Musk as arguably the single most important figure in this generation in defense of free speech. The intense hatred for Musk is due to the fact that he was the immovable object in the path of their formerly unstoppable force.

Turley

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Long article. These are just the juiciest bits.

• Whoever Wins This Pennsylvania County Is Expected To Win The White House (ET)

It’s not just the Erie County Republican Party that’s hard at work trying to flip the county back to Trump’s camp. Leo Williard, a small business owner, has set up what he calls “Trump factories” in two auto dealerships owned by his friend and located just outside downtown Erie. While still managing his own business, Williard told The Epoch Times that he spends hours every week talking to and converting Democratic voters to Trump’s side. Williard said he was inspired to do so by the city of Erie’s Democratic leanings: While the rural and suburban areas are more evenly divided, the city itself votes overwhelmingly for Democrats. Many of those who come into the dealership are from the city, he said. “And we started talking to those people, and I have a table set up in the corner of his office up there that I call the ‘Trump corner.’ I call this whole process the ‘Trump factory,’” Williard said, adding that he was bringing as many as five to 15 Democrats a day over to Trump’s side.

“You can’t believe the people we are turning from Democrat to Trump.” For many, financial concerns—particularly inflation—are the most pressing issue, Williard said, agreeing that inflation could be described as “the No. 1 issue” in the county right now. The modest income of many residents makes the hit harder than it might be in more affluent areas, Williard said. Williard said that Democrats’ decision to nominate Vice President Kamala Harris did energize the Democratic base in the city, but he is confident. “I still think that Erie County, based on the work I see being done and the enthusiasm I see, will go red. I think it will turn the state red,” Williard said. Republicans have seen strong signs for optimism—but recent Democratic victories in the county still undercut any sort of certainty.

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The Biden Regime Has Just Issued a Very Suspicious Directive Permitting Military Intervention in US Domestic Affairs

• Military Intervention in US Domestic Affairs? (Paul Craig Roberts)

The Department of Homeland Security has flagged individuals questioning COVID-19 origins, vaccine efficacy, and election integrity as potential domestic terrorism threats. Is a coup being set in place? A new Department of Defense directive 5240.01 issued September 27, 2024, just prior to the November presidential election allows the US military to use lethal force against American citizens in assisting police authorities in domestic disturbances. A report on this development lists these civil liberties concerns:

Right to protest: There are fears that expanded authority could suppress legitimate protests. Privacy rights: Increased military involvement in domestic intelligence gathering could infringe on privacy. Due process: The military’s role in law enforcement could bypass standard due process protections. Freedom of speech: The broad definition of “national security threats” could target individuals for their political beliefs. Civilian control: The expanded military role could erode civilian oversight of the military.

Unless Trump cuts a deal with Democrats not to hold them accountable and also a deal with the Ruling Elite not to interfere with their control, I can see no way that either will permit Trump to be President. The Biden regime and the Trump Justice (sic) Department and FBI are criminal operations. I can see indictments and arrests for those who have weaponized law enforcement. The Ruling Elite and leading Democrats such as Hillary Clinton and John Kerry can all be arrested, honestly unlike Trump and his supporters, for insurrection as they have openly called for the overthrow of the United States by demanding the overthrow of the First Amendment of the US Constitution. No fooling, this is treason. The US is the Constitution. Advocating the overthrow of the Constitution is advocating the overthrow of the United States. This is a major issue of our time, and it is not mentioned — which displays the control the elite have over what can be an issue subject to notice and discussion.

That one month prior to the presidential election the corrupt Biden regime issued a directive that permits the US military, purged of its patriotic officers, to use lethal force against American citizens is an indication that something is afoot. Why is such a directive suddenly needed, a directive that goes against all previous policy? Here is a possible scenario: If despite the whore media’s assault on Trump and the in-place legalized election theft procedures in the swing states, the Democrats and Ruling Elite conclude that the election can neither be won nor stolen, an orchestrated false flag insurrection is staged that activates Department of Defense directive 5240.01 issued September 27, 2024. Trump, his supporters, the Republican Party, probably sparing the RINOs as a fake opposition party will be needed to carry on the illusion of democracy under one-party rule, will be arrested as insurrectionists. The courts will be helpless as they have no enforcement powers, and any intervention against the coup will be misrepresented as “siding with insurrectionists.”

Absurd! Extreme! Nutcase! No, I am none of these. Just think of all the violations of US law and international law by Democrat officials. They are subject to arrest nationally and internationally. Trump, unless he cuts the deals I mentioned, is a threat to the Ruling Establishment as he can put most of them in prison. How can the Democrats and the Ruling Elite let a man and a movement this dangerous to them become President? They cannot. Unless Trump sells out, he is in a fight to the death. Elon Musk knows it. Musk wondered on Tucker Carlson how long his prison sentence would be if Trump loses the election. Most Americans, however, are too insouciant to realize that if Trump loses the election, or it is stolen from him, or prevented from happening, there will never again be an election in the United States of America. A Stalin type election, perhaps, where 99.9% of the votes are taken by the ruling personage.

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“..financially dependent on their parents with about 30% of those aged 18 to 25 continuing to live at home with a parent..”

• Young Men in US Are Shifting Right, as Many Feel ‘Left Behind’ (Manley)

According to data from the Pew Research Institute, young men in the US without college degrees are making less money than previous generations and are less likely to be working full time. Fearful of inflation, the housing crisis, and poor job prospects, more young men in the US are switching to the Republican party. Less than two decades ago, young men could be seen as solidly Democratic, a report from NBC News explained citing pollsters and social scientists. But due to fear of a poor economy and a lack of investment in social issues, more young men are turning to the right. “The economic and employment picture for younger men without college degrees is significantly worse than previous generations,” said Dan Cox, director of the Survey Center on American Life at the American Enterprise Institute.

“These sort of traditional norms around masculinity and what it means to be a man and a husband are wrapped up in economic success, and that makes it really, really challenging when their economic outlook is not as bright.”
Richard Reeves, the president of the American Institute for Boys and Men, adds that there is a “cultural dislocation among men”. And that they feel as though they don’t really know whether they are going to be “needed” or feel as if they are “failing against the standard that was set 50 years ago about the position of men and women in the labor market.” Overall, a majority of both young men and young women allegedly prefer Vice President Kamala Harris to former President Donald Trump as their next presidential pick. However, 33% of young men identify as being part of the Democratic Party, compared to a previous 42% in 2020, a poll of 18 to 29-year-old by the Harvard Institute of Politics found.

In 2008, for example, former President Barack Obama won the votes of 66% of young men. While Trump has been campaigning on the Biden administration’s “failed” economy, he has also pledged to bring back manufacturing jobs by placing 20% tariffs on imports which economists have warned will trigger widespread inflation and supply chain disruptions. But the economy looks different to young men compared to other Americans, the report adds. Young men are less likely to worry about the costs of prescription drugs, child care or mortgage interest rates. Instead, their income goes rent, dining out and entertainment along with student loan debt.

Rent cost is also the biggest point of economic pain for young people’s wallets. Rent in the US has increased around 20% since 2020, and about two-thirds of young adults said they spend more than 30% of their monthly income on housing while a quarter said more than half of their income goes to housing, the report said citing data from the Bank of America. “You look at what our parents were able to buy for $10,000 back in the day,” said Derek, a focus group participant from Wisconsin who is thinking of voting for Trump. “I just went through trying to buy a house two years ago, and the struggles that you come through. You’ve got to be making $150,000 just to get your standard three-bed, two-bath house nowadays.” As a result, young American men are now more likely to be financially dependent on their parents with about 30% of those aged 18 to 25 continuing to live at home with a parent. As a result, young men are also waiting longer to get married as well as to have children.

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And then they say they’re underfunded.

• Speaker Johnson Says FEMA Spent Just 2% Of $20 Billion In Disaster Aid (JTN)

House Speaker Mike Johnson said over the weekend that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has distributed only 2% of the billions of dollars to disaster relief provided by Congress. “FEMA has distributed 2% of the over $20 billion in disaster relief funding Congress provided,” Johnson said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “They need to do their job and get this assistance to the people in need. Once the total calculations are completed, Congress will address any additional needs,” he continued. Hurricane Helene hit Florida two weeks ago as a Category Four storm, and caused disastrous damage in Georgia, North and South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. Hurricane Milton also hit Florida this week as a Category Three storm.

FEMA has gotten backlash for not spending money properly in the wake of these storms as Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters earlier this month that the organization does not have adequate funds to manage disaster relief for the rest of hurricane season. FEMA has previously spent approximately $650 million on grants to nonprofits and local authorities that resettle and aid illegal immigrants, and has sent employees down to the border to help address the increase in unaccompanied minors that began in 2021, Fox News reported. This has been part of an ongoing controversy over whether FEMA being involved in issues related to aid to illegal immigrants at the southern border is affecting their ability, both financially and in terms of manpower, to carry out their emergency work on natural disasters and other emergencies.

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Appalachia.

• US Emergency Workers ‘Hunted By Militia’ – WaPo (RT)

Federal employees responding to Hurricane Helene in Rutherford County, North Carolina, were threatened last week by militias and had to temporarily pull out, the Washington Post reported on Sunday. An email sent on Saturday by an official with the US Forest Service, which assists the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), advised federal responders to “stand down and evacuate the county immediately,” the newspaper said. The warning came after members of the National Guard claimed to have come across what they called “trucks of armed militia saying there [sic] were out hunting FEMA.” The Post said two federal officials confirmed to it that the message was authentic. The newspaper stressed that it was not clear how serious the threat was assessed to be.

One of the sources said employees were moved to a “safe area,” which resulted in recovery work being put on hold in the area. Personnel were back in place by Sunday afternoon, the officials, who spoke to the newspaper on condition of anonymity, added. Journalist Brianna Sacks, who bylined the story, later published on her X account a message claiming that a firefighter crew had been instructed to avoid certain areas on the border between North Carolina and Tennessee “due to communities being governed by armed militias” there. The Post described the incident in Rutherford County as the latest example of security issues in western North Carolina. In the two weeks since Hurricane Helene ravaged parts of the state, “misinformation and rumors have made the recovery more difficult,” the reports stated, claiming that some locals were refusing to cooperate with federal officials.

“It’s terrible because a lot of these folks who need assistance are refusing it because they believe the stuff people are saying about FEMA and the government,” Riva Duncan, a former Forest Service official, told the news outlet. “And it’s sad because they are probably the ones who need the help the most.” The Appalachian region of the US, which includes western North Carolina, tends to be less affluent and has come to be seen by many as having been left behind by the coastal political elites. It also has a long history of anti-federal sentiment. On Friday, President Joe Biden denounced “reckless, irresponsible, and relentless disinformation and outright lies” for the death threats allegedly received by emergency response workers in remarks about the government’s hurricane response efforts.

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“The arch Zionist and likely intelligence asset’s approval rating as prime minister now stands at only 26%..”

• US Sets Stage for Direct Participation in Middle East War (Miles)

The US and its European client states are doubling down on their support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the waning days of the Biden administration, setting the stage for Western militaries to directly participate in Israeli atrocities or even a broader regional conflagration. A series of events in recent days has demonstrated NATO countries’ deepening commitment to Israel as new UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer leads the way. “US special forces flights to Israel from a British airbase have doubled in frequency since Keir Starmer took over from Rishi Sunak as prime minister,” reported the website Declassified UK recently. “It has… previously been revealed that the US is using Akrotiri to deliver weapons to Israel,” the investigative reporting outlet continued, referring to the UK’s large airbase in Cyprus. “The UK government has long refused to give any details of US use of British territory to support the Israeli assault on Gaza.”

Starmer has been heavily criticized for alleged weaponization of claims of antisemitism during his tenure as leader of the UK Labour Party. After previously signaling cooperation with former leader Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters, Starmer ultimately expelled Corbyn from Labour and purged pro-Corbyn candidates and party members. A damning report released in 2022 revealed that a manufactured antisemitism crisis within the party was used to undermine Corbyn, who is a prominent anti-imperialist and supporter of the Palestinian cause. The former Czechoslovak government concluded Starmer was a likely Western intelligence asset in an internal report written in the 1980s. Former Central Intelligence Agency director Mike Pompeo suggested in 2019 that the United States would work to prevent Corbyn’s election as British prime minister, paving the way for Starmer to fill the role instead. The arch Zionist and likely intelligence asset’s approval rating as prime minister now stands at only 26% according to recent polling.

“In November 2023, a US military official revealed that American special forces were stationed in Israel and actively helping the Israelis,’” noted journalist Matt Kennard. While US military personnel have assisted Israel’s operation in the Gaza Strip over the last year, the Biden administration signaled an open commitment of US troops in the country today in a statement released by the Pentagon. “At the direction of the President, [US Defense] Secretary [Lloyd] Austin authorized the deployment of a Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery and associated crew of U.S. military personnel to Israel to help bolster Israel’s air defenses,” said press secretary Maj. Gen. Patrick S. Ryder, claiming the move was intended to safeguard the country’s military installations after Iran’s retaliatory attack earlier this month. It is thought that some 100 US troops would be dispatched to Israel to operate the THAAD system.

Observers warn the open commitment of personnel could serve as a casus belli to send troops to fight with Israel if a US service member is injured or killed in a strike on an Israeli military target. The official death toll in Gaza stands at almost 43,000, but a study in the respected British medical journal The Lancet claimed it will ultimately approach 200,000 as Palestinians cope with mass hunger, malnutrition and lack of medical care. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has sought the arrest of Netanyahu and Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes, while the International Court of Justice (ICJ) is investigating Israel on claims of a “plausible” genocide in the Gaza Strip. The possibility of accountability for Israel’s conduct in the Palestinian territory raises the prospect of Western leaders like Starmer and US President Joe Biden being held criminally liable for their enthusiastic support for Israel, which has included the provision of arms, assistance in military planning and diplomatic cover in venues such as the United Nations.

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“UNIFIL has opposed the ultimatum, with Irish peacekeepers vocally rejecting Israeli demands to abandon their observation post..”

• Imperial Israel (Miles)

Relations between Israel and the United Nations have reached a nadir as Tel Aviv has urged UNIFIL to “relocate” some of its 10,000 peacekeepers in southern Lebanon. Emboldened by the uncritical backing of the United States, Israel is ramping up its military operation in southern Lebanon – bringing it into confrontation with United Nations peacekeeping forces. Tel Aviv once again came into confrontation with the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, on Friday, striking the organization’s headquarters and injuring two peacekeepers during a morning attack. Israeli forces struck the same installation the day before, also injuring two. “You will have seen that the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) issued a statement this morning saying that two of its peacekeepers were injured after an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Merkava tank fired its weapon toward an observation tower at UNIFIL’s headquarters in Naqoura, directly hitting it and causing them to fall,” stated the spokesperson for UN Secretary General António Guterres after the first attack Thursday.

“The injuries are fortunately – this time – not serious, but the peacekeepers remain in the hospital.” The comments came before a briefing by Representative of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Nestor Owomuhangi on the impact of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza on women and girls. The attacks drew condemnation in the form of a statement released by France, Italy and Spain – which have become increasingly critical of Israeli actions in recent months – as well as unsympathetic coverage in conservative-leaning news outlets like the UK-based Daily Mail. The joint statement expressed “outrage” over Israel’s “unjustified attack,” accusing the country of failure to uphold its obligations under international law by striking UN peacekeeping forces. The three countries called for a ceasefire.

Relations between Israel and the United Nations have reached a nadir as Tel Aviv has urged UNFIL to “relocate” some of its 10,000 peacekeepers in southern Lebanon. UNFIL has opposed the ultimatum, with Irish peacekeepers vocally rejecting Israeli demands to abandon their observation post as Israel attempts to press forward with their invasion. The incident led to violent rhetoric from Israelis and their apologists on social media, with former White House advisor Matthew RJ Brodsky calling on Tel Aviv to “drop napalm” on the nonviolent Irish peacekeeping force. The comments led to a rare suspension of a pro-Israel account on the X social media platform and forced Brodsky to resign his current position advising a Republican congressional candidate. Ireland has long been one of the most stalwart defenders of the Palestinian cause in Europe, with activists and politicians in the country frequently comparing the plight of the displaced people to that of Irish resistance fighters during the country’s occupation by the UK.

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“..every two sentences, Uzi would interrupt: “No, no, we’ve got to kill them all”. And other people, members of the Institute, were also just talking continually about killing Arabs..”

• Israel Does What It Does; It Was Always Planned This Way (Alastair Crooke)

With the assassination of Sayed Hassan Nasrallah and a number of the Hizbullah senior leadership in Beirut – expressly without prior warning being given to the Pentagon – Netanyahu fired the start gun on an implicit Israeli widening of war to – using Israel’s term – the ‘octopus’ tentacles’: Hizbullah in Lebanon; Ansarullah in Yemen; the Syrian government and the Iraqi Hash’ad A-Shaabi forces. Well, after the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh and part of Hizbullah’s leadership cadre (including a senior Iranian general), Iran – demonised as the ‘octopus head’ – entered the conflict with a volley of missiles that targeted airfields, military bases and the Mossad HQ – but intentionally caused no deaths. Israel thus made the U.S. (and most of Europe) partners or accomplices to a war now definitively cast as neo-imperialism versus the whole of the non-West. Palestinians – the global icons of the aspiration for national liberation – were to be annihilated from historic Palestine.

Further, the bombing in Beirut, and Iran’s riposte to it, now ranges Israel backed and materially supported by the U.S. vs Iran, backed and materially supported by Russia. Israel, the military correspondent of Yedioth Ahronoth warns, ‘must go crazy and strike Iran – because striking Iran “will end the current war”’. Plainly, it marks the end to ‘playing nice’ – of incrementally escalating, one calculated step after another – as if playing chess with an opponent who calculates similarly. Both now threaten to take a hammer to the chess board. ‘Chess is over’. It seems that Moscow too, understands that ‘chess’ simply cannot be played when the opponent is no ‘adult’, but a reckless sociopath ready to sweep away the board – to gamble all on an ephemeral ‘great victory’ move. Looked at dispassionately, either the Israelis are inviting their own demise by over-extending across seven fronts. Or their hope lies with invoking the threat of their demise as the means to bring in the United States.

As with Zelensky in Ukraine, there is ‘no hope’ unless the U.S. adds its fire-power decisively – both Netanyahu and Zelensky assume. So, in West Asia the U.S. is now supporting, no less, than a war against humanity per se, and against the world. This clearly cannot be in America’s self-interest. Do its power-broker Panjandrums realise the possible consequences for it to stand against the World in an act of gross immorality? Netanyahu is betting his house – and now the West’s – on the outcome of his roulette table ‘bet’. Is there a sense amongst the Panjandrums that the U.S. is betting on the wrong horse? Whilst it seems there are some contrarians placed at a high level in the U.S. military who do have reservations – as in every ‘war game’ the U.S. loses in the Near East – their voices are few. The wider political class clamours for revenge on Iran.

The dilemma of why there are so few opposing voices in Washington has been addressed and explained by Professor Michael Hudson. Hudson explains that matters are not so simple; that context is missing. “Everything that’s happened today was planned out just 50 years ago, back in 1974 and 1973. “I worked at the Hudson Institute for about five years, 1972 to ‘76. I sat in on meetings with Uzi Arad, who became Netanyahu’s chief military advisor after heading Mossad. I worked very closely with Uzi there … I want to describe how the whole strategy that led to the United States today, not wanting peace, but wanting Israel to take over the whole Near East, took shape gradually. “On one occasion, I brought my mentor, Terrence McCarthy, to the Hudson Institute, to talk about the Islamic worldview, and every two sentences, Uzi would interrupt: “No, no, we’ve got to kill them all”. And other people, members of the Institute, were also just talking continually about killing Arabs”.

The strategy of using Israel as the regional battering ram to achieve U.S. (imperial) objectives was worked out essentially in the 1960s by Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson. Jackson was nicknamed ‘the Senator from Boeing’ for his support for the military-industrial complex. And the military-industrial complex backed him to become chair of the Democratic National Committee. He was too twice an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic nomination for the 1972 and 1976 Presidential elections. Well, he was backed by Herman Kahn too, who became the key strategist for U.S. hegemony in the Hudson Institute.

Initially, Israel didn’t really play a role in the U.S. plan; Jackson (of Norwegian descent) simply hated communism, he hated the Russians, and had a lot of support within the Democratic Party. But when all of this strategy was being put together, Herman Khan’s great achievement was to convince the U.S. Empire builders that the key to achieving their control in the Middle East was to rely on Israel as its foreign legion. And that arms-length arrangement enabled the U.S. to play the role, Hudson says, of the ‘good cop’, whilst designating Israel to play its role as ruthless proxy. And that’s why the State Department turned over management of U.S. diplomacy to Zionists – to separate and distinguish Israeli behaviour from the claimed probity of U.S. imperialism.

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That can only be Russia..

• Germany Is Committing ‘Economic Suicide’ – Who’s To Blame? (Amar)

Robert Habeck, Germany’s Green minister of the economy, has just had to lower his growth prognosis for 2024 as a whole. So much, in fact, that, instead of the minuscule increase of 0.3% – yes, you read that right: that’s what’s considered good news now in Germany, if it happens, which it does not – the country is looking at a minus of 0.2%. Germany’s economy is not merely stagnant, it is shrinking. When Berlin was still dreaming about that lavish 0.3% growth that is not actually happening, government representatives were speaking of a turning point. Well, there has been a turn alright, another one for the worse. What makes this much worse is that it is not an outlier event or a temporary phenomenon but the new, miserable German normal. Or, as German economists put it, their country is stuck in a “deep structural crisis.” Even the staunchly NATO-philic and Russophobic Economist came to the same conclusions last summer already. Asking (rhetorically) if Germany was “the sick man of Europe,” the journal found that, since 2018, Berlin has been presiding over an economic “laggard.” Before that, Germany was doing quite well.

After the mid-2000s, its economy had grown – cumulatively – by 24%, while Britain added 22% and France only 18%. But, as of last year, the IMF predicted German cumulative growth of only 8% for the period of 2019 to 2029, while it forecast 15% for the Netherlands and 17% for the US. And the way things are going, the IMF may well have been too optimistic. Germany’s deep economic crisis has many causes. They include an aging population; weak digitalization; a surfeit of bureaucracy (but then that has always been the case); corporate taxes that some consider too high (but then someone will always complain about taxes); the country’s failure to overcome the Covid shock more quickly; the massively deteriorating relationship with China, a key market for Germany in general and an indispensable factor in the making of the “good times” before 2018; Germany’s dependency on global supply chains and markets beyond China, which means it is hard hit by the current fracturing of the globalized economy; the insane decision to abandon nuclear energy and, linked to that, the failure of a perfectly messed-up “green transition.”

Yet only the lazy assemble a grab-bag of causal factors and end their analysis with a simple “all of the above.” To do better requires, as a minimum, identifying the most crucial factors. There can be no doubt that two of them are geopolitical: the disruption of the relationship with China and the fact that energy is too expensive, that is more expensive than in many competitor economies. As German experts are acknowledging, this makes producing in Germany “persistently less attractive” than other locations. Put simply, it does not pay any longer to make stuff in Germany. And the reason for that economically lethal state of affairs is well known, even if German politicians and mainstream media won’t admit it: Berlin has cut its economy off from inexpensive Russian gas and oil. And we need to stress the word “inexpensive” because Germans do, of course, still use both. Only they buy them from intermediaries, so they are now expensive.

None of this had to happen. As late as at the beginning of 2022, Berlin could have chosen to promote a reasonable compromise between Russia and the West, which was what was really at stake in the crisis over Ukraine. Back then, especially together with France, Germany could still have charted a course sufficiently independent of the hardliners in the US, with their warmongering camp followers in Eastern Europe and Britain. Berlin could have stopped the insane drive to all-out proxy war in the delusional pursuit of a “strategic defeat” for Russia. If Germany had done so, Ukraine would be much better off, and so would the whole of the EU and Germany as well. All that, however, is water under the bridge. The question now is whether things can be repaired again. There is no reason, unfortunately, for optimism, at least not before fundamental changes in German politics. Under the current government, in any case, it is certain that things will only get worse, because its members display zero interest in even understanding, far less in correcting their mistakes.

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“The UK is suffering the worst decline in living standards of any G7 country..”

• UK Police Officers Resigning in Droves as Country Roiled by Protest (Miles)

Two months after massive anti-immigrant protests made global headlines, new data reveals UK police officers are leaving the profession in record numbers. The Police Federation of England and Wales, a labor organization representing British public security officers, sounded the alarm Sunday, airing its concerns in The Daily Telegraph. “Labour’s plans to put more bobbies on the beat are set to fail because record numbers of officers are quitting or planning to leave,” the newspaper reported, questioning whether new UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer would be able to fulfill a key plank of his party’s most recent platform. “Home Office figures show that police officers voluntarily leaving the service has hit a record high of more than 5,000, or 3.4 per cent of the workforce,” the broadsheet continued. “This is more than double the rate four years ago. The federation’s survey of its 145,000 members found that one in five said they were planning to leave the service within the next two years or as soon as possible.”

Starmer’s promise to expand policing comes as rates of crime have risen in the country in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Recent data revealed shoplifting has increased by 30% over the last year, continuing a trend observed after stringent lockdowns in the country in 2020. High-profile incidents of “antisocial behavior” such as harassment and vandalism have also made headlines. In late July and early August, the UK was rocked by major anti-immigration demonstrations, culminating in one instance in rioters setting fire to a hotel believed to be housing migrants. The incident resulted in massive counter-demonstrations soon after, in which some confrontations between protesters on both sides of the issue were observed. UK officials baselessly accused Moscow of fomenting the demonstrations via the propagation of “fake news” online, a claim rejected by Russian officials.

Tiff Lynch, the Police Federation’s deputy national chair, blamed meager pay increases for officers’ decision to leave the profession. Police officers’ pay recently received an increase of only 4.75%, Lynch noted, while other public workers received an increase of 5 to 6 percent. Police have endured a pay cut of almost 20% in real terms since 2010, she claimed. The UK has enforced harsh austerity measures since then, which observers have claimed led to a significant decline in living standards. One study asserted that British citizens have lost a half year in life expectancy as a result of the decrease in social spending.

“The UK is suffering the worst decline in living standards of any G7 country,” the British Trades Union Congress claimed recently. “Contraction in UK household budgets is going to get worse – despite falling inflation. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecasts that real house disposable income per head in Britain will fall by an additional 3.4% by the end of the first quarter of 2024. The UK seems set for ongoing political turmoil as well, despite electing a new leader only three months ago. Recent polling reveals new Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s approval rating stands at only 26%. The new head of state has made military assistance to Israel and Ukraine a priority, despite opposition from growing segments of the British public.

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“If there is no political agreement… there Ukraine will suffer a military defeat..”

• Ukraine’s Battlefield Situation ‘Critical’ – ex-NATO Official (RT)

Ukraine will soon have to abandon the key Donbass city of Pokrovsk as its defenses slowly crumble under Russian attacks, General Harald Kujat, a former chief of staff of the German armed forces and chairman of the NATO Military Committee, believes. In an interview with journalist and podcaster Flavio von Witzleben on Sunday, Kujat, who chaired the NATO Military Committee between 2002 and 2005, suggested that Ukraine’s plan to divert Russian units away from Donbass via its Kursk incursion has failed because Russia has not had to curtail its offensive in the region. “Ukraine originally intended… that the Russians would pull combat troops back [to Kursk Region], but this has now turned out to be to its own detriment because the Russians are now tying up the urgently needed Ukrainian reserves that are now missing in Donbass,” he said, describing the Kursk offensive as an “all-in action.”

As a result, Russia is slowly advancing in Donbass at a pace consistent with the desire to minimize losses, Kujat believes. Russia has made gains near Pokrovsk, Kujat noted, describing the city, located some 50km northwest of Donetsk, as “of crucial importance” due to its logistical significance. “Ukraine is still holding its position but it is only a matter of time before this city falls… The situation of the Ukrainian armed forces is critical and it is becoming more and more critical day by day and this is despite the massive material and financial support from the West,” he said. In light of this, the conflict is on a “downward trend” for Ukraine, Kujat said, adding that this trajectory has clearly accelerated. “If there is no political agreement… there Ukraine will suffer a military defeat,” the general projected.

As fighting rages on the outskirts of Pokrovsk, Ukrainian officials have repeatedly described the situation there as “difficult.” Several Western media outlets have also warned that the loss of Pokrovsk will not only hamper the Ukrainian military’s logistics in Donbass, but will also deal a severe blow to the country’s economy, as the area serves as a key source of coal for its steel and iron industries. The Russian military has been making gains in Donbass in recent weeks, liberating dozens of settlements, including the key stronghold of Ugledar in the southern section of the front. Both Donetsk and Lugansk Regions in Donbass overwhelmingly voted to join Russia in referendums in the autumn of 2022, along with two other former Ukrainian territories.

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Debt Rattle October 9 2024

Oct 092024
 
 October 9, 2024  Posted by at 8:41 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  76 Responses »


Elio Ciol Via Portica, Assisi 1958

 

• Trump Is The Only One Who Can Bring Peace To Russia, Ukraine – General (JTN)
• DeSantis, Dark Brandon, CNN Hit Kamala Over Hurricane ‘Phone Call’ Stunt (ZH)
• Harris’s Biden-esque ‘Hiding In The Basement’ Campaign Has Dems Worried (JTN)
• Kamala’s True Grit (Turley)
• Texas Demands Biden-Harris Verify 454,289 Unverified Voters (HUSA)
• How FEMA Got Into The Illegal Immigrant Business (JTN)
• Von Der Leyen’s New Budget Is A Huge Power-Grab From Brussels (RMX)
• Stoltenberg Could Have Prevented Ukraine Conflict, But Fueled It Instead (Sp.)
• Most NATO Countries Do Not Support Ukraine’s Accession – Hungary FM (RT)
• American Neocons Get Their Iran War As Congress Sleeps (Ron Paul)
• Israel’s Bond Sale To Americans – How To Stop The Big Steal (Helmer)
• Israel’s Unity Is Shaken And It’s Bleeding Support (Sadygzade)
• Good Morning Italy, It’s Black Rock Here (Pacini)
• America Is Falling Apart (Whitehead)
• Biden-Harris’ FAA May Finally Greenlight Musk’s Starship Launch (ZH)

 

 

 

 

 

 

KamaColbert

 

 

Trump ad

 

 

60m

 

 

Walmart

 

 

9ft

 

 

Bridges

 

 

Schiff

 

 

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“..what you need is an interlocutor, and somebody who can actually sit down and talk to both sides.”

• Trump Is The Only One Who Can Bring Peace To Russia, Ukraine – General (JTN)

Former National Security adviser General Keith Kellogg said that former President Donald Trump is the only one who will be able to bring peace between Russia and Ukraine as president. “He’s the only one who can do it,” Kellogg said on the “John Solomon Reports” podcast. “Because what you need is an interlocutor, and somebody who can actually sit down and talk to both sides.” He added that neither President Joe Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris could properly talk to the leaders of Ukraine and Russia.

Western leaders had discussions last month about whether or not they would allow Kyiv to use weapons supplied by the West to hit targets deep inside Russia. Top Russian officials warned that if Ukraine started launching long-range strikes with the support of the West, the response won’t “be pretty.” Kellogg said that the war is brutal and needs to end quickly. “I think the president could do that by pulling both sides together,” Kellogg said. “And I think you start with getting both sides to start talking. And I think he can do that immediately.”

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“..She has never contributed anything to any of these efforts, and so what I think is selfish is her trying to blunder into this..”

• DeSantis, Dark Brandon, CNN Hit Kamala Over Hurricane ‘Phone Call’ Stunt (ZH)

After completely biffing her 60 Minutes interview (after which the network edited out her word salad), Vice President Kamala Harris has come under fire for accusing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis of “political gamesmanship” after reports emerged that he didn’t take her calls ahead of Hurricane Milton. When asked about the alleged snub, Harris said DeSantis was being selfish and “utterly responsible” for not taking her call.

In a Monday evening interview with Fox News, DeSantis said he’s “leveraging all resources available, including from the federal government” to prepare for the storm that’s headed straight for Tampa. DeSantis said he’s been in touch with both President Joe Biden and officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “And so for Kamala Harris to try to say that my sole focus on the people of Florida is somehow selfish, is delusional,” said DeSantis. “She has no role in this. In fact, she’s been vice president for three and a half years. I’ve dealt with a number of storms under this administration. She has never contributed anything to any of these efforts, and so what I think is selfish is her trying to blunder into this,” he continued.

