Joan Miro The tilled field 1924
John Oliver
https://twitter.com/i/status/1741677557810880580
Count the vote
JOE BIDEN: "We have put together the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics."
"I don't need you to get me elected."
"It's no longer just who gets to vote or making it easier for eligible people to vote."
"It's about who… pic.twitter.com/sx7gGqEvdH
— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) January 1, 2024
January is named after the Roman god Janus, protector of gates and doorways. Janus is depicted with two faces, one looking into the past, the other into the future.
X thread. ” If there are more than two candidates and no one hits 270, that triggers a contingent election..[..] where the House of Representatives selects a president and the Senate selects a vice president.”
• How Congress May Select Our Next President In 2024 (Laura Loomer)
Did you know that a winner of the 2024 Presidential election may not come to fruition due to a “contingent election”, which would then let Congress select the next President and Vice President? This is what @RobertKennedyJr is trying to accomplish by running as an Independent. He’s trying to create a contingent election in which neither candidate gets 270 electoral votes. RFK’s plan is to create a contingent election, as was admitted by his own PAC. An article outlining the PACs $15 million plan said, “A statement outlining the new plan also said it’s confident that Kennedy could win a contingent election, a possible scenario where no presidential candidate gets 270 electoral college votes.” This is why RFK switched from running as a Democrat to an Independent.
Recently, it was announced that “American Values” @AmValues2024, a Super PAC which was created to support RFK’s presidential campaign, is planning to spend $15 MILLION to get him on the ballot in 10 key states that collectively carry 210 electoral votes that are needed to win the 2024 election, including: Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Nevada, New York, and Texas. If RFK is able to pick up enough electoral votes to the point where neither Trump or Biden gets 270, then under the US Constitution, we would have what is called a “contingent election”, which is what happens if no candidate gets a majority in the Electoral College. To win the Electoral College, a candidate needs a majority — at least 270 electoral votes. If there are more than two candidates and no one hits 270, that triggers a contingent election, a fallback process created by the Twelfth Amendment where the House of Representatives selects a president and the Senate selects a vice president.
HOW WOULD THIS HAPPEN? House members vote as state delegations. Each state delegation gets a single vote, and a candidate becomes president with the support of a majority (26) of state delegations. If no candidate wins 26 state delegations by January 20th, then the vice president-elect becomes acting president. And if the Senate fails to select a vice president, then under the Twentieth Amendment and the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, the next eligible person in the presidential line of succession (potentially the speaker of the House) becomes acting president.
This could be disastrous, given the fact that Republicans only hold a 1 seat majority in Congress right now with the early retirement of @SpeakerMcCarthy, several other GOP members of Congress, and the ousting of George Santos @MrSantosNY. It will only take one more House GOP rep to retire early, and then Dems will have control of the House again before the 2024 election. I predict Dems take control of the House by March, and when they do, we will be one step closer to having a contingent election. This is all part of their plan to make sure Trump and Biden aren’t the next President. Congress would then be able to install their own President and Vice President if this happens. Hopefully you now see why @RobertKennedyJr is so dangerous. This could very well happen.
“Isn’t it the job of the American public to decide what leaders are “better leaders?”
• Secretary Of State That Kicked Trump From Ballot Wants ‘Better Leaders’ (ZH)
The precedent being set by states like Colorado and Maine could change the political landscape of America forever if allowed to go unchallenged. Removing presidential candidates from the ballot based on unilateral opinion rather than any kind of legally arbitrated decision or criminal conviction is the most slippery of slopes for a number of reasons. The most dangerous implication being that a handful of officials can decide for the entire population of their states (or the entire population of the country) what leaders they are allowed to vote for based on a “guilty until proven innocent” ideology. Meaning, all they have to do is make accusations of criminal behavior or criminal intent and then remove a candidate based on those accusations alone. No person or group should have that power.
