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Debt Rattle March 25 2026

Mar 252026
 
 March 25, 2026  Posted by at 10:11 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  69 Responses »


Odilon Redon Sunset 1902

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• ICE at the Airports Is One of Trump’s More Brilliant Moves (Stephen Kruiser)
• ICE Saves Lives — and Air Travel (Daniel McCarthy)
• Democrats Predicted ICE Would Terrorize Airports (Margolis)
• Israel’s Mossad Promised It Could Ignite Regime Change In Iran (MEE)
• International Energy Agency Pushes Rationing (Jeffrey A. Tucker)
• The Late Robert Mueller, Bill of Rights Executioner (James Bovard)
• The Supreme Court Seems Ready to Make ELECTION DAY Great Again (Victoria Taft)
• Russia ‘Clearest Winner’ In US-israeli War On Iran – John Mearsheimer (RT)
• Iran’s Flex Of Long-Range Ballistic Missiles Vindicates Trump (JTN)
• EC Postpones Publication of Ban On Russian Oil Imports (TASS)
• Hungary Blasts ‘Fake’ EU Accusation (RT)
• Hungarian Foreign Minister Wiretapped By EU Spies – Orban (RT)
• There’s A Heretic In The Heart of The EU And He Wants To Talk To Putin (Amar)
• Shakespeare’s Birthplace to be “Decolonized” (Turley)
• Who Killed Hollywood? Or Did it Kill Itself? (Stephen Green)

 


 

https://twitter.com/Alexandr4Denman/status/2036042572078911642?s=20 https://twitter.com/robertdunlap947/status/2036410184881365435?s=20

 


 


Bonus for whoever thought of it.

• ICE at the Airports Is One of Trump’s More Brilliant Moves (Stephen Kruiser)

As we rush headlong towards what will probably be some very weird midterm elections, I firmly believe that the Republicans should be running as the party of law and order. The Democrats have been squirrelly on that issue ever since the Obama years, but have gotten really weak about it in the last year. They have to oppose everything President Trump and his administration do, of course, which includes getting violent scumbags off the streets and out of the country. A key part of that opposition has been the ongoing, deliberate demonization of the agents of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The Democrats praise criminals and treat ICE agents as if they’re the lawbreakers.


It truly is an exercise in insanity over there on the left. This is from something Matt wrote yesterday: “As PJ Media previously reported, over the weekend, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries went on CNN and literally claimed ICE agents would kill people at airports. “The last thing that the American people need are for untrained ICE agents to be deployed at airports all across the country, potentially to brutalize or, in some instances, kill them,” Jeffries said. And he wasn’t alone. Senator Richard Blumenthal piled on with his own apocalyptic vision, claiming, “ICE agents at airports will only aggravate delays & lines—disrupting checks, interrogating travelers, dragging parents from children, detaining citizens, brutalizing families, shooting & even killing.”

I don’t know who the Democrats think this is a good look for. It’s as if all they want to do is stir up the voters who are already voting for them. Joe and Edna Swing Voter in Flyover, USA probably aren’t down the idea that federal agents want to kill them. When President Trump first said that he would deploy ICE agents to airports to fill in gaps left by unpaid Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents, Democrats immediately began falling all over themselves. The president is always thinking four steps ahead of the Democrats and all they’ve got is reactive flailing. They have been trying to keep travelers miserable and blame Republicans for the lack of TSA funding, but everybody has internet and the Dems are not that great with messaging anymore.

This is from Victoria: “Only Trump can find leverage in the Democrats’ TSA defunding — turning those broke, unpaid TSA agents and the disastrously long lines at the nation’s airports into a teachable, brilliant, GOTCHA moment to behold. When Democrats figure out what hit them, they’ll be so tattooed with this disaster, even the leftist screechers will lead the effort to restore TSA funding. Things will change soon because local media in the woke cities are covering the increasing freak out by leftists because Donald Trump is replacing missing, unpaid, TSA agents with paid, and perhaps even masked, ICE agents to help process passengers.

This should play out like another instance of Trump playing 4-D chess while the Democrats are just learning checkers. Despite all of the lying about the president by the Democrats and their flying monkeys in the mainstream media, the Trump 47 administration doesn’t let any of the false narratives get legs. This is because they are proactively doing things that are good for the country while the Democrats can only keep reassuring people that they hate President Trump. That’s the only policy they have now. It’s a lot of fun watching President Trump make the Democrats dance. Reading about it in the MSM is always an intense exposure to pathological denial. The dystopian fiction that the leftists are living in is intensely awful. Thankfully, none of it is real.

Read more …

“ICE is funded separately from the rest of DHS, including TSA, which is why Dems can’t attack immigration enforcement directly.”

• ICE Saves Lives — and Air Travel (Daniel McCarthy)

Democrats who want to defund Immigration and Customs Enforcement aren’t getting away with the political hostage-taking they’re using to do it. They’re trying to hold the Transportation Security Administration’s funding hostage until their demands for weakening ICE are met. That means they’re also subjecting millions of air travelers to added anxiety, and worse, as security-line wait times stretch into hours. According to CNN, “Half the nation’s busiest airports had more than a third of (TSA) agents call out Saturday.” At LaGuardia on Sunday, passengers were in line for up to three hours — not because of the Air Canada accident late that evening but because TSA was understaffed all day. What’s President Donald Trump doing about this mess?


He’s called the Democrats’ bluff. Instead of gutting immigration enforcement, he’s sent ICE into more than a dozen of the nation’s busiest airports to make up for TSA’s missing manpower. Democrats, predictably, are furious — and fearmongering to the nth degree. “The last thing the American people need is for untrained ICE agents to be deployed at airports across the country, potentially to brutalize or to kill them,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries frothed on CNN’s “State of the Union.” What about the Americans brutalized and killed by illegal-alien criminals? If Jeffries and his party succeed in chipping away at ICE, more Americans like 18-year-old Loyola University student Sheridan Gorman will die.

The man charged with her murder is a Venezuelan national who was breaking the law just by being in this country — yet the enforcement necessary to keep killers like him out, or send them back promptly if they do get through our borders, is what Democrats aim to dismantle. Illegal alien criminals, not law-enforcement officers, are the threat to ordinary Americans’ lives and well-being, but Jeffries and his fellow Democrats choose to demonize ICE. They’re beholden to a left-wing activist base that wants little less than open borders, as the immigration crisis brought about by the last Democratic administration showed.

Voters repudiated that agenda, but the election of Trump on a platform of serious immigration enforcement hasn’t chastised Jeffries or his Senate counterpart Chuck Schumer — they’re determined to take the country back to the Joe Biden era, when the likes of Gorman’s killer could enter with ease. Yet what Dems didn’t foresee is that Trump would repair their sabotage of America’s transportation security by using the very agency Jeffries and company are trying to destroy.

ICE is proving to be doubly invaluable now — for its primary task of immigration enforcement but also as a fallback for TSA when Democrats play shutdown games with Homeland Security. The only risk to travelers is that leftist provocateurs will attempt to manufacture conflict to besmirch ICE — a strategy they employed to deadly effect in Minneapolis. Yet the country can’t give in to intimidation if innocent lives like Gorman’s or Laken Riley’s are to be saved. Jeffries and Schumer may not plot their tactics over the phone with anti-ICE street activists, but they’re working from the same playbook: create tense, frustrating, even dangerous situations, then channel the resulting outrage against law enforcement.

It’s true ICE agents can’t substitute for trained TSA personnel in providing for all an airport’s security needs. But they can cover the basics, while remaining TSA employees — whom Democrats refuse to pay during the standoff — handle the specialized work. And if Jeffries and Schumer still won’t budge? How long before even the most selfless TSA worker can’t afford to eat, or pay rent, because of the Democrats’ stunt?

ICE is funded separately from the rest of DHS, including TSA, which is why Dems can’t attack immigration enforcement directly. And ICE is set up to hire quickly — so if Democrats keep Homeland Security and TSA shut down, Trump might have another way to rescue the travelers and government workers who are all Schumer’s hostages. The president could hire the best TSA workers straight into ICE, immediately acquiring the skills necessary for the enforcement agency to run airport security indefinitely.

Read more …

ICE is still part of the government.

• Democrats Predicted ICE Would Terrorize Airports (Margolis)

Democrats just can’t help themselves. Give them a microphone and a crazy talking point, and they’ll say anything if they think it hurts President Donald Trump. This time, they tried to convince Americans that President Donald Trump’s deployment of ICE agents to airports would lead to violence, abuse, and even death. They couldn’t have been more wrong. As PJ Media previously reported, over the weekend, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries went on CNN and literally claimed ICE agents would kill people at airports. “The last thing that the American people need are for untrained ICE agents to be deployed at airports all across the country, potentially to brutalize or, in some instances, kill them,” Jeffries said.


And he wasn’t alone. Senator Richard Blumenthal piled on with his own apocalyptic vision, claiming, “ICE agents at airports will only aggravate delays & lines—disrupting checks, interrogating travelers, dragging parents from children, detaining citizens, brutalizing families, shooting & even killing.”, Blumenthal adde. “Brutal, lawless tactics common in communities across the country by masked, unidentified agents, violating basic rights—no way to help TSA or travelers.”= If you took these guys at their word, you’d expect airports to resemble war zones by now. Travelers cowering. Families torn apart. Agents running wild. Death and mayhem. So what actually happened?

At Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport—one of the busiest in the world—things initially looked rough. Lines stretched out the doors, and wait times reportedly hit as long as nine hours. A mess, no question. And then ICE showed up. And instead of chaos, something very inconvenient for Democrats occurred: things got better. A lot better, actually.CNN’s own Ryan Young was on the ground covering the situation, and his report completely undercut the panic narrative. “Finally, we can take a deep breath here. The numbers have dropped off. The lines are getting shorter. I think the average wait time now is under 40 minutes, so if you have a flight to catch today, it’s a good time to come to Hartsfield-Jackson International.”

Young even described what ICE agents were actually doing—and it wasn’t anything close to the horror stories Democrats were predicting. “Talking about those ICE agents, you can see a few behind me right there. And then I’m gonna walk you this direction, and you can see some more of them gathered over here. This is what they’ve been doing for the most part today, is doing the patrols around the airport, uh, talking and gathering, uh, not really helping the public in the sense of they’re, they’re not taking tickets from anybody. They’re not interacting with the public we’ve seen so far. They’re not checking anyone’s ID.”

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How Mossad got its war.

• Israel’s Mossad Promised It Could Ignite Regime Change In Iran (MEE)

Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad had a plan to ignite public protests that would lead to the collapse of Iran’s government, the New York Times has reported. David Barnea, Mossad’s chief, met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu days before the US and Israel began their war on Iran and told him that the agency would be able to galvanize Iranian opposition in order to bring about regime change. Barnea, according to the report, which cites interviews with US and Israeli officials, also presented this proposal to senior US officials during a visit to Washington in mid-January.


The plan was then taken up by Netanyahu and Trump, despite doubts among some senior American officials and Israeli military intelligence. Mossad’s promises were, according to US and Israeli officials, used by Netanyahu to convince the US president that collapsing the Iranian government was possible. In the plan’s conception, the war would begin with the killing of Iranian leaders, followed by a “series of intelligence operations intended to encourage regime change.” This could, Mossad believed, lead to a mass uprising that would bring about victory for Israel and the US. As the war began, Trump’s public messaging reflected this. In an eight-minute video statement he said:

“Finally, to the great, proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand…when we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.” But talk of regime change quickly evaporated. Less than two weeks in, US senators came out of a briefing on the war to say that overthrowing the Islamic Republic was not one of its goals, and that in fact there was “no plan” at all for the military operation. The CIA’s own assessment of the situation is that the Iranian administration will not be overthrown. In fact, the US intelligence agency had said that if Iran’s leaders were killed, a “more radical” leadership would take power.

Israeli intelligence sees Iran’s government as weakened but intact. “The belief that Israel and the United States could help instigate widespread revolt was a foundational flaw in the preparations for a war that has spread across the Middle East,” the NYT report said. While Netanyahu has remained bullish about the prospect of putting troops on the ground in Iran, he is said to be frustrated that Mossad’s promises to bring about an uprising have not come to fruition.According to the NYT, Netanyahu said in a security meeting days after the war began that Trump could end the war at any moment if Mossad’s operations did not bear fruit. Allegations that the White House went in the direction of ‘optimistic’ Israeli assessments over US intelligence consensus:

Mossad’s promises were, according to the report, disputed by many senior US officials and analysts at the Israeli army’s intelligence agency, Aman. US military leaders told Trump that Iranians would not take to the streets while bombs were falling, while intelligence officials assessed that the chances of a mass uprising were low.

Read more …

Go talk to Elon about plants on the moon.

• International Energy Agency Pushes Rationing (Jeffrey A. Tucker)

The International Energy Agency in Paris has released a new and urgent document that it wishes all nations with energy struggles to adopt. Many are doing that now. The website even maintains a spreadsheet updated daily to celebrate the countries that are following its plan for controlling energy use. Before explaining why none of this will work, let’s look at what they are suggesting. Seeming out of nowhere, the head of the IEA, Dr. Fatih Birol, is being quoted in the highend press as the world’s expert. His Wikipedia page says that he is from Turkey but works closely with China on the “energy transition.” Indeed, he has been a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering since 2013. Inspired by the manner in which governments were able to control communication and people during the COVID crisis, the IEA advises the following:

1. Work from home where possible. You read that right: we are back to languishing at home and consuming entertainment through laptops. Some governments (Indonesia, Vietnam, Pakistan, Philippines) have already adopted this policy loosely, with new measures such as four-day work weeks. IEA comments: “Displaces oil use from commuting, particularly where jobs are suitable for remote work.”

2. Reduce highway speed limits by at least 10 km/h. That means lowering all speed limits by 6-7 miles per hour, which is really nothing more than a method to create an annoyance. The IEA says “lower speeds reduce fuel use for passenger cars, vans and trucks,” but is that even true? Not always. Boggy traffic creates more stop/start situations that cause more gas consumption.

3. Encourage public transport. That exhortation has been the dream of city planners for probably 50 years. Not everyone can do this of course and a mandate like that will cause many just to stay home. In this case, IEA is probably correct: “A shift from private cars to buses and trains can quickly reduce oil demand.” But not for the reason you might think. It just means more staying at home.

4. Alternate private car access to roads in large cities on different days. Now we are getting to a policy that drove an entire generation batty in the 1970s. In those days, even/odd license plates were allowed access to gas but this is more intense. Alternating access would require a massive policing effort, one that is without precedent. IEA comments: “Number-plate rotation schemes can reduce congestion and fuel-intensive driving.”

5. Increase car sharing and adopt efficient driving practices. This is easily done in the same way police enforce HOV lanes. You cannot drive alone. You must have other passengers if you are going to be out on the road. One can imagine a future in which people routinely grab a family member or friend to sit in the passenger seat for compliance purposes. IEA comments: “Higher car occupancy and eco-driving can lower fuel consumption quickly.”

6. Efficient driving for road commercial vehicles and delivery of goods. Here we get to the old essential/nonessential divide. Commercial deliveries are allowed because we have to live somehow but driving to the park for a picnic or visiting friends and families is not.

7. Divert LPG [Liquefied Petroleum Gas] use from transport. This is the planner’s vision to preserve propane for “essential needs.”

8. Avoid air travel where alternative options exist. You will surely notice that this is already happening. My recent flight bookings have doubled in price. Because of the limited government shutdown, airport security lines can be 2-3 hours. People miss flights or simply bail out and go home. This is also causing connections to fail. Events this weekend that relied on travel are a bust. IEA comments: “Reducing business flights can quickly ease pressure on jet fuel markets.”

9. Where possible, switch to other modern cooking solutions. Earlier we saw an exhortation to save propane for cooking but here we see that this is not recommended either. We are supposed to switch to electric appliances. IEA comments: “Encouraging electric cooking and other modern options can reduce reliance on LPG.”

10. Leverage flexibility with petrochemical feedstocks and implement short-term efficiency and maintenance measures. This advice is directed toward energy plants to switch from one source to another to conserve oil. This suggestion reaches deep into industrial planning and would require draconian enforcement.

Read more …

What a weasel.

• The Late Robert Mueller, Bill of Rights Executioner (James Bovard)

Obituaries on eminent Washingtonians usually omit the dreadful precedents they set that will vex Americans long after their death. Not this piece. Former FBI director Robert Mueller died last week at the age of 81. The New York Times eulogized him as a “button-down, lockjawed, rock-ribbed exemplar of a vanishing caste.” In reality, Mueller was simply a twenty-first century version of J. Edgar Hoover, trampling the Constitution and seizing new power on any pretext.


Mueller took over the FBI one week before the 9/11 attacks and he was worse than clueless afterwards. On September 14, 2011, Mueller declared, “The fact that there were a number of individuals that happened to have received training at flight schools here is news, quite obviously. If we had understood that to be the case, we would have—perhaps one could have averted this.” Three days later, Mueller announced, “There were no warning signs that I’m aware of that would indicate this type of operation in the country.” His protestations helped the W. Bush administration railroad the Patriot Act through Congress, vastly expanding the FBI’s prerogatives to vacuum up Americans’ personal information.

Deceit helped capture those intrusive new prerogatives. The Bush administration suppressed until the following May the news that FBI agents in Phoenix and Minneapolis had warned FBI headquarters of suspicious Arabs in flight training programs prior to 9/11. A House-Senate Joint Intelligence Committee analysis concluded that FBI incompetence and negligence “contributed to the United States becoming, in effect, a sanctuary for radical terrorists.” FBI blundering spurred The Wall Street Journal to call for Mueller’s resignation, while a New York Times headline warned: “Lawmakers Say Misstatements Cloud F.B.I. Chief’s Credibility.”

But the FBI was off and running. Thanks to the Patriot Act, the FBI increased by a hundredfold—up to 50,000 a year—the number of National Security Letters (NSLs) it issued to citizens, business, and nonprofit organizations, and recipients were prohibited from disclosing that their data had been raided. NSLs entitle the FBI to seize records that reveal “where a person makes and spends money, with whom he lives and lived before, how much he gambles, what he buys online, what he pawns and borrows, where he travels, how he invests, what he searches for and reads on the Web, and who telephones or e-mails him at home and at work,” The Washington Post noted. The FBI can lasso thousands of people’s records with a single NSL—regardless of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of unreasonable warrantless searches.

The FBI greatly understated the number of NSLs it was issuing and denied that abuses had occurred, thereby helping sway Congress to renew the Patriot Act in 2006. The following year, an Inspector General report revealed that FBI agents may have recklessly issued thousands of illegal NSLs. Shortly after that report was released, federal judge Victor Marrero denounced the NSL process as “the legislative equivalent of breaking and entering, with an ominous free pass to the hijacking of constitutional values.” Rather than arresting FBI agents who broke the law, Mueller created a new FBI Office of Integrity and Compliance.

The Electronic Freedom Foundation, after winning lawsuits to garner FBI reports to a federal oversight board, concluded that the FBI may have committed “tens of thousands” of violations of federal law, regulations, or Executive Orders between 2001 and 2008. President George W. Bush, scorning a unanimous 1972 Supreme Court ruling, decided he was entitled to impose warrantless wiretaps on Americans. At an April 2005 Senate hearing, Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) asked Mueller, “Can the National Security Agency, the great electronic snooper, spy on the American people?” Mueller replied, “I would say generally, they are not allowed to spy or to gather information on American citizens.”

Read more …

” Paul Clement, was asked by Justice Sonia Sotomayor if his position on Election Day’s meaning meant the 2000 election — Bush v. Gore — was bogus. Clement was not only ready for that turd of an argument; he polished it and handed it back to the notoriously radical justice.”

• The Supreme Court Seems Ready to Make ELECTION DAY Great Again (Victoria Taft)

There’s a reason reporters capitalize the words Election Day in their stories, why Election Day is on every American calendar, and why it is emblematic of a single day by which you must deliver your ballot to the vote counters. The problem is, a dozen U.S. states have all sorts of cockamamie rules for when voters must get their ballots into the elections office, and it turns out that Election Day is not that day. On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court appeared to be leaning in favor of making Election Day great again — or at least making it a day again.


Oral arguments were heard on Monday that both embrace and reject the notion that there’s a day on the books in America called Election Day. The nine justices heard from both sides, and while there was the usual partisan Democrat cheerleading from Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, and to a lesser extent Justice Elena Kagan, throwing shade on that old-fashioned idea about Election Day, based on the reactions of the more conservative members of the court, Americans may not have to endure seemingly never-ending election days again, based on those conservative court members’ questions for lawyers.

Justice Sam Alito asked lawyers what Election Day means. He also noted that getting “radically different” vote tallies in the days after Election Day undermines the confidence people have in the integrity of elections. The elections in Nevada and Arizona in 2020 come to mind.

We know why the left has systematically changed Election Day deadlines throughout the country. If they could, they’d start the next election period the day after the previous election. They want as much chaos and confusion over the election results and want Americans inured to the idea that, for some reason, there sure seem to be a lot of election-changing ballots turned in after Election Day. There was a time in this country, like present-day Florida for example, when you could have election results on Election Day. But with the chaos surrounding what passes for an election these days, it’s hard to sort out legitimate votes from stuffed ones.

During the 2020 election, Pennsylvania Democrats staged a last-minute lawsuit, winning a three-day extension of Election Day. States such as Mississippi have five days to get their mail-in ballots counted. That’s why the U.S. government, voter integrity organizations, and others are fighting to retain a semblance of an orderly Election Day and asked the Supreme Court to disallow any votes coming in afterward. Among the plaintiffs bringing this election integrity lawsuit is Judicial Watch, which wants the Supreme Court to affirm a Fifth Circuit Appeals Court ruling declaring Mississippi’s five-day-after-Election Day deadline unlawful. Judicial Watch’s and the GOP’s lawyer, Paul Clement, was asked by Justice Sonia Sotomayor if his position on Election Day’s meaning meant the 2000 election — Bush v. Gore — was bogus. Clement was not only ready for that turd of an argument; he polished it and handed it back to the notoriously radical justice.

Read more …

“This is all bad news for India. There’s no question that all Indians understand that this war is disastrous for India..”

• Russia ‘Clearest Winner’ In US-israeli War On Iran – John Mearsheimer (RT)

Russia is the “clearest winner” in the US-Israeli war on Iran, international relations expert John Mearsheimer has said on RT’s New Order show. Mearsheimer, professor at the University of Chicago and co-author of ‘The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy’, added that India stands to be “a big loser” from the Middle East conflict despite having good relations with all sides. “The clearest winner is Russia,” Mearsheimer said, referring to the waiver of sanctions on Russian oil and gas by US President Donald Trump. On New Delhi’s diplomatic trajectory as the conflict escalates, Mearsheimer said, “The only interesting question at this point in time is how big a loser it’s [India] going to be.”


“This is all bad news for India. There’s no question that all Indians understand that this war is disastrous for India,” Mearsheimer added. New Delhi’s pain points include inflation, cost of gas, fertilizers, and food production, according to the expert. Mearsheimer said Trump and Israel believed in a quick and decisive victory, and that the Gulf nations and countries such as India also did not see a long war. “So what happened was that India did not protest. The Gulf states did not protest,” he added. New Delhi did not condemn the US-Israeli assassination of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, choosing instead to later offer condolences.

On the complexities of dealing with the Trump administration, Mearsheimer said India has done a decent job. “[Prime Minister Narendra] Modi is aware of the danger of getting too close to the United States,” he stated. “The United States is basically a rogue elephant, and if you get too close to a rogue elephant, it may trample you.” He said the countries that have benefited the most from the Iran war are “clearly Russia and China, and they’re both members of BRICS. But at the same time, I think a lot of the BRICS countries are going to be badly hurt. India is one of them. Indonesia may be another.” Mearsheimer said the end result is that the war will cause those countries to rethink their relationship with the US.

Read more …

“…about 4,000 kilometers [nearly 2,500 miles]..”

• Iran’s Flex Of Long-Range Ballistic Missiles Vindicates Trump (JTN)

With Iran’s launch of two long-range missiles on Friday, putting nearly all of Europe in striking distance, the regime showed that it possesses a capability that President Donald Trump previously cited as a key justification for the U.S. conflict with the Islamic Republic after years of denying it publicly. Iran fired the intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) at the joint U.S.-U.K. airbase on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, more than 2,000 miles from Tehran, on the same day that the British government gave the United States the green light to use the facility to launch strikes on Iran.


“It could probably hit Paris, maybe London,” security expert says
Neither missile struck the base. One failed in flight and a U.S. warship fired an interceptor missile at the other, though the U.S. military did not say whether the interception was successful. “This whole conflict changed when Iran fired intermediate-range ballistic missiles at Diego Garcia, proving that it could probably hit Paris, maybe London,” Fred Fleitz, former Chief of Staff of Trump’s National Security Council during the president’s first term, told the John Solomon Reports podcast on Monday. Besides its nuclear program, Iran’s conventional missile program was one of the primary motivations for the Trump administration’s decision to strike Iran earlier this year. In his State of the Union Address just days before the military action, the president told Congress that the regime is developing missiles that would one day be able to reach the United States.

“They’ve already developed missiles that can threaten Europe and our bases overseas, and they’re working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America,” Trump said in February. “They were warned to make no future attempts to rebuild their weapons program, in particular nuclear weapons.” Though U.S. intelligence assessments show that Iran is about nine years away from developing a missile that could reach the United States, officials allege that Tehran’s growing space program provided the vector for achieving such a breakthrough.

Before the ballistic missile launch targeting Diego Garcia on Friday, Iranian leaders claimed their arsenal was limited in range and primarily for the purpose of deterring other countries rather than strikes abroad. In an interview with NBC News earlier this month, the regime’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that Iran had intentionally limited the range of its ballistic missiles to below 1,250 miles “because we don’t want to be felt as a threat by anybody else in the world.”

Much further than the previously estimated ranges
But, after firing two missiles at the airbase, Iran’s semi-official Mehr News Agency reported that the missiles were fired at the base on Friday. “Iran’s targeting of Diego Garcia, about 4,000 kilometers [nearly 2,500 miles] away from Iran, implies its missiles have a greater range than Tehran has previously announced,” Mehr News Agency reported. “Iran’s targeting of US faraway military base demonstrates its missile capability in targeting long-range positions.”

Indeed, the range touted by the state-backed outlet would be much further than the previously estimated ranges of Iran’s missiles, excepting the Simorgh rocket — a space launch vehicle for satellites — if it were repurposed as a ballistic missile. Neither the U.S. nor the United Kingdom provided information about how far the Iranian ballistic missiles flew. However, if the Iranian regime-backed news outlet can be trusted, such a range would place most of Europe within the radius of the IRBMs, including the more than 38 U.S. military bases on the continent. Members of the European NATO alliance host the U.S. European Command (Stuttgart, Germany), strategic air and naval bases, and U.S. forward-deployed nuclear weapons.

“It’s sort of amusing to look back now, carried by arms control experts and European leaders that we know Iran doesn’t have missiles that can fire more than 2000 kilometers, because the Supreme Leader said that they wouldn’t do that. Well, that wasn’t true,” Fleitz said. “They have missiles with at least a range of 4000 kilometers, which can almost get to Paris. And for all we know, the missiles can go even further,” he added. Though many European leaders have been hesitant about becoming overtly involved in the conflict, there are signs that their tune may be changing after Iran’s attempted long-range strike last week.

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A rock and a hard place.

• EC Postpones Publication of Ban On Russian Oil Imports (TASS)

The European Commission cannot yet set a precise date for the publication of a draft ban on Russian oil imports for EU countries, European Commission Spokesperson Anna-Kaisa Itkonen said at a briefing in Brussels. “I don’t have, first of all, a definite date to give. What I can reassure you of is that we remain committed to making this proposal. What the President of the European Commission (Ursula von der Leyen – TASS) has been very clear about is that going back to importing Russian energy would be repeating a mistake of the past,” she said. Initially, April 15 was discussed, but the ban clause has now disappeared from the European Commission’s agenda. Itkonen noted in this regard that the EC’s agenda is “preliminary” and the European Commission is “looking for a new date.”


Earlier, von der Leyen stated that the European Commission does not intend to allow EU countries to import Russian energy resources, even in the event of power outages in Europe. Energy Commissioner Dan Jorgensen said that the EU would not “import as much as one molecule from Russia.” All this is happening against the backdrop of Brussels’ conflict with Budapest and Bratislava. On January 27, Kiev blocked Russian oil supplies via the Druzhba pipeline to Hungary and Slovakia. In response, both countries blocked €90 billion in military financing from Europe to Ukraine, as well as the 20th package of sanctions against Russia.

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“The bloc backs the country’s opposition and is attempting to smear government parties ahead of a key election, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has claimed .. “

• Hungary Blasts ‘Fake’ EU Accusation (RT)

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has denied and condemned claims that he leaked the details of EU meetings to Moscow. The allegations were reported by the Washington Post and Politico some three weeks prior to the Hungarian parliamentary election scheduled for April 12. On Friday, the WaPo cited security officials claiming that Szijjarto had made regular phone calls during breaks at EU meetings to provide Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov with “live reports on what had been discussed.” On Sunday, Politico echoed the allegations, citing unnamed diplomats and officials who said Brussels had begun limiting the flow of confidential material to Hungary, forcing leaders to meet in smaller groups amid concerns that Budapest might leak sensitive information to the Kremlin.


“Instead of spreading lies and fake news, come to Budapest to support the opposition! Last time it worked… for us,” Szijjarto said Sunday in a post on X, responding to a comment by Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who argued that the new allegations “shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.” The Hungarian foreign minister earlier stated that Tusk was “the star speaker at the opposition rally” four years ago, stressing that back then Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his Fidesz party had won the election by 20%. Szijjarto also criticized his Polish counterpart, Radoslaw Sikorski, over a similar remark, accusing Warsaw of “spreading lies to support the [opposition] Tisza Party and install a pro-war puppet government in Hungary.”

Orban has been at odds with Brussels over his criticism of open-border migration and what he calls a “suicidal” plan to admit Ukraine to the bloc. Hungary’s prime minister and Vladimir Zelensky are involved in a standoff over the Ukrainian leader’s claim that he is unable to send Russian oil to Hungary. In return, Orban has refused to green light a €90 billion debt facility Brussels wants for Ukraine.

Read more …

Orban is Trump’s friend.

• Hungarian Foreign Minister Wiretapped By EU Spies – Orban (RT)

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has ordered an investigation into the alleged wiretapping of Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto by at least one EU member state. The operation was aided by a Hungarian opposition journalist. The probe was announced on Monday, after the Washington Post and Politico published reports claiming that Szijjarto phoned Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov during breaks in EU meetings to give Lavrov “live reports on what had been discussed.” The reports cited unnamed “European security” officials.


Szijjarto dismissed the claims as “lies and fake news,” but Hungarian conservative outlet Mandiner revealed on Monday that Szijjarto’s contact details had likely been passed to EU security officials by Szabolcs Panyi, an opposition journalist in Hungary. In an audio file released by Mandiner, Panyi can be heard telling a source how he gave Szijjarto’s phone number to “a state organ of an EU country.” Panyi then explains that once the agency he spoke to has a person’s phone number, they can extract “information about who that number spoke to, and they see who is calling that number or who that number is calling.”

In a Facebook post on Monday, Panyi confirmed that he was the person on the recording. He said that he was asking his source whether she knew of any alternate numbers used by Szijjarto or Lavrov, so that I could compare them with information received from the national security service of a European country. “We are dealing with two serious issues”, Orban stated on Monday. “There is evidence that Hungary’s foreign minister was wiretapped, and we also “have indications of who may be behind it. This must be investigated immediately.”

Later in the audio file, Panyi tells his source that he is a “quasi-friend” of Anita Orban, a member of opposition leader Peter Magyar’s Tisza party, and Magyar’s pick to replace Szijjarto as foreign minister, should Tisza win next month’s parliamentary elections. Panyi suggests that he has close links to Tisza, and would be in a position to recommend “who should stay or be removed” if Magyar takes power. Panyi is an editor with Vsquare, and leads the outlet’s Budapest office. Vsquare is funded by the US State Department’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED), USAID, and two EU-financed journalism funds. Earlier this month, Vsquare claimed to have uncovered evidence that “election fixers” with Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, were working in Budapest to swing the upcoming elections for Orban.

Read more …

And even then…

• There’s A Heretic In The Heart of The EU And He Wants To Talk To Putin (Amar)

]Ideally, policy debates should serve to bring together the fullest information, the brightest minds, and the sharpest arguments in order to find solutions. That is, the optimum combination between what is best and what is feasible. In the real world, shaped by ordinary human fallibility and the extraordinary egotism of professional politicians, that is usually not what happens. But the EU is still special in just how atrociously, hopelessly, for crying-out-loud bad it is at the solution game. Because it is not just playing it badly, it’s not playing at all.


Instead, in the upside-down, white-is-black, Israel-is-defending-itself-and-Iran-is-just-so-damn-mean alternate universe of the EU, the space where policy debates should take place has long been fully clogged up by three pernicious weeds of swamp-á-la-Brussels. First, those elaborately underhanded backroom deals that eliminate even the faintest remains of transparency and accountability. For a fresh – if also foul – example, just check out the recent double-dealing between the EU parliament’s oh-so-democratic Centrists and the at-least-not-so-hypocritical far right. A deal so obviously perfidious, even Berlin doesn’t like to be associated with it – in public, that is.

Secondly, there is that old bureaucratic panacea: hyperactive lethargy. If you can’t devise a rational solution to a public need to find broad support with most of 27 national governments (not to speak of their voters who matter little anyhow), just keep churning out inefficient non-solution papers, strategies, and plans that everyone can at least agree to keep talking but do very little about. That’s the pattern in which the EU is currently not addressing, for instance, its quite possibly medium-term-lethal problem of decaying competitiveness.


And finally, there is the doctrinally most demanding way of shutting down genuine policy debate: the hammer of the Brussels inquisition. That, of course, is not a specific office but a pervasive attitude of narrow-minded conformism always ready to promptly pounce on any heretic who offers alternative views on reality and plausible courses of action. Those, clearly, would be an essential ingredient of any productive debate and decision-making process. But that’s not important for the EU. No divergence from the party line, please, we are Europeans! And down with all rebels!

That is what is currently happening to the Belgian prime minister Bart de Wever, and not for the first time. He is already notorious for having almost single-handedly kept the EU (and Berlin) from fully plundering Russia’s frozen sovereign assets in the EU. With unheard of audacity, De Wever insisted on protecting Belgium’s national interests first.

In an interview with his country’s L’Echo newspaper that has been widely reported from the Financial Times to the Guardian, De Wever has painted a target on his own back by acknowledging the obvious and concluding the inevitable. The obvious being that the current EU policy of waging a proxy war against Russia by way of Ukraine is not working and will never work, and the inevitable that when you can’t win your ill-conceived war, then you must settle for a compromise with your opponent.

And once you have to make peace, you might as well do so in a way that offers economic benefits. In the EU’s case, the most obvious – and most urgently needed – would be in trying to regain access to Russian gas and oil. Moreover, if the EU sticks to its policy of, in essence, total obstruction, then it will only make sure not to be part of the solution once a way back to peace is finally found. Not at that table, it will have to accept an outcome that will be disadvantageous to its interests. And all for playing hard to get. De Wever’s points are simple and compelling, right?

Among the reasonable, yes. And among the morally normal as well, because even on the EU’s own, misguided terms, it is perverse to continue a war that is allegedly waged on Ukraine’s behalf but has always been unwinnable, bleeds its people dry, can be ended with a reasonable settlement, and is encountering ever more popular opposition.

There is a reason why Kiev is running a de facto authoritarian regime and the Ukrainian military has turned to massive and brutal forced mobilization. But the response from both Brussels and national governments is to try to push even those Ukrainian men who had made it out back into the proxy war meatgrinder.

Those setting the tone in the EU are neither reasonable nor humane. That is why even De Wever’s decidedly realistic arguments cannot make a dent in their monotonous group think. De Wever, after all, is not a Russophile. Witness, for instance, his recent appearance on a Davos World Economic Forum panel, led, as it happened, by uber Cold War Re-enactor Gideon Rachman from the Financial Times. There, De Wever was clear about his view that the EU has to keep aiding Ukraine, on this occasion to the tune of $90 billion, to “keep [it] in the fight.”

Read more …

They know better than some geezer from the 17th century. Rewrite him!

• Shakespeare’s Birthplace to be “Decolonized” (Turley)

William Shakespeare’s birthplace will be de-colonised over fears that portraying his success as the ‘greatest’ playwright ‘benefits the ideology of white European supremacy’In Hamlet, William Shakespeare famously wrote, “To thine own self be true.” The problem is when others want to present a different “truth” long after you are gone. Shakespeare is under an unrelenting attack in the United Kingdom from trigger warnings to censoring his prose. Now, Shakespeare’s Birthplace Trust has announced that it will “de-colonise” the Bard. In the name of creating “a more inclusive museum experience,” the Trust is moving away from Western perspectives to avoid the dangers of “white supremacy.”


A prior research project between the trust and Dr Helen Hopkins at the University of Birmingham raised concerns over just praising the writer. Even recognizing Shakespeare’s genius “benefits the ideology of white European supremacy.” The new push at the Trust follows The Globe Theatre’s previous move to “decolonise” Shakespeare’s famous plays. Again, while many of us denounce this type of revisionism, it appeals to this community of cultural overlords. It is personally advancing for these academics and experts to seek to change or cancel such works. The same voices are being heard in the United States. As we previously discussed, in a column in the School Library Journal, Minnesota librarian and journalist Amanda MacGregor questioned why teachers were even still exposing their students to this harmful influence:

“Shakespeare’s works are full of problematic, outdated ideas, with plenty of misogyny, racism, homophobia, classism, anti-Semitism and misogynoir.” Lorena German, National Council of Teachers of English Anti-Racism Committee chair and a co-founder of the Disrupt Texts forum, insisted “everything about the fact that he was a man of his time is problematic about his plays. We cannot teach Shakespeare responsibly and not disrupt the ways people are characterized and developed.”

It is time for the dwindling population of sane Brits to step forward and fight for their culture and heritage. These advocates have used academia and the media to attack the foundations of British culture. It is not enough to foster diversity in other areas, they must change and reframe how historical figures and works are presented. They recognize this as a culture war, but have met little resistance. It is time, as the Barb himself wrote, to “Cry havoc! and let slip the dogs of war.”

Read more …

“The view from Flyover Country is that Hollywood committed suicide, and that Newsom and Bass just added a few shovels of dirt on top of the coffin.”

• Who Killed Hollywood? Or Did it Kill Itself? (Stephen Green)

“The Hollywood industry is dying,” comedian David Spade told Fly on the Wall cohost Dana Carvey last week, specifically calling out California Gov. Gavin Newsom and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass. “Dude, I’m so old,” he said. “I was on the lot at CBS Radford when we were doing Just Shoot Me… It was the greatest lot. Of course, [the lot] just filed for bankruptcy. Terrifying in L.A. Thanks, Karen Bass. Thanks, Gavin.” Earlier this year, the storied production facility — Seinfeld shot there, too — was turned over to creditors after Hackman Capital Partners defaulted on a $1.1 billion mortgage. “Studio owners have struggled to lease space due to a sharp downturn in film and TV production volume since 2022,” Variety reported in January.


“Survive Until 2025” was Hollywood’s mantra in 2024, but last year brought zero relief from post-COVID TV and movie production woes. L.A.’s entertainment industry job losses amounted to 40% or more of 2022 highs. IBT reported last week that local studios “logged only 19,694 days of filming in Los Angeles in 2025, compared to 36,792 in 2022.” It’s the production crews who suffer most from Tinseltown’s downfall, and by and large, they aren’t woke Hollywood progressives. They’re workingmen and women who tend to be far more centrist or even conservative than the stars and studios they work for.

And Another Thing: I always liked Spade, but only recently learned that he’s no Hollywood wokester, either. “I don’t want half the crowd tuning me out,” Spade told Variety in 2019, explaining why he didn’t jump on the TDS bandwagon with the rest of the industry. “When people do things, I think it’s fair game to make a few jokes, and then you move on – not too personal, of course.” Some say the economics of streaming — particularly Netflix — are to blame, but as Carvey told Spade on the same podcast, “The amount of productions is dying, and so they have to do something so more production comes back, and that starts with negotiating with the union and also subsidizing the industry tax breaks to compete with Romania.”

California and L.A. stopped competing for big-ticket productions, which is why studios decamped to Georgia, the U.K., and, yes, even Romania. But there’s more to the story than just California’s business-hostile environment driving filming out of state. Whether filmed in Los Angeles or Timbuktu, Americans increasingly won’t buy what Hollywood sells. Netflix largely produces “second screen” content that people kinda-sorta watch while scrolling on their phones, and will pay for on an all-you-can-eat basis. But streamers produce very little that would otherwise draw people into theaters. What struck me most about Project Hail Mary — which hit the big screen on Friday to great reviews and awesome ticket sales — is how rare that kind of good-natured hit film is.

I hope Project Hail Mary goes on to earn a gazillion dollars, and maybe even remind Hollywood that you don’t need capes, a sequel, or a reboot to produce a winner. Just a really good story that almost anyone can enjoy will do. We still love going to the movies, but Hollywood only sometimes remembers anymore how to get us to go. Alas, the summer slate is filled — you guessed it — capes, sequels, and reboots. And, of course, more second-screen algorithm-pleasing slop from the Netflix content firehose. The view from Flyover Country is that Hollywood committed suicide, and that Newsom and Bass just added a few shovels of dirt on top of the coffin.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/DooridooriX/status/2036146403941163451?s=20 AI bird?

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle February 15 2026

Feb 152026
 
 February 15, 2026  Posted by at 10:46 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  33 Responses »


Ito Shinsui Snowy night 1923


• Newsom Tells EU “Trump Is Temporary,” Doubles Down On Failing Green Agenda (ZH)
• Rubio on Fire! (Sarah Anderson)
• Vast Majority Of Americans Want Voter ID And Democrats Don’t Care (ZH)
• The Least Laid Generation in History: Gen Z Is Ghosting Sex (Pinsker)
• OH BABY! Couples Could Make Big Money on Trump Accounts (DS)
• Americans Could Be Silenced by EU Online Speech Laws (ET)
• More Nations Are Mulling Social Media Bans For Teens (ZH)
• The Unsettling Truths the Epstein Files Reveal About Power and Privilege (ET)
• California Democrats Trigger a Reverse Gold Rush with a Wealth Tax (Turley)
• FBI Opened 1,200 ‘Assessments’ Of Sensitive Figures (JTN)
• US Smuggled Starlinks Into Iran Amid Riots – WSJ (RT)
• Trump Makes A HUGE Promise About Voter ID
• American Workers Have Less Than A $1000 in Retirement Savings (Turley)
• Stolen Land At The Grammys: How Hollywood Groupthink Threatens Democracy (ET)
• “Billion Dollar Movie In One Prompt” (ZH)

 


 

Make sure you take your time today for the Debt Rattle. I know it can seem overwhelming. Watch some videos. Use the time well. Everything goes faster than you think.

Then again, Elon Musk says we are In The Singularity. That means ALL predictions are off. Including Elon’s.

 


 

Miles Deutscher@milesdeutscher

Ok fine – maybe you don’t want to listen to me. I’m just a 25-year-old on the internet.

But maybe you’ll listen to them.

I documented every major warning from the people actually building AI.

Every CEO. Every founder. They’re all saying the same thing.

Read this slowly:

• Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI: “Being a lawyer, an accountant, a project manager, a marketing person – most of those tasks will be fully automated by AI within 12 to 18 months.”

• Elon Musk: “AI and robots will replace all jobs. Working will be optional.” Called AI his “biggest fear.”

• Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic: AI will eliminate 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs. Unemployment could hit 20%. Called it “unusually painful.” Then said: “Most lawmakers are unaware this is about to happen.”

• Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI: “Some areas, I think just like totally, totally gone.” Said changes that normally take 75 years will be compressed into a short period. Admitted he loses sleep over it.

• Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia: “Every job will be affected, and immediately. It is unquestionable.”

• Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase: “It will eliminate jobs. People should stop sticking their head in the sand.” Warned mass AI layoffs without safeguards could trigger “civil unrest.” Said he’d welcome a government ban on mass-firing for AI.

• Stuart Russell (author of the most-used AI textbook in history): Political leaders are “staring 80% unemployment in the face”.

• Kai-Fu Lee, VC & former head of Google China: Called predictions of 50% job displacement by 2027 “uncannily accurate.”

These aren’t journalists. These aren’t influencers. These aren’t politicians trying to get elected.

These are the people building it. Funding it. Deploying it.
And not one of them is saying your job is safe.

 


 

Elon Musk just gave retirement planning the most radical advice possible:

“Don’t worry about squirreling money away for retirement in 10 or 20 years — it won’t matter.

You won’t need to save for retirement.” His reasoning (from the same conversation):

We’re already in the singularity — “the event horizon” where prediction breaks down.

The accelerating timeline makes long-term saving irrelevant.

Services, homes, healthcare, entertainment — abundance will be so extreme that the old rules vanish.

Peter Diamandis: “The way this unfolds is fundamentally impossible to predict because of self-improvement of the AI and the accelerating timeline.”

Elon: “We’re in this beautiful sweet spot… like being at the top of the roller coaster about to drop. I don’t just have courtside seats — I’m on the court.”

If saving for retirement becomes pointless in the next 10–20 years because we’re already past the event horizon…

what’s the first thing you’d change about how you live right now?

 


 

Software that rewrites itself. https://twitter.com/Khulood_Almani/status/2022315978575483386?s=20 Huang GenZ 4 Hours? 18 hrs https://twitter.com/iam_smx/status/2022743830491988095?s=20

 


 


Two -very- different futures for America, courtesy of Rubio and Newsom.

• Newsom Tells EU “Trump Is Temporary,” Doubles Down On Failing Green Agenda (ZH)

California Gov. Gavin Newsom spoke at the Munich Security Conference earlier on Friday, telling European elites that President Trump is “temporary” and will be gone within three years. Newsom, noticeably angered by Trump’s push for deregulation and the rollback of climate policy, lashed out at the president, calling him “more destructive” than the current occupant of the White House. The issue for Newsom is that he still operates within the climate crisis framework promoted by globalists, even as the West is moving on from two decades of nation-killing green policy regime that hollowed out parts of the industrial base and fueled inflation.


On Thursday, President Trump rescinded the 2009 Obama-era “Endangerment Finding,” a determination that greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare, which he said has been used by the radical left to justify $1.3 trillion in regulatory costs that have hurt American households and sent consumer prices soaring, especially for automobiles. “The single largest deregulatory action in American history. That’s a big statement in American history, and I think we can add the words by far,” Trump told reporters. Also this week, there was considerable discussion among industry leaders in Europe about Brussels watering down carbon-pricing markets, which have made electricity outrageously expensive and crushed the industrial base (Goldman explained more here).

And it is not just Trump and European industry leaders pushing to unwind green policies that have financially crushed working-class families and hollowed out the industrial base; major companies are also dialing back EV production plans and softening green targets as the net-zero dream collides with reality. Here’s what Newsom said earlier at the MSC (courtesy of Real Clear Politics):

GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM: “Donald Trump is doubling down on stupid. California has been a leader in climate policy going back to Ronald Reagan. In 1967, Governor Ronald Reagan established the first tailpipe emissions standards in the United States of America and created the California Air Resources Board. Three years later, a president by the name of Richard Nixon — another Republican — codified California’s leadership under the Clean Air Act.

Never in the history of the United States of America has there been a more destructive president than the current occupant in the White House in Washington, D.C. He’s trying to recreate the 19th century. He’s a wholly owned subsidiary of big oil, gas, and coal. He’s quite literally reopening coal plants in the United States of America. He’s received close to half a billion dollars in campaign contributions. He asked for $1 billion — look it up — in return for basically eliminating all regulations in the United States of America. De facto, he just did that yesterday with federal regulations and the endangerment finding.

It is code red in terms of American leadership in this space — low-carbon, green growth — and I know a thing or two about this. I represent the fourth-largest economy, from a GDP perspective, in the world, and we ran the fourth-largest economy last year nine out of ten days on 100% clean energy — two-thirds renewable energy. We’ve seen our GDP grow by 81% since 2000, and we’ve reduced our greenhouse gas emissions by 21%. Seven times more clean energy jobs than fossil fuel jobs.

We’re proving at scale that we can implement, we can compete, and we can dominate. But Donald Trump is trying to turn back the clock. And so we’re showing up, but we’re also showing what can be accomplished — the power of emulation. We are in the great implementation in my state. Final word. I hope, if there’s nothing else I can communicate today: Donald Trump is temporary. He’ll be gone in three years. California is a stable and reliable partner in this space, and it’s important for folks to understand the temporary nature of this current administration in relationship to the issue of climate change and climate policy.

MODERATOR]: Governor, many have called Joe Biden the climate president, but that didn’t help with his re-election. So how important do you think climate issues will be for the 2028 presidential election?

GAVIN NEWSOM: Well, you may not believe in science, but you’ve got to believe your own eyes. I mean, people are burning up, choking up, heating up. We have simultaneous droughts and floods. Historic wildfires. You may know little about California, but you’ve seen those images of these wildfires. Talk about being as dumb as we want to be — places, lifestyles, traditions being wiped off the map. Greenville. Paradise, California. And so this issue has been brought home in a very personal way, not a political way. Senator Whitehouse is here — he’s also someone who deeply understands that climate risk is financial risk. It’s becoming uninsurable.

This is an economic issue, not just a moral issue. It’s not just a competitiveness issue. And so it’s incredibly important that we talk in those terms to address some of the political dynamics. But it’s again something we’re on the other side of in California. It’s a big blue state, but it also has more Republicans than most Republican states. And we have long moved beyond the partisanship on this issue, because there is no Republican thermometer, there’s no Democratic thermometer — there’s just reality.And people in my state have been mugged by reality. Those that have been in denial understand that we’re on the other side of the debate.

Read more …

“And that is what we are defending: a great civilization that has every reason to be proud of its history, confident of its future, and aims to always be the master of its own economic and political destiny.”

We Won’t Be ‘Polite and Orderly Caretakers of the West’s Managed Decline’

• Rubio on Fire! (Sarah Anderson)

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2022816808403615888?s=20
“The world is changing very fast right in front of us. The old world is gone… We live in a new era in geopolitics, and it’s going to require all of us to reexamine what that looks like and what our role is going to be.” That’s what Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the press before he boarded a plane to Munich, Germany on Thursday evening. Little did we know that this quote was setting the stage for what turned out to be a momentous speech at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday morning, a speech that framed the end of one major geopolitical era and the beginning of another. We may well look back on this speech in Munich as another defining moment in the secretary’s career.


Rubio told European leaders that the post–Cold War era is over, that the “euphoria of this triumph led us to a dangerous delusion: that we had entered, quote, ‘the end of history;’ that every nation would now be a liberal democracy; that the ties formed by trade and by commerce alone would now replace nationhood; that the rules-based global order – an overused term – would now replace the national interest; and that we would now live in a world without borders where everyone became a citizen of the world.” He said that this idea was foolish and “ignored both human nature and it ignored the lessons of over 5,000 years of recorded human history.”

While championing the Donald Trump administration’s America-First foreign policy, he also reaffirmed the bond between our nations, saying that the Western Hemisphere may be our home, but we’re a child of Europe, and we share history, culture, and heritage. “We belong together,” he said. But he also made it clear that the world has reached a turning point and course correction is required. Europe must save itself because, “we in America have no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline.” Rubio called on our European allies to revitalize their nations and reject policies leading to their decline.

That includes the embracing of “a dogmatic vision of free and unfettered trade” and shuttering our plants, which resulted “in large parts of our societies being deindustrialized, shipping millions of working and middle-class jobs overseas, and handing control of our critical supply chains to both adversaries and rivals.” He continued: “We increasingly outsourced our sovereignty to international institutions while many nations invested in massive welfare states at the cost of maintaining the ability to defend themselves. This, even as other countries have invested in the most rapid military buildup in all of human history and have not hesitated to use hard power to pursue their own interests.

To appease a climate cult, we have imposed energy policies on ourselves that are impoverishing our people, even as our competitors exploit oil and coal and natural gas and anything else – not just to power their economies, but to use as leverage against our own.”n nAnd in a pursuit of a world without borders, we opened our doors to an unprecedented wave of mass migration that threatens the cohesion of our societies, the continuity of our culture, and the future of our people. We made these mistakes together, and now, together, we owe it to our people to face those facts and to move forward, to rebuild.

Under President Trump, the United States of America will once again take on the task of renewal and restoration, driven by a vision of a future as proud, as sovereign, and as vital as our civilization’s past. And while we are prepared, if necessary, to do this alone, it is our preference and it is our hope to do this together with you, our friends here in Europe. But it wasn’t just a critique or warning about globalization. Rubio explained that it’s the fundamental part of national security. “The fundamental question we must answer at the outset is what exactly are we defending, because armies do not fight for abstractions. Armies fight for a people; armies fight for a nation. Armies fight for a way of life,” he said.

“And that is what we are defending: a great civilization that has every reason to be proud of its history, confident of its future, and aims to always be the master of its own economic and political destiny.” Rubio also spoke of how “we can no longer place the so-called global order above the vital interests of our people and our nations,” and how we must reform global institutions. He used the United Nations as an example, explaining that it has potential to be a “tool for good” but right now, it’s basically useless. “But we cannot ignore that today, on the most pressing matters before us, it has no answers and has played virtually no role.”

It could not solve the war in Gaza. Instead, it was American leadership that freed captives from barbarians and brought about a fragile truce. It had not solved the war in Ukraine. It took American leadership and partnership with many of the countries here today just to bring the two sides to the table in search of a still-elusive peace. It was powerless to constrain the nuclear program of radical Shia clerics in Tehran. That required 14 bombs dropped with precision from American B-2 bombers. And it was unable to address the threat to our security from a narco-terrorist dictator in Venezuela. Instead, it took American Special Forces to bring this fugitive to justice.

He concluded: “…America is charting the path for a new century of prosperity, and that once again we want to do it together with you, our cherished allies and our oldest friends. We want to do it together with you, with a Europe that is proud of its heritage and of its history; with a Europe that has the spirit of creation of liberty that sent ships out into uncharted seas and birthed our civilization; with a Europe that has the means to defend itself and the will to survive.”

The speech, which ended with a long standing ovation, was similar to that of Vice President JD Vance’s Munich moment from last year but a bit softer, a bit more diplomatic. Rubio assured the Europeans that the United States is not abandoning them, but the old playbook is shelved. If the alliance is to continue, Europe must adapt and defend the true interests of its people and Western civilization unlike ever before. You could almost hear a sigh of a relief in the room, but how these European leaders will actually respons remains to be seen. I, for one, am not particularly hopeful.

Read more …

Democrats Don’t Care.

• Vast Majority Of Americans Want Voter ID And Democrats Don’t Care (ZH)

Are voter ID requirements considered a controversial idea in the eyes of US citizens? If you watch the establishment media or follow leaders in the Democratic Party then you might think bills like the SAVE Act are the end of freedom as we know it However, outside the echo chambers of DNC propaganda, the vast majority of Americans have no problem whatsoever with people proving their US citizenship before they vote in local and federal elections. The widespread support for voter ID is undeniable. Surveys from the past year including those from Pew and Gallup show that, regardless of party or ethnicity, Americans citizens want elections to be protected from manipulation through mass illegal immigration.


A Pew Research Center survey from August 2025 found that 83% of Americans favor requiring all voters to show government-issued photo ID to vote. This includes:
95% of Republicans
71% of Democrats
Only 16% of people oppose it.

A Gallup poll from 2024 shows 84% support for requiring photo ID to vote, with 98% of Republicans, 84% of independents and 67% of Democrats in approval.A recent CNN segment featuring number cruncher Harry Enten confirms that the backing for the SAVE Act is also dominant regardless of ethnicity: 85% of white voter, 82% of Latino voters and 76% of black voters all want voter ID. It’s difficult to find many issues which the American public universally supports at this level.

Democrat leaders, however, don’t care that the majority of their own base wants voter ID laws. Party officials and the left-wing media have engaged in a shameless propaganda campaign designed to frighten the public into opposing the SAVE Act, despite their previous platforms defending majority rule. They consistently compare the new laws to “Jim Crow” era restrictions, claiming that minorities (and rural Americans) are too dumb to figure out how to get access to state IDs and birth certificates.

In truth, every state that already has some form of election ID laws has seen a spike in voter participation, not a decline. Only 8 states have laws demanding proof of citizenship before voting (half of the states are in legal battles to implement them); the other 42 only require that you check a box that says you are a citizen. When Democrats are asked why they are ignoring their majority of their constituents when it comes to the SAVE Act, they launch into tirades about racism and fascism, but never seem to be able to answer the question.

It’s difficult to reconcile the rhetoric of Democrats from 2024 when they wailed and screamed about conservatives being a “threat to democracy” compared to their rhetoric today. At bottom, the political left only supports majority public decisions when those decisions work in the favor of leftist elites. The majority of Americans continue to support the Trump Administration’s deportations of all illegal migrants (not just migrants with violent criminal records), but Dem leaders and their NGO partners continue trying to thwart the will of the people. By extension, voter ID makes it far more difficult for non-citizens to vote and makes it easier for voting records to be checked for discrepancies.

It’s clear that ID requirements and tighter controls on mail-in ballots will work heavily against Democrats and, if passed, they are likely to see a sharp decline in votes across the board. They are fighting against the SAVE Act because they want oligarchy, not “democracy.” They want minority elitist control over government policy. Voter ID is perhaps the most important legal question of our era; it will determine the course of elections for many years to come. Most western countries have laws in place to prevent illegal migrant voting and foreign manipulation of elections. The US is the only country in which this type of law is treated as “racist”.

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Ask the one-child Chinese how fast this can get out off hand.

• The Least Laid Generation in History: Gen Z Is Ghosting Sex (Pinsker)

So, barmaid, bring a pitcher, another round of brew
Honey, why don’t we get drunk and screw?
—Jimmy Buffett, Why Don’t We Get Drunk (and Screw)


It’s not just sex: Alcohol consumption has dropped by 54%, with youth (18 to 34) drinking falling ANOTHER 9% just between 2023 and 2025. From TIME magazine’s article, “Why Gen Z is Drinking Less”: “[R]esearch from the National Institute on Drug Abuse shows that lifetime drinking, past month drinking, and past year drinking among young people began to decline around the year 2000. That means that such declines have especially impacted Generation Z, defined as anyone born from 1997 to 2012, and some Millennials, born between 1981 and 1996. […]

“It is becoming clear that, for whatever reasons, today’s younger generations are just less interested in alcohol and are more likely than older generations to see it as risky for their health and to participate in periods of abstinence like Dry January,” said National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism George F. Koob in a statement. Maybe that’s not coincidental. Perhaps there’s a causal link (as famed philosopher Jimmy Buffett suggested). Maybe, just like peanut butter and jelly are complementary products, sex and alcohol are, too. Koob seemed to agree with Buffett:

“Another contributing factor has to do with the changing socialization patterns of younger generations. “Alcohol tends to be a social drug, even for young people, so part of the decline in underage drinking could be related to less in-person socializing,” said Koob. On average, the amount of time people spent with friends in-person decreased from 30 hours a month in 2003 to 10 hours a month in 2020, according to the U.S. Surgeon General’s advisory on the epidemic of loneliness. That decline was especially marked for people aged 15 to 24.

Back in 1991, more than half — 54.1% of all high school students — were sexually active. (The other 45.9% lied about it.) By 2007, the number fell to 47.8%. Four years later, it dropped again to 43%. By 2017, it was just 39.5%. As of 2023, it’s 31.6%. What’s going on with kids today, with their wild, out-of-control abstinence and crazy teetotalling?! It’s one of the strangest, most inexplicable cultural shifts in recent memory. I was certainly blindsided: I figured our sex drive was so biologically ingrained, it would never go away! But it has. And with it, so has the U.S. birthrate: It’s now at a 40-year low.

We need a birthrate of 2.1 babies per woman to maintain our population. We’re currently at 1.6.mnFor decades, our shrinking birthrate was masked by immigration growth. In 1991, the U.S. population was 253 million. By 2025, it grew to 343.6 million. = Since 2020, immigration has been the #1 driver of American population growth. With the new crackdown on illegal immigration, we’re flirting with our first-ever population decline. And it’s not just an American phenomenon — all over the world, birthrates have collapsed. At least one geopolitical strategist and demographic expert predicts it’ll lead to the end of China within the next 10 years:

“And three months ago, the Chinese government updated the data. They’re now reporting a 70% drop in the birthrate since 2017. That’s a faster decline than what was suffered by the Jews of Europe during the Holocaust. And the Shanghai Academy of Sciences, which is kind of the Wiseman organization of statisticians in China that interprets all the data, says that this is still wrong. They estimate that the Chinese system has overestimated its population by over 100 million people. With all of the missing millions being people who would’ve been born during the one-child era, which is a rather sterile way of saying that all the missing millions are under age 40 suggesting that these yellow bars don’t even exist. China has, at most, 10 years before it faces national dissolution. They will not be a unified industrialized nation state 10 years from now. ”

—Peter Zeihan

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Prediction: “The Least Laid Generation in History” will start boinking for cash. Then again, Elon says they won’t need the cash.

• OH BABY! Couples Could Make Big Money on Trump Accounts (DS)

The Trump administration has created an incentive for Americans to have more children within the next three years. Any baby born between Jan. 1, 2025, and Dec. 31, 2028, is eligible for $1,000 of seed money in a tax-advantaged investment account known as a “Trump Account,” though any parent with a child under 18 can open an account for their son or daughter. The account operates similarly to an IRA, and parents, relatives, and friends can contribute up to $5,000 annually, though they do not have to make regular contributions.


“Your child’s funds will automatically be invested in American companies,” according to the Trump Accounts website.mWhen the child turns 18, they can either allow the account to continue to grow, or they can withdraw the funds for education costs or to purchase a home. If the maximum amount is contributed to the account annually from the time the child is born, the account will have grown to over $270,000 by the child’s 18th birthday.

Between the rapid increase in the cost of living over the past 20 years and many young people in debt with student loans, true financial freedom is a distant dream for many in their 20s and 30s, but Trump Accounts could change that for the next generation. If Americans take advantage of the program to its full extent, Generation Alpha, born between 2010 and 2024, and Beta, born between 2025 and 2039, can hope to avoid the financial situation many Millennials and members of Gen Z find themselves in today.

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Trump will not accept this.

• Americans Could Be Silenced by EU Online Speech Laws (ET)

Europeans who face criminal charges for what they said or wrote warned that Europe’s speech laws can silence Americans as well, regardless of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment protections. While testifying before the House Judiciary Committee last week, Paivi Rasanen, a member of parliament in Finland, recounted how she has been prosecuted since 2021 for quoting Bible verses to church members and on social media that questioned her church’s participation in a Gay Pride march. Although she was acquitted, first by a local district court and then by an appellate court, prosecutors appealed the decision to Finland’s supreme court, where the case currently sits.


“My prosecution shows how quickly democratic societies can abandon free expression when the state decides which beliefs are acceptable,” Rasanen told The Epoch Times. “I never imagined that quoting the Bible in a Twitter post would lead to years of criminal charges, yet this is now the reality in Europe,” she said. “Americans should be concerned because once censorship is normalized, it never stays confined to one country.”

The trend among Western countries to restrict religious speech has spread beyond Europe, with the Canadian government currently advancing a bill that would remove a religious exemption from “hate speech” laws in the country’s Criminal Code. Similarly, newly proposed legislation in Queensland, Australia, would criminalize certain symbols and phrases, with penalties of up to two years in prison. While speaking before Congress, Rasanen was joined by Graham Linehan, an Irish writer and comedian who was arrested upon traveling through Heathrow Airport in 2025 for statements he had made in America on transgender issues. “For a decade, the British police have harassed me for expressing views that the majority of the public share,” Linehan stated. “We have simply been punished for objecting to fashionable yet incoherent orthodoxies.”

‘Foreign Censorship Threat’
Their testimony was underscored by the release of a Feb. 3 House report titled “The Foreign Censorship Threat,” which charged that “The European Commission, in a comprehensive decade-long effort, has successfully pressured social media platforms to change their global content moderation rules, thereby directly infringing on Americans’ online speech in the United States.” More specifically, the report states that “though ostensibly meant to combat ‘misinformation’ and ‘hate speech,’ nonpublic documents produced to the Committee show that for the last 10 years, the European Commission has directly pressured platforms to censor lawful, political speech in the European Union and abroad.”

This included regular meetings between U.S. tech companies and European Union regulators to put “content moderation” policies and algorithms in place to conform to European laws regarding “hate speech” and “misinformation,” the report states. The EU claims these initiatives were voluntary, but subpoenaed emails from tech executives stated that “we don’t really have a choice.” Judicial Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) told hearing attendees that, based on subpoenas issued to U.S. tech companies regarding their correspondence with EU officials, a pattern of compelled censorship emerged that included U.S. citizens.

“The European Commission successfully pressured social media companies to change their global content moderation rules, directly harming the speech of Americans in the United States,” Jordan stated. He also referenced an incident in which European commissioner Thierry Breton warned X owner Elon Musk that his company may face penalties for posting an interview with Donald Trump during the 2024 presidential campaign. “The European Commission is trying to censor speech and meddle in elections worldwide,” Jordan said. “When the European Commission makes censorship demands, platforms have to listen.”

According to the European Commission’s website, the Digital Services Act (DSA) “empowers citizens by strengthening the protection of their fundamental rights online and giving them greater control and more choices when they navigate online platforms and search engines.” The DSA also requires platforms to “minimise the risks of exposing citizens, including children and young people, to illegal and harmful content.” nCritics of EU speech laws say they have become a tool to punish U.S. tech companies for allowing any content that a European country has deemed to be illegal. In countries such as Germany, that could include insulting government officials.

French member of the European Parliament Virginie Joron called the DSA a “Trojan horse for surveillance and control.” Joron accused government officials of having “seized upon the DSA as a political tool to control speech, particularly targeting platforms like X, Facebook, and Telegram.” And legal analysts say that the reach of the DSA extends beyond Europe. The DSA “creates a pathway for foreign governments to influence public debate inside the United States without ever passing a single American law,” Lorcan Price, an Irish barrister who defended Rasanen and testified at the House hearing, told The Epoch Times.

“The EU’s Digital Services Act gives European regulators unprecedented leverage over American tech companies, which means European speech rules can end up shaping what Americans are allowed to say online,” Price said. “Once U.S. platforms are forced to comply with European censorship demands to avoid massive fines, those restrictions don’t stop at Europe’s borders.”

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Maybe they should see if they can agree on something. 15, 16, 18, not at all?

• More Nations Are Mulling Social Media Bans For Teens (ZH)

After Australia’s first-of-its-kind social media ban for adolescents under the age of 16 came into effect in December, more countries in Europe and elsewhere are taking steps to implement their own restrictions. As Katharina Buchholz reports, according to Statista research, France and the United Kingdom have gotten furthest, with laws passing in one chamber each of the countries’ bicameral legislatures as of early February. While the latter country is also aiming to ban social media for kids under the age of 16, France’s proposed law targets only those under the age of 15.


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Six more nations have seen country leaders announce initiatives aiming to ban social media access for adolescents. While Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand and Spain all have more restrictive regulations in mind, excluding those under the age of 16, Greece is aiming to exclude those under the age of 15 and Austria those under the age of 14 from social media.Social media, including personalized algorithms and the possibility to scroll endlessly, is receiving scrutiny for its effect on mental health, especially in younger people.

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Social media addiction can affect any age group, but it is seen as especially harmful in adolescents which are still developing social behaviors, body image and time management skills. Two more planned bans announced in Europe, by Portuguese and Danish leadership, are reportedly willing to leave a back door open for parental consent, putting them in a different category that already exists in several nations like France, Italy and, since recently, Brazil, where children of the applicable ages can access social media sites if their parents are in agreement.

While outright bans like the Australian one often plan implementation via a strict official age-verification mechanism, parental consent regulation can work by linking parents accounts, for example. Instagram has meanwhile already rolled out this feature in Europe, the U.S., Australia and Canada, with teenagers between the ages of 13 to 15 only in the position to disable a special restricted account mode with the consent of their parent’s account. Like other platforms, Instagram accepts users from the age of 13, but this restriction is so far not tied to verification. In the EU, social media sites are since 2018 under further restrictions concerning the use of personalized ads for minors.

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“He functioned as a social broker among financiers, politicians, academics, royalty, and celebrities…”

• The Unsettling Truths the Epstein Files Reveal About Power and Privilege (ET)

The public fixation on the Epstein files has settled, predictably, on the most lurid elements of the story. This is understandable. Sexual exploitation, particularly of the young, is among the most corrosive of crimes, and the scale of Epstein’s abuse, as well as the apparent indifference of powerful institutions to it, demands moral outrage. But to focus exclusively on the sexual scandal is to miss the deeper and more unsettling lesson the affair reveals. What the Epstein files expose, above all, is the social and moral estrangement of American elites from the people they claim to govern.


Epstein was not merely a predator who gained access to power. He was a node within a closed world of wealth, influence, and immunity. The scandal is not that powerful people behaved badly in private—history shows many such examples—but that they did so with a confidence rooted in the belief they were insulated from the consequences of their behavior. They moved through a transnational elite culture that had largely severed itself from ordinary moral constraints, legal accountability, and civic obligation. That culture did not merely tolerate Epstein but normalized him.

This echoes the point Christopher Lasch made decades ago, long before private islands and hedge-fund philanthropy became familiar symbols of elite excess. In his 1994 book “The Revolt of the Elites,” Lasch argued that the modern American ruling classes had stopped seeing themselves as stewards of a shared national project. Instead, they increasingly saw themselves as a mobile, globalized caste, educated in the same institutions, moving through the same cities, governed by the same tastes, and primarily accountable only to each other. Citizenship was seen as a minor inconvenience. Nationhood and patriotism were just sentimental relics from less enlightened times.

The Epstein affair reads like a case study in Lasch’s thesis. Here was an individual whose wealth was opaque, whose sources of income were rarely scrutinized, and whose social standing seemed immune to ordinary reputational risk. He functioned as a social broker among financiers, politicians, academics, royalty, and celebrities, many of whom publicly advocated policies of moral uplift, social justice, and global responsibility. Yet in private, they inhabited a world defined by indulgence, entitlement, and a contempt for limits.

Elite detachment today is not only economic but also existential, and it is hardly confined to Americans. The governing classes of advanced democracies increasingly inhabit a world defined by mobility, abstraction, and insulation from consequence. Their loyalties are professional rather than civic, global rather than national, and managerial rather than moral. They experience society less as a shared inheritance than as a set of problems to be administered at a distance. In such a world, attachment to place, memory, and common fate appears parochial, even suspect, while belonging itself is quietly redefined as an obstacle to progress.

Those who create policies affecting immigration, policing, education, public health, and national security rarely face the consequences themselves. They do not send their children to failing schools, live in high-crime neighborhoods, compete for scarce housing, or navigate broken public institutions. Their lives are shielded by wealth, location, private services, and increasingly by law itself.

The Epstein files sharpen this reality because they reveal not just hypocrisy, but impunity. Despite extensive documentation, repeated warnings, and credible testimony, accountability arrived slowly and incompletely. This is not because the crimes were ambiguous, but because the accused moved within a protected sphere where consequences were negotiable and enforcement discretionary. Justice, like morality, was something applied elsewhere for other people.

What enrages the public is not prurience, but recognition. The scandal resonates because it confirms a growing suspicion among ordinary people that there is one moral universe for the governing class and another for everyone else. Elites preach restraint, sustainability, and responsibility while living lives of extraordinary consumption and indulgence. They urge social sacrifice while exempting themselves from its costs. They speak the language of progress while practicing a refined form of decadence.

Lasch warned that such a ruling class would eventually forfeit legitimacy, not because of ideology, but because of character. A society cannot be governed indefinitely by people who do not believe they belong to it. When elites become tourists in their own countries, financially global, culturally unrooted, and morally untethered, their authority rests on little more than coercion and spectacle. The Epstein files should therefore be read less as an aberration than as a symptom. They reveal a governing class that has lost the habits of self-restraint that once justified its power, and the sense of common fate that once bound leaders to citizens. For many, the salient point of the Epstein files is the scandal. I think it is more accurately seen as a disclosure.

The danger is not merely that such elites are corrupt, but that they are bored. Bored with limits, bored with norms, bored with accountability, and ultimately bored with democracy itself. That boredom, Lasch understood, is the precondition of revolt, not by the masses, but by those who no longer feel answerable to them. If the Epstein affair provokes lasting anger, it is because it crystallizes a truth many citizens already sense, that the people shaping the future live in a world apart, governed by different rules, and increasingly incapable of moral seriousness. No society can long endure that division without consequence. The question is not whether further revelations will emerge. It is whether the public will finally insist that elites once again live under the same moral and civic conditions as those they presume to lead.

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“.. you made…all your money in California, you ungrateful piece of s***, you could figure out a way to pay more taxes, and we deserve the taxes from you, given you made your wealth here . . . so why don’t we just do shock and awe at this point, because you don’t seem to be availing yourself to thinking that you owe your state something more.”

• California Democrats Trigger a Reverse Gold Rush with a Wealth Tax (Turley)

This month, the anniversary of the California Gold Rush came and passed with little mention … for good reason. When James W. Marshall found gold at Sutter’s Mill, millions traveled great distances to seek their fortune in the “Golden State.” Now, 178 years later, California has engineered an inverse Gold Rush, virtually chasing wealth from the state. Rather than covered wagons going West, there is a line of U-Hauls going anywhere other than California.


From boondoggle projects to reparations, California politicians continue to rack up new spending projects despite a soaring deficit and shrinking tax base. Rather than exercise a modicum of fiscal restraint, Democrats are pushing through a tax that takes five percent of the wealth of any billionaires left in the state. I have long criticized the tax as perfectly moronic for a state with the highest tax burden and one of the highest flight rates of top taxpayers. In my new book, “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution,” I discuss the reversal of fortunes in California and other blue states as politicians unleash new “eat the rich” campaigns before the midterm elections.

The problem, of course, is that billionaires are mobile, as is their wealth. Liberals expect billionaires to stay put in a type of voluntary canned hunt. They are not. Billionaires are joining the growing exodus from the state, taking their companies, investments, and jobs with them. The latest billionaire to be chased off may be Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who is reportedly heading for Florida. The growing departures have triggered outrage among many on the left, who are in disbelief that billionaires will just not stand still to be fleeced.

Former New York Magazine editor Kara Swisher captured that rage in a recent posting, declaring “you made…all your money in California, you ungrateful piece of s***, you could figure out a way to pay more taxes, and we deserve the taxes from you, given you made your wealth here . . . so why don’t we just do shock and awe at this point, because you don’t seem to be availing yourself to thinking that you owe your state something more.” By some estimates, California has already cost over a trillion dollars in lost investments and business. That is no small achievement. Here’s a mind teaser: How can you burn a trillion dollars (which would create a stack some 67,866 miles high) without taking years and destroying the environment? California politicians have a solution: Have people take it out of the state in a reverse gold rush.

In addition to saying that they want to grab 5 percent of the wealth of these billionaires, California Democrats are planning to base wealth calculations on the voting shares of corporate executives. Often, particularly with start-ups, entrepreneurs have greater voting shares than actual ownership. However, they will be taxed as if voting shares amounted to actual wealth. In other words, California is moving to nuke the entrepreneurs who created the Silicon Valley boom. Emmanuel Saez, the U.C. Berkeley economist who helped design the tax, insists that they may not want to stay, but they will still be tapped. They are planning to trap the wealthy fleeing the state retroactively: “The tax is based on residence as of Jan. 1, 2026, sharply limiting their ability to flee the state to avoid paying. Despite billionaires’ threats to leave, I think extremely few will have been able to change residence by Jan. 1, given the complexity of doing so.”

The effort to retroactively impose such a tax is legally controversial and will face years of challenges. In my view, this is unconstitutional, but admittedly it is a murky area. Regardless of the outcome, a wealth tax will affect a wide range of other wealthy taxpayers. If Democrats can get a retroactive wealth tax to be upheld, it is doubtful that they will stop with billionaires. Why should other top taxpayers stick around to find out where the next cull will fall in the tax brackets? Recently, Gavin Newsom boasted, “California isn’t just keeping pace with the world — we’re setting the pace.” That is undeniably true if the measure is the record number of U-Hauls fleeing the state — more than any other state. Indeed, the only thing harder to find than a wealthy taxpayer in California appears to be a U-Haul.

According to U-Haul’s data, the state is again leading blue states in the exodus. The Washington Post noted recently that “California came in last. Massachusetts, New York, Illinois, and New Jersey rounded out the bottom five. Of the bottom 10, seven voted blue in the last election.” Conversely, “nine of the top 10 growth states voted red in the last presidential election,” with Texas again leading the growth states. The Post put it succinctly, “People want to live in pro-growth, low-tax states, while the biggest losers tend to be places with big governments and high taxes.” The problem is that, while the economics are horrific, the politics remain irresistible.

Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, who represents part of Silicon Valley, recently mocked billionaires rushing to escape the state. Laughing at his own constituents, Khanna quipped, “I will miss them very much.” You will not be alone as California becomes known as the La Brea Tar Pit of taxation. They are on the verge of converting the state motto from “Eureka” to “Welcome to Hotel California, you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.”

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I have questions.

• FBI Opened 1,200 ‘Assessments’ Of Sensitive Figures (JTN)

The FBI opened 1,200 probes related to politicians, journalists, religious leaders, academics and others tied to “sensitive investigative matters,” using a special investigative tool that requires no factual predicate to launch, according to a Government Accountability Office report. The GAO report, which was obtained by Just the News, was published last month but not made public, and it was titled FBI Investigative Activities: Oversight Efforts of Opening and Conducting Assessments Should be Strengthened.


The report, which assists in congressional oversight of the executive branch, provided details on the roughly 127,000 FBI “assessments” in all opened from 2018 to 2024, the vast majority of which were eventually closed without accusations of wrongdoing or criminal charges against those targets being scrutinized. The 57-page report did not include any names of those targeted for assessment. Among the total assessments, 1,200 were related to “sensitive investigative matters” that target public officials, news organizations, houses of worship or members of academia, which the bureau views as more sensitive in nature.

So-called “assessments” were established by Justice Department guidelines in 2008, providing the FBI with an investigative tool short of opening a full-fledged investigation requiring a factual predicate. The probes are used by the bureau to “address a potential threat to national security or potential violation of federal criminal law,” the congressional watchdog said. They allow FBI agents to open probes on authorized matters but without a factual basis and allow them to employ investigative such techniques as physical surveillance on subjects.

If sufficient basis is found, assessments can turn into preliminary investigations, full investigations or enterprise investigations. But most assessments are closed without meeting the standards for a full inquiry by the bureau, the GAO said. nn The revelations were detailed in the GAO’s January 2026 report, which was designated “For Official Use Only” because of the sensitive information it contains. GAO noted that the report should be “safeguarded when not being used and destroyed when no longer needed.”

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I don’t think Trump wants to attack Iran. But does he have a choice anymore?

• US Smuggled Starlinks Into Iran Amid Riots – WSJ (RT)

The Trump administration covertly smuggled approximately 6,000 Starlink satellite internet terminals into Iran amid a nationwide unrest earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal has reported, substantiating Tehran’s claims of foreign interference behind the deadly riots. The operation, which senior US officials said involved State Department funding, came after Iranian authorities imposed a sweeping internet blackout in January. President Donald Trump was aware of the deliveries, officials told the WSJ on Thursday, though it remains unclear whether he personally approved the plan.


Iranian officials have repeatedly blamed Washington and Tel Aviv for fueling the unrest, which began in December as peaceful demonstrations over economic hardship but escalated into widespread violence. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stated last month that more than 3,000 people had been killed, including nearly 700 individuals he described as “terrorists,” alongside civilians and security personnel. President Masoud Pezeshkian has accused the US and Israel of embedding “foreign terrorists” within protest crowds, alleging they have employed what an Iranian diplomatic source described to RT as “ISIS-like” tactics – including beheadings of law enforcement officers and civilians being burned alive.

At the height of the unrest, Trump openly encouraged “peaceful” Iranian protesters, posting on Truth Social: “All Iranian patriots, keep protesting. Take over your institutions if possible.” He also promised that “help is on its way,” and deployed a “beautiful armada” to the region, raising speculation of an imminent military intervention. The State Department supports a range of so-called “internet freedom” tools, including virtual private network (VPN) service providers to Iran. To purchase Starlinks, the department reportedly redirected funds from US-supported VPNs, which had allowed an estimated 20-30 million Iranians to stay online during the previous 2022 riots and the Israeli-US bombing last year.

Washington seeks to pressure Iran into accepting a new nuclear deal, after Trump unilaterally withdrew from the 2015 agreement (JCPOA) during his first term, reimposing sanctions against Tehran under a “maximum pressure” campaign. Decades of US economic pressure were the primary driver of the country’s economic deterioration, according to officials in Iran – the world’s second most sanctioned country after Russia. Despite the US administration’s public denials of involvement in fomenting anti-government riots, the reported Starlink operation reveals expanded covert support for what Moscow called an attempt to “destroy the Iranian state” through a “color revolution” playbook.

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“I will be presenting them shortly, in the form of an Executive Order.” An executive order would not be ideal, but I’m hoping it won’t be necessary.”

• Trump Makes A HUGE Promise About Voter ID

They finally have the votes. Now the real fight begins. The SAVE Act already cleared the House in a tight 218–213 vote, with just one Democrat, Henry Cuellar, willing to break with his party and support basic election safeguards. That tells you everything you need to know about where Democrats really stand on election integrity. Senate Republicans also just locked down the 50 votes they need to move ahead on the SAVE Act, thanks to Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) finally jumping off the fence and signing on as a cosponsor. With Vice President JD Vance ready to break a 50–50 tie, Republicans now have the votes to pass the bill if it ever reaches a final vote. That’s the good news.


The bad news is that Democrats still have one powerful weapon left: the filibuster. In the Senate, the math is brutally simple. Republicans have the votes to pass the bill, but they do not have the 60 votes needed to break the filibuster. Not even Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) will support the SAVE Act — and he claims to support voter ID. So what’s the next move? Well, that’s up to the Senate GOP leadership. If they are serious about this bill, they have to force a real, old-school, stand-on-the-floor-and-talk-until-you-drop filibuster. Not the fake Cory Booker kind, either, but a real filibuster. It’s time for the Democrats’ abuse of the filibuster, effectively turning it into a de facto veto of the minority party, to be over.

Sen. Mike Lee laid out the path in a video message on X. “If senators want to debate this, if they want to filibuster it, make them work for it,” he said. “Make them stand up, make them speak. If we do it this way, we can continue this progress, and I think we can get this thing done.” The only problem is that even then, nothing is guaranteed. A talking filibuster is a tool, not a magic wand. It forces a showdown. It does not promise victory. “Look, there are no guarantees here,” Lee conceded. “But the only shot we’ve got at this is through the talking filibuster. Thanks for fighting. Keep going. We’ll get it done.”

There is, of course, a backup plan. On Friday, President Donald Trump announced that if the SAVE Act can’t pass the Senate, he plans to bypass Congress altogether and use executive action to require voter ID for the November midterms. “There will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not!” he wrote on Truth Social. “This is an issue that must be fought, and must be fought, NOW!” he wrote in a follow-up post. “If we can’t get it through Congress, there are Legal reasons why this SCAM is not permitted. I will be presenting them shortly, in the form of an Executive Order.” An executive order would not be ideal, but I’m hoping it won’t be necessary.

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But Elon says in 10 years it won’t matter anymore.

• American Workers Have Less Than A $1000 in Retirement Savings (Turley)

There is a new, troubling study on the financial status of most American workers. The National Institute on Retirement Security (NIRS) found that the median American worker has just $955 saved for retirement through defined-contribution plans such as 401(k) accounts. Given the expected job losses from robotics and AI, the study only deepens concerns about the economic and political pressures facing this country in the years to come.


In my new book, “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution,” I discuss those impacts from robotics and AI on our democracy. Using the most conservative estimates of job losses, the book explores how a large population of unemployed citizens will affect their relationship with the state. We cannot maintain a “kept citizenship” while preserving the essential elements of the American republic. A large population of static, unemployed citizens poses challenges for what I call a “liberty-enhancing economy,” an economy that affords citizens independence from the state.

This study magnifies those concerns. If accurate, it suggests that even a short displacement in employment will return state support. Many jurisdictions are already launching Universal Basic Income (UBI) pilot programs. If this republic is to survive in the 21st Century, it will require developing new areas of “homocentric” jobs while avoiding predictable measures to subsidize positions that will inevitably be lost to robotics. Notably, the study found that among those with positive retirement plans, median savings were much higher at $40,000. Those with a defined contribution (DC) plan are far better off with an average savings of $179,082.

The takeaway from the report, for me, is the need to instill greater private savings. Some workers are barely paid above subsistence. However, we also need to educate citizens about the importance of setting aside retirement funds to the extent possible. As I previously wrote, I am a great fan of the Trump Accounts. The $6.25 billion gift of Michael and Susan Dell (now augmented by dozens of corporations) could offer the single best hope for the survival of our system. Millions of young people will be able to experience the benefits of investments, savings and, most importantly, economic independence.

The study also shows the growing dangers of the collapse of the social security accounts. Despite assurances made when Congress established the system, Congress has continued to draw on Social Security funds to avoid reducing spending levels. The system could fail for these workers, who will not be able to draw upon money taken from their paychecks for the purpose of retirement. It is one of the most outrageous betrayals in United States history.

To this day, Democrats are opposing efforts to make major changes to guarantee the viability of the system for future generations, including the use of private investment accounts that could no longer be raided by Congress for easy money. All politicians express alarm at the potential failure, but they attack any efforts to address the underlying problems as an attack on social security. As a result, we just drift toward this cliff knowing that most citizens have practically no other source of retirement support.

Read more …

AI trumps groupthink too.

• Stolen Land At The Grammys: How Hollywood Groupthink Threatens Democracy (ET)

Among the consolations of youth is the certainty with which one holds beliefs about the world. There is comfort in the conviction that one’s moral bearings are firmly set, that one’s understanding of complex questions is not only sincere but also correct. The world appears legible; right and wrong seem sharply drawn; doubt and nuance are dismissed as weakness or evasion. There is rarely a single moment when these certainties collapse. They loosen instead through the slow accumulation of experience. Over time, one discovers that life resists easy judgments. Circumstances complicate principles. Good intentions collide with unintended consequences. Our friends betray us. The world proves denser, more conflicted, and less amenable to neat and tidy conclusions than youthful confidence would suggest.


This recognition of complexity, fallibility, and the limits of one’s own certainty is among the quiet achievements of maturity. It marks the point at which conviction learns restraint and moral seriousness acquires humility. Yet much of our public culture now moves in precisely the opposite direction. It rewards juvenile certainty while punishing hesitation, qualification, or good-faith disagreements. Confidence is applauded regardless of depth; slogans substitute for argument; restraint is recast as moral failure. That inversion was on clear display at the recent Grammy Awards, when Billie Eilish declared to enthusiastic applause that “no one is illegal on stolen land.”