He took her to task on Tuesday, where he said “It’s not about you, Kamala,” adding “She has never called on any of the storms we’ve had when she’s been vice president until apparently now. Why all the sudden is she trying to parachute in and inject herself?” You know it’s bad when CNN and President Biden back DeSantis… “She’s attacking the governor of a state that’s about to get lashed with one of the worst storms,” said CNN senior political commentator Scott Jennings, adding “Is she crazy?” And on Tuesday, Biden said DeSantis is doing a great job, and that he gave the governor his personal phone number in case he needs anything.

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“..the danger in that is if you don’t define your own candidacy well enough, people will start defining it themselves.”

• Harris’s Biden-esque ‘Hiding In The Basement’ Campaign Has Dems Worried (JTN)

Vice President Kamala Harris has emulated her former running mate’s 2020 presidential campaign in minimizing her time in the spotlight and carefully managing her few public media interactions with friendly outlets. Some Democrats are increasingly worried that what worked for President Joe Biden, may not yield similar fruit for her. “They’re trying to keep her away. It’s like seeing your favorite Hollywood actor, and then they’re on a talk show and they can’t even speak,” former New Hampshire Democratic House Speaker Steve Shurtleff told Fox News. “It’s so obvious she’s been avoiding the one-on-one interviews, and the voters deserve better.” The Harris campaign has long faced scrutiny from its Republican counterpart over its perceived unwillingness to engage with the media and the public outside of a carefully controlled setting.

Indeed, a Fox News analysis released last week found that former President Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance had participated in at least 65 interviews between them, while Harris and running mate Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., had done a mere 26 non-scripted interviews since making the Democratic ticket. Apart from the infrequency of such events, the lack of substance of Harris’s public statements has also attracted criticism. In a September campaign event, for instance, Vance mocked her penchant for responding to policy questions with seemingly unrelated anecdotes. “Vice President, Harris. What are you going to do? What is your specific plan to solve the inflation crisis that’s making it unaffordable to buy groceries and housing?” he asked. “And Kamala will say, ‘Well, did you know that I grew up in a middle class family? I had a very nice lawn back there in Berkeley, California.’”

“How are you going to solve [the Israel-Gaza conflict] as President of the United States?” he then added. “And Kamala Harris will say, ‘Well, did you know that I worked at McDonald’s for about three months when I was a teenager?’”But while such lines have been ubiquitous at Republican events, such refrains have become more common in Democratic circles as well. Harris is set for a media blitz this week, including appearances on “60 Minutes,” “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” and a town hall event on Univision. The majority of her appearances, the New York Times conceded, will occur on “friendly” networks. Democratic strategist Chris Kofinis outlined the risks of minimizing public appearances and giving softball interviews in a statement to NBC News last week. “The campaign is taking a chance that they can run out the clock and Trump’s weaknesses will be enough to win,” he said.

“But the danger in that is if you don’t define your own candidacy well enough, people will start defining it themselves.” Biden was able to employ his so-called “basement” strategy during 2020 in part due to his substantial polling lead, as well as his decades in the public spotlight and status as a known commodity, in addition to a campaign based on personal hatred towards Donald Trump. But Harris has not been in the national spotlight nearly as long and signs have shown a narrowing race. Her most noteworthy public appearance was her debate with former President Donald Trump, a public event that saw moderators lopsidedly fact-check Trump while giving Harris a pass on several questionable statements. While pundits widely pronounced Harris the winner, she evidently failed to win over a substantive bloc of undecided voters as panels and post-debate polling suggested the needle did not move.

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“..Harris’s pledge to gun down intruders stands in stark contrast to her opposition to stand your ground laws..”

• Kamala’s True Grit (Turley)

The reinvention of Vice President Kamala Harris in this election has been a thing to behold. In politics, candidates often reconstruct their records to secure votes, but Harris appears to have constructed an entirely mythical being. Once ranked to the left of socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders and viewed as among the most liberal members of the Senate, Harris has sought to convince the public that she is actually a frack-loving, gun-toting, border-defending moderate. This last week, Harris sounded like she has hired Neo as her new campaign manager from the Matrix. When asked “what do you need, besides a miracle?” Neo replied “Guns. Lots of Guns.” Recently, that remake was on full display during a softball interview with Oprah, who has endorsed Harris. The Vice President declared that she is a gun owner and “if somebody breaks into my house, they’re getting shot.”

She repeated the claim in a CBS Sixty Minutes interview and noted that she has fired the gun at a pistol range. The gun is reportedly a semiautomatic Glock handgun. Many Glocks are semiautomatics that use 9mm ammunition. When CBS’s Bill Whitaker expressed shock at her gun-toting persona on the campaign trail, he asked if she actually fired it. Harris then did her best Rooster Cogburn, who noted “Well a gun that ain’t loaded, ain’t much good for nuthin.” Harris said that she has of course fired the gun in her trips to the firing range. While she was referring to defending her home, Harris’s pledge to gun down intruders stands in stark contrast to her opposition to stand your ground laws. When she was the San Fransisco District Attorney, Kamala Harris was one of the signatories on the District Attorneys’ amicus brief in District of Columbia v. Heller — in support the handgun ban. The Court rejected the position of Harris and her fellow Democratic DAs and held that there is an individual right to bear arms under the Second Amendment.

Harris’ true grit has delighted activists who are trying to lure male voters back to the Democratic Party. It may not be as thrilling to some in the Biden-Harris Administration including President Joe Biden. As we have previously discussed, Biden and other Democrats have repeatedly denounced semiautomatics and some have suggested that, with a change in the Supreme Court, they might be banned. While the Administration has repeatedly called for a ban on AR-15s, the most popular weapon in America, President Biden has suggested in the past that he might seek to ban 9mm weapons. In reference to guns that use 9mm ammunition, Biden declared “there’s simply no rational basis for it in terms of thinking about self-protection.” It is a call that has been echoed in Canada where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that his government is introducing legislation to “implement a national freeze on handgun ownership.”

He said Canadians would no longer be able “to buy, sell, transfer or import handguns anywhere in Canada,” adding that “there is no reason anyone in Canada should need guns in their everyday lives.” While the White House subsequently tried to walk back his comments, Biden saying there’s “no rational basis” to own 9mms makes the new Harris look . . . well . . . irrational. Both Biden and Harris have made sweeping, unsupportable statements about guns and constitutional protections. For example, despite being repeatedly corrected, President Biden continues to repeat the same false statements about bans on weapons when the Second Amendment was ratified. Likewise, in support of the ban on AR-15s, Harris declared: “Do you know what an assault weapon is? It was designed for a specific purpose, to kill a lot of human beings quickly. An assault weapon is a weapon of war, with no place, no place in a civil society.”

Yet, courts likely would press a Harris administration on why it is seeking to ban this model when other higher-caliber weapons are sold. AR-15s can handle a variety of calibers. However, they are no more powerful than other semi-automatic rifles of the same caliber and actually have a lower caliber than some commonly sold weapons which use .30-06, .308 and .300 ammunition; many of these guns fire at the same — or near the same rate — as the AR-15. None of these weapons are classified as actual military “assault weapons,” and most civilians cannot own an automatic weapon. As discussed earlier, President Biden showed the same disconnect as Harris between the factual and the rhetorical basis for some gun-control measures. He condemned “high-caliber weapons” like 9mm handguns and said “a .22-caliber bullet will lodge in the lung, and we can probably get it out — may be able to get it and save the life. A 9mm bullet blows the lung out of the body.” Biden has not made any comment on Harris promising to blow away anyone coming into her house with her own Glock.

Yet, before condemning Harris for her an implied threat to “blow lungs out of bodies,” Biden should again check both the constitutional and practical statements about handguns. Gun experts mocked the notion that 9mm rounds blow organs out of bodies, but 9mm ammunition is the most popular handgun caliber in the U.S., with more than half of all handguns produced in 2019 using that round, according to Shooting Industry magazine. If Biden pushed a ban, he would target more than 40 percent of all pistols produced in the U.S., including many Glocks. Again, in fairness to Harris, she is not the first politician to reinvent herself on the campaign trail. For now, Harris wants to be clear that “I have a Glock, and I’ve had it for quite some time.” For critics, the reload is a bit much given her record. Yet, in a close election, many activists want voters in states like Pennsylvania to know that Harris is the virtual Jed Clampett of the Beverly Hills set. Indeed, you get the impression that she would use her Glock to frack, if only she could.

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“Texas has exhausted all available methods to confirm the citizenship status of the voters in question and is now demanding federal assistance..”

• Texas Demands Biden-Harris Verify 454,289 Unverified Voters (HUSA)

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has demanded that the Biden-Harris administration turn over data to verify the citizenship status of nearly 454,289 registered voters in Texas. In a letter addressed to USCIS Director Ur M. Jaddou on Monday, Paxton raised concerns that these individuals may have unlawfully registered to vote without having their citizenship status confirmed. Paxton requested Jaddou’s assistance in identifying non-citizens on the voter rolls to ensure only eligible voters cast ballots in the 2024 presidential election, which is expected to be close. “The Biden-Harris Administration is legally obligated to assist States in doing so, and it is imperative that we use every tool available to uphold the integrity of our elections,” Paxton wrote.

Paxton’s request follows an investigation by his office and Secretary of State Jane Nelson, which found individuals who registered to vote without providing a state driver’s license or other state-issued identification. This, Paxton argued, made it near impossible for state officials to verify these individuals’ citizenship. It is not immediately clear when these individuals were registered to vote. “I am not asking for verification of the citizenship of anyone whose voter registration records contains [sic] a driver’s license or state-issued identification number,” Paxton clarified. According to Paxton, over 1,300 non-citizens were found registered to vote during an audit of four randomly selected counties. “That is 1,300 too many when so many of our federal, state, and local election [sic] are decided by a handful of votes,” Paxton wrote.

Paxton noted that Texas has exhausted all available methods to confirm the citizenship status of the voters in question and is now demanding federal assistance. However, it is unlikely that the Biden-Harris administration will respond or cooperate with Texas on this issue. On Sept. 27, the DOJ filed a lawsuit against Alabama after Wes Allen, the Republican secretary of state, inactivated the voter registrations of 3,251 individuals due to a lack of citizenship verification. The DOJ argued that Alabama’s actions violated the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. Allen defended his decision in an interview with Headline USA, stating, “I was elected Secretary of State by the people of Alabama, and it is my Constitutional duty to ensure that only American citizens vote in our elections.”

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“..the truth is both parties signed off on a budget deal earlier this year that increased funding for the new mission authorized in 2023 for FEMA..”

• How FEMA Got Into The Illegal Immigrant Business (JTN)

In the midst of the last major budget crisis in Washington, Democrats diverted money and the legal authority to put the nation’s disaster relief agency into the business of caring for the millions of illegal immigrants who crossed the border on the Biden-Harris administration’s watch. And now both parties seem to be trying to obfuscate the truth. White House spokeswoman Karine-Jean Pierre took the lead in trying to suggest it was a “conspiracy theory” to suggest the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was using its resources to aid illegal aliens. Republicans countered with surprise and shock that FEMA had routed $640.9 million in grants to nonprofits aiding immigrants, many of whom have crossed into the U.S. illegally. But the truth is both parties signed off on a budget deal earlier this year that increased funding for the new mission authorized in 2023 for FEMA, which is now reeling from a double-barreled hurricane crisis that has led to frustration over alleged missteps by the agency as millions of stranded and needy Americans in the Southeast await help.

“FEMA, as well as this whole Biden administration has is here to protect Americans, our citizens, and hurricane Helene has put a tremendous burden on us, but, get this, follow these funds that have been directed at anything but Americans: $110 million in FEMA funds went to the emergency food and shelter program to assist migrants,” Congressman Ralph Norman, R-S.C., told the “Just the News, No Noise” TV show Monday. Norman partly blamed the broken budget process in Congress for giving funds to FEMA for immigrants rather than American citizens suffering from a disaster. “If we don’t get back to regular order, John, then there’s no hope for ever having a fiscal sanity plan in place,” he said. “They, the Democrats, play us like a drum waiting to the end of the year.” FEMA has disputed the Republican characterizations in recent days that disaster relief money was diverted to fund illegal immigrants, instead pointing out that Congress appropriated funding for the immigrant programs separately during the budget process.

“This is false. No money is being diverted from disaster response needs. FEMA’s disaster response efforts and individual assistance is funded through the Disaster Relief Fund, which is a dedicated fund for disaster efforts. Disaster Relief Fund money has not been diverted to other, non-disaster related efforts,” FEMA said in its Hurricane Helene Frequently Asked Questions page. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre also denied that FEMA resources were going to illegal migrants at a press conference last week despite her own statements at the podium two years earlier touting the opposite. “Funding is also available through FEMA’s Emergency Food and Shelter program to eligible local governments and not-for-profit organizations upon request to support humanitarian relief for migrants,” Jean-Pierre said of FEMA efforts to alleviate the immigration crisis.

A Democrat-run Congress that year later created the Shelter and Services Program (SSP) was to replace a similar program formerly run by DHS, which was directed to transfer $800 million of its appropriations in 2023 to the emergency management department. Though FEMA is a subagency of DHS, it represented a transfer of the core responsibility for illegal and legal immigrant support to the agency dedicated to disaster relief. The funding was to stand up the new program which would “support sheltering and related activities provided by non-Federal entities, including facility improvements and construction, in support of relieving overcrowding in short-term holding facilities of U.S. Customs and Border Protection,” according to the Congressional Research Service.

By 2024, the program was well established at the agency when Republicans and Democrats alike voted to fund it to the tune of $650 million with the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2024—a minibus bill passed by the House and Senate in March, both with significant Republican support, and sent to President Joe Biden’s desk. Now, Republicans have placed the program under a spotlight after widespread flooding and damage from Hurricane Helene left several southeastern regions devastated and tens of thousands of citizens without basic resources. But, so far, few who originally supported the bill have owned up to their role in passing the budget stopgaps last year funding the very programs being placed under the spotlight.

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“Why is this dangerous? In such a scenario, the liberal elite in Brussels could win every time..”

• Von Der Leyen’s New Budget Is A Huge Power-Grab From Brussels (RMX)

Poland’s Piotr Serafin will probably take over as EU commissioner for budget on Dec. 1, but the president of the European Commission is already organizing his most important task: the draft EU budget for 2028-34. The document, seen by Polish media outlet Rzeczpospolita shows that the German, Ursula von der Leyen, wants to dismantle regional policy across the EU, which will have a profound effect on Poland. The money that is currently given to the regions, and largely managed by them (two-thirds of EU structural funds), would be given instead to the governments of the member states. These governments would then divide it as they saw fit, allowing for more centralization and control, a move that would better suit a Brussels looking to expand its control through a top-down approach. Instead of the 530 currently operating programs (including 398 concerning cohesion policy), Ursula von der Leyen proposes 27 national operational programs.

Each such program will include all expenditures that have so far made up cohesion policy and agricultural policy, including even subsidies for farmers. The programs will be divided into sectors, e.g., transport, energy, agriculture, or internal affairs and migration — all under the slogan of simplification. The second slogan repeated by von der Leyen is “flexibility.” She wants to introduce the principle of an “annual review” of the multiannual budget, which she argues will increase flexibility. Money allocated to one area could therefore be shifted to another purpose if necessary. Experts who spoke to Rzeczpospolita unofficially have no doubt that this proposal means the elimination of regional policy, which von der Leyen clearly does not like, which is more control for rural areas on how funding is spent with these rural areas often leaning more conservative.

Why is this dangerous? In such a scenario, the liberal elite in Brussels could win every time. First, when the central government is of a different political color than the local government, the distribution of EU funds can be an element of rewarding its party allies. Let’s imagine a situation where Poland’s Law and Justice (PiS) returns to power and does not transfer money to voivodeships or cities governed by PO. However, in such a scenario, Brussels could turn around and cut funding to Poland if it disagrees with PiS’ policies. In the event that a left-liberal government carries out such actions, it could simply look the other way and allow funds to continue to flow. Von der Leyen also wants the payment of money to be on the condition of reforms at the central level, even if the regions have nothing to do with the lack of reforms.

Finally, the transfer of competencies to the central level means that many regions will not have coherent investment programs. For decades, the EU has been building a regional policy based on the principle of convergence, or raising the level of development of poorer areas. It had a developed methodology, instruments for negotiating programs with governments and regions, and criteria for granting money. The aim of such a policy was also to bring the EU closer to its citizens: local authorities were involved in writing operational programs and the effects of EU money were visible on the ground. Now, von der Leyen proposes throwing this policy in the trash and introducing a transactional method: the government carries out reforms and, in return receives money and divides it between sectors.

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“..understanding that the ongoing proxy war in Ukraine must be stopped and the “next [war], which will come,” averted. ”

• Stoltenberg Could Have Prevented Ukraine Conflict, But Fueled It Instead (Sp.)

Former NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg had the power to prevent the Ukraine conflict from escalating, but, on the contrary, he fostered it, said Patrick Pasin. Pasin has been studying the roots of the conflict in Ukraine for a long time, and also said that “he has always scrupulously respected historical facts, especially in the context of the situation between Ukraine and Russia.” In particular, he wrote the book “War in Ukraine: the Criminal Responsibility of the West”, and also helped with the publication of two books by 15-year-old girl Faina Savenkova from Donbass. The French author explained that he was motivated to take the unusual step due to understanding that the ongoing proxy war in Ukraine must be stopped and the “next [war], which will come,” averted.

“Because it’s clear, we see what’s happening in the Middle East and we know that the next step is against China. So we can’t accept that these people can trigger wars, unlawful wars, unjust wars. And that we, and when I say ‘we,’ I mean Russians, Ukrainians, I mean all the people of the world, pay the price,” Pasin underscored. Jens Stoltenberg blatantly lied when he claimed NATO had never promised Russia that the alliance would not expand eastwards, Pasin said, and for that he deserves to be sued. The publisher recalled that during his trip to Germany, Stoltenberg was asked by a German journalist “Didn’t we [NATO] promise to the Russians that we will not go further eastwards?” Stoltenberg answered in German, saying “No… even behind the scenes, never was such an agreement made between the West and the Russians.”

“This was a lie,” Pasin said, pointing to the same German outlet the following month publishing an article with a document confirming the Russian version, proving that there had not only been a promise, but a “commitment from the West and NATO not to go eastwards.” Confirmation of such a commitment can be found in the NATO website archives, the author said. There is a text of a speech by Manfred Wörner, who was the secretary general of the alliance in the 1990s, in which he underscored that “the commitment of NATO not to expand eastwards was a serious guarantee of security for Russia,” Pasin noted. The Russian Federation had no choice but to intervene in Donbass in 2022 due to the law of nations, said Patrick Pasin. Ukrainian forces were “bombing civilians” in complete violation of the United Nations charter, the Minsk agreements, and the articles of the Fourth Geneva Convention, Patrick Pasin told Sputnik.

He took a moment to recall Russia’s numerous efforts to draw attention to the Donbass disaster, noting that Moscow’s own core demands contained in the draft agreements on security guarantees in Europe that it presented to the US and NATO in December 2021 were disregarded. At a January 2022 press conference, President Joe Biden fueled invasion fears, stating he believed Russia was ready to attack Ukraine. US and UK tabloids soon claimed a Russian offensive could occur on February 15-16, which did not happen. Pasin referenced data from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which was monitoring the ceasefire in line with the Minsk agreements. When the Russians did not, as the West had predicted, “invade” Ukraine within the designated timeline, “the [Ukrainian] bombings started immediately,” the writer noted.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces began using “heavy weapons against the civilian population of Donetsk and Lugansk,” he recalled. “It was a serious matter, because the law of nations forbids to bomb civilian populations. That’s what the Ukrainian forces did,” Patrick Pasin emphasized, concluding that Russia had no choice but to protect Donbass. The mainstream media “can’t love [his lawsuit against former NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg], because they have been lying for more than two years,” Patrick Pasin told Sputnik. “In fact, they have been lying at least since the beginning of the war. People who want to express a different point of view and simply a neutral point of view, saying that we should listen to the Russians, are fired immediately. And it’s the reason why they sort of forbade Russian media in Europe,” said Pasin.

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“..I don’t know what they are trying to convince him of, but when we are alone behind closed doors, the majority [of NATO states] shares the position that I just articulated..”

• Most NATO Countries Do Not Support Ukraine’s Accession – Hungary FM (RT)

Most NATO members are acting “unfairly” towards Ukrainians and do not actually support the country’s desire to join the US-led military bloc, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto claimed on Tuesday during a televised press conference. The diplomat stated that many members of the bloc have been expressing their skepticism and opposition in private conversations. The behavior of a “significant part” of NATO members has been “extremely unfair” to Ukrainians, given that the countries do not talk “honestly” about their real position, Szijjarto said. The minister said he conveyed this to his Ukrainian counterpart Andrey Sibiga during their recent meeting. The diplomat did not reveal how the Ukrainian minister reacted to his remarks.

“Last week I told the head of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, who was in Budapest, that I don’t know what they are telling him, I don’t know what they are trying to convince him of, but when we are alone behind closed doors, the majority [of NATO states] shares the position that I just articulated,” Szijjarto said. Unlike most NATO states, Hungary has openly opposed Kiev’s membership, believing its accession would result in World War III, he pointed out. Because the accession of new countries must be approved by all of NATO’s 32 members, even a single nation is capable of keeping an aspirant out of the US-led bloc. A similar stance has been repeatedly taken by Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, who had held the office twice and regained it after the October 2023 election. The potential accession of Ukraine would only “serve as a good basis” for WWIII, Fico believes.

“As long as I am the prime minister of the Slovak Republic, I will lead the legislators, whom I have control over as a party chairman, to never agree to Ukraine’s membership in NATO,” he said last week in an interview with the broadcaster STVR. Kiev formally applied to join NATO in September 2022, citing the conflict with Russia. While many Western states publicly back Ukraine’s aspirations, they have refused to provide a concrete roadmap or timetable for accession. Vladimir Zelensky acknowledged in July that “we will not be in NATO until the war is over in Ukraine.”

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“It would be an economic calamity for Americans for the benefit of a foreign country. This is what they call patriotism?”

• American Neocons Get Their Iran War As Congress Sleeps (Ron Paul)

Over the weekend, the Commander of the US Central Command (CENTCOM), General Michael Kurilla, arrived in Israel to “coordinate” with the Israeli military and plan a military strike against Iran. Think about that for a moment: one of the highest-ranking officers in the US military is planning a war in a foreign country against another foreign country which will be fueled by American weapons, American intelligence, and American tax dollars. Did that foreign country – Iran – attack the United States or threaten Americans? No, it did not. What did Iran do to warrant a CENTCOM commander bringing the weight of the US military into play to plan a war – possibly WWIII? It retaliated against Israeli airstrikes including the assignation of a Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran.

It was the Israeli missile attack on Tehran – an unprecedented event – that set off this chain of escalation, but few would know if from media coverage. This war fever between Israel and Iran not only has nothing to do with us, but our increasing involvement actually hurts our national interests in the region. After a deadly and futile three-year proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, the last thing we need is another war in the Middle East, especially against Iran. But make no mistake, war is what we are getting. This Administration has even offered to “compensate” Israel with even more weapons and diplomatic support if they hit targets of the US choosing and avoid others in Iran. Imagine if China sent military officials to Iran to pay Tehran to make sure some US targets were struck and others avoided. Would we consider it Iran’s war against us, or China’s war against us? Both? Has Congress declared war on Iran or even authorized the war? No.

Has this Administration explained to us why Americans suffering after the catastrophic Hurricane Helene are on their own because we need to spend billions on a war that is none of our business? No. The neocons have wanted this war for decades and for them it’s always America last. This war will make us less free, less safe, and much poorer. There will be no benefits at all, only downside. Will the Biden/Harris Administration greenlight Israel taking out Iran’s oil production and other energy facilities? That would mean the average American already suffering under high inflation and an economic downturn would be paying orders of magnitude higher for not just gasoline, but everything. Consider the cost of shipping and trucking and every aspect of our lives that depends on world energy prices. It would be an economic calamity for Americans for the benefit of a foreign country. This is what they call patriotism?

We are sleepwalking into a catastrophic war, lulled into compliance by non-stop media propaganda. More billions will be drained from our economy and many more innocent lives will be lost in this madness. Almost a quarter of a century later we still have not learned the lessons of 9/11. When we go abroad wreaking havoc and destruction on foreign populations who have not harmed us we create enemies who will seek revenge. We harm ourselves. And we risk blowback. The time to oppose this impending war is NOW!

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“..four Palestinian Americans launched the most serious threat to Israel’s survival in the economic war that is under way in parallel..”

“Their target is $700 million worth of Israel bonds purchased by the Palm Beach County treasury of Florida on the order of a single man, the county’s chief financial officer Joseph Abruzzo.”

• Israel’s Bond Sale To Americans – How To Stop The Big Steal (Helmer)

Just days before Iran and Arab forces launched their October 1 operation to expose Israel’s military vulnerabilities, four Palestinian Americans launched the most serious threat to Israel’s survival in the economic war that is under way in parallel. On September 24 they filed an 89-page brief in a Florida state court to declare illegal US financing of Israel’s war against Palestine through the purchase of Israeli government bonds with American taxpayer money. Their target is $700 million worth of Israel bonds purchased by the Palm Beach County treasury of Florida on the order of a single man, the county’s chief financial officer Joseph Abruzzo. Starting in September 2023, one month before Hamas launched its break-out from Gaza, Abruzzo signed a purchase of $40 million in Israel bonds. Then from October 10 through March 2024 Abruzzo used county taxpayer funds to buy $660 million worth of securities the Israeli government was issuing to cover its warfighting costs.

Altogether, the Israeli plan is to raise at least $58 billion in new debt this year, with an increasing proportion of this debt to be covered from the US where Goldman Sachs and Bank of America are placing the bonds with small-town officials like Abruzzo. In Abruzzo’s case, the court papers relate, “Palm Beach County is currently the world’s largest investor in Israel Bonds due to the Defendant’s [Abruzzo] $700 million dollar investment in Israel bonds. These $700 million dollars, sourced from Palm Beach County taxpayers’ property taxes, are being poured into a foreign economy that has an increased risk of default. Defendant purchased $700 million dollars of Israel Bonds amidst a housing crisis in Palm Beach County, an education crisis, and a funding shortfall of $732 million dollars in Palm Beach County’s budget that is leading to several capital-improvement projects such as athletic centers, parks, animal shelters, and bridges to be either delayed or cancelled. At the time the $732 million dollar shortfall in Palm Beach County’s budget was announced, Defendant had already invested $160 million dollars in Israel Bonds.”

After his own budget deficit and treasury debt were announced, Abruzzo “invested an additional $540 million dollars in Israel Bonds.” In his public justification, Abruzzo told the Miami press on October 10: “I am proud to show solidarity with the people of Israel and make Palm Beach County the first county in the nation to increase its investment in Israel Bonds following their declaration of war against Hamas.” Six months later, Abruzzo attacked critics of Israel in the Democratic party as it began the presidential election campaign. “Do I hear, especially from the far-left wing of my Democratic party, concerns about investing in Israel? Yes. Are the public leaders in D.C. of the Democratic Party condemning support for Israel? Yes. . . But I would say to them, we’re not going to be deterred. They need to back off and we need to stand united with our greatest ally, Israel.”

At the same time Abruzzo has claimed: “everything I do financially is, down to the penny, putting personal feelings aside,” Abruzzo said. “None of my purchases was done for a political purpose whatsoever. It’s the dollars and cents and getting the most we can for taxpayers. It’s all economic driven.” Abruzzo has also tweeted that “if we don’t balance the federal budget and curb spending, our nation’s future will be unrecognizable. With interest payments on the national debt now exceeding $1 trillion, the urgency for fiscal responsibility should have been addressed…”

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“..no one truly wants war – Iran shows restraint, the US and other players seek diplomatic solutions, and it seems that only Netanyahu and his circle are willing to go to any lengths to achieve their goals.”

• Israel’s Unity Is Shaken And It’s Bleeding Support (Sadygzade)

AA year after the events of October 7, 2023, the conflict between Israel and Palestinian factions has not only failed to subside but has also significantly expanded, engulfing the entire Middle East region. The ongoing military operations in Gaza, Israel’s reluctance to engage in negotiations with Hamas, and the recent assassinations of senior Hezbollah leaders and other radical figures have escalated tensions, bringing the region closer to a full-scale war. Despite numerous international calls for a ceasefire and hostage exchange, Israel continues its war with Hamas, showing little interest in diplomatic negotiations. Lengthy and complex negotiations over hostages, in which Hamas proposed various exchange options while Israel delayed decisions or imposed additional conditions, serve as an example.

US officials have frequently criticized Israel for dragging out negotiations, and members of the Biden administration have expressed frustration, stating that Netanyahu’s hardline stance complicates diplomatic efforts for a truce and increases the risk of conflict escalation. In 2024, Israel intensified its military operations beyond Gaza. One of the most significant events was the elimination of Ismail Haniyeh, one of the leaders of Hamas, along with Hezbollah’s secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah. These assassinations provoked immediate retaliation from Lebanon and Iran. Israel has already been targeted by direct missile strikes from Iran twice, heightening fears of an imminent direct military confrontation between the two nations. Alongside operations against Hamas, Israel launched an invasion of Lebanon, encountering fierce resistance from Hezbollah.

The fighting has resulted in substantial losses on both sides, including civilian casualties. In this context, the international community is increasingly concerned about the possibility of Israeli strikes on Iran, which could trigger a full-scale regional war involving the US. The world watches with bated breath as analysts warn that an Israeli strike on Iran could drag the US into a Middle Eastern conflict. Washington is unprepared for such a scenario, but its alliance with Israel complicates its diplomatic maneuvering. US officials have repeatedly called on Israel to exercise restraint, understanding that escalation could have catastrophic consequences for the entire region. Netanyahu faces a daunting challenge – consolidating power at home while diminishing the influence of the opposition, which criticizes him for failing to protect citizens from terrorist attacks.

Israel’s internal instability, driven by political divisions, is compounded by external threats from Iran and its proxy groups across the ‘Axis of Resistance’. Netanyahu’s strategy aims to address two key issues. On the one hand, he seeks to weaken Iranian influence in the region, viewing Iran as the primary threat to Israel’s security. On the other hand, he strives to maintain control over the domestic political situation, using military operations as a way to strengthen his hold on power and counter opposition criticism. A year after the start of the conflict, the situation in the Middle East has only deteriorated. The military operations in Gaza, the invasion of Lebanon, and the growing tensions with Iran pose the threat of a full-scale regional conflict that could extend beyond the Middle East, potentially involving major global powers, including the US.

Despite diplomatic efforts, the conflict continues to expand, and its consequences could be devastating for the entire region. Many believe that no one truly wants war – Iran shows restraint, the US and other players seek diplomatic solutions, and it seems that only Netanyahu and his circle are willing to go to any lengths to achieve their goals.

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“At the end of July 2024, the giant BlackRock, the world’s largest investment fund, posted unprecedented losses, seeing $1.7 trillion go up in smoke within a few months..”

• Good Morning Italy, It’s Black Rock Here (Pacini)

Giorgia Meloni’s leadership is bringing great joy to Italians: unrestrained immigration, taxes and excise duties appearing like mushrooms after an autumn rainstorm, skyrocketing food prices, denial of the freedom to demonstrate, and even a nice award at the Atlantic Council. A resounding success. To crown it all further, she has seen fit to invite U.S. financial monster Black Rock to shop in Italy. At the end of July 2024, the giant BlackRock, the world’s largest investment fund, posted unprecedented losses, seeing $1.7 trillion go up in smoke within a few months. In August, it was discovered that the U.S. fund’s top executives, such as CEO Larry Fink and Chairman Shapiro, had sold their shares for $54 million. The fund in which the wealth of the world’s most powerful banking families is stored is bleeding away, and the sharks running it seemed to be taking off. Certain movements should have tipped us off that something was about to happen.