“One could argue that this is already the case and that the two party system filters out candidates on a regular basis. However, the notion of state ballot removal is a decidedly leftist/Democrat affair clearly engineered to benefit the progressive power structure for many years to come. It’s not only about Donald Trump – Woke bureaucrats could use this trend in the future to deny ballot access to any conservative candidate on the grounds that they “might” represent a “threat to Democracy.” This is essentially the message conveyed by Secretary of State Sheena Bellows, now well known as the person responsible for single-handedly removing Trump from the 2024 election ballot in Maine. She argues “better leaders” must be put in positions of power to prevent “election sabotage” and the end of Democracy. The hypocrisy is mind blowing, and of course we have to ask: Isn’t it the job of the American public to decide what leaders are “better leaders?”
Bellows laces her argument with social justice platitudes about protecting minority voting rights, which she insinuates are under threat from “white supremacy.” This is a common claim among Democrats when referencing Republican efforts to require proof of citizenship for voters, which has nothing to do with “intimidation” or race. The diatribes of woke officials are not as random as they seem. Each buzzword is carefully chosen to elicit an emotional knee-jerk response and to create false associations. In this case, Bellows is falsely associating voter suppression with Republicans while Democrats are, in fact, engaging in voter suppression.
Not only that, but she is connecting Republican election suppression (which isn’t happening) to racial motivations (that don’t exist). It’s not surprising to discover that this effort is being headed by people with career ties to far-left organizations like the SPLC and ACLU. It has become exceedingly obvious in recent years that progressive institutions are a driving force behind national division, but they are also directly attempting to manipulate election outcomes. It’s no longer a matter of influencing citizens with arguments or propaganda, they want to dictate the mechanics of the system; elevating themselves as the arbiters of who is acceptable as a candidate and who is not.
X thread. “Bellows has no law degree. She was appointed by a majority vote of the Democratic-controlled Maine legislature, not through a popular ballot.”
• Who Are the Real Insurrectionaries? Part One (Victor Davis Hanson)
Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows just ordered Trump’s name removed from the primary ballot in May. She claimed he is guilty in her view of “insurrection”—a crime Trump has never been charged with, much less convicted of. Her evidence, mostly gleaned from popular news accounts and video reports, would not stand up in a court of law. Bellows has no law degree. She was appointed by a majority vote of the Democratic-controlled Maine legislature, not through a popular ballot. Her legal expertise seems to be derived from years of political activism with the ACLU. We can see where the ultimate trajectory of this usurpation is going—once a single official decides to remove the leading primary and general election candidate of the opposition from the ballot by fiat. Tit-for-tat will likely follow and would unwind the republic.
Take Bellows’ action and then apply it to any future candidacy of Hillary Clinton. And by these new rules she surely would fail to qualify to have her name on a state ballot. Remember, in 2016 Hillary Clinton illegally hired a foreign national (by law forbidden to work in presidential campaigns), Christopher Steele, to create a “dossier” of smears and fake-news accounts, aimed at destroying her presidential opponent Donald Trump by extra-legal means. Clinton hid her illicit payments to Steele behind the paywalls of the DNC, the Perkins-Coie law firm, and Fusion GPS. Her leftwing associates and partisans in the waning Obama administration, the DOJ, State Department, FBI, and CIA worked hard to brand the slurs as credible, as they variously passed them off and leaked to the media on the eve of the election.
They and Democrats in congress later engineered the appointment of a special counsel, whose investigations consumed two years of the Trump administration’s term, before finding no “collusion”. Even three years after the election in 2019 and the special counsel’s findings, Clinton could still persist that Trump was an “illegitimate” president: “He knows he’s an illegitimate president”. She also declared that year that the 2016 election had been “stolen”: “I think it’s also critical to understand that, as I’ve been telling candidates who have come to see me, you can run the best campaign, you can even become the nominee, and you can have the election stolen from you”—de facto asserting the balloting was fraudulent. She was prepping the battlefield for 2020. So Clinton continued her denialism right up to the eve of the 2020 election, further claiming the 2016 election was rigged, “There was a widespread understanding that this election [in 2016] was not on the level.” To be continued…
Two articles on the same topic, but very different.
• Jack Smith: Trump’s Immunity Defense Could Allow President To Murder (JTN)
Allowing former President Donald Trump to use the presidential immunity defense could pave the way for a president to claim immunity from numerous charges such as murder and the sale of nuclear secrets so long as it was done under the claim of official activities, according to special counsel Jack Smith. Trump has argued that he is immune from criminal prosecution for activities that fall under his official presidential responsibilities, but Smith’s office, which charged Trump with allegedly attempting to overturn the 2020 election in his favor, vehemently denied such claims in an 82-page court filing Saturday.