It was left unspecified just whose land was being referenced, by whom it was stolen, and according to what historical or legal criteria that claim could be made. The audience, however, needed no clarification. Eilish’s statement was rewarded exactly because it avoided complexity and invited no questions. What was on display was not moral seriousness but a high school performance, an adolescent sense of righteousness delivered with absolute certainty and accepted as self-evident truth. One might charitably attribute such unthinking, categorical statements to Eilish’s youth. Alas, hers is a posture that we have come to expect from many of Hollywood’s men and women: confident, declarative, and curiously uninterested in the burdens of thought that genuine moral judgment requires.

This brings us to the core issue. The greatest threat to free expression today isn’t obvious censorship or government orders. Instead, it’s a more subtle and widespread force: cultural groupthink. This informal but influential system of rewards and punishments quietly limits the range of acceptable opinions, shaping what people feel allowed to say, what they hesitate to voice, and which questions are no longer askedn Nowhere is this trend more evident than in modern celebrity culture. Hollywood and the broader entertainment sector have become models of ideological conformity, especially on divisive social and political topics.

From climate change and gender issues to racial justice and international conflicts, Hollywood repeats the same messages, all delivered with youthful confidence. The same moral language, slogans, and conclusions are echoed with ritualistic consistency. The Eilish episode was not an aberration but a symptom. It illustrated a broader pattern in which public speech functions less as a means of inquiry than as a test of ideological conformity. The cost of dissent is not a thoughtful and considered rebuttal. Rather, it takes the form of reputational damage through social media pile-ons, calls for boycotts, professional exclusion, or quiet blacklisting.

Under such conditions, silence is often the rational choice. Most people have families to support and livelihoods to protect.The greater danger lies in the lesson this celebrity culture teaches: that there is only one permissible way to think and speak about certain issues, and that deviation signals not error but moral failure. Political and social questions are reduced to dogma rather than debated. Once moralized in this way, disagreement becomes illegitimate by definition. This logic now extends well beyond Hollywood. Similar patterns can be found in journalism, medicine, academia, corporate governance, and even the legal profession.

Approved vocabularies narrow discussion; certain premises must be affirmed before conversation can begin; others may not be questioned at all. Arguments are no longer answered on their merits but dismissed as evidence of bad character or suspect motives.The consequences for democratic culture are profound. Democracies do not depend on unanimity but on citizens who can weigh competing claims, tolerate uncertainty, and revise their views in light of evidence and argument. Groupthink undermines these capacities by rewarding conformity and punishing independent judgment. Over time, public discourse loses its corrective function. Errors persist not because they are persuasive, but because questioning them carries too high a cost.

[..] Free speech, properly understood, is not a threat to democracy. It is its foundation.

Read more …

“AI Disruption Crosshairs Hone In On Hollywood Studios ..”

Why pay Brad Pitt 100 million when a computer can “build” his scenes?

• “Billion Dollar Movie In One Prompt” (ZH)

:AI-driven equity disruption was everywhere this past week, spreading like wildfire beyond software into insurance, commercial real estate, financials, shipping, wealth management, and likely many more industries in the coming trading sessions.One industry in the crosshairs of AI disruption is Hollywood. Some of the publicly traded studios include The Walt Disney Company, Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount Global, Sony Group Corporation, Netflix, Lionsgate, and others.nOn Friday, Axios reported that the Walt Disney Company sent a cease-and-desist letter to ByteDance, alleging that the Chinese tech firm has been infringing on its films to develop Seedance 2.0 without compensation.

Disney’s outside attorney, David Singer, wrote a letter to ByteDance global general counsel John Rogovin, accusing the AI company of “pre-packaging its Seedance service with a pirated library of Disney’s copyrighted characters from Star Wars, Marvel, and other Disney franchises, as if Disney’s coveted intellectual property were free public domain clip art.” “Over Disney’s well-publicized objections, ByteDance is hijacking Disney’s characters by reproducing, distributing, and creating derivative works featuring those characters. ByteDance’s virtual smash-and-grab of Disney’s IP is willful, pervasive, and totally unacceptable,” Singer said.

He added, “We believe this is just the tip of the iceberg, which is shocking considering Seedance has only been available for a few days.” It’s not just ByteDance’s Seedance 2.0 that has spooked Hollywood studios. A growing wave of video-generation models suggests that Hollywood’s moat is crumbling, and its control of the media game is nearing its end.

“Authorities should use every legal tool at their disposal to stop this wholesale theft,” the Human Artistry Campaign – a coalition that includes dozens of creative groups such as SAG-AFTRA and the Directors Guild of America – said in a statement on Friday. Seedance 2.0 model …

Hollywood is living on borrowed time. The next big AI disruption trade could be studios.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Optimus COVID RFK jr Joe Rogan and Dr. Robert Malone https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/2022601763405103379?s=20 Pepe Casey https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/2022673982432886873?s=20 https://twitter.com/MAGAVoice/status/2022410612689768945?s=20

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle August 14 2025

Aug 142025
 
 August 14, 2025  Posted by at 9:32 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  43 Responses »


John Martin The Seventh Plague of Egypt 1823

 

• Both Sides Want The Putin-Trump Alaska Summit To Succeed (Suslov)
• Ukraine and NATO’s Playbook of Staged Attacks Blamed on Russia (Sp.)
• Zelensky Doesn’t Want Peace – Human Rights Lawyer (RT)
• Doomed Zelensky Desperate to Sabotage Putin-Trump Summit – Expert (Sp.)
• New EU Media “Freedom Law” Allows for Journalist Arrests (RTN)
• EU Plotting ‘Regime Change’ In Hungary – Moscow (RT)
• Kash Patel Sends John Solomon a Prior Whistleblower Report (CTH)
• Trump Takeover Renews Questions Over D.C. Crime Data (Turley)
• Newly Released FBI Files Uncover Comey’s Plot Against Trump (Margolis)
• FBI Offered Chris Steele $1 Million to Substantiate Dossier; He Never Did (CTH)
• This Could Be the End of Chuck Schumer’s Political Career (Margolis)
• Texas Democrats Will Return Home, and the New Map Will Be Approved (Margolis)
• Trump Rails Against ‘Unfair’ Media Quoting ‘Fired Losers’ (NYP)
• Hollywood Writers Wage War on Trump (Tim Graham)
• Trump: 1, USAID: 0 – Appeals Court Lets Admin Block Billions In Aid (ZH)
• The Trump-Putin Meeting: How We Got Here (Connor O’Keeffe)
• Macron’s Rise To Power (John Mac Ghlionn)

 

 

https://twitter.com/MAGAVoice/status/1955315649082954158

Comey
https://twitter.com/nicksortor/status/1955587369572409831
https://twitter.com/patel_patriot/status/1955434673552888015

Creek

 

 

Here’s the Michelle Shocked video I couldn’t find yesterday. Someone found it on a Russian site. Still an excellent song. Arrangement? Oh well…

 

 

 

 

On our way to Anchorage, a few longish articles are included today. Can’t always avoid them.

 

 

“No Zelensky, no Brussels, no problem: Here’s how Putin and Trump’s Alaska power move will play out…”

• Both Sides Want The Putin-Trump Alaska Summit To Succeed (Suslov)

On Friday, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump will meet in Alaska. This will be the first full-scale Russia-US summit since June 2021 in Geneva, and the first official visit by a Russian president to American soil since Dmitry Medvedev’s trip in 2010 at the height of the “reset.” It will also be the first time the leaders of Russia and the US have met in Alaska, the closest US state to Russia, separated only by the narrow Bering Strait, and once part of the Russian Empire. The symbolism is obvious: as far as possible from Ukraine and Western Europe, but as close as possible to Russia. And neither Zelensky nor the EU’s top brass will be in the room. The message could not be clearer – Moscow and Washington will make the key decisions on Ukraine, then inform others later. As Trump has said, “they hold all the cards.”

The Alaska summit marks a sharp departure from the Biden years, when even the idea of such a meeting was unthinkable and Washington’s priority was isolating Russia. Now, not only will Putin travel to Alaska, but Trump is already planning a return visit to Russia. Moderate optimism surrounds the meeting. Summits of this type are rarely held “just to talk”; they usually cap a long process of behind-the-scenes negotiations. The idea for this one emerged after three hours of talks in Moscow on August 6 between Putin and Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff. Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov described Washington’s offer as “very acceptable.” That suggests Putin and Trump will arrive in Alaska with a preliminary deal – or at least a framework for a truce – already in place.

Why Trump needs this
Trump has good reason to want the summit to succeed. His effort to squeeze Moscow by pushing China and India to stop buying Russian oil has backfired badly. Far from isolating Russia, it triggered the worst US-India crisis in 25 years and drove New Delhi even closer to Moscow. It also encouraged a thaw between India and China, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi now set to attend the SCO summit in Tianjin. BRICS, which Trump has openly vowed to weaken, has only grown more cohesive. The Alaska summit is Trump’s chance to escape the trap he built for himself – trying to pressure Moscow through Beijing and New Delhi – and to show results on Ukraine that he can sell as a diplomatic victory. For Moscow, a successful summit would be a powerful demonstration that talk of “isolation” is obsolete – even in the West. It would cement Russia’s standing with the “global majority” and highlight Western Europe’s diminished influence.

The transatlantic split would widen, weakening Brussels’ claim to be Russia’s toughest opponent. Most importantly, Washington today has little real leverage over Russia, especially on Ukraine. If the summit yields a joint Russian–American vision for a truce or settlement, it will inevitably reflect Moscow’s position more than Kiev’s or Brussels’. And if the Western Europeans try to derail it, the US could pull the plug on all aid to Ukraine – including intelligence support – accelerating Kiev’s defeat. Not everyone in Russia is cheering. Many prominent “Z”-aligned war correspondents see the war as unfinished and oppose any truce. But they have been asked to stick to the official line. If the Alaska meeting produces a deal, they will be expected to back it – or at least use “cooling” language for their audiences. The Kremlin is betting it can manage this dissent.

Western Europe, for its part, will be watching from the sidelines. Its leaders are “scrambling” for scraps of information via secondary channels. The optics will underline a humiliating reality: for the first time in almost a century, decisions about Europe’s security will be made without the likes of Italy, France and Germany in the room. The location hints at other agenda items. Arctic economic cooperation, largely frozen since 2014, could be revived. Both sides stand to gain from joint development in the far north, and a deal here would be politically symbolic – proof that the two countries can work together despite the baggage of the last decade. Arms control will also be on the table. Moscow’s recent decision to end its unilateral moratorium on deploying intermediate-range missiles was almost certainly timed to influence the talks. Strategic stability after the New START Treaty expires in February 2026 will be a central concern.

If Alaska delivers, it could reshape the conflict in Ukraine and the broader Russia-US relationship. A joint settlement plan would marginalize Kiev and Brussels, shift the diplomatic center of gravity back to Moscow and Washington, and reopen channels for cooperation on global issues – from the Arctic to arms control. If it fails – if Trump bends to last-minute EU pressure – Moscow will continue fighting, confident that US involvement will fade. Either way, Russia’s position is stronger than it was two years ago. What’s different now is that the two powers with “all the cards” are finally back at the same table – and Western Europe is on the outside looking in.

Read more …

“…the April 2022 Ukrainian neo-Nazi massacre of civilians who accepted Russian aid in a Kiev suburb after the withdrawal of Russian forces..”

• Ukraine and NATO’s Playbook of Staged Attacks Blamed on Russia (Sp.)

The Russian MoD’s warning about a plot to stage a fake incident in Chuguyev, Kharkov region to sabotage the upcoming Putin-Trump meeting in Alaska “positions Russia to expose the West and Zelensky’s deception if it occurs, undermining their credibility,” veteran geopolitical analyst Angelo Giuliano told Sputnik. It’s definitely not the first time Kiev and its backers have stooped to such tactics. “The Bucha lie, crafted by Ukraine and the West, derailed 2022 peace talks by framing Russia for war crimes,” Giuliano recalled, referencing the April 2022 Ukrainian neo-Nazi massacre of civilians who accepted Russian aid in a Kiev suburb after the withdrawal of Russian forces, which galvanized the West for long, costly proxy war against Moscow.

That was just the beginning, according to Giuliano, who also cited:
1. the constant shelling of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, threatening to unleash a Chernobyl-like disaster on Europe, and blaming Russia (even though Russian forces control the plant).
2. the July 2022 bombing of a prison housing Ukrainian PoWs in a Russian-controlled area of the DPR, killing dozens, and designed to “silence Azov prisoners, preventing exposure of Western-backed neo-Nazis in Russian courts.” Also blamed on Russia, ironically.
3. the September 2022 bombing of the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline network, severing a major Russian energy artery with Germany. Sy Hersh revealed that the operation was carried out by US Navy divers with assistance from Norway. Russia still blamed.
“Despite the West’s propaganda machine—evident in Zaporozhye and Nord Stream—Russia’s readiness to counter this deception could limit its impact, though Western bias might still disrupt the Alaska summit. The Bucha playbook remains a potent tool for sabotage,” Giuliano warned.

Read more …

“The only chance he has to stay in power and to continue looting the aid from the West is for this war to continue…”

• Zelensky’s Life Depends On War Continuing – Human Rights Lawyer (RT)

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky does not want peace because he can only stay in power as long as the conflict with Russia continues, US human rights lawyer Dan Kovalik has told RT. The Russian Defense Ministry warned on Tuesday that Kiev is preparing a false flag attack on civilians in Kharkov Region in an attempt to derail Friday’s summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart, Donald Trump. During the talks in Anchorage, Alaska, the two leaders are expected to discuss the possible settlement of the Ukraine conflict and bilateral issues. Zelensky has not been invited to the summit. Kovalik said in an interview on Tuesday that he “suspected Ukraine would try to do something provocative to break up any possibility of a deal in Alaska. I mean Zelensky, his whole political life and maybe his real life depend on this war continuing.”

Moscow was right to warn the international community about Kiev’s plans, as “this will immunize people against a false-flag attack in the sense that they will be ready for it and know who really did it when, if it comes. God forbid it does come,” he suggested. The Ukrainian authorities “clearly do not want it to end… they do not want peace,” the human rights lawyer said. “Look, Zelensky has not had proper constitutional authority… for over a year. His term ran out over a year ago. He has refused to have elections. He knows his popularity is in decline. The only chance he has to stay in power and to continue looting the aid from the West is for this war to continue,” Kovalik added.

Zelensky said on Tuesday that he considered the fact that Putin was meeting Trump on US soil a “personal victory” for the Russian leader. The US president earlier described the Alaska summit as a “feel-out meeting” that will help him determine whether the Ukraine conflict can be settled. Moscow expects that the talks between Putin and Trump will “give an impulse to the normalization of bilateral relations” with Washington.

Read more …

“Expired” Zelensky and his team will stop at nothing to derail the upcoming summit..”

• Doomed Zelensky Desperate to Sabotage Putin-Trump Summit – Expert (Sp.)

Ukraine’s Zelensky is painfully aware that being sidelined from the upcoming Putin-Trump dialogue on Ukraine will deliver him a knockout blow, said Vietnamese international relations expert Dr. Hoang Giang.
“Expired” Zelensky and his team will stop at nothing to derail the upcoming summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump, or at the very least, cast a shadow over the talks, Dr. Hoang Giang told Sputnik. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban put it perfectly when he said that “If you’re not at the negotiating table, you’re on the menu,” the pundit explained, adding: “That is something Zelensky and his backers simply cannot accept.”

Intelligence from multiple sources points to a planned provocation by the Ukraine regime designed to sabotage the Russia-US summit planned for Friday, Russia’s Defense Ministry has stated. The Ukrainian Armed Forces could deliver a provocative strike using UAVs and missiles against one of the densely populated residential neighborhoods of Chuguyev in the Kharkov region [near the Russian border], causing significant civilian casualties. The imported Western journalists are expected to ‘immediately document’ the incident. Provocations in other settlements under the control of the Kiev regime are also possible, noted the MoD.

Read more …

The “Digital Services Act” and this “European Media Freedom Act” sound great, beneficial even, but have one goal only: control.

• New EU Media “Freedom Law” Allows for Journalist Arrests (RTN)

The European Union’s “European Media Freedom Act” became binding law across all member states on August 8, but behind its name lies a set of provisions that could restrict the very freedoms it claims to safeguard. Alongside language about protecting reporters, the regulation authorizes arrests, sanctions, and surveillance of journalists whenever authorities say it serves an “overriding reason in the general interest.” Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, hailed the legislation’s arrival on social media, saying, “A free and independent press is an essential pillar of our democracy. With our European Media Freedom Act, we want to improve their protection. This allows journalists to continue their important work safely and without disruption or intimidation.”

Although the law outlines protections such as prohibiting spyware or coercion to expose sources, those assurances are undercut by built-in loopholes. Governments can bypass them if their actions are allowed under national or EU law and deemed proportionate to a vaguely defined “general interest.” That permission extends to intrusive surveillance technologies in cases tied to crimes carrying a maximum prison term of three years or more, a list that ranges from terrorism and human trafficking to offenses labeled as “racism and xenophobia.”

The legislation also orders each country to maintain registers of media owners and addresses. It targets so-called “disinformation,” accusing some media outlets of manipulating the single market to spread falsehoods. Large online platforms are portrayed as choke points for access to news, blamed for fueling polarization. To confront this, the EU wants tighter cooperation between national regulators, overseen by a European Media Services Board made up of member state regulators and a Commission representative. Although labeled independent, the board’s secretariat is run by the Commission, giving it an inside track on the decision-making process.

Another element of the act involves pushing “trustworthy media” and reinforcing state broadcasters through transparent appointment processes and stable public funding. Annual gatherings between EU officials, internet companies, media representatives, and NGOs are encouraged to assess how disinformation initiatives are being carried out. Despite being sold as a shield for press freedom, the structure of the act gives Brussels and national authorities the ability to decide which voices remain active and which can be silenced. By allowing arrests, surveillance, and tighter state involvement in the media landscape, it risks turning from a safeguard into a tool for control.

Read more …

” Orban announced last month that he was rejecting the budget proposal, calling it “built on the logic of war.”

• EU Plotting ‘Regime Change’ In Hungary – Moscow (RT)

The European Commission is plotting to help oust Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban over what it considers his overly independent policy, according to Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). The Hungarian leader has repeatedly clashed with Brussels in recent years, opposing EU military aid to Ukraine and Kiev’s bid to join the bloc. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen “is seriously studying regime change scenarios” in Hungary, the SVR press service said in a statement on Wednesday. Brussels intends to bring Peter Magyar, leader of the Hungarian opposition Tisza Party – seen as “loyal to globalist elites” and “the main candidate for the post of Prime Minister” – to power in the 2026 parliamentary elections, “if not sooner,” according to the SVR.

Significant “administrative, media and lobbying resources” are being deployed to support Magyar through “German party funds, the European People’s Party and a number of Norwegian NGOs,” the Russian intelligence service said. Kiev, which has been “offended” by Orban’s opposition to Ukraine attempting to join the EU, is doing the “dirty work” and destabilizing the home situation in Hungary via its intelligence services and local Ukrainian diaspora, it added. Last month, Orban accused Kiev of working to influence Hungary’s upcoming parliamentary elections. The European Commission is “outraged” by Orban’s attempts to “pursue independent policy” and his efforts to influence EU decision-making, the SVR stated.

Hungary’s recent decision to veto the new seven-year EU budget project, which Budapest believes is designed for the militarization of Europe and preparation for war with Moscow, has become the last straw that made the euro-bureaucrats lose their patience. Orban announced last month that he was rejecting the budget proposal, calling it “built on the logic of war.” “Billions for Ukraine, crumbs for farmers and development. Their goal: defeat Russia, install liberal allies, and expand their realm of influence,” he wrote on X. Moscow has repeatedly denied claims that it aims to attack NATO or EU countries, and has accused Western European leaders of pursuing “uncontrolled militarization” to prepare for war with Russia.

Read more …

Sundance still has his own view:

“The Patel’s, Bondi’s, Solomon’s and Hannity’s then play this game of pretend. Packaging the corruption evidence as accountability hopium and selling it to the addicted battered conservatives.”

• Kash Patel Sends John Solomon a Prior Whistleblower Report (CTH)

FBI Director Kash Patel sends John Solomon a declassified whistleblower report, showing how a prior House Intelligence Committee staffer blew the whistle on then HPSCI ranking member Adam Schiff, who was giving the staff instructions to leak fabricated intelligence reports on Trump-Russia to smear President Donald Trump in 2017 and 2018. According to the release, the FBI eventually received and investigated the whistleblower claims; then in 2023, sent the information to the Merrick Garland/Lisa Monaco DOJ, who took no action because the claim was now beyond the statute of limitations. Read those dates carefully, because what this report from Kash Patel and John Solomon actually outlines is something we have all been very frustrated with.

As Solomon now notes, … “The alleged leaks fall outside the statute of limitations for prosecution on most legal theories, but the revelations nevertheless come at a sensitive time for Schiff“.. At the time of the Whistleblower report, the information to the FBI and DOJ would have been evidence that could have prosecuted Adam Schiff. However, now the information is limited to just providing I-told-you-so’s. There are a couple of really frustrating aspects to this, and the pattern is transparently obvious. The FBI and DOJ from 2017 to 2023, under both Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s administration, played the silo game of control of evidence. They did nothing with the evidence until the statute of limitations had tolled, which then provides Main Justice with the justification for doing nothing.

In 2025, understanding the public is insanely frustrated with the lack of accountability, the pretending game is now deployed by the FBI under Kash Patel, through John Solomon, to the broadcast venue of Sean Hannity. At the end of this clickbait circle-jerk is nothing. Again, no accountability, but a bunch of controlled information operatives saying, “Well, let’s see what the DOJ does with this now.” A pox on all their houses. There is no doubt in my mind this is a clear example of why the DC system uses special counsels (Mueller, Durham, et al) purposefully to create “ongoing investigations” as capture nets for information/evidence control. “It’s under investigation, and we don’t speak about ongoing investigations.” In real time, from 2019 to 2020, I was providing this type of evidence from within the silo system to John Durham and Bill Aldenberg who were designated information managers.

In my naiveté’, as I initially opened these doors, I thought some form of accountability would be possible, because the evidence was direct, irrefutable and without denial. However, once Aldenberg and Durham clearly said they could only act on evidence they ‘discovered’ themselves, and they could not act on evidence provided by “others” because that would make the “evidence political,” I quickly realized this was all going to amount to nothing. Now, we are looking in hindsight at evidence from inside the system, provided to these investigators by participants inside the system, yet they also did nothing with it at the time it held value. So, here’s the basic construct of how the DC game is played. Evidence delivered from outside DC cannot be used by those who are charged with investigating corruption within DC.

Evidence delivered from inside DC, goes into the system of “ongoing investigations” (special counsels) until its usefulness is exhausted by the clock-ticking. If the risk of accountability remains, the special counsels are extended until that accountability clock has expired. Once the accountability clock has expired, if another party comes along (Kash) and releases that evidence (Solomon), the value only exists insofar as it generates clickbait income (Just News), column inches and punditry talking points (Sean Hannity) for the DC proletariat. The Patel’s, Bondi’s, Solomon’s and Hannity’s then play this game of pretend. Packaging the corruption evidence as accountability hopium and selling it to the addicted battered conservatives. Insert vote. Pull lever. Get hopium pellet. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. Who is continuing to buy this game?

Read more …

“Washington, DC’s 2024 murder rate was 27.54 per 100,000 people. That is higher than cities like Bogota (15.1), Mexico City (10.6), Islamabad (9.2), and Lima (7.6). It is astronomical when compared to the capitals of close allies like Paris (1.64), London (1.1), and Madrid (0.96).”

• Trump Takeover Renews Questions Over D.C. Crime Data (Turley)

Washington, D.C. is a city that has long spun statistics to the point that they become more fable than fact. It reaffirms the famous view that there are “lies, damned lies, and statistics.” The line is the perfect warning to the unwary about politicians citing statistics. The quote itself is widely misrepresented as the work of Mark Twain or British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, so it seems nothing can be trusted when it comes to statistics, not even quotes on statistics. That question is again at the heart of a debate following the announcement of President Donald Trump that he would be sending the National Guard into Washington and taking temporary control of the D.C. police. In response, Mayor Muriel Bowser and other democrats denounced the plan and claimed that violent crime is at a 30-year low after dropping by 26% so far in 2025.

However, those statistics were recently challenged after a scandal involving allegations of suppressing crime reports to artificially reduce crime rate statistics. The media is reporting the reduction claim despite only recently questioning those statistics. The MPD in July suspended Michael Pulliam, police commander for the Adams Morgan neighborhood, for allegedly manipulating crime numbers. D.C. Fraternal Order of Police chairman Gregg Pemberton accused police officials of pressuring officers to falsify statistics to reduce crime rates: “When our members respond to the scene of a felony offense where there is a victim reporting that a felony occurred, inevitably there will be a lieutenant or a captain that will show up on that scene and direct those members to take a report for a lesser offense.

So, instead of taking a report for a shooting or a stabbing or a carjacking, they will order that officer to take a report for a theft or an injured person to the hospital or a felony assault, which is not the same type of classification.” Pemberton said that the MPD’s statistics were “preposterous… There’s absolutely no way crime could be down 28%. Last year, they suggested that it went down 34%.” Even accepting some of these statistics, it is hardly anything to celebrate. For example, Washington, DC’s 2024 murder rate was 27.54 per 100,00 people. That is higher than cities like Bogota (15.1), Mexico City (10.6), Islamabad (9.2), and Lima (7.6). It is astronomical when compared to the capitals of close allies like Paris (1.64), London (1.1), and Madrid (0.96).

There are good-faith reasons to oppose this move. I am not convinced that the National Guard deployment is warranted or likely to have a meaningful impact on crime. However, President Trump is within his rights to order the deployment. He may also take temporary control of the police and can notify Congress if he wants to extend that period to 30 days. D.C. is a federal enclave and is thus different from other cities. There is no governor involved in such orders in Washington, which remain under the jurisdiction of the federal government. What is also clear is that crime remains very high in this city and the reliability of the D.C. crime statistics can be legitimately questioned as we look for solutions for public safety.

Read more …

“The goal, Richman told the FBI, was “to correct stories critical of Comey, the FBI and to shape future press coverage” outside of the bureau’s official press office…”

• Newly Released FBI Files Uncover Comey’s Plot Against Trump (Margolis)

Newly released FBI documents paint a damning picture of James Comey’s role in a coordinated intelligence operation against Donald Trump, an effort we know that Barack Obama ordered and that John Brennan, James Clapper, and a network of loyal operatives carried out. The “Arctic Haze” documents reveal that the FBI not only knew that sensitive information was leaking to the media, but it was also orchestrating the leaks. At the center of this effort was Columbia University law professor Daniel Richman, whom Comey personally arranged for the FBI to hire and grant top security clearance. Richman acted as Comey’s go-between with reporters, helping to shape the Russian collusion hoax and polish Comey’s public image. Hard evidence now backs what many have long suspected: the willful weaponization of U.S. intelligence against a duly elected president.

“The FBI concluded numerous legacy news media stories that crafted the false Russia collusion narrative contained illegally leaked classified intelligence but failed to definitively identify the leakers,” reports Just the News. “But agents did force a stunning admission that ex-FBI Director James Comey used a special conduit to the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times in his bid to polish his image and push for a special prosecutor to take down President Donald Trump.”Columbia University law professor Daniel Richman admitted to agents in interviews he routinely communicated on behalf of Comey, his longtime friend, with Times reporter Michael Schmidt, whose work was among the newspaper’s 2018 Pulitzer-winning stories on Russian election interference.

The goal, Richman told the FBI, was “to correct stories critical of Comey, the FBI and to shape future press coverage” outside of the bureau’s official press office, according to internal FBI memos that current Director Kash Patel delivered to Congress this week. Just the News notes that the media publicly quoted Richman in news stories as a Comey advocate. What’s new, however, is that “he admitted to agents, who were part of the FBI’s Arctic Haze classified leaks inquiry, that Comey gave him access to what turned out to be highly classified information up to the SCI level and sometimes provided information to reporters on an anonymous basis.” According to the FBI memos, Richman claimed he didn’t think he had passed classified information to reporters but admitted he couldn’t be “100%” sure. In fact, he told agents he was only confident “with a discount” that he hadn’t told New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt about the classified material.

That’s not exactly the kind of airtight denial you’d expect from someone with top security clearance. Earlier this week, we learned that a veteran career intelligence officer, who spent over a decade working for Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee, repeatedly warned the FBI starting in 2017 that then-Rep. Adam Schiff had personally signed off on leaking classified information to smear President Trump during the Russiagate hoax. Despite this and other evidence pointing to potential leaks, the Justice Department shockingly chose not to press charges against Comey, his inner circle, or even now-Sen. Adam Schiff. Their excuse? They just couldn’t be certain who leaked what and when. Convenient.

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“Danchenko told them the Steele dossier was full of fabricated nonsense. However, to keep the revelation of the dossier presented “as nonsense” hidden, the FBI then hired Danchenko as a confidential human source, technically shielding him from being questioned or exposed…”

• FBI Offered Chris Steele $1 Million to Substantiate Dossier; He Never Did (CTH)

I have been asked to recap some of my research into cited formats of what I believe to be criminal conduct, with specific statutes against them. This is the third.mDNI Tulsi Gabbard is not a lawyer. While I may be wrong, I find Tulsi Gabbard to be a patriot. Mrs. Gabbard is focused on providing evidence to the DOJ that essentially forces action. I support Tulsi Gabbard’s efforts.

In 2022, the legal case brought by prosecutor John Durham against Chris Steele’s primary sub source, Igor Danchenko, was predicated on the notion that Christopher Steele’s primary source for his dossier willfully and intentionally lied to the FBI. Therefore, according to Durham’s legal theory, Danchenko was guilty of purposefully misleading FBI investigators assigned to the Trump-Russia/”Crossfire Hurricane” investigation. Every intellectually honest person knew the FBI were not duped by Danchenko, and later records proved Danchenko told them the Steele dossier was full of fabricated nonsense. However, to keep the revelation of the dossier presented “as nonsense” hidden, the FBI then hired Danchenko as a confidential human source, technically shielding him from being questioned or exposed. The FBI decision to hire Danchenko was to keep the fraudulent Steele Dossier useful for their Trump targeting operation. After all, the Trump surveillance warrants were dependent on it.

The pretending by Durham highlighted two things: (1) Durham was protecting the corrupt DOJ and FBI institutions by not investigating any government action; and yet, (2) Durham was simultaneously exposing corrupt FBI and DOJ action through his Danchenko court filings. FBI supervisory analyst Brian Auten testified in court that Hillary Clinton’s contracted opposition researcher, Christopher Steele – hired by Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on Donald Trump, was offered up to $1 million by the FBI in early October 2016, if Chris Steele could prove the claims within the Trump dirt dossier he authored. Steele was never paid the money, because he could not prove the claims within the dossier, nor would he originally give up the name of the primary source for the information, Igor Danchenko.

However, despite the FBI knowing the dossier could not be proved, validated or verified, later that same month, October 21, 2016, they used the dossier as evidence to support a Title-1 FISA surveillance warrant against former Trump campaign aide, Carter Page. The FBI offered Chris Steele $1 million to ‘prove it.’ Chris Steele could not ‘prove it.’ The FBI used the dossier anyway to get the warrant. The details provided by Durham proved the researched outline we delivered in 2018. The FBI knew the Steele dossier was junk, yet they used it in lieu of the mandatory ‘Woods File’ to seek an all-inclusive secret search warrant against the Trump campaign. Carter Page was a tool for the fraudulent search warrant, the FBI knew Carter Page from previous work he had done for them as an informant. However, to get the warrant they needed to accuse Page of being an asset of a foreign government – so they did.

The Steele Dossier was used as manufactured evidence to support the FISA application. The FBI goal was to create a legal mechanism putting everyone in/around Donald Trump under surveillance. This was the “insurance policy” as described by FBI agent Peter Strzok. The FBI had been conducting unlawful political surveillance against Donald Trump throughout the 2016 campaign, the FISA warrant was used as the legal basis to make the previous and future surveillance legal. The FBI knew the dossier was junk, the FBI didn’t care – they needed it to create a fraudulent search warrant. The FBI knew Carter Page was not a Russian asset, the FBI didn’t care – they needed him to get to Trump. The FBI goal was always to conduct political surveillance against Donald Trump.

(Via CNN) – Shortly before the 2016 election, the FBI offered retired British spy Christopher Steele “up to $1 million” to prove the explosive allegations in his dossier about Donald Trump, a senior FBI analyst testified Tuesday. The cash offer was made during an October 2016 meeting between Steele and several top FBI officials who were trying to corroborate Steele’s claims that the Trump campaign was colluding with Russia to win the election. FBI supervisory analyst Brian Auten testified that Steele never got the money because he could not “prove the allegations.” Auten also said Steele refused to provide the names of any of his sources during that meeting, and that Steele didn’t give the FBI anything during that meeting that corroborated the claims in his explosive dossier.

Auten was testifying at the criminal trial of Igor Danchenko, a primary source for Steele’s dossier, who is being prosecuted by special counsel John Durham. Danchenko has pleaded not guilty to lying to the FBI. CNN previously reported that the FBI reimbursed some expenses for Steele, who had been an FBI informant. Durham, a Trump-era prosecutor who is looking for misconduct in the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation, has used some of the proceedings Tuesday to criticize the FBI’s handling of some of the early steps in the Russia probe. Durham handled many of the in-court arguments on Tuesday and personally questioned Auten on the witness stand – a rare move for a special counsel and former US attorney. (read more)

Offering $1 million to a source to provide evidence is not a decision made by a supervisory special agent. The authorization to spend up to $1 million for evidence is a decision made by the Director or Deputy Director of the FBI. Follow the timeline:
• Steele offered $1 million to prove the dossier in early October 2016. He cannot.
• FBI uses dossier in late October for a FISA warrant against Trump campaign.
• Dossier source Igor Danchenko interviewed by FBI in January 2017. Tells FBI dossier is junk.
• The FBI then interviews Carter Page five times, March 9, 10, 16, 30 and 31, 2017.
• The FBI then hired Danchenko in March 2017, just before renewing the FISA they now know is based on junk.
• April 2, 2017, the FBI renew the FISA warrant for the 2nd time.
• May 2017 Robert Mueller appointed to cover up all of the DOJ/FBI corruption that existed in the Trump targeting.
• June 2017 Robert Mueller interviews Danchenko, then Mueller renews the FISA.
• February 2019, Bill Barr enters as Attorney General.
• April 2019 Robert Mueller completes investigation.
• May 2019, Bill Barr appoints Durham just to look into things. Immediately then begs Trump not to declassify any documents. Trump writes executive order giving Bill Barr ability to review and declassify documents.
• October 2020, Bill Barr officially (and quietly), makes John Durham a special counsel. We don’t find out until December (after the Nov. election).
• October 2020, FBI drops Igor Danchenko as paid informant.

Put it all together and you see the continuum.
(1) Donald Trump was being targeted by a corrupt DOJ and FBI.
(2) Robert Mueller was installed in May 2017 to cover up the targeting.
(3) When Mueller is nearing his completion, Bill Barr steps in to mitigate institutional damage from 1 and 2.
(4) Barr maintains damage control and installs Durham.
(5) Durham takes over the coverup operation from October 2020 (Danchenko safe to exit) through today.

Main Justice kept a bag over Danchenko until they needed a scapegoat, created by Durham, to sell a narrative that Main Justice was duped. John Durham charged Danchenko (working outside govt) with lying to the FBI while simultaneously avoiding drawing attention to the FBI/DOJ officials (inside govt) who knew Danchenko was lying and were willfully blind to it in order to continue attacking and investigating President Donald Trump. James Comey, Robert Mueller, Bill Barr, John Durham, the Mar-a-Lago raid… it’s all one long continuum of the same targeting and coverup operation. Bill Barr was the Bondo application, and John Durham was the spray paint. The entire system is corrupt.

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“A poll from earlier this year showed AOC leading Schumer by double digits in a hypothetical primary…”

• This Could Be the End of Chuck Schumer’s Political Career (Margolis)

The political winds are shifting dramatically in New York, and no figure embodies this change more starkly than Chuck Schumer. Once an unshakable pillar of Democratic power, Schumer now finds himself grappling with a crisis of confidence unlike any he’s faced in two decades. This isn’t just a battle over approval numbers; it’s a stark referendum on the future of the Democratic Party itself. As younger, more radical voices rise to challenge the old guard, the question becomes: Is Schumer’s era ending, and if so, what comes next? Schumer has hit a historic low in favorability, according to a recent Siena College poll — the worst showing of his career dating back two decades. Once comfortably positioned as the Democratic strongman in the Empire State, Schumer now finds himself under fierce fire not just from political adversaries but from within his own party.

His approval rating stands at a mere 38% favorable, with half of New Yorkers viewing him unfavorably. Even more striking, Schumer is underwater among New York City voters for the first time ever in Siena’s polling, at 39% favorable to 46% unfavorable. The tide really turned against Schumer after his controversial decision in March to allow a vote on a continuing resolution to fund the government and avoid a shutdown. This move angered radical leftist Democrats who derided it as a betrayal. That decision cast a long shadow over Schumer’s leadership and raised serious questions about whether his era is concluding. The fissures within the Democratic Party have become increasingly visible. Leftist voices have started rallying behind Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a potential challenger to Schumer’s Senate seat in 2028.

A poll from earlier this year showed AOC leading Schumer by double digits in a hypothetical primary, signaling a deep appetite among Democratic voters for younger, more confrontational leadership. His favorability with Democrats has dropped from 55% in June to 49%, while unfavorable ratings among party members rose to 39%. This erosion of support reflects a widening gap between Schumer’s pragmatic approach and the ambitions of a more aggressive, younger generation of Democrats unwilling to yield to Republicans or Donald Trump. The big question is whether Schumer will seek re-election or make way for fresher faces representing the party’s emerging priorities.

His declining approval ratings suggest that if he does run again, it won’t be without a stern primary challenge, and I can’t see him running in a primary that he’s at risk of losing. Indeed, in an era where firebrands like AOC capture the spirit of the party’s activist wing, the political script in New York is fast rewriting itself. Ultimately, Schumer’s political plunge reflects a broader crisis of confidence within Democratic ranks. Once a master of Senate backroom deals and partisan maneuvering, his struggles highlight the party’s deepening identity crisis. Will Democrats double down on the establishment’s old-school power politics, or will they hand the reins to the younger, more radical voices demanding aggressive confrontation? The answer will shape not only Schumer’s fate but the future trajectory of the party itself.

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Predictable. Will they pass on their traveling bills to the taxpayer?

• Texas Democrats Will Return Home, and the New Map Will Be Approved (Margolis)

The war over Texas’ congressional maps is nearly over, and conservatives emerged victorious. ABC13 Eyewitness News reports that multiple sources have confirmed House Democrats are finally coming back to Texas. They haven’t said exactly when, but apparently, they think they’ve achieved some grand victory by killing the first special session and grabbing a few headlines about the mid-decade redistricting fight. In reality, all they’ve done is waste taxpayer money, embarrass themselves on the national stage, and guarantee that the new map will still pass, just without the drama next time. It is unclear which day they will be in Austin at the Capitol, but they stress that they will push for Hill Country flooding relief to be the priority. nThis comes as the House went another session without a quorum on Tuesday, with just 95 members present for the second day in a row.

Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows said that assuming there is no quorum on Friday, the session will end, and a new one will begin. Hours later, the Senate actually passed a new map that benefits Republicans ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. It’s the same map that passed out of committee in the House and precipitated more than 50 House Democrats to break quorum. Democrats in the Senate walked out in protest, but a quorum remained. Sources told ABC13 that Senate Democrats will not break quorum. It’s not all that surprising. The Democratic Party, the worst offenders when it comes to gerrymandering, throwing a conniption over Republican redistricting, was the epitome of hypocrisy, and to top that off, Texas Democrats fled to the heavily gerrymandered state of Illinois: a stunt so tone-deaf that it practically wrote its own punchline. Democrats were going to cave eventually; it was only a matter of when.

Something tells me that when Gov. Greg Abbott vowed to keep calling special sessions until the new map was passed, they knew they were beat. “This could literally last years because in Texas, I’m authorized to call a special session every thirty days. It lasts thirty days,” he told Fox News host Shannon Bream on Monday, promising to keep calling session after session relentlessly. “As soon as this one is over, I’m gonna call another one, then another one, then another one, then another one.” When it comes to gerrymandering, Democrats are the undisputed champions. Four of the five most gerrymandered states, Illinois, California, New Jersey, and New York, are all under full Democratic control.

Their congressional maps hand Democrats far more seats than their actual vote totals warrant. Illinois, for instance, gives Democrats a staggering 27-point edge in representation, even though they only won 55% of the presidential vote. California and New Jersey aren’t far behind, each showing double-digit advantages for Democrats. The only state making the list with a significant Republican presence is North Carolina, with a 20-point GOP edge. But Texas, often slammed as the GOP’s gerrymandering poster child, actually has a smaller partisan gap. Republicans won 56% of the presidential vote and hold 66% of the congressional seats, a 10-point advantage that will grow with the new map, but still pales compared to the distortions cooked up in Democratic bastions.

The facts don’t lie. The worst gerrymanders are in blue states, and that advantage has propped up Democrats even as they lose the national House popular vote. What’s happening in Texas isn’t an attack on democracy; it’s a long-overdue correction. No amount of grandstanding from lawmakers playing hide-and-seek in Illinois will change that reality. Texas Democrats finally realized they were fighting a losing battle. Now the Texas Senate has approved the map, sending it to the State House for final passage, leaving Democrats to grumble about something else.

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‘Fired Losers’ = Bolton.

• Trump Rails Against ‘Unfair’ Media Quoting ‘Fired Losers’ (NYP)

President Trump raged against the “unfair” media over their coverage of his high-stakes summit with Russian tyrant Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday. “Very unfair media is at work on my meeting with Putin. Constantly quoting fired losers and really dumb people like John Bolton, who just said that, even though the meeting is on American soil,” Trump seethed on Truth Social Wednesday. “‘Putin has already won.’ What’s that all about? We are winning on EVERYTHING. The Fake News is working overtime (No tax on overtime!). If I got Moscow and Leningrad free, as part of the deal with Russia, the Fake News would say that I made a bad deal! But now they’ve been caught,” he added. Leningrad reverted to its pre-Bolshevik name, St. Petersburg, in 1991.

Trump’s anticipated meeting at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson with Putin will mark the first time the Russian leader sets foot on US soil in about a decade. It will also be Putin’s first in-person meeting with a US president since he began the brutal invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has made ending the bloody war in Ukraine one of his top foreign policy objectives. Over recent months, he has soured on Putin over the brutal Russian drone and missile strikes on Ukrainian civilians. Critics such as Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton have argued that the president will be welcoming a “rogue leader of a pariah state” into the US and that Putin will attempt to “take advantage” of him.

The Friday summit meeting comes after special envoy Steve Witkoff met with the Russian leader at the Kremlin last week, ahead of Trump’s deadline for Moscow to move toward peace or else the US would work to cut off its oil exports using steep economic penalties. Details about Putin’s exact conditions for bringing about an end to his country’s war are murky and have drawn confusion from European allies. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has publicly cast doubt on making significant territorial concessions to Russia and underscored that Ukraine must have a say in any potential deal. The Trump administration is working toward a trilateral summit among Trump, Putin and Zelensky and sees the Alaska meeting as a step toward that goal, according to Vice President JD Vance.

One of Trump’s close allies, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, has claimed the president is “testing” Putin and trying to gauge his openness to peace. Secretary of State Marco Rubio similarly implied that Trump is attempting to get a better sense of whether the Russian dictator is open to peace. “The president talked to Putin on the phone three times or four times. Okay. And nothing has come of it — or at least we haven’t gotten to where we want to be,” Rubio told “Sid and Friends in the Morning” on Tuesday.“So the president feels like, ‘Look, I’ve got to look at this guy across the table. I need to see him face-to-face,’” he added. “‘I need to make an assessment by looking at him.’”