It is never easy to predict the point of the matter, because these are financial transactions at very high levels and the hidden regions can be many. What is certain is that a capital flight, or rather a sell-off, always suggests something negative. And something has indeed happened. Meloni went to New York on 23 September to receive the Global Citizen Award, an award from the Atlantic Council, NATO’s main think tank. She receives the statuette from Elon Musk and in her speech claims the defense of so-called ‘Western values’ as an answer to the autocracies of the rest of the world. The event, it should be noted, took place in conjunction with the 79th UN General Assembly, just as a reminder of who is in charge of whom. The Italian Prime Minister’s merits? Her support for the European Union, the large amount of money and armaments sent to Ukraine, the presidency of the G7 in 2024 and the work done to strengthen the Atlantic Alliance. A true ‘American girl’.

The next day, delighted with the celebrations, Meloni met face to face with Fink, the head of BlackRock. Which – we learn – could help the government in many ways. Of course, as we know, aid is never ‘free’, but always involves a quid pro quo. What must the two have said to each other? Like it or not, in recent days, the Meloni government has authorized BlackRock to exceed the threshold of 3% in Leonardo, the main company in the Italian-flagged defense sector. In fact, the American fund has become the only private shareholder with such a stake. This is a further qualitative leap in the presence in Italy of one of the Big Three investment funds, Black Rock, Vanguard and State Street, which is now the main foreign investor in companies listed on the Milan Stock Exchange. BlackRock is present literally everywhere: banks like UniCredit, BPM, Mediobanca, Intesa San Paolo, but also companies like Ferrari, in the telecommunications sector with Prysmian, in pharmaceuticals with Stellantis, in energy with Eni and Enel, and in other multi-utilities.

But that’s not all: on the horizon is the issue of the announced privatizations, a very serious business. In order to make the accounts of the Budget Law turn around, the government needs to privatize at least EUR 6 billion, half of which has already been taken through privatizations in Eni. The remainder will apparently be taken from Poste Italiane, a state-owned company that has had excellent growth in 2024. Another attack is planned on Ferrovie dello Stato, already largely privatized for years, which is in the crosshairs of government commissions. We also do not know exactly how much has been promised to Fink in the energy and technology sector, especially with regard to cyber-intelligence and digitization. These operations represent a very strong political stranglehold by the U.S. on Italy, but on Europe in general. There will probably be big mergers of European companies and capital funds, or perhaps something even bigger. What is already clear is that political sovereignty, not just economic sovereignty, is being further attacked and put in check. Because you know, in the 20th century the economy overtook politics and became its main engine, in the words of Karl Marx.

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“Our National Priorities Are In Dire Need Of Restructuring..”

• America Is Falling Apart (Whitehead)

A water main breaks every two minutes somewhere in the U.S., resulting in contaminated drinking supplies and boil water notices. One out of three bridges in the U.S. needs repair, endangering hundreds of millions of commuters. More than 42,000 bridges across the country, carrying about 167 million vehicles each day, are in disrepair. It is estimated that 300 million people could face power outages across the United States between 2024 and 2028, due in large part to widespread power grid failures. No wonder U.S. infrastructure received a C- on the Infrastructure Report Card. America is falling apart. Collapsing bridges, buckling roads, overheated railways, deteriorating power lines, contaminated water lines, outdated public transportation, overtaxed power grids, aging ports and waterways, unsafe tunnels and highways, and spotty or insufficient telecommunications assets are all becoming frequent hallmarks of the American way of life.

If the nation is woefully unprepared to deal with climate disasters such as floods, hurricanes, wildfires, and droughts, despite the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars that have been pledged to shore up the nation’s infrastructure problems, it is because politicians across the political spectrum have failed us. The devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene makes this failure by the government to put the needs of the American people first painfully evident. Entire towns are under water. Roadways have collapsed or are otherwise impassable. Potable water is scarce. More than 1.5 million households are still without power. Clearly, our national priorities need to be re-examined. While the politicians play partisan games with our tax dollars, the nation’s critical infrastructure—both the physical foundations of the nation and the figurative foundations of our freedoms—continues to be neglected and deprioritized in favor of grandstanding, bloated military budgets on endless wars abroad, foreign aid to shore up the infrastructure and military defenses of international allies, and all manner of graft and pork barrel spending.

When all is said and done, the bread-and-circus distractions and sleight-of-hand political theater being trotted out in order to keep Americans distracted, deluded, amused, and insulated from the government’s steady encroachments on our freedoms adds nothing of real value to the lives of the average American. It’s time to fix what’s broken in this country. For starters, we need an overhaul of the nation’s infrastructure. According to Time magazine, “Throughout the country, millions of Americans don’t have access to or can’t afford broadband internet service. In excess of 2 million people live without running water or basic plumbing. For too long, the American public has had to carry on while these deficiencies have gone unattended. The political will has been weak or inattentive, the rewards too far removed from electoral advantage.”

In other words, the politicians who dance to the tune of the oligarchic elite aren’t motivated to do anything about our failing infrastructure because they get nothing out of it: no votes, no money, no power. This isn’t about whether the Republicans or Democrats have better policies. Indeed, both parties’ priorities are disconcertingly alike: both parties support endless war, engage in out-of-control spending, ignore the citizenry’s basic rights, have no respect for the rule of law, are bought and paid for by Big Business, care most about their own power, and have a long record of expanding government and shrinking liberty. This is about the plight of the American people who continue to be treated like a permanent underclass.

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“By continuing to push our hardware in a flight environment, and doing so as safely and frequently as possible, we’ll rapidly bring Starship online and revolutionize humanity’s ability to access space.”

• Biden-Harris’ FAA May Finally Greenlight Musk’s Starship Launch (ZH)

Elon Musk’s SpaceX and the Federal Aviation Administration have been locked in disputes on when the Starship mega-rocket will blast off from SpaceX Starbase in Texas. After a month of delays, SpaceX revealed on X that Starship’s fifth launch could begin as early as Sunday. The initial launch date was slated for mid-September. Since the FAA fined SpaceX $633,000 for safety violations in Florida and $633,000 for environmental violations at Starbase – while slowing down rocket launches, the private space company has moved to speed up timelines. Company execs have warned that FAA regulatory hurdles are nothing more than ‘lawfare’ by Biden-Harris admin officials. San Antonio Express-News noted, “Chatter of a mid-October launch began last week when a Coast Guard Notice to Mariners about the launch appeared online.” However, the FAA dismissed that, saying, “We are not issuing launch authorization for a launch to occur in the next two weeks—it’s not happening.”

SpaceX provided more details about the upcoming Starship test flight: “Starship’s fifth flight test could launch as soon as October 13, pending regulatory approval. A live webcast of the flight test will begin about 30 minutes before liftoff, which you can watch here and on X @SpaceX. You can also watch the webcast on the new X TV app. The launch window will open as early as 7:00 a.m. CT. As is the case with all developmental testing, the schedule is dynamic and likely to change, so be sure to stay tuned to our X account for updates. Flight 4 was a tremendous success. A fully successful ascent was followed by the first ever booster soft-landing in the Gulf of Mexico and Starship making it through a brilliant reentry, before its own landing burn and splashdown in the Indian Ocean. The fifth flight test of Starship will aim to take another step towards full and rapid reusability. The primary objectives will be attempting the first ever return to launch site and catch of the Super Heavy booster and another Starship reentry and landing burn, aiming for an on-target splashdown of Starship in the Indian Ocean.

Extensive upgrades ahead of this flight test have been made to hardware and software across Super Heavy, Starship, and the launch and catch tower infrastructure at Starbase. SpaceX engineers have spent years preparing and months testing for the booster catch attempt, with technicians pouring tens of thousands of hours into building the infrastructure to maximize our chances for success. We accept no compromises when it comes to ensuring the safety of the public and our team, and the return will only be attempted if conditions are right. Thousands of distinct vehicle and pad criteria must be met prior to a return and catch attempt of the Super Heavy booster, which will require healthy systems on the booster and tower and a manual command from the mission’s Flight Director.

If this command is not sent prior to the completion of the boostback burn, or if automated health checks show unacceptable conditions with Super Heavy or the tower, the booster will default to a trajectory that takes it to a landing burn and soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico. The returning booster will slow down from supersonic speeds, resulting in audible sonic booms in the area around the landing zone. Generally, the only impact to those in the surrounding area of a sonic boom is the brief thunder-like noise with variables like weather and distance from the return site determining the magnitude experienced by observers. Starship will fly a similar trajectory as the previous flight test with splashdown targeted in the Indian Ocean. This flight path does not require a deorbit burn for reentry, maximizing public safety while still providing the opportunity to meet our primary objective of a controlled reentry and soft water landing of Starship.

One of the key upgrades on Starship ahead of flight was a complete rework of its heatshield, with SpaceX technicians spending more than 12,000 hours replacing the entire thermal protection system with newer-generation tiles, a backup ablative layer, and additional protections between the flap structures. This massive effort, along with updates to the ship’s operations and software for reentry and landing burn, will look to improve upon the previous flight and bring Starship to a soft splashdown at the target area in the Indian Ocean. With each flight building on the learnings from the last, testing improvements in hardware and operations across every facet of Starship, we’re on the verge of demonstrating techniques fundamental to Starship’s fully and rapidly reusable design. By continuing to push our hardware in a flight environment, and doing so as safely and frequently as possible, we’ll rapidly bring Starship online and revolutionize humanity’s ability to access space.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Costco

 

 

Shepherd

 

 

Bear resistant

 

 

Snow leopard
https://twitter.com/i/status/1843771316983468338

 

 

Coconuts

 

 

Dance

 

 

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in wartime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle October 7 2024

Oct 072024
 
 October 7, 2024  Posted by at 8:00 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  77 Responses »


Francisco Goya Fire at night 1793-94

 

• Trump Promises To Reach Mars (RT)
• Harris Calls for Backup: Obama Joins Struggle to Keep Campaign Afloat (Sp.)
• Milton Strengthens to Hurricane, DeSantis Preps Gulf Coast (ET)
• “We Lose Total Control”: Clinton Continues Her Censorship Campaign (Turley)
• RFK Jr. Focused on America’s Chronic Disease Problem (ET)
• Biden Urges Congress to Replenish Disaster Relief Funding (ET)
• Slovak PM Fico Pledges To Block Ukrainian NATO Membership (RT)
• Zelensky Rules Out ‘Bargaining’ With Russia (RT)
• Khamenei’s Lebanese Red Line (Rizk)
• Israel Won’t Last Long – Khamenei (RT)
• 4 in 5 Gaza Mosques, All 3 Churches Devastated in Israel Bombing Campaign (Sp.)
• ‘America is Partner and Financier of Israel’s Crimes’ – Houthi Leader (Sp.)
• Medvedev Calls for ‘Sinking’ of Great Britain (RT)
• Julian Assange’s Oct. 1 Address with Comment by Paul Craig Roberts (PCR)

 

 

 

 

Trump Elon
https://twitter.com/i/status/1842701203630690680

 

 

Grace of God

 

 

Rally

 

 

Star Spangled

 

 

Discover

 

 

Tulsi

 

 

Walz

 

 

Biden immigrants

 

 

US child trafficking

 

 

Shah
https://twitter.com/i/status/1842829985754521677

 

 

 

 

 

 

“We’re gonna win, and he’s gonna reach Mars by the end of our term, which is a big thing, before China, before anybody. My money’s on that guy [Musk].”

• Trump Promises To Reach Mars (RT)

Former US President Donald Trump has pledged to “reach Mars” before the end of his term in office, should he defeat Vice President Kamala Harris next month. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk will lead the mission, Trump declared. Musk joined Trump for a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday evening. During the event, which took place at the site of Trump’s attempted assassination in July, the 45th president issued a series of familiar campaign promises – vowing to close the US southern border, end the Ukraine conflict, and lower energy prices and inflation – as well as a pledge to reach the Red Planet before 2028. ”We will lead the world in space exploration,” he told the audience. “We will reach Mars before the end of my term.” “Elon promised me that he was going to do that,” Trump continued, before turning to Musk and asking “I don’t know, can you do that?”

“We’re gonna win, and he’s gonna reach Mars by the end of our term, which is a big thing, before China, before anybody. My money’s on that guy [Musk].” During his first term in office, Trump issued a series of space-related executive orders and policy directives. He tasked NASA in 2017 with leading “the return of humans to the Moon for long-term exploration and utilization, followed by human missions to Mars and other destinations,” and in 2019 established the US Space Force as the sixth branch of the country’s military, leading opponents to accuse him of militarizing space. Musk, who endorsed Trump’s campaign earlier this summer, has promised for years to make humanity a “multiplanetary” civilization. However, he blames excessive government regulation for delaying his planned colonization of Mars.

Last month, Musk claimed that his SpaceX reusable ‘Starship’ rocket would be ready for uncrewed flights to Mars within two years, and crewed flights two years later. After the Federal Aviation Administration denied SpaceX permission to test the rocket before November due to environmental concerns, Musk took to his X platform to complain that “we will never get humanity to Mars if this continues.” “Unfortunately, we continue to be stuck in a reality where it takes longer to do the government paperwork to license a rocket launch than it does to design and build the actual hardware,” SpaceX wrote in a statement at the time. “This should never happen and directly threatens America’s position as the leader in space.” During his first term, Trump pushed the idea of cutting two government regulations for every new one enacted. If elected again, he has promised to go further, telling the New York Economic Club last month that he would “eliminate a minimum of 10 old regulations for every one regulation” imposed.

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“..some Democrats, including a few of Harris’ staff, were concerned that the vice president was not holding enough campaign events..”

• Harris Calls for Backup: Obama Joins Struggle to Keep Campaign Afloat (Sp.)

Former President Barack Obama is stepping in to save the day, as he’ll start hitting the campaign trail for Vice President Kamala Harris starting October 10, according to ABC News. Obama will help Harris in her campaign through election day, his speeches are planned in key swing states, the first of which will be Pennsylvania, a senior member of Harris’ campaign told the broadcaster. Earlier, NBC News reported that some Democrats, including a few of Harris’ staff, were concerned that the vice president was not holding enough campaign events, which could cost her the election. The US presidential election will take place on November 5. The Democratic Party will be represented by Vice President Kamala Harris, and the Republican Party by former President Donald Trump.

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“Milton has intensified into a category 1 hurricane. [..] ..expected to make landfall on Wednesday on the Gulf Coast of Florida as a Category 3 major hurricane..”

• Milton Strengthens to Hurricane, DeSantis Preps Gulf Coast (ET)

Milton has intensified into a category 1 hurricane. According to the 2 p.m. ET advisory from the National Hurricane Center on Sunday, Milton was about 815 miles west-southwest of Tampa, Florida. It is expected to make landfall on Wednesday on the Gulf Coast of Florida as a Category 3 major hurricane. Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis said earlier on Sunday that the state is preparing for the storm and that the top priority is round-the-clock debris cleanup from Hurricane Helene, which hit only 10 days ago. “This is all hands on deck to get that debris where it needs to be,” he said during a press conference at the state’s emergency operations center on Oct. 6. A tropical storm warning has been issued for Mexico’s Celestún to the Caribbean’s Cabo Catoche, while a tropical storm watch is in effect for east of Cabo Catoche to Cancún. Hurricane and storm surge watches could be required for for portions of Florida later Sunday.

When DeSantis gave his briefing, the tracks predicted landfall on Madeira Beach in Pinellas County, and he warned that along with the intense winds, storm surge damage could exceed that of Helene. “Most of the Big Bend is uninhabited,” he said. “When you’re talking about Tampa Bay, and you talk about what even 10 feet of storm surge would do in an area that has, I mean, the Greater Tampa Bay Area has millions of people. “That is just a level of damage, I think, that would far exceed the damage that was done in the Big Bend.” DeSantis and Kevin Guthrie, executive director of Florida’s Division of Emergency Management, announced plans underway to stage resources in the Tampa Bay area. They said they are prepared for the possibility of Tampa Bay landfall and a storm track that runs along the I-4 corridor across the state, causing debris, significant power outages, and infrastructure damage.

“The State Emergency Response Team planning section has been working this particular scenario, as well as other scenarios, for at least two weeks now,” Guthrie said. “So that’s what’s making us very effective in the response before hurricane season ever began. Our team knew to hope for the best and prepare for the worst.” High-water vehicles have been sent to Hillsborough and Pinellas Counties. A Hillsborough County fire station received 400 feet of flood protection systems, and another 1,800 feet will be distributed to wastewater facilities, pump stations, and a hospital in Hillsborough and Manatee counties. DeSantis also recalled members of Florida’s State Guard, National Guard, Fish and Wildlife, Highway Patrol, and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement who were deployed to help North Carolina and Tennessee recover from Helene, along with all necessary equipment to respond to Milton.

“I have the State Emergency Response Team preparing for the largest evacuation that we have seen, most likely since 2017 hurricane Irma,” Guthrie said, urging Floridians to finalize their hurricane plans as soon as possible. Guthrie added that the Florida Department of Emergency Management has “thought through a lot of contingencies,” including providing emergency fuel and EV charging along evacuation routes, as well as identifying every potential housing location, which his division calls “a refuge of last resort.” Meanwhile, debris cleanup remains a top priority across the Gulf Coast before tropical storm conditions return. In his Oct. 5 executive order declaring a state of emergency for 35 counties—now amended to 51—the governor ordered all disaster debris management sites and landfills in all Helene-impacted counties to remain open for 24-hour operations.

Gulf

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“..Clinton will hopefully continue to face “a long and difficult road to getting anything done” in limiting the free speech of her fellow citizens.”

• “We Lose Total Control”: Clinton Continues Her Censorship Campaign (Turley)

Hillary Clinton is continuing her global efforts to get countries, including the United States, to crackdown on opposing views. Clinton went on CNN to lament the continued resistance to censorship and to call upon Congress to limit free speech. In pushing her latest book, “Something Lost and Something Gained,” Clinton amplified on her warnings about the dangers of free speech. What is clear is that the gain of greater power for leaders like Clinton would be the loss of free speech for ordinary citizens. Clinton heralded the growing anti-free speech movement and noted that “there are people who are championing it, but it’s been a long and difficult road to getting anything done.” She is right, of course. As I discuss in my book, the challenge for anti-free speech champions like Clinton is that it is not easy to convince a free peope to give up their freedom.

That is why figures like Clinton are going “old school” and turning to government or corporations to simply crackdown on citizens. One of the lowest moments came after Elon Musk bought Twitter on a pledge to restore free speech protections, Clinton called upon European officials to force Elon Musk to censor American citizens under the infamous Digital Services Act (DSA). This is a former democratic presidential nominee calling upon Europeans to force the censorship of Americans. She was joined recently by another former democratic presidential nominee, John Kerry, who called for government crackdowns on free speech. Other democrats have praised Brazil for banning X. For her part, Clinton praised the anti-free speech efforts in California and New York and called for the rest of the country to replicate the approach of those states.

Clinton added a particularly illuminating line that said the quiet part out loud. This is all about power and the fear that she and others will “lose control” over speech: “Whether it’s Facebook or Twitter or X or Instagram or TikTok, whatever they are, if they don’t moderate and monitor the content we lose total control and it’s not just the social and psychological effects it’s real harm, it’s child porn and threats of violence, things that are terribly dangerous.” Clinton continues to offer a textbook example of the anti-free speech narrative. While seeking sweeping censorship for anything deemed disinformation, Clinton cites specific examples that are already barred under federal law like child porn.

Despite the amplified message on sites like CNN, most citizens may not be as aggrieved as Clinton that she and her allies could “lose total control” over the Internet. The greater fear is that she and her allies could regain control of social media. The Internet is the single greatest invention for free speech since the printing press. That is precisely why figures like Clinton are panicked over the inability to control it. If citizens remain true to their values and this indispensable right, Clinton will hopefully continue to face “a long and difficult road to getting anything done” in limiting the free speech of her fellow citizens.

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“I prayed to God every day for the past 19 years that America’s health crisis would be solved for the next generation..“

• RFK Jr. Focused on America’s Chronic Disease Problem (ET)


Rescue the Republic rally in Washington on Sept. 29, 2024. Madalina Vasiliu.

As the dust settles on his White House bid, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is focusing on his initiative, Make America Healthy Again, with the goal to turn around what he calls a chronic disease epidemic in the United States. Kennedy suspended his independent presidential campaign on Aug. 23 and threw his support behind former President Donald Trump, the GOP nominee. Trump has promised to appoint Kennedy to a health-related role in a potential second term. Kennedy told The Epoch Times in September that ending his presidential campaign was a difficult decision, but it was a “necessary step” to achieving his mission. “I prayed to God every day for the past 19 years that America’s health crisis would be solved for the next generation,“ he said. ”That is a major reason why I ran for president.” Kennedy’s campaign platform focused on fighting “corporate capture of government agencies” and ending the chronic disease epidemic.

An environmental lawyer and founder of Children’s Health Defense, Kennedy believes one issue impacts the other. U.S. corporations, Kennedy said, have made America the sickest country in the world. “We enriched these corporations and their captive agencies. And now they want to go and commoditize all of the things we value in our lives,” he said on a soggy afternoon on Sept. 30. Kennedy was among the keynote speakers at Rescue the Republic, a day-long rally that brought 6,500 supporters of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement to the National Mall in Washington. Little will change until the corporate capture of government agencies is removed, he said. “The FDA, USDA, and CDC are all controlled by giant or private corporations. Their function is no longer to improve and protect the health of Americans. Their function is to advance the mercantile and commercial interests of the pharmaceutical industry that has transformed them and the food industry that has transformed them into sock puppets,” he said at the event.

At an earlier address in Washington, Kennedy said the state of health care should be measured by patient outcomes, including chronic illness, childhood obesity, and life expectancy. He pointed out that the United States is significantly behind other countries with smaller economies, such as Italy, which has a higher life expectancy and spends less on health care. “Today, we are an average of six years behind our European neighbors. Are we lazier and more suicidal than Italians or is there a problem with our system? Are there problems with our incentives? Are there problems with our food?” Kennedy said. He said the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, has contributed to the nation’s health care crisis by driving up insurance premiums and “making health care the largest driver of inflation while American life expectancy plummets.” Since the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, Kennedy has been an outspoken critic of how elected officials and public health leaders managed the crisis.

The United States had one of the worst COVID outcomes in the world with deaths, he said. “Our health leaders said that COVID was a pharmaceutical deficiency. This was a lie. We have the highest chronic disease rate on earth.” Two-thirds of U.S. adults suffer from chronic health issues, Kennedy noted, and 74 percent are overweight or obese. “When my uncle was president [1961-63], about 1 percent of the children in this country had a chronic disease. That number may be as high as 60 percent in America today,” he said. He sees the chronic disease epidemic among American children as a form of abuse. “Children are the most precious assets that we have in this country. How can we let this happen to them? How can we call ourselves a moral nation, the most exemplary democracy in the world, if we are treating our children like this?” He said diseases that once mostly impacted the elderly are now increasingly common among children.

“About 18 percent of American teens now have fatty liver disease,” Kennedy stated. “When I was a boy, this only affected late-stage alcoholics who were elderly. Cancer rates are skyrocketing in the young and old. Young adult cancers are up 79 percent, and 1 in 4 American women is on antidepressant medication. Forty percent of teens have a mental health diagnosis; 15 percent of high schoolers are on Adderall. No other country has anything like this.” Ultra-processed foods are a primary culprit in the medical crisis impacting the young, he said. “Seventy percent of American children’s diet is now ultra-processed, which means industrial, manufactured in a factory.” He said these ultra-processed foods have chemicals that didn’t exist a century ago and are partly responsible for the rise in diseases in all ages.

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Now when the money runs out Congress is to blame. That was easy…

• Biden Urges Congress to Replenish Disaster Relief Funding (ET)

President Joe Biden urged Congress on Friday to expedite funding for the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) disaster loan program, warning that it will run out of money within weeks amid ongoing recovery efforts in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. In a letter to Congress on Oct. 4, Biden warned that the SBA’s disaster loan program will run out of funding “in a matter of weeks and well before the Congress is planning to reconvene.” “I warned the Congress of this potential shortfall even before Hurricane Helene landed on America’s shores,” the president stated, adding that he had requested more funding for SBA “multiple times” in the past months. “Small businesses and individuals in affected areas depend on disaster loans as a critical lifeline during difficult times,” he said. “The Congress must act to restore this funding.” The president did not specify the amount needed to replenish the disaster loan program.

The SBA offers low-interest loans to businesses, homeowners, and renters affected by declared disasters. Its loan program provides affected homeowners with up to $500,000 to repair their primary residence, and up to $2 million for businesses to cover disaster-related losses. In his letter, Biden stated that while the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) disaster relief fund has sufficient resources to meet its immediate needs for Hurricane Helene response efforts, it could face a shortfall by the end of the year. FEMA and the Department of Defense have been carrying out “critical life-saving and life-sustaining missions” due to impacts from Hurricane Helene, which made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane on Sept. 26. Biden said that FEMA will continue to perform its missions “within present funding levels” but urged Congress to provide additional resources. “Without additional funding, FEMA would be required to forego longer-term recovery activities in favor of meeting urgent needs,” the president stated.

Biden traveled to North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, and Georgia this week to tour areas severely impacted by the storm, which caused heavy flooding and widespread power outages. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said on Oct. 2 that FEMA does not have enough money to make it through the hurricane season. “We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have,” Mayorkas told reporters aboard Air Force One on Oct. 2. Hurricane Helene barreled through the Southeast last week, making landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region. The storm hammered Florida’s Gulf Coast with record storm surges and brutal winds before pommeling the rest of the region with historic flooding, wiping out entire towns. More than 150,000 households have registered for FEMA assistance, according to Frank Matranga, an agency representative. That number is expected to climb as rescue and recovery efforts continue.

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“Ukraine’s entry into NATO would serve as a good basis for a third world war.”

• Slovak PM Fico Pledges To Block Ukrainian NATO Membership (RT)

Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico has said that his country would not allow Ukraine to join NATO as long as he stays in power. Admitting Kiev into the US-led military alliance would trigger a new world war, he warned in an interview with the broadcaster STVR on Sunday. “As long as I am the prime minister of the Slovak Republic, I will lead the legislators, whom I have control over as a party chairman, to never agree to Ukraine’s membership in NATO,” Fico said. “Ukraine’s entry into NATO would serve as a good basis for a third world war.” Fico, a longtime critic of Western military and financial aid to Ukraine, has insisted that the conflict must be resolved through diplomatic means. He repeatedly warned against further escalation with Moscow. The accession of new countries must be approved by all of NATO’s 32 existing members, with national parliaments voting in favor or against new candidates.

Kiev formally applied to join NATO in September 2022, citing the ongoing conflict with Russia. While many Western states publicly backed Ukraine’s aspirations, they have refused to provide a concrete roadmap or a timetable for accession. Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zenesky acknowledged in July that “we will not be in NATO until the war is over in Ukraine.” Russia views NATO’s expansion eastward as a security threat and has cited Ukraine’s cooperation with the alliance as one of the main reasons behind the conflict. President Vladimir Putin warned last month that using Western-supplied longer-range weapons for strikes deep inside Russia would be tantamount to “direct involvement” of NATO in the fighting.

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Russia has no intention of bargaining.

• Zelensky Rules Out ‘Bargaining’ With Russia (RT)

Kiev has no plans to cede any territories to achieve peace in the conflict with Russia, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has said, following media reports that the West is considering a settlement with Moscow in which it retains “de-facto” control over some areas formerly controlled by Kiev. In a video address on Saturday, the Zelensky announced that Ukrainian officials would discuss Kiev’s so-called ‘victory plan’ with Western backers next week, claiming it would help strengthen the country, especially in the military sphere. Kiev has yet to release the much-hyped roadmap to the public, though it has promised to do so, at least with regard to the essential points. Several media reports, however, claim that the plan includes NATO-like Western security guarantees for Ukraine, the continuation of Kiev’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk Region to serve as a territorial bargaining chip, deliveries of “specific” Western-made advanced weapons, and international financial aid for Ukraine.

The plan was presented by Zelensky in the US last month, and was reportedly met with skepticism by officials who suggested that it contains no “real surprises” and largely amounts to a “wish list,” according to Bloomberg. Discussions with Kiev’s Western backers will enable it to move closer to ending the conflict in line with Zelensky’s ‘peace formula’, the Ukrainian leader said, referring to his plan which demands that Russia withdraw troops from territories claimed by Ukraine. This has been rejected by Moscow as a non-starter for talks. “This is our goal – to guarantee Ukraine reliable peace and security. This is possible only based on international law and without any bargaining over sovereignty or trading territories,” he stated.

His remarks come after the Financial Times reported that Western diplomats and some Ukrainian officials “have come round to the view that meaningful security guarantees could form the basis of a negotiated settlement in which Russia retains de facto, but not de jure, control of all or part of the Ukrainian territory.” The outlet noted that this approach implies “tacit acceptance that those lands should be regained through diplomatic means in the future,” adding, however, that this remains a “taboo” for Kiev, at least in public. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that Moscow is ready to immediately declare a ceasefire and start peace negotiations as soon as Ukraine starts withdrawing troops from the regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye. In August, however, he ruled out any engagement with Kiev as long as Ukrainian troops are occupying parts of Kursk Region.

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“..his first public sermon in nearly five years..”

• Khamenei’s Lebanese Red Line (Rizk)

Friday’s commemoration of Hezbollah’s late leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, in Iran was no ordinary event and provides an indication of how far Tehran is willing to go to preserve the Axis of Resistance in the face of Israeli escalation. Thousands reportedly turned out for the commemoration ceremony, in which Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Khamenei led Friday prayers before addressing the gathered masses. Khamenei’s public appearance can itself be seen as both an act of defiance directed at the Axis’ enemies and a message of reassurance to its supporters, who are no doubt looking to Iran for leadership following Nasrallah’s assassination. The Iranian leader’s public appearance comes after foreign media reports that he had been moved to an undisclosed location for safety reasons in the immediate aftermath of Nasrallah’s assassination.

Perhaps more importantly, it comes on the heels of Operation True Promise 2, in which Iran launched a heavy barrage of missiles on Israel, which, according to the Iranians, hit 90 percent of their intended targets. That operation was notably heavier-handed than the first True Promise, which came in response to Israel’s attack on Iran’s consulate in Damascus last April and marked the first direct military action by Tehran on Israel. In an article for Foreign Policy, Vali Nasr notes how Iran’s second direct attack on Israel was carried out with far less advanced warning compared to the April operation. Nasr – considered an authoritative voice in Washington on issues related to West Asia – also explained how the latest missile salvo “signaled Iran’s will and ability to attack Israel – and penetrate its defense systems in potentially damaging ways.”

True Promise 2 came in response to the assassination of Nasrallah, Hamas Political Bureau Chief Ismael Haniyeh, and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Commander Abbas Nilforushan, conveying a clear message that Iran, contrary to many assessments, was ready to escalate. This message was reinforced by Khamenei on Friday, as he delivered some fiery remarks with a rifle by his side. “What our armed forces did was the minimum punishment for the crimes of the usurping Zionist regime,” said Khamenei in reference to Iran’s latest offensive, while warning that Tehran was ready to conduct more direct military action against Israel should the need arise.

These warnings come amid much speculation on Israel’s likely response to True Promise 2, as senior officials in Tel Aviv have pledged that Iran’s attack will not go unanswered, and the Israeli military appears to be readying a large-scale operation against Iran, with US support. In turn, senior Iranian military officials have warned that any Israeli operations targeting Iranian soil would be met with devastating blows, far exceeding the strikes Tehran has conducted in both its previous operations. As IRGC Deputy Commander Ali Fadavi said in a statement published by Iranian state-affiliated media: “If the occupiers make such a mistake [attack Iran], we will target all their energy sources, installations, and all refineries and gas fields.”

That Iran has upped the ante dramatically in the aftermath of Nasrallah’s assassination speaks to how determined it is to demonstrate that this setback will not weaken the Axis of Resistance. Perhaps even more importantly, these latest developments speak to the special relationship between the Islamic Republic and Hezbollah. This is reflected in the fact that Khamenei’s speech was the first time in which Iran’s supreme leader publicly addressed a mass crowd since the US assassination of IRGC Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani in early 2020, further highlighting the special status of Nasrallah throughout Iran, and with Khamenei, at a personal level.

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“..those who help” the Palestinians and support them are merely “doing their duty.”