Trump’s “approach would grant immunity from criminal prosecution to a President who accepts a bribe in exchange for directing a lucrative government contract to the payer; a President who instructs the FBI Director to plant incriminating evidence on a political enemy; a President who orders the National Guard to murder his most prominent critics; or a President who sells nuclear secrets to a foreign adversary,” Smith argued. Prosecutors said that in all of those examples, “the President could assert that he was simply executing the laws,” and thus be immune from prosecution. Smith made the filing in the D.C. Court of Appeals after the Supreme Court earlier this month rejected his request to rule on Trump’s immunity claims before an appeals court made a decision on the arguments.
If Trump prevailed on presidential immunity claims, the case against him still should not be dismissed because the charges against him fall beyond his official responsibilities, Smith also argued. “Even if a former President could claim immunity from criminal prosecution commensurate with his immunity from civil damages liability for official conduct, dismissal would be unwarranted because the indictment contains substantial allegations of a plot to overturn the election results that fall well outside the outer perimeter of official Presidential responsibilities,” prosecutors wrote.
The double jeopardy claim is crucial.
• Jack Smith Disputes Trump’s Claims in Appeals Court (ET)
Special Counsel Jack Smith Saturday urged the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to reject President Donald Trump’s immunity and double-jeopardy claim that he will be retried for similar charges on which he has already been acquitted. President Trump is not entitled to immunity in the election case and the criminal charges against him also didn’t violate the principle of double jeopardy, the prosecutors argued. Immunity for a U.S. president applies to civil liability only and not criminal, the special counsel’s office claimed. “The defendant, a former President, does not enjoy immunity from federal prosecution for the offenses charged in this case. Under separation-of-powers analysis, the President’s unique constitutional status provides immunity from civil liability for official conduct … but it does not render a former President immune from criminal liability when charged with violations of generally applicable federal criminal statutes,” reads the filing.
Meanwhile, although President Trump has been acquitted after being impeached over an event connected to Jan. 6, the special counsel’s office argued that its criminal charges filed against him don’t violate the principle of double jeopardy because the only remedies in an impeachment proceeding are removal from the office and disqualification. Mr. Smith argued those likely don’t meet the term “jeopardy.” Even if President Trump was put into jeopardy during the impeachment proceeding, the indictment charges filed by his office are different from what President Trump was impeached for, the special counsel argued.
Accordingly, Mr. Smith asked the appeal court to reject President Trump’s immunity and double-jeopardy defenses and affirm the district court’s ruling. Mr. Smith also pushed the court to rule on this promptly. “For the foregoing reasons, the Court should affirm the district court’s order denying the defendant’s motions to dismiss on Presidential-immunity and double-jeopardy grounds,” the prosecutors wrote. “The Government respectfully requests the Court to issue the mandate five days after the entry of judgment. Such an approach would appropriately require any party seeking further review to do so promptly.”
“..In the Warsaw Ghetto, the Germans handed out three kilograms of bread and one kilogram of marmalade to anyone who “voluntarily” registered for deportation..”
• Israel’s Genocide Betrays the Holocaust (Chris Hedges)
Israel’s lebensraum master plan for Gaza, borrowed from the Nazi’s depopulation of Jewish ghettos, is clear. Destroy infrastrutrue, medical facilities and sanitation, including access to clean water. Block shipments of food and fuel. Unleash indiscriminate industrial violence to kill and wound hundreds a day. Let starvation — the U.N. estimates that more than half a million people are already starving — and epidemics of infectious diseases, along with the daily massacres and the displacement of Palestinians from their homes, turn Gaza into a mortuary. The Palestinians are being forced to choose between death from bombs, disease, exposure or starvation or being driven from their homeland. There will soon reach a point where death will be so ubiquitous that deportation – for those who want to live – will be the only option.