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“The Democrats are about as popular right now as measles, so democracy is somehow endangered.”

• Hollywood Writers Wage War on Trump (Tim Graham)

The entertainment press found it very important to report that Hollywood thinks President Donald Trump is an authoritarian. This is still somehow considered “news.” Over 2,300 members of the Writers Guild felt compelled to speak out in an open letter because they believe in their “role in a healthy democracy.” In 2024, democracy was healthy and Hollywood’s candidate lost. “Writers Guild of America West PAC [political action committee] Endorses Kamala Harris for President,” they announced. So sad. They can’t get over it. When the Left’s feverishly spinning propaganda machines don’t work, “now, we face an unprecedented, authoritarian assault.” The Democrats are about as popular right now as measles, so democracy is somehow endangered.

“We are members of the Writers Guild of America who speak with one voice to decry the dangerous and escalating attacks on the First Amendment, independent media, and the free press,” the letter read in part. “He has retaliated against publications reporting factually on the White House and threatened broadcasters’ licenses. He regularly calls for the cancellation of news and entertainment television shows that criticize him in late-night and, most recently, ‘The View.’” They complained, “We don’t have a king, we have a president. And the president doesn’t get to pick what’s on television, in movie theaters, on stage, on our bookshelves, or in the news.” Of course not. The kings and queens of Hollywood insist they get to pick what people see, and the “healthy democracy” librarians get to dictate what’s on the public bookshelves. The leftists think “democracy” is healthiest when they are in charge of all “mainstream” messaging.

When it comes to Trump, Hollywood rushed to make hostile movies—for the Cineplex and for TV—asserting the rudest things, like Trump raped his first wife (“The Apprentice” movie). Nobody made a Hunter Biden movie, despite all the wild crack-and-hookers narratives, not to mention Hunter sleeping with his brother’s widow and getting her on drugs. The fundamental fallacy of these “attacks on the First Amendment” arguments is that the First Amendment includes the freedom to attack the “free press”—like asserting liberals lie when they call themselves the “independent media.” They’re partisan operatives. Trump suing news organizations and spurring settlements isn’t authoritarian. This is where you undermine the silly claim of these scriptwriters that leftist “news” outlets are being attacked for “reporting factually.” They don’t lead with facts. They lead with their angry opinions and often unproven accusations.

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“The majority holds that when the President refuses to spend funds appropriated by Congress based on policy disagreements, that is merely a statutory violation and raises no constitutional alarm bells.”

• Trump: 1, USAID: 0 – Appeals Court Lets Admin Block Billions In Aid (ZH)

The Trump administration scored a major victory on Wednesday after a US appeals court ruled that they can cut billions of dollars in foreign assistance approved by Congress. In a 2-1 decision, the appellate panel reversed a Washington federal judge who ruled that US officials were violating the Constitution’s separation of powers principles by failing to authorize payments in line with what the legislative branch had allocated. This means that President Trump’s day-one order to dissolve the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and broadly withhold funding from other foreign aid programs can move forward. After the Trump administration cut off foreign aid, two groups of grant recipients sued, claiming a violation of separation of powers.

US District Judge Amir Ali (Canadian-born Biden appointee) ruled in March that the administration must make available foreign assistance that Congress appropriated for FY2024. Ali’s order also required USAID to pay bills owed through Feb. 13 under existing contracts and grants, however that part of the injunction was not on appeal – and substantially all of the owed payments are now complete according to court records. Not so fast Ali! Writing for the majority appellate decision – US Circuit Judge Karen Henderson (Bush appointee) said “The district court erred in granting that relief because the grantees lack a cause of action to press their claims. They may not bring a freestanding constitutional claim if the underlying alleged violation and claimed authority are statutory.”

One judge, US Circuit Judge Florence Pan (Biden appointee) dissented, writing “The majority holds that when the President refuses to spend funds appropriated by Congress based on policy disagreements, that is merely a statutory violation and raises no constitutional alarm bells.” Lauren Bateman, an attorney for consumer advocacy group Public Citizen which represents the suing grant recipients wrote on Wednesday “Today’s decision is a significant setback for the rule of law and risks further erosion of basic separation of powers principles,” adding “We will seek further review from the court, and our lawsuit will continue regardless as we seek permanent relief from the Administration’s unlawful termination of the vast majority of foreign assistance.”

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Pieces so long I put them at the bottom of the pile. Still good to refresh the memory.

• The Trump-Putin Meeting: How We Got Here (Connor O’Keeffe)

This Friday, President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are set to sit down together in what will be the first face-to-face meeting between leaders of each country since the war in Ukraine broke out almost three and a half years ago. For many, this is a long-overdue step towards bringing this war to an end. For others, it marks the dangerous and unnecessary return of a policy of “appeasement” that’s sure to prompt more invasions from Putin and other leaders that the US government does not back. There certainly will be plenty of debate in the coming days over the wisdom and likely consequences of this meeting. But, as with anything, the best way to understand both is to look back at how we got here. A lot has been written about the many policy decisions that took place after the USSR fell in 1991, which transformed the Russian government and the Western governments in NATO back into enemies.

Those factors are important for understanding why Putin made the decision to invade Ukraine in early February 2022 and how he was able to get enough of the Russian public on board with the war. But even setting all of that aside, when Putin gave the order for Russian forces to invade Ukrainian territory, he cited three purposes for the move in his address to the Russian people that can help us understand the specific Russian objectives in this campaign. They were to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO, to destroy the far-right Nazi factions within Ukraine, and to protect the people living in the separatist regions of eastern Ukraine. It is certainly possible that none of these reasons was or is genuine. As we Americans should know well, governments frequently use entirely fake justifications to manufacture public acceptance for a war when they think the real reason won’t work.

However, if we look closer at Putin’s actions, we can get a clearer picture of what the Russian leader wanted and, importantly, was willing to settle for. Shortly after the invasion began on February 24, 2022, Ukraine’s President Zelensky attempted to set up an indirect backchannel with Putin. He was able to do so fairly quickly with the help of the Israeli Prime Minister at the time, Naftali Bennet. Thanks to Bennet’s efforts, the two sides began talking. And, exactly two weeks after the tanks had rolled over the border, the Ukrainian and Russian foreign ministers sat down in person in Turkey to see if an agreement could be reached that would put an end to the fighting. A few weeks later, they did reach an agreement. According to officials who were present on both sides and in mediator roles, the Russians agreed to pull all of their forces back to pre-invasion boundaries—in other words, to end the war and give up all the territory they had seized in that first month.

And, in exchange, the Ukrainians agreed not to seek NATO membership. Remember, this isn’t some Russian spin on the Istanbul talks, it’s based on what the Ukrainian negotiators and the German, Israeli, and Turkish officials who were present said happened. So we know that a month into the war, Putin was willing to abandon two of the three stated objectives of his military campaign in exchange for a promise that Ukraine would not join NATO, which suggests that this really is the priority for the Russian regime. He may have even begun to honor his side of the agreement. Putin claims that the sudden massive withdrawal of Russian forces from the areas around Kyiv, a few days after the Istanbul agreement was reached, was actually the first step towards withdrawing the entire invading force. That may be a lie, but the timing does match up.

Regardless, shortly after the talks wrapped up, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson went to Kyiv, really on behalf of all the top Western military powers in NATO, and convinced the Ukrainians to walk away from the agreement, which they did. It appears that Western governments talked the Ukrainian leaders into continuing the fight by promising heavier weapons and more sophisticated support to help them gain more leverage over the Russians, so future talks could be even more fruitful. Some people in Western governments may have really believed that. But a lot of the rhetoric we saw from American officials when they were talking to the American public or to each other suggests that the true motivations for keeping the war going grew out of a recognition of how lucrative it would be for certain well-connected American companies, a desire to learn more about what tactics and technology is effective in modern conventional war, and a perceived opportunity to “weaken Russia” without the need to spill any American blood.

But regardless of whether their intentions were pure and misguided or deceptive and depraved, American and Western European officials stymied the early peace talks and kept the war going. And fairly quickly, it became frustratingly clear that the Ukrainians would not be able to fight their way to a better negotiating position than they had had in March of 2022. Over that first summer, the “heavier weapons” the US and other Western governments began transferring to the Ukrainians did not push the front line dramatically to the east, as the Ukrainian government seems to have been led to expect. And then, in September, the Russian government formally annexed four oblasts—or provinces—in eastern Ukraine, laying permanent claim to tens of thousands of square miles of territory that it had previously agreed to surrender. Ukraine’s position in future negotiations was already growing weaker.

That said, in November, a month after the Russian annexation, Ukrainian forces successfully used misdirection to recapture the southern city of Kherson and the northern city of Kharkiv. While their position was still weaker than it had been in March, it was still a solid opportunity to transition back to talks. But again, the opportunity was missed. Instead, Western officials and their allies in the media began to generate hype about plans for a massive counteroffensive operation that would mobilize all Ukrainian forces to break through Russian lines and drive Russian forces out of the newly-annexed territory. For months, the coming counteroffensive was used to shoot down any calls to return to the negotiating table. But several independent military experts raised doubts—especially in reaction to the nightmarish battle over the city of Bakhmut—that Ukraine truly had the capability to push the Russian lines way back to the east.

Those concerns really came to a head in early 2023 when a 21-year-old airman named Jack Teixeira leaked evidence that American military and intelligence officials were similarly pessimistic about the operation—for which he was thrown in prison with a sixteen-year sentence. And, sure enough, when the counteroffensive began in the summer of 2023, the Ukrainians struggled to break through Russian minefields and ended up losing more territory than they gained. The counteroffensive was a failure. And yet, the war went on. For the next year, the front lines remained mostly unchanged as the war evolved into a trench-style artillery war of attrition. Ukraine was dealing with a serious shortage of soldiers, which the Russians appeared to have recognized meant time was in their favor.

Then, last summer, the Ukrainians made the surprising decision to pull troops away from the front line to send them north over the border to capture some Russian territory in the so-called Kursk region. While they were met with some initial success, because the Russians had not thought to defend the area heavily, the territory they took was small compared to what the Russians held in Ukraine. And, most consequentially, the transfer of soldiers weakened Ukraine’s already-tenuous standing on the eastern front. Which has meant that, over the last year, Ukraine has been struggling. According to some analysts like retired Colonel Daniel Davis, the Russians have shifted their focus from trying to take more territory to trying to wipe out as many soldiers as possible to exacerbate Ukraine’s manpower problems, which will ensure that, down the road, taking territory will be far easier.

The Russians also didn’t let the lame-duck Biden administration’s provocative and unnecessarily risky decision to help the Ukrainians launch long-range missiles deeper into Russia pull them away from their strong position. So Russian forces now hold a lot of territory, and time is on their side if they wish to take even more territory in the future. And there isn’t much of anything else the NATO governments can do with weapons transfers or economic sanctions to change that. If they could, they would have done it already. In other words, the Russians have significantly more leverage over the Ukrainians and their Western backers than they did during those early talks in Turkey a month into the war. Trump has clearly tried to create some pain points against Putin that he can attempt to negotiate away—most notably a massive tariff on India for buying Russian oil. But the disheartening and frustrating fact is that Putin has no real reason to want this war to come to an end right now.

That said, the Russian president did signal that he would be open to stopping the war in exchange for eastern Ukraine. If that proposal is genuine, Trump should seriously try to work out a deal and hope that the boasts he made about deceiving the Iranians with fake negotiations earlier this summer did not destroy his credibility in situations like this. But, regardless of what happens during the talks on Friday, more Americans need to start recognizing what the civilians in Ukraine evidently have already: that, as bad as this situation is, it can and will continue to get worse. So many opportunities for peace have been missed. If there is any chance of another, Trump should take it.

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X thread.

“The Macron we see today — the carefully packaged politician, the unapologetic globalist, the made-for-television president — wasn’t born. He was built. And he was built at remarkable speed.”

• Macron’s Rise To Power (John Mac Ghlionn)

The term “Manchurian Candidate” conjures images of spy thrillers, of men who are brainwashed and programmed to act against their own nations. It’s Hollywood fantasy. Or is it? Because when you examine Emmanuel Macron, his sudden, improbable ascent from obscurity to the Élysée Palace starts to feel less fictional. No sci-fi brainwashing. No flashing lights or hypnotic spirals. Just careful grooming. Silent backers. Loyalties shaped long before the public ever knew his name. A mediocre man who gets slapped around by his domineering wife is now one of the most powerful people in the world. Germany may be Europe’s economic engine, but France has always been its crown jewel: the political, military, and cultural heart of the continent. Control France, and you control not just markets, but minds, traditions, and the future of Europe itself.

Which makes the rise of Macron all the more disturbing. How, one wonders, did a provincial banker, virtually unknown to the French public a decade ago, climb so quickly to the highest office in the land? The truth is, he didn’t climb. He was carried. Macron’s Rothschild years reveal a man propelled by connections, not competence. Early colleagues recall that he didn’t even know what EBITDA — earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization — meant. A fundamental term in corporate finance. It’s the equivalent of a mechanic not knowing what an ignition is. Yet Macron rose from basic spreadsheet tasks to partner in record time, thanks to elite backers and well-timed advantages, not technical mastery. From relatively obscure banker to the highest circles of European politics.

The rise was too fast, too clean, and far too suspect. Enter Jacques Attali. His name may not mean much to some readers, but this is someone who has influenced France’s political class for decades. Now 81, he served as special adviser to President François Mitterrand. Attali played a key role in mentoring François Hollande. Even now, he ranks among the most formidable behind-the-scenes operators in French politics. In the American context, his reach would put him in the company of Zbigniew Brzezinski and George Soros. Part strategist, part gatekeeper, part financier. Attali once boasted that he “discovered” Macron, even claiming he “invented him.” The Macron we see today — the carefully packaged politician, the unapologetic globalist, the made-for-television president — wasn’t born. He was built. And he was built at remarkable speed.

At age 32, Macron’s selection into the French-American Foundation’s program placed him among future operatives aligned with U.S.-EU integrationist interests. The Foundation has long served as a quiet grooming ground for transatlantic elites. Past participants in the French-American Foundation’s Young Leaders program include figures like Bill and Hillary Clinton. Macron passed through other elite grooming institutions: Sciences Po and the École nationale d’administration (ENA). Sciences Po, often referred to as the training ground for France’s ruling class, has produced generations of presidents, prime ministers, and top civil servants. The ENA is even more exclusive. Founded after World War II, it was designed to produce the officials who would rebuild modern France.

ENA alumni include Hollande, Jacques Chirac, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, and Mr. Macron. But then came Bilderberg, the real proving ground. Within months of attending in 2014, Macron’s political career took off. For the uninitiated, Bilderberg is a private, invitation-only gathering where the world’s most powerful bankers, CEOs, generals, and politicians meet behind closed doors. Off the record, out of sight, and far from accountability. It is where future leaders are sized up, tested, and quietly approved. At the 2014 meeting, Macron was placed directly before the men and women who would soon bankroll and promote his ascent. This wasn’t a coincidence. It was, I suggest, a coronation. In 2016, after becoming a World Economic Forum (WEF) Young Global Leader, Macron reached another “miraculous” milestone. He joined a carefully selected group approved by Klaus Schwab that included the likes of Justin Trudeau and Jacinda Ardern.

This was yet another clear signal, a public endorsement from the same global interests that had backed him from the start. Less than twelve months later, Macron stormed to the French presidency. Stunning achievement for a man with no real political base, no electoral track record.= His main rivals were systematically crippled by scandals, exposed and prosecuted with an efficiency rarely seen in a country where the legal machinery usually crawls. Meanwhile, a political vehicle — En Marche! — was assembled almost overnightzBacked by deep-pocketed donors and coordinated by consultants and firms closely tied to France’s corporate and financial elite. Macron didn’t create a movement. A movement was created around him. There is nothing normal about Emmanuel Macron’s rise.

Under his leadership, France has been pushed deeper into corporate control, subordinated to supranational institutions, and subjected to sweeping social experiments, often in open defiance of the will of the French people. He has governed not as a servant of the nation, but as an agent. National industries have been stripped. Traditional institutions have been weakened. Public anger has hardened into revolt, visible everywhere from the Yellow Vests to the farmer protests that periodically paralyze parts of the country. He has waged war on free speech and presided over mass immigration policies that have transformed the demographics of major cities. Expansion of digital surveillance that now rivals anything seen in authoritarian states. Vaccine mandates with open contempt for dissenters.

He boasted that his government would make life “miserable” for the unvaccinated. At the same time, Macron has cultivated a carefully managed image of centrist respectability. English-language media has showered him with endless praise, even as approval ratings have plummeted. The modern political asset doesn’t need reprogramming. He only needs ambition, vanity, and the right people whispering promises of power and protection in his ear. Who would want a man like Macron at the helm? Those who needed a willing figurehead to manage, reframe, and ultimately dissolve France’s sovereignty into a broader, borderless project — a France no longer for the French, but for the architects of the global agenda.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Inside mRNA Vaccines – The Movie.
1 Hour movie. it may be shadowbanned (happened to me overnight). If so look on Steve Kirsch’s timeline.
https://twitter.com/stkirsch/status/1955425232413659281

 

 

RFK

Elon

NGOs
https://twitter.com/WallStreetApes/status/1955397400656482561

Net zero
https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/1955351128440213532

Tucker

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle March 3 2025

Mar 032025
 
 March 3, 2025  Posted by at 11:02 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  50 Responses »


Gustave Courbet The village maidens 1852

 

• Europe Unveils Rival Ukraine Peace Plan (ZH)
• UK, France, Ukraine Agree To Work On Cease-Fire Plan To Present To US (ZH)
• We Won’t Give Kiev Money Until Zelensky Seeks Peace – Lutnick (RT)
• US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz Suggests Zelensky May Need To Go (RT)
• Trump, Vance, and the New New World Order (Soukup)
• Musk Backs US Withdrawal From UN and NATO (RT)
• Without The US There Is No NATO And No Ukraine (ZH)
• NATO Chief Urges Zelensky To Make Peace With Trump (RT)
• Hollywood Celebrities Were Paid Millions To Back Ukraine – Orban (RT)
• Ukraine’s Future Now Rests With A New President, After White House Fiasco (Jay)
• US Approves New Russian Ambassador As Part of Major Reset Underway (ZH)
• Trump Impressed By Vance’s Handling Of Zelensky – WSJ (RT)
• Putin Ally In Secret Talks With Trump Admin To Restart Nord Stream 2 (ZH)
• Top DOJ Attorneys Involved In Biden-Era Prosecutions Demoted (JTN)
• Exposing Elite Degeneracy – Mr. and Mr. Macron (Karganovic)
• The Press Falls to Another Record Low in Public Trust (Turley)

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1896167156863381762

Rubio

Schiff

Kolomoisky

Georgescu
https://twitter.com/i/status/1895891169407877562

Rogan Elon

Mearsheimer 2015

Sachs

 

 

 

 

For three years, Europe has done nothing to establish peace in Ukraine, quite the opposite. They want to keep the war going. But now that Trump acts, they do too. Or they at least want to give that impression. Still, they don’t want peace, they want the fight to continue. That’s why they inject their voice at this point in time, when Trump threatens to get results. They call it a peace plan, but it’s a war plan. Given a chance, they will simply add some point(s) they know Putin cannot accept. That’s all it takes to provide a forever war. The idea of boots on the ground might be enough.

Perhaps the only way out for Trump is to leave NATO.

• Europe Unveils Rival Ukraine Peace Plan (ZH)

Is the UK trying to pull Trump into starting WW3? During Sunday’s security summit of European leaders to find an alternate peace plan to Washington’s, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced a “coalition of the willing” to step up efforts in support of Kiev. Starmer said he hopes this coalition will gain support and leadership from the Trump White House. “We are at a crossroads in history today,” Starmer said after the summit of 18 leaders – which included Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Starmer unveiled a four point agreed-to ‘peace plan’ (..though not agreed to by the US):
• to keep military aid flowing into Ukraine, and to keep increasing the economic pressure on Russia
• that any lasting peace must ensure Ukraine’s sovereignty and security and Ukraine must be present at any peace talks
• in the event of a peace deal, to boost Ukraine’s defensive capabilities to deter any future invasion
• to develop a “coalition of the willing” to defend a deal in Ukraine and to guarantee peace afterwards

But one crucial line in his remarks detailing the plan caught many people’s attention – the expressed willingness to put Western/NATO boots on the ground in Ukraine: “The UK are prepared to back this with boots on the ground and planes in the air,” Starmer said. He also announced a £1.6bn missile deal for Ukraine, saying this “support for Ukraine is unwavering.” His rationale was that “We have to learn from the mistakes of the past, we cannot accept a weak deal… which Russia can breach with ease, instead any deal must be backed by strength.” He further in the wake of the disastrous Trump-Zelensky meeting said Europe will have to do the “heavy lifting” – and that’s when he said it would be backed by boots on the ground:

The PM said his coalition “will intensify planning now, with real urgency” and reiterated that the “UK is prepared to back this with boots on the ground and planes in the air”. He said: “Together with others, Europe must do the heavy-lifting but to support peace in our continent and to succeed, this effort must have strong US backing. We’re working with the US on this point.” Speaking to journalists after the summit, the PM said he did “not accept that the US is an unreliable ally”, and that the discussions formed a plan that would see the US as allies. Of course, being this antagonistic to Russia – at the very moment the US is trying to forge ahead on peace – is in reality a scenario that eventually forces Trump’s hand to react. It also appears a deliberate effort by Europe to keep the US on a hawkish path, and to sabotage US-Russia talks in the process.

***
After essentially being kicked out of the White House on Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky went to London where British Prime Minister Keir Starmer immediately offered a warm embrace: ‘we stand with you’ – was the message after the major public clash with President Trump and Vice President Vance in the Oval Office. “You have full backing from the United Kingdom and we stand with you with Ukraine for as long as it may take,” Starmer, who was also just at the White House on Thursday, said in a presser with Zelensky on Saturday. “And I hope you’ve heard some of that cheering in the street, that is the people of the United Kingdom coming out to demonstrate how much they support you, how much they support Ukraine, and our absolute determination to stand with unwavering determination,” the UK leader added.

Zelensky is also meeting with the UK’s King Charles on Sunday. CNN and other are presenting this moment as a consolation of sorts after the “nightmare Trump meeting”. Currently, European leaders are meeting at Lancaster house, hosted by the UK’s Starmer, reportedly to work with Ukraine on a peace plan. The leaders in attendance include NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, French President Emmanuel Macron, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson. Starmer said Sunday before the meeting that Kiev and Europe will work together toward a plan to “stop the fighting” with Russia before presenting it to the White House.

The British PM told BBC: “We have agreed that the UK, along with France and possibly one or two others, will work with Ukraine on a plan to stop the fighting. Then we will discuss that plan with the US.” The fact that these European leaders are now talking about urgently drawing up an official new peace plan is without doubt due to the pressure of the Trump presidency as well as the controversial mineral deal and Zelensky’s apparent rejection of it. While these leaders may still not actually be interested in peace, given many of them have urgently called for the West to keep transferring weapons to Ukraine’s military, they are at least making a show of it as an alternative approach to Washington. This older interview clip of Zelensky is making the rounds again after Friday’s fireworks at the White House…

https://twitter.com/i/status/1891830368459792863

Meanwhile, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has bluntly acknowledged that the Western allies appear weaker and more divided than ever at this point, per FT: Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has warned that fractures in the traditional transatlantic alliance will “leave us all weaker”, while suggesting that the UK and Italy can together “play an important role in bridge-building”. “We are all committed to the goal that we all want to achieve — which is a just and lasting peace in Ukraine,” Meloni told Starmer at the start of a bilateral meeting before the summit. “It is very very important that we avoid the risk that the west divides.”

The Kremlin will meanwhile likely bypass engaging these European leaders altogether, in preference of continuing to deal with Trump on the cause of achieving ceasefire in Ukraine. Russian leadership also understands that Europe will ultimately fall in line based on whatever Washington finally achieves on the peace negotiations front, as has been the historic pattern, and given the US shoulders the bulk of defense funds and hardware for NATO. The US has continued to pursue bilateral talks with Moscow, yet without European or Ukrainian representatives in the room.

Read more …

Note: all these guys have terrible polling numbers domestically. Scholz, Macron, Starmer, Trudeau, Zelensky. The only one who does not is Trump.

• UK, France, Ukraine Agree To Work On Cease-Fire Plan To Present To US (ZH)

[..] perhaps in response to the latest toothless European summit, which Poland’s PM summarized best as follows…
*TUSK REITERATES POLAND WON’T SEND ITS TROOPS TO UKRAINE
*TUSK: SECURITY GUARANTEES FOR UKRAINE NOT DISCUSSED IN SUMMIT
… or in other words, once again nothing of significance was agreed upon, Donald Trump posted in his Truth Social account a quote from Gartner analyst Michael McCune, according to whom Zelensky now has “no choice but to back down and accept Trump’s terms” suggesting that Trump clearly is content with the outcome of the Friday debacle in the White House.

Earlier, from Jacob Burg of the Epoch Times:

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on March 2 that Europe must continue to provide funding for Ukraine to sustain its position during peace negotiations, while also committing to roughly $2 billion in export financing to supply Ukraine with 5,000 air defense missiles. Starmer hosted a security summit in London on Sunday with other European and world leaders as Britain, France, and Ukraine work on a cease-fire plan to present to the United States as an effort to end the Russia–Ukraine war. Starmer emphasized that despite the breakdown in talks at the White House on Feb. 28, the United States remains an important ally to Britain. “The U.S. has been a reliable ally to the U.K. for many, many decades and continues to be,” Starmer said. “There are no two countries as closely aligned as our two countries.” Starmer said he is working on a Ukraine peace plan intended to receive U.S. backing and warned that Europe must do the heavy work of defending itself.

Starmer’s March 2 summit of leaders stands in contrast to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s meeting in the White House on Feb. 28, during which U.S. President Donald Trump scolded him for not being ready for peace and not being grateful for America’s support in his nation’s defense against Russia’s three-year-long invasion. Starmer said he’s working on restoring discussions of peace and is using the breakdown on Feb. 28 as an opportunity to reengage with Trump, Zelenskyy, and French President Emmanuel Macron rather than “ramp up the rhetoric.” “We’ve now agreed that the United Kingdom, along with France and possibly one or two others, will work with Ukraine on a plan to stop the fighting, and then we’ll discuss that plan with the United States,” Starmer told the BBC, adding that he and Macron have both spoken to Trump since the latter’s meeting with Zelenskyy.

At the Feb. 28 summit, European leaders will look toward shoring up the continents’ defenses in defending Ukraine, including discussions to create a European military force to send to the war-torn country to cap a cease-fire. Starmer suggested the military force would include a “coalition of the willing.” While he does not trust Russian President Vladimir Putin, Starmer said he trusts Trump. “Do I believe Donald Trump when he says he wants lasting peace? The answer to that is yes,” he said. Starmer added that “intense discussions” to obtain a security guarantee from the United States are one of the three components of lasting peace. “If there is to be a deal, if there is to be a stopping of the fighting, then that agreement has to be defended, because the worst of all outcomes is that there is a temporary pause, and then Putin comes again,” Starmer said. “That has happened in the past. I think it is a real risk, and that is why we must ensure that if there’s a deal, it is a lasting deal, not a temporary pause.”

The summit, which will be held at Lancaster House—a 200-year-old mansion near Buckingham Palace—will also include leaders from France, Germany, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Canada, Finland, Sweden, the Czech Republic, and Romania. Other attendees include the Turkish foreign minister, NATO secretary-general, and the presidents of the European Commission and European Council. Zelenskyy received support from European leaders after the contentious Feb. 28 meeting at the White House in which a rare earths deal was abandoned and Trump told Zelenskyy to come back when he was ready for peace. After the Ukrainian president arrived in Britain on March 1, Starmer embraced him. “As you heard from the cheers on the street outside, you have full backing across the United Kingdom,” Starmer said. “We stand with you, with Ukraine, for as long as it may take.”

Starmer also pledged to boost military spending to 2.5 percent of GDP by 2027. Other European nations might follow suit. On Saturday, Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala said European countries must increase military spending to at least 3 percent of GDP as the continent faces a historic test in defending itself. “If we don’t increase our effort fast enough and let the aggressor dictate its conditions, we won’t end up well,” he said. In calling for unity among his European neighbors, Macron embraced more defense spending after saying it was legitimate for the United States to shift its military focus to China and Asia. “We should have woken up earlier,” Macron said. “I’ve been saying for years that we need a more sovereign, more united, more independent Europe.”

Read more …

“Zelensky needed to hear it directly from the funding mouth of the United States of America: We’re not going to give you money unless you’re here for peace..”

• We Won’t Give Kiev Money Until Zelensky Seeks Peace – Lutnick (RT)

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky was given a clear message during his meeting with US President Donald Trump on Friday, that further financial support hinges on Ukraine’s willingness to negotiate peace, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has said. His comments follow Zelensky’s heated confrontation with Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance. Zelensky visited the White House on Friday, intending to finalize a minerals agreement. However, the discussion deteriorated when he insisted that Trump back Kiev rather than act as a neutral mediator in talks with Moscow. In response, Trump and Vance accused Zelensky of “gambling with World War III” and showing reluctance to pursue peace with Russia, portraying him as ungrateful despite the billions in US military assistance.

In a Sunday Fox News interview, Lutnick stressed that US president made clear he “just wants to make peace.” However, he said that Zelensky did not come for that, and made “ridiculous” requests to Trump and Vance. “Zelensky needed to hear it directly from the funding mouth of the United States of America: We’re not going to give you money unless you’re here for peace,” Lutnick stressed. He added that Trump had tried to reason with Zelensky, stressing that the Ukrainian leader can’t say “[Russian Presiden Vladimir] Putin’s a terrorist and then call the guy up and try to make peace with him.” During the Friday meeting, Zelensky insisted on US security guarantees while fighting is still ongoing with Moscow. Trump dismissed these requests as “ridiculous.” The confrontation ultimately led to Trump cutting the meeting short.

Not only did the visit conclude abruptly without signing the minerals agreement, but it also raised concerns about the future of US military assistance to Ukraine. According to The Washington Post, the Trump administration is now reconsidering its financial and military commitments to Kiev. US National Security Adviser Mike Waltz also hinted at a possible shift in Washington’s stance, suggesting that Zelensky may need to step aside if he refuses to pursue a diplomatic solution. Speaking to CNN, Waltz stated, “it’s unclear whether President Zelensky, particularly after what we saw on Friday, is ready to transition Ukraine to an end to this war and negotiate a compromise.” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that while Washington seeks peace for Ukraine, some European allies seem to prefer prolonging the conflict to further weaken Russia. As of January 2025, the US had provided $65.9 billion in military assistance to Ukraine since February 2022.

Read more …

“Waltz compared Zelensky to an “ex-girlfriend that wants to argue everything that you said nine years ago, rather than moving the relationship forward.”

• US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz Suggests Zelensky May Need To Go (RT)

Washington is unsure whether Vladimir Zelensky is the right man to lead Ukraine at this juncture, the US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz has told CNN. The official argued that Friday’s tumultuous spat between the Ukrainian leader, President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance indicated that Zelensky may not be ready to talk peace. When asked by Dana Bash on Sunday to share his view of Zelensky, Waltz said that “it’s unclear whether President Zelensky, particularly after what we saw on Friday, is ready to transition Ukraine to an end to this war, and to negotiate and have to compromise.” He noted that it is President Trump’s conviction that both Kiev and Moscow would have to make concessions in order to stop the bloodshed. According to the national security advisor, during the US president’s meeting with Zelensky on Friday, “it did not appear to us that [he] was ready to go to peace.”

When pressed by a CNN presenter as to whether the White House wanted Zelensky to step down, Waltz clarified that “we need a leader that can deal with us, eventually deal with the Russians, and end this war.” The official added that “if it becomes apparent that President Zelensky’s either personal motivations or political motivations are divergent from ending the fighting in his country, then I think we have a real issue on our hands.” In an interview with Breitbart Radio on Saturday, Waltz compared Zelensky to an “ex-girlfriend that wants to argue everything that you said nine years ago, rather than moving the relationship forward.” Speaking with ABC news on Sunday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that he had not “had any contact with [Zelesnky] since Friday.” The diplomat stressed that the Trump administration’s goal is to bring Ukraine and Russia to the negotiating table, with the US head of state being the “only person on Earth who has any chance whatsoever” of accomplishing this.

“Don’t do anything to disrupt that, and that’s what Zelensky did unfortunately – he found every opportunity to try to Ukraine-splain on every issue,” Rubio stated, recounting Friday’s shouting match at the White House. Commenting on Zelensky’s demeanor at the White House on Friday, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told Fox News later that day that his altercation with Trump and Vance represented a “missed opportunity.” Addressing the Ukrainian people, the lawmaker added, “I don’t know if Zelensky can ever get you to where you want to go with the United States. Either he dramatically changes or you need to get somebody new.” The senator, who hailed Zelensky as the “ally I’ve been hoping for all my life” during the Munich Security Conference earlier this month, wrote in a post on X on Saturday that the Ukrainian leader’s “behavior was beyond unacceptable and [his] lectures are wearing thin.” Graham also lauded President Trump for standing up to him in defense of American interests.

Read more …

“Wilson’s goal, of course, was “global governance” under the League of Nations, a goal that the U.S. Senate, mercifully, denied him..”

• Trump, Vance, and the New New World Order (Soukup)

This past week, the venerable Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator for The Financial Times, used his column to declare the Trump administration and, by extension, the United States “the enemy of the West.” “Today,” Wolf wrote, “autocracies [are] increasingly confident,” and “the United States is moving to their side.” According to the subhead on the column, “Washington has decided to abandon…its postwar role in the world.” Meanwhile, Wolf cites the (in his estimation) august Franklin Roosevelt, as he complains that the United States “has decided instead to become just another great power, indifferent to anything but its short-term interests.” The ironies here—as well as the historical ignorance—abound.

To start, one would imagine that Wolf, an educated man with two degrees from Oxford, might know that it was his countryman (and two-time Prime Minister), Henry John Temple (i.e. Lord Palmerston), who declared in a speech in the House of Commons that “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.” Wolf might also be expected to know that this statement was repeated—more famously and more pithily—by Henry Kissinger, perhaps the quintessential American diplomat in the supposedly vaunted postwar order. Kissinger, like Palmerston and Trump (apparently) understood that a nation that pursues anything other than its interests is foolish, faithless, and, in time, doomed.

What bothers Wolf, it would seem, is that American interests are diverging from British and continental European interests. That is unfortunate, but it is also more than likely the case that this divergence is the result of Britain and Europe’s abandonment of the principles, values, and ambitions the allies once shared, rather than the other way around. For example, Wolf criticizes the speech given by J.D. Vance in which the vice president defended the traditional American dedication to free speech and attacked the British and European rejection of that principle. Yet again, Wolf might be expected to know that the American preoccupation with this and all other negative rights is something the nation’s Founders inherited from their British forefathers. If the two nations now differ on the importance of this fundamental right, then that’s hardly Vance’s, Trump’s, or any other American’s fault.

More ironies are found in Wolf’s praise of the now-dying postwar order and his citation of FDR as the architect of that order. While Wolf is correct that Roosevelt was one of two Americans most responsible for the creation of the postwar order, he is wrong in believing that the order was virtuous by design and that it played out precisely as Roosevelt intended. Indeed, he couldn’t be more wrong if he tried.

Almost from the moment the United States entered World War II, Roosevelt was planning how best to achieve the goal he inherited from his former boss and Progressive predecessor, Woodrow Wilson. Wilson’s goal, of course, was “global governance” under the League of Nations, a goal that the U.S. Senate, mercifully, denied him. Regrettably, Roosevelt shared Wilson’s dream. The political scientist and historian of the Cold War, Amos Perlmutter, wrote that Roosevelt’s “vision for a postwar world was neo-Wilsonian, totally at odds with reality. He would help create a new international order, presided over in an equal partnership by the two emerging superpowers, the United States and the USSR, and buttressed by the newly created world organization, the United Nations.” Like Wilson, Roosevelt sought to fix the world by bringing the whole of it under the control of a handful of its most benevolent and brilliant men—himself included, naturally.

The catch, of course, was that in order to believe that he could effectuate his plan for the postwar global order, Roosevelt also had to believe that it would be received positively by the man who turned out to be the most proficient mass murderer in the war, Josef Stalin. Remarkably, Roosevelt did, in fact, believe just that. He repeatedly told his staff and others that he was convinced that the man he affectionately called “Uncle Joe” would eagerly welcome his friendship and American entreaties to share governance of the world jointly. They would, he believed, be the closest of allies and the best of friends. In 1943, before ever even meeting Stalin, FDR told his first ambassador to the USSR, William Bullit, that “I have just a hunch that Stalin doesn’t want anything but security for his country, and I think that if I give him everything I possibly can and ask nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he won’t try to annex anything and will work for a world democracy and peace.”

Read more …

First, set the DOGE guys on them?!

• Musk Backs US Withdrawal From UN and NATO (RT)

Billionaire Elon Musk has publicly endorsed the idea of the US withdrawing from both the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Responding to a social media post advocating such a move on Sunday, Musk, who leads the US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), commented, “I agree.”US President Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers have vowed to reconsider Washington’s participation in the UN, as well as in the US-led military bloc. In February, Senator Mike Lee of Utah introduced the Disengaging Entirely from the United Nations Debacle (DEFUND) Act, proposing a complete US withdrawal from the UN. Lee criticized the UN as a “platform for tyrants” that attacks America and its allies, arguing that despite significant funding, the organization has failed to prevent wars, genocides, human rights violations, and pandemics.

Echoing Lee’s sentiments, Musk wrote on X that “America provides way too much funding to the UN and associated entities.” During his 2016 campaign, Trump described the UN as weak and incompetent, stating it was “not a friend of democracy… freedom… the United States.” Last month, the Trump administration opposed a UN General Assembly resolution demanding Russia’s immediate withdrawal from Ukraine. Musk, now a key advisor to Trump, has taken the lead in looking for ways to cut costs and reduce the federal workforce. In February, DOGE released its first savings report, claiming an estimated $55 billion in savings through cost-cutting measures.That same month, Elise Stefanik, Trump’s nominee for US Ambassador to the UN, advocated the global adoption of Musk’s DOGE initiative.

She criticized the UN’s financial practices and called for a “Global DOGE” effort to reform international governance. Stefanik also pledged to push for defunding and dismantling UN-affiliated organizations accused of corruption and antisemitism. Musk has also voiced skepticism about NATO. In February, he labeled the alliance “anachronistic” and called for a full review, questioning its relevance in the post-Cold War era. He also questioned the rationale behind American taxpayers covering a significant portion of Europe’s defense costs, highlighting that the US pays for approximately 67% of NATO’s military expenses, despite spending only 3.5% of its GDP on defense. His position aligns with Trump, who has frequently criticized NATO, urging members to increase defense expenditure and threatening to withdraw, arguing the US bears an unfair financial burden for European security.

Read more …

“The western split over Ukraine is a profound event in history. Some will say it was the moment the US “abandoned their allies” and let Russia win. Those with sense will say that this was the moment the US stopped contributing to the problem..”

• Without The US There Is No NATO And No Ukraine (ZH)

Well before the fireworks at the White House between the Trump team and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky European governments were increasingly discussing the possibility of an “EU army” and a NATO without US involvement. UK officials along with those in Germany and France have been playing with the notion of boots on the ground in Ukraine, an action which would no doubt precipitate WWIII with Russia. Political leaders and media proponents have been flooding social media to show support for Zelensky as the new savior of the EU and many have suggested that Europe can easily fill the void that the US leaves behind. This is dangerous delusion. For example, the US represents around 70% of the entire annual combined defense spending of NATO countries. No other nation comes close.

In 2023-2024, this expenditure amounted to over $860 billion. The closest NATO member in terms of budget for the alliance is Germany with $68 billion. NATO funding is included in America’s total defense spending package. According to RAND Corporation’s Defense Spending Index, the US carries 47% of the burden share, vastly outweighing any other NATO member. While NATO’s official budget is $3.5 billion, this does not represent the burden share if NATO goes to war. Members with the largest armies and spending the most on defense will be expected to expend the most resources in a conflict. The media consistently misrepresents the NATO spending imbalance by comparing NATO fees as a percentage of GDP. This is nonsense. The sheer amount of defense spending is what matters, not the ratio to GDP. When examined in true terms there is no argument to be made – The US is essentially the military cash cow for the entire western world. Without the US there is no NATO.

When it comes to Ukraine the waters are more muddy but the conclusions are the same; the US is expected to bear the brunt of the burden. US aid to Ukraine so far ranges from $120 billion to $180 billion depending on the source. Zelensky claims that $100 billion of this money “never reached Ukraine”. There is no verification of this either way. For now let’s assume Zelensky is misinformed. A graph of total expenditures between the US and other western nations shows the EU with a large amount of aid, but take a closer look at military commitments and it’s clear that the EU has spent a minimal amount on Ukraine’s actual defense. The US is the primary provider of weapons, ordnance and other equipment used to actually fight the war. Without the US, Ukraine’s defenses will suffer an expedited collapse.

To be clear, Ukraine is not entitled to US tax dollars or US military aid. Europe insists that the war must continue even without US help, but their ability to fund and fight the war is limited. They would trigger WWIII in the process, and they would lose. The belief that more money or more armaments will prevent a Ukraine loss or land concessions to Russia is irrational. Ukraine’s biggest problem is manpower, not money, and no amount of money is going to triple Ukrainian forces on the eastern front. A peace deal should have been negotiated a long time ago. For now it appears that the European elites are frantically trying to rally public support around extending the conflict and forming a centralized EU military. This will take them years and it will never come close to the same funding levels that the US provided. Not to mention, younger native born Europeans have no interest in joining to fight. The western split over Ukraine is a profound event in history. Some will say it was the moment the US “abandoned their allies” and let Russia win. Those with sense will say that this was the moment the US stopped contributing to the problem and offered a solution while Europe foolishly refused to listen.

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Too late.

• NATO Chief Urges Zelensky To Make Peace With Trump (RT)

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has called on Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky to mend ties with US President Donald Trump following a heated exchange at the White House. The meeting between Trump and Zelensky on Friday, which Rutte described as “unfortunate” in an interview with the BBC on Saturday, was originally set up to finalize a minerals agreement. It escalated into a tense exchange. The Ukrainian leader maintained that Washington should increase its support for Kiev rather than position itself as a neutral mediator with Moscow. Trump criticized Zelensky for what he perceived as a lack of gratitude for American assistance and an unwillingness to make concessions to resolve the conflict with Russia. The confrontation led to the day’s events being cut short, with the US president reportedly dismissing his guest from the White House.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio described the encounter as a “fiasco,” with Trump telling Zelensky to return when he was “ready to pursue peace.” “I said: I think you have to find a way, dear Vladimir, to restore your relationship with Donald Trump and the American administration. That is important going forward,” Rutte said, referring to a call he had with Zelensky on Friday. He reminded Zelensky of the support provided by the Trump administration, particularly the provision of Javelin anti-tank weapons in 2019, which were crucial in Ukraine’s defense when the conflict escalated in 2022. Without the Javelins, “Ukraine would have been nowhere,” Rutte stated. The NATO chief emphasized the importance of acknowledging the assistance from the US, which remains Kiev’s biggest donor. The US has provided $65.9 billion in military aid since 2022, according to a US Department of State posting on January 20, 2025.

“We really have to give Trump credit for what he did then, what America did since then and also what America is still doing,” Rutte said. The heated Trump-Zelensky exchange has drawn diverse international reactions. European leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, reaffirmed their support for Ukraine. Conversely, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban endorsed Trump’s stance, praising his peace efforts. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called the meeting a “complete political and diplomatic failure” by the Ukrainian side.