• Israel Won’t Last Long – Khamenei (RT)

The surprise attack on Israel launched by Hamas last year was a “logical and legal” step towards defeating the “malicious and cowardly” Zionist regime, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said. On Friday, in his first public sermon in nearly five years, Khamenei defended the actions against Israel by the ‘axis of resistance’, which includes the Lebanese-based Hezbollah and Palestinian group Hamas. Monday marks one year since the start of Israel’s military operation in Gaza, which came in response to Hamas’ surprise attack in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, in which around 1,100 people were killed and more than 200 people were taken hostage. Israel’s campaign in the enclave, following years of a de-facto blockade of Gaza, has resulted in the deaths of over 41,000 Palestinians, Gaza’s Health Ministry said earlier this week.

Tensions between Israel and neighboring Muslim countries have soared during the Gaza operation, with both Iran and Hezbollah supporting Hamas and Palestine. Earlier this month, the conflict entered a new stage as Israel launched a ground operation in Lebanon. In retaliation, Iran launched a massive missile attack on Israel this week. Khamenei said in his sermon that the Palestinians, like “every people,” have “the right to defend their land, their home, their country, and their interests against aggressors,” and this “logic is supported by international law.” He added that “those who help” the Palestinians and support them are merely “doing their duty.” “This is the rule of Islam, the rule of reason, and international and global logic. The Palestinians are defending their land; their defense is legitimate, and helping them is also logical and legal,” he stated. He defended Iran’s recent missile attack on Israel, saying it was “the minimum punishment for the usurping and bloodthirsty Zionist regime… whose only achievement has been to bomb homes, schools, hospitals and civilian gathering centers” in Gaza.

Khamenei went on to say that Iran “will perform any duty required” to see Israel defeated, claiming that West Jerusalem has only managed to “survive” for so long due to the assistance of its allies in the West. “This regime acts like rabid wolves and raging dogs of America in the region. This malicious and cowardly entity has barely kept itself afloat thanks to America’s support, and it will not last long,” he said. Khamenei stressed that the main problem in the Middle East is foreign interference, as “the countries of the region are capable of establishing security and peace” if left alone. He criticized America’s involvement and support for West Jerusalem, saying the US has never wanted peace in the Middle East, but has instead been pursuing the goal “of turning Israel into a tool to seize all the natural resources of the region and invest them in major global conflicts.”

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“..the use of AI-assisted “kill-lists” known as Lavender – allowing 15, 20, or 100 or more civilians to be killed to eliminate one suspected Hamas operative..”

• 4 in 5 Gaza Mosques, All 3 Churches Devastated in Israel Bombing Campaign (Sp.)

At least two dozen people were killed and nearly 100 injured in an airstrike on a mosque sheltering displaced persons in the city of Deir al Balah, central Gaza early Sunday. The IDF confirmed responsibility for the strike, alleging that the mosque and a nearby school were used by Hamas as a command post. Some 814 of 1,245 mosques in the Gaza Strip have been destroyed, another 148 partially damaged, and all three of the strip’s churches ravaged. Those are the stark conclusions reached by Gaza’s Ministry of Religious Affairs on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the Gaza war, which has become the deadliest chapter in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict since 1948. According to the ministry, 19 of 60 cemeteries in its care have been targeted, eight destroyed, and 11 damaged, and grave sites and remains have been exhumed, desecrated, plundered, and mutilated in areas where Israeli troops have operated.

The campaign of Israeli airstrikes is estimated to have destroyed some 79% of all religious sites in the enclave, causing some $350 million in damage. Eleven of 14 administrative and educational facilities under the Ministry of Religious Affairs’ care have also been targeted, with nine of them razed, the ministry said. Targeted sites included the ministry’s headquarters, the Holy Quran Radio building, the Khan Yunis Endowments Directorate, the Antiquities and Manuscripts Center, the Endowments Sharia School for Boys and the College of Islamic Propagation’s northern branch. Nine of the ministry’s vehicles have also been destroyed. Over the past year, 238 Religious Affairs Ministry employees have been killed and 19 others detained by Israeli forces, according to the figures. The ministry called on the international community and Islamic organizations to intervene to stop what it characterized as an “ongoing war of extermination.”

The Gaza conflict has now claimed the lives of over 43,000 people, mostly Palestinian civilians, and maimed nearly 97,000 others – collectively accounting for over 6% of the strip’s prewar population of 2.1-2.3 million people. An estimated 99% of Gaza’s population is Sunni Muslim, with Christians, Shia, and Ahmadi Muslim communities making up less than 1% of residents. Before the war, Christians were tightly packed into Gaza City, worshiping at the Gaza Baptist Church, the Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius, and the Catholic Holy Family Church. All three have been targeted by Israeli aerial bombardments. The severity of Israel’s operations in Gaza, which have reportedly included the use of AI-assisted “kill-lists” known as Lavender – allowing 15, 20, or 100 or more civilians to be killed to eliminate one suspected Hamas operative – has sparked international outrage and condemnation. Over a dozen countries have signed onto South Africa’s International Court of Justice case against Israel accusing the nation of “genocide” in Gaza. Israeli officials have rejected the allegations.

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“..a “curse” would “fall on the Zionist enemy,” and the “global conscience” sure to remember its “crimes.”

• ‘America is Partner and Financier of Israel’s Crimes’ – Houthi Leader (Sp.)

The Houthis’ escalating conflict with Israel is nearing its one-year anniversary, having started on October 19, 2023 with the launch of missiles and drones toward Tel Aviv, and expanding in November of that year into a partial blockade of the Red and Arabian Seas which the US and its allies have proven unable to effectively challenge. “America is a partner and financier of all the crimes of the Zionist enemy. It is killing the Palestinian nation and has brought suffering and misery to this nation,” Houthi leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi said in a televised address Sunday on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the Gaza War. Pointing to the US provision of large amounts of armaments to Israel in decades past, al-Houthi said Washington had delivered the “devil of wars” in Tel Aviv “the deadliest weapons” over the past year, including hundreds of transport planeloads and over 100 shiploads, (among this 240 planes and 20 ships worth in the first three months of the conflict alone).

“The Israeli enemy has used about 100,000 tons of explosives, including bombs, missiles and rockets, which were provided by the United States,” the militia leader asserted, adding that this includes an estimated 10,000 tons of unexploded ordonnance currently littering the Gaza Strip today, and US-made bombs prohibited under international law. “The enemy has mobilized all its resources to attack Gaza, and America, Britain and the West have supported this regime through the Gaza War. The Israeli enemy attacked Gaza with an army of over 350,000 soldiers and reserve forces…sending five formations under the cover of fire from the land, sea and air. This has been the most violent and brutal attack in the history of wars,” al-Houthi said. Listing off a series of “murders and massacres” he said had targeted Gaza’s residents over the past year, al-Houthi warned that a “curse” would “fall on the Zionist enemy,” and the “global conscience” sure to remember its “crimes.”

Al-Houthi went on to blast the US over what he characterized as Washington’s “obstruction” of efforts at the United Nations to secure a ceasefire in Gaza, including the blocking of five ceasefire resolutions, while its officials visited Israel. Characterizing ‘Al-Aqsa Storm’ – the Hamas surprise attack into southern Israel on October 7, 2023 which kicked off the present war, as a “very big and very hard blow to the Israeli enemy,” al-Houthi asserted that “no matter how much the Israeli enemy continues with its genocide, killing and terrorism, it will not achieve the result it wants.

No matter how many genocidal crimes it commits, it will not bring about any result other than the downfall and destruction of this regime.” “The [Axis of Resistance] fronts of support in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen are one of the most important features of this round of the conflict with the Israeli enemy…and this situation is unprecedented and has never been seen before in the past 75 years,” al-Houthi said. As for the Houthis, “one of the most important results of the Yemen operation has been preventing the movement of the Israeli enemy in the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, the Bab al-Mandeb Strait and the Arabian Sea,” al-Houthi said.

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“..we need to solve the problem radically and just sink the damned island of Anglo-Saxon dogs..”

• Medvedev Calls for ‘Sinking’ of Great Britain (RT)

Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council and former president, has suggested ‘sinking Great Britain’ as a way to solve the country’s problems with London. The former president was responding to a statement made late last month by renowned Russian skiing champion Elena Vyalbe. In an exclusive interview with NEWS.ru outlet, the three-time Olympic champion and head of Russia’s Cross-Country Skiing Federation slammed the West for banning the country’s athletes from most international sports tournaments in response to the Ukraine conflict. Vyalbe claimed that “if we had dropped a serious bomb in the center of London, it would have all been over by now and we would have been allowed everywhere.”

Medvedev, who has become known for his sharp language in social media posts, argued that there are more effective ways to deal with the problem than bombing. “Our famous skier Elena Vyalbe suggested dropping a bomb on London. She’s right, of course, but we need to solve the problem radically and just sink the damned island of Anglo-Saxon dogs,” Medvedev said. He did not elaborate on whether ‘the problem’ refers to sports or the state of Russia’s relations with the UK in general. The UK and its NATO partners have sided with Ukraine in its conflict with Russia, providing Kiev with financial and military aid and placing sanctions on Moscow. London was among 30 nations that urged the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to uphold a ban it had placed on Russian and Belarusian athletes when it proposed allowing them to compete in the Summer Olympics this year.

Most Western-based sports bodies banned Russia and Belarus from taking part in international sports tournaments shortly after the outbreak of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, including the IOC, FIFA, FIDE, and others. Moscow has repeatedly criticized the restrictions. In her interview, Vyalbe slammed the IOC, calling it a “trash heap” that is “engaged in who knows what, but certainly not honest sport.” She added that while “sports has always been tied with politics,” the sweeping bans on athletes for political reasons “no longer resemble sport at all.”

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Julian Assange’s Address to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on October 1, 2024, with Comment by Paul Craig Roberts.
(Assange address is under the link, this is PCR’s commenst)

• Julian Assange’s Oct. 1 Address with Comment by Paul Craig Roberts (PCR)

After reading Assange’s address I realized that all of this was just the tip of the iceberg. What the United States government did to Assange is worse than can be found in any dystopian novel. Read Assange’s speech, and then ask yourself how you can possibly believe you are a free person living in a free democratic country with accountable government where there is justice, mercy, integrity, morality, and the rule of law. Also notice that it was the Obama Justice Department that dropped all attempts to indict Assange as there are no legal grounds for his indictment, and that it was the Trump Justice Department that reopened the case under CIA pressure. If memory serves, the whores who comprise Western journalism came out against Assange, that is, the dumbshits came out against their own profession, and conservative pundits accused Assange of being a Russian spy. Get the traitor, get the traitor, screamed the presstitutes and conservative pundits.

It was pressure from the Council of Europe and funding of Assange’s lawyers by donations from individuals that caused the CIA to settle for Assange’s plea that he was “guilty of practicing journalism.” We might laugh, but what the CIA has accomplished is a possible precedent for the criminalization of truthful, objective journalism, and its replacement with enforcement of official narratives. Assange himself says he “pled guilty to being a journalist.” The guilty plea implies that journalism is a crime. How many people will be bothered to understand Assange’s treatment by the “great free democracy, the light of the world”? Hardly any, just as hardly any understand that Washington has provoked Russia to the point of nuclear war, and a majority of Americans, it seems, support Israel’s relentless slaughter of Palestinians redefined by Israel as “Muslim terrorists.” Suppose people were able to free themselves from insouciance and gain access to truth and understanding, what can they do without political leaders?

Where are their leaders? I can only think of two who have recognizable names: Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen. How have the ruling establishments reacted to these two representatives of the people? Trump has been served by the “freedom and democracy” US government with four criminal indictments for which he is on trial. Le Pen is on trial for representing French ethnicity. The official charge is embezzlement of funds, but her defense of a French ethnic nation makes her a racist under the ruling DEI ideology, and that is the real charge against her. How good are these two leaders? Le Pen must be pretty good. She has stood the heat for many years, and the party has grown. Possibly it is the largest of the French political parties, but the Establishment has been successful keeping it out of office. It seems Le Pen is on trial on an annual basis.

Trump is a neophyte, He defeated himself in his first term by stupidly surrounding himself with the representatives of the ruling establishment that he thought he was going to overthrow. Instead they overthrew him. Trump claims he has learned Washington since appointing Gestapo operatives such as Pompano and Barr and refusing to defend General Flynn, his only sensible appointment. But what has he learned? Did he learn that the Establishment is more powerful than the President and that second time around he had best get along with the Establishment? Leaders are rare. Even if one appears, he cannot count on the people’s support. Cicero, Quaestor, Procounsel, and Counsel of Rome, tried to rally the Roman people from their self-destruction and paid for it with his life. Trump tried to give power back to the American people and was punished for it with four criminal indictments. Le Pen tries to represent French ethnicity and is constantly legally harassed.

When the people themselves lose interest in their rights and cannot bring themselves to fight to regain them, they lose their freedom. In the United States today, and I think throughout the Western world, law has been weaponized against all who openly dissent from the Ruling Establishment’s narratives and agendas. As law is now a weapon in the hands of the state, why would Democrats, whose hand is on this weapon, permit an election to take it away from them? A sinking ship cannot change its course. If the Democrats steal a third national election, and the American people again accept it, there will not be another election. Americans will have crossed the Rubicon into tyranny. Older Americans will be slow to realize it, and new generations, having been born into tyranny will not know what has been lost, having never experienced freedom. This is the way liberty dies.

Read more …

 

 



 

 

RFK Covid

 

 

Maher Dr. Phil

 

 

Helper

 

 

Penguin

 

 

Ukame

 

 

Barcelona
https://twitter.com/i/status/1842963176545235161

 

 

Locks
https://twitter.com/i/status/1842837698890932241

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle October 6 2024

Oct 062024
 
 October 6, 2024  Posted by at 8:35 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , ,  130 Responses »


Francisco Goya Witches’ Sabbath 1798

 

• Biden Doubts US Presidential Election Will Be Peaceful (TASS)
• We Can’t Have The World Laughing At US – Trump (RT)
• Political Storm Rages Over FEMA Disaster Relief Weeks Before Election Day (JTN)
• Musk Accuses Biden Administration of Blocking Disaster Relief (RT)
• Biden/Harris Doctrine Has Brought the World Closer to World War III (AmG)
• Israel Should Strike Iran’s Nuclear Sites – Trump (RT)
• Soleimani Wins: Israel Falls Into The Trap of the Axis of Resistance (SCF)
• The Resistance Wants Victory (Pacini)
• Tanker Blown Up By Houthis As Disasters Mount For Biden-Harris (ZH)
• NATO Plans Major Force Buildup – Welt (RT)
• New NATO Chief Visits Ukraine (Antiwar)
• Kiev May Have To Accept Loss Of Territory – Stoltenberg (RT)
• Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico To Visit Russia For Victory Day (RT)
• Robert Fico Is A Rare Voice Of Sanity When It Comes To Russia (Amar)
• Le Pen Trial Chance for Establishment to Bring Her Party to Its Knees (Sp.)
• Alex Jones Creditors Target Future Assets – Which Could Include His Name (ZH)
• Argentina’s Milei Accused Of Copying Speech From The West Wing (RT)

 

 

 

 

FEMA sources
https://twitter.com/i/status/1842201497028689989

 

 

Rally

 

 

Biden press

 

 

Trump NC


Trump DEI
https://twitter.com/i/status/1842394029012480193

 

 

Fitton

Ashli Babbitt

Vivek Bolton
https://twitter.com/i/status/1842234866223436183

Liz Cheney Harris

 

 

 

 

• Biden Doubts US Presidential Election Will Be Peaceful (TASS)

US President Joe Biden is convinced that the upcoming presidential election in the United States will be free and fair, but doubts that it will be peaceful. “I’m confident it [the election] will be free and fair. I don’t know whether it will be peaceful,” he said, answering to a reporter’s question at the White House. “The things that [former President and Republican candidate Donald] Trump has said and the things that he said last time around when he didn’t like the outcome of the election were very dangerous.” Biden added that Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, had dodged the question of whether he will accept any outcome of the vote.

“They haven’t even accepted the outcome of the last election. So, I’m concerned about what they are going to do,” he said. The US will hold a presidential election on November 5. Incumbent US President Joe Biden was expected to run on the Democratic Party ticket, but after his disastrous performance at the June debate with Trump, he decided to quit the race and instead supported the nomination of his Vice President Kamala Harris. Her candidacy was later formally endorsed at a Democratic Party Convention.

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“They respected us. They respected us more than they’ve ever respected us, and now they laugh at us. We can’t have them laugh at us.”

• We Can’t Have The World Laughing At US – Trump (RT)

The US has squandered respect on the world stage, becoming a laughing stock, former President Donald Trump said at a campaign event in the swing state of Pennsylvania. Trump held a rally to drum up support for his re-election in the city of Butler on Saturday, returning to the site where he nearly survived an assassination attempt in July. The Republican nominee vowed to lift up the US economy, combat violent crime and crack down on illegal immigration through the southern border. “Everything has to be the best,” he said. “We have to have the best schools. We have to have strong borders. We don’t want bad people coming in and hurting us,”“You deserve a nation that builds things again, makes things better, that aims for the stars once more, and that once again, commands respect, and we want to get respect like we had it four years ago,” he told the rally crowd.

The entire world respected us. They respected us. They respected us more than they’ve ever respected us, and now they laugh at us. We can’t have them laugh at us. Throughout his campaign, Trump has accused the “weak” administration of President Joe Biden and the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, of damaging America’s reputation. He claimed that the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza would not have broken out if he was still in charge. Trump also argued that he had good relations with all of the world leaders, including presidents Vladimir Putin of Ukraine and Xi Jinping of China. He repeatedly claimed that he would quickly resolve the Russian-Ukrainian conflict if elected for a second term in November. Biden and Harris, meanwhile, have accused Trump of undermining NATO and failing to stand up to Russia. “Our NATO allies are so thankful that you are no longer president,” Harris told Trump during a televised debate last month.

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FEMA just flatly denies. That’s one way to do it.

• Political Storm Rages Over FEMA Disaster Relief Weeks Before Election Day (JTN)

After the devastation of Hurricane Helene, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) appears to be facing a storm of its own, as allegations of mismanagement and obstruction fly just weeks before the November election. A series of Republicans and alleged whistleblowers have accused the agency of mismanaging funds that were designated for disaster relief and using it for illegal immigrants at the southern border instead. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Wednesday admitted to reporters that FEMA does not “have the funds to make it through the [hurricane] season,” but said it does have enough to handle Hurricane Helene, which has resulted in over 200 deaths since making landfall in Florida last week. The secretary and FEMA have not indicated how much more money they would be needing to get through the rest of the season, which concludes at the end of November, but said the money approved through Congress’ continuing resolution would not be enough.

A group of Republican senators expressed concern on Friday over the allegations that FEMA’s “entanglement” with the border crisis could impact its ability to provide disaster relief. “FEMA’s continued entanglement in DHS’s efforts to respond to the border crisis could impact its readiness and emergency response mission,” the Republican lawmakers wrote to Mayorkas. “Rather than ensuring FEMA is ready to respond to hurricanes and other emergencies, FEMA has been pulled into a border crisis mission.” The senators also requested information on how many full-time FEMA employees have since been deployed at the border, and how much money FEMA reprogrammed to support its border-related mission duties. Florida GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz backed up the senators’ concerns in his own letter to Mayorkas on Friday, in which he claimed FEMA whistleblowers said the agency used taxpayer funds marked for disaster relief on non-disaster-relief programs that housed and supported illegal immigrants on the country’s southern border.

Gaetz also said that he was told by whistleblowers that FEMA employees are on the ground in areas impacted by the hurricane, such as North Carolina, but do not have deployment orders so they are waiting on the clock in hotels. FEMA, the White House, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have denied all of the allegations of misappropriating its funds, claiming the money used for the border and for disaster relief are from two separate programs. The agency has even created a “rumor response” page on its website. “No money is being diverted from disaster response needs,” the agency said in a news release. “FEMA’s disaster response efforts and individual assistance is funded through the Disaster Relief Fund, which is a dedicated fund for disaster efforts. Disaster Relief Fund money has not been diverted to other non-disaster related efforts. “The funding for communities to support migrants is appropriated by Congress to Customs and Border Patrol – it has nothing to do with FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund,” it added.

FEMA has spent approximately $650 million on grants to non-profits and local authorities that resettle and aid migrants so far, per Fox News, and has sent employees down to the border to help address the increase in unaccompanied minors that began in 2021. But the money for grants is far less than the roughly $20 billion budget for the agency’s disaster relief fund. Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on Friday also criticized the federal response to Hurricane Helene, claiming that the government was blocking flights trying to bring Starlinks and aid to hurricane victims, after a source told Musk the airspace was shut down. The source texted Musk that FEMA is blocking shipments and seizing goods from volunteers. He also claimed the government is throttling private flights in the North Carolina airspace, which is making it harder to bring in supplies and Starlinks.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg denied the reports that they are making it harder for civilians to help with disaster relief, stating that “no one is shutting down the airspace and FAA doesn’t block legitimate rescue and recovery flights.” FEMA also denied the accusation, stating that reports they were confiscating aid meant for the survivors were “false” but that such rumors often spread after disasters. “FEMA does not take donations and/or food from survivors or voluntary organizations,” the agency said in its news release. “Donations of food, water, or other goods are handled by voluntary agencies who specialize in storing, sorting, cleaning and distributing donated items.”

Read more …

“As of Friday, FEMA had spent $45 million on relief efforts following Hurricane Helene, or 14 times less than it spent housing illegal immigrants last year..”

• Musk Accuses Biden Administration of Blocking Disaster Relief (RT)

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has accused US President Joe Biden’s administration of “actively blocking” the supply of Starlink internet terminals and critical aid to areas of North Carolina devastated by Hurricane Helene. The administration has dismissed those claims as false. Hurricane Helene tore through the American southeast last week, killing more than 225 people and leaving hundreds unaccounted for. The damage was particularly severe in Georgia and western North Carolina, where bridges were washed away and tens of thousands of people are still without running water, power, and cellphone service. During a visit to Georgia on Monday, former US President Donald Trump said that he had been in touch with Musk, who would be delivering Starlink internet terminals to affected areas. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) also said in a press release that it would be distributing Starlink terminals to local authorities.

On Friday, however, Musk claimed on his X platform that FEMA “is not merely failing to adequately help people in trouble, but is actively blocking citizens who try to help!” Citing a SpaceX engineer in North Carolina, Musk claimed that FEMA personnel are confiscating Starlink terminals and other supplies arriving in the state. In a follow-up post, the billionaire shared text messages from the engineer, who alleged that the agency had “shut down the airspace to ‘regulate’ the private choppers we are riding in to deliver Starlink and supplies.” Replying to Musk’s post, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said that “no one is shutting down the airspace and [the Federal Aviation Administration] doesn’t block legitimate rescue and recovery flights.” “If you’re encountering a problem give me a call,” Buttigieg added. The issue was apparently resolved late on Friday night, with Musk replying to thank Buttigieg and announce that “support flights are underway.”

Republican politicians and conservative pundits have accused the Biden administration of slow-walking relief to western North Carolina due to the fact that the region’s predominantly white population overwhelmingly voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020. Trump visited Georgia and North Carolina before Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris earlier this week, and claimed at a rally on Friday that “a lot of the money that was supposed to go to Georgia and supposed to go to North Carolina” had been spent on “people that came into the country illegally.”

After FEMA spent $640 million on housing for illegal immigrants over the last fiscal year, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced on Wednesday that the agency does not have enough money to make it through the rest of hurricane season, which typically runs until early December. However, the $640 million spent on illegal immigrants was not drawn from FEMA’s disaster relief fund, but from a separate fund authorized by Congress. As of Friday, FEMA had spent $45 million on relief efforts following Hurricane Helene, or 14 times less than it spent housing illegal immigrants last year, according to a White House statement.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1842331082139566081

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What? “Several experts, including Blinken and Sullivan, wrote that President Biden enhanced American foreign policy by strengthening the American economy..”

• Biden/Harris Doctrine Has Brought the World Closer to World War III (AmG)

By a strange turn of fate, on October 1, 2024, the day that Iran launched the largest ballistic missile attack ever against Israel, Foreign Affairs magazine published an article by Secretary of State Antony Blinken in which he claimed “the Biden administration’s strategy has put the United States in a much stronger geopolitical position today than it was four years ago” and that Iran is being held in check. A year earlier, Foreign Affairs published another tragically erroneous article by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, which said, “Although the Middle East remains beset with perennial challenges, the region is quieter than it has been for decades.” Six days after this article was posted, Hamas launched a sneak attack against Israel, massacring more than 1,200 people and maiming and injuring many more. In a stunning violation of journalistic ethics, Foreign Affairs allowed Sullivan to revise his article after the Hamas terrorist attack. Here is a link to the original version.

In these articles, Biden officials are trying to rewrite history by manufacturing false narratives of a successful Biden national security doctrine that they claim has enhanced U.S. and global security. This is, of course, preposterous. Not only has there been a huge increase in global instability since Donald Trump left office in January 2021, the Biden-Harris administration has brought the world closer to World War III because of an increased chance Russia could use nuclear weapons against Ukraine, the real prospect of an Israel-Iran War, a new Russia-China-Iran-North Korea Axis, a growing chance that China will attack Taiwan, and other current and potential crises.

Several Biden allies have tried to invent a so-called Biden Doctrine since 2021. Most made fatuous claims that Biden was reversing the damage done by President Trump to the country’s alliances, deterrence, and global leadership despite clear evidence that Trump strengthened alliances and had a successful foreign policy that brought global stability and kept U.S. troops out of new wars. Others asserted that Biden “restored trust abroad for the U.S.,” a claim that many U.S. allies would dispute. Several experts, including Blinken and Sullivan, wrote that President Biden enhanced American foreign policy by strengthening the American economy. The huge advantage that Donald Trump currently has in the polls over Kamala Harris on the economy proves this isn’t true either.

In January 2024, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote an article titled, “A Biden Doctrine for the Middle East Is Forming. And It’s Big” on a supposed new Biden Middle East peace initiative to quickly end the Hamas/Israel war. Under this plan, the Biden administration would bring peace to the Middle East with a tough stand on Iran, push for recognition of a Palestinian state, and greatly scale up the U.S. security alliance with Saudi Arabia. None of these things happened. Instead, Middle East security has deteriorated in 2024 to the worst level in decades.

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His big blind spot.

• Israel Should Strike Iran’s Nuclear Sites – Trump (RT)

Israel should carry out a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities to avenge Tehran’s recent missile attack on the Jewish state, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has argued. Earlier this week, Iran fired around 180 missiles at Israel, calling it retaliation for the assassinations of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, both of whom had close ties to Tehran. The attack killed one Palestinian in the West Bank, while the Israeli military acknowledged that some of the projectiles hit its air bases. The attack also followed what Israel called a “limited ground operation” in southern Lebanon targeting Hezbollah. Speaking at a campaign event in North Carolina on Friday, Trump, known for his hawkish stance on Iran, disagreed with US President Joe Biden, who had earlier refused to support an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

“They asked him, what do you think about Iran, would you hit Iran? And he goes, ‘As long as they don’t hit the nuclear stuff.’ That’s the thing you want to hit, right? I mean, it’s the biggest risk we have, nuclear weapons,” he said. “When they asked him that question, the answer should have been, hit the nuclear first, and worry about the rest later,” Trump added. As president, Trump spearheaded the US withdrawal in 2018 from the nuclear deal with Iran. Under the agreement, Iran had agreed to limit its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. At the time, however, Trump argued that the deal did little to permanently prevent Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Following the Iranian strike on Israel, Axios reported that West Jerusalem is eyeing a “significant retaliation” for the missile barrage and that all options are on the table, including strikes on Tehran’s nuclear facilities. Other potential targets could reportedly include gas and oil rigs or air defense systems, while targeted assassinations could also be considered. Meanwhile, according to an Al Jazeera report, Iran warned the US that any Israeli attack could be met with an “unconventional response.” As tensions continue to soar in the Middle East, Politico reported that Biden is growing increasingly frustrated by Israel’s conduct, including recent attacks on Hezbollah and the war in Gaza, with the White House said to be acknowledging the possibility that it may not be able to prevent a full-scale “regional war.”

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“..one of the greatest military thinkers in history – the man largely responsible for creating the trap that Israel has just fallen into, four years after his death..”

“Soleimani’s strategy was focused on creating a prolonged war, wearing down the Zionist regime to the point of no return of its own state structure.”

• Soleimani Wins: Israel Falls Into The Trap of the Axis of Resistance (SCF)

In 2020, the U.S. military assassinated Iranian General Qassem Solemani in a terrorist attack with drones in Iraq. The purpose of the operation was simply to eliminate one of the greatest military thinkers in history – the man largely responsible for creating the trap that Israel has just fallen into, four years after his death. Much more than a mere military officer, Soleimani was a strategist and negotiator – perhaps it would not be an exaggeration to even call him a “war diplomat”. An expert in clandestine operations, intelligence and special forces’ tactics, Soleimani was responsible for enabling the network of anti-Zionist organizations known as the “Axis of Resistance”. Overcoming religious, ethnic and ideological differences between the various Islamic and anti-Zionist movements, Soleimani united different factions in a joint strategy against Israel.

Obviously, this strategy was centered on Iran and gave the Islamic Republic the leading role in the fight against the Israeli occupation and its regional proxies. However, one of the keys to the success of the Axis is precisely its largely decentralized nature, guaranteeing autonomy of action for its members, without tight Iranian control over all the acts of the coalition. The Axis of Resistance was victorious in Syria, where several militias, with the support of Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), defeated ISIS and other Israeli proxies. At the time, Soleimani’s military diplomatic success was so great that even a dialogue with the Kurdish militias (historically supported by the West) was possible at a time of confrontation against more dangerous groups – such as ISIS itself. Soleimani’s survival was perceived as an existential threat by Israel, encouraging the Zionist lobby in the U.S. to push for a targeted assassination operation.

The main problem, however, is that targeted assassinations are rarely effective against highly ideological groups and countries with well-defined war strategies. Soleimani’s death did not dismantle the Axis, but rather further united the militias around Iran – including the Palestinian Sunni militias, which have historically suffered a struggle for influence between Shiites and Wahhabis. Today, no one can deny Iran’s great influence over the Palestinian Resistance. What few people know, however, is that this process is precisely the result of the diplomatic alliances achieved by Soleimani. By killing Ismail Hannyeh, the Hamas leader closest to Iran in the entire history of the Palestinian party and responsible for the peace between the Palestinian jihadists and the Syrian government, Israel also hoped to destabilize the Axis – reducing Iranian influence and expanding the pro-Wahhabi lobby in Palestine, which, as we know, did not happen.

In the same vein, by killing Hassan Nasrallah, then head of Hezbollah, Israel planned to once again destabilize the Axis, liquidating the leadership of the main Shiite paramilitary organization and thus possibly fomenting an institutional crisis within the group. Contrary to Zionist expectations, Hezbollah did not show any shock from the assassination of its leader, except to become even more organized and confident in its engagement against the occupation. Tel Aviv will not stop carrying out targeted assassinations. It is quite possible that the response to Iran’s recent attack will be through assassination attempts against other Iranian public figures. This Israeli method is due to a specific characteristic of the regime that was acutely perceived by General Soleimani: Israel’s inability to go to all-out war. Contrary to the myth of “Israeli invincibility” commonly propagated in the West, Tel Aviv has a natural weakness due to its own geographical limitations.

The policy of targeted killings was developed by Israel to try to destabilize its enemies psychologically and institutionally, avoiding prolonged military engagements. Without the capacity for continuous replenishment of troops and resources and having a very small territory with very exposed targets, Israel fears a large-scale war – and this was precisely Soleimani’s assessment. By creating the Axis of Resistance, the Iranian general has condemned Israel to perpetual war. There will be no peace at any time. If Israel defeats Hamas and the other Palestinian militias, there will still be Hezbollah and the Syrian militias in the north. On the naval front, Yemen will continue to capture ships and strike on strategic targets throughout occupied Palestine. In Iraq, the Resistance will not stop its operations at any time. And in the end, even if it defeats all these enemies, Tel Aviv will still have to face Iran itself – the largest military power in the Middle East, which, unlike Israel, has a large population and a gigantic territory, rich in resources and protected by a complex mountainous geography.