Danny Danon, Israel’s former Ambassador to the U.N. and a close ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told Israel’s Kan Bet radio that he has been contacted by “countries in Latin America and Africa that are willing to absorb refugees from the Gaza Strip.” “We have to make it easier for Gazans to leave for other countries,” he said. “I’m talking about voluntary migration by Palestinians who want to leave.” The problem for now “is countries that are willing to absorb them, and we’re working on this,” Netanyahu told Likud Knesset members. In the Warsaw Ghetto, the Germans handed out three kilograms of bread and one kilogram of marmalade to anyone who “voluntarily” registered for deportation. “There were times when hundreds of people had to wait in line for several hours to be ‘deported,’” Marek Edelman, one of the commanders of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, writes in “The Ghetto Fights.”
“The number of people anxious to obtain three kilograms of bread was such that the transports, now leaving twice daily with 12,000 people, could not accommodate them all.” The Nazis shipped their victims to death camps. The Israelis will ship their victims to squalid refugee camps in countries outside of Israel. Israeli leaders are also cynically advertising the proposed ethnic cleansing as voluntary and a humanitarian gesture to solve the catastrophe they created. This is the plan. No one, especially the Biden administration, intends to stop it. The most disturbing lesson I learned while covering armed conflicts for two decades is that we all have the capacity, with little prodding, to become willing executioners. The line between the victim and the victimizer is razor thin.
The dark lusts of racial and ethnic supremacy, of vengeance and hate, of the eradication of those we condemn as embodying evil, are poisons that are not circumscribed by race, nationality, ethnicity or religion. We can all become Nazis. It takes very little. And if we do not stand in eternal vigilance over evil — our evil — we become, like those carrying out the mass killing in Gaza, monsters. The cries of those expiring under the rubble in Gaza are the cries of the boys and men executed by the Bosnian Serbs at Srebrenica, the over 1.5 million Cambodians killed by the Khmer Rouge, the thousands of Tutsi families burned alive in churches and the tens of thousands of Jews executed by the Einsatzgruppen at Babi Yar in Ukraine. The Holocaust is not an historical relic. It lives, lurking in the shadows, waiting to ignite its vicious contagion.
[..] The German playwright and revolutionary Ernst Toller, unable to rouse an indifferent world to assist victims and refugees from the Spanish Civil War, hanged himself in 1939 in a room at the Mayflower Hotel in New York City. On his hotel desk were photos of dead Spanish children. “Most people have no imagination,” Toller writes. “If they could imagine the sufferings of others, they would not make them suffer so. What separated a German mother from a French mother? Slogans which deafened us so that we could not hear the truth.” Primo Levi railed against the false, morally uplifting narrative of the Holocaust that culminates in the creation of the state of Israel — a narrative embraced by the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. The contemporary history of the Third Reich, he writes, could be “reread as a war against memory, an Orwellian falsification of memory, falsification of reality, negation of reality.” He wonders if “we who have returned” have “been able to understand and make others understand our experience.”
Raw power fight.
• Israeli Supreme Court Strikes Down Bibi’s Judicial Overhaul Law (Axios)
Israel’s Supreme Court on Monday narrowly struck down a controversial law that’s part of the Netanyahu government’s judicial overhaul and limited the court’s ability to review government decisions. The dramatic ruling could thrust Israel back into a constitutional and political crisis amid the war in Gaza and concerns about a potential war with Lebanon. A strong reaction by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his radical right-wing political allies could push former Defense Minister Benny Gantz to leave the emergency unity government that was formed after the Oct. 7 attack. If Gantz, who is part of the opposition National Unity alliance, left the war cabinet, it would leave Israel with a radical right-wing government to make decisions about the war, which could have implications for U.S. support of the war in Gaza.
Netanyahu’s Likud Party said in a statement that it is “unfortunate” that the court decided to publish a ruling that deals with a central disagreement in Israeli society amid the war in Gaza. “The court’s ruling is opposed to the people’s will for unity, especially in times of war,” the party said. Gantz said in a statement that everyone must abide by the court’s ruling. “There are no winners and losers today. We have one mutual goal – to win the war,” he said. “After the war we will need to settle the relationship between the different branches of power through dialogue and broad consensus.”. Opposition leader Yair Lapid said the court upheld its duty to protect the citizens of Israel. “If the government resumes the fight over the Supreme Court it will show they didn’t learn anything from Oct. 7,” Lapid said
The legislation the court struck down was passed last July. It limits the Supreme Court’s oversight of government actions and policies and ends the court’s ability to strike down government decisions and appointments on the basis of “reasonability.” The law was the first piece of legislation of Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul — a plan that destabilized Israel’s economy, military and foreign relations. The Supreme Court struck down the law in an 8-7 vote. The court ruled that the law should be canceled because it seriously and unprecedentedly damages Israel’s democratic character. Twelve out of 15 Supreme Court judges ruled that the court has the authority to conduct judicial oversight on basic laws and intervene in extreme cases when the Knesset oversteps its legislative authority.