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New Oscars category? “..Jolie had received $20 million for her trip to Lviv in April 2022, and that Penn, Stiller and Bloom were written checks of $5 million, $4 million and $8 million, respectively, by USAID.”

• Hollywood Celebrities Were Paid Millions To Back Ukraine – Orban (RT)

The Hollywood celebrities who visited Ukraine to ‘support’ the country during its ongoing conflict with Russia didn’t do it out of sympathy, but because they were paid millions, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said. Stars’ trips to Kiev were paid for with money from USAID, Washington’s primary mechanism for funding political projects abroad, Orban said in an interview with Hungarian broadcaster TV2 on Saturday. “People were given money for their opinions. I am talking about big celebrities and movie stars. They were given money to go to Ukraine, so they did not do it from the heart or out of sympathy for the Ukrainians – which could have actually been the case – but because they were given money,” he said. The payments received by the stars amounted to “millions of euros or dollars,” the prime minister claimed, without providing any names.

Angelina Jolie, Sean Penn, Ben Stiller and Orlando Bloom were among the most prominent Western celebrities to have visited Ukraine since the escalation of the conflict between Moscow and Kiev three years ago. In early February, reports emerged on social media claiming that Jolie had received $20 million for her trip to Lviv in April 2022, and that Penn, Stiller and Bloom were written checks of $5 million, $4 million and $8 million, respectively, by USAID. Back then, Stiller rejected the accusations, calling them “lies coming from Russian media.” The actor insisted in a post on X that his visit to Kiev was “self-funded.” Penn’s lawyer also said that reports of his client being paid by USAID to meet with Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky were “completely false, misleading and reckless.”

Several Western media outlets, including AFP and Reuters, said that their fact checking teams had found that the claims of stars getting USAID money originated from a fabricated video and that there were no available records of the agency paying the celebrities. Shortly after taking office, US President Donald Trump launched a clampdown on USAID, accusing it of widespread corruption and inefficiency. He imposed a 90-day funding freeze on the agency and transferred oversight of its programs to the direct control of the US State Department.

Orban said in his interview that the activities of USAID in recent decades could be “the biggest corruption scandal in the history of the Western world.” “I have never seen anything like this before – when billions of dollars are being transferred from the US budget to foundations and various forms of support, and then they are being distributed around the globe and given to those who represent the ideals, spirituality, programs and specific interests demanded by the Americans, and they receive money for that,” he stressed.

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“Ukraine needs a new cookie monster.”

• Ukraine’s Future Now Rests With A New President, After White House Fiasco (Jay)

Rarely do we see such a showdown in the White House between a leader of an allied country and the president of the U.S. For many, it was surreal to the point where they questioned its authenticity. But if we were ever looking for a crystalized example of what is wrong with Ukraine and how the West got into this quagmire, it was all there in a tense, live exchange where Trump and JD Vance wanted to essentially use the moment to put Zelensky in his place. But he resisted. He believed he was a player and had many moves ahead of him. “You don’t have enough cards,” Trump exploded. Zelensky responded by “this is not a game.” And yet it is a game and Zelensky just proved himself to be the main, if only obstacle to peace in the country. The arrogance and delusion was stunning but understandable given that a number of western leaders have been rallying even more support for him.

Does Zelensky and his support base actually believe they can just ignore Trump and Putin and continue with their game? When watching the sensational crossfire, all becomes clear. The dictator is pumped up on something which carries him and leads him to believe that he is there to negotiate when in reality he is just there to be Trump’s bitch and sign whatever is given to him. The delusion was amazing. And like so many dictators, you can see the lack of preparation; where are the advisors and media experts to prepare him? Doesn’t need ‘em. The result, which could have worked out for him if he was smarter, was a bloodbath, a slaughter which in many ways made everything now clearer and simpler for Trump. He can’t work with Zelensky and so therefore, he will have to go as he is really the obstacle to anything being achieved in Ukraine. Perhaps the Russians already knew this and were just biding their time for the Trump camp to work it out.

Of course, the resentment was so thick you could cut it with a knife. The way JD Vance spoke to him was like you talk to your 12-year old boy who has been expelled from school. Trump and JD saw Zelensky as a creation of Biden and Obama of course and gave him one last chance to cross a divide and say ‘no, actually I’m with you guys’. But he couldn’t. Europe is of course to blame for making him feel so unique and irreplaceable and no doubt this will just make Trump more determined than ever that a quick fix to Ukraine will simply come in pushing for early presidential elections. Critical now will be how Zelensky’s cabal will stay with him or be peeled off one by one by a sweeter deal offered by Trump. Most likely, Trump and JD are already looking for their own replacement although it may well be that no interfering will be necessary as many Ukrainians will be disappointed with Zelensky’s performance.

Politically within Ukraine, the White House stunt will cost him a lot which he might not understand fully if his European support base is telling him not to worry. We’ve got your back. What Zelensky did in 2022 with Boris Johnson – to reject a very favourable peace deal – was foolish and will go down in history as a mistake which cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians who were fed into the meat grinder and sent to the front lines. But what he then did in the White House with Trump and JD was stupid beyond belief as not only did it enrage Trump – to the point where he actually asked Zelensky to leave the Oval Office – but it amalgamated support for him from EU leaders even more – the very gesture which will push Trump into an even more belligerent position.

sHe will put Zelensky and the EU in its place and now show the whole world how ineffective Europe is when it wants to play at being a superpower but doesn’t want to pick up the tab. Can Europe go it alone in Ukraine is not the question. The question is whether Trump will let it. This might have been one scenario which could have been bandied about and might have been given some oxygen, but now the EU position has to be tackled head on. Trump will be thinking ‘I have to teach the EU a lesson.’ ‘America is running the show and I call the shots,’ will be Trump’s thinking now. It is hardly a great act of prescience now to predict that Zelensky will now have, at the very least, lost all the U.S. support he had before; and at the very best a new political dynamic which will emerge in the coming weeks which will have a support infrastructure probably more than the puny 5 billion dollars that Victoria Nuland blew on the 2014 elections which installed Poroshenko. Ukraine needs a new cookie monster.

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I think the restoration of direct commercial flights will be a BIG step.

• US Approves New Russian Ambassador As Part of Major Reset Underway (ZH)

The two rounds of high level US-Russia talks in Riyadh and Istanbul in the last two weeks appear to already be bearing fruit, as Russia’s Foreign Ministry has announced it’s received approval from Washington to send Aleksandr Darchiev as Moscow’s new ambassador to the United States. Current bilateral US-Russia dialogue has been focused on fully restoring relations and putting back in place all embassy staff in Washington and Moscow, respectively. There had been several rounds of hostile mutual booting of diplomats as relations deteriorated under Biden. According to Russian media, “Darchiev, a senior diplomat with more than 30 years of experience, currently heads the Foreign Ministry’s North Atlantic Department. He previously served as Russia’s ambassador to Canada from 2014 to 2021 and has held several high-ranking positions within the ministry, including deputy director of the North America Department and counselor at the Russian embassy in Washington.”

This is no doubt part of the “concrete initial steps” being taken by both sides toward resuming regular contacts and diplomatic engagement, with a higher aim of finding a permanent peace solution to the Ukraine war. Darchiev’s predecessor, Anatoly Antonov, served as Russia’s ambassador to the US throughout much of the Ukraine crisis and the entirety of the war until now. He ran the Russian embassy in D.C. for seven years, and just recently returned to Moscow. Just as Moscow is poised for a reset with the US under the new Trump administration, Washington relations with Ukraine are at a low point after Friday’s Zelensky fireworks in the Oval Office. Russian media has been busy hailing and welcoming these developments, which may soon result in the following:

US President Donald Trump’s administration is considering ending all ongoing shipments of military aid to Ukraine, The Washington Post wrote citing sources. Military supplies could be halted “in response to remarks” by Vladimir Zelensky at a meeting with Trump in the White House and “his perceived intransigence in the peace process,” according to the publication. The decision, if made, would apply “to billions of dollars of radars, vehicles, ammunition and missiles awaiting shipment to Ukraine through the presidential drawdown authority,” an official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic, was quoted as saying. Ukraine frontlines have already been steadily collapsing, so without a future flow of American heavy weapons, this collapse will only accelerate, and the war would likely reach finality within a few months or less.

President Putin has meanwhile been touting the chance for “major” cooperative economic and diplomatic initiatives with the US under Trump, and as bilateral talks progress. Russia has even offered its own minerals access deal as a possibility of closer cooperation, and as Trump floats potentially dropping sanctions in the future. The next step may be the restoration of direct commercial flights between the two countries.

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JD got himself some new fans, not just Trump.

• Trump Impressed By Vance’s Handling Of Zelensky – WSJ (RT)

US President Donald Trump was impressed with how Vice President J.D. Vance handled himself during a tense Oval Office exchange with Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, unnamed administration officials told the Wall Street Journal. The politicians met on Friday in the White House Oval Office ahead of what was expected to be a celebratory signing of a minerals deal between Washington and Kiev. The WSJ dubbed Vance a “MAGA champion” after the confrontation in a piece published on Saturday. Vance sat mostly silent as Trump and Zelensky answered questions. But then a reporter asked the US president if he aligned with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. Vance, a critic of US aid to Ukraine, interjected to praise Trump’s diplomatic efforts and criticize past policy under President Joe Biden.

The conversation escalated when Zelensky pushed back. During the intense discussion, Vance highlighted Ukraine’s challenges in conscripting additional troops and said that Zelensky should be “thanking” Trump for efforts to resolve the conflict. Vance criticized his recent public appearances highlighting war devastation, accusing him of hosting “propaganda tours,” and labeled the Ukrainian leader “disrespectful.” The confrontation led to the day’s events being cut short.Trump has reportedly told White House staff that his former vice president “would have never done that.” Former Indiana Governor Mike Pence was vice president during Trump’s first term. Their political alliance ended acrimoniously over the January 2021 riots at the US Capitol, after Pence refused to comply with Trump’s demands to prevent Congress from certifying Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 US presidential election.

The White House later circulated statements of support from Republican lawmakers and administration officials. “I was very proud of J.D. Vance, standing up for our country,” US Senator Lindsey Graham said. While Senator Mike Lee called Vance the “GOAT,” an acronym for “greatest of all time.”The 40-year-old Vance is the third-youngest vice president in US history. His relationship with Trump has evolved significantly since the president’s first term. Once a vocal critic of Trump, Vance opposed his candidacy in 2016, calling him “cultural heroin” for conservatives and questioning his character. However, he later shifted his stance, securing Trump’s endorsement in his successful 2022 Senate bid, a move that cemented his place within Trump’s inner circle.

Last month, during his first foreign trip as vice president, Vance sent shockwaves with a speech criticizing European leaders at the Munich Security Conference, accusing them of censoring free speech and neglecting public concerns over migration.Vance’s relationship with Trump remains strong, though the president has so far demurred on naming him his successor. Trump told Fox News in February that he considers Vance “very capable” but noted that “there are a lot of very capable people.” However, tech billionaire and Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) chief Elon Musk referred to Vance as “our future President” on Saturday.

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It’s easy to get confused, but “restart” is not the correct term here. Nord Stream 2 was never activated. Neither of its 2 arms.

• Putin Ally In Secret Talks With Trump Admin To Restart Nord Stream 2 (ZH)

A close friend of Vladimir Putin – and like the Russian president, also a spy – has been engineering a restart of Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Europe with the backing of US investors, a once unthinkable move which according to the FT, shows the breadth of Donald Trump’s rapprochement with Moscow. According to the Nikkei-owned publication, the efforts on a deal were the brainchild of Matthias Warnig, an ex-Stasi officer in East Germany who until 2023 ran Nord Stream 2’s parent company for the Kremlin-controlled gas giant Gazprom. Warnig’s plan involved outreach to the Trump team through US businessmenas part of back-channel efforts to broker an end to the war in Ukraine while deepening economic ties between the US and Russia. If this was just some unilateral attempt to get the pipeline that was bombed by Western intelligence agents and assorited Ukrainian hangers-on back online, it would hardly be a surprise.

However, according to the report it appears that at least several “prominent” Trump administration figures are aware of the initiative to bring in US investors, and they see it as part of the push to rebuild relations with Moscow. While there have been several expressions of interest, one US-led consortium of investors has drawn up the outlines of a post-sanctions deal with Gazprom. Meanwhile, senior EU officials have become aware of the Nord Stream 2 discussion only in recent weeks, and leaders of several European countries are concerned and have discussed the matter, although it is unclear what the prevailing sense on the ground within the corridors of Brussels. It is far easier, for example, to guess what Germany thinks about a return of much cheaper and far more abundant Russian energy if virtue signaling and politics were not an issue.

One of Nord Stream 2’s two pipelines was blown up in what now appears to have been a US attack in September 2022 that destroyed both pipelines of its older sister project Nord Stream 1. The other Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which has an annual capacity of 27.5bn cubic metres of natural gas, is undamaged but has never been used. The latest plan would in theory give the US unparalleled sway over energy supplies to Europe, after EU countries moved to end their dependence on Russian gas in the aftermath of the invasion. That said, the obstacles are considerable: a deal would require the US to lift sanctions against Russia, Russia to agree to resume sales it cut off during the war, and Germany to allow the gas to flow to any potential buyers in Europe.

“The US would say, ‘Well, now Russia will be dependable because trustworthy Americans are in the middle of it’,’” said a former senior US official, who was aware of some of the dealmaking efforts. The US investors would collect “money for nothing”, he added. The talks come as the Trump administration races to seal a peace deal through bilateral discussions with Russia that have excluded Europe and Ukraine, spooking deep-state apparatchiks in European capitals who fear a US détente with Moscow could threaten the continent. Trump has promised deeper economic co-operation with Russia if a peace agreement can be reached. Putin has talked up the economic benefits he says the US could reap with the Kremlin in the event of a settlement in Ukraine, claiming that “several companies” were already in touch over potential deals.

Nord Stream 2 AG, the pipeline’s Swiss-based parent company, received an exceptional stay on bankruptcy proceedings in January by at least four months. According to a redacted court document, Nord Stream 2’s shareholder — Gazprom — argued that the new Trump administration, as well as the German election in February 2025, “presumably can have significant consequences on the circumstances of Nord Stream 2” to warrant a delay. The submission pointed to “complex geopolitical affairs” and the sanctions regime.

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“Martin, a Trump ally, previously worked to help Jan. 6 defendants and [DOGE] in their respective legal fights..”

• Top DOJ Attorneys Involved In Biden-Era Prosecutions Demoted (JTN)

Ed Martin, the interim U.S. Attorney in charge of the Justice Department’s Washington office, reportedly reassigned several senior leaders to entry-level positions. Among those demoted were Kathryn Rakoczy, Reuters reported, who secured convictions of several members of the Oath Keepers for their roles in the Jan. 6 riots on Capital Hill. Among those convicted was the founder of the group, Stewart Rhodes, who Trump pardoned along with 13 others previously convicted in the riot.

Elizabeth Aloi, who prosecuted former Trump White House advisor Peter Navarro for defying a congressional subpoena, was another prosecutor demoted in the Justice Department shakeup. Martin told Reuters that he needed to assign attorneys where he believed they could best contribute. The reassignments to misdemeanors, he noted, are not temporary. Martin, a Trump ally, previously worked to help Jan. 6 defendants and the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in their respective legal fights, including by helping to orchestrate the pardons of hundreds of people convicted for their actions on January 6.

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“Mr. and Mr.” I’ve been following Candace’s latest on X a bit, and it seems she may now be ready for prime time. But who will stand up against Macron/Rothschild with her?

• Exposing Elite Degeneracy – Mr. and Mr. Macron (Karganovic)

It goes almost without saying that the “elite” referenced here is located in the collective West. It would be exceedingly difficult to associate the leading segment of any other society or civilisation, as a class, with degeneracy. Our archetypal case study are the Macrons, the French power couple situated at the apex of their country’s political pyramid. Our French sources assure us that in France anomalies concerning the birth gender of the allegedly female member of that pair have been suspected for a long time. Those suspicions, however, have had to be voiced sub rosa, because of the establishment’s extreme hostility to any speculations on that subject. The few investigative journalists and investigators who had ventured to question those anomalies, many of which are obvious even to the naked eye, have been hounded by the media and persecuted by the French judicial system in a variety of vicious ways.

That plainly gives the lie to what remains of France’s historical reputation of being a haven of enlightened tolerance for diverse views. American journalist Candace Owens has assembled evidence that compellingly (and almost conclusively) demonstrates that the individual passed off to the public under the identity of Brigitte Macron, the official wife of the French President, is neither Brigitte nor a biological woman. Candace Owens’ professional trajectory parallels in many ways that of her colleague Tucker Carlson. Like Tucker, Candace laboured for many years in the ranks of establishment media until her conscience became so conflicted by the constraints on truthful reporting and honest commentary that for her remaining within the system was no longer an option. Like Tucker, Candace was able to parlay the respect and trust that she had built up over the years into an independent investigative journalism platform.

There, without censorship, she can discuss topics and articulate opinions that are off limits in the discourse of the pseudo liberal democratic world of mainline journalism that had expelled her, as it did Tucker, from the ranks of its licenced professionals. Intrigued by the rumours swirling around France’s “first lady,” Candace Owens made the bold decision to dig into the story and share the findings with her audience, which by now numbers in the millions. The result was Becoming Brigitte: Gaslighting the public, a series of investigative reports that for the first time brought to the attention of the Anglophone world the tangled web of lies and misrepresentations surrounding not just the true identity of Emmanuel Macron’s putative spouse, but also his own vertiginous (and it appears unmerited) rise to prominence and ultimately the Presidency of a major European country.

In essence, Candace’s disclosures are that “Mme. Macron” has been, so to speak, misgendered, but by deliberate design, having been born a male and subsequently undergoing surgical procedures to alter her sex. But by degraded contemporary criteria that revelation is standard fare compared to the really sleazy part of the story. It turns out that most of what we have been told about the inception of their relationship is provably false. Even the assertion in the official account that at seventeen Emmanuel was almost of legal age when he and his teacher, the allegedly thirty-six year-old Brigitte, “fell in love” is as false as “Mrs.” Macron’s official gender identity. Meticulous research has revealed that at the critical stage when he succumbed to the charms of his middle school literature teacher, Emmanuel was in fact a child of fourteen, whilst his seductress (or perhaps more precisely, seducer) was thirty-nine.

Not only does that significantly increase the age difference between the lovers, but more importantly it places the affair within the legal ambit of statutory rape, even by the notoriously permissive French standards. That, of course, is just the bare bones of the polemical contentions that Candace Owens corroborates with ample proof, leaving little room for reasonable doubt. No summary of the details can do justice to what Candace calls “a look back at the murky, hidden background of Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron,” so viewing the entire series of six episodes, culminating with the just posted incisive recapitulation, Epilogue, is highly recommended to all wishing to savour the particulars of this sordid tale of debauchery, deceit, paedophilia, and betrayal of the public trust.

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“Objectivity has got to go.”

• The Press Falls to Another Record Low in Public Trust (Turley)

We have previously discussed polling showing the media at record lows in public trust. Well, the latest survey from Gallup shows that the media hit another all-time low. What is most impressive is that plummeting readers, revenues, and layoffs have done little to convince the mainstream media that the problem is not the public but themselves. The only institution with a lower level of public trust is Congress, and that says a lot. It is like beating Ebola as the preferred communicable disease.Some 69 percent of Americans now say that they have no or little trust in the media. Only 31 percent say that they have a great deal or fair amount of trust. The trending line looks like the sales of buggy whips after the introduction of the Model T Ford. Gallop put it into sharp terms:

“About two-thirds of Americans in the 1970s trusted the “mass media — such as newspapers, TV and radio” either “a great deal” or “a fair amount” to “[report] the news fully, accurately and fairly.” By the next measurement in 1997, confidence had fallen to 53%, and it has gradually trended downward since 2003. Americans are now divided into rough thirds, with 31% trusting the media a great deal or a fair amount, 33% saying they do “not [trust it] very much,” and 36%, up from 6% in 1972, saying they have no trust at all in it.” In my book, The Indispensable Right, I discuss how journalists and journalism schools have destroyed their own profession by rejecting objectivity and engaging in open advocacy journalism. The mainstream media has long echoed the talking points of the left and the Democratic Party, particularly in its one-sided coverage of the last three elections.

While Bob Woodward and others have finally admitted that the Russian collusion coverage lacked objectivity and resulted in false reporting, media figures are pushing even harder against objectivity as a core value in journalism. We have been discussing the rise of advocacy journalism and the rejection of objectivity in journalism schools. Writers, editors, commentators, and academics have embraced rising calls for censorship and speech controls, including President-elect Joe Biden and his key advisers. This movement includes academics rejecting the very concept of objectivity in journalism in favor of open advocacy. Columbia Journalism Dean and New Yorker writer Steve Coll decried how the First Amendment right to freedom of speech was being “weaponized” to protect disinformation.

In an interview with The Stanford Daily, Stanford journalism professor Ted Glasser insisted that journalism needed to “free itself from this notion of objectivity to develop a sense of social justice.” He rejected the notion that journalism is based on objectivity and said that he views “journalists as activists because journalism at its best — and indeed history at its best — is all about morality.” Thus, “Journalists need to be overt and candid advocates for social justice, and it’s hard to do that under the constraints of objectivity.” The Washington Post’s former executive editor Leonard Downie Jr. and former CBS News President Andrew Heyward released the results of their interviews with over 75 media leaders and concluded that objectivity is now considered reactionary and even harmful. Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, editor-in-chief at the San Francisco Chronicle said it plainly: “Objectivity has got to go.”

Lauren Wolfe, the fired freelance editor for the New York Times, has not only gone public to defend her pro-Biden tweet but published a piece titled “I’m a Biased Journalist and I’m Okay With That.” Former New York Times writer (and now Howard University Journalism Professor) Nikole Hannah-Jones is a leading voice for advocacy journalism. Indeed, Hannah-Jones has declared “all journalism is activism.” This is why the whole “Let’s Go Brandon” chant was as much a criticism of the media as President Biden. There is clearly an effort by owners like Jeff Bezos to change this culture rather than bankroll newspapers like the Washington Post vanity projects for the left.

Robert Lewis, a British media executive who joined the Post earlier this year, reportedly got into a “heated exchange” with a staffer. Lewis explained that, while reporters were protesting measures to expand readership, the very survival of the paper was now at stake: “We are going to turn this thing around, but let’s not sugarcoat it. It needs turning around,” Lewis said. “We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. Right. I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.” The response from staffers was to call for the new editors to be fired. One staffer complained, “We now have four White men running three newsrooms.” The Post has been buying out staff to avoid mass layoffs, but reporters are up in arms over the effort to turn the newspaper around.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Malhotra

 

 

Rogan Bill Murray

 

 

Grizzly

 

 

Horsenado

 

 

First steps

 

 

Retriever

 

 

Gong

 

 

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Debt Rattle January 17 2025

Jan 172025
 
 January 17, 2025  Posted by at 10:57 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  94 Responses »


Jean-François Millet The Gleaners 1857

 

• Netanyahu’s Office Confirms Gaza Deal Signed by Israel, Hamas, US, Qatar (Sp.)
• Trump Played Key Role In Gaza Ceasefire Deal – Times of Israel (RT)
• Hamas Denies Netanyahu’s Claims On Violating Hostage Deal (RT)
• UK To Sign ‘100 Year Partnership’ With Ukraine (RT)
• UK and France Secretly Discussing Troops For Ukraine – Telegraph (RT)
• UK Promises To ‘Explore Options’ For Military Bases In Ukraine (RT)
• Denmark’s Repeated Threats Over Greenland’s Independence Bid (Sp.)
• Moscow Slams West For ‘Fantastic Hypocrisy’ (RT)
• In Farewell Address, Biden Brags (ZH)
• Pam Bondi’s Confirmation Hearing for Attorney General (ET)
• Trump Team Planning Roadmap To Ease Russia Sanctions – Bloomberg
• Far Left UK Government Proposes BANNING “Controversial” Conversations (MN)
• Sen. Ramaswamy? Vivek Emerges As Dark Horse Successor To Vance (JTN)
• Pete Hegseth Confirmation Vote Expected After Inauguration (JTN)
• Trump Names Three Legendary Actors As ‘Special Envoys’ To Hollywood (RT)
• The British Attack On The Skripals Didn’t Kill Them (Helmer)

 

 

 

 

Popok

Granddaughters
https://twitter.com/i/status/1879738402633101535

Yilongma
https://twitter.com/i/status/1879592734580953158

Leavitt

Sachs

Joe 2016

Bessent
https://twitter.com/i/status/1879934087064088636

1871

 

 

 

 

Let’s see you break it.

• Netanyahu’s Office Confirms Gaza Deal Signed by Israel, Hamas, US, Qatar (Sp.)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has confirmed that Israel, Palestinian movement Hamas, the United States and Qatar have signed a deal on a ceasefire and the release of hostages in the Gaza Strip, The Jerusalem Post newspaper reported on Friday, citing the office. The prime minister gave instructions to convene the security cabinet and then hold a government meeting to approve the deal, the report added.On Thursday, media reported, citing an Israeli official, that the Israeli security cabinet will meet to vote on the ceasefire deal on Friday, while the Israeli government is expected to vote on the agreement on Saturday.

Israel and Hamas, with the mediation of Qatar, Egypt and the United States, agreed on January 15 to a 42-day ceasefire and declared their intention to finally end the hostilities that have claimed the lives of 46,000 Palestinians and about 1,500 Israelis over 15 months, spreading to Lebanon and Yemen and provoking an exchange of missile strikes between Israel and Iran. The first stage provides for a partial exchange of prisoners, the withdrawal of Israeli troops to the Gaza borders and humanitarian aid. The second and third stages are yet to be agreed upon. Under the deal, the guarantors of the agreement — Qatar, Egypt and the United States — will establish a coordination center in Cairo.

Alon Piskas

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“..Trump’s envoy pick managed to achieve more “in a single sit-down” than President Joe Biden’s administration had in a year.”

• Trump Played Key Role In Gaza Ceasefire Deal – Times of Israel (RT)

US President-elect Donald Trump’s team has played a deciding role in mediating a ceasefire deal between Israel and the Gaza-based militant group Hamas, the Times of Israel reported on Wednesday, citing two Arab officials. Trump’s incoming Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, has reportedly managed to convince Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to the truce’s terms in just one meeting. On Wednesday, Trump announced that West Jerusalem and Hamas had reached an agreement securing the release of the remaining hostages. According to multiple media reports, the deal struck in Qatar involves a 42-day truce and an exchange of prisoners, including all Israelis taken captive in the October 7, 2023 Hamas incursion. Witkoff has been in Qatar’s capital, Doha, for the past week and has taken an active part in the hostage release talks, according to the Times of Israel.

Last Saturday, he also flew to Israel for a meeting with Netanyahu. It was during that meeting that he reportedly swayed the Israeli prime minister to accept the key provisions of the deal, two Arab sources told the news outlet. Two days after the meeting, both sides told the mediators they have accepted the draft deal in principle, the sources added. Neither Witkoff, nor the Israeli prime minister’s office responded to the Times of Israel’s request for comment. The paper also stated that Trump’s envoy pick managed to achieve more “in a single sit-down” than President Joe Biden’s administration had in a year. After the deal’s announcement, both Trump and Biden claimed credit for it. The president-elect called it an “epic ceasefire agreement that could only have happened” because of his election victory in November.

Biden called it a result of “dogged and painstaking American diplomacy” as well as pressure exerted on Hamas and the weakening of Iran. The outgoing president nonetheless credited the role played by his successor, saying that “for the past few days, we have been speaking as one team.” Trump’s team responded on X by claiming that Biden could not have gotten the deal done without the intervention of Trump and Witkoff. The US State Department also recognized Trump’s role in the development. “The involvement of President-elect Trump’s team has been absolutely critical in getting this deal over the line,” its spokesman, Matthew Miller, told journalists.

On Thursday, Netanyahu’s office accused Hamas of “reneging” on key points of the deal, claiming the Palestinian group had created “a last-minute crisis that is preventing an agreement.” The militants denied the accusations, saying they were “committed” to the deal. West Jerusalem intensified its airstrikes across Gaza shortly after the announcement of the truce deal. At least 32 people were killed in “heavy Israeli bombardment” on Wednesday evening, according to Reuters. On Thursday, the IDF accused Hamas of firing a rocket into the Jewish state, adding that the incident had caused no casualties.

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Two more days before it’s active.

• Hamas Denies Netanyahu’s Claims On Violating Hostage Deal (RT)

Palestinian armed group Hamas has rejected claims by the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that it is creating a last-minute “crisis” in finalizing the deal to release the hostages held in Gaza. On Wednesday, US President-elect Donald Trump announced that Israel and Hamas had struck an agreement securing the release of the remaining hostages. According to multiple media outlets, the agreement approved in Qatar involves a 42-day truce and an exchange of prisoners, including all Israelis taken captive in the October 7, 2023 Hamas incursion into the country. “Hamas is committed to the ceasefire agreement, which was announced by the mediators,” Izzat al-Risheq, a senior member of the group’s political bureau, said in a post on Telegram on Thursday.

The statement came shortly after Netanyahu’s office accused the Palestinian group of “reneging on the understandings” reached as part of the hostage deal and “creating a last-minute crisis that is preventing an agreement.” “The Israeli cabinet will not convene [to approve the deal] until the mediators notify Israel that Hamas has accepted all elements of the agreement,” it stressed. Israel intensified its airstrikes across Gaza shortly after the ceasefire and hostage release deal was announced, Reuters reported, citing the civil emergency service and residents in the enclave. The attacks came as people in Gaza took to the streets to celebrate the truce, which is expected to start on Sunday. At least 32 people were killed in “heavy Israeli bombardment,” especially of Gaza City, late on Wednesday, the agency said.

The strikes continued early on Thursday, with homes being destroyed in Rafah in southern Gaza, Nuseirat in central Gaza, and in northern Gaza, it added. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) blamed Hamas for firing a rocket into Israel on Thursday, with the incident causing no casualties. Israel began its military operation in Gaza 15 months ago in response to the cross-border raid by Hamas, in which around 1,200 people died and 250 others were taken prisoner. At least 94 of them still remain in captivity. Nearly 47,000 Palestinians have been killed and over 104,000 wounded in Israeli attacks in the enclave, according to the latest data from Gaza’s health ministry.

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The Brits still have a sense of humor.

• UK To Sign ‘100 Year Partnership’ With Ukraine (RT)

The UK and Ukraine will sign a 100-year partnership agreement during British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s first trip to Kiev since taking office, London has said. The British government announced the planned deal on Thursday, shortly before Starmer arrived in the Ukrainian capital on a surprise visit. The agreement that the prime minister and Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky are expected to sign will formalize “the unbreakable bonds” between the two countries, further expanding bilateral ties in defense and other areas, the government statement read. The treaty would “deter ongoing Russian aggression” against Ukraine and commit London and Kiev to increase defense cooperation, including on maritime security in the Baltic Sea, Black Sea and Sea of Azov, it stated.

Moscow has control of the whole Sea of Azov coastline after the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, and Kherson and Zaporozhye regions officially became part of Russia following referendums in the fall of 2022. Russian President Vladimir Putin and other officials have since then described it as Russia’s “inland sea.” As part of the deal, a UK-built Grain Verification Scheme will be launched in order to track down on what London called “stolen grain,” referring to the crops produced in Russia’s new territories. “We are closer than ever, and this partnership will take that friendship to the next level,” Starmer claimed before his trip. The UK has been one of Ukraine’s prime backers since the escalation between Moscow and Kiev in February 2022. It has committed 12.8 billion pounds ($16 billion) in military and civilian aid to Kiev and trained 50,000 Ukrainian troops on British soil.

However, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that officials close to Zelensky have privately expressed disappointment in Starmer for months over what they described as his cautious approach to Ukraine. According to the agency, the Ukrainian leadership has also questioned why it took the British prime minister, who assumed office more than six months ago, so long to visit Kiev. Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova previously said that Britain’s continued support for Ukraine is a sign that the UK government “clearly does not seek to resolve the conflict [between Moscow and Kiev]. They are doing everything possible to make it drag on, thus prolonging the suffering of the Ukrainian people.”

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There are still some warmongers left.

• UK and France Secretly Discussing Troops For Ukraine – Telegraph (RT)

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron have discussed sending soldiers into Ukraine as a peacekeeping force, the Telegraph has claimed citing anonymous sources. Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky first mentioned the idea last week, and said he would discuss it with Starmer when he visits Kiev. According to the British outlet, however, Starmer is not fully on board yet. “There are challenges over what we could support, what would we want to support, and the broader question about the threat that those troops may be under and whether that is escalatory,” the Telegraph quoted a Whitehall source as saying on Wednesday evening. Spokespeople for 10 Downing Street and the Elysee Palace did not deny that Starmer and Macron discussed the peacekeeper possibility last week at the Chequers estate in the UK, but gave no details about the conversation.

Starmer was in Kiev on Thursday, promising a “100-year partnership” pact with Ukraine. One of the rumored plans US President-elect Donald Trump might propose after taking office next Monday involves Western troops deployed as peacekeepers along the demilitarized zone between Russia and Ukraine, supposedly running along the current line of conflict. No US forces would be involved, only “European” soldiers not acting under NATO command, according to media reports that have been impossible to verify. Macron reportedly brought up the idea of “European” peacekeepers with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk last month, but Warsaw said it was “not planning any such actions.” Earlier this week, Zelensky wrote on social media that he had discussed with “key allies” the “practical steps” for the implementation of the peacekeeper idea.

“We are getting slightly ahead of ourselves. We are not there yet,” one British official told the Telegraph. Putting boots on the ground in Ukraine has been endorsed by former PM Boris Johnson, former Foreign Minister Jeremy Hunt, and two ex-defense ministers, Grant Shapps and Gavin Williamson. The UK has given 12.8 billion pounds ($16 billion) in military and civilian aid to Kiev since the conflict between Russia and Ukraine escalated in February 2022, and reportedly trained 50,000 Ukrainian troops on British soil. The British government’s continued support for Kiev means London “clearly does not seek to resolve the conflict,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said recently, accusing the UK of “doing everything possible to make it drag on, thus prolonging the suffering of the Ukrainian people.”

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Russia will love this part…

• UK Promises To ‘Explore Options’ For Military Bases In Ukraine (RT)

London has revealed details of a long-term partnership agreement with Kiev, which includes broad plans for military infrastructure development and defense cooperation over the next century. The document suggests the potential establishment of military bases in Ukraine, with an emphasis on aligning these initiatives with NATO standards for maximum effectiveness.The 15-page declaration, signed on January 16, 2025, lays out a framework for cooperation between the United Kingdom and Ukraine across various sectors, with a primary focus on military collaboration. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky formalized the deal during a ceremony in Kiev on Thursday. “The Participants will explore options for deploying and maintaining defence infrastructure in Ukraine, including military bases, logistics depots, reserve military equipment storage facilities and war reserve stockpiles,” the document states.

The agreement also emphasizes maritime cooperation, particularly in the Black Sea region. The UK has pledged to enhance Ukraine’s interoperability with NATO in the maritime sphere through joint naval operations, port visits, and the development of Ukrainian naval bases. “We will work together to ensure NATO learns the lessons from Ukraine’s experience in the Black Sea to inform its development of future maritime capabilities. We will promote the development of naval bases on the territory of Ukraine,” the document reads. Another section highlights plans to “deepen cooperation on long-range strike capabilities,” integrated air and missile defense, and the stockpiling of complex weapons to bolster “deterrence.” Additionally, London has committed to providing Ukraine with annual military assistance of no less than £3 billion until at least 2031, and “for as long as needed to support Ukraine.”

While the agreement lacks detailed, binding commitments beyond promises to expand, intensify, and facilitate collaboration across multiple sectors, Zelensky hinted at potential “secret” components within the pact. The UK has been one of Ukraine’s prime backers since the escalation of conflict between Moscow and Kiev in February 2022. It has committed 12.8 billion pounds ($16 billion) in military and civilian aid to Ukraine and reportedly trained 50,000 Ukrainian troops on British soil. Russia has sharply criticized London’s continued support of Kiev as a sign that the UK government “clearly does not seek to resolve the conflict.” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova previously said “they are doing everything possible to make it drag on, thus prolonging the suffering of the Ukrainian people.”

Meanwhile, reports suggest that US President-elect Donald Trump, set to take office next Monday, may propose deploying Western troops as peacekeepers along a demilitarized zone between Russia and Ukraine. The rumored plan reportedly excludes US forces, relying instead on “European” soldiers acting outside NATO’s command structure. London remains cautious about the idea of sending British troops to Ukraine as part of any peacekeeping force, even though Starmer is said to have discussed the matter with French President Emmanuel Macron, according to The Telegraph.

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“Almost No One in Greenland Wants to Join the US.” I don’t believe that for a second. They’re tired of Demark.

• Denmark’s Repeated Threats Over Greenland’s Independence Bid (Sp.)

For years, Denmark has been threatening Greenland every time the issue of independence is raised, the leader of the island’s largest opposition party, Naleraq, and former Greenlandic Foreign Minister Pele Broberg told RIA Novosti. “Every time we talk about independence, they [the Danes] threaten us. They say, ‘If you do this, you will never come to Denmark again; you will have no education, etc.’ We always hear threats when we talk about independence,” Broberg said. For example. He added that when his party ran for parliament seats in 2018 and he mentioned the plan to gain independence, the Danish prime minister addressed national media, saying that it was unrealistic. “Even to this day, Danish politicians say, ‘No, no, we will never do anything like that [give Greenland independence].'”

They don’t even seem to respect the self-government law as far as independence is concerned. But we have a problem in that there are political parties that are publicly in favor of independence without any plans but don’t really want it,” the official noted. In addition, Naleraq has a very clear plan to leave the Kingdom of Denmark, which is that if the party wins the 2025 parliamentary elections, it will submit an application for an independence referendum on the same day, Broberg added. “It may take two days, it may take two months, it may take two years. The plans we have developed are based on how we left the EU in the 80s. We voted in 1982, and we left in 1985. Brexit also took three years, and that is why we keep saying that the discussion is about a three-year period. The most important thing for us is to start the process itself,” the ex-minister said.

Washington has no chance to bribe the Greenlandic government to annex the island, the former minister added. “No,” Broberg said in response to a corresponding question. US President-elect Donald Trump, who is due to assume office on January 20, has called it an “absolute necessity” for the United States to own Greenland. Greenland’s Prime Minister, Mute Egede, responded by saying that the island was not for sale. Greenland was a colony of Denmark until 1953. It remains part of the kingdom, but in 2009 it received autonomy with the ability to self-govern and make independent choices in domestic policy.

Almost No One in Greenland Wants to Join the US. Only 0.0001% of people in Greenland want to become part of the United States, while 75% support the idea of independence from Denmark, Pele Broberg pointed out. US President-elect Donald Trump, who is due to assume office on January 20, has called it an “absolute necessity” for the United States to own Greenland. Greenland’s Prime Minister, Mute Egede, responded by saying that the island was not for sale. On January 7, Donald Trump Jr., the son of the president-elect, visited Greenland. Following the visit, Trump confirmed in a post on Truth Social that his son and members of his team visited the nation, adding that “the reception was great.” The president-elect posted a video in which people wearing baseball caps that read “Make America Great Again” responded in the affirmative when asked if they wanted Trump to buy Greenland.

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Still diverting attention away from Nordstream?

• Moscow Slams West For ‘Fantastic Hypocrisy’ (RT)

The West is spinning incidents in the Baltic Sea as purported evidence of a Russian threat, while putting a smoke screen on real attacks that undermine European energy security, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday. The EU and NATO have alleged that Moscow was behind multiple cases of power and communication cables being damaged in recent months. Western officials have argued that they justify bolstering NATO regional presence and imposing sanctions against the so-called ‘shadow fleet’ – ships allegedly involved in Russian oil exports in defiance of unilateral restrictions issued by Western nations. Western claims that Moscow is waging a sabotage campaign in the Baltic Sea fit a wider pattern of baseless accusations against Russia, Zakharova said. She told a regular media briefing: “Accusations directed against our nation are being habitually voiced before the circumstances of what had happened are established. We have seen this many times.”

She accused the West of “fantastic hypocrisy,” pointing to what she described as the “non-investigation” of the September 2022 attack on the Nord Stream pipelines. The energy links built under the Baltic Sea were intended to deliver Russian natural gas directly to Germany, before being blown up in what Moscow calls a “terrorist attack.” The US benefited the most from the incident and was likely behind it directly or through a proxy, Russian officials have claimed. In early 2022, US President Joe Biden declared that “there will be no Nord Stream,” if Russia used military force against Ukraine.

Zakharova criticized Brussels for swiftly demanding action against Russia over the cable incidents after showing no such reaction to the Nord Stream sabotage. “It seems that since Biden said that he would destroy this project, the EU believes that what happened was all proper,” she said. She also condemned the EU for reacting meekly to Kiev’s drone attack on a Russian compressor station last week. The facility pumps natural gas under the Black Sea to Türkiye and multiple consumers in Southern Europe. Attacks like that are seemingly being “condoned by the part of the EU, which has been acting against the interests of their own people for many years,” she stated. Such people would rather stoke fear in Europe over the “myth” of supposedly dangerous Russian ships than address genuine security threats, she added.

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Please go away.

• In Farewell Address, Biden Brags (ZH)

Five days before leaving office, President Joe Biden delivered a live primetime farewell address to the nation, highlighting his accomplishments and warning of emerging threats, including oligarchs and a “tech-industrial complex.” His speech, delivered from the Oval Office on Wednesday evening, not only marked the end of his presidency but also the conclusion of his five-decade political career. “After 50 years of public service, I give you my word, I still believe in the idea for which this nation stands, a nation where the strengths of our institutions and the character of our people matter and must endure,” Biden said before ending his speech. “Now, it’s your turn to stand guard.” As Emel Akan reports for The Epoch Times, Biden’s political career, which spanned decades and included serving as a senator from Delaware and as vice president under President Barack Obama, will come to an end on Jan. 20 when he hands the reins to Republican President-elect Donald Trump.

“In the past four years, our democracy has held strong, and every day, I’ve kept my commitment to be president for all Americans through one of the toughest periods in our nation’s history,” Biden said. Ahead of Biden’s farewell speech, the White House released a fact sheet outlining his administration’s record, highlighting a long list of actions, starting with the efforts to combat the pandemic. “Millions of Americans now have the dignity of work. Millions of entrepreneurs and companies creating new businesses and industries, hiring American workers, using American products,” Biden said. “Together, we’ve launched a new era of American possibilities.” Biden is leaving office with his approval rating at the lowest point of his term, according to a recent CNN poll. Only 36 percent of U.S. adults say they approve of how Biden handled the presidency, with particularly low marks on issues like immigration, foreign affairs, and the economy.

Biden stated that although a positive impact of his policies and spending priorities may not be felt right away, he believes they will produce lasting benefits in the years ahead. “You know, it will take time to feel the full impact of all we’ve done together but the seeds are planted. And they‘ll grow and they’ll bloom for decades to come,” he said. In his nearly 17-minute speech, Biden did not mention his successor by name but wished success to the incoming administration. “I’m so proud of how much we’ve accomplished together for the American people. And I wish the incoming administration success because I want America to succeed,” Biden said. Presidential farewell addresses are a longstanding tradition in American politics, offering presidents a final chance to reflect on their time in office, list their accomplishments, and provide parting advice to the nation.

As Ronald Reagan famously remarked in his 1989 farewell address, “There is a great tradition of warnings in Presidential farewells.” This tradition is a key feature of farewell addresses, where outgoing leaders look to the future and warn of potential dangers facing the nation. Biden’s farewell address followed the same pattern. “I want to warn the country of some things that give me great concern,” Biden said. “Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.” Biden referred to Dwight Eisenhower’s iconic 1961 farewell address where he warned the nation about the dangers of the “military-industrial complex.” “The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist,” Eisenhower said during his speech.