In other words, the existence of the Axis of Resistance is Israel’s death sentence. Soleimani’s strategy was focused on creating a prolonged war, wearing down the Zionist regime to the point of no return of its own state structure. The time will come when Israel becomes unviable as a country and will have to accept negotiating terms to create a demilitarized and non-ethnic state (joint between Jews and Palestinians), putting an end to apartheid. Otherwise, years of war will destroy all the country’s resources and create an irreversible migration crisis, leading millions of citizens to flee the Middle East forever.

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“..on the eve of one of the most delicate lunar transits of the century – with the Moon entering Libra with an eclipse attached with Mars opposed to Pluto retrograde in Capricorn, which will perfect the opposition at the end of the month, a conjunction harbinger of great clashes..”

• The Resistance Wants Victory (Pacini)

This is it. Something has happened. And this ‘something’ was for many unexpected, for others much hoped for. Now we have to reckon with what will happen. There are choices that cannot be made without considering certain esoteric data, the influence of which can be decisive for the success of a strategic operation. Israel knows this well, applying the notions of the Jewish Kabbalah to all political and military choices. This time the timing was not lacking even in the response: on the eve of one of the most delicate lunar transits of the century – with the Moon entering Libra with an eclipse attached with Mars opposed to Pluto retrograde in Capricorn, which will perfect the opposition at the end of the month, a conjunction harbinger of great clashes and which opens a two-year period of important battles – the Islamic Republic of Iran took the step of responding to the Zionist fury.

The attack was claimed as a legitimate response to the assassination of Haniyeh, Nasrallah and other members of the Resistance, following what the United Nations had also declared in recent months, when Israel had violated Iran’s territorial sovereignty by attacking Tehran directly. From a technical military point of view, it was an attack that could be described as modest. Certainly not focused on gaining significant strategic advantage, the operation involved some 400 hypersonic missiles that reached targets in Israel within approximately 15 minutes, all of them strategic in nature, i.e. military bases, weapons depots, and supply platforms. No civilian targets were tracked in the executed attack, confirming the military precision and legitimacy of the attack under International Law and Ius in bello, a necessary clarification given the Israeli use of targeting civilian targets.

What this attack has shown is that Iran has succeeded in overcoming Israel’s multi-layered air defence, somewhat like it did in April under similar circumstances. This time, however, the missile attack was significantly more successful than the previous one, with more warheads impacting the targets. The missiles employed were – according to the official release of the Iranian institutions – Fatteh-1s, defined as hypersonic, employed for the first time. Bear in mind that the term ‘hypersonic’ means that the missile maintains a speed of Mach 5 (or higher) for the entire duration of the flight, not just for part of it as is the case with non-hypersonic missiles. They are missiles with a weight of 450 kilos and a range of more than 1400 kilometers. From the recovered fragments, it appears that Cheibar Shekan missiles, which are particularly fast and have a longer cruise range, were also used.

The attack was followed by a series of ‘diplomatic clarifications’: if Israel counter-attacks, Iran is ready to strike more heavily. In the meantime, the U.S. condemned the attack and deployed its armed forces in support of Israel, which had also been present in the area for some time, both with the regular missions already there and the reinforcements sent since the beginning of the fight with Hamas in October last year. The quality of this attack is perhaps to be understood more on the level of international relations than on the strictly military level. Such a ‘partial’ attack was not helpful in clearing the way for ground troops, let alone in tampering with the enemy’s systems. The affected bases had already been evacuated hours in advance and Israel was waiting for the promised retaliation. What has changed is at the international level. The U.S. barefacedly confirmed its sine qua non protection to Israel, while, let us remember, Netanyahu was in New York at the UN plenary when he issued the order to attack to kill Nasrallah and shortly afterwards invade Lebanon, starting the Third Lebanon War.

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“..This chaos has sparked global supply chain snarls for the shipping industry as commercial vessels are rerouted around the Cape of Good Hope.”

• Tanker Blown Up By Houthis As Disasters Mount For Biden-Harris (ZH)

The Biden-Harris administration is facing several disasters this week. From FEMA’s botched response in the hurricane-ravaged US Southeast to elevated WW3 risks in the Middle East, one major and ongoing crisis that went underreported this week was multiple attacks by Iran-backed Houthi rebels on commercial ships in the critical maritime chokepoint of the southern Red Sea. On Wednseday we penned a note, citing intelligence firm SynMax, which specializes in maritime and energy intelligence, about two commercial vessels targeted by Houthis: “Two ships targeted by Houthis in the Red Sea yesterday—Panama-flagged CORDELIA MOON and Liberian-flagged MINOAN COURAGE—the first such attacks since September,” SynMax wrote on X.

Fast forward to late week, the maritime news website gCaptain released footage showing one of the vessels, Panama-flagged tanker M/T Cordelia Moon, being hit by a Houthi unmanned surface vessel. Here’s more from the gCaptain: The incident, which occurred on October 1, involved multiple missile strikes and a hit by an USV. The vessel was unladen and in ballast condition at the time of the attack. According to the Joint Maritime Information Center (JMIC), the vessel was targeted while navigating the southern Red Sea, approximately 64 nautical miles from Al Hudaydah, Yemen. The attack unfolded in several stages, according to the ship’s Master:
At 0150 UTC, three projectiles landed near the ship’s port bow.
At 0253 UTC, a fourth projectile splashed 100 meters from the aft starboard quarter.
At 0500 UTC, the ship was struck by a USV on its port side.

The JMIC confirmed that the Cordelia Moon sustained damage but did not require assistance. All crew members are reported safe, and the vessel is proceeding to its next port of call. It also assesses that vessel was likely targeted due to affiliations within the vessel’s operation structure. The current threat assessment indicates that vessels with Israeli, United States, or United Kingdom associations are at the highest risk, but ships within company structures that have been identified as making port calls to Israel are also potential targets. As tensions continue to rise in the Red Sea, this latest incident underscores the dangers to vessels and their crews in the region, particularly those with connections to countries perceived as adversaries by the Houthi rebels. Dramatic footage.

For one year, Houthi rebels have launched over 80 attacks on commercial ships in the critical maritime chokepoint, sinking two ships and killing four sailors. [..] This chaos has sparked global supply chain snarls for the shipping industry as commercial vessels are rerouted around the Cape of Good Hope. Even more concerning is the Biden-Harris administration’s failure of ‘Operation Prosperity Guardian’ to ensure freedom of navigation and maritime security in the critical chokepoint. Meanwhile, the clogged chokepoint is causing major supply chain disruptions at top global ports. [..] In August, former Navy Seal and Blackwater founder Erik Prince issued this dire warning about what the clogged Red Sea actually means for the West: America’s “credibility and deterrence” are quickly eroding.

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49 additional combat brigades of 5,000 soldiers each.

• NATO Plans Major Force Buildup – Welt (RT)

NATO is planning to dramatically increase the number of its combat units amid tensions with Russia, the daily Die Welt reported on Saturday, citing a confidential planning document it obtained from the German Defense Ministry. Entitled the “Minimum Capability Requirements,” it was reportedly written by two top commanders of the US-led bloc: American General Christopher Cavoli, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, and French Admiral Pierre Vandier, who is responsible for the bloc’s doctrinal and transformation issues. The document outlines the basic requirements NATO has to fulfil if it plans to defend “every centimeter” of its territory in a potential conflict with Moscow, Die Welt said. Cavoli and Vandier explain that the current number of the bloc’s combat brigades is insufficient for this task and should be increased from 82 to 131.

Under German army standards, the strength of such new formations should be around 5,000 soldiers each, the newspaper said, without explaining if the NATO strategy paper outlined any specific requirements. The number of corps and divisions is also to be increased from six to 15 and from 24 to 38 respectively, according to the document. The number of ground-based air defense units equipped with systems such as US-made Patriots or the German-made IRIS-T should be expanded fivefold from 293 to 1467, the outlet said. Each of the 32 NATO members would reportedly have to contribute to these new “minimum capabilities” depending on its population. It is unclear how quickly NATO countries would be able to meet the new requirements. According to Die Welt, the German Armed Forces – the Bundeswehr – currently has eight combat brigades and one more is being formed. Berlin plans to field one more brigade by 2031.

The buildup would require “significant further funding,” the authors said, as cited by Die Welt. The plan would “probably demand significantly more than two percent” of member states’ national GDP to be spent on defense, they added. Western nations have repeatedly called Russia a major threat to their security since the start of the conflict between Moscow and Kiev. The Kremlin has denied any plans to attack NATO. President Vladimir Putin has dismissed talk of a ‘Russian threat’ as “nonsense” and propaganda by Western governments aimed at scaring European populations “to extract additional expenses” from them. However, Russian senior officials have warned that the West’s ever-increasing involvement in Ukraine via weapons shipments and other military assistance creates the risk of a direct confrontation between Moscow and the bloc.

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“Ukraine is closer to NATO than ever before. And we will continue on this path until you become a member of our alliance. I very much look forward to that day..”

• New NATO Chief Visits Ukraine (Antiwar)

Former Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte visited Ukraine on Thursday, just two days after replacing Jens Stoltenberg as the head of NATO, demonstrating the alliance’s commitment to the proxy war. “This is now my fifth time in Ukraine since the full onslaught of Russia started in February 2022,” Rutte said alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. “But this is my very first time as NATO Secretary General, and it was important to me that I come to Ukraine at the start of my mandate.” Rutte vowed he would work to support Ukraine’s continued move closer to NATO and eventual membership in the alliance. “Ukraine is closer to NATO than ever before. And we will continue on this path until you become a member of our alliance. I very much look forward to that day,” he said.

Rutte’s visit comes as Ukraine continues to lose territory to Russian forces in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region. On Wednesday, Ukraine announced it was withdrawing from the strategic Donetsk town of Vuhledar, and Russian troops are closing in on Pokrovsk. Fighting is still raging in Russia’s Kursk Oblast, but the invasion has failed to distract Russia from eastern Ukraine. Russian forces have been slowly pushing the Ukrainians back in Kursk since launching a counteroffensive a few weeks ago. Zelensky is still pushing hard for the US to allow NATO missiles to be used in long-range strikes inside Russian territory, a step that would risk a direct NATO-Russia war and nuclear escalation.

“The frontline must be strengthened, and long-range capabilities must finally be provided in the way necessary to end this war. Everyone in the alliance understands the needs,” Zelensky said in his nightly address after meeting with Rutte. Last month, the US appeared poised to approve the decision on long-range strikes but may have backed down after Russian President Vladimir Putin warned it would mean NATO is at war with Russia and ordered changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine.

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“The West should “make the conditions” that would enable Ukraine to “sit down with the Russians and get something which is acceptable… something where they survive as an independent nation”.

• Kiev May Have To Accept Loss Of Territory – Stoltenberg (RT)

Ukraine may have to recognize the loss of some of its territory to Russia in order to achieve peace and security guarantees, Jens Stoltenberg said in his first long interview after stepping down as NATO secretary-general. Stoltenberg ended his ten-year tenure as the chief of the US-led alliance on October 1. In a conversation with the Financial Times published on Friday, he said that Kiev may be forced to rethink seeing the restoration of the 1991 borders as a prerequisite for any peace deal. Stoltenberg suggested that “a kind of new momentum” would come after the US presidential election in early November, possibly ushering in “ways to try to get movement on the battlefield combined with movement around the negotiating table.” The West should “make the conditions” that would enable Ukraine to “sit down with the Russians and get something which is acceptable… something where they survive as an independent nation”.

Asked what he would propose to Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, the former NATO chief offered a comparison to the resolution of the Soviet-Finnish war nearly 85 years ago. “Finland fought a brave war against the Soviet Union in ‘39. They imposed much bigger costs on the Red Army than expected,” he said. “The war ended with them giving up 10% of the territory. But they got a secure border.” Under the March 1940 treaty, Finland ceded a large portion of the Karelia region and Viipuri, its second-largest city at the time (known as Vyborg in Russia). Stoltenberg argued that Ukraine could obtain security guarantees from NATO even “if there is a line that is not necessarily the internationally recognized border.” He noted that the US defense pact with Japan does not cover Tokyo’s claim on the Kuril Islands, which are part of Russia, and that West Germany was admitted to NATO despite the fact that East Germany was controlled at the time by a separate, Soviet-aligned government.

“When there is a will, there are ways to find the solution. But you need a line which defines where Article 5 is invoked, and Ukraine has to control all the territory until that border,” Stoltenberg said, referring to the section of the NATO treaty, which outlines the duty of member states to defend each other. Russia has said that it would not accept Zelensky’s ten-point ‘peace formula’ and not relinquish control over Crimea and four other regions, which Kiev and its backers continue to view as Ukrainian territory under illegal occupation. Kiev’s hopes of imposing its terms appear more distant after the failed 2023 counteroffensive and Russia’s new victories in Donbass, where Moscow’s troops have been making steady progress throughout 2024. During its renewed advances, the Russian Army pushed the Ukrainians out of several heavily fortified towns, including Avdeevka, which fell in February, and Ugledar, which was captured earlier this week.

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“..he recently reiterated to authorities in Kiev that he does not understand why they continue to fight the Russians..”

• Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico To Visit Russia For Victory Day (RT)

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico on Saturday announced his intention to visit Moscow to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany. Speaking to the host of the ‘Saturday Dialogues’ show on Slovakia’s RTVS radio, Fico said the event should have nothing to do with today’s conflicts. “Who will stop me next year, when it will be the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, from going to a peaceful demonstration in Moscow? I think I will go. And why wouldn’t I go. What does it have to do with the present time?” Fico stated, responding to a question from the host about his possible attendance. Fico said he would not let anyone forget that “freedom came from the East,” apparently referring to the liberation of Slovakia from Nazi occupation by the Soviet Army in spring 1945.

With regard to present-day Ukraine, he said he recently reiterated to authorities in Kiev that he does not understand why they continue to fight the Russians. Since returning to power in 2023, Fico has stopped Slovak weapons deliveries to Ukraine. He has also repeatedly called for a diplomatic solution to the conflict. At a press conference earlier this week, the premier vowed to do everything in his power to restore relations with Moscow once the fighting ends. Earlier this month, Fico lambasted the West for condemning the atrocities committed by the Third Reich during WWII while turning a blind eye to Ukrainian troops wearing Nazi symbols. In a speech the former site of Sered concentration camp in western Slovakia, he called on the global community to stop “silently tolerating” Kiev’s forces using Nazi insignia.

Moscow has long tried to draw the attention of the global community to the growing influence of Nazi ideology among the Ukrainian public, and has made the “denazification” of Ukraine one of the goals of the military operation it launched in February 2022. Russian Security Council deputy chairman Dmitry Medvedev accused the West earlier this year of nurturing and supporting modern Nazis by backing Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin also recently slammed the West for “forgetting the lessons of World War II” and “mocking history” by justifying the actions of current followers of the Nazis.

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“..he is heading to a meeting with the Ukrainian leadership to discuss how to continue the transit of Russian gas through Ukraine so that the Slovak economy does not go the way of Germany’s..”

• Robert Fico Is A Rare Voice Of Sanity When It Comes To Russia (Amar)

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has done something very normal that in today’s West is highly unusual – speaking at a press conference in Bratislava, Fico said that when a war ends, actual peace should follow. This sensational idea is the essence of his statement that if the Ukraine War “ends during the [2023-2027] mandate of this government,” he will do “everything possible for the renewal of economic and normal relations with Russia.” What an outrageously reasonable idea! Especially for the leader of a small state that belongs to both the EU and NATO. And all the more so as he is heading to a meeting with the Ukrainian leadership to discuss how to continue the transit of Russian gas through Ukraine so that the Slovak economy does not go the way of Germany’s – a slow, then increasingly rapid collapse by energy strangulation at the hands of Washington and Kiev.

Fico made the remarks about re-establishing normality with Russia – which would go far toward re-establishing normality in Europe in general – at a press conference on his government’s new tax policies, namely increases. They are needed, Fico argues, to lower a fiscal deficit that has grown bad enough to lead to a downgrade by Fitch International at the end of last year due to what the ratings agency called a “deterioration in public finances and an unclear consolidation path.” In other words, like all other EU countries, Slovakia is struggling with economic problems. Its government seeks to tackle them by deficit reduction; the opposition does its part and disagrees. So far, nothing unusual. But there is something that is very unusual in the Slovak case – namely, the clearsighted and open acknowledgement of two facts by the leader.

First, that Slovakia has no good reason to make its problems worse by giving up on comparatively inexpensive energy from Russia, whether in the shape of oil or gas. Never mind that the EU exerts, in Fico’s words, “huge pressure” to bend Slovakia to its will. Indeed, as Fico has correctly pointed out, grand gestures of cutting yourself off from Russian energy tend to end up with buying it anyhow, only at a higher price and via middlemen. And secondly, that the eventual end of the Ukraine conflict should lead to a rapid re-establishment of normal commercial and political relations with Russia. Unfortunately, there as well, the Slovak leadership is a lonely voice; the only comparably sane positions on these questions are to be found in Hungary. It is true that there are more and more voices among yesterday’s ultra-hardliners in the West who are beginning to strike a different, more timid tone now that Moscow is winning the war against both Ukraine and NATO.

Germany’s Olaf Scholz is begging for a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin. It is slowly dawning on NATO’s former figurehead, Jens Stoltenberg, that Ukraine will lose territory; and France’s Emmanuel Macron is becoming gloomy about the potential ‘end’ of the EU. But unfortunately, there are enough obstinate hardliners left, and even those who are beginning to get cold feet are still nurturing delusions such as a territorially (and otherwise) reduced Ukraine inside NATO.Even if and when the EU finally learns its lesson, things will not be easy at all. Though Fico could hardly be expected to say anything to the contrary, there is one part of his statement that is not quite as realistic as the rest – that the “European Union needs Russia, and Russia needs the European Union.” In principle, yes – as neighbors, the EU and Russia should derive great mutual advantages from stable and persistent cooperation.

But in reality, as shaped by Western economic warfare via sanctions, Russia has ever less interest in the EU, for two reasons: The EU has revealed itself as knowing no limits, not even of elementary self-interest, in its obedience to the ongoing US attempts to degrade Russia; from Moscow’s perspective, it is an entirely unreliable actor since it does not even act rationally. Second, in response to the sanctions attack, Russia has succeeded in re-casting and re-orienting its economy in a manner that makes the EU much less important for it. None of this means that there is no potential for future cooperation. But it won’t be the same as in the past, it won’t be symmetrical, and Russia will emerge with a stronger position than the EU which it will not hesitate to use.

Fico is to be commended for his good sense and the persistent courage to speak it, especially in view of the fact that he barely survived an assassination attempt by a deranged Ukraine fan, who may or may not have been just that – a crazed loner. The Slovak leader is not giving up and he should not. Yet he is up against something extraordinarily resistant to reasonable arguments – a form of mass delusion among the West’s elites. The real problem is that so many Western leaders have not simply lost their connection to reality – they are proud of having proactively abandoned it. That’s why, in the final analysis, their obstinate refusal to give up on misguided wishful thinking is not really even about Russia.

They are in rebellion against having to heed facts as such, and what annoys them most about the Russian leadership is its insistence on living in the real world. Think of this Western syndrome as the real-life equivalent of something Orwell foresaw in his novel ‘1984’, which is all too often misunderstood as a silly Cold War pamphlet. In his drab, imaginary future, which is at least as much about the abyss of human hubris as about politics, the ruling elites practice what one of them describes as “collective solipsism.” If we all believe we are levitating, then we are levitating. Gravity be damned. That is as concise a description of the state of mind that prevails in Washington, Brussels, and London as we will get.

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“The alleged facts date back to a time when Ms. Le Pen’s party had few elected members, but had major funding needs because of its solid foothold in France, the need to finance a party machine etc… ”

• Le Pen Trial Chance for Establishment to Bring Her Party to Its Knees (Sp.)

Prosecutors in the case against Marine Le Pen and her colleagues allege that between 2004 and 2016, the populist right party, then known as the National Front, misused millions of euros in EU moneys, spending cash doled out for parliamentary aides on personnel including a bodyguard for Ms. Le Pen and her father, a chief of staff, a secretary, and a graphic designer. Le Pen denies any wrongdoing, accusing the prosecution of “fabricating” “preconceived ideas” about the case, assuring that the party has “not violated any political and regulatory rules of the European Parliament,” and promising to present “serious and extremely solid arguments” in the party’s defense in the coming months. “Parliamentary assistants do not work for the parliament. They are political assistants to elected officials, political by definition,” Le Pen maintains. “I have the impression that [preconceived ideas] have been fabricated by the prosecution, the European Parliament,” she said in her testimony Wednesday.

The European Parliament wants €2.7 million in compensation from the National Rally for “financial and reputational damages,” accounting for €1 million already paid back by the party following a probe. The 56-year-old politician served as National Rally president between 2011 and 2021, worked as a member of European Parliament between 2009 and 2017, and ran for president three times between 2012 and 2022, taking 41.5% of the vote in the 2022 race in the runoff against incumbent Emmanuel Macron. Separately, Le Pen and her colleagues could now face up to 10 years in jail and a €1 million fine, if found guilty of misusing the EU funds. Le Pen could also be banned from running for office for five to ten years, which would bar her from running in the 2027 presidential election. Notably, the National Rally and its allies won some 142 seats in snap French legislative elections in July, taking 53 additional seats in the 577-seat parliament as pro-Macron centrists saw their numbers drop by 86 seats, to 159 total.

The populist right party emerged as kingmaker capable of bringing down the Macron-appointed government of Prime Minister Michel Barnier this week after the populist left New Popular Front filed a no-confidence motion over the government’s undemocratic representation and austere budgetary plans. Le Pen had earlier promised to keep Barnier “under surveillance,” but to give his government a chance, on the condition that any new tax hikes are complemented by measures to assist the lower and middle classes, and measure are taken to tighten controls on immigration and measures against crime, including narcotics and human trafficking. Mainstream observers expect the trial to push the National Rally to focus its attention and resources on defending themselves instead of fully playing their opposition role, with some suggesting that Le Pen’s years-long campaign to successfully broaden the party’s base could be seriously marred if she or her colleagues are found guilty.

The trial is a chance for the establishment to cast shade on her party, and “a good opportunity to bring what is now France’s leading party to its knees,” Dr. Edouard Husson, a historian and publisher of Le Courrier des Strateges – a French geopolitical affairs journal, told Sputnik. “I can’t comment on the facts of the case. But I can talk about the context. The alleged facts date back to a time when Ms. Le Pen’s party had few elected members, but had major funding needs because of its solid foothold in France, the need to finance a party machine etc… The French system for financing political parties is disadvantageous for small parties or parties on the rise, such as the Front National/Rassemblement National at the time – since it grants funding on the basis of the number of votes obtained. I therefore assume that what Ms. Le Pen and the other defendants are accused of is using European Parliament funding beyond what is reasonable. Obviously, the Rassemblement National’s fear is that it may be judged more severely than other parties,” Husson explained.

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One goal: Shut him up.

• Alex Jones Creditors Target Future Assets – Which Could Include His Name (ZH)

Lawyers targeting Alex Jones over a $1.4 billion judgement to Sandy Hook families have asked a Texas court to appoint a receiver to manage assets he acquired after his recent Chapter 7 bankruptcy conversion. The move seeks to control any new ‘non-exempt’ assets or endeavors that Jones might generate in the future. If the receiver deems that Jones’ name, as a business entity or brand, holds value – they could seize control of any profits or business activity generated under it to satisfy the debt. Jones explained the situation on Friday: Non-exempt assets are properties and income streams that bankruptcy protection does not cover. In the Jones’ case, this could include future earnings from personal appearances, digital content revenues, or any new business ventures initiated after the conversion of his bankruptcy case from Chapter 11 to Chapter 7.

Jones has raised just under $80,000 as of this writing in a GiveSendGo campaign to foot his legal bills. In response, InfoWars said the following: “As President Trump has rightly stated hundreds of times, “They’re not after me, they’re after you—I’m just in the way,” when you stand with Alex Jones in the face of the globalist onslaught you are standing up not only for yourself but your family, your country, and God. Again, your desperately needed donations will fund Alex Jones’ legal defense and expenses associated with staying on the air that are essential to him being able to stay on the air regardless of what happens to InfoWars. We the people have turned the tide but evil is striking back. Without your support the enemies of humanity will win.

Thank you,
Alex Jones & Crew

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“..Milei’s adviser, Santiago Caputo, who is reportedly a big fan of The West Wing and was said to have made watching the show a condition for joining his political consulting firm.”

• Argentina’s Milei Accused Of Copying Speech From The West Wing (RT)

Argentine President Javier Milei has been accused of plagiarizing the hit US political drama ‘The West Wing’ during his recent speech at the UN. According to the Buenos Aires Herald, Carlos Pagni, a journalist with the newspaper La Nacion, was the first to notice the “remarkable resemblance” between parts of Milei’s fiery address and the monologue delivered by fictional US President Jed Bartlet. “We believe in freedom of expression for all. We believe in freedom of worship for all. We believe in freedom of commerce for all and we believe in limited governments, all of them,” Milei told the UN General Assembly on September 24.

“We believe that everyone should live free of tyranny and oppression, be that in the form of political oppression, economic slavery, or religious fanaticism. This fundamental idea cannot remain merely as words. It must be supported in facts, diplomatically, economically, and materially,” he continued. Nearly identical words were spoken by Bartlet, who was portrayed by actor Martin Sheen, to his cabinet in episode 15 of season four of the show. Pagni suggested that the speech was written by Milei’s adviser, Santiago Caputo, who is reportedly a big fan of The West Wing and was said to have made watching the show a condition for joining his political consulting firm.

Created by screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, The West Wing ran from 1999 to 2006, winning multiple awards, including three Golden Globes and 26 primetime Emmys. Milei, a self-described anarcho-capitalist who is known for using brash and sometimes eccentric language, has not commented on the matter. Speaking from the podium in New York last month, he described the UN as a “Leviathan with multiple tentacles” that attempts to trample on the sovereignty of countries and impose a “socialist” agenda.

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Walz fraud

 

 

AI

 

 

Expecting

 

 

Chicken coop

 

 

Gosling
https://twitter.com/i/status/1842443112779518343

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in wartime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle October 5 2024

Oct 052024
 
 October 5, 2024  Posted by at 8:43 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  57 Responses »


Francisco Goya Witches’ Sabbath 1797-98

 

• Musk Says FEMA ‘Blocking’ Delivery Of More Starlinks In Devastated Areas (JTN)
• The Regime Wants Appalachia To Suffer (Bishop)
• October Surprise (Kunstler)
• The Reprehensible Audacity Of FEMA Being Broke (QTR)
• Elon Musk to Attend Trump Rally at Site of Attempted Assassination (ET)
• Donald Trump Takes His Biggest Lead Yet In Daily Mail Election Model (DM)
• Walz Makes the Case for the Most Anti-Free Speech Ticket in History (Turley)
• There Is Only One Important Decision Waiting to be Made (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Ukraine’s Mobilization Campaign ‘Gets Dirty’ – The Times (RT)
• They lie. They cheat. They steal. They bomb. And they spin (Pepe Escobar)
• Biden on Israel Response to Iranian Attack: ‘That’s Between Me and Them’ (Sp.)
• US, UK Digging Their Grave In Catastrophic War In The Middle East (SCF)
• US, Israel Reportedly Downplay Level of Destruction by Iran (Sp.)
• US Secret Service Struggling To Keep Staff – NYT (RT)
• New NATO Arctic Group is No Match for Russo-Chinese Cooperation (Sp.)

 

 

 

 

Alina: It’s called desperation

 

 

 

 

 

 


https://twitter.com/i/status/1841955852825063617

 

 

OMG

Line in the Sand

 

 

Assange

 

 

Presler

 

 

 

 

$42 billion, zero people connected. And then this.

• Musk Says FEMA ‘Blocking’ Delivery Of More Starlinks In Devastated Areas (JTN)

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk accused the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) of blocking the delivery of additional Starlink units to help residents in areas devastated by Hurricane Helene to stay connected to the Internet. “FEMA is not merely failing to adequately help people in trouble, but is actively blocking citizens who try to help!” Musk wrote Friday in a post on X which included the following note he received from a SpaceX engineer on the ground in North Carolina. “Hey Elon, update here on site of Asheville, NC. We have powered up two large operating bases for choppers to deliver goods into hands. We’ve deployed 300+ starlinks and outpour is it has saved many lives,” the engineer wrote.

“The big issue is FEMA is actively blocking shipments and seizing goods and services locally and locking them away to state they are their own. It’s very real and scary how much they have taken control to stop people helping. We are blocked now on the shipments of new starlinks coming in until we get an escort from the fire dept. but that may not be enough,” he added.

A text message Musk revealed in a second post said that the Federal Aviation Administration is throttling private flights in the North Carolina airspace which has made it harder to keep delivering more Starlink units and other emergency supplies. Former first daughter Ivanka Trump handed out Starlinks, hot meals and critical supplies in North Carolina on Wednesday. According to the texts from Musk’s team on the ground, FEMA showed up there and “starting blocking us.” The text message is consistent with comments made by Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg regarding “temporary flight restrictions” that have been imposed on private flights and drones over areas damaged by the storm.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1841946537170972786

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“The counties most impacted by the storm disproportionately vote in ways the current regime does not like.”

• The Regime Wants Appalachia To Suffer (Bishop)

Americans from Florida to North Carolina continue to deal with the devastating consequences of Hurricane Helene, now the deadliest hurricane to hit the US since Katrina. The stories emerging from the region are heart breaking. The economic damage to property and the infrastructure will take years to recover from. Large parts of the area will never return to what they were. Many Americans may be unaware of the extent of the damage. Unlike Hurricane Katrina, which received non-stop coverage on cable news for weeks, with primetime anchors like Anderson Cooper visiting on location covering stories of human tragedy and government incompetent, Helene’s aftermath has received far less coverage. It is on social media platforms like X where folks will find horrifying stories of the stench of death still strong in difficult to reach areas, the lack of government assistance for those in need, and the courage of private efforts serving the area.

Some of this is explained by the time period we are living in. Escalation in the Middle East. A national election is on the horizon. A court decision releasing documents that allows the salivating press to re-litigate the events of January 6th, 2020 yet again. What cannot be ignored, however, is the extent to which the open hostility to which the nation’s most powerful institutions have had to the sorts of people that are overwhelmingly impacted by this storm, predominantly white, working class, and politically conservative. This horrific natural disaster is a reminder of the extent to which the regime hates the people who live there.

This was true prior to Helene, where Washington policies have impoverished this areas with policies ranging from the national impact of inflation and financialization to more specific regional impacts stemming from regulatory policy with specific impacts on the region impacted. The immediate aftermath, however, demonstrates the extent to which state reaction to a disaster impedes voluntary efforts to quickly mobilize and assist those in need. A combination of heavy-handed federal and state action has attempted to undercut recovery efforts, from grounding private helicopters seeking to rescue stranded victims, to the demands of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to stop citizens from flying drones near impacted areas seeking to locate those in need of help. Given the logistical strains that even the best organized response to a severe crisis would create, the voluntary organization of local human resources on the ground is essential to meaningful and quick recovery. Here, the priority of government actors has been to elevate their control over the situation at the expense of these efforts.

The allocation of emergency resources itself is deserving of extended scrutiny as well. The victims of this tragedy, like all Americans, have their wealth extracted by Washington to fill the coffers of large federal agencies like FEMA. This same agency, whose nominal priority is to assist Americans in the case of emergency, are already pleading poverty. Of course, these same agencies oversaw the redirection of over a billion dollars in recent years to subsidize migration into the country. The priorities are clear, emergency funds take a back seat to a regime that cares more about new arrivals than the families who lived in this country for generations. This predatory relationship between the regime and its citizens is systemic. The priorities of Washington will always stand in conflict with the people of Appalachia.

DC sees no problem with ordering the Tennessee National Guard to the Middle East at a time when their fellow Tennesseans are facing their own crisis. This relationship is also bipartisan in nature. Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, who has become very rich off the backs of the people who elevated him to political power, ignoring the victims of Helene on social media, while very focused on Israel and Iran. The regime will always prioritize its own interests, including the interests of what it has identified as their special privileged classes, over the interests of its people. Changing this parasitic relationship requires more than a change of political party in the White House, but a determined effort by those who seek to represent the interests of these people to strike at the root of this relationship.