A draft ruling was leaked a few days ago to Israel’s Channel 12 in an unprecedented way that resembled the leak of the 2022 Roe v. Wade ruling in the U.S. After the leak, Netanyahu and his political allies called on the court not to publish the ruling, claiming it would be divisive if it happened in the middle of the war in Gaza. Some also hinted that they believed the ruling would be illegitimate because two of the judges who supported striking down the law had already retired. President Biden called for the Israeli government to come to a broad consensus on judicial reform instead of pushing the plan unilaterally.
“..at the global level the situation is aggravated by the fact that the escalation in Gaza has become another fault line in the confrontation between the West and the world majority..”
• How Russia and The Arab World Defied Western Pressure In 2023 (Sadygzade)
On October 7, media around the world reported on Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, which was initiated by the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigade, a radical paramilitary group affiliated with Hamas. The horrific attack on Israeli territory left many civilians dead and more than 250 others taken hostage. In response, the Israeli government announced the launch of a ground anti-terrorist operation in Gaza, which was aimed at completely eliminating Hamas and other groups in the Palestinian exclave. This new escalation in the Middle East is still ongoing, and judging by the statements of Israeli officials and the scale of the clashes, the conflict will be long. Already the number of dead in Gaza has exceeded 21,000, while on the Israeli side the death toll is around 1,200.
The military action has shaken the already troubled region, disrupting the emerging normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, as well as leading to a diplomatic “cooling” of relations between the Jewish state and Türkiye, as well as a number of other states in the region. Russia, which has traditionally been a mediator and a member of the quartet on Middle East settlement together with the EU, US, and UN, has not stood aside. Since the first days of the escalation, Moscow has been calling on the parties to stop the violence and resume diplomatic negotiations on the basis of UN General Assembly resolutions. Moscow believes that a solution to the conflict is possible only through the establishment of an independent Arab state of Palestine and full recognition of the Jewish state of Israel by the Palestinians and other Arab states.
While Western countries and representatives of the Kiev authorities blamed Russia for instigating the hostilities, Moscow was actively consulting with the parties to the conflict and the main regional players. Russian diplomacy was also active within the UN, trying to initiate in the Security Council a resolution on the situation and calling for an immediate ceasefire, but all such attempts were blocked by Western countries. The conflict is still not over – there will be many more casualties on both sides – but at the global level the situation is aggravated by the fact that the escalation in Gaza has become another fault line in the confrontation between the West and the world majority. Moscow’s actions are viewed positively by the Arab Street and states that consider Russia to be the most unbiased and decisive player in the case. There are not many opportunities for settlement in the current situation, but Russian diplomacy will continue to try to bring the parties to the negotiating table one way or another.
“.. probably some scum like Zelensky is dreaming of our armed forces turning Kiev city center into some semblance of the Gaza strip.”
• Zelensky is ‘Scum’ – Medvedev (RT)
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky is “scum” who would love to see his own civilian population killed, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has claimed. The official, who currently serves as deputy chairman of the Security Council, was commenting on a deadly strike on Belgorod, insisting that Moscow’s forces only hit military targets, in contrast to Kiev’s army. On Saturday, Ukraine unleashed an artillery barrage on the Russian city, which is located around 40km from the border. The attack came shortly after a Russian bombardment of multiple Ukrainian cities, and left 24 people dead and 108 injured, Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov reported. In a post on the Russian VK social media platform on Saturday, Medvedev wrote: “It is obvious that the terrorist strike on Belgorod and the death of our citizens is a bloody crime at the hands of the Banderite bastards [caused by their] powerlessness to change anything on the front line.”