“Six decades later, I’m equally concerned about the potential rise of a tech-industrial complex that could pose real dangers for our country,” Biden said. “Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation, enabling the abuse of power. The free press is crumbling. Errors are disappearing. Social media is giving up on fact-checking.”Biden recently expressed disapproval of Meta’s decision to do away with its current social media fact-checking program, calling it “really shameful.” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg justified the decision last week in a video statement by saying that fact-checking has become “too politically biased,” resulting in censorship and a loss of trust. He also warned of dangers of AI, saying that it’s crucial for people to govern this new technology. “As the land of liberty, America, not China, must lead the world in the development of AI,” Biden said.

Biden also hinted in his speech at charges his Department of Justice made against Trump. “We need to amend the Constitution to make clear that no president, no president, is immune from crimes that he or she commits while in office,” Biden said. This marked the president’s fifth and final address from the Oval Office since taking office. The president last spoke from behind the Resolute Desk on July 24, when he addressed the nation to explain his decision to withdraw from the 2024 presidential race. Farewell addresses are a key opportunity for presidents to shape the narrative of their time in office, according to Tom McArdle, former White House speechwriter for President George W. Bush. “Presidents use farewell addresses primarily to try to write history before the historians do, and they rarely succeed,” he told The Epoch Times.

Their efforts often fail because the true measure of a presidency is shaped more by actions than words, McArdle said. It’s inevitably Biden’s performance that will define his legacy, he said. The president’s farewell speech comes on the heels of a breakthrough in the Middle East, as Israel and Hamas reached a deal for a hostage and prisoner swap, along with a six-week ceasefire, set to take effect on Jan. 19.Before he began his farewell speech, Biden took credit for his work in brokering the deal in the Middle East. “After eight months of non-stop negotiation by my administration, a cease-fire and hostage deal has been reached by Israel and Hamas,” Biden said. “This plan was developed and negotiated by my team, and it will be largely implemented by the incoming administration.”

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She was impressive.

• Pam Bondi’s Confirmation Hearing for Attorney General (ET)

Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi fielded questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee on Jan. 15 as part of her confirmation process to serve as the next attorney general of the United States. During the hearing, both sides of the aisle focused on concerns about the weaponization of the Department of Justice (DOJ), which Bondi pledged not to engage in. Democrats tended to focus on Bondi’s ties with President-elect Donald Trump and her willingness to maintain the DOJ’s independence from the White House. She also encountered questions about illegal immigration, national security, and FISA warrants. While the Senate is expected to confirm Bondi, Sam Dorman, via The Epoch Times, lays out some of the main topics addressed during the hearing:

Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi fielded questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee on Jan. 15 as part of her confirmation process to serve as the next attorney general of the United States. During the hearing, both sides of the aisle focused on concerns about the weaponization of the Department of Justice (DOJ), which Bondi pledged not to engage in. Democrats tended to focus on Bondi’s ties with President-elect Donald Trump and her willingness to maintain the DOJ’s independence from the White House. She also encountered questions about illegal immigration, national security, and FISA warrants. While the Senate is expected to confirm Bondi, here are some of the main topics addressed during the hearing:

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They don’t work anyway.

• Trump Team Planning Roadmap To Ease Russia Sanctions – Bloomberg

Advisers to US President-elect Donald Trump are developing a sanctions strategy to push Russia-Ukraine peace talks which could involve easing restrictions on Moscow, Bloomberg claimed on Thursday. Last week, incumbent US President Joe Biden unveiled a “sweeping” new round of sanctions on Moscow, targeting two major Russian petroleum producers, Gazprom Neft and Surgutneftegaz, associated entities, as well as 183 vessels involved in transporting Russian crude oil. These new measures have already caused world oil prices to surge; Brent futures have gained almost $5 per barrel since they were announced. Citing people familiar with Trump’s plans, Bloomberg has claimed that the future president’s team is currently considering two main approaches to future US sanctions.

In the first scenario, if Washington sees that the Ukraine conflict could soon be resolved, limited sanctions relief may be granted to Russian oil companies as a gesture of good faith. The other option, however, is to take a more aggressive stance by intensifying restrictions in a bid to put more pressure on Moscow and increase US leverage in negotiations. According to the outlet, the easing of sanctions against Moscow could include raising the ceiling on Russian oil prices above the current limit of $60 per barrel. Meanwhile, tougher restrictions could involve strengthening secondary sanctions or measures against ships that allegedly transport oil from Russia. Bloomberg’s sources noted that these plans are still in their early stages and depend on how Trump himself chooses to proceed.

Moscow has vehemently condemned Biden’s last round of sanctions, calling them “illegal,” with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warning that they could destabilize global energy markets. Responding to Washington’s move, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova also suggested that the outgoing president’s legacy would be defined by the “mess” he leaves behind. Meanwhile, Trump has said that a meeting between him and Russian President Vladimir Putin is currently being set up. with Moscow also expressing an openness to negotiations with the future US leader.

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Careful what you say anywhere.

• Far Left UK Government Proposes BANNING “Controversial” Conversations (MN)

The leftist Labour government in Britain has proposed radical reforms to the rights of workers that could include classing ‘sensitive’ topics of conversation in the workplace such as religion, women’s rights, or transgenderism as ‘harassment’. The proposed legislation would force employers to prevent workers from being subjected to such subjects by third parties, such as customers. If they are found to have failed to do so, they could face lawsuits under the legislation. Watchdog The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has warned that if it comes into the force next year, the proposed law could significantly impact freedom of expression and even be applied to “overheard conversations” such as those between two or more people in a pub.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1879129951988838575

The EHRC has noted that applying the harassment law in cases involving a “philosophical belief” could lead to problems owing to the fact that many employers do not understand such topics are protected by equality law. “The legal definition of what amounts to philosophical belief is complex and not well understood by employers. It is arguable that these difficulties may lead to disproportionate restriction of the right to freedom of expression,” the watchdog warned. A spokesman for the British Beer and Pub Association said in comments to The Times “Any legalisation must be carefully drafted to make sure it does not have unintended consequences, such as pub workers expected to decide whether private conversations between customers constitute a violation of law.”

Sir Tim Martin, founder and chairman of the pub chain Wetherspoons urged that the proposal “sounds like Big Brother thought control which would be a bureaucratic nightmare to enforce.”Martin added, “All beliefs which challenge the status quo are contentious. Newton’s law of gravity and Einstein’s theory of relativity were contentious at one point. Or Alexander Fleming creating the biggest-ever advance in medicine from mould.” “Humanity has progressed through these challenges and their subsequent debate,” he further emphasised, adding that “The cancellation of ideas is, in effect, a new religious commandment by those who think they’re not religious.” Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK remarked “Every pub is a parliament. It is where we discuss the world. If that is restricted they might as well all close.”

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“Trump himself had privately urged him to accept the post. Should he do so, he may not be able to work with Musk at DOGE.”

• Sen. Ramaswamy? Vivek Emerges As Dark Horse Successor To Vance (JTN)

Former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy disappeared from social media in recent weeks, amid reports that he could fill Vice President-elect JD Vance’s Senate seat. The reports come as something of a reversal as he previously removed himself from consideration for the post after Trump put him in charge of a planned new department. Originally named the co-chair of President-elect Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Ramaswamy was set to prioritize sweeping cuts to government spending alongside co-chair Elon Musk. The pair spoke boldly about finding $2 trillion in waste to help the country balance the budget and drastically reduce the size of the federal government. But Ramaswamy fell off the grid in the wake of a contentious and public debate between incoming Trump administration figures over the H-1B visa program.

Ramaswamy’s defense of the program and comments about the way Americans raised their children drew intense backlash from the MAGA wing of the Republican Party and led to pronouncements that he had killed his political future. But mounting reports suggest that he may find a viable escape route through the upper chamber and that Trump himself had privately urged him to accept the post. Should he do so, he may not be able to work with Musk at DOGE. Politico reported this week that Ramaswamy had met with Gov. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, to discuss the prospect of him replacing Vance. The Ohio-based Republican is one of the state’s most high-profile politicians not currently in office and has attracted speculation over a possible gubernatorial run as well.

Ramaswamy gained traction in the Republican primary, however, primarily as an advocate for reforming American foreign policy in favor of a more reserved approach. During that contest, he regularly traded barbs with former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and railed against the party’s neoconservative wing. He also developed a reputation as conservative firebrand on an array of domestic issues. DeWine, for his part, is widely regarded as a moderate and establishment Republican, making Ramaswamy an unexpected choice to succeed Vance. But the prospect of a Ramaswamy gubernatorial campaign evidently has the governor mulling a Senate appointment, to clear the way for Lt. Gov. Jon Husted, R-Ohio, to take over DeWine’s post. “DeWine isn’t incentivized to pick Ramaswamy for Senate, but Vivek is also the one roadblock to Husted,” one source told Politico.

Trump has not discussed the matter publicly but has reportedly encouraged Ramaswamy behind closed doors to accept the position, largely due to a consensus among Musk, the president-elect, and Ramaswamy himself that DOGE will need a stalwart advocate in the Senate. Ramaswamy would also fill a void left by Vance as a stalwart voice against hawkish interventionism amid the largely neoconservative upper chamber GOP. While an appointment from the governor would not put Ramaswamy before the state’s electorate for two years, his arrival in the Senate may not be well-received by some members of the chamber or Trump’s base. The tech mogul’s campaign saw him spar repeatedly with the establishment GOP, going so far as to use his opening remarks in a primary debate to call on then-RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel to step down.

Should he emulate Vance on foreign policy, moreover, he is likely to become a thorn in the side of hawkish leadership like his predecessor. His comments on the H-1B debate, moreover, are likely to make him less than palatable to some immigration hawks and MAGA stalwarts. Ramaswamy weighed in weeks ago in support of the visa program, contending that employers needed to look abroad for qualified manpower due to an American culture that he said valued “mediocrity over excellence.”

“Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer),” Ramaswamy said. “A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.” Ramaswamy’s initial X post was widely shared online and attracted tens of thousands of comments, largely negative, and accusing him of solely looking to defend the importation of cheap labor. Trump himself spoke in defense of the H-1B visa, calling it a “great program,” but his own remarks have not quelled the anger of his base over Ramaswamy’s comments.

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He did well.

• Pete Hegseth Confirmation Vote Expected After Inauguration (JTN)

Senate Armed Services Chairman Roger Wicker on Thursday said the final vote to confirm Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth will likely take place in the days following President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration. The senate committee held its hearing on Hegseth on Tuesday, where he clashed with Democrats, and denied allegations of sexual assault, alcohol abuse, and financial mismanagement. But Republicans appeared to rally around the conservative, including Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, who endorsed the nominee following the hearing. Wicker did not specify what day the vote would take place, but said it could be as late as next Thursday if Senate Democrats do not allow the chamber to speed up the confirmation process.

“I expect our Democratic friends will delay it to the extent to which they are free to do under the rules. Wednesday, Thursday perhaps,” Wicker told reporters, per Politico. “This is not something that needs to drag out. He’s got the votes.” Senate Democrats have not stated whether they intend to delay the vote, which would leave the Pentagon without a confirmed leader, but the committee’s ranking member Jack Reed said the chamber needs more information before voting. “We’ve made it clear we feel that there’s more information that should be provided, and not just for our benefit, but for our Republican colleagues too,” he said.

If the confirmation is delayed, it is not clear who would fill in for Hegseth after Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin leaves office. But the move is not unprecedented, as President Joe Biden had to wait two days after his inauguration for the Senate to confirm Austin in 2021. The potential delay also comes after Republicans insisted that Trump’s national security team should be confirmed as quickly as possible, citing recent national security concerns, including a terror attack in New Orleans.

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The industry’s imploding through woke and DEI. Maybe not a bad idea to try and save it.

• Trump Names Three Legendary Actors As ‘Special Envoys’ To Hollywood (RT)

US President-elect Donald Trump has named movie icons Jon Voight, Mel Gibson, and Sylvester Stallone as his “special ambassadors” to Hollywood, a position apparently invented by the incoming president on Thursday. ”It is my honor to announce Jon Voight, Mel Gibson, and Sylvester Stallone, to be Special Ambassadors to a great but very troubled place, Hollywood, California,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Thursday. “They will serve as Special Envoys to me for the purpose of bringing Hollywood, which has lost much business over the last four years to Foreign Countries, BACK—BIGGER, BETTER, AND STRONGER THAN EVER BEFORE!” he continued, adding that the three men will serve as his “eyes and ears” inside the film industry.

It is unclear what the position, which has never existed before, will entail. However, all three actors are outspoken supporters of Trump, making them rarities in a Democrat-dominated industry. Voight was a vocal supporter of Trump during the latter’s first term in office, and received a National Medal of Arts from then-President Trump in 2019. Gibson came out in support of Trump before November’s election, describing his rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, as someone with “the IQ of a fence post.” Stallone spoke at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate after the election, praising the Republican as “a really mythical character” and “the second George Washington.”

Hollywood has been mired in a downturn since the Covid-19 pandemic, with competition from foreign countries and streaming services chipping away at profits and forcing multiple studios – including Disney, Warner Bros Discovery, Paramount, and NBCUniversal – to announce layoffs over the last year. The number of US productions during the second quarter of 2024 was down 40% on the same period in 2022, and fell another 5% in the third quarter of last year, according to figures from ProdPro and Film LA. The US box office take fell to $8.7 billion last year, a 3.3% drop in 2023 and a 23.5% drop from 2019, according to Variety.

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“Weapon, crime scene, victim, killer, motive – all have been faked.”

• The British Attack On The Skripals Didn’t Kill Them (Helmer)

The war to destroy Russia has been an evil in which the British, Americans, Germans and French have combined for more than a century now. In the present stage on the Ukrainian battlefield, every weapon and force fielded by the Anglo-Americans and their allies has been defeated; the Ukraine itself, territorially and politically, has been destroyed. No serious Russian believes this war will be over when the incoming US president claims the personal credit for negotiating end-of-war terms short of the US side’s capitulation. About men like him and negotiations like his, it was the Irishman Edmund Burke who in his 1770 essay “Thoughts on the Present Discontents” issued this warning: “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”*

In the present war against Russia, the bad men have combined across the Atlantic and the Pacific. Against them on the information war front, there are very few good men – not one in the mainstream media, almost none in the alternative media. The power of state repression is only half the reason. The other half is the competition for money. In competing for internet media subscribers, even those tempted to be good will be motivated not to associate, to compete against each other instead, and thereby “fall, one by one in the contemptible struggle.” In propaganda war, the bad men must convince their paymasters more than their audience that they are winning. Reaching this point today has required a series of confidence-building, warmaking preparations – the putsch in Kiev of February 2014; the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 in eastern Ukraine in July 2014; and the Novichok attack on Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury, England, in March 2018.

The official narrative of Novichok, the Russian chemical warfare weapon allegedly used against the Skripals, has just reached its climax in London. A state-sponsored report will be published in a few weeks’ time. It will conclude that President Vladimir Putin had the means, opportunity and motive to kill the Skripals, and is guilty of attempted murder on English soil. But the forensic evidence which has slipped into the public record from the British intelligence and security services, the chemical warfighters at Porton Down, and the Whitehall staffs advising the prime minister proves the narrative and the indictment are false. Weapon, crime scene, victim, killer, motive – all have been faked. By the Anglo-American and Canadian law standards of reasonable doubt and balance of probabilities, the prosecution of the case against Russia should have collapsed. Except, of course, that in the present state of war, this hasn’t happened.

The new book, Long Live Novichok! The British poison which fooled the worldis the lone voice to explain for the time being at least; it is also the only platform to defend Sergei and Yulia Skripal as political prisoners of the British for the past seven years. Because they didn’t die after they had been sprayed with a British poison, they have been kept in hospital under forced sedation and tracheostomy; then held under guard, in isolation, incommunicado. Their telephone calls to family in Russia, made in a hurry and in secret, stopped five years ago. For the first time the book documents the British presentation in public of the poison weapon itself, revealing the clue of the colour of Novichok. This is the evidence that the murder weapon wasn’t Russian, it wasn’t Novichok at all. In today’s podcast from Canada, Chris Cook and I discuss the reasons for the failure of Novichok to kill anyone, and its success at brainwashing everyone, or almost everyone.

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Jeremy Kuzmarov, John Helmer January 15, 2025 by Chris Cook

Jeremy Kuzmarov and counting down to The Donald’s return; John Helmer and spitting out the red, white, and blue Skripal pills in the second half.

Read on Substack

Read more …

 

 

 

 

MAHA

 

 

Freeman


Nap time
https://twitter.com/i/status/1879642213476389367

Stray

Pastor

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle Quatorze Juillet 2023

Jul 142023
 
 July 14, 2023  Posted by at 8:55 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  57 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Femme nue couchée (Marie-Thérèse Walter) 1932

 

• NATO Ultimatum To Ukraine – Win By Winter Or Die (Helmer)
• Putin ‘Already Lost’ War In Ukraine, Biden Says (Hill)
• NATO Suffering Delusions Of Grandeur – Lavrov
• Russia Will Treat F-16s In Ukraine As Nuclear Threat – Lavrov (RT)
• Putin: Ukraine in NATO Will Create Security Threat for Russia (Sp.)
• NATO Summit Serves Up Cringe Nothing-Burger (Scott Ritter)
• NATO Can’t Exist Without An Enemy – Moscow (RT)
• Wagner PMC Formally Doesn’t Exist – Putin (TASS)
• Biden Offered Erdogan IMF Support To Ratify Sweden NATO Bid – Hersh (RT)
• US to Supply ‘Significant Military Equipment’ Soon – Greek PM (Sp.)
• Rampant Corruption Is One Reason Behind Ukraine’s Failed NATO Bid (RMX)
• How The End Of The US Dollar’s Global Dominance Will Play Out (Salikhov)
• New Twitter Files Contradict FBI Director’s Testimony (Turley)
• Drugs Discovered Three Times At White House Since 2022 (JTN)
• Hollywood Grinds To A Halt As Actors And Writers Go On Strike Together (ZH)

 

 

 

 

RFK TNI

 

 

Biden quietly sends 3,000 active US troops to Europe. Ukraine?!

 

 

Macgregor

 

 

 

 

Caviezel

 

 

 

 

Agenda 21

 

 

EP WHO

 

 

 

 

“Whatever is achieved by the end of this year will be the baseline for negotiation..”

• NATO Ultimatum To Ukraine – Win By Winter Or Die (Helmer)

For all its public talk, NATO has agreed on a secret six-month plan for Ukraine. It’s a case of do or die by December. Either the Ukrainian forces, firing everything the NATO allies can give them — from US cluster munitions to Franco-English Storm Shadow missiles and German Leopard tanks — will gain territory and advantage over the Russians; or else the Kiev regime will be destroyed and must fall back on Lvov while NATO beats its own retreat westward from the Polish and Romanian borders — its military capabilities defeated but its Article Five intact. This is hardly a secret. “Whatever is achieved by the end of this year will be the baseline for negotiation”, the Czech President Petr Pavel, former Czech and NATO army general, announced on the first day of the summit meetings in Vilnius. There is no more than a six-month window of opportunity, Pavel added, which will “more or less close by the end of this year”. After that, “we will see another decline of willingness to massively support Ukraine with more weapons.”

The difference between the Czech’s “more or less” was explained to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky by Henry Kissinger on the telephone. But the telephone was rigged, and Kissinger was talking instead to the Stavka in Moscow, in the guise of the pranksters Vovan and Lexus. After justifying himself at length for initially opposing NATO membership of the Ukraine, and then mispronouncing the word “anomalous”, Kissinger acknowledged there is a problem for the Biden Administration to combat European government opposition to NATO membership for the Ukraine. The Ukrainians must fight against that, too, he implied. So long as the US is backing Zelensky, it is necessary for the Ukrainian offensive to demonstrate small territorial advantages; abandon more ambitious ones (like Crimea); and only then agree to ceasefire talks. Although Kissinger told Zelensky he had been speaking with US “military people”, he gave no hint that they had warned him the Ukrainians are facing defeat on the battlefield, and the loss of both territory and European support.

The Russian General Staff calculation is different. At the current rate of battlefield casualties – announced by the Defense Ministry counting conservatively — by December 31 the Ukrainian army will lose between 75,000 and 100,000 dead, and up to 300,000 wounded and out of combat. In parallel, the destruction of NATO weapons will accelerate faster than the NATO states can resupply and deliver them, or replacement parts to keep the surviving stock going at the front. By the time Russia’s General Winter takes control of the battlefield, there will be too few Ukrainian fighting men left, and insufficient weapons and ammunition, to resist the start of the Russian offensive. A demilitarized zone of mines and cluster bomblets will have taken shape over several hundred kilometres west of the surrendering Odessa, Nikolaev, and Kharkov; they will abandon Kiev when Kiev abandons them.

The Russian target then will be to drive what remains of the Ukrainian regime, its flags, tattoos, money, and stay-behind terrorism plans, into an enclave around Lvov. The NATO window, as General Pavel called it, will have been opened, but then will be closed to keep NATO itself from catching cold. One of the unreported outcomes of the Wagner mutiny, and of the June 29 meeting in Moscow between President Vladimir Putin and Yevgeny Prigozhin, is Putin’s commitment to fight for nothing short of the Ukraine’s rout to Lvov, and the NATO retreat westward in the footsteps of the Grande Armée and the Wehrmacht. This too is incomprehensible at NATO headquarters.

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How are they going to walk this back in a few months’ time? Blame Zelensky?

• Putin ‘Already Lost’ War In Ukraine, Biden Says (Hill)

President Biden said Thursday there is “no possibility” of Russian President Vladimir Putin winning the war in Ukraine while adding he’s “already lost” the conflict as Biden capped a trip to Lithuania and Finland as a show of strength against Russian aggression. Biden, in a joint press conference with Finnish President Sauli Niinistö, was asked whether his assurance that Ukraine will be able to join the NATO alliance once its war with Russia ends might encourage Putin to drag out the conflict. Biden noted no country can join NATO while in the middle of a war, because it would drag the entire alliance into conflict — a stance Biden and his administration have been stressing this week as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky criticized the alliance’s resistance to fast-tracking its membership.

“The issue of whether or not this is going to keep Putin from continuing to fight, the answer is Putin’s already lost the war,” Biden continued. “Putin has a real problem. How does he move from here? What does he do?” “And so, the idea that there’s going to be what vehicle is used, he could end the war tomorrow. He could just say, ‘I’m out,’” Biden added. “But what agreement is ultimately reached depends on Putin and what he decides to do. But there is no possibility of him winning the war in Ukraine. He’s already lost that war.” Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, and the fighting has dragged on in the 17 months since with no end in sight. The U.S. and its allies have provided billions of dollars in support for Ukraine to defend itself.

Biden has previously argued Putin will not be able to win the war in Ukraine because the Ukrainians have put up a staunch defense in response to the Russian invasion, and his aggression has galvanized the NATO alliance. The president this week attended a NATO Summit in Lithuania, where continued support for Ukraine was at the top of the agenda. The U.S. and its Group of Seven allies announced plans Wednesday for security negotations with Ukraine to ensure it had the military support it needed in the short-term and in the future to defer further Russian aggression.

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“..apparently, we are not even allowed now to have a relationship [with China], or so they wish.”

• NATO Suffering Delusions Of Grandeur – Lavrov

The US and its allies are targeting Russia and China because of their strong relationship, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has claimed, citing the final communique from this week’s NATO summit in Lithuania. The NATO document stated that “the deepening strategic partnership between [China] and Russia and their mutually reinforcing attempts to undercut the rules-based international order run counter to our values and interests.” Commenting on Thursday during a trip to Indonesia, Lavrov said that “apparently, we are not even allowed now to have a relationship [with China], or so they wish.” The diplomat noted that the US had previously limited itself to referring to Russia and China as its “rivals.”

The NATO statement further justifies Russia’s efforts to oppose “modern forms of colonialism” and to advocate international relations based on respect, Lavrov insisted. “People in NATO are obviously not prepared for [the same approach]. Delusion of grandeur is expressed in all actions of the NATO leadership, as well as member states, frankly speaking. Everybody sees that,” the Russian minister claimed. Lavrov accused the West of attempting to preserve its hegemony and dress it up as a “rules-based order,” but predicted that multipolarity would ultimately prevail. He also alleged that NATO’s appetite for spreading its influence globally was causing destabilization outside of the North Atlantic region.

“They already have plans to build up NATO military infrastructure in the [Asia-Pacific] region, including in the nations that were invited to the summit in Vilnius… I mean Australia, New Zealand, Japan, [South] Korea,” said the minister. Canberra violated its own commitment to keep the Pacific free from nuclear weapons when it agreed to host “elements of infrastructure” related to nuclear arms under the AUKUS arrangement, Lavrov argued. Tokyo and Seoul “have been signaling that they would not oppose stationing American nuclear weapons or obtaining some of their own,” he added. The Russian foreign minister was speaking in Indonesia after a summit with ASEAN, a regional integration bloc. He claimed the US was pushing for the Southeast Asian organization to be replaced by structures under Washington’s control, so that it could undermine China.

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“The very fact of the appearance of such systems within the Ukrainian Armed Forces will be considered by us as a threat from the West in the nuclear domain..”

• Russia Will Treat F-16s In Ukraine As Nuclear Threat – Lavrov (RT)

Moscow can’t ignore the nuclear capability of US-designed F-16 fighter jets that may be supplied to Ukraine by its Western backers, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said. By continuing to provide more sophisticated arms to Kiev, “the US and its NATO satellites create the risk of a direct armed confrontation with Russia, and this may lead to catastrophic consequences,” Lavrov warned in his interview with Lenta.ru on Wednesday. The plans to supply F-16s to Kiev is yet another example of an escalatory move by the West and in itself is “an extremely dangerous development,” he stated. “We have informed the nuclear powers – the US, UK and France – that Russia can’t ignore the ability of these aircraft to carry nuclear weapons,” the foreign minister continued.

“No assurances [by the West] will help here,” he warned. In the midst of fighting, the Russian military isn’t going to investigate whether any specific jet is equipped to deliver nuclear weapons or not, he added. “The very fact of the appearance of such systems within the Ukrainian Armed Forces will be considered by us as a threat from the West in the nuclear domain,” Lavrov said. In an interview on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Vilnius on Wednesday, White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said “there will be the transfer of F-16s [to Ukraine], likely from European countries that have excess F-16 supplies.” A day earlier, Denmark announced that a “coalition” – which includes the Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, the UK and Sweden – would begin training Ukrainian airmen to fly the US-designed aircraft in August.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba suggested earlier this week that the first F-16s piloted by Ukrainians could take to the skies“by the end of the first quarter of next year.” Kiev has been pressing its foreign backers for fourth-generation F-16 warplanes for months, arguing that they are crucial in providing air cover for Ukraine’s troops and defending Ukrainian airspace amid a massive Russian missile campaign targeting military facilities and energy infrastructure. The US and its allies initially ruled out deliveries of the jets, saying the F-16 wasn’t the type of hardware that Ukraine needed, but changed their stance on the issue over time. In June, Russian President Vladimir Putin said there was no doubt that the F-16s “will burn”once they’re delivered to Ukraine, just like what has happened to tanks and other Western-supplied weapons.

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“I am sure that this will not increase the security of Ukraine itself..”

• Putin: Ukraine in NATO Will Create Security Threat for Russia (Sp.)

In early June, Zelensky said that Kiev hoped to receive a clear invitation to join the bloc at the Vilnius summit. He also said Kiev was disappointed that it had not yet received a clear positive response about joining both the European Union and NATO. Ukraine’s possible membership in NATO will create a security threat for Russia and will not increase security of Ukraine itself, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday. “As for Ukraine’s membership in NATO, we have repeatedly spoken about this, this creates threats to Russia’s security. Obviously. And as a matter of fact, the reason for the special military operation, one of the reasons, is the threat of Ukraine’s entry into NATO. I am sure that this will not increase the security of Ukraine itself,” Putin said.


Speaking about Western missiles and tanks supplied to Ukraine, Vladimir Putin noted that they ause damage but do not pose a critical threat in the combat zone. “As for the supply of weapons, various weapons, we see how many hopes were placed on the supply of missiles with a sufficiently long range. Well, yes, they cause damage, but nothing critical happens in the combat zone with the use of missiles. The same goes for foreign-made tanks, infantry fighting vehicles,” Putin said on air of the Rossiya 24 broadcaster. The president added that 311 pieces of military equipment used by Ukraine has been destroyed since June 4, and at least one third of those were Western-made. “I can tell you that Ukrainian servicemen often refuse to even get into these tanks, because they are a priority target for our guys,” Putin said, adding that foreign tanks “burn better” than the Soviet-made ones.

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“Zelensky confronted his erstwhile allies with the harsh reality that not only would the conflict with Russia not be ending any time soon, but also the growing realization that, when it did end, it would be as a decisive Russian military victory.”

• NATO Summit Serves Up Cringe Nothing-Burger (Scott Ritter)

The Vilnius Summit was intended to showcase the alliance’s unity and resolve in the face of the challenges presented by Russia and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. There had been a great deal of discussion prior to the summit about the prospects of Ukrainian membership in NATO. It was understood by all parties that, while the conflict between Ukraine and Russia remained in an active phase, Ukrainian membership was impossible, if for no other reason that, under Article 5 of the NATO charter, NATO would immediately find itself in a war with Russia which had a good chance of going nuclear. The working premise going into the Vilnius Summit was that NATO would empower Ukraine to carry out a massive counteroffensive designed to break through the Russian defenses and drive to the Sea of Azov, thereby severing the land bridge between Crimea and Russia, forcing Russia to negotiate an end to the conflict.

At that juncture, having “frozen” the conflict on terms that would be unfavorable to Russia, NATO would extend an invitation to Ukraine for membership, thereby shrouding Ukraine’s gains with Article 5 protections while effectively checking any future Russian offensive operations. In the weeks leading up to the summit, Ukraine was desperately trying to do its part, throwing its newly constituted NATO-trained and equipped assault brigades at prepared Russian defenses in actions which made the infamous “Charge of the Light Brigade” seem like the epitome of military planning and execution by comparison. With much of its NATO-provided weaponry, including the much-touted Leopard tanks and Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, destroyed or damaged without ever reaching the main Russian defensive positions, and some 20,000 Ukrainian casualties, the Ukrainian counteroffensive fizzled out.

Instead of presenting his NATO partners with a decisive Ukrainian victory, Zelensky confronted his erstwhile allies with the harsh reality that not only would the conflict with Russia not be ending any time soon, but also the growing realization that, when it did end, it would be as a decisive Russian military victory. Confronted with this reality, NATO sought to soften expectations about Ukrainian membership. Rather than provide Ukraine with a concrete road map to membership, NATO declared that it would extend an invitation to Ukraine when “conditions are met”, one of which is that the conflict with Russia must be over. NATO offered up as a consolation prize the establishment of a NATO-Ukraine Council “to advance political dialogue, engagement, cooperation, and Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO,” and promised to “continue our support for as long as it takes.”

Scott Ritter

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“..catastrophic consequences for European security, Ukraine, and the alliance itself.”

• NATO Can’t Exist Without An Enemy – Moscow (RT)

NATO needs enemies so it could justify its existence, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Aleksandr Grushko said on Thursday, reflecting on the Western bloc’s recent meeting in neighboring Lithuania. “Expansion is one of the instruments used by NATO countries to maintain confrontation,” Grushko told Russia’s Channel One. “Therefore, unfortunately, history has forced us to conclude that NATO cannot exist without an adversary. Otherwise, it would lose all meaning.” Grushko stressed that the admission of Ukraine into the US-led bloc would have “catastrophic consequences for European security, Ukraine, and the alliance itself.” At the same time, Western countries use the prospect of NATO membership as a way to control Ukraine’s domestic politics, the diplomat argued.


Although NATO has refused to grant an immediate membership or a concrete accession timetable to Kiev, the bloc’s members affirmed at the summit in Vilnius on Tuesday that the country would be invited to join in the future. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that Ukraine was “closer to NATO than ever before.” Russia considers NATO’s expansion eastward a threat to its own national security, and has warned that the delivery of heavy weapons and other military aid to Ukraine makes the alliance a de facto participant in the conflict. Western countries insist that NATO is a strictly defensive alliance and claims that it poses no threat to Russia.

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“..there is no such legal entity.””The [Wagner] Group exists, but it is judicially non-existent..”

• Wagner PMC Formally Doesn’t Exist – Putin (TASS)

Legalizing private military companies is a complicated issue that should be handled by the government and the parliament, because formally companies such as Wagner PMC are non-existent in Russia at this point, Russian President Vladimir Putin was quoted as saying. Kommersant’s special correspondent Andrey Kolesnikov quoted the Russian president as saying in response to a question about the organization’s future that, from the point of view of the Russian legislation, “Wagner PMC does not exist.” The president explained that Russia has no law on private military companies and, therefore, “there is no such legal entity.””The [Wagner] Group exists, but it is judicially non-existent,” the report quotes Putin as saying.


“The formal legalization is a separate issue that should be addressed by the State Duma [the lower chamber of the Russian parliament] and the government. It’s a complicated issue.” The president believes that the Wagner Group controversy “is very simple and clear for [members of] the Russian society.” “Wagner’s ordinary members were fighting with dignity… so it is very regrettable that they became embroiled into these events,” Putin added. On Thursday, the Russian president took part in the plenary session of the Future Technologies Forum. After the event was over, he had a conversation with Russian journalists. Excerpts of the talk, where the issue of Ukraine, NATO and the grain deal were raised, were published by the Kremlin website and aired by the Rosssiya-24 television channel.

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Erdogan is in big financial trouble.

• Biden Offered Erdogan IMF Support To Ratify Sweden NATO Bid – Hersh (RT)

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh claimed on Thursday that US President Joe Biden offered his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan more than $11 billion in IMF assistance to ratify Sweden’s bid to join the NATO bloc. In an article posted to his Substack account, Hersh wrote that he had been informed by an anonymous source that “Biden promised that a much-needed $11-13 billion line of credit” would be established for Türkiye by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This was to be in return, Hersh suggested, for Erdogan removing Ankara’s objection to Stockholm joining the US-led military bloc ahead of the NATO summit that took place this week in Lithuania.

Erdogan, who was re-elected as Turkish leader in late May, is currently facing the mammoth task of replacing or repairing hundreds of thousands of buildings damaged or destroyed in February’s earthquakes in which at least 50,000 lost their lives. Türkiye had previously opposed Sweden’s accession to the bloc, largely due to Ankara’s stance that Stockholm has harbored militants from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) which was involved in an armed conflict with the Turkish state in the 1980s. The PKK has been designated a terrorist organization by Türkiye, Sweden, Europe and the United States. “What could be better for Erdogan,” Hersh wrote of the American and Turkish presidents’ alleged arrangement, quoting an official familiar with it, than him “finally having seen the light and realizing he is better off with NATO and Western Europe?”

The report also referenced a June financial analysis of Ankara’s coffers by the independent think tank Council on Foreign Relations, which cast a dire economic outlook for Erdogan to navigate in the early stages of his latest term as leader. It said that Türkiye stands on the precipice of an “imminent financial crisis” and if facing a choice “between selling its gold, an avoidable default, or swallowing the bitter pill of a complete policy reversal and possibly an IMF program.” Hersh, 86, generated headlines earlier this year when he claimed he had been informed –also by an anonymous source– that the United States was responsible for last year’s explosions that neutered the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines that supply energy from Russia to Europe. Washington dismissed the claims as “complete fiction.”

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To balance out the support for Turkey…

• US to Supply ‘Significant Military Equipment’ Soon – Greek PM (Sp.)

The United States will soon provide Greece with “significant military equipment” for free, announced Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. “I mean not only the approval of [the delivery of] F-35 [fighter jets], which is very important, but also the possibility of getting surplus [military] equipment, significant surplus equipment that will be given to us for free. That is what the US is doing and has every reason to do it to a greater extent for a good ally like Greece,” Mitsotakis said in an interview with Greek broadcaster while expressing hope that F-35s would be delivered in 2028. The prime minister noted that Athens was engaged in talks with Washington, having signed “a very strong defense agreement for five years,” adding that he believed Greece hopes for support “regardless of what happens in the negotiations with Turkiye.”

Mitsotakis also said that the construction of French-made Belharra-class frigates for Greece was ahead of schedule, adding that the first frigate would be delivered in September. He noted that Athens are aimed at having “a very strong deterrence capacity,” adding that he believed Greece “has been able to achieve that at a rapid pace.” In 2019 and 2021, Washington and Athens amended the Mutual Defense Cooperation Agreement, which allowed the US to establish new military bases on the territory of Greece and expanded the term of the agreement from one to five years. Until 2019, the US had only one military base in Greece but now has nine. The US was granted access to the port of Alexandroupolis in the north of the country, which is used for the delivery of military equipment to Eastern Europe and Ukraine. Mitsotakis then said that the amended agreement made Greece Washington’s main partner in the region.

Greece is implementing 19 arms procurement programs worth 11.5 billion euros ($12.9 billion). Among them are the purchase of 24 French-made Rafale fighter aircraft, Belharra-class frigates and the modernization of 83 F-16 Block 52+ and 52+ Advanced fighters to the Viper variant — the most advanced variant of F-16. The Greek air force already received two F-16 Viper fighters in September 2022. Moreover, Athens is planning to purchase over 20 F-35 fifth-generation fighters.

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Ukraine has never been more corrupt. The enormous influx of money and weapons systems guarantees it.

• Rampant Corruption Is One Reason Behind Ukraine’s Failed NATO Bid (RMX)

Ukraine must implement reforms to fight corruption and strengthen its institutions if it wants to be eligible to join NATO, said Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, during the second day of the NATO summit in Vilnius. Von der Leyen encouraged Ukraine to implement further reforms and pledged the support of the European Union. According to Hungarian newspaper Magyar Nemzet, von der Leyen’s statement “said in plain language that there was still so much corruption and opacity in Ukraine’s institutions that it could not yet get the green light to join NATO or the European Union.” However, the paper also noted that von der Leyen noted the country’s efforts were appreciated and it had made a lot of progress.

The European Commission already identified systemic corruption in Ukraine in 2021. Although the EU had launched a number of initiatives to reduce the potential for corruption and proposed a wide range of measures, the EU commission’s report at the time found that no progress had been made on this issue in 2021. At that time, there was a significant decline in the judiciary, and anti-corruption institutions were also under threat, according to the report. The authors also noted that oligarchs and vested interests are the biggest problem, as they are an obstacle to the rule of law and economic development in Ukraine.

Brussels is keen to bring Ukraine into the European Union. However, even EU officials do not dare mention in their reports anything concrete or substantial to suggest that Ukraine is ready for integration, and Von der Leyen’s remarks indicate that the situation has still not improved. As Remix News reported last week, the Federation of Employers of Ukraine, representing Ukrainian entrepreneurs, issued an appeal to President Volodymyr Zelensky, demanding action to curb the abuse of power by government officials. The abuse of power by military officials and judges has crossed all lines, according to Ukrainian entrepreneurs, who are calling for the establishment of a public registry to identify corrupt officials. They further argue that corruption on an unprecedented scale is eroding Ukraine’s defensive capabilities.

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Anybody’s guess.

• How The End Of The US Dollar’s Global Dominance Will Play Out (Salikhov)

A more important factor than the nominal share of the US dollar in international reserves is the changing approach to the management and accumulation of foreign assets. The same IMF data shows that the total value of central bank reserves has remained virtually unchanged at $11.5-12 trillion over the past decade, even as the global economy has grown. China’s foreign exchange reserves peaked at $4 trillion in 2014 and have been declining ever since. Their current value is $3.2 trillion, down 20% from 2014. Many other developing countries are not increasing their international reserves, if not reducing them. This does not mean, however, that external assets are not being created.

They can be formed in “non-standard” forms, such as assets of sovereign wealth funds, state banks, development institutions and other structures not directly related to central banks. Foreign direct investment by government structures can also be classified as a type of reserve asset. Such a strategy is not aimed at maximising the availability and liquidity of assets, but at securing one’s own economic interests in foreign markets. To some extent, it provides greater protection against the political risks of asset freezes, as their legal status is less transparent. A similar strategy is being pursued by China, which is seeking to gradually “internationalize” its currency. Formally, the yuan’s share of central banks’ international reserves is small, amounting to no more than 3%. Moreover, between a third and a half of this demand is provided by the Bank of Russia.

China’s strategy is to secure the international status of the RMB through trade rather than investment. In recent years, China has actively sought to motivate and encourage its partners to trade in RMB rather than other currencies. This is being done in a number of ways, including infrastructure development, its own analogue of the SWIFT system, development of clearing, international lending in the currency and so on. Many people have heard of the term “petroyuan” – an analogue of the petrodollar. In essence, it is the signing of long-term contracts for the supply of oil in yuan in return for a flow of goods and equipment. So, trade is already being conducted in yuan rather than US dollars. This creates demand outside the Chinese economy. At the same time, the Chinese authorities maintain restrictions on capital transactions.

***
The de-dollarization of the global financial system will continue. This will be facilitated in particular by progress in financial technology. The development of automated trading platforms will reduce the cost of exchanging one currency for another. Central banks will seek to directly clear each other’s currencies without directly using the currencies of Western countries. In the future, central banks’ digital currencies may also be used for international transactions, reducing costs for economic agents. However, this process will be slow and we should not expect a fundamental change in the global financial system in the foreseeable future.

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“..when there’s a glitch, and the accounts remain up, the FBI immediately writes back and says, what’s the deal? We just wrote to you, why is it still up?”

• New Twitter Files Contradict FBI Director’s Testimony (Turley)

Yesterday’s hearing with FBI Director Christopher Wray was another maddening experience of faux contrition and open evasion. Wray apologized for violations that have already been established by courts or Congress (often over the best efforts of the FBI). However, on ample public evidence of new violations, Wray continued to use his favorite testimonial trilogy to dismiss any questions: expressing (1) lack of knowledge, (2) ongoing investigations, and (3) promises of later answers or briefings. He did, however, hold forth in detail after Rep. Eric Swalwell asked him about FBI Family Day. Despite the near total lack of substance, Wray did make one surprising denial. He insisted that the FBI does not engage in censorship efforts, focuses only on “foreign disinformation,” and does not pressure companies to censor others.

Those denials are not only directly contradicted by the recent 155-page opinion of a federal court and the Twitter Files, but a new release from the Twitter Files and journalist Matt Taibbi. Wray said that “…The FBI is not in the business of moderating content, or causing any social media company to suppress or censor.” He then added that these companies are not under any pressure in making their own decisions whether to censor people or groups flagged by the FBI. The statement is obviously false. The FBI maintained a large operation of agents actively seeking the censorship of thousands, as discussed in my prior testimony. Taibbi, however, has released another example of how aggressive the FBI was with social media companies. In the latest Twitter Files release, there is one email exchange where Twitter “immediately” suspended accounts flagged by the FBI without investigation.

Taibbi explained: “In one shot, you can see the FBI asks to remove three accounts, that gets forwarded to Twitter, Twitter immediately suspends them, the accounts. But more importantly, when there’s a glitch, and the accounts remain up, the FBI immediately writes back and says, what’s the deal? We just wrote to you, why is it still up? So, that shows the nature of the relationship basically that it’s not really a collaboration. It’s much more like somebody reporting to an authority. … [W]hat happens in these instances in the ones that I was showing, they’re just forwarding names of accounts that they say are associated with foreign threat actors. It’s very vague. And Twitter is taking them down before they even investigate. In this case, they later determined that they couldn’t find anything connecting them to any bad actors. In fact, one of them was from Canada. And so, that’s the problem. If it’s not connected with a crime, they’re just asking to take accounts down because they don’t like the profile of them.”

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”..everything they do is to move along to the next story. They know there will be another Biden crime crisis.”