Unfortunately, while elections alone are not adequate to address the victimization of Appalachia, it is reasonable to consider what impact the specter of politics is having on their current neglect. The counties most impacted by the storm disproportionately vote in ways the current regime does not like. Would America’s federal government deliberately undermine recovery efforts to try to achieve its own desired political ends? Would the corporate press deliberately fail to cover the inadequacy of these efforts, hoping to prevent a candidate it fears doesn’t win? For those that understand the true nature of the state, the answer is an obvious one. Our prayers are with the victims of Hurricane Helene, that they receive the help they need as recovery efforts continue, that they have the ability to build back their communities strong, and that they will one day be free of a regime that cares so little for them.

JD

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“Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’s brand-new VP pick, is a fanatical far-left lunatic wearing the friendly armor of hapless, bloated oaf from the sticks” — Peachy Keenan

• October Surprise (Kunstler)

That same obvious void of conviction you see on Tim Walz’s labile face is on display with the feds’ response to mass tragedy in the Appalachian hurricane zone. It was a point in my book, The Long Emergency, that our national government would become increasingly impotent, ineffectual, and incompetent as conditions worsened — and now here it is. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), could not bestir itself to aid stricken citizens around the flood-ravaged region in North Carolina and Tennessee. Sec’y Mayorkas of Homeland Security said that FEMA was out of money which, in this season of political weirdness, is especially weird, seeing as how the nation’s fiscal year began Oct 1, and Congress’s continuing resolution for funding US agencies should assure that FEMA’s checkbook is full. What was up with that?

Well, everybody and his uncle has heard by now that FEMA (and many other agencies under Mayorkas’s DHS) commits tons of money to pamper the millions of mutts from foreign lands sneaking over the US border, with lots of assistance from NGO cut-outs funded by your tax dollars, who marshal groups of aliens south-of-the-border for the crossing, and then fly or bus them around our country for the special purpose of distributing them in swing voting districts to then coordinate with other NGOs devoted to registering non-citizens to vote in order to “harvest” their ballots. Quite an operation. Completely lawless and corrupt. And official! So, no aid for you, baskets of deplorables, shivering in the dark in your hills and hollows of Appalachia, your houses splintered, scant chattels lost, and your beloved hound-dogs carried away in the roaring torrents.

The money that might have helped you begin to recover from the complete devastation of your lives is paying for Guatemalans to bunk in the Roosevelt Hotel and order-in quesadillas and churros, and refill their government-issued debit cards so they can afford a few nice things as they wait for mysterious others to cast ballots in their names. This is the work of your Democratic Party, the party of chaos, party of the Woke mentally ill, party of wrecking the country, of America’s end times. And you’re going to vote for more of it? Of course not. And despite the attempts to knock him out of the arena with scores of utter bullshit lawfare cases, and efforts to shoot him dead, Mr. Trump keeps coming at them, an implacable, relentless force, the true Golden Golem conjured up by their catamite news media. Their inability to destroy him has wrecked their minds.

One surprising October surprise is advanced by whistleblower Mike McCormick on Substack (Midnight in the Laptop of Good and Evil). Mr. McCormick was White House stenographer under Presidents Bush II, Obama, and Trump. His job was to transcribe meetings, speeches, and interactions between major political figures. He was the proverbial fly-on-the-wall for years and years. He has seen and heard a lot and still hears a lot from people who know a lot. He says the Obama-Biden-Harris faction of the Deep State blob is anti-Israel and that Israel understands what this means. He says that Benjamin Netanyahu has told “Joe Biden” (or, let’s say, told errand-boys Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan) that if the blob engineers a phony victory for Kamala Harris, he will blow up the oil fields in Iran and the anti-Israel Democrats will have to pick up the pieces.

There it is, raw power politics, like so much meat on the table. “Joe Biden” cannot control Bibi. “Joe Biden” is too far gone and two weak, and Israel does not aim to let itself get wiped off the map, as Iran’s leadership never tires of saying. The blob, McCormick says, has to ask itself: does it help rig the election for Harris or stand down on all its ballot harvesting and other trickery and actually allow a real election to roll out? Surprise! Now, take your Kit-kat bar and go home.

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“What FEMA being broke today means not just that we have pissed away the money that we could have allocated for it to non-U.S. citizens — it’s far more insulting than that.”

• The Reprehensible Audacity Of FEMA Being Broke (QTR)

After the devastating effects of Hurricane Helene, FEMA has all of a sudden come out and said it doesn’t have enough funds to make it through hurricane season. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas warned this week that FEMA is running low on funds. “We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have. We are expecting another hurricane hitting,” Mayorkas said. “FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season.” While Mayorkas didn’t specify the exact funding needed, his comments reflect growing concerns from President Biden and lawmakers that a supplemental spending bill may be necessary this fall to support recovery efforts.

I’ve spent the last four years watching as millions of people have crossed unchecked through our southern border and have been treated like royalty by the Biden administration while everyday citizens struggle with rising prices, crumbling infrastructure, and the negative effects of suffocating regulation. I’ve also spent the last four years watching the United States dole out close to $50 billion in foreign aid, mainly to Ukraine to help it press on with a war that realistically it has little chance of winning, while shaking down waitstaff, Uber drivers and anybody using Venmo for purposes of more than $600 for tax receipts. And in my short time in the world of finance, I’ve seen enough omnibus spending bills—with funds allocated for things like border security in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia and Oman and family planning to halt population growth that “threatens biodiversity or endangered species”—to have developed a deep loathing for how our government and our Treasury manage finances.

So when sorry-ass Alejandro Mayorkas—who has sworn up and down for the last three years that there’s no crisis at the southern border while parts of the country have been overrun and overwhelmed by unchecked, undocumented, and sometimes criminal migrants—takes to publicly decrying that FEMA is out of money in the midst of one of the largest domestic disasters in the country’s history, it’s absolutely revolting to watch. Not only is it grotesque because of how we have squandered away hundreds of billions of dollars on things that everyday U.S. citizens are not going to see an impact from, but it’s even worse when examined under the umbrella of how we run monetary policy in this country. There once was a day when, if you needed to fund government entities, you actually had to have the revenue coming in from taxpayers because we couldn’t just print dollars ad infinitum anytime we wanted. Those were the days of sound money, and they are long gone.

What FEMA being broke today means not just that we have pissed away the money that we could have allocated for it to non-U.S. citizens — it’s far more insulting than that. It means that in a day and age where we can theoretically print endless fiat dollars and have an ‘infinite amount of cash’—an idea that I think is completely batshit insane, but our Fed governors don’t—that we still have not stocked the coffers of our domestic agencies with the bare minimum necessary for them to help the American people when they need to. In other words, if the money is all fake, and we can conjure up as much of it as we want without any consequences, as both political parties would have you believe over the last several decades, why should FEMA ever be asking for more money to help hurricane victims?

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The Trump team comes together one at a time: RFK Jr, Elon Musk, JD Vance, Vivek Ramaswamy, Tulsi Gabbard, Tucker Carlson, Mike Flynn, etc etc.

“The martyr lived. Last time America had a candidate this tough was Theodore Roosevelt..”

• Elon Musk to Attend Trump Rally at Site of Attempted Assassination (ET)

Elon Musk said on Oct. 3 that he will attend former President Donald Trump’s upcoming rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. “I will be there to support!” Musk wrote on X, the social media platform that he mostly owns. Trump has a rally scheduled for Saturday at the Butler Farm Show, where he was struck by a bullet during an event in July. Authorities say Thomas Crooks, who was shot dead by a U.S. Secret Service agent, attempted to assassinate Trump. About 30 minutes later, Musk shared video footage of Trump rising to his feet and holding a fist up after surviving the attempted assassination. Musk said he endorsed the former president. “I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery,” Musk wrote at the time. “The martyr lived. Last time America had a candidate this tough was Theodore Roosevelt,” he wrote in a follow-up post.

The business mogul, who is also CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, said in another post on Thursday that backing Trump has become “essential to saving America!” Musk’s posts frequently support Trump and Republicans while denigrating Vice President Kamala Harris and members of the Democratic Party. Trump welcomed Musk’s endorsement at the time and said in a September speech that, if elected, he would, on Musk’s advice, create a government efficiency commission tasked with improving government operations. The exact security protocols in place for Trump’s next Butler rally have not been disclosed but the U.S. Secret Service says it is prepared. A spokesman told The Epoch Times in an email that the agency has, since the attempted assassination attempt, “made comprehensive changes and enhancements to our communications capabilities, resourcing, and protective operations.” Trump, he said, is receiving heightened protection.

The agency has said previously that Trump is receiving the same level of protection as President Joe Biden and Harris in the wake of the assassination attempt by Crooks and another apparent attempt by a man at a golf course in Florida. “Regarding the October 5th event in Butler, PA, we are coordinating closely with the Pennsylvania State Police as well as local law enforcement in and around Butler Township. We are also leveraging other federal security resources to expand personnel and technology,” the spokesman said. “To maintain the integrity of our protective operations, we cannot go into the specifics regarding the security enhancements. Residents in the area should expect traffic delays and an increased presence of state, local, and federal law enforcement as part of our efforts to ensure a safe and secure event.”

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“..Trump moves out to a 13-point lead from just five points earlier in the week.”

• Donald Trump Takes His Biggest Lead Yet In Daily Mail Election Model (DM)

With a month to go until the only poll that matters, former President Donald Trump has roared back into a substantial lead in our election model. A slew of recent surveys has shown him with leads in key battleground states. And when the data are processed through our DailyMail.com/J.L. Partners model it shows the former president winning in 56.7 percent of the simulations. As ever, the road to the White House appears to run through Pennsylvania, with its 19 electoral college votes. For weeks it has been in ‘tossup’ territory. Now the model moves it to ‘lean Trump’ in what could be a decisive moment in the election race. Lose that state, and Vice President Kamala Harris would struggle to triumph even if she wins Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin. With fewer paths to electoral college victory, Harris wins in only 43.2 percent of the simulations. It means that, overall, Trump moves out to a 13-point lead from just five points earlier in the week.

To be clear, this is not like a poll lead. Instead, it shows the frequency with which Trump wins the electoral college when our model crunches through all the thousands of possible permutations of states using all the latest available data (along with decades worth of election results combined with economic data.) Until now his highest point was a 10-point advantage last month, but that number has waxed and waned with fresh inputs of data. And the race remains incredibly close. Harris is on course to win the popular vote (as Democrats have done in seven of the last eight elections.) Minnesota is looking safer than ever for her, solidifying her electoral college floor, and she is two points stronger in Michigan, where both she and Trump campaigned Thursday. But the latest model outcome shows a clear direction of travel, said Callum Hunter, data scientist with J.L. Partners.

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“Harris and Walz are the dream team for the anti-free speech movement.”

• Walz Makes the Case for the Most Anti-Free Speech Ticket in History (Turley)

In the vice presidential debate Tuesday, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz pulled the fire alarm. His opponent, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, cited the massive system of censorship supported by Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate. Walz proceeded to quote the line from a 1919 case in which Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said you do not have the right to falsely yell fire in a crowded theater. It is the favorite mantra of the anti-free speech movement. It also is fundamentally wrong. In my book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I discuss the justice’s line from his opinion in Schenck v. United States. Holmes wrote, “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.” As I discuss in the book, the line was largely lifted from a brief in an earlier free speech case. It has since become the rationale for politicians and pundits seeking to curtail free speech in America.

For example, when I testified last year before Congress against a censorship system that has been described by one federal court as “similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth,’” Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., interjected with the fire-in-a-theater question to say such censorship is needed and constitutional. In other words, the internet is now a huge crowded theater and those with opposing views are shouting fire. Goldman and Walz both cited a case in which socialists Charles Schenck and Elizabeth Baer were arrested and convicted of violating the Espionage Act of 1917. Their “crime” was to pass out flyers in opposition to the military draft during World War I. Schenck and Baer called on their fellow citizens not to “submit to intimidation” and to “assert your rights.” They argued, “If you do not assert and support your rights, you are helping to deny or disparage rights which it is the solemn duty of all citizens and residents of the United States to retain.” They also described the military draft as “involuntary servitude.”

Holmes used his “fire in a theater” line to justify the abusive conviction and incarceration. At the House hearing, when I was trying to explain that the justice later walked away from the line and Schenck was effectively overturned in 1969 in Brandenburg v. Ohio, Goldman cut me off and said, “We don’t need a law class here.” In the vice presidential debate, Walz showed that he and other Democratic leaders most certainly do need a class in First Amendment law. As I have said, the Biden-Harris administration has proved to be the most anti-free speech administration in two centuries. You have to go back to John Adams’ administration to find the equal of this administration. Harris has been an outspoken champion of censorship in an administration that supports targeting disinformation, misinformation and “malinformation.” That last category was defined by the Biden administration as information “based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.”

In the debate, Walz also returned to his favorite dismissal of censorship objections by saying that it is all just inflammatory rhetoric. Recently, Walz went on MSNBC to support censoring disinformation and declared, “There’s no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech, and especially around our democracy.” That is entirely untrue and shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the right called “indispensable” by the Supreme Court. Even after some of us condemned his claim as ironically dangerous disinformation, Walz continues to repeat it. This is why, for the free speech community, the prospect of a Harris-Walz administration is chilling. Where President Joe Biden was viewed as supporting censorship out of political opportunism, Harris and Walz are viewed as true believers. We are living through the most dangerous anti-free speech movement in American history. We have never before faced the current alliance of government, corporate, academic and media forces aligned against free speech.

A Harris-Walz administration with a supportive Congress could make this right entirely dispensable. Others are laying the groundwork for precisely that moment. University of Michigan Law School professor and MSNBC legal analyst Barbara McQuade has said that free speech “can also be our Achilles’ heel.” Columbia law professor Tim Wu, a former Biden White House aide, wrote a New York Times op-ed with the headline, “The First Amendment Is Out of Control.” He told readers that free speech “now mostly protects corporate interests” and threatens “essential jobs of the state, such as protecting national security and the safety and privacy of its citizens.” Walz said in the debate that Vice President Harris is promoting the “politics of joy.” Indeed, the wrong people are perfectly ecstatic. Harris and Walz are the dream team for the anti-free speech movement.

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“The only relevant decision in the world at this time is whether Washington decides that Putin means what he says or that Putin is so averse to war that he will stand down..”

• There Is Only One Important Decision Waiting to be Made (Paul Craig Roberts)

Except for the neoconservatives whose agenda it is, I sometimes wonder if I am the only other person who understands what the Ukraine conflict is about. While we await Washington’s decision about firing missiles into Russia, I will explain how we reached the current crisis. In 2007 Washington declared war on Russia without announcing it. Putin provoked Washington’s secret declaration of war when he rejected Washington’s uni-polar hegemony at the Munich Security Conference. Washington’s first attack was a year later when, while Putin was distracted at the Beijing Olympics, Washington sent a US trained and equipped Georgian army into South Ossetia. The purpose was not to defeat Russia militarily. Instead, it was a calculated risk that Putin might stand down and to avoid a military conflict that the West could misrepresent as restoring the Soviet Empire, and allow the Russian protectorate to be absorbed into Georgia.

The American neoconservatives were gambling with lives not their own that Putin and thereby Russia would be weakened by giving in, thus opening more paths of aggression against Russia. The neoconservatives’ plot against Putin might have worked except the Georgian invaders killed Russian peace-keepers. In 2008 Putin was trying to resurrect Russian pride, which was lost with the Soviet collapse 1991, and could not turn his back on dead Russian soldiers in South Ossetia. He returned from China, sent in an army, and smashed the US trained and equipped Georgian army in 5 days.

All of Georgia, a province of the Soviet Union until 1991, was in Putin’s hands. The Western propaganda is that Putin is dangerous because he intends to recover the Soviet empire. Obviously, this is a lie, because Putin pulled the Russian army out and left Georgia an independent state. Following the US neoconservative’s failure in South Ossetia, which they mischaracterized as a “Russian invasion of Georgia,” the neoconservatives began pouring billions of dollars into Ukraine in order to create cadres, NGOs, and purchased politicians that would support the “Maidan Revolution,” which was Washington’s overthrow of the democratically elected government of Ukraine that was living in profitable peace with Russia.

Again Putin was inattentive, this time distracted by the Sochi Olympics, and this time he did nothing. It is unclear why Putin allowed Ukraine to become Washington’s puppet state hostile to Russia and a candidate for NATO. The neo-Nazi state that Washington created began a number of operations against the Russian population in Donbas. The use of the Russian language was banned. Russians were accosted and killed in the streets by bands of Stepan Bandera’s followers. (Bandara fought for Nazi Germany against Russia during World War II.) The Russian parts of Ukraine, Donbas and Crimea, which were separated from Russia by Lenin and Khrushchev, asked Putin to protect them by re-admitting them to Russia. Putin accepted Crimea’s request as the Russian Black Sea naval base is in Crimea, but Putin refused the requests from Donbas, which had formed into two independent republics to protect themselves from slaughter by the Ukrainian army.

Putin, always cautious, was advised that if he accepted Donbass he would give credence to Western propaganda that Russia was restoring the Soviet Empire. Nevertheless, Putin knew he had to do something to protect the Donbas Russians. He concocted the Minsk Agreement. The Minsk Agreement kept Donbas as part of Ukraine, but gave the territory some autonomy, such as its own police and courts, to prevent persecution by Washington’s puppet in Kiev. Kiev and the two Donbas republics signed the Minsk agreement, and Germany and France promised to enforce it. Believing that the West had integrity, Putin was taken for a ride. Both the German Chancellor and French President later publicly admitted that they deceived Putin for eight years while Washington built and equipped a strong Ukrainian Army capable of conquering the two break-away republics in Donbas.

When during December 2021 and February 2022 Putin and Lavrov’s efforts to secure a mutual defense agreement between Russia and the West were met with extremely cold shoulders from Washington, NATO, and the European Union, Putin was faced with a large Ukrainian army about to invade the Donbas republics. Putin’s false hopes and mistaken belief in the West’s integrity left him unprepared, but he was forced to intervene and Russia, due to unpreparedness was forced to rely on a small private military force, the Wagner Group. As Putin had not prepared for the obvious conflict staring him in the face, he limited his intervention to Donbas to clearing out the Ukrainian forces, not to quickly prevailing in the conflict. The long conflict has given the West two years and eight months to involve itself and widen the conflict. As Putin never enforced any of the announced red lines, he has no credibility in the West. Recently, the NATO Secretary-General said NATO does not pay any attention to Putin, because he talks but never does anything.

Consequently, the world has reached the precise point I said would be reached. Putin has backed up so much that he has no more room. His back is to the wall. NATO, the British Prime Minister, and the neoconservatives are lobbying Washington to give a green light to US/NATO firing missiles into Russia from Ukraine territory. Understand, Ukraine hasn’t the capability and satellite targeting systems to fire the missiles. A missile attack on Russia can no longer be characterized as a “proxy war.” Putin himself has made this clear. Putin said that missiles fired into Russia means the US and NATO are at war with Russia and that Russia reserves the right to respond with nuclear weapons. A crisis is upon us. The only relevant decision in the world at this time is whether Washington decides that Putin means what he says or that Putin is so averse to war that he will stand down from his threat in order to avoid a wider conflict involving nuclear weapons.

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“..efforts to boost conscription are becoming increasingly deceitful, coercive and violent..”

• Ukraine’s Mobilization Campaign ‘Gets Dirty’ – The Times (RT)

Ukraine’s mobilization campaign is falling far short of targets, while the effort remains marred by violence, mistrust and rampant corruption, The Times reported on Thursday, citing local officials. According to the paper, Kiev has so far called up about one million soldiers and plans to increase that number by another 200,000 by the end of the year, but that mark remains difficult to reach. Moreover, “efforts to boost conscription are becoming increasingly deceitful, coercive and violent,” the outlet noted, citing the example of an Odessa conscript who was technically exempt from the service due to a chronic kidney condition, but was lured to the conscription office and sent to a training base anyway. An unnamed conscription officer in Odessa told The Times that “we’re not mobilizing even 20% of what is required.”

He noted that there is little enthusiasm among potential soldiers to respond to the summons, while his department is plagued by corruption, mismanagement and disillusionment. The bribes, the officer, added, can reach thousands of dollars while staff shortage means that employees have to perform multiple duties at once, including patrolling the streets. In addition, employees are threatened with being sent to the front if they underperform. In other cases, many of those who answer the mobilization call are often found to be unfit for service due to serious health conditions, including tuberculosis, hepatitis or HIV, the Times’ source said. Meanwhile, a 47-year-old Ukrainian recalled that he was eager to be called up and go to the front early in the conflict, but was denied at the time, and now has no desire to do so.

“Our government doesn’t support soldiers. They don’t have proper equipment and are forgotten about if they get injured,” the man explained. Ukraine announced general mobilization in February 2022 shortly after the outbreak of hostilities, barring most men aged between 18 and 60 from leaving the country. This spring, faced with mounting losses, Kiev lowered the draft age from 27 to 25, and significantly tightened mobilization rules, obliging potential service members to report to conscription offices for “data validation,” which in practice often means a ticket to the front. “font-size:11px;color: #353535;”As Ukraine’s mobilization campaign intensified, so did draft evasion, filling social media with videos of recruiters trying to catch eligible men on the streets, in gyms, and in shopping malls, sometimes leading to clashes.

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“..the name of the (new, deadly) game is U.S./Israel vs. Russia/Iran..”

• They lie. They cheat. They steal. They bomb. And they spin (Pepe Escobar)

Hezbollah has a seriously though spell ahead. Resources – especially supply of weapons and military equipment, through Syria and by air from Iran to Lebanon – will become increasingly scarce. Compare it to Israel’s unlimited supply chain from Exceptionalistan – not to mention tons of money. Israel intel is far from shabby – as commandos went deep, in secret, into Hezbollah territory collecting info on the fortification network. When – in fact if – they reach populated areas in Southern Lebanon, then it will be bombing dementia plus heavy artillery against residential areas. That operation might well be called Gaza-on-the Litani. It will happen only if Hezbollah’s complex network in southern Lebanon is cracked – a major “if”. Jeffrey Sachs, for all his good intentions, went as far as he could to characterize Israelis as judeo supremacist extremist terrorists. Virtually the whole Global Majority is now aware of it.

What comes next in Talmudic-Zio-con planning may include a ghastly false flag, possibly after the U.S. presidential election, for instance on a NATO vessel or on U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf, to lock up the new administration into the long-planned U.S. war on Iran. Dick Cheney will have an orgasm – and croak.The BRICS summit in Kazan under the Russian presidency is less than three weeks away. In sharp contrast to genocide and serial wars in West Asia, Putin and Xi will be standing by the – open – door on behalf of BRICS+, welcoming scores of nations that are fleeing the collective West like the plague. Russia is now fully behind Iran – and as much as in floundering Ukraine, that means Russia at war with the U.S./Israel; after all the Pentagon is directly shooting down Iranian missiles, while Israel is the U.S.’s de facto pre-eminent state, fully, fiscally supported by U.S. taxpayers.

It gets trickier by the minute. Immediately after a very important meeting between Alexander Lavrentiev, Putin’s special envoy to Syria, and Ali Akbar Ahmadian, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Tel Aviv went Full Dementia – what else – and targeted warehouses of Russian forces in Syria.There was a joint Russia-Syria air defense response. What that shows is the Talmudic psychos not only obsessed on breathing fire against the Axis of Resistance but now also going after Russian national interests. This can get very ugly for them in a flash – and is yet one more illustration that the name of the (new, deadly) game is U.S./Israel vs. Russia/Iran.

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He’s real important.

• Biden on Israel Response to Iranian Attack: ‘That’s Between Me and Them’ (Sp.)

When asked for his opinion on how Israel should respond to the latest Iranian missile strike, US President Joe Biden said on Friday that it was between him and the Israelis. “That’s between me and them,” Biden told reporters. Israel has not yet determined how it will strike Iran but they should consider other options than targeting oil fields, President Biden noted. “The Israelis have not concluded … what they’re going to do in terms of the strike, that’s under discussion,” he said during the press briefing. “If I were in those shoes, I’d be thinking about other alternatives than striking oil fields.” Biden also elaborated that the United States is considering imposing sanctions on Iran “right now”, including on the country’s oil sector. “That’s under consideration right now, the whole thing,” he elaborated, adding that he will not discuss the issue further at present.

POTUS also noted that he does not know whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to influence the presidential election in the United States, adding that he is “not counting on that.” “Whether he’s trying to influence the election, I don’t know, but I’m not counting on that,” he told reporters during his first visit to the White House press briefing room. According to US media reports, Democrats, and in particular Senator Chris Murphy, have expressed their concerns that Netanyahu, with his harsh actions in the Middle East, is playing into the hands of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, as this gives the latter the opportunity to accuse Biden of failing to resolve the conflict in the Middle East.

“I certainly worry that Prime Minister Netanyahu is watching the American election as he makes decisions about his military campaigns in the north end of Gaza. I hope this is not true, but it is certainly a possibility that the Israeli government is not going to sign any diplomatic agreement prior to the American election, as a means potentially to try to influence the result,” CNN quoted Murphy as saying in an interview for CNN. The Biden administration has made several attempts to resolve the conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon through ceasefire agreements, which have so far failed.

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“An attack by Israel and the U.S. is reportedly imminent on Iran’s oil industrial facilities. Biden has the braindead temerity to call this intended U.S.-Israeli aggravation a “proportionate response..”

• US, UK Digging Their Grave In Catastrophic War In The Middle East (SCF)

The American and British leaders are fully backing Israel to escalate its criminal aggression in the Middle East. In so doing, Washington and London are being exposed for the arch-criminal regimes that they are. An all-out war against Iran is on the brink. The consequences will be abysmal, yet the U.S. and British rulers are shameless, reckless – and ultimately stupid – in their complicity. In a few days, on October 7, the Israeli regime will have conducted 12 months of non-stop genocidal destruction of Gaza. There is no sign of that monstrous war of extermination coming to an end. The Israeli regime is completely out of control, acting with impunity and shocking violation of all laws and moral norms. More than 41,000 Palestinian people have been killed. Some estimates put the real death toll at over 100,000 and even as high as 200,000.

This slaughter of women and children is supposed to be justified by the incursion of Palestinian militants on October 7 last year in which some 1,200 Israelis were killed – many of them by their own security forces using reckless firepower. The Hamas incursion was in response to years of inhumane, genocidal siege on the Gaza Strip by Israel. The actions of the Israeli regime are wholly indefensible. Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli leaders have gotten away with mass murder because of the diplomatic and – more importantly – military support from the United States, Britain and other Western states. The genocide in Gaza and the other Palestinian enclave of the West Bank has been infernally compounded by Israel’s expansion of aggression in the region. The past two weeks have seen Israeli forces indiscriminately bombing Beirut and other Lebanese civilian areas, causing 2,000 deaths and over one million people displaced from their homes.

The orgy of violence is engulfing the entire region. The Israeli regime is also bombing Syria, Iraq and Yemen, as well as Iran in assassination missions. Israel’s murderous conduct has been going on for decades – indeed for 76 years since its inception as an illegal colonial state in 1948, established by British and American machinations at the then newly formed United Nations. Invasions, annexations, air strikes, terrorism, assassinations, and much more are routine for the Western colonialist project known as Zionist Israel. But now the regime is spinning out of control in its bloodlust and psychopathic mania fostered by the impunity afforded by Western sponsors. This history of state terrorism has – and is – all fueled by Western imperialist powers who also believe in supremacy (euphemistically called exceptionalism) and privilege despite their disingenuous virtuous rhetoric to the contrary.

The Israeli regime and its fascist barbarism are a manifestation of the Western powers in their fundamental nature. The same nefarious violence and plunder was – and is – carried out in every corner of the planet that had the misfortune of Western encounter. Zionism is but a variant of Western imperialism. Iran hit back this week with a massive attack involving at least 200 missiles, including hypersonic missiles, raining down on Israeli targets. The response from Iran has been up to now incredibly restrained despite the relentless provocations and acts of war perpetrated by Israel. Even in the latest Iranian attacks, the targets were mainly military centers and aimed at avoiding civilian casualties. Yet immediately, the United States and Britain rushed to condemn Iran for “barbaric aggression” and perversely declared their support for Israel’s right to self-defense. Such a travesty of lies and distortion. The truth is, that Iran was finally acting in legitimate self-defense.

U.S. President Joe Biden is coordinating with Israel to conduct “severe repercussions” on Iran. An attack by Israel and the U.S. is reportedly imminent on Iran’s oil industrial facilities. Biden has the braindead temerity to call this intended U.S.-Israeli aggravation a “proportionate response”. Iran has warned the United States that its policy of unilateral restraint is now definitively over. Tehran has repeatedly said it does not want a regional war, but if Israel follows through on its latest threats of retaliation, then Iran will hit back with even greater force than already shown. Ominously, Iran said it will deploy “unconventional” tactics. This is taken to mean closing the vital oil trade route through the Strait of Hormuz. The Middle East is the source of a third of the world’s oil supply. If Iran shuts down the global oil supply then the world economy is heading for an unprecedented calamity. Already oil prices have begun to spike. If a war should engulf the region, the impact on the world economy will be catastrophic.

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“But, make no mistake, this genocide is absolutely only happening because the US is allowing it to happen.”

• US, Israel Reportedly Downplay Level of Destruction by Iran (Sp.)

At least two dozen long-range Iranian ballistic missiles were able to break through both Israeli and other Western air defenses on Tuesday night, the Washington Post reported. The missiles struck or landed near at least three military and intelligence installations, a review of videos and photos of the attack and its aftermath showed. “The findings raise questions about the full scope of the damage to Israeli military bases and suggest that Iran was more successful in evading Israel’s defenses than in April,” the report wrote. The Pentagon declined to comment on the report’s findings, the Post said. And the Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment, either. Phil Kelly, a political commentator and socialist activist based in Belfast joined Sputnik’s Political Misfits on Friday, and suggested that Western media is “struggling” to “give credence to Israeli propaganda”.

“…it’s interesting when the Washington Post […] newspaper, which is not a go-to read for me anymore, is starting to find itself struggling to give credence to Israeli propaganda and more and more things you’re starting to find that where the lurid kind of propaganda of the Israeli regime is just too much. It’s, the stenographers at the Washington Post and various Western media just struggle to bring themselves to go that far because of its ridiculousness,” Kelly explained. “It’s clear Israel was hit hard. The Iron Dome was not so secure that Iran made a point and will probably be forced to make further points, I would imagine, because Israel is hell-bent on escalation. It wants to drag other parties into this abyss with it,” he added.

Using commercial satellite imagery, researchers have identified more than 30 points where Iranian missiles may have impacted an air base in southern Israel, a report from NHPR (New Hampshire and NPR) revealed. The images showed damaged hangars, buildings, taxiways and a crater on one of the runways at Nevatim Airbase, the report writes. However, both Israel and the US have attempted to downplay the amount of damage that Israel has suffered: “This attack appears to have been defeated and ineffective,” said U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan. Sputnik’s Michelle Witte also noted that the US has a law that dates back to the 1990s which restricts the quality of commercial satellite imagery that US companies can sell if they depict Israel and Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. An unusually specific restriction, she added, that seems to give Israel a special level of protection other countries do not receive from the US.

“But, in terms of that special relationship, it shouldn’t shock anyone when you look at the Israeli lobby that basically owns [the US] political system. It would seem that it would go to these lengths to stop people looking under the rock that is Israel, stop people seeing the reality of the situation, whether it is how much damage they’ve sustained or the mass graves that they are filling with innocent civilians.” “…when Israel commits its crimes, when Israel commits its invasion, when Israel keeps bombing different sovereign countries, the response of the West is to help them cover it up, help them help their propaganda dominate, make sure it’s the Israeli narrative that we hear and do not allow people to see the truth of what is unfolding in this conflict. It should set alarm bells ringing,” the analyst added.

At least 215 people in the US are believed to be dead as a result of the recent storm, Hurricane Helene. In May, NOAA National Weather Service forecasters at the Climate Prediction Center predicted above-normal hurricane activity in the Atlantic basin this year. Despite their prediction, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced this week that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will not have enough funds to last the rest of the hurricane season. Yet, just a week ago, Israel announced that it had secured an $8.7 billion aid package from the US to support its military goals. “The reality is that most US politicians, when they talk about putting country before politics, they’re talking about Israel,” Kelly explained. “And that should really enrage ordinary US citizens who have struggled for a long time, seeing that their living standards drop and wondering why in hell your government is sending billions of dollars to a racist, colonial regime, a small regime in the Middle East, which is committing genocide…”

“…the myth of America, I think, is over. It was struggling long before it went all in on genocide Joe’s watch to push Europe into World War III and to facilitate [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. But the rest of the world sees the US for what it is, and that is why you’re seeing real concrete moves in the global side to disengage,” he added. “That the war in Ukraine was really a starting point for that, and it’s gained momentum because the US cannot be trusted.” “Europe’s starting to get a bit worried. Macron made a few noises about how Europe needs to keep an eye on the US – slow learner there, Mr. Macron. As Kissinger said, the US doesn’t have friends, it has interests. The world’s awakening to that,” the analyst said. “But, make no mistake, this genocide is absolutely only happening because the US is allowing it to happen.”