He went on to say that “probably some scum like Zelensky is dreaming of our armed forces turning Kiev city center into some semblance of the Gaza strip.” Medvedev suggested that the Ukrainian leadership might be secretly wishing for such an attack by Moscow, as it would make it easier for them to “beg their masters” for more weapons. The office of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the Ukrainian strike as a “violation of international humanitarian law,” as quoted by RIA Novosti. An anonymous Moscow security source told RT’s Russian-language service that Zelensky had personally ordered his forces to target the Russian city.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Saturday that “Britain is behind the terrorist act,” with the US and EU also bearing responsibility. Ukrainian defense officials claimed that their forces had targeted exclusively military facilities, with any destruction of civilian infrastructure resulting from the “inefficient work of Russian air defenses.” Apart from condemning Kiev’s actions on Saturday, Medvedev wrote in his VK post that a day before, the “Russian army inflicted considerable damage on the Nazi regime’s military and other infrastructure.” According to the Ukrainian authorities, the Russian bombardment of several major cities, including the capital, Kiev, left 39 people dead and nearly 160 injured. The Russian Defense Ministry insisted that its drones and missiles strictly targeted “military facilities and infrastructure.” Any civilian casualties were attributable to the unprofessional performance of Ukrainian air defense forces, Moscow explained.
This made it through a GOP controlled House…
“..It’s aimed at Trump and one of the few decent things he might do if elected president..”
• Congressional Nincompoops Saddle The US With NATO Forever (CP)
Nobody in their right mind wants to be obliged to send their kid off to war in Eastern Europe if Romania and Moldova start bombing each other. Yet NATO membership requires just that. And courtesy of the best congress money can buy, now power to withdraw from NATO has been removed from the U.S. president and enshrined in the well-greased palms of our legislators. More specifically, on December 16 congress approved a bill barring the president from unilaterally exiting NATO without legislative approval. This is a disaster. It’s aimed at Trump and one of the few decent things he might do if elected president, namely ditch that trouble-making albatross, NATO. Naturally president Joe Biden did not delay signing the National Defense Authorization Act, which includes this new NATO provision; so we’re stuck with it.
You doubt this is bad news? Just look at NATO’s track record: bombing Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya and currently the abattoir NATO has made of Ukraine – or rather the disaster caused by NATO’s promise to absorb Ukraine. In Afghanistan, NATO performed with its usual, incomparable mediocrity, so the U.S. withdrew, convinced its puppet regime could hold off the Taliban for months. After all, the U.S. and NATO had bombed the country and the Taliban to smithereens – right? Well, it turned out our puppet couldn’t restrain the Taliban long enough for retreating U.S. jets to lift off from the tarmac. And what was NATO doing in Afghanistan for 20 years anyway? Don’t ask any of our military geniuses like David Petraeus, who kept telling us victory was just around the corner, and who even argued in the Atlantic, August 8 2022, that “we could have won.” Ha!
As for NATO’s 2011 military intervention in Libya, that was a debacle that transformed Africa’s most prosperous nation into a stone-age pit with open-air slave markets. The NATO 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia wasn’t much better, in that it should never have happened and arguably the only reason it did was so then President Bill “NATO Uber Alles” Clinton could distract the public from the lurid details of a sex scandal and impeachment. Thus the noble enterprises in which NATO has engaged, spreading mayhem, misery and murder across the globe in the name of freedom and democracy. What has NATO learned from these fiascos, seriatim? Arguably nothing.
Take NATO’s plans for the South China Sea and for Finland, plans which slate Taiwan for the cemetery and leave Finland bristling with U.S. bases from Helsinki in the south to Utsjoki in the north. You disagree that Taiwan’s headed for the grave? Well, numerous U.S. bigwigs have bandied about the notion of bombing Taiwan’s computer chip industry, rather than letting it fall into China’s hands. That’s American homicidal love for Taiwan. Meanwhile, back in July, NATO infuriated Beijing by portraying China as a major challenge to…you got it, NATO! What is NATO doing in the China Sea, you ask? Whatever Washington tells it to do. Lately, that means stirring up trouble and painting Beijing in the garish colors of a supervillain. NATO did so by announcing, according to Al Jazeera July 12, that China “challenged the alliance’s interests, security and values with its ‘stated ambitions and coercive policies.’”