• Drugs Discovered Three Times At White House Since 2022 (JTN)

Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert said after the Secret Service briefing Thursday on cocaine found July 2 at the White House that drugs have been found two other times since last year in the building. The Colorado lawmaker also confirmed that Secret Service officials said at the briefing the agency likely won’t find a suspect in connection to the cocaine discovery and that the probe will conclude Friday. “There’s a list of more than 500 individuals that they looked into their backgrounds for prior drug records or use, and nothing was determined from from their analysis,” she said. “And the Secret Service is very eager to close this within the next couple of days.”

The cocaine was reportedly found in a cubby near the White House’s West Executive entrance and weighed less than a gram. Republican Rep. Nancy Mace, who like Boebert is a member of the House Oversight Committee and attended the briefing, also confirmed with Just the News the investigation will be closed Friday without a suspect. “The cocaine caper is going to be concluded without any outcome. No suspects, no resolution,” the South Carolina lawmaker said after the briefing, “which is frustrating, because every time there’s something unsavory happening on the president, the White House’s administration, we never get an answer. And it’s just ironic and interesting and frustrating.”

Boebert said the drug found twice before in roughly the past year was marijuana and that she thinks the Secret Service closed the investigation without a suspect “because everything in this administration is about covering up for the Biden crime family.” “This is the third time that drugs have been found on the White House property since 2022, and we did not even hear about the marijuana,” she also said. “I certainly did not hear about the marijuana that was found in 2022, two times, and now there’s cocaine on the property. So everything they do is to move along to the next story. They know there will be another Biden crime crisis.”

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TV vs internet.

• Hollywood Grinds To A Halt As Actors And Writers Go On Strike Together (ZH)

Actors and writers in Hollywood have staged the first joint walkout in six decades, saving the country – if not the world, from the production of crappy, woke entertainment, at least for now. The Screen Actors Guild, which represents approximately 160,000 performers, announced the strike on Thursday after failing to reach a new labor agreement with Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers, which represents studios including Walt Disney Co. and Netflix Inc, Bloomberg reports. The Writers Guild of America, meanwhile has been on strike since May 2, shutting down late-night TV programs like The Tonight Show, halting many projects in progress and imperiling the traditional release of new broadcast TV shows starting in September.

In a statement after the strike announcement, the studio alliance said the union “has regrettably chosen a path that will lead to financial hardship for countless thousands of people who depend on the industry.” -Boomberg According to the studios, double-digit percentage increases in salaries and higher pension and health benefits, plus a boost in residuals (the money actors and other receive when shows are rerun), weren’t enough. Also offered were protections against the use of actors’ digital likenesses. A key dispute which remains unresolved is compensation from streaming services as online video entertainment cannibalizes broadcast and cable TV.

“I cannot believe how far apart we are in so many things,” said SAG president Fran Drescher. “The entire business model has been changed by streaming. This is a moment of history. That is a moment of truth.” The move has halted work on shows such as Abbott Elementary and Netflix’s Stranger Things. if the strikes last more than a few days, the impact will be far greater than just the writer’s strike alone. Meanwhile, actors will have to stop promoting upcoming projects and refuse to attend events such as Comi-Con International which is scheduled for next week.

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Obesity

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bison

 

 

Moth
https://twitter.com/i/status/1679299872401268742

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle January 12 2023

Jan 122023
 
 January 12, 2023  Posted by at 9:45 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  112 Responses »


Heinrich Hofmann Christ and the Rich Young Man 1889

 

• Is Coincidence Now The Leading Cause Of Death? (Emerald)
• The City Of Soledar Has Been Liberated By The Wagner PMC (Saker)
• Wagner Comments On Ukrainian Casualties In Soledar (RT)
• Zelensky Tries To Reassure Hollywood: “There Will Be No Third World War” (ZH)
• Nothing That Our Adversaries Predicted Has Happened – Putin (RT)
• Kremlin Explains Why There Are No Peace Talks On Ukraine (RT)
• Using Ukraine as a Bloodied Pawn (Antiwar)
• Share Prices Of NATO Weapons Makers Surge (RT)
• Why Biden and Trump Are Treated Differently in Classified Document Cases (ET)
• Biden’s ‘Surprise’: Classified Documents Were Moved At Least Twice (Turley)
• Top Dems Fume As Kevin McCarthy Boots Them From Key Committee Positions (AW)
• India Won’t Support G7 Price Cap On Russian Oil – Analyst (RT)
• Italy and the EU Are on Collision Course as Economic Conditions Worsen (NC)
• Greece, Malta Lag Behind In Sanctioning Russian Assets – EU Official (RT)
• WEF Partner Behind Sudden Push to Ban Gas Stoves (GP)

 

 

 

 

Pentagon controlled Covid – Whole FDA approval process was theater.
https://twitter.com/TheChiefNerd/status/1613316088690876418

 

 

 

 

Tucker RFK jr

 

 

 

 

Trust the science

 

 

 

 

 

 

Good video.

• Is Coincidence Now The Leading Cause Of Death? (Emerald)

Vaccinated people around the world are now dying of “sudden cardiac events” according to the latest data we have from the CDC. Just comb through the data published by the Ethical Skeptic on Twitter if you don’t believe me.

But you knew that already — if you watched what happened to NFL player Damar Hamlin. The situation was so bad that our corrupt corporate media actually pulled the arch-villain Dr. Fauci out of exile to defend the experimental COVID vaccines — thus implicating his “Wuhan baby” in Hamlin’s medical case of course. CBS News’ Major Garrett completely disgraced himself with this abject display — he might as well retire now to the Dan Rather Rest Home for Disgraced Journalists after he takes his next booster and prays to his pocket Dr. Fauci bobble-head doll. Big Pharma had already deployed its Twitter bots and its paid media shills to defend their products in the Damar Hamlin incident — only to discover that former NFL player Uche Nwaneri had died of a heart attack (aged 38) at home on the same day. That should be one coincidence too many for most people.

In fact, Damar Hamlin and Uche Nwaneri were just the tip of the iceberg. Two days later, pro surfer Marcio Freire died of a “sudden cardiac event” while surfing. (He was 47.) The next day, a 16 year-old girl died of the same thing while playing flag football at a Las Vegas school and an 18 year-old girl died of a “sudden cardiac event” while playing basketball in the Bahamas. The day after those tragic deaths, pro soccer player Modeste M’Bami died of a heart attack as well. (He was 40.) Two days later, a coach at Devine Middle School died of a heart attack in front of his students while teaching class. (He was 35.) Then a 21 year-old student at the Air Force Academy died of a “sudden cardiac event” while walking to class — and a boy at Western Brown High School in Ohio died of the same thing on the same day at his school.


It was getting hard to keep track of all these “sudden cardiac events” killing young and healthy people. Our corporate media was not keeping track of the deaths — so much as claiming that literally anything could have caused those deaths other than the experimental vaccines. You might call it Sudden Invented Syndrome Syndrome: our political elites and Big Pharma and MSM were creating new medical syndromes to cover up the biggest failed medical experiment in human history. You know it’s true. It could be Sudden Adult Death Syndrome (SADS)! It could be commodio cordis! It could be climate change! It’s all a coincidence, you understand — and you should definitely not doubt the COVID vaccines, or Big Pharma, or your doctors, or your government. This situation was captured perfectly in the best video of 2023.

Coincidence

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“..NATO wants to fight Russia down the the last Ukrainian while Russia does not want to fight NATO down to the last Russian…”

• The City Of Soledar Has Been Liberated By The Wagner PMC (Saker)

I do not have access to Russian plans, but I do not believe that the liberation of Soledar by itself will have a major impact for the planned “Big Offensive” the Russian forces are ready to execute. Yes, time is of the essence in warfare, but that means that, like in chess, sometimes that critical feature of time means that waiting is the correct use of that time. That being said, the liberation of Soledar will have a major effect on NATO supply lines, both on roads and railways. Again, the idea here is to transform the once unified NATO forces into smaller “chunks” unable to help each other. By all signs, this has been an extremely effective Russian tactic. Another location which NATO tried really hard to exploit is Kherson, yet all the NATO attacks failed and have now petered down to almost nothing (mostly UAV recon flight and regular artillery strikes).

Ditto for the Kharkov oblast were Ukie attacks mostly stopped. Finally, here is another important marker: the size of the NATO offensives. Remember how in the first months of the war the Ukrainian counter-attacks typically involved several brigades? Then much of what we saw were battalion-size attacks. Now most of what we see are very small, company-level, engagements. Such, engagements are futile by definition: why bother with a company-level attack which, even if fully successful you won’t be able to develop even tactically, nevermind operationally? The ONLY reason for such attacks are optics and PSYOPs. Period. The Russians won’t fight that way, because that way implies sending wave after wave after wave of bodies through into the Russian meat grinder for the sole purpose of taking a photo, making a video or claim another absolutely huge “peremoga” (all the NATO victories are huge, didn’t you know?).

Right now the KIA/MIA ratio between NATO and Russia is roughly about 10:1 and that is exactly how the Russians like it, even if they now have several hundred of thousand of soldiers in the South, East and North. Simply put, NATO wants to fight Russia down the the last Ukrainian while Russia does not want to fight NATO down to the last Russian. This is why NATO fights with bodies and Russia with (mostly) artillery shells. Conclusion: let’s not start acting like NATO and Ukie airmchair generals and declare that the liberation of Soledar is a “huge” victory. It is, however, very good news as it strongly suggests that the NATO first and second line of defense have been breached forcing NATO to regroup. Could that be the “first crack” in the NATO defenses? Maybe, maybe not, we need to see how NATO will respond before coming to conclusions.

Russian winter
https://twitter.com/i/status/1613153895638863876

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“..Russian control of the town now threatens to unravel the entire Ukrainian front in Donbass..”

• Wagner Comments On Ukrainian Casualties In Soledar (RT)

Ukrainian soldiers surrounded in Soledar have either surrendered or been killed, Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Wednesday. Fighters of the private military company completely surrounded the Donbass town the day prior and are now clearing the extensive tunnel network in the salt mines underneath. “I want to repeat that Soledar has been fully liberated and cleared of Ukrainian army units,” Prigozhin said in a statement on Wednesday evening. “The Ukrainian troops that refused to surrender have been destroyed.” Prigozhin estimated that around 500 Ukrainian troops have been killed after Wagner forces closed the encirclement of Soledar. “The entire town is littered with the bodies of Ukrainian servicemen,” he said. Wagner fighters first circulated a video taken in downtown Soledar on Tuesday, as proof the town administration was under their control.


Later in the day, Prigozhin was filmed touring the salt mine tunnels as well, which he said Wagner was starting to clear as well. The tunnel network is approximately 300 kilometers (186 miles) long and reaches hundreds of meters below the ground level. Prigozhin also quashed rumors, circulating due to a meeting of Russian and Ukrainian officials in Türkiye on Wednesday, that some kind of evacuation was being arranged. “There can be no word of any humanitarian corridor,” he said, noting that all civilians have already been evacuated from the town. Soledar had around 10,000 residents before the conflict. The Ukrainian army turned it into a strongpoint after being pushed out of Popasnaya in mid-2022. Russian control of the town now threatens to unravel the entire Ukrainian front in Donbass. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky had acknowledged on Sunday that the situation in Soledar was “very difficult” but vowed that Ukrainian troops would continue to hold “no matter what.”

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And while -at least- 100s of his people are dying, Frankie goes to Hollywwod.

• Zelensky Tries To Reassure Hollywood: “There Will Be No Third World War” (ZH)

When we first heard that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would make a virtual appearance at 80th annual Golden Globe Awards Tuesday night in order to update the audience and American public on the status of the conflict, we thought it was a joke. It should be remembered too that the Oscar Awards rejected efforts for a Zelensky appearance last year (though he did give an emotional speech at the Grammys last April). But like with much else connected with Zelensky and the unprecedented pandering of American institutions for a foreign leader, it was all too absurdly real. He told the audience of Hollywood A-listers that “there will be no third World War” – citing Ukraine’s momentum on the battlefield. “The war in Ukraine is not over yet, but the tide is turning and it is already clear who will win,” Zelensky said after being introduced by friend and actor Sean Penn. “There are still battles and tears ahead.”

He launched into a bit of a history lecture, akin to his December in-person Congressional speech, reminding the television viewing audience that the Golden Globe Awards first got its start during WWII, and compared the current Russian invasion to “the struggle for the right of the new generations to know about the war only from movies.” That’s when Zelensky sought to assure Americans against what’s become a legitimate overarching concern – uncontrollable escalation between the US and Russia: “The First World War claimed millions of lives. The Second World War claimed tens of millions of them. There will be no third World War. It is not a trilogy,” Zelensky said, promising that Ukraine “will stop the Russian aggression” with the help of the free world.

“The war in Ukraine is not over yet, but the tide is turning and it is already clear who will win… We will make it together with the whole free world and I hope that all of you will be with us on the victorious day the day of our victory,” Zelensky said. For anyone worried that the world is inching toward nuclear Armageddon, these words are not cause for comfort – but quite the opposite… after all, it’s 2023 and a foreign head of state just appeared at a Hollywood awards show to tell celebrities he’s not expecting World War 3 to break out. But Kiev wants to combat growing global skepticism regarding the war’s outcome, in order to keep the Western weapons pipeline flowing of course. He also just pledged “victory” over nuclear armed super power Russia, and that a Ukrainian “win” is becoming “clear”… so let that sink in.

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“..there’s still much that needs to be done to secure Russia’s “absolutely … sovereign independent development despite all the external pressure and threats.”

• Nothing That Our Adversaries Predicted Has Happened – Putin (RT)

None of the gloomy forecasts the West made about Russia’s fate in 2022 have come to pass, Russian President Vladimir Putin told the government on Wednesday as he commented on the West’s failure to disrupt the national economy. “Nothing that our adversaries predicted has happened to us,” Putin said as he thanked the government for its effective work throughout 2022, which helped Russia withstand international pressure amid unprecedented sanctions imposed by the US and its allies. “In no small way, that was the result of the government’s work,” he added. The president then said that there’s still much that needs to be done to secure Russia’s “absolutely … sovereign independent development despite all the external pressure and threats.”

He highlighted the fact that more efforts should be aimed at supplying the Russian forces involved in the conflict in Ukraine. Russia should also expand the technological capacities of its economy and encourage the creation of new industries and workplaces, he said, while strengthening the financial sector, the agriculture industry and some other economic fields. Following the start of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine in late February, the US and its allies in Europe and beyond imposed unprecedented sanctions against Moscow, targeting entire sectors of its economy, including finances and banking as well as aviation and space industries. In December, the EU, along with the G7 countries and Australia, introduced a price cap on Russian seaborne oil, set at $60 per barrel.

Last spring, many Western officials and media outlets predicted that the Russian economy would collapse under the pressure of sanctions and military expenditures, only to admit that Moscow managed to defy all of those predictions. In May, Croatian President Zoran Milanovic admitted that the Western sanctions were not working, as The Economist reported that the Russian economy proved to be “surprisingly resilient” amid high oil and gas revenues. In August, Bloomberg and the Washington Post reported that the sanctions failed to bring about the economic collapse that Western leaders had hoped for. In December, Putin said that Russia was outperforming many of the G20 nations despite sanctions. Earlier the same month, the Russian Finance Ministry said that oil and gas budget revenues exceeded the full-year target in the first 11 months, bringing an additional $9 billion to Russia’s coffers.

Putin 2016

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“Moscow says Washington and its allies are waging a proxy war at the expense of the Ukrainian people.”

• Kremlin Explains Why There Are No Peace Talks On Ukraine (RT)

Russia would prefer peace talks with Ukraine over fighting, but sees no potential for them due to the positions taken by Kiev and its Western backers, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said. The official reminded journalists on Wednesday that Ukrainian law “forbids the president of Ukraine [from having] any dialogue with us.” “Under the circumstances, in which Westerners are apparently not prone to allow Kiev to show any flexibility on the issue, we cannot say that there is any potential [for negotiations] at the moment,” he added. In October, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky signed into law an order by the Security and Defense Council, which banned any talks with Russia while its President Vladimir Putin remains in office.


Senior Ukrainian officials declared that talks with Moscow may only be possible after Kiev seizes control of all the land it considers to be under its sovereignty, including the Crimean Peninsula. Moscow said it was on the verge of signing a truce with Kiev in early April, after a breakthrough was achieved during Türkiye-mediated talks in Istanbul. The Ukrainian government made a U-turn, however, which Russia believes to have been the result of Western meddling. The US has declared “strategic defeat” of Russia in Ukraine as its policy goal and pledged to help Kiev “for as long as it takes” to achieve military victory. Moscow says Washington and its allies are waging a proxy war at the expense of the Ukrainian people.

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“Achieving such an objective would indisputably require a prolonged war in Ukraine – regardless of the consequences to the Ukrainian people.”

• Using Ukraine as a Bloodied Pawn (Antiwar)

US and NATO officials routinely contend that assisting Ukraine in its war against Russia is a moral as well as a strategic imperative. Ukraine is supposedly on the frontlines of a global struggle between democracy and freedom on one side and brutal authoritarianism on the other. That justification lacks credibility for two reasons. First, Ukraine itself is a corrupt, repressive autocracy, not a freedom-loving democracy, even if one uses the most flexible, expansive definition of “democracy.” Second, the Russia-Ukraine war is a nasty turf fight over mundane stakes, not part of an existential global confrontation between good and evil.

It is hard to determine how much Western political leaders and their media mouthpieces actually believe their own moralistic propaganda. Some likely have drunk the Kool Aid, but others clearly have more practical (and less savory) reasons for wanting Washington to wage a proxy war against Russia. First and foremost, the financial benefits to the military-industrial complex are enormous. The United States has already provided more than $100 billion in aid to Kyiv, and a major portion of those funds are going to pay for Ukraine’s purchases (now or in the near future) of weapons systems from Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, or other manufacturers. Those firms also will benefit from the destruction of weapons already provided to Kyiv, since US stockpiles supposedly must be replenished. The usual collection of hawks already are sounding alarms that the arsenals of the United States and its NATO allies have become significantly depleted.

However, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin may have inadvertently disclosed a broader, ignoble motive for the proxy war. An April 2022 statement that he issued in Poland at the end of his stealth visit to Kyiv emphasized that Washington’s goal was not merely to help Ukraine repel Russia’s invasion, but to “weaken Russia” to the point that it could no longer pose a threat to any other country. Achieving such an objective would indisputably require a prolonged war in Ukraine – regardless of the consequences to the Ukrainian people.

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What kind of people hold and purchase these shares?

• Share Prices Of NATO Weapons Makers Surge (RT)

The largest military and defense corporations of NATO member states have seen a 21.5% boost in market value in 2022 amid the military operation in Ukraine and the rearmament in Europe, Vedomosti newspaper reported on Wednesday, citing data from Defense News and Tradingview analytics. Their combined market capitalization increased from $579 billion in December 2021 to $703 billion in December 2022, according to the estimates. The ranking included 25 companies with a capitalization of over $1 billion which are traded on the stock market and have military products dominating in their revenues, and are also actively involved in arms supplies to Ukraine.


Authors of the report name German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall as the top gainer over the last 12 months, with a 122% surge in share price. French drone and missile producer Thales saw its market value rise 54%. American defense contractor Northrop Grumman was up 44%, while stock in HIMARS rocket launchers maker Lockheed Martin gained 42%. Other notable mentions in the report include BAE Systems (+40%), Kongsberg Gruppen (+37%), General Dynamics (+24%), and Raytheon Technologies (+19%). The report pointed out that the value of NATO’s military giants was soaring while the overall Western corporate sector sank by 16% last year, according to the S&P 1200 index, suggesting that arms manufacturers were likely the main beneficiaries of the political crisis in Europe.

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Garland knew of the “Biden files” on Nov. 2, said nothing. But did order the raid on Mar-a-Lago on Nov. 16. There is no excuse.

• Why Biden and Trump Are Treated Differently in Classified Document Cases (ET)

As Republican lawmakers such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) express concern that President Joe Biden’s retention of classified materials from his vice presidency may be “[swept] under the rug,” legal experts told The Epoch Times why Biden and former President Donald Trump appear to have been treated very differently in two strikingly parallel cases. FBI agents executed a search warrant on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida, in August 2022. The warrant said there was probable cause to believe there were “additional documents that contain classified NDI [national defense information]” or “presidential records subject to record retention requirements” at Mar-a-Lago.

By contrast, neither the Penn Biden Center nor any other address associated with Biden has been raided after classified materials were reportedly found at the center’s Washington office, which is located in a nondescript building about a mile from the White House. “What’s the difference in what President Trump did versus what we now know President Biden did?” asked House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.), as reported by CBS. Biden’s attorneys have said that the materials were identified on Nov. 2, just days before an underwhelming midterm election performance by Republicans. Yet, the public wasn’t told of the existence of those materials until Jan. 9, two months after those elections took place.

That delay is indicative of “a political cover-up,” says Mike Davis, former chief counsel for nominations to then-Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and the founder of the Article III Project. He sees it as part of a pattern under the Biden administration. “There’s a clear political double standard at the Biden Justice Department, which has been politicized and weaponized against Republicans,” Davis told The Epoch Times on Jan. 10. An expert on administrative law had a similar perspective. “The fact that this has happened really creates a rule of law: if you’re a Republican, you have to meet certain exacting standards when it comes to records, and if you’re a Democrat, you don’t,” according to the expert, who requested anonymity because company policy doesn’t allow employees to speak to the media.

“A Republican president must operate in a fishbowl. If you’re a Republican president, the presumption is you have to preserve everything. And you just have to be extra careful. If you’re a Democrat, rest assured, you’re going to have different procedures applied.” Under a more consistent system, he added, the standard set by Trump’s case would also have applied to Biden’s case. “The Justice Department shouldn’t have said, ‘Let’s negotiate. You guys review and tell us what you find.’ The Justice Department should have immediately had the FBI raid the offices. Why? How do we know, without documenting and creating an inventory, whether the documents were classified or top secret?”

Tucker Biden files

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“Clinton was also “surprised” by the discovery of the documents . . . after they could not be used as part of the earlier investigation.”

• Biden’s ‘Surprise’: Classified Documents Were Moved At Least Twice (Turley)

With the reported discovery of a second batch of highly classified documents connected to President Biden, the decisions of Attorney General Merrick Garland are fast moving from the inexplicable to incomprehensible. Garland was presumably briefed that classified documents were discovered in Joe Biden’s old office on Nov. 2. He also presumably knew about the Biden documents when he appointed a special counsel to investigate the classified documents at Mar-a-Lago 16 days later. At the time of the appointment of Jack Smith, some of us noted the inexplicable refusal of Garland to appoint a special counsel to look into alleged Biden influence peddling and other crimes. Garland continued to refuse such an appointment even as he justified the appointment of Smith on the basis that Trump was running for the presidency.

Joe Biden is the president. What is the difference? President Biden, meanwhile, is feigning ignorance, simply saying he was “surprised” the documents were there. By not discussing the content of the documents, Biden minimizes his vulnerability to charges of obstruction or false statements. He can simply declare “surprise,” knowing that many in the media will welcome his silence as they spin the scandal. Despite the lack of information, the press and pundits have already declared there is no real national security danger and certainly no comparison to Mar-a-Lago. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, declared “There is no comparison. They were in a locked closet. They were not accessible.” So that is the standard? A locked closet? The Mar-a-Lago storage room was locked and later the security was enhanced at the request of the FBI.

It is fair to note that Trump and his staff are accused of false statements and obstruction. However, that does not change the same alleged crime of unlawful removal and possession. Biden is taking a page from the Hillary Clinton playbook. Recall the long-sought Whitewater documents. After the case was effectively over, they suddenly appeared. The New York Times called the documents “elusive,” as if they moved by free will. Clinton was also “surprised” by the discovery of the documents . . . after they could not be used as part of the earlier investigation. There are some obvious explanations for the documents being present in the office, particularly given Biden’s work on a book that discussed his work in some of the referenced countries like Ukraine. However, even that explanation raises more questions.

For example, Biden left office as vice president in 2017 and had an office at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia after finishing his term until 2019. On February 8, 2018, the Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement says that it opened its doors in Washington, D.C. So if these documents were removed when Biden left office, where were they in the prior year and were they moved repeatedly before they ended up in the Washington office? This does not appear a “one-and-done” mistake. Rather documents may have been at various locations over a five year period. None of this could be clarified with Biden simply expressing “surprise.”

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“McCarthy has the power to block Schiff and Swalwell. But the House will need to act against Omar serving on Foreign Affairs.”

• Top Dems Fume As Kevin McCarthy Boots Them From Key Committee Positions (AW)

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has just made good on another promise Tuesday to remove Squad member Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) from the Foreign Affairs Committee and Reps. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Eric Swalwell (D-CA) from the Intelligence Committee. The Daily Mail is contending that it is payback from former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (CA) stripping GOP Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Paul Gosar (R-AZ) from their committee assignments during the 117th Congress. However, Republicans are asserting it is a promise kept to clean the House of radical leftists who they see as a national security threat. Republicans warned Democrats this was coming. Although conservatives won back the House with a slim majority, it is just enough to give them control and allow McCarthy the power to boot leftists from powerful committees.

Normally, the new Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries would present names for the committees to McCarthy, but the Speaker had already made it clear who would be blocked, which includes the three far-left representatives, according to Punchbowl News. “It’s not like it’s anything new,” McCarthy informed the media outlet. “Remember, this is what Nancy Pelosi – this is the type of Congress she wanted to have.” “Swalwell can’t get a security clearance in the private sector,” he noted of the California lawmaker who was allegedly honey potted by a Chinese spy named Fang Fang. “I’m not going to give him a government security clearance.” The woman helped Swalwell raise money for his 2014 campaign and many suspect he was sleeping with her.

The California Democrat claimed that he cut all ties to the alleged spy, but it was shown that he remained friends with her on Facebook long after an FBI briefing on her connection to China. “Schiff has lied too many times to the American public. He should not be on Intel,” McCarthy bluntly asserted. And then there are Omar’s antisemitic outbursts and anti-American sentiments. She even made conciliatory comments at the last moment, but it didn’t save her committee assignment. [..] McCarthy has the power to block Schiff and Swalwell. But the House will need to act against Omar serving on Foreign Affairs. With a Republican majority and numerous Jewish Democrats who don’t care for her, it should be no problem making sure she’s off the Foreign Affairs Committee.

Read more …

“At the beginning of 2022, Russia’s share of India’s oil imports amounted to just 0.2%. By the end of last year, it had grown to nearly one million barrels per day, reaching more than 20% of the country’s oil import basket.”

• India Won’t Support G7 Price Cap On Russian Oil – Analyst (RT)

The chances of India backing the G7 price cap imposed on Russian oil are almost zero, as the country will prioritize its own political and economic interests, an Observer Research Foundation (ORF) analyst told TASS on Wednesday. Nandan Unnikrishnan said India would not be targeted with secondary sanctions for rejecting the mechanism introduced by the EU, G7 countries and Australia in December. The measures target Russia’s seaborne crude, banning Western businesses from providing insurance and other services in respect of the country’s oil cargo unless it’s purchased at or below $60 per barrel. “At the moment, prospects of India joining the oil price ceiling are almost zero,” Unnikrishnan said in an interview with the news agency. His comments followed media reports suggesting that New Delhi could join the Russian oil price cap if crude costs go above $60 per barrel. “India will pursue its own interests – economic, political, strategic. It is currently interested in importing cheap crude from Russia and won’t give up on this, as the nation makes big profits,” added the ORF analyst.


Unnikrishnan also noted that 85% of the Indian economy relies on the private sector, stressing that Reliance Industries, the country’s largest buyer of Russian oil, has significant assets in the US, but it has not stopped imports. He said Indian companies would act purely in accordance with their business interests. India, the world’s third-biggest importer of crude oil after China and the US, has been steadily increasing purchases of Russian crude over the past several months, taking advantage of discounts Moscow offered to attract buyers. At the beginning of 2022, Russia’s share of India’s oil imports amounted to just 0.2%. By the end of last year, it had grown to nearly one million barrels per day, reaching more than 20% of the country’s oil import basket. India reportedly remained Russia’s top importer for three months in a row as of December.

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“The 10-year bond yield has climbed above four percent (the level at which investors say panic sets in), nearly quadrupling the level of a year ago..”

• Italy and the EU Are on Collision Course as Economic Conditions Worsen (NC)

Despite NATO’s Ukraine war being the driver of Eurozone inflation, the European Central Bank is determined to keep hiking interest rates even if that means recessions for bloc countries and another debt crisis for Italy. The ECB raised its benchmark interest rate by 50 basis points In December, but also signaled that more hikes would follow in the coming months, which triggered a sell-off of Italian government bonds. Italy’s borrowing costs have risen to over four percent and are causing alarm in Rome. Meloni said the ECB should avoid making “choices that make things worse.” Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini called the ECB’s decisions “unbelievable, baffling, worrying.” Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto criticized the ECB and its president Christine Lagarde for blindly following economic theory despite the harm it will inflict on businesses and workers.

“You have to justify this politically to your European citizens. You are not a Martian,” he said. Crosetto even resorted to accusing the ECB of aiding Russia with its rate hikes. The situation for Italy could worsen as growth slows and interest rates rise further. According to FT: “The new Italian government had “given little cause for concern for investors for now,” said Veronika Roharova, head of euro area economics at Swiss bank Credit Suisse. “But concerns may resurface if growth slows, interest rates continue to rise and [debt] issuance is picking up again.” Economists are now widely expecting all three of those to occur. Two-thirds of economists polled by FT predicted the ECB would start cutting rates in 2024 – likely after Italy and other states in the EU are in a recession. Again from FT:

“The ECB will start shrinking its €5 trillion bond portfolio by €15 billion per month from March by replacing only partially matured securities, putting further pressure on Italian borrowing costs. Ludovic Subran, chief economist at German insurer Allianz, said the eurozone risked a repeat of the 2012 bond market collapse “as fiscal options differ across countries without the heavy lifting of the ECB”.” Italy’s borrowing costs have already risen sharply since the ECB started raising interest rates over the summer. The 10-year bond yield has climbed above four percent (the level at which investors say panic sets in), nearly quadrupling the level of a year ago, and 2.1 percentage points above the equivalent yield on German bonds. According to Bloomberg, such conditions “threaten to unlock the same Pandora’s box that fueled the euro crisis of 2010-12, when the currency bloc nearly split apart as more-indebted countries faced a sudden, harsh tightening of financial conditions as investors sold off their bonds.”

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“..the EU is also working on making bypassing sanctions a criminal offence in all the member states.”

• Greece, Malta Lag Behind In Sanctioning Russian Assets – EU Official (RT)

Greece and Malta lag behind their European Union peers in freezing Russian assets sanctioned over Moscow’s war against Ukraine, according to an EU official and an internal document, as the bloc considers confiscating the funds to help Kyiv, Report informs via Reuters. The 27 EU countries have so far reported freezing some 20.3 billion euros ($22 billion) of sanctioned Russian assets, with Italy, Ireland, France, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and Austria each notifying actions totalling more than a billion euros. Almost every other EU country has frozen millions worth of assets, according to the document from the EU’s executive European Commission, which was seen by Reuters. By comparison, Greece had only notified the bloc of freezing assets worth 212,000 euros, and Malta 147,000 euros. “That is a bit surprising,” said the EU official, who spoke under condition of anonymity.


“Either they don’t have much, or they are not doing their job. Or they have done something but not communicated to us even though they had chances.” More than 10 months since Russia’s attack on Ukraine, the EU currently has some 1,300 individuals and 120 entities blacklisted, as well as economic sanctions in place that include trade, transport, energy, banking, media and defence sectors. The EU’s attention turns this year to how and whether to confiscate the frozen Russian assets, and spend it on rebuilding Ukraine, an exercise where an estimated 300 billion euros worth of Russian central bank assets in Europe could also be at stake. There is little legal precedent and some member states voice major concerns about ensuing lawsuits, while others say turning the assets over to Ukraine’s benefit would be the right thing to do. Linked to that, the EU is also working on making bypassing sanctions a criminal offence in all the member states, which is not the case currently.

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“it’s all part of the plan.”

• WEF Partner Behind Sudden Push to Ban Gas Stoves (GP)

The abrupt push by Democrats led by the Biden Regime to ban gas stoves has enraged and confused Americans across the country. The good news is we may have found the primary culprit behind the push and it’s connected to the World Economic Forum. RedState.com, which first broke this story, points out prominent Democrats and liberals never demonstrated an iota of concern over gas stoves before. Not even noted low-IQ Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who made an utter fool of herself by claiming a study shows gas stoves are dangerous to brain health. A major Twitter leftist named Max Kennerly also got in on the act pushing the supposed dangers of cooking with gas. Like AOC, he had never tweeted about gas stoves before. Look at this tweet by Libs of TikTok showing Kamala Harris, Jill Biden, Pocahontas, and AOC all cooking on gas stoves. Do they appear alarmed over the potential impact to their health?

So why the manufactured outrage over gas stoves? Where did this study AOC cited come from? RedState.com has the answer: “Regardless, it’s worth asking where this is all coming from, right? Why did Democrats all start moving in lockstep to ban gas stoves, seemingly with no prior concern at all? And sure enough, with a little digging, it’s been revealed that this isn’t just idle science taking place.” “The company behind the study is called “Carbon-Free Buildings.” That company is a partner of the World Economic Forum and has a true-believer CEO who wants to rid the world of all carbon emissions (which is impossible and would lead to mass extinction).” To no one’s surprise this all connects back to the World Economic Forum (WEF). The same megalomaniacs who years ago informed the masses that they “will own nothing and be happy.”


Certainly looks like the Regime and its fellow Democrats have received marching orders from their globalist masters. The WEF and the Democrats both share a common goal of eliminating fossil fuels for the commoners while they fly gas-guzzling private jets across the globe. The elimination of gas stoves qualifies another step toward completing their scheme. As the Joker from The Dark Knight once said, “it’s all part of the plan.” If you have not realized this until now, then you really have not been paying attention.

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The most famous figure in human history, according to the ranking of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is Aristotle. (MIT) collected and analyzed data on history and culture around the planet from 4,000 BC. until 2010. There are six people from Greece in the top ten.

 

 

 

 

 

 


The green heron with its neck at rest vs. fully stretched

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle March 13 2018

Mar 132018
 
 March 13, 2018  Posted by at 10:33 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , ,  15 Responses »


Mayfair Building, Times Square NYC 1954

 

• Sea Change Is Underway in Money Markets for Banks, Investors (BBG)
• The Real Reasons Trump Blocked Broadcom’s Qualcomm Takeover (CNBC)
• Donald Trump’s Attack on German Prosperity (Spiegel)
• Trump Pushes EU to Cut Tariffs as Bloc Vows to Resist ‘Bullies’ (BBG)
• Trump’s Metal Tariffs ‘Like An Atomic Bomb’ For European Firms (CNBC)
• Is The Dot.Com Bubble Back? (Roberts)
• China Plans New Ministries, Merger Of Regulators In Massive Revamp (R.)
• Central Banks Are Looking for New Ways to Meet Inflation Targets (BBG)
• Labour’s Nationalisation Plans As Damaging As ‘No Deal’ Brexit – CBI (G.)
• Another Quandary (Jim Kunstler)
• Russian Foreign Ministry Slams UK’s Comments On Skripal Poisoning Case (Tass)
• Saudis Reportedly Wielding Veto Power Over Prince Alwaleed (CNBC)
• The Rich Aren’t Happy About New Zealand Foreign Bolthole Ban (BBG)
• The Pentagon & Hollywood’s Successful And Deadly Propaganda Alliance (RT)
• Krill Fishing Poses Serious Threat To Antarctic Ecosystem (G.)

 

 

Is this where central banks fail in their quest for control?

• Sea Change Is Underway in Money Markets for Banks, Investors (BBG)

While many fixed-income investors may be focused on the specter of higher long-term Treasury yields, there’s a sea change afoot at the shorter end – in U.S. money markets. The London interbank offered rate, or Libor, and rates on Treasury bills are at levels not seen since 2008. The Fed’s move to tighten policy forms the backdrop for the increase, but an added force behind the surge this year has come from a deluge of supply as U.S. deficits widen. Higher short-term borrowing costs have implications for investors and also for banks, which find themselves paying up to borrow through the commercial-paper market as they compete to lure cash. “We are in a new paradigm,” said Jerome Schneider at Pimco. “The clear focus for the market is where will incremental demand come from to meet this supply.”

The Treasury has been jacking up debt sales this quarter: Net issuance is slated to exceed $400 billion, with the bulk coming in bills. The Treasury increased the 4-week bill sale to $65 billion, from as low as $15 billion earlier in the year. The march higher in Libor has widespread consequences despite regulatory efforts to replace it following a price-fixing scandal. About $350 trillion of financial products and loans are linked to Libor, with a large chunk hinged to the dollar-based version of the benchmark. Libor is among the main indexes, along with one-year T-bill rates, used to set U.S. adjustable-rate mortgages.

Assets in U.S. government-only money funds, which include bills among key holdings, have risen to $2.26 trillion, from $2.07 trillion last year. As the Fed keeps hiking, with the next move likely this month, the influx may continue. But for banks, the increasing appeal of T-bill rates is making them pay up to compete, through offering better returns on the commercial paper they use for short-term borrowing. “Banks still need funding and they need to entice investors,” Schneider said.

Read more …

Protectionism, national security. Where’s the anti-Trump lobby on this?

• The Real Reasons Trump Blocked Broadcom’s Qualcomm Takeover (CNBC)

The threat of China factored heavily into the U.S. government’s decision to block Broadcom’s proposed buyout of Qualcomm. President Donald Trump, for his part, officially declared on Monday that the proposed $117 billion deal was prohibited on national security grounds. The president said in his order that “there is credible evidence” leading him to believe that Broadcom through control of San Diego-based Qualcomm “might take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States.” That conclusion may seem extreme given that Broadcom is based in Singapore — and looking to redomicile to the U.S., where it conducts most of its operations — but it’s not a fear of the Southeast Asian city state that is raising national security concerns.

“The case that has been constructed is that, given Broadcom’s business practices, the worry is that they will cut investment significantly, particularly in the 5G roadmap, weaken Qualcomm, as well as the U.S. position and allow Huawei, a Chinese company to take the lead,” explained Stacy Rasgon, chip analyst at Bernstein. The Treasury Department said last week in a letter to lawyers involved in the deal that Qualcomm was trusted by the U.S. government and cited Huawei as a competitive threat in the development of 5G, which is a telecommunications standard that will allow for faster transfer of data. Beyond those 5G concerns, there’s even more to Trump’s decision to block the deal, experts said.

“It is not just China, it is not just chips. It is broad technology. It is U.S. military power and economic power going forward and he’s got a very consistent point of view,” said Ron Napier, head of Napier Investment Advisors. “Trump has been saying all year long since he was inaugurated that security is very important to him, technology is very important to him, trade is very important to him and getting jobs back to the United States is very important to him. He’s making this all into one fabric,” he added. “He sees this as the U.S.’ last big stand if it’s going to remain the leader of the free world,” Napier told CNBC.

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Far too much steep is produced every year. THAT is the problem.

• Donald Trump’s Attack on German Prosperity (Spiegel)

The looming conflict is a sign of the turning point at which the global economy finds itself. Recently, the economy in most corners of the globe has been healthy, with the world experiencing a rare phase of synchronous growth. But it looks as though that phase is now coming to an end. Interest rates are rising and sovereign debt is growing, the result of which is that governments are beginning to lose their flexibility and it is likely that some countries will soon face difficulties borrowing money on the open market. Increasing financial market instability shows that insecurity is on the rise. And in this situation, protectionist policies pursued by populists and nationalists harm economic growth and endanger international prosperity.

It is something on which a majority of economists actually agree: tariff barriers slow growth, put jobs at risk and drive up inflation. Once a trade war is triggered, there is no winner, although Munich-based economist Gabriel Felbermayr says that Germany has the most to lose. “There is no other country in the world that would be hit as hard.” Felbermayr, 41, heads up the Center for International Economics at the Center for Economic Studies (CES). The shaved-headed economics professor, originally from Austria, has examined just how devastating Trump’s economic policies could be for the German economy. Every fourth job in the country, he says, is dependent on exports. And in five key sectors – automobiles, machinery, electrical engineering, pharmaceuticals and precision instruments – fully three-quarters of all exports go to the United States.

“If the U.S. were to cut itself off, it would threaten the German business model,” Felbermayr says. “Everything would start teetering.” [..] The global steel market has been imbalanced for years, with producers manufacturing 1.6 billion tons of crude steel each year against an annual demand of just 900 million tons. China is primarily to blame for this lopsidedness. Inexpensive energy and low wages enable the country’s steel producers to sell their products cheaply around the world. If the U.S. were to make moves to protect its domestic steel producers, even more cheap steel would flow into the EU than is already the case. Were that to happen, says Wolfgang Eder, head of the Austrian steel concern Voestalpine, “Europe would threaten to become the world’s garbage pail.”

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The EU vows to stand up to bullies. Ask the Greeks about that one. What kind of person has the guts to say that?

• Trump Pushes EU to Cut Tariffs as Bloc Vows to Resist ‘Bullies’ (BBG)

The EU told U.S. President Donald Trump it won’t be cowed by his escalating protectionist rhetoric and talk of punitive tariffs. “Europe is prepared,” Dutch Finance Minister Wopke Hoekstra said Monday as he headed into a meeting with his counterparts from the rest of the euro area. “We are not afraid, we will stand up to the bullies,” Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said earlier in the day. Trump returned to the offensive over the weekend, raising the prospect of higher levies on European cars and telling supporters at a rally that the countries of the EU have banded together “to screw the U.S. on trade.” The latest brinkmanship follows new tariffs on steel and aluminum imports that are straining a transatlantic relationship already tested by disputes from climate change to Middle East policy.

“Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross will be speaking with representatives of the European Union about eliminating the large Tariffs and Barriers they use against the U.S.A.,” Trump tweeted on Monday. “Not fair to our farmers and manufacturers.” Trump’s rhetoric drew unanimous condemnation from European finance ministers gathering in Brussels. France’s Bruno Le Maire said that he’s concerned about “a trade war between the EU and the U.S.” while his Spanish counterpart Roman Escolano, making his debut as minister, said protectionism is always a mistake. Malmstrom accused the Trump administration of using trade “to threaten and intimidate” Europeans and using the issue as a “scapegoat.”

A meeting in Brussels between Malmstrom and her U.S. counterpart Robert Lighthizer on Saturday ended without a breakthrough, as the EU didn’t receive assurances that it will be exempted from the metal tariffs. “If anyone starts throwing stones, it’s better first to make sure he’s not living in a glass house,” European Commission spokesman Enrico Brivio said.

Read more …

If even more Chinese steel floods into Europe, that is now Trump’s fault.

• Trump’s Metal Tariffs ‘Like An Atomic Bomb’ For European Firms (CNBC)

Donald Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum could cause major disruption for companies in Europe, a business lobbyist told CNBC Monday, who argued that the U.S. president should have taken less severe measures to protect his domestic market. U.S.’s allies, including the European Union and Japan, are hoping to be excluded from new tariffs that Trump announced last week. The decision to raise steel import taxes by 25% and aluminum by 10% could hurt not only those industries directly, but also carmakers and construction firms which use the raw materials. Trump decided that the tariffs would be the best way to deal with overcapacity in these sectors and based his argument on national security.

“This is a very exceptional mechanism that is rarely used. It’s a bit considered like an atomic bomb, because really to use this is like saying ‘look we are really at a level where we cannot use anti-dumping or anti-subsidies’,” Luisa Santos, the international relations director at BusinessEurope, told CNBC Monday. [..] European steel and aluminum businesses are reportedly preparing for a collapse in local prices if the tariffs are indeed applied to their region. Charles de Lusignan, from the Steel Association for Europe, said ultimately the tariffs could mean a scaling back in Europe, with firms letting people go, cutting investment and also innovation. “We need to act immediately because the damage will be done within the first weeks,” he said. “In fact it might already be happening, because obviously an exporter knows that the steel might be blocked in the future so they already start sending it ahead.”