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Cute excuse for two murder attempts.

• US Secret Service Struggling To Keep Staff – NYT (RT)

The US Secret Service went into 2024 having lost almost a fifth of its veteran agents, with the rest overworked, underpaid, inadequately trained, and lacking the latest technology, the New York Times has reported. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned in July after an assassin nearly killed former President and current Republican candidate Donald Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. “The service was not ready,” the Times noted on Thursday. The attempt on Trump’s life “revealed deep problems in the Secret Service,” from lack of technology to “failures in command” and communication. For instance, the Butler shooter scouted the venue with a drone, while the protective detail did not have one and their radios did not work properly.

The biggest problem, however, has been “an exodus of the best-trained people,” the Times reported, citing current and former agency employees. At least 1,400 of 7,800 Secret Service employees left in the fiscal years 2022 and 2023, the biggest loss in two decades. While the agency has expanded its workforce to 8,100 – the highest level ever – by this summer, this was still short of the numbers it said it needed. There were concerns about the fitness of new hires and the problems with how to train them and where. The main training facility is so “decrepit” that it often floods in heavy rains, according to the Times. The agency has resorted to using a scale model of the White House built in Atlanta by filmmaker Tyler Perry, because Congress would not authorize funds to build their own.

The chief reason most veterans quoted for leaving was “crushing amounts of overtime work,” sometimes for no pay, because of a federal salary cap. In a survey conducted by a federal police association 68 of the 153 agents who responded said they had “maxed out” on their overtime last year, missing as much as $30,000 in pay. “You ride your horse until it dies, and then you eat it,” Jonathan Wackrow, who left the Secret Service after 14 years, told the Times about management’s view of their workforce. Another former agent, Louis Fitzig, claimed that “nepotism, favoritism, [and] corruption” are part of the agency’s culture. Meanwhile, a scheme to make up the attrition by rehiring recently retired agents backfired spectacularly as agents rushed to retire early, so they could get both a pension and a salary, while not serving in the field where bodies were needed the most.

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“..they are all are NATO allies now after Finland and Sweden’s admission to the military bloc. “There are no neutral countries in the North any more..”

• New NATO Arctic Group is No Match for Russo-Chinese Cooperation (Sp.)

The Western Arctic states are planning to coordinate on defense, intelligence and cyber activities, as they are all are NATO allies now after Finland and Sweden’s admission to the military bloc. “There are no neutral countries in the North any more,” Mikael Valtersson, former Swedish Air Defense officer told Sputnik, commenting on Canada’s push to form a security group to counter Russia and China in the Arctic. Earlier this week, Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly told Bloomberg News that Canada and its allies need an “Arctic security dialogue” to discuss defense matters in light of Russia and China’s growing activities in the region. Russia, an Arctic state, maintains security cooperation with China in its territorial waters. It was reported on October 2 that patrol ships of the China Coast Guard entered the waters of the Arctic Ocean for joint patrols with coast guard vessels of the Russian FSB Border Service. Valtersson expects the new “security dialogue” to work closely with NATO.

“It might develop into an evolved Arctic military command within NATO and also a political body where politicians co-ordinate their actions before meetings in the Arctic Council,” Valtersson said. The pundit warned that NATO’s potential build-up in the region could “increase the risk for both an arms race in the Arctic and incidents in the region.” But Valtersson believes that the creation of the new Arctic body would neither upset the established balance of power in the Arctic nor endanger Russia’s positions in the region. “The Nordic countries and Canada are too small to challenge Russia, and even more a Russian-Chinese cooperation,” he said. “The US has a lot of other interests in the world and will not focus on the Arctic in the way Russia already does, and should increase doing.”

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EVs

 

 

Elon 21 years ago

 

 

IgG4

 

 

Potoo

 

 

P&K

 

 

Soul

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in wartime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle February 18 2023

Feb 182023
 
 February 18, 2023  Posted by at 10:01 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  47 Responses »


Pablo Picasso The dream 1951

 

• Seymour Hersh’s Trinity of Truth (Scott Ritter)
• Seymour Hersh Believes Betting On Ukraine’s Victory ‘Suicidal’ (TASS)
• ‘Ukraine Would Have Wiped Out Donbass Last Year If Not For Russia’ (TASS)
• Food For Thought (Gonzalo Lira)
• NATO Involvement In Ukrainian Conflict Is Maximal – Zakharova (TASS)
• Ukraine ‘Peace Petition’ Backed By Nearly Half A Million Germans (RT)
• No Sense In Signing Any Agreements With Zelensky – Medvedev (TASS)
• Moscow Warns EU Over Seized Assets (RT)
• Oh Lightning, I Command Thee To Smite My Foe! (Kunstler)
• George Soros Is Defending The Unipolar World Order, Not Freedom (Blankenship)
• EU Parliament Blocks Scrutiny of Von der Leyen Over Pfizer Contract (Pol.eu)
• Nancy Pelosi’s Daughter Caught on Tape Refuting J6 Narrative (GP)
• Too Slow And Too Secret? Pace of Staley Investigation Undermines Trust (G.)
• Trump Announces Upcoming Visit to East Palestine, FEMA Reverses Course {(CTH)

 

 

 

 

Galloway Ritter

 

 

 

 

Putin 2019

 

 

No more boosters in the UK.

 

 

And Idaho is putting it a bit stronger even.

 

 

Maersheimer

 

 

 

 

 

 

“..Sy Hersh, through his reporting, has exposed truths which have the potential of bringing down a presidency, destroying NATO, and proving Russia right in the eyes of the world..”

• Seymour Hersh’s Trinity of Truth (Scott Ritter)

I’ve read nearly everything Sy Hersh has written, and am able to put his considerable journalistic output in its proper historical perspective. It is therefore that I feel very comfortable in concluding that, in terms of its potential for bringing about tectonic geopolitical change, Sy’s Nord Stream reporting is his most important work ever. The GOAT has produced what I call the Trinity of Truth. Truth One: The President of the United States, Joe Biden, by conspiring with members of his national security team to deliberately bypass constitutionally-mandated reporting requirements to Congress regarding acts of war undertaken by the United States, has committed an impeachable offense unmatched by any other president in the history of the United States.

Truth Two: The blow-back that will occur inside Germany to the revelations put forward by Seymour Hersh that the United States carried out an economic Pearl Harbor by destroying energy infrastructure critical to the well-being of the German nation has the potential of breaking up the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU), upending more than eighty years of post-war European security and stability, and resulting in the diminishment of the United States on the world stage as it becomes isolated from long-time European allies that served as the foundation of the global acceptance of the so-called “rules based international order” that has served as the means by which the United States exerted global hegemony.

Truth Three: The decision to attack the Nord Stream pipeline puts a lie to the US contention that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was an unprovoked act of aggression, instead underscoring the harsh truth that the United States had a strategic plan which hinged on provoking a conflict with Russia in Ukraine to provide the geopolitical cover for ending Europe’s reliance upon cheap Russian natural gas by demonstrating that every time Russia sought a negotiated end to the crisis, whether before the invasion through implementation of the Minsk Accords, or after in the Istanbul round of talks scheduled for April 1, the United States sabotaged the effort, keeping the conflict alive long enough to implement its major objective—the destruction of Nord Stream. In short, Sy Hersh, through his reporting, has exposed truths which have the potential of bringing down a presidency, destroying NATO, and proving Russia right in the eyes of the world.

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“..It’s impossible to believe how just dumb this leadership was. <…> And then they stick to the war..”

• Seymour Hersh Believes Betting On Ukraine’s Victory ‘Suicidal’ (TASS)

The US administration’s hopes for Ukraine’s victory in the conflict with Russia are ‘suicidal,’ US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh said in an interview with the Consortium News portal. “It was suicidal to think you can win that war, that Ukraine can win that war. There’s just too much corruption. That was a very, very bad decision. We should have been pushing for peace, we should have made an agreement,” said Hersh, who earlier published his findings about explosions targeting Russia’s Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 pipelines. “It’s just silly not to right away assure the Russian government that we were not interested in making Ukraine a member of NATO. NATO didn’t want Ukraine anyway because of the corruption. There were just so many bad mistakes made. It’s impossible to believe how just dumb this leadership was. <…> And then they stick to the war,” he said.


On February 8, Hersh wrote in an article, citing sources, that US Navy divers had planted explosive devices under the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines under the cover of the BALTOPS exercise in June 2022 and Norwegians activated the bombs three months later. According to the journalist, the decision to conduct the operation was made by US President Joe Biden personally, following nine months of discussions with White House security specialists. White House National Security Council Spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a comment to TASS that Hersh’s account was utterly false and complete fiction.

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“700-800 rounds of ammunition per day flew into the republic.”

• ‘Ukraine Would Have Wiped Out Donbass Last Year If Not For Russia’ (TASS)

Ukraine would have levelled the Donbass republics a year ago if Russia had not intervened in time by recognizing the Lugansk and the Donetsk People’s Republics and launching its special military operation, Former LPR ambassador to Moscow Rodion Miroshnik said on Friday. “Exactly one year ago, the Ukrainian regime began artillery preparations before attacking Donbass! A 150,000-soldier group, armed and trained by NATO, was preparing to sweep away the Donbass. And if it were not for Russia’s decision to start a special military operation, we would have simply been levelled,” he wrote on his Telegram channel on the anniversary of the beginning of the escalation of the situation in the Donbass, “And neither the UN nor the OSCE would have noticed it.”


Miroshnik recalled that from February 17 to 24, when the Russian Federation began its special military operation, the Ukrainian armed forces fired 551 shells on the LPR territory. At that time, he recalled, “700-800 rounds of ammunition per day flew into the republic.” There were attempts to break through the defense, as well as casualties among civilians. Also on Friday, Miroshnik drew attention to the fact that a year ago, neither the guarantors (of the Minsk agreements) – France and Germany – nor the UN General Assembly had forced Kiev to fulfill its obligations. At that time, the republics understood that the clock was ticking as the Ukrainian military could wipe out the DPR and the LPR cities, so the emergency evacuation began. “But the world prefers not to see this and starts counting from February 24,” he pointed out.

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Twitter thread.

“They see the West as a paper tiger, run by fools and degenerates.”

• Food For Thought (Gonzalo Lira)

I’ve been talking to a number of acquaintances in Russia. These are well-educated professionals who speak English fluently, many of whom have lived/worked in the US/Europe. Some are highly critical of Putin, and many were very much opposed to the SMO. Some observations. They are universally shocked at the racist Russophobia, from Europe especially. “I thought they were our friends/partners!” is a common complaint. They don’t understand why Europe destroyed its own economy with the sanctions. (There’s quite a bit of schadenfreude over that. They don’t understand why the Germans are not reacting to the Nord Stream terrorist attack. They see it as self-evident that the Americans did it—an act of war by one of Germany’s closest ally.

They have zero trust in the Europeans—because of the Russophobia and revelations. Hollande and Merkel have publicly bragged about how the Minsk agreements were entered into to buy time to arm Kiev. This has had a huge impact on them. So they won’t accept any negotiations or ceasefire. They all think Russia would be played for fools again by the West. Even the “doves” believe that the conflict can only end in total victory, i.e. complete military occupation of Ukraine. They don’t look forward to this—but they believe it is the only solution to guarantee Russian safety. They all view this conflict as a Russia vs. NATO war. And they all believe this war will last for years. There is a palpable sense of determination and *relief* that they too—like their grandfathers before—are involved in an existential war for the survival of their nation.

They one and all despise the Russians who fled to Europe, Israel and Georgia. They view them as fair-weather friends at best—traitors at worst. They all made it clear that they would not be welcomed back at the end of this conflict. Even the “doves” respect Putin, and they laugh at the idea of “regime change in Russia”. The principal criticism of Putin is that he’s been too gentle, too patient. Many (not all) would prefer a scorched earth, total war campaign, specifically targeting the Kiev leadership. All in all, they are satisfied with their leadership. Lavrov was universally praised, Peskov the one least respected. Shoigu, Gerasimov and Surovikin were all endorsed, though they all took some criticism, mostly because they think the war is going too slowly. Interestingly, I sensed a gnawing anxiety over Russia’s economy, which seems to be going so well—as if it’s too good to be true.

The 2015 sanctions nearly broke their economy—but now, with even worse sanctions, none are experiencing a loss of standard of living. They seem to have lost their respect, admiration—and fear—of the West. Certainly their trust. They all believe that “human rights”, “democracy”, etc. are empty platitudes the West uses to get its way. They see the West as a paper tiger, run by fools and degenerates. This is inevitably a very biased selection of opinions: Highly educated, well traveled, Western-oriented, fairly well-to-do people aged 27–60. So imagine how much more conservative Russian working class people’s opinions would be. Food for thought.

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“Now they directly control the leadership of the Kiev regime, they are all connected.”

• NATO Involvement In Ukrainian Conflict Is Maximal – Zakharova (TASS)

The involvement of NATO countries in the conflict in Ukraine is maximal, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a briefing on Friday. “NATO countries are playing innocent, trying to prove that they are not a party to the conflict [in Ukraine] <…>. The involvement [of NATO countries] is maximal, [they’ve been carrying out] provocative activity for many years. Now they directly control the leadership of the Kiev regime, they are all connected.” According to Zakharova, Moscow also drew attention to media reports that Ukraine might organize joint licensed production of shells and other weapons with the UK and create similar military enterprises with other NATO countries. “It is obvious that big Western capital is behind the pumping of the Ukrainian armed forces, the formation of combat operations,” the diplomat noted.

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“If the fighting goes on like this, Ukraine will soon be a depopulated, destroyed country..”

• Ukraine ‘Peace Petition’ Backed By Nearly Half A Million Germans (RT)

Almost 500,000 Germans have supported a petition urging Chancellor Olaf Scholz to spearhead efforts for peace negotiations in Ukraine. The appeal is authored by journalist Alice Schwarzer and Sahra Wagenknecht, a prominent member of Germany’s Left Party (Die Linke), and implores officials in Berlin not to provide Kiev with more weapons. The document, which was published last Friday and has since gathered an increasing number of supporters, claims that the conflict in Ukraine has already cost the lives of more than 200,000 military personnel and 50,000 civilians. “If the fighting goes on like this, Ukraine will soon be a depopulated, destroyed country,” the authors warn. Wagenknecht and Schwarzer also argue that “a lot of people in Europe fear an expansion of the war.”

The petition asserts that Ukrainians need solidarity from Germany, but questions whether Berlin’s current policies truly reflect the support they require. “What is now, one year on, the actual goal of this war?” the authors ask, citing German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock’s recent comment about Europe being at war with Russia. The petition expresses skepticism over whether Scholz’s government will keep its word and not provide Ukraine with fighter jets. According to Wagenknecht and Schwarzer, the German chancellor has already crossed multiple “red lines” in recent months. The pair also warn that Russian President Vladimir Putin could unleash a “maximum counterstrike,” should Ukraine retake Crimea – which is among the goals set by senior officials in Kiev.

“Are we then inexorably sliding down a chute leading to a world war and nuclear war?” the petition asks, adding that numerous major conflicts have begun this way, and that another could end up being the last for mankind. The petition stresses that “to negotiate doesn’t mean to capitulate,” but rather to “make compromises on both sides.” The authors claim that half of the German population wants immediate peace talks, and suggest that the government should heed their calls. “We demand that the federal chancellor stop the escalation of weapons deliveries,” the document states, urging officials in Berlin to focus on peace efforts and form an international alliance to this end.

The petition had received 496,008 signatures at the time of writing. Moscow has repeatedly signaled it is open to talks with Kiev, provided that Ukrainian leaders accept Russia’s conditions and recognize what the Kremlin calls the “reality on the ground.” In early October 2022, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky ruled out negotiations with his Russian counterpart. Kiev is insisting on a military victory over Russia, and refuses to make any territorial concessions to its neighbor.

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“..He is not supposed to hold any talks. He is supposed to sign what he is told to sign..”

• No Sense In Signing Any Agreements With Zelensky – Medvedev (TASS)

Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev said on Friday that he sees no point in signing any agreements with Kiev, since it is highly likely that Ukraine’s next leader will annul them. Medvedev drew attention to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s statements that he was not inclined to hold any talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. “It’s not news, but there is a nuance he opted not to mention yesterday although he is quite aware of it. He is not supposed to hold any talks. He is supposed to sign what he is told to sign. Although, frankly speaking, this document will not be worth its weight in paper. You can remember the Minsk agreements that were signed by his predecessor,” Medvedev wrote on his Telegram channel.

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The west keeps thinking they will be rebuilding Ukraine.

• Moscow Warns EU Over Seized Assets (RT)

Any Western attempts to transfer seized Russian assets to Ukraine would be “barbarism,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has claimed. If necessary, Moscow is ready to impose a tit-for-tat response, she added. Speaking at a press briefing on Friday, Zakharova noted that EU nations had invested heavily in Russia, meaning a significant amount of European-owned assets remains in the country. Their value is larger than that of the Russian assets seized by foreign nations, the spokeswoman argued. Zakharova insisted that Russia wants to operate within the law and would give the US and its allies “every last chance” to reconsider any plans to confiscate Russian property. However, she added that Moscow was fully prepared to defend its interests, including through the use of “equal compensatory measures.”

The remarks referred to a new EU working group, established to explore ways to make Russia fund the future reconstruction of Ukraine. “This must be done in accordance with EU and international law, and there is currently no direct model for this,” Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said, commenting on the new group. Stockholm currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU Council. Western nations have frozen hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of Russian sovereign reserves, as well the assets of Russians whom they consider close to the government. Moscow has branded the measures an act of robbery. Zakharova stressed that property rights should not be subject to the whims and geopolitical needs of a handful of nations, adding that US foreign policy was often prone to wild swings.

She claimed that a case in point is Venezuela, where Washington previously referred to Juan Guaido as the legitimate leader who has the right to manage the nation’s wealth. “Now Western delegations visit [Nicolas] Maduro, whom we always considered the legitimate president, as if nothing happened,” Zakharova said. “So everything they say now about Russia, their accusations, threats, and blackmail… can flip-flop in a moment. Mark my words.” The spokeswoman warned that the international community should oppose the push for the expropriation of Russian property, if not for its own sake. Countries could otherwise find themselves on the receiving end of the “ostensibly impartial” West-controlled financial system, Zakharova cautioned.

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“..Russia has every intention of pacifying the joint at all costs..”

• Oh Lightning, I Command Thee To Smite My Foe! (Kunstler)

In the meantime, America is rapidly disintegrating on the home front. Is it attempted suicide or murder? It’s a little hard to tell. Things are blowing up from sea to shining sea — food processing facilities, giant chicken barns, regional electric grids, oil refineries. The latest, of course, is a chemical spill from the Norfolk-Southern train wreck in East Palestine, Ohio, set ablaze by a conclave of government officials purportedly to keep the toxic liquids from seeping into the Ohio River watershed and beyond. Of course, in the dithering prior to lighting it up, enough vinyl chloride leached into streams feeding the big river to kill countless fish. And then torching the remaining chemical pools sent up a mushroom cloud of dioxin and other poisons that killed wildlife, pets, and chickens in the vicinity before the evil miasma wafted eastward on the wind to the densely-populated Atlantic coast.

One has to wonder whether an army of saboteurs is on the loose across the land. Considering the border with Mexico is wide open, why wouldn’t America’s adversaries send whole wrecking crews over here to mess with our infrastructure? There’s no question that people from all over the planet have been sneaking across the Rio Grande. Surely some of them are on a mission. America is filled with “soft” targets, things unguarded and indefensible — not least, tens of thousands of miles of railroad track. Of all the reasons to be unnerved by “Joe Biden’s” open border policy, this one is the least discussed, even in the alt-media. But it seems like a no-brainer for nefarious interests who might want to bamboozle and disable us.

The sad truth of this moment in history is that the USA has too much going sideways with our own business at home now to be dabbling in any foreign misadventures — and we couldn’t have picked a worse place than Ukraine to do it. The sheer logistics are implausible. The geography is lethally unfavorable. The place has been inarguably within Russia’s sphere of influence for centuries and Russia has every intention of pacifying the joint at all costs. Peace talks are apparently out of the question for our leaders. Something’s got to give, and that something is probably Western Civ’s financial system. It’s primed to blow anyway, and when it does, we’ll have other things to think about.

Read more …

Soros picks DeSantis.

• George Soros Is Defending The Unipolar World Order, Not Freedom (Blankenship)

Contrary to the causes Soros claims to champion, his vision is more likely to usher in a third World War – not prevent one. There’s no credible evidence of a Russian regime-change operation in Moldova. China’s global position has little to do with Russia’s success or failure in Ukraine — the two are partners, but not a unified entity, or even allies; their societies and economies are distinct. What Soros was really rambling against wasn’t corruption or anti-democratic behavior — but the emerging multipolar world order, of which India and Türkiye are, to various degrees, becoming a part. I will not waste my time defending the likes of Modi or Erdogan, as their records are, in my opinion, indefensible. But it’s not their autocratic leanings that Soros hates about them — it’s their flickers of independence.


He may, in this respect, ultimately come to be disappointed by Brazil’s turn to democracy, as it will lead to more development in multipolarism and visibility in multilateral institutions. I also believe he seriously underestimates the US Republican Party’s sheer lack of principles and its willingness to tap into even the most wretched sources of untamed hatred for political support. Despite what the aging “philanthropist” desires, the era of unipolar liberal hegemony is over. The world is entering a new era of multilateralism and anti-hegemony. Soros’ speech before the Munich Security Conference may, in this way, be a symbol. A symbol of how the old way of doing things dies with the ramblings of an old man while the emerging multipolar world order is born in the thunderous cry of billions of youth across the Global South.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1626539057684660225

Read more …

It’s a closed circuit. The opposite of democratic. They only need the chiefs. The rest have no say.

• EU Parliament Blocks Scrutiny of Von der Leyen Over Pfizer Contract (Pol.eu)

The top ranks of the European Parliament have slammed the door shut to a public cross-examination of Commission President Ursula von der Leyen over her personal role in negotiating a multibillion euro vaccine deal with Pfizer. Last month, lawmakers in the Parliament’s special committee on COVID-19 proposed to invite von der Leyen to answer questions on the EU’s largest vaccine contract, signed at the height of the pandemic. It was in the run-up to this contract that she is reported to have exchanged text messages with Pfizer’s Chief Executive Albert Bourla. However, at a closed-door meeting Thursday of the Conference of Presidents (CoP) — which includes the heads of all the political groups and the Parliament’s president — leaders refused the request to hold a public grilling.


Instead they decided to ask von der Leyen to answer questions in private at some point in the future, watering down the invitation to almost nothing. “It was agreed that CoP will be able to raise … [the Parliament’s COVID-19 committee’s] concerns in their next regular meeting with the president of the Commission,” said an EU official with knowledge of the confidential discussions. The European People’s Party MEP in the room, Siegfried Muresan, dismissed the suggestion that the group was protecting von der Leyen — also affiliated with the EPP — as a “conclusion in search of an argument.” “The broad consensus was that we’re in dialogue with her [and] that should continue in the formats that have worked so far and that we have established,” he told POLITICO.

Read more …

“Nancy Pelosi has contributed to destroying countless lives with her “insurrection” narrative and sham committee – And here is her daughter on camera saying it’s all a crock.”

• Nancy Pelosi’s Daughter Caught on Tape Refuting J6 Narrative (GP)

In the video below, Nancy Pelosi’s daughter, Alexandra Pelosi, is meeting with a January 6 defendant she wanted desperately to be in her sham documentary. It is a meeting with this same J6 defendant and his attorney. Alexandra Pelosi asked the defendant numerous times to participate. He politely declined. The Gateway Pundit reached out to the January 6 defendant in this video to confirm the details in the recording. Alexandra Pelosi agreed to be recorded by the defendant. In this video, Alexandra Pelosi is on camera saying many very shocking things. She mocks the idea that January 6th was an insurrection and admits that DC is too biased to hold fair trials and that many J6ers would be found not guilty if their cases were handled anywhere else in the country, and much more.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1626678002602893335

This video has not yet been made public. This is an exclusive video for The Gateway Pundit audience. From our source: “I did a lot of due diligence making sure that the defendant who shot this video had permission to do so. I spoke with his attorney who provided me documentation that Alexandra agreed to be filmed if they met. I wanted to bring this to you before anybody else if you’re interested in featuring it. Nancy Pelosi has contributed to destroying countless lives with her “insurrection” narrative and sham committee – And here is her daughter on camera saying it’s all a crock.” Here are some of the key moments in the video where Alexandra makes some particularly audacious comments.


Key moments:
2:43: Pelosi: “The Shaman did noth(ing)… What did the Shaman do? He stood there.”
4:24: “After the Democrats lose the house, then they get rid of the committee, people may lose I think interest… no one is going to care after the democrats are out of power. And you take Biden out of office- then who cares!?”
4:50: “DC is a lot of people who work for the government. I don’t think they’re sympathetic. If you got it moved (changed trial jurisdiction from DC) you’d totally get off” (laughs while saying this)
6:50: “If there was an insurrection… you were supposed to have a plan!” “It was the sorriest insurrection in history”
8:11: “You’re going to be able to laugh about this one day”
14:53: Pelosi talks about her friendship with Gavin McInnes and laughs at the notion that Proud Boys are white supremacists.

Daughter Pelosi

Read more …

Why does the Guardian cover this all of a sudden?

• Too Slow And Too Secret? Pace of Staley Investigation Undermines Trust (G.)

Three years after it began, the findings of a City watchdog investigation into whether the former Barclays chief executive Jes Staley gave a full account of his relationship with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to the bank’s board are still pending. There is a risk that justice delayed may prove justice denied for the British public. Our system relies on the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and other regulators to uphold the integrity and honesty of those who manage our money. The issue came to the fore again this week after the publication of allegations made in a court case brought by the US Virgin Islands, where Epstein had a home, against Staley’s former employer, JPMorgan Chase bank.

It is alleged by Virgin Islands prosecutors that Staley held discussions with Epstein in which they referred to women by the names of Disney princesses, that Epstein procured women for Staley, and that Epstein emailed his friend photos of young women in seductive poses. Staley is not a party to the lawsuit and denies the allegations. JP Morgan declined to comment on the latest allegations. It previously called for the lawsuit to be dismissed, claiming it did not participate in or benefit from sex trafficking by its former client. As allegations about Staley’s ties to Epstein have mounted, so too has the pressure on the Barclays board to justify why they backed him to stay on as chief executive in 2020. The implications of this case are broad, says Simon Learmount, professor in corporate governance at Cambridge Judge Business School:

“This is a really, really important case, not just because of what it may reveal about the Staley-Epstein relationship, but the questions it raises about the Barclays board and boards in general.” Establishing who knew what, and when, and how they responded, is the task that faces the FCA. Its probe not only looked at Staley’s disclosures to the Barclays board, but those the board subsequently made to the FCA. The preliminary findings – which have still not been made public and are subject to legal challenge – therefore speak not only to Staley’s integrity but also the board’s. That includes Nigel Higgins, who received Staley’s disclosures and who is still chair of Barclays. Yet despite the clear public interest in good governance at the top of a British bank of systemic importance, the public may never know the final conclusions of the FCA inquiry. If its preliminary findings are successfully challenged, they will not be disclosed.

[..]Epstein’s luxurious celebrity lifestyle and royal friendships, his death in prison after a previous conviction for soliciting sex from a minor, have all served to keep his name in the headlines. As Epstein’s one-time banker at Wall Street investment bank JPMorgan Chase, Staley has been the focus of attention too. The pair exchanged thousands of messages, many of which were handed over to the UK authorities by US counterparts. A spokesperson for Staley admitted, following an investigation by the Wall Street Journal, that he had made multiple trips to Epstein’s private island, Little St James, in 2020. It was in February that year that the Barclays board decided, following an internal investigation commissioned from the law firm Clifford Chance, which reviewed the emails, that it would stand full square behind Staley. The banker, who had arrived from the US in 2015 with a £10m pay package, had their “full confidence”.

Read more …

They’ll blame Trump for the whole thing.

• Trump Announces Upcoming Visit to East Palestine, FEMA Reverses Course {(CTH)

The announcement by President Trump with his intent to visit East Palestine next Wednesday, followed moments later by a reversal announcement from FEMA stating they will now offer support to East Palestine, do not seem coincidental. The Biden administration, including the EPA, FEMA and Transporation Secretary, was likely very worried about the optics of getting blasted by President Trump very visibly next week for their lack of urgency and concern. Moments after Trump announces his visit, FEMA reverses their prior denial of aid. lol

Ohio train tracks
https://twitter.com/i/status/1625998479393783809

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Just hours after saying he “[did] not expect” members of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to be in East Palestine, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine now confirms the government entity will, in fact, be sending a crew to assist with the aftermath of the train derailment in the village. In a joint statement released Friday night, DeWine and FEMA Regional Administrator Thomas C. Sivak said the agency would deploy a Regional Incident Management Assistance Team (IMAT) to Columbiana County starting Saturday, along with a senior response official. The workers will “support ongoing operations, including incident coordination and ongoing assessments of potential long-term recovery needs.”


[…] DeWine had previously requested federal help, and today the Department of Health and Human Services announced toxicologists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would be journeying to East Palestine to assist with public health testing. However, the governor’s request for FEMA assistance was initially denied, with the agency apparently telling his office the current situation “[did] not quality for assistance.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Treehopper
https://twitter.com/i/status/1626574980644499465

 

 


“The incredible Gomesa Jiaho Queen orchid. It’s a hybrid originated by Jia Ho Orchids in 2018, being a cross breed of Gom. Mulattas’ Dancing and Gom. varicosa”

 

 

Black sea nettle

 

 

Frogfish

 

 

Lions
https://twitter.com/i/status/1626569203753926656

 

 

 

 

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BREAKING: Virus Kills Easter Bunny

Mar 242020
 
 March 24, 2020  Posted by at 7:41 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , ,  15 Responses »


James Proudfoot Sun on a House, Dieppe 1937

 

 

Famous last words?!

“I would love to have it open by Easter,” Trump said in an interview Tuesday with Fox News. “I would love to have it opened up and just raring to go by Easter.” “A lot of people agree with me. Our country is not built to built to shut down. Our people are full of vim and vigor and energy. They don’t want to be locked into a house or an apartment, it’s not for our country”

Note that Trump covered himself by framing it as “I would love to…” Still, Easter is April 12, 19 days from now. I think the US is highly unlikely to even have reached its peak in infections by then, and the country will be awash in misery, sickness, death and heartbreaking stories, not uplifting ones of a roaring economy.

The US death toll is still very low compared to its active cases, but that is because the epidemic in the country is relatively new, and there are still hospital beds and ventilators available. Those days will soon be over, try the end of next week if not sooner, and the death toll will be going going gone out of there.

And remember, half of all US corona cases are still in New York State alone. There are 49 other states to go, that just about all still have open borders with each other. New York today, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut etc. tomorrow.

If Governor Andrew Cuomo was not exaggerating too much earlier today when he said he asked FEMA for 30,000 ventilators and got only 400, the ominous path forward is beginning to look like a very eery version of a Yellow Brick Road to nowhere, with the Wizard sipping banana daiquiries on his private yacht in the Caribbean.

Our friend Mike Mish Shedlock did a bit of math on Sunday with data from the Covid Tracking Project, and came up with this:

How Long to 1 Million US Cases?

Inquiring minds are investigating a relatively new data feed from the Covid Tracking Project. I plot four data series for the US: Negative tests, positive tests, hospitalized, and deaths. Arguably, hospitalizations are the most significant column but the project only has two days worth of data. Once I have another dfats point or two, I will plot a trendline manually.


Trendlines At the current pace, the number of positive coronavirus cases would hit 100,000 on March 26, and 1,000,000 on April 3. At the current pace, the number of coronavirus deaths would hit 1,000 on March 26, and 10,000 on April 5. Those are not my projections, those are observations of what would happen if the current trends last that long at the same pace.

At that point, the US had 32,000 cases. On Monday that had become 42,000. As I write this, it’s 52,000 and the day is far from over. And remember what I said yesterday, that on March 8, just 16 days ago, the US reported 409 cases.

When I posted Mish’s numbers, I questioned his prediction of 100,000 cases by Thursday, but that’s really just details. If not Thursday, it will be Friday. Yes, that’s a doubling in 2 or 3 days. Early next week, if not his weekend, it’ll be 200,000. And so on. Mish says 1 million in 10 days from now. I see no reason to doubt him.

Either tomorrow or Thursday, March 25 or 26, the US will overtake China for the no. 1 global position in total cases -which is some 81,000 now-. With very flawed to non-existent testing procedures, with ongoing endless political bickering, and with a looming huge shortage in hospital beds and ventilators; this is beginning to look like a very bad movie.

By Easter, much of US industrial production in many parts of the country will have to be shut down, the same way China’s was -and still is-, and Italy’s is. You can’t successfully run a factory -or an office for that matter-, if your employees get sick, stay home, end up in hospital or worse. Even in the US, one single case should be enough to close the entire facility down.

The victim will have to be quarantined, as must his/her entire family, everyone (s)he worked with must be tested, and so on. It works like that everywhere, and the US is no exception. It can’t be, the risk is too high.

Brace yourself. Don’t take my word for anything, look at the numbers and draw your own conclusions. My idea is Easter is going to be different from usual this year.

 

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Debt Rattle November 9 2017

Nov 092017
 
 November 9, 2017  Posted by at 9:28 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  6 Responses »


Henri Cartier Bresson Madrid 1933

 

• How I Sold Out To The Putin-Soros-Murdoch Conspiracy (Steve Keen)
• Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffett Richer Than Poorest Half Of US (G.)
• The Middle East Is On The Verge Of New War (SF)
• With Saudi Princes Dead, Arrested, King Fahd’s Grandson Flees To… Iran (IT)
• Prince Alwaleed Sold His Shares In 21st Century Fox (Abc.au)
• It Begins: Pension Bailout Bill To Be Introduced This Week (ZH)
• How The Netherlands Became A Tax Haven (SüdD)
• FEMA Offers To Airlift Puerto Ricans To Mainland US (CBS)
• Catalan Parliament Speaker, 5 MPs Appear In Court On Sedition Charge (G.)
• EU Gives Greece Foreclosure Ultimatum (K.)
• The Plot Against Greece (K)
• UK Will Back Total Ban On Bee-Harming Pesticides (G.)

 

 

“How I sold out to the Putin-Soros-Murdoch conspiracy to destroy Western civilization”

Steve has a sense of humor alright. But the serious note here is that RT is the only place where he can get a chance to discuss the issues he sees as real. The BBC, for one, is not interested.

• How I Sold Out To The Putin-Soros-Murdoch Conspiracy (Steve Keen)

I was delighted to find myself in the Top Ten (alright; top 15) of the European Values list of 2,326 “Useful Idiots” appearing regularly on RT shows, and thus legitimizing Vladimir Putin’s attempt to destroy Western civilization as we know it. Why delighted? Because it completes the set of conspiracies to which I can now be accused of belonging. They include: • The Putin Conspiracy, since I am regularly interviewed on Russia Today (and even worse, I now get paid to write for RT!); • The Soros Conspiracy, since my research, has been funded by the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) which he established; • The Murdoch Conspiracy, since I appear every week on Sky News Australia with Carson Scott, and I used to get paid by News Ltd to write a weekly column; and • The Alt-Right Conspiracy, since I’ve signed a book contract with Vox Day’s publishing firm Castalia House.

So not only am I a “useful idiot,” I’m a useful idiot for four contradictory conspiracies. Does that make me a double-double agent? No, it makes me someone who’s quadruple pissed off with people who attempt to understand the world from the perspective of conspiracy theories in the first place. I don’t deny the existence of conspiracies: in fact, far from it, because they’re everywhere. What I do deny is the implicit assumption that the conspirators understand the system they’re attempting to manipulate. For example, I’ve heard plenty of conspiracy theorists assert that the 2008 financial crisis was caused by the Federal Reserve/George Soros (Hi George!)/Hedge Funds/Academic-Economists-Who-Peddle-The-Efficient-Markets-Hypothesis, and “they” profited from it.

This implies “they” knew what “they” were doing. Pardon me, but I’ve met many of these protagonists—and in the case of academic economists, I’ve worked with them for 30 years. “They” don’t have a clue (except George). Even those that were actively conspiring—like many hedge funds during the subprime bubble were doing so on the basis of utterly deluded theories about how the system they were trying to game actually worked. Where apparent conspiracies did work, like Soros’s punt against the British Pound decades ago, they did so because a CSP (Clever Sinister Person) bet against the conventional wisdom of others who thought they understood the system (and did not), rather than because the CSP set up the whole thing in the first place.

Read more …

“..the “billionaire class” continues to “pull apart from the rest of us” at the fastest rate ever recorded..”

• Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffett Richer Than Poorest Half Of US (G.)

The three richest people in the US – Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffett – own as much wealth as the bottom half of the US population, or 160 million people. Analysis of the wealth of America’s richest people found that Gates, Bezos and Buffett were sitting on a combined $248.5bn (£190bn) fortune. The Institute for Policy Studies said the growing gap between rich and poor had created a “moral crisis”. In a report, the Billionaire Bonanza, the thinktank said Donald Trump’s tax change proposals would “exacerbate existing wealth disparities” as 80% of tax benefits would end up going to the wealthiest 1% of households. “Wealth inequality is on the rise,” said Chuck Collins, an economist and co-author of the report. “Now is the time for actions that reduce inequality, not tax cuts for the very wealthy.”

The study found that the billionaires included in Forbes magazine’s list of the 400 richest people in the US were worth a combined $2.68tn – more than the GDP of the UK. “Our wealthiest 400 now have more wealth combined than the bottom 64% of the US population, an estimated 80m households or 204 million people,” the report says. “That’s more people than the population of Canada and Mexico combined.” The report says the “billionaire class” continues to “pull apart from the rest of us” at the fastest rate ever recorded. “We have not witnessed such extreme levels of concentrated wealth and power since the first gilded age a century ago.” Forbes celebrated 2017 as “another record year for the wealthiest people in America”, as “the price of admission to the country’s most exclusive club jumped nearly 18% to $2bn”.

That was a tenfold increase on the amount of money needed to enter the list when it first started in 1982. Josh Hoxie, another co-author of the thinktank report, said: “So much money concentrating in so few hands while so many people struggle is not just bad economics, it’s a moral crisis.” The report says many Americans are joining an “emerging anti-inequality movement”. “A century ago, a similar anti-inequality upsurge took on America’s vastly unequal distribution of income and wealth and, over the course of little more than a generation, fashioned a much more equal America,” it says.

Read more …

“.. the kingdom’s leadership is desperately in need of an enemy..”

• The Middle East Is On The Verge Of New War (SF)

A missile gets fired on the Saudi capital. A missile, which was allegedly built in Iran and smuggled to Yemen, just to be fired at Saudi Arabia. According to initial reports, two Saudi princes died back to back in 24 hours: one in an “accidental” helicopter crash, the other during a firefight that broke out while security forces were trying to arrest him. On November 7, Saudi Arabia’s information ministry spokesman said that “Prince Abdulaziz is alive and well”. However, the prince could not be independently reached for comment by the media. Other high-ranking members of the establishment and the royal family – the two tend to be one and the same in Saudi Arabia – get arrested on charges of corruption, with their bank accounts frozen. Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri unexpectedly resigns after he was summoned to Riyadh by his Saudi-backers.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia accused Iran of conducting acts of “direct military aggression” and accused Lebanon of “declaring war” on Riyadh by allowing Hezbollah “aggression” against the kingdom. All this happened in a span of just a few days. With ever-growing security challenges and problems at the regional level, the crisis that took hold of Saudi Arabia does not seem to be slowing down. One contributing factor to the ongoing crisis is a major split in the Saudi royal family: the power struggle that resulted in the former crown prince being deposed and replaced with a new one, a move that shook things up quite a bit inside the country. The echo of this can be seen in the current “anti-corruption” persecution, enforced by the current Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman.

Outside the country, several key foreign policy projects failed: the effectiveness of the Yemen intervention can be judged by the fact that it resulted in a missile being fired at Riyadh. Bashar al-Assad is still in power in Syria. The attempts to scare Qatar into submission backfired, as Qatar has been getting more and more friendly with Russia, Turkey and Iran. Iran is gaining more and more influence in the region, while the Saudis seem to be losing it, hence they are trying to compensate for their losses by participating in proxy wars elsewhere. The Saudis also tried to flex their diplomatic muscle. King Salman even visited Moscow, where the two sides exchanged promises with no guarantees that these will ever be fulfilled. This also backfired, as some considered it a demonstration of weakness or an attempt to make peace by making concessions.

Add economic struggles to this series of failures, and one can see why the King’s and his Crown Prince’s position seem less and less stable by the minute. The situation apparently seemed so dire, that in order to keep everything afloat active persecution seemed the only possible way to keep the King and his successor in power. The “anti-corruption” campaign is just an excuse: the corruption has always been high in Saudi Arabia, and no one batted an eye before now. These are temporary measures. Persecution can hardly solve foreign and internal matters, and it will not lead to a solution of the problems. Right now, the kingdom’s leadership is desperately in need of an enemy to unite the population and draw their attention away from the chaotic events that unfolding in the country.

Read more …

The one that got away.

• With Saudi Princes Dead, Arrested, King Fahd’s Grandson Flees To… Iran (IT)

The Saudi royal family – the House of Saud – is throwing up one intrigue after another. Hours after the reported death of Prince Abdul Aziz bin Fahd, his nephew and son of late King Fahd’s eldest surviving son, Prince Turki bin Mohamed bin Fahd has fled the country. His destination, according to speculation among those who are watching the situation closely, is, wait for it, Iran.If this is true, this may put new strain on Tehran and Riyadh, already at loggerheads for dominance in the restive Middle East region, where Saudi Arabia and Iran are fighting, what analysts term, a proxy war in Yemen. What makes Prince Turki bin Mohamed bin Fahd’s reported flight to Iran, where he is said to have sought asylum, interesting, apart from his destination, is that it comes at a time when Saudi aviation authorities are said to have been told not to let any of the oil-rich kingdom’s many royals fly out of the country.

Of course,with the outflow of information from Saudi Arabia particularly restricted right now, all reports of developments on the region must be taken with a pinch of salt. Turki bin Mohamed, is the son of Muhammad bin Fahd Al Saud, the second-oldest son of late Saudi King Fahd bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, and is also the grandnephew of the current King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud This is the same King Salman whose son Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman (known informally as MBS) is believed to be have orchestrated what many are seeing as a coup by sideling prominent Saudi royals and taking decisions that could win over the country’s liberal quarters.

Read more …

Murdoch’s powers challenged.

• Prince Alwaleed Sold His Shares In 21st Century Fox (Abc.au)

One of Rupert Murdoch’s key business allies, who was arrested in last week’s corruption crackdown in Saudi Arabia, has quietly sold off his $1.5 billion stake in 21st Century Fox. The business relationship between Mr Murdoch and Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is now under new scrutiny, with Mr Murdoch’s control over his family-controlled business empire looking more uncertain. “This is very big news,” Murdoch watcher and shareholder activist Stephen Mayne said after the company confirmed Prince Alwaleed had offloaded his shareholdings in Fox and News Corporation. “He’s been the number one backer of Murdoch family control of the public companies for the last 20 years.”

One of the world’s richest men, the Prince is one of dozens of royal family members, officials and business leaders arrested in Saudi Arabia in recent days. With his bank accounts and other assets likely to have been frozen by Saudi authorities, his detention had raised questions about who had control over his almost 40 million Fox shares. It now appears he sold those shares with little fanfare. It is unclear when the shares were sold. But a Bloomberg report on the company’s shareholders shows Prince Alwaleed’s stake fell to zero during the current financial quarter.

Read more …

Impossible to overestimate what a disaster this is going to be. We need a whole new economics to confront it.

• It Begins: Pension Bailout Bill To Be Introduced This Week (ZH)

Over the past year we have provided extensive coverage of what will likely be the biggest, most politically charged, and most significant financial crisis facing the aging U.S. population: a multi-trillion pension storm, which was recently dubbed “one of the most heated battles of a lifetime” by John Mauldin. The reason, in a nutshell, why the US public pension problem has stumped so many professionals is simple: for lack of a better word, it is an unsustainable Ponzi scheme, in which satisfying accrued pension and retirement obligations requires not only a constant inflow of new money, but also fixed income returns, typically in the 6%+ range, which are virtually unfeasible in a world where global debt/GDP is in the 300%+ range. Which is why we, and many others, have long speculated that it is only a matter of time before the matter receives political attention, and ultimately, a taxpayer bailout.

That moment may be imminent. According to Pensions and Investments magazine, Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown from Ohio plans to introduce legislation that would allow struggling multiemployer pension funds to borrow from the U.S. Treasury to remain solvent. The bill, which is co-sponsored by another Democrat, Rep. Tim Ryan, also of Ohio, could be introduced as soon as this week or shortly after. It would create a new office within the Treasury Department called the Pension Rehabilitation Administration. The funds would come from the sale of Treasury-issued bonds to financial institutions. The pension funds could borrow for 30 years at low interest rates. The one, and painfully amusing, restriction for borrowers is “they could not make risky investments”, which of course will be promptly circumvented in hopes of generating outsized returns and repaying the Treasury’s “bailout” loan, ultimately leading to massive losses on what is effectively a taxpayer-funded pension bailout.

Read more …

Amoral.

• How The Netherlands Became A Tax Haven (SüdD)

Barack Obama had only been in office for a few weeks when he first tried to take on tax havens. The freshly inaugurated U.S. president wanted greater transparency, harsher penalties and more justice. Obama, who had helped draft anti-tax haven legislation – to date, still not passed – as an Illinois senator, called out many tax havens by name. There were the usual suspects: Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and Switzerland. But there was also, to the surprise of many, the Netherlands. A founding member of the European Union, quaint little Holland has for years been the most important tax haven for American corporations. This includes large multinationals such as the coffee chain Starbucks, the delivery company FedEx, the pharmaceuticals giant Pfizer and – as the Paradise Papers have revealed – the sporting apparel manufacturer Nike and the electric carmaker Tesla.

Every year, other countries lose out on billions of euros in taxes for the apparent reason that the Netherlands has bent to the will of influential lobbyists while neighboring EU member states have stood idly by and done nothing. Experts accuse the country of providing illegal state subsidies, and the European Commission is alarmed, but the Dutch tax loophole will nevertheless remain open for years to come. One of the most important days for the Netherlands as a tax haven was July 6, 2005. That was the day that Paragraph 4 of Article 24 – the so-called anti-abuse clause – was struck from the U.S. tax convention with the Netherlands, effectively legalizing the abuse of Dutch corporate law. The Netherlands’ tax loophole revolves around a business structure known in Dutch as a commanditaire vennootschap, or CV, the Dutch version of a limited partnership. In a CV, just like in a limited partnership, two or more people can join together for business purposes.

One of the partners, namely the limited partner, is only liable for a fixed amount, while the other, the general partner, is fully liable. In contrast to Germany, CVs are not regarded as taxable entities in the Netherlands, but solely as partnerships. In the eyes of the Dutch tax authorities, it’s not the CV itself that’s responsible for paying taxes, but the individual partners. This is where things get interesting, especially for American companies. By founding a CV in the Netherlands plus one or two Dutch subsidiaries, U.S. firms reach “the Holy Grail of tax avoidance.” That’s how Senator Carl Levin once put it while still in office, describing the complex networks of companies that allow their owners to completely avoid taxes.

Read more …

Time for a plan?!

• FEMA Offers To Airlift Puerto Ricans To Mainland US (CBS)

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is offering to airlift victims of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico to the U.S. mainland to reach temporary housing – a complex operation that would be the first of its kind for the agency. Under FEMA’s Transitional Shelter Assistance (TSA) program, displaced residents and families who are still living in shelters on the island can opt to relocate to housing in Florida and New York. The agency is working with the governors in both states to work through logistical issues for families interested in participating. Mike Byrne, a federal coordinating officer for FEMA, said the program is the first time the agency has attempted what it calls an “air bridge,” or a relief operation requiring the transportation of individuals from a disaster area.

In most disasters, FEMA pays for displaced residents to stay in hotels under the TSA program. In Puerto Rico, the hotels are filled to capacity, so FEMA is turning to the mainland and working with states to find accommodations. “A thousand miles adds a whole level of complexity to this,” Byrne said. Byrne says agency teams are traveling to shelters on the island to ask longtime occupants about their housing options going forward, telling them about FEMA’s offer. He said the level of interest in the program has so far been low, with only about 30 out of 300 families interviewed on Tuesday expressing interest in participating. “People really don’t want to leave their homes,” Byrne said. “We want to give them every opportunity we can to be able to stay here, whether it’s providing financial assistance or repairing their homes. So we are going to work hard on those things so people don’t have to leave.”

Read more …

And still no-one has come forward with an answer. A third party will have to, the two sides can’t do it be themselves.

• Catalan Parliament Speaker, 5 MPs Appear In Court On Sedition Charge (G.)

The speaker of the Catalan parliament and five of its members appeared before Spain’s supreme court in Madrid on Thursday to answer charges of rebellion and sedition over their roles in staging a banned referendum on Catalonia’s independence last month. The court will decide whether to remand Carme Forcadell and the five MPs in custody while the investigation continues or release them under certain conditions. Eight former members of the Catalan government and the leaders of the two main grassroots pro-independence groups are already in custody awaiting trial on sedition charges for their parts in the 1 October referendum, which Spanish courts ruled illegal.

The region’s deposed president, Carles Puigdemont, and four of his former cabinet ministers went into self-imposed exile in Belgium last week after Madrid responded to Catalonia’s declaration of independence by firing his administration, dissolving the parliament and calling regional elections for December. Spain’s high court issued an arrest warrant for for all five last week on sedition and rebellion charges. Forcadell and the five MPs were summoned last week to the supreme court, which handles cases of people who enjoy parliamentary immunity, but it gave them more time to prepare their defences. They are suspected of having followed a “concerted strategy to declare independence” before the official declaration of the Catalan parliament on 27 October, which Spain’s constitutional court annulled on Wednesday.

Read more …

The narrative is that rich parties organize protests. But there are certainly people simply wanting to prevent people being thrown out into the streets.

• EU Gives Greece Foreclosure Ultimatum (K.)

European officials have given the government an ultimatum to proceed with electronic foreclosures on homes later in the month or else the country’s third bailout review will not be concluded. The warning came despite the recent positive messages emanating from Brussels and Washington that Greece is making progress in the review and is on course to reach an agreement with creditors on a technical level by the end of the year. But lenders appear adamant that the review’s conclusion will be jeopardized if foreclosures do not take place as scheduled and if notaries, who have borne the brunt of attacks by anti-establishment groups and protesters, are not protected. “If the Greek government has the will to protect notaries it will find the way to achieve this,” a source told Kathimerini, adding that “if they want to stop the violence they can do it.”

The sources told Kathimerini they expect to see foreclosures beginning on November 27 “at all banks and throughout the country and not just isolated cases.” Auditors have repeatedly made it clear that the resumption of foreclosures, which have dragged during the crisis years due to strikes by lawyers and notaries and more recently due to anti-austerity protesters, is a prerequisite for the successful conclusion of Greece’s current bailout review. The ultimatum, however, appears to have motivated the government to take action so that foreclosures resume and notaries are protected as sources said that all necessary measures will be taken to “ensure strategic debt defaulters do not hide behind the attacks against notaries.”

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The plot is Greeks themselves?!

• The Plot Against Greece (K.)

If some power wanted to undermine all that is good in a country, to waste its natural beauty and people, to damage its past, present and future, it need look no further than Greece. Here it would see the result of a long-term conspiracy against the coue beginning of the modern Greek state, the Greeks were under foreign tutelage. In the past few decades, though, as a member of the European Union, we had begun to believe that we could function as an independent country, without patrons. And suddentry. Fortunately, the Greeks are fighters, they resist as much as they can. That is why the country is still beautiful, with talented, generous people, with bright children capable of competing with the best in the world. The “enemy,” though, holds the people hostage, keeping them from reaching their full potential, from making the country what it could be.

From thnly, bankrupt, we found ourselves under strict supervision again. It is understandable, then, that we blame foreigners for all our ills – those powers that want to suck us dry of our wealth, to keep us weak and under control. Because it is certain that we are not the ones who benefit from continued political and economic insecurity, from unpredictable and excessive taxation, disdain for investments, dysfunctional justice, a weakened education system. The only beneficiaries are the tricksters who know how to exploit the situation – and other countries. When we have almost no investments and the country’s strongest selling point as a tourist destination is its stability in an unstable region, it is clear that we are not creating added value, we are not establishing foundations for the future. Investments go elsewhere and Greece keeps falling behind the competition.

In the World Bank’s latest Doing Business survey of 190 countries, Greece was ranked 67th, from 61st last year (and 60th and 58th before that). It is incredible that after seven years of crisis and three bailout agreements it should still be so difficult to set up a business in Greece. And yet, there is stiff resistance to improving the situation: Taxes and social security contributions are way above the European Union average; there are long delays in the justice system, conflicting and confusing laws and regulations, along with a public administration determined to obstruct whatever it can, encourage corruption and send businesses elsewhere.

Other countries gain even more when thousands of Greek doctors and others with special skills move away in search of a better life, taking with them the money invested in their education. So why should we not believe that it is in our foreign partners’ interests to keep Greece at this level? In the past, they lent us money, now they loot our human resources (and later perhaps our still-to-be-discovered fossil fuels, according to a long-running conspiracy theory). Our partners did not stop lending us money, but now it comes not from their banks but from their taxpayers, and with strict conditions.

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Well well. Something good comes out of that mess of a government.

• UK Will Back Total Ban On Bee-Harming Pesticides (G.)

A total ban on insect-harming pesticides in fields across Europe will be backed by the UK, environment secretary Michael Gove has revealed. The decision reverses the government’s previous position and is justified by recent new evidence showing neonicotinoids have contaminated the whole landscape and cause damage to colonies of bees. It also follows the revelation that 75% of all flying insects have disappeared in Germany and probably much further afield, a discovery Gove said had shocked him. Neonicotinoids are the world’s most widely used insecticide but in 2013 the European Union banned their use on flowering crops, although the UK was among the nations opposing the ban. The European Commission now wants a total ban on their use outside of greenhouses, with a vote expected in December, and the UK’s new position makes it very likely to pass.

“The weight of evidence now shows the risks neonicotinoids pose to our environment, particularly to the bees and other pollinators which play such a key part in our £100bn food industry, is greater than previously understood,” said Gove. “I believe this justifies further restrictions on their use. We cannot afford to put our pollinator populations at risk.” In an article for the Guardian, Gove said: “As is always the case, a deteriorating environment is ultimately bad economic news as well.” He said pollinators boost the yield and quality of UK crops by £400m-£680m every year and said, for example, gala apple growers are now having to spend £5.7m a year to do replace the work of lost natural pollinators.

Gove said the evidence of neonicotinoids’ harm to pollinators has grown stronger since 2013, including a landmark field trial published in July that showed neonicotinoids damage bee populations, not just individual insects, and a global analysis of honey revealing worldwide contamination by the insecticides. [..] Gove’s decision has delighted campaigners and scientists who have long argued that heavy pesticide use, along with the destruction of habitat and disease, are having a devastating impact on insects. “Michael Gove is to be congratulated for listening to the experts on this issue and backing tougher restrictions,” said Friends of the Earth’s chief executive Craig Bennett. “But lessons also need to be learned – we now need to move away from chemical-intensive farming and instead boost support for less damaging ways of tackling persistent weeds and pests.

Read more …

Catalonia and other Disasters

Oct 012017
 
 October 1, 2017  Posted by at 2:02 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  9 Responses »


Catalunya October 1 2017

 

I’ve seen a lot of videos and photos of the Catalonia attempt to hold a referendum today (Tyler has a “nice” series of them), and what struck me most of all, apart from the senseless violence police forces were seen to engage in, is the lack of violence on the side of protesters.

So when I see the Interior Ministry claim that 11 policemen were injured, That is hard to take serious. Not that the Catalans had no reason to resist or even fight back. That hundreds of protesters, including scores of grandma’s, are injured is obvious from watching the videos. Since rubber bullets were used in large numbers, fatal injuries are quite possible.

Policemen hitting peaceful older ladies till they bleed is shocking, and we are all shocked. Many of us will be surprised too, but we shouldn’t be. Spain is still the land of Franco, and his followers continue to exert great influence in politics, police and military. And it’s not just them: one video from Madrid showed people singing a fascist theme from the Franco era.

 

 

That’s the shape the EU knowingly accepted Spain as a member in, and that shape has hardly changed since. The total silence from Brussels, and from all its capitals, speaks volumes. Belgian PM Michel said earlier today that he doesn’t want to talk about other countries’ politics, and that’s more than I’ve seen anyone else say. It’s of course a piece of gross cowardly nonsense, both Michel’s statement and the silence from all others.

Because this very much concerns the EU. As Julian Assange tweeted “Dear @JunckerEU. Is this “respect for human dignity, freedom and democracy”? Activate article 7 and suspend Spain from the European Union for its clear violation of Article 2.” (Article 7 of the European Union Treaty: “Suspension of any Member State that uses military force on its own population.”) Sure, technically the Guardia Civil is not military, but are Juncker, Michel and above all Merkel really going to try and hide behind that?

Assange also re-tweeted this: “Claude Taylor Breaking: contact with Ecuadorian Govt says they plan on removing Julian Assange from their Embassy in London. Expect his arrest to follow.” Assange’s reaction: “DC based ex-White House claims I’m to be arrested for reporting on Spain’s censorship & arrests in Catalonia. Dirty.”

But that should not be a surprise either. We know from the example of Greece, and the treatment of refugees, what the morals of Europe’s ‘leaders’ are. Their morals are bankrupt. In that sense, they fit in seamlessly with those of Mariano Rajoy’s governing PP party in Spain.

 

 

Still, this is not why people want to be part of the EU. So unless very strong statements come from the various capitals, and very soon, given that they’re already way too late, the EU as a whole will find itself in such a deep crisis it might as well pack its bags and go home. Wherever home may be for these career politicians.

If you’re void of any and all ethics and morals, which is what that silence shouts out very loudly, you can’t lay any claim at all to the right to make decisions for anyone at all. That is true for Rajoy and his party, and it’s just as true for all other deadly silent European leaders.

And this is by no means over, it hasn’t started yet. Here’s a map of close vs open polling stations in Catalonia, via Assange. ‘Nuff said. What will Rajoy’s next move be? Locking up everyone? The entire Catalan governing party that organized the referendum? Make no mistake: the Spanish military have long threatened they would destroy Catalonia before allowing it independence.

 


Catalan polling stations. Green=open. Red=closed

 

Philosopher Anna M. Hennessey, who has lived in both Spain and in Catalonia, put it this way:

Franco was victorious and did not lose his war, as Hitler and Mussolini lost theirs, but this must not mean that we should let the dictator’s toxic ideological infrastructure persist any further into the twenty-first century. Supporting Catalonia is a necessary step in putting an end to fascism in Europe.

When Fascism Won’t Die: Why We Need to Support Catalonia

People in the United States, especially those from the 1980s onward, know little of Spain’s Civil War (1936-1939) and the long dictatorship that followed. This knowledge is helpful in understanding the situation in Spain and Catalonia right now. The judge (Ismael Moreno) who is set to decide on sedition charges against Catalan activists for attempting to hold a democratic referendum on October 1st, for example, has roots that are deeply connected to Francisco Franco (1892-1975), the military leader who initiated the Civil War, won it, and then went on to rule as Head of State and dictator in Spain for almost forty years.

Franco is a major figure of twentieth-century fascism in Europe. A purge of Francoist government officials never took place when the dictatorship ended in the 1970s, and this leadership has had a lasting impact on how Spain’s government makes its decisions about Catalonia, a region traumatized during and after the war due to its resistance to Franco’s regime. The lingering effects of Franco’s legacy are at this point well-documented and need to be a part of the discourse that surrounds what is quickly unraveling in Barcelona.

[..] Like the Spanish government, the Spanish police force was never purged of its Francoist ties following the dictatorship. It is a deeply corrupt institution [..] Manuel Fraga Iribarne, one of Franco’s ministers during the dictatorship, founded Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s Popular Party. The party is currently enmeshed in a corruption scandal of its own. Spain’s royal family is similarly linked to Franco and has also been brought to trial for its own set of corruption charges. It is impossible to ignore the fascist bedrock upon which modern Spain is founded, or to ignore the reality that this foundation has to do with the way Spain treats Catalonia.

And so we can see the dream of a united Europe die. At least one that most people will feel comfortable living in. And if you can’t achieve that, why have a union to begin with? Democracy in Europe is dying in Brussels, it’s dying in Greece and the Mediterranean, and it died today in the streets of Barcelona and other Catalan locations.

Are all Europeans simply going to sit back and wait till it dies where they live, too? My bet is they will only do that until they no longer see the EU as economically beneficial to them. And as of today, because of Catalunya, economics will no longer be the only consideration. Because Spain will not be thrown out, not even suspended. There will be lots of empty strong words, but not all Europeans are all that stupid.

Barcelona mayor Ada Colau has called for Rajoy to resign, but she knows as well as anyone that that will not be enough, and it won’t change a thing. Rajoy is merely one representative of a fascist system that is the underbelly of Spain, waiting for its opportunity to raise its ugly head. It’s found that opportunity today, and the whole world is silent. Well, the ‘leaders’ are.

 

And while we’re talking disaster, I can’t help myself from briefly addressing Puerto Rico. The anti-Trump echo chamber is louder than ever, and it’s getting absurd. I can’t see what part of it is Trump’s doing, and what is due to other sources, but it simply seems not true that help is not moving forward. In a destruction as complete as Puerto Rico, there are limits to what can be done in a limited amount of time.

All the criticism of Trump at some point becomes criticism of other people involved as well. The mayor of San Juan gets lauded as a hero in certain circles, but is she really? How about the US military, how about FEMA? They look to be doing a good job, and FEMA seems to have learned a lot from Katrina 12 years ago.

Again, I don’t know how much of that is Trump, but if I may be cynical, he’s smart enough to know how his response could or would be used against him, so he would be really thick if he let the situation get worse than it should be. Earlier today Cate Long, an expert on Puerto Rico due to its debt fiasco, and hence with a lot of contacts there, tweeted:

“Federal govt has leapfrogged Puerto Rico govt & made direct connection with 78 municipalities. Central to powerful supply chain & relief.”

While the Huffington Post, not exactly Trump cheerleaders, posted this:

US Military On Puerto Rico: “The Problem Is Distribution”

Speaking today exclusively and live from Puerto Rico, is Puerto Rican born and raised, Colonel Michael A. Valle (”Torch”), Commander, 101st Air and Space Operations Group, and Director of the Joint Air Component Coordination Element, 1st Air Force, responsible for Hurricane Maria relief efforts in the U.S. commonwealth with a population of more than 3 million.

Since the ‘apocalyptic’ Cat 4 storm tore into the spine of Puerto Rico on September 20, Col. Valle has been both duty and blood bound to help. Col. Valle is a firsthand witness of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) response supporting FEMA in Puerto Rico, and as a Puerto Rican himself with family members living in the devastation, his passion for the people is second to none. “It’s just not true,” Col. Valle says of the major disconnect today between the perception of a lack of response from Washington verses what is really going on on the ground.

[..] some truck drivers from outside the island have been brought in, and more are coming, however it’s not a fix-all. “We get more and more offers to help, but there is no where to stay, we can’t take any more bodies, there’s no where to put them.” Col. Valle says, adding that their “air mobility” is good, and reiterating that getting more supplies or manpower is not the issue. When asked three times what else Washington can do to help, or anyone for that matter, three times Col. Valle answered, “It’s going to take time.”

Maybe it’s time to exit your echo chamber?