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Not a relevant question.

• Is The Dot.Com Bubble Back? (Roberts)

Whether you believe there is a “bubble” in the Technology stocks, or the markets, is really not important. There are plenty of arguments for both sides. At the peak of every bull market in history, there was no one claiming that a crash was imminent. It was always the contrary with market pundits waging war against those nagging naysayers of the bullish mantra that “stocks have reached a permanently high plateau” or “this is a new secular bull market.” (Here is why it isn’t.) Yet, in the end, it was something unexpected, unknown or simply dismissed that devastated investors. This is why the discussion of “this time is not like the last time” is largely irrelevant.

Individuals no longer “invest” to become a “shareholder” in a publicly traded business. The “quaint concept” of “valuations” died with the mainstreaming of investing during the 1990’s as the “Wall Street Casino” opened for business. Today, investors only think in terms of speculating on “electronically traded bits of paper” in the hopes the value will rise over time. The problem, of course, is they are never told when to “sell” to capture that valuation increase which is the most critical aspect of the investment process. Instead, individuals continue to “bet” the “greater fool” will always appear. For now, the “bullish case” remains alive and well. The media will go on berating those heretics who dare to point out the risks that prevail, but the one simple truth is “this time is indeed different.”

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There goes the last shred of transparency.

• China Plans New Ministries, Merger Of Regulators In Massive Revamp (R.)

China said it will merge its banking and insurance regulators, according to a parliament document released on Tuesday, in a series of proposed changes in the biggest ministry shake-up in years. In a long-awaited move to streamline and tighten oversight of the financial system in the world’s second-biggest economy, China will also transfer some of the banking and insurance regulators’ roles to the central bank, documents showed. In much-anticipated plans to create seven new ministries and a raft of government agencies announced on Tuesday, one of the most significant changes was creation of the national markets supervision management bureau.

The new body will decide on antimonopoly and pricing issues, replacing the roles played by the three national antitrust regulators: the National Development & Reform Commission (NDRC), the Ministry of Commerce and the State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC). Unifying the structure under one agency, rather than handing the responsibility to one of the three existing watchdogs, reflects the growing importance of the issue for the government. China will also form a powerful new competition regulator in a bid to ramp up oversight of mergers and acquisitions and price-fixing as the world’s second-largest economy seeks to make policymaking more efficient and coordinated. Since the beginning of last year, Beijing has cracked down on leverage and risky market practices, with China’s various regulators releasing a flurry of new rules in an attempt to rein in risks.

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Only, they don’t know what it is.

• Central Banks Are Looking for New Ways to Meet Inflation Targets (BBG)

With so many central banks failing to hit their inflation targets, some are considering changes to the tool kits they use to steer their economies. Norway’s decision to lower its price target is just the latest example, and follows more or less official adjustments in Sweden, Argentina and the euro area. Even in New Zealand, the birthplace of inflation targeting, the central bank is shifting to a broader goal that includes a focus on employment. But there’s no one-fits-all solution for monetary authorities and debate is splintered. Raising inflation targets has been discussed equally intensively in recent years as reducing or amending them.

And while some central banks acknowledge a need to reconsider their mandates, others are doubling down on existing policies. Claudio Borio, a top official at the Bank for International Settlements, poured fuel on the debate in September with a provocative speech calling for a broad rethink that accounts for how globalization and technological advances have influenced inflation. “Shall we throw away the books?” ECB President Mario Draghi asked on Thursday. “There are serious costs about changing course on credibility and the anchoring of expectations. We can go on on this for a while about changing objective.”

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Think tanks are your friend.

• Labour’s Nationalisation Plans As Damaging As ‘No Deal’ Brexit – CBI (G.)

The head of Britain’s biggest business lobby group has attacked Labour’s nationalisation plans as potentially just as damaging to the economy as Britain leaving the European Union without a deal. In a speech on Monday, Paul Drechsler, the CBI president, said renationalising large parts of the economy would cause serious harm to the UK’s reputation as a place for international investors, which he argued would be as bad as a hard Brexit and would damage job prospects and living standards. “So you want to nationalise energy, rail and water, and bring public services contracts back in house? Let’s see the evidence that it will deliver a better service to consumers at a lower cost,” he said.

The intervention by the lobby group – which represents about 190,000 companies, including transport and utility firms – constitutes a warning from the boardrooms of corporate Britain that they harbour concerns over Labour’s plans for the economy despite supporting the party over its stance on Brexit. The CBI was among leading business voices supporting Jeremy Corbyn’s move to keep Britain in a customs union with the EU. The lobby group warned before the referendum that Brexit could lead to almost a million job losses and cost the economy £100bn – the equivalent of 5% of GDP – by 2020. Drechsler challenged Labour to provide evidence that its plans would lead to a better service for consumers at a lower cost.

He said private investment had helped create jobs and improve the efficiency of utility companies since they were sold off under the Thatcher government of the 1980s, and argued that progress could be undone if they were taken back into state control. However, utility companies and railway operators have faced intense pressure over their service standards and prices at a time when households are under increasing financial strain. Public support has swung behind Labour’s plans for greater state control of several key industries – shown in recent polls that suggest widespread backing for nationalisation of the railways, water, gas and electricity.

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Mentally ill, cannabis.

• Another Quandary (Jim Kunstler)

That crusty ole rascal, Gov. Jerry Brown of California, seems to be enjoying his sunset journey into Civil War Two or maybe the destination is more like Blade Runner (since we know that history only rhymes but does not repeat). Anyway, it’s not a good place. The once-golden state begins to look something like what one federal official recently called — dare I say it? — a shithole. “A mix of used hypodermic needles, human feces, and other trash litters the streets and sidewalks in a large section of downtown San Francisco, a local news outlet reported Sunday night. It’s a problem that has grown by epic proportions in recent years and has many concerned for the health and safety of some the city’s youngest residents…” — The Blaze

Yes, quite literally. This particular failure of the political Left started in the 1970s when states began aggressively shuttering their large mental hospitals. Many of these institutions dated from the late 19th century – ghastly old gothic revival warehouses for the mentally ill, fraught with overtones of abuse and neglect, scenes out of Vincent Price movies… lightning flashes through the barred windows… a scream in the night… hysterical laughter echoing down the dark, tiled hallways…. They were an embarrassment, for sure, and certainly an affront to liberal sensibilities. But, of course, they fucked up the remedy for that. Instead of replacing the giant old state insane asylums with smaller, better-managed institutions, they just released the inmates under the rationale that they were a politically oppressed minority group. And there it ended.

And so here we are, going on a half-century later, with an economy that manufactures failure and immiseration at a greater volume than its other finished products, and many more lost souls out on the city streets, and now we are an even more ideologically inflamed society than we were in 1973, with the ranks of intersectional oppressed minorities and aggrieved victim groups grown into virtual armies-of-the-night — and the mentally ill just lost in the crowd. It never seems to occur to anyone that a mental hospital can be run humanely, at an appropriate scale, and that these poor, sad creatures might, at least, be better off there with a bed, a bathroom, and somebody to check in on them daily than they are wallowing in the gutters of San Francisco and other cities. Surely there are up-to-date models in other lands for this kind of caretaking — if maybe we sent a few bureaucrats overseas to have a look.

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Who needs proof in an echo chamber? Whether it’s Theresa May or the House Intelligence case, the lines have been drawn long ago.

• Russian Foreign Ministry Slams UK’s Comments On Skripal Poisoning Case (Tass)

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has dubbed as a ‘circus show’ comments of UK Prime Minister Theresa May on the poisoning of Sergey Skripal, a former colonel in Russia’s GRU military intelligence, and his daughter. “This is a circus show in Britain’s parliament,” she stressed. “The conclusion is obvious – a next political media campaign based on provocation,” Zakharova added. Earlier, Theresa May said it is “highly likely” that Russia is responsible for the poisoning of Sergey Skripal and his daughter. Moscow urges London to make public the results of the investigation into the deaths of Alexander Litvinenko and Boris Berezovsky, Zakharova said.

“Before making up new stories, let somebody in the Kingdom tell us what the previous fairy-tales ended in – those about Litvinenko, Berezovsky, Perepilichny and many others who died under mysterious circumstances on British soil,” the diplomat said. Former GRU Colonel Sergey Skripal, 66, and his 33-year-old daughter Julia on March 4 suffered from the effects of an unidentified nerve agent. They were found in an unconscious condition on a bench near The Maltings shopping center in Salisbury. Both are now in hospital in critical condition.

In 2004, Skripal was arrested by the federal security service FSB, charged, tried and convicted of high treason and stripped of all ranks and awards. In 2010 he was handed over to the United States under an arrangement to exchange persons arrested on spying charges. Later in the same year Skripal settled in Britain.

Read more …

The price of freedom.

• Saudis Reportedly Wielding Veto Power Over Prince Alwaleed (CNBC)

Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal remains chairman of Kingdom Holding Company following his release from detention, but the Saudi government reportedly has final say over decisions at the investment firm. Investment decisions at Kingdom Holding are now subject to approval by the government, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing senior Saudi advisers. Kingdom Holding has $12.5 billion invested across more than a dozen sectors around the world, according to its website. Alwaleed’s personal investment portfolio is also under government control, according to the Journal. Alwaleed holds substantial stakes in companies like Citigroup, Twitter, Lyft and Time Warner.

The Journal report does not indicate whether the government has exercised its newfound influence over these investments. However, sources tell the Journal the government has already intervened in a major real estate project, ordering senior managers at Kingdom Holding to abandon the Jeddah Tower, which would be the world’s tallest skyscraper when — and if — it is completed. Officials have directed Kingdom Holding to instead focus its energy on a new city called Neom, which is expected to cost $500 billion to build. The project was announced in October by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the influential king in waiting who is overseeing the kingdom’s economic transformation and spearheaded the campaign that led to Alwaleed’s detention.

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What happens when there’s only rich people left? Or: who cares about New Zealanders?

• The Rich Aren’t Happy About New Zealand Foreign Bolthole Ban (BBG)

Rich-listers like Californian billionaire Ric Kayne have issued a warning to New Zealand – banning house sales to foreigners could hurt the country’s reputation and turn wealthy investors away. Kayne, who has built an exclusive golf course in New Zealand and wants to expand his investments, is one of several rich businessmen who claim the proposed new law will have unintended consequences. They’re seeking amendments to the draft legislation or its withdrawal in its current form. “The vision we have for what we would like to contribute to New Zealand is now being threatened,” Kayne wrote in submissions to a parliamentary committee examining the proposed law change.

“The new rules will “impact on us personally, and others like us who, having discovered this country, want to devote considerable resources to preserving, protecting and enhancing it.” The new Labour-led government came to power in October on a pledge to fix a housing crisis with a raft of measures, including a ban on foreign speculators buying residential property. While data suggest non-residents have only a minor impact on the wider housing market, support for the move was boosted by headlines about rich foreigners buying mansions and farms in New Zealand as boltholes away from the world’s ills.

House prices have surged more than 60% in the past decade amid record immigration and a construction shortfall. In biggest city Auckland, prices have almost doubled since 2007 to an average of more than NZ$1 million ($730,000). That’s made it more difficult for first-time buyers to enter the market and driven up rents, leaving increasing numbers of poor people homeless. “It’s really important for us that we sort our housing market out, that we give New Zealanders a fair go at buying their first home,” Finance Minister Grant Robertson said in a television interview Sunday. While the country welcomes foreign investment, “what we want is good-quality investment that supports the productivity of the New Zealand economy,” he said.

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Ethics and Hollywood.

• The Pentagon & Hollywood’s Successful And Deadly Propaganda Alliance (RT)

The Pentagon helps Hollywood to make money and, in turn, Hollywood churns out effective propaganda for the brutal American war machine. The US has the largest military budget in the world, spending over $611 billion – far larger than any other nation on Earth. The US military also has at their disposal the most successful propaganda apparatus the world has ever known… Hollywood. Since their collaboration on the first Best Picture winner ‘Wings’ in 1927, the US military has used Hollywood to manufacture and shape its public image in over 1,800 films and TV shows. Hollywood has, in turn, used military hardware in their films and TV shows to make gobs and gobs of money.

A plethora of movies like ‘Lone Survivor,’ ‘Captain Philips,’ and even blockbuster franchises like ‘Transformers’ and Marvel, DC and X-Men superhero movies have agreed to cede creative control in exchange for use of US military hardware over the years. In order to obtain cooperation from the Department of Defense (DoD), producers must sign contracts that guarantee a military approved version of the script makes it to the big screen. In return for signing away creative control, Hollywood producers save tens of millions of dollars from their budgets on military equipment, service members to operate the equipment, and expensive location fees.

Capt. Russell Coons, director of the Navy Office of Information West, told Al Jazeera what the military expects for their cooperation: “We’re not going to support a program that disgraces a uniform or presents us in a compromising way.” Phil Strub, the DOD chief Hollywood liaison, says the guidelines are clear. “If the filmmakers are willing to negotiate with us to resolve our script concerns, usually we’ll reach an agreement. If not, filmmakers are free to press on without military assistance.”

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We’ve screwed up even the bottom of the food chain. Winning!

• Krill Fishing Poses Serious Threat To Antarctic Ecosystem (G.)

Industrial fishing for krill in the pristine waters around Antarctica is threatening the future of one of the world’s last great wildernesses, according to a new report. The study by Greenpeace analysed the movements of krill fishing vessels in the region and found they were increasingly operating “in the immediate vicinity of penguin colonies and whale feeding grounds”. It also highlights incidents of fishing boats being involved in groundings, oil spills and accidents, which it said posed a serious threat to the Antarctic ecosystem. The report, published on Tuesday, comes amid growing concern about the impact of fishing and climate change on the Antarctic.

A global campaign has been launched to create a network of ocean sanctuaries to protect the seas in the region and Greenpeace is calling for an immediate halt to fishing in areas being considered for sanctuary status. Frida Bengtsson, from Greenpeace’s Protect the Antarctic campaign, said: “If the krill industry wants to show it’s a responsible player, then it should be voluntarily getting out of any area which is being proposed as an ocean sanctuary, and should instead be backing the protection of these huge swaths of the Antarctic.” Last month a study found a combination of climate change and industrial-scale fishing is hitting the krill population, with a potentially disastrous impact on larger predators.


Photograph: Justin Hofman/Alamy Stock Photo

The study warned that the penguin population could drop by almost one-third by the end of the century due to changes in krill biomass. Krill are a key part of the delicate Antarctic food chain. They feed on marine algae and are a key source of food for whales, penguins and seals. They are also important in removing the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by eating carbon-rich food near the surface and excreting it when they sink to lower, colder water. There is a growing global demand for krill-based health products which are claimed to help with a range of ailments from heart disease to high blood pressure, strokes and depression. A recent analysis of the global krill industry predicted it was on course to grow 12% a year over the next three years. Krill populations have declined by 80% since the 1970s.

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Debt Rattle July 6 2017

Jul 062017
 
 July 6, 2017  Posted by at 9:07 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  3 Responses »


Roy Lichtenstein Woman With Flowered Hat 1963

 

• The Fed Grows Worried Its Loose Policy Threatens US Financial Stability (CNBC)
• Fed Eyes September Announcement on Balance-Sheet Reduction (WSJ)
• China’s Debt Binge Threatens Australia (CB)
• Australian Housing ‘Bubble’ Fears Overblown, HSBC Economist Says (BBG)
• Europe’s Quietly Growing Poor Population Is Getting Louder (Occupy)
• German Banks Pose A Threat That Politicians Want To Hide (CNBC)
• Saudi Arabia Chief Foreign Promoter Of Islamist Extremism In UK – Report (Ind.)
• Theresa May: Austerity Prevents UK From Turning Into Greece (G.)
• China’s Electric Cars Are Actually Pretty Dirty (BBG)
• After Failure To Prove Trump-Russia Collusion, There’s Pro-Trump Websites (ZH)
• Terrorists in Syria to Stage Provocations to Justify US Strikes – Moscow (Sp.)
• Hollywood Promotes War On Behalf Of The Pentagon, CIA and NSA (M.)
• Report In Sweden Claims Erdogan Orchestrated July 15 Coup In Turkey (SCF)
• Three In Four Recent Greek Graduates Work For Less Than €800 A Month (K.)
• EU Calls On Members To Aid Migrants Amid Rising Mediterranean Death Toll (G.)
• EU Blamed For ‘Soaring’ Migrant, Refugee Death Toll (BBC)

 

 

I think the Fed has known this for a long time.

• The Fed Grows Worried Its Loose Policy Threatens US Financial Stability (CNBC)

The Federal Reserve’s most recent interest rate hike came amid worries that keeping policy loose was posing increasing risks to financial stability and the economy. Fed officials indicated a determination to continue raising rates even with muted inflation levels, which they considered to be temporary and likely to rise over the long run to a targeted level of 2%, according to a summary from the June meeting of the policymaking Federal Open Market Committee. The Fed raised its benchmark rate target a quarter point at the meeting and outlined a plan to reduce its $4.5 trillion balance sheet of bond holdings it accrued while trying to stimulate the economy during and after the financial crisis. Meeting minutes released Wednesday indicated that Fed officials believe the balance sheet can be reduced with “limited” disruption to financial markets.

Officials also expressed little concern that low inflation would persist. However, Fed officials were divided on when the balance sheet runoff should begin, and did not release a timetable on when it would happen. Recent readings below the Fed’s 2% goal were attributed to “idiosyncratic factors, including sharp declines in prices of wireless telephone services and prescription drugs, and expected these developments to have little bearing on inflation over the medium run.” The rate hike came as several officials voiced concern over the effect, or lack thereof, that their recent measures were having on financial markets. Rather than causing conditions to tighten, they actually have grown looser since the central bank embarked on a series of hikes.

While the Fed has increased its benchmark rate target four times since December 2015, government bond yields have declined in recent months. Stocks have continued to gain in the second-longest bull market ever recorded, and multiple other measures of financial conditions remain loose. The meeting minutes reflected considerable discussion over why that was happening. Low bond yields, they reasoned, could be the product of “sluggish longer-term economic growth” as well as the Fed’s $4.5 trillion balance sheet of bond holdings.

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It’s time to say goodbye to the Fed and other central banks. They’re too destructive.

• Fed Eyes September Announcement on Balance-Sheet Reduction (WSJ)

Federal Reserve officials have indicated there is a strong chance they will announce in September a decision to start shrinking the central bank’s portfolio of bonds and other assets, while putting off until December any further interest-rate increase. The moves would give officials time to assess how markets react to the balance-sheet reductions and to confirm their view that a recent slowdown in inflation will fade. Launching the balance-sheet plan in September also would afford Chairwoman Janet Yellen an opportunity to initiate it well ahead of any potential leadership transition. Her term as chair expires in February, and President Trump hasn’t indicated whether he would nominate her to a second term or replace her. While a final decision on the next Fed moves hasn’t been made, officials will have several opportunities in coming weeks to clarify their thinking.

The central bank releases minutes of the June meeting on Wednesday, and Ms. Yellen testifies before Congress next week. Officials will also gather in Jackson Hole at the end of August for an annual monetary-policy conference that will provide ample opportunities for them to offer further guidance. Earlier this year, some officials indicated they were considering raising interest rates in March, June and September and then starting the portfolio reduction plan in December. They did raise rates in March and June, but are considering the new strategy for several reasons. First, they agreed at their June policy meeting on how they would reduce the $4.5 trillion portfolio, and made that plan public. Some officials now think they might as well get started soon, given the U.S. economic expansion appears steady and global growth is improving.

Second, if Ms. Yellen isn’t nominated to a second term as chair, they would prefer not to wait until December and launch the plan shortly before her successor takes charge. Third, inflation remains a puzzle for the Fed. The unemployment rate fell to 4.3% in May, a 16-year low, yet price pressures have diminished in recent months, moving year-over-year inflation gauges further below the central bank’s 2% target. Some Fed officials in recent weeks have said they want to see more proof that such price softness is transitory before resuming rate increases, but haven’t signaled similar qualms about initiating the balance-sheet runoff. “Take the balance sheet, get that started, and position ourselves for a December rate increase,” said Chicago Fed President Charles Evans in an interview last month.

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But.. wasn’t it supposed to make Australia rich?

• China’s Debt Binge Threatens Australia (CB)

No country can be indifferent to China’s economy, especially not Australia. We’re more exposed to what goes on in it than just about any other nation. China has long been the biggest market for our commodities, such as iron ore, coal and wool. And now it is the largest foreign buyer of our services, especially education and tourism. The upshot? Many thousands of Australian jobs depend on the health of the Chinese economy. Big Asian economies in our region – China, India and Indonesia – are bound to become even more important to us during this, the Asian Century. Our politicians like to dwell on the opportunities presented by the historic economic transformation to our north. But we’ll also need to be prepared for some nasty bumps along the way. The aftermath of China’s enormous corporate debt bubble could well be one of them.

For some years now China’s economic growth has been underpinned by an explosion in corporate lending. China has accounted for half – yes half – of all new credit created globally since 2005 according to the New York Federal Reserve. That’s a huge share for an economy that now only accounts for about 15% of the global economy. Alarm bells rang last August when the IMF pointed out the trajectory of credit growth in China was eerily similar to countries that experienced painful post-debt boom adjustments in the recent past. This includes Japan in the 1980s, Thailand prior to Asian Financial Crisis and Spain prior to the European debt crisis. The sheer pace of lending growth makes it likely many loans are going to marginal borrowers or unviable projects.

A recent Oxford University study that evaluated 65 major road and rail projects in China concluded just 28% could be considered “genuinely economically productive”. The rapid expansion of China’s less regulated “shadow banking” sector adds to the complexity. The Reserve Bank has described China’s financial system as “increasingly large, leveraged, interconnected, and opaque”. Authorities have recently taken steps to reduce credit growth in China but it continues to expand at a rapid pace. The Reserve’s latest review of financial stability published in April, said the risks continue to build. “The level of debt in China has risen significantly over the past decade to reach very high levels, with particularly strong growth in lending from the less regulated and more opaque parts of China’s financial system,” it said.

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Fire the guy, and all others like him.

• Australian Housing ‘Bubble’ Fears Overblown, HSBC Economist Says (BBG)

Soaring home prices in Australia’s biggest cities are driven by strong demand and a lack of supply, rather than indicating a “bubble,” according to HSBC’s local Chief Economist Paul Bloxham. “At a national level, a key reason for rising housing prices has been housing under-supply,” Bloxham wrote in a research note on Thursday. “This also suggests that a significant fall in Australian housing prices, as occurred in the U.S. and Spain during the global financial crisis, is unlikely.” Five years of red-hot growth have left prices in Sydney and Melbourne up 80% and 60% since mid-2012, fueling bubble concerns. In June, Moody’s Investors Service cut the long-term credit ratings of Australia’s four biggest banks, saying surging home prices, rising household debt and sluggish wage growth pose a threat to the lenders.

Bloxham, a former staffer at the Reserve Bank of Australia, said that “fundamental factors” largely explain the price boom and, “as a result, we do not judge it to be a bubble.” Demand for housing in Melbourne and Sydney has been supported by domestic and international migration, foreign investment and a lack of new supply, he said. Price increases have been much smaller in places such as Perth, where demand has been weaker amid the waning of a mining boom. The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority has gradually been ratcheting up restrictions on riskier loans and in recent months the big lenders have all raised interest rates charged on interest-only loans. Bloxham said he believes these regulatory measures will help cool the market, along with lower demand from overseas and increased supply.

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“..more than 240 million people now live on the poverty line..”

• Europe’s Quietly Growing Poor Population Is Getting Louder (Occupy)

[..] early last month, financial analysts lauded the explosive growth of the Eurozone, claiming that it had outdone the U.S. The ECB predicted that countries like Germany and France would be able to issue bonds worth over 600 billion euros by the end of the year. By all accounts it would seem that the storm has passed. The E.U. suffered long and hard, endured the departure of one of its most economically sound member-states, and has apparently managed to come out on top, even amid one of the most dire humanitarian crises in recent memory. However, a brief look at some the official reports published by E.U. economists paints a wholly different, less rosy picture. In March 2010, the European Commission published a detailed economic strategy that was intended to rescue the then 80 million citizens of the Eurozone from falling below the poverty line.

In a manner reminiscent of the Soviet Union, the Commission extensively defined “poverty” in as loose a terminology as possible, hoping to reduce the number of that population. It also measured income inequality using the wildly fluctuating per-capita incomes of each member-state. One of the more prevailing definitions used by the European Commission at the time was relative poverty: “People are said to be living in poverty if their income and resources are so inadequate as to preclude them from having a standard of living considered acceptable in the society in which they live. Because of their poverty they may experience multiple disadvantage through unemployment, low income, poor housing, inadequate health care and barriers to lifelong learning, culture, sport and recreation. They are often excluded and marginalized from participating in activities (economic, social and cultural) that are the norm for other people and their access to fundamental rights may be restricted.”

The purpose of the strategy was to implement, for lack of a better term, a “glorious 10-year plan” that would lift up the failing economies of the less developed or ailing member-states, encourage mobility within the Union and enable those 80 million citizens to be lifted above the poverty line. In 2017, the strategy was given a new, thorough assessment by Bruegel, a Brussels-based economic think-tank, which revealed that it not only failed to achieve its goal (an understandable outcome under the circumstances) but also increased the number of E.U. citizens risking poverty almost threefold. As of June, the European Commission website stated that more than 240 million people now live on the poverty line (around one-third of the E.U. population), with a full 9% of citizens suffering from deprivation.

That doesn’t factor in the considerable population of refugees and other marginalized communities such as the Roma, or the desperate populations of underdeveloped areas in countries like Romania. So where does all this leave the E.U.’s poor? According to predictions, financial troubles will escalate the already growing trend of social exclusion affecting women, single parents, immigrants and others in the E.U. for years to come. Already, E.U. citizens are choosing to abandon higher education in favor of steady employment. In countries like Greece, Macedonia and other member-states with expansive rural areas, the exodus of able-bodied young people combined with an aging population will lead to a long-term economic drain from which they may never recover.

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Too many banks? Or too much debt?

• German Banks Pose A Threat That Politicians Want To Hide (CNBC)

With the Italian banking system in the spotlight, analysts have highlighted that Germany’s lenders are still not out of the woods, saying shipping loans and too many bank branches are some of the very real problems they are currently facing. German officials repeatedly tell EU members from the south of Europe to restructure their banking systems but industry experts believe they have a problem of their own as federal elections approach. “Germany is overbanked, too many banks, very little consolidation has taken place,” Carsten Brzeski, chief economist at ING Germany, told CNBC via email on Wednesday. There are approximately 2,400 separate banks with more than 45,000 branches throughout the country and over 700,000 employees, according to Commercial Banks Guide, an industry website.

This increases the cost income ratio for banks, Brzeski explained. Meanwhile, the IMF warned last May that cost-to-income and leverage remain high in Germany. “Low profitability reflects structural inefficiencies, persistent crisis legacy issues, provisions for compliance violations, and the need to adjust to the new regulatory environment,” the IMF said in the report last May. Another problem seems to be the reliance on the shipping industry for many banks. “I would point towards some specific issues with asset quality: Shipping is one of the priorities of the single supervisor, the ECB, for next year,” Gildas Surry, senior analyst at Axiom Alternative Investments, told CNBC on Wednesday when citing the biggest problem for the German banking sector.

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As May refuses to make public a government report. Dead end.

• Saudi Arabia Chief Foreign Promoter Of Islamist Extremism In UK – Report (Ind.)

Saudi Arabia is the chief foreign promoter of Islamist extremism in the UK, a report has warned. The conservative Henry Jackson Society said there was a “clear and growing link” between Islamist organisations preaching violence and foreign state funding. In a new report entitled “Foreign Funded Islamist Extremism in the UK”, the thinktank calls for a public inquiry into extremism bankrolled by other countries. It suggests several Gulf states and Iran are responsible for much of the foreign funding of extremism in the UK, but that Saudi Arabia in particular had spent millions on exporting its conservative branch of Wahhabi Islam to Muslim communities in the West since the 1960s.

The thinktank, run by controversial journalist and political commentator Douglas Murray, said this typically took the form of endowments to mosques and Islamic educational institutions which host radical preachers and distribute extremist literature. The report calls for a public inquiry in Saudi Arabia’s connections with UK based extremism. The UK’s Saudi Arabian embassy told the BBC the allegations were “categorically false”. But it comes as the Government is facing mounting pressure to release its own report into Saudi funding of extremism. Responding to a parliamentary question on Tuesday, Theresa May said ministers were “considering advice on what is able to be published and will report to Parliament with an update in due course”.

The report, which has been in Ms May’s personal possession for six months, was first commissioned by David Cameron in 2015 following an agreement with the Liberal Democrats to get their support for Syrian air strikes. But last month a spokesman for the Home Office admitted to the Guardian that the report may not be published because its contents were “very sensitive”. Since coming to power in July last year, Ms May has courted the conservative kingdom, which is one of the main buyers of UK-made arms. Earlier this year, the Government approved £3.5bn-worth of arms exports licences to the Gulf state.

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This is getting too absurd. She’s claiming austerity can rescue a nation, but look at Greece. Someone like Steve Keen should set May straight once and for all. Corbyn doesn’t sound terribly clear either.

• Theresa May: Austerity Prevents UK From Turning Into Greece (G.)

Theresa May raised the spectre of a Greek-style economic collapse if Britain fails to press ahead with tackling the deficit on Wednesday, as she was challenged repeatedly by Jeremy Corbyn over the public sector pay cap. With intense political pressure on the prime minister – including from her own cabinet colleagues – to ease the strain for cash-strapped public servants, including nurses and teachers, she warned MPs about the risks of loosening the purse strings. “This is not a theoretical issue. Let us look at those countries that failed to deal with it. In Greece, where they have not dealt with the deficit … What did we see with that failure to deal with the deficit? Spending on the health service cut by 36%. That does not help nurses or patients,” she said.

Comparisons with Greece were repeatedly used by George Osborne in 2010 to justify public spending cuts, as riots erupted on the streets of Athens over the stringent bailout conditions imposed by the IMF and the eurozone. But the analogy represented a significant ratcheting up of the pro-austerity argument from May. A Conservative spokesman emphasised remarks afterwards, saying: “There are siren calls from Labour to abandon any kind of fiscal restraint whatsoever. What happens, we’ve seen as a case study, is what happened in Greece.” He added: “I think she was suggesting if Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party got the chance to impose its fiscal policies on the United Kingdom that is a very real threat.”

A spokesman for Corbyn described the claims as “preposterous”. “The situation in Greece is tied up with the eurozone and the management of the eurozone banks – we’re not remotely in that situation. Our manifesto and our pledges were costed, unlike the government’s,” he said.

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Prediction: the Green crowd is not going to listen.

• China’s Electric Cars Are Actually Pretty Dirty (BBG)

China has been making great strides toward electrification. Electric vehicle sales are booming: Consumers bought more than 300,000 last year, and more than 5 million are expected to be on the road by 2020. The government just announced bold plans for a wave of big new battery factories. Encouraging as that may be, though, the move away from conventional cars and trucks won’t immediately reduce the country’s carbon emissions. On the contrary, the production and exploitation of electric vehicles in China actually produces more greenhouse gases and consumes more overall energy. In the short run, China’s moves could make greenhouse emissions go up, not down. Electric vehicles seem environmentally benign. They’re lightweight, energy-efficient, and potentially greener than their conventional counterparts.

But the reality is more complex. Their manufacture entails energy-intensive mining of rare elements, such as the lithium required for their batteries. Their fuel efficiency can make up for that in the course of use, but only if the electricity is produced in a relatively clean way. Developed nations get the best results, because they tend to generate electricity using cleaner sources. By one estimate, the average electric car in the U.S. has just half the greenhouse gas impact of a conventional car over its life cycle. It’s even less in the western, southern and northeastern parts of the country, where power plants draw more renewable power. A comprehensive energy model being developed by Argonne National Laboratory produces a similar estimate.

Europe does well, too. Looking at all the processes involved in the manufacture, use, and ultimate disposal of a range of both electrical and conventional vehicles, Norwegian researchers found that electric vehicles offer at least a 10% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions (assuming they were driven about 150,000 kilometers). To be sure, electric-vehicle batteries impose a host of other environmental costs linked to the mining of rare metals. But on carbon emissions, electric vehicles win out. The real challenge to reducing greenhouse gas emissions will be in developing nations – especially China, which is likely to dominate the global auto market for decades to come. Unfortunately, the structure of China’s industrial economy will make it difficult. One recent study by Chinese engineers estimated that electric vehicles generate about a 50% increase in both greenhouse gas emissions and total energy consumption over their life cycle. The manufacture of the lithium-ion battery alone accounts for 13% of the energy consumption and 20% of the emissions.

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It’s high time for a reset. The narrative is dead.

• After Failure To Prove Trump-Russia Collusion, There’s Pro-Trump Websites (ZH)

Having failed miserably to produce even one single shred of tangible evidence that Trump colluded with Russia to stage a coup in 2016’s presidential election, Democrats, rather than simply admit that their entire crusade to prove a false narrative was nothing more than a charade designed to cover up their embarrassing defeat, have decided to shift the narrative to target “pro-Trump websites.” You know, because a couple of websites sharing stories over Facebook clearly overshadowed the 24/7 Hillary Clinton cheerleading sessions on CNN, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, CBS, Washington Post, New York Times… Per The Guardian, this convenient shift in the ‘Russian hacking’ narrative comes just as Trump’s former head of digital media has been summoned to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee to answer for his alleged ‘sins:”

“The spread of Russian-made fake news stories aimed at discrediting Hillary Clinton on social media is emerging as an important line of inquiry in multiple investigations into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow. Investigators are looking into whether Trump supporters and far-right websites coordinated with Moscow over the release of fake news, including stories implicating Clinton in murder or pedophilia, or paid to boost those stories on Facebook.The head of the Trump digital camp, Brad Parscale, has reportedly been summoned to appear before the House intelligence committee looking into Moscow’s interference in the 2016 US election. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee carrying out a parallel inquiry, has said that at least 1,000 “paid internet trolls working out of a facility in Russia” were pumping anti-Clinton fake news into social media sites during the campaign.”

Ironically, the same investigators digging into the “Trump collusion” narrative admit that similar media campaigns were used during the Democratic primaries in favor of Bernie Sanders. Oddly, however, there has been no organized effort to figure out whether or not Bernie conspired with Putin to destroy Clinton’s chances at the White House. A huge wave of fake news stories originating from eastern Europe began washing over the presidential election months earlier, at the height of the primary campaign. John Mattes, who was helping run the outline campaign for the Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders from San Diego, said it really took off in March 2016. “In a 30-day period, dozens of full-blown sites appeared overnight, running full level productions posts. It screamed out to me that something strange was going on,” Mattes said. Much of the material was untraceable, but he tracked 40% of the new postings back to eastern Europe.

Four of the Facebook members posting virulent and false stories about Clinton (suggesting, for example, that she had profited personally by arming Islamic State extremists) had the same name, Oliver Mitov. They all had a very small number of Facebook friends, including one which all four had in common. When Mattes tried to friend them and contact them there was no reply.

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Does anyone still notice the lack of evidence?

• Terrorists in Syria to Stage Provocations to Justify US Strikes – Moscow (Sp.)

According to information in the possession of Russian Foreign Ministry, terrorists in Syria are planning to stage chemical provocations in order to justify US strikes on government forces, Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said during her weekly presser on Thursday. Russia believes terrorists in Syria plan to stage chemical attacks in order to justify US airstrikes against the Syrian military, Zakharova said. “According to information available [to us], Syrian terrorist groups plan staged provocative actions with the use of chemical poison gases to justify US strikes against the positions of the Syrian government forces,” Zakharova told a weekly briefing.

Daesh has deployed chemical laboratories and special equipment for creating chemical bombs to Deir ez-Zor from Raqqa in Syria, Zakharova revealed. The relocation of the laboratories from Raqqa speaks to the US-led coalition’s “selective reluctance to see facts” and “aiding insurgents,” according to Zakharova. The spokeswoman reiterated that Russia will seek thorough probe of the April 4 incident in Khan Sheikhoun in addition to other ‘chemical’ provocations against the Syrian authorities. “We will continue to consistently seek the most professionally rigorous and politically impartial investigation into the investigation of both the Khan Sheikhoun chemical incident and other persistent chemical provocations against the legitimate Syrian government,” Zakharova said.

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Setting the social mood. Robert Prechter can tell you a lot about that. But he sees it as a phenomenon that moves itself.

• Hollywood Promotes War On Behalf Of The Pentagon, CIA and NSA (M.)

When we first looked at the relationship between politics, film and television at the turn of the 21st century, we accepted the consensus opinion that a small office at the Pentagon had, on request, assisted the production of around 200 movies throughout the history of modern media, with minimal input on the scripts. How ignorant we were. More appropriately, how misled we had been. We have recently acquired 4,000 new pages of documents from the Pentagon and CIA through the Freedom of Information Act. For us, these documents were the final nail in the coffin. These documents for the first time demonstrate that the US government has worked behind the scenes on over 800 major movies and more than 1,000 TV titles.

The previous best estimate, in a dry academic book way back in 2005, was that the Pentagon had worked on less than 600 films and an unspecified handful of television shows. The CIA’s role was assumed to be just a dozen or so productions, until very good books by Tricia Jenkins and Simon Willmetts were published in 2016. But even then, they missed or underplayed important cases, including Charlie Wilson’s War and Meet the Parents. Alongside the massive scale of these operations, our new book National Security Cinema details how US government involvement also includes script rewrites on some of the biggest and most popular films, including James Bond, the Transformers franchise, and movies from the Marvel and DC cinematic universes.

A similar influence is exerted over military-supported TV, which ranges from Hawaii Five-O to America’s Got Talent, Oprah and Jay Leno to Cupcake Wars, along with numerous documentaries by PBS, the History Channel and the BBC. National Security Cinema also reveals how dozens of films and TV shows have been supported and influenced by the CIA, including the James Bond adventure Thunderball, the Tom Clancy thriller Patriot Games and more recent films, including Meet the Parents and Salt. The CIA even helped to make an episode of Top Chef that was hosted at Langley, featuring then-CIA director Leon Panetta who was shown as having to skip dessert to attend to vital business. Was this scene real, or was it a dramatic statement for the cameras?

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Expect Erdogan to be loud and poresent this weekend around the G20.

• Report In Sweden Claims Erdogan Orchestrated July 15 Coup In Turkey (SCF)

Last year’s failed coup attempt in Turkey is nothing but a false flag orchestrated by Turkey s autocratic President Recep Tayip Erdogan and his henchmen to create a pretext for a mass persecution of critics and opponents in a state of perpetual emergency, a new detailed study titled ‘July 15: Erdogan’s Coup’ by Stockholm Center for Freedom (SCF) concluded. Based on publicly available data, the coup indictments, testimonials in court trials, private interviews, reviews of military expert opinions and other evidence collected by researchers, SCF is fairly confident that this attempt did not even qualify a coup bid in any sense of military mobilization which was unusually limited in numbers, confined in few cities, poorly managed, defied the established practices, tradition, rules of engagement and standard operating procedures in Turkish military.

This was a continuation of a series of false flags that were uncovered in the last couple of years under the authoritarian rule of Erdoan regime and it was certainly the bloodiest one, said Abdullah Bozkurt, the President of SCF. Erdogan appears to have tapped on widely circulated coup rumors in Turkish capital and staged own show to steal wind and set up his opposition for a persecution, he added. Judging from the results of the coup bid, Erdogan won big time by securing imperial presidency, consolidating his gains, stifle the opposition and even launching cross border military incursion into Syria for which he had been itching for too long. No wonder why he immediately called the attempt ‘a gift from God’. The report was originally published in Turkish. SCF plans to release an English edition soon with new changes and updated data.

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Shock doctrine. What can they do but leave?

• Three In Four Recent Greek Graduates Work For Less Than €800 A Month (K.)

Almost three in every four (73%) people who graduated after 2011 in Greece collect no more than 800 euros per month, while one in six gets less than 400 euros per month, if they have a job, according to the findings of a survey the Foundation for Economic and Industrial Research (IOBE) presented on Wednesday. That compares with just 24% of pre-2011 graduates who get less than 800 euros per month. In the years of the financial crisis graduates have found it much more difficult to find work, as the unemployment rate among degree-holders soared from 7% in 2009 to 18% in 2016.

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Report after report circles around money. Not people.

• EU Calls On Members To Aid Migrants Amid Rising Mediterranean Death Toll (G.)

Brussels will urge European countries to give shelter to more refugees from Africa to ease the pressure on Italy, as record numbers of people attempt the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean. The European Union executive wants all member states – including the UK – to contribute to resettling a total of 37,000 vulnerable people from five north African countries by the end of 2018. Interior ministers meeting in Tallinn on Thursday will be called on by Dmitris Avramopoulos, the EU home affairs commissioner, to make voluntary pledges by the middle of September. The appeal came as Amnesty International released a damning 31-page reportlinking “failing EU policies” to the the rising death toll in the Mediterranean, and shocking abuses faced by refugees and migrants in Libyan detention centres.

The EU resettlement plan is focused on children, as well as victims of people smugglers and torture, from Libya, Egypt, Niger, Sudan and Ethiopia. Most people making the perilous sea crossing from north Africa are deemed to be economic migrants not eligible for international protection. But the EU announced a relocation plan for vulnerable people as part of a package of emergency measures to help ease pressure on Italy. “It can be an important safety valve for people with vulnerabilities,” said an EU source. Frans Timmermans, European commission vice president, has made clear Brexit does not exclude the UK from the 2017-2018 programme, although pledges are voluntary. The plan, which has a strong emphasis on returning unwanted migrants, emerged as it was revealed that EU countries have paid in less than half of the funds promised to help African governments manage migration.

The Africa “trust fund” was announced with fanfare in 2015 to win African support for the deportation of unwanted migrants in Europe. Brussels has contributed €2.6bn (£2.3bn) from the EU budget, but officials are frustrated that national capitals are not digging deeper into their state coffers. Only €90bn of a promised €202bn has so far materialised. The UK has paid in €0.6bn of its promised €3bn, far less than Italy, which has paid €32bn. France, Germany and Spain have put in €3bn each, according to the latest data from the European commission.

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The EU will say: but look at all the money we gave! And then blames member states.

• EU Blamed For ‘Soaring’ Migrant, Refugee Death Toll (BBC)

Amnesty International has blamed “failing EU policies” for the soaring death toll among refugees and migrants in the central Mediterranean. In a report, it said “cynical deals” with Libya consigned thousands to the risk of drowning, rape and torture. It said the EU was turning a blind eye to abuses in Libyan detention centres, and was mostly leaving it up to sea rescue charities to save migrants. More than 2,000 people have died in 2017 trying to get to Europe, it said. The EU has so far made no public comments on Amnesty’s report. It comes as interior ministers from the 28-member bloc are meeting in Tallinn, Estonia, to discuss the migrant crisis. They will review a $92m (£71m) action plan unveiled by the European Commission to deal with the issue.

The commission proposes to use more than 50% of the funds to boost the Libyan coastguard’s capacity to stop traffickers launching boatloads of migrants out to sea to be rescued. The rest is to help Italy feed, house and process the migrants who get there. “Rather than acting to save lives and offer protection, European ministers… are shamelessly prioritising reckless deals with Libya in a desperate bid to prevent refugees and migrants from reaching Italy,” said John Dalhuisen, Amnesty’s Europe director. “European states have progressively turned their backs on a search and rescue strategy that was reducing mortality at sea in favour of one that has seen thousands drown and left desperate men, women and children trapped in Libya, exposed to horrific abuses,” he said.

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