The industry is salivating..
• Britain’s Arms Stockpile Reduced To ‘Nothing’ – The Times (RT)
Britain’s weapons stockpiles have been nearly completely emptied out by almost two years of deliveries to Ukraine, The Times has claimed. The British newspaper also reported that the UK, together with other European nations, is scrambling to ramp up arms production ahead of the 2024 presidential election in the US. While London has spent more than £4.6 billion ($5.7 billion) on arming Kiev since February 2022, NATO’s deputy supreme allied commander for Europe, Gen. Tim Radford, warned in July that the UK was running the risk of losing its status as a major power within the US-led bloc. The general cited personnel shortages, among other issues. In its article on Sunday, The Times quoted an anonymous Ukrainian military source as saying that Britain had “nothing” left in terms of weapons it could donate.
The unnamed official added, however, that London was still playing a crucial role in persuading other nations to ship their own arms to Kiev. According to the newspaper, citing an unnamed staffer from Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s office, Britain and several other European countries are “cranking through the gears” to make sure Ukraine has enough military supplies to fall back on in case a new US administration decides to withhold or drastically diminish defense aid. Britain and other Western nations are allegedly seeking to extend the conflict into 2025, and possibly beyond, the source said, in the hope of stretching Russia’s resources and forcing it to eventually relent. The Times also claimed that a growing number of Ukrainians are becoming weary of the conflict, with the idea of sealing a truce with Russia presumably gaining traction among the population.
This sentiment is in part fueled by the political impasses in the US and the EU, which have left a massive amount of aid for Kiev hanging in limbo, the paper reported, citing an anonymous Ukrainian military source. A similar report was published back in early October by the Telegraph, which at the time quoted an unnamed senior British military official as warning that the UK had “given away just about as much as we can afford.” Meanwhile, back in August, British MP Andrew Murrison, who serves as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence People and Families, floated the idea of allowing the British military to recruit candidates with such conditions as autism, Asperger’s, and ADHD. The lawmaker cited “serious” staffing shortages, adding that to tackle the problem London may also want to extend the retirement age for military personnel.
“..We have to push back because there is no going along with this. They are trying to kill us, number one. Then they are trying to take all of our stuff, and we can’t let them..”
• Pushback to Tyranny & Control Increases in 2024 – Catherine Austin Fitts (USAW)
Catherine Austin Fitts (CAF), Publisher of The Solari Report, financial expert and former Assistant Secretary of Housing (Bush 41 Admin.), says the top story (out of 20 top stories) of 2023 was massive, documented pushback to tyranny and control by the evil Deep State globalists. CAF explains, “Our top story of 2023 is ‘The Year of Pushback.’ It was so long, and it was so big, we had to make a special page and move the other 19 top stories to a whole different section on another page.” Just a few of the 2023 stories that documented this massive pushback, according to CAF, are, “Stories on Constitutional protections, different litigations on the First Amendment and the Second Amendment, and we have one on information sovereignty and infrastructure. We have stories on all the pushback against the media, including litigation to hold people accountable and stopping emergency powers. We have culture wars about saying no to international organizations.
Woke capital controls and ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance investing) is toast. The state AGs have gone after ESG and Larry Fink (BlackRock CEO), and he’s had to publicly backpedal. They are steamrolling him. We had another story about taking it to the streets and have a whole section on ‘Pushback Heros.’ . . . In 2023, people started to realize that it is kill or be killed. We have to push back because there is no going along with this. They are trying to kill us, number one. Then they are trying to take all of our stuff, and we can’t let them. CAF also talks about what she calls “massive collateral fraud.” CAF goes on to say, “The collateral fraud is enormous, and we have talked about the money (trillions of dollars) that has gone ‘missing’ for years from the federal government.
This is what’s been going on in the United States and around the world for years. You issue debt, you get a whole bunch of money, and then the money disappears. . . . So, there is an extraordinarily fraudulent system going on around the debt markets. The reality is if you are going to run a bubble like that, you need very strict control of the collateral. This is what “The Great Taking” is all about. 2024 is the year the pushback can put us over the top.” CAF thinks gold is a “must have” investment for the coming years. The US dollar is being weakened, but it is still “dominant and dangerous.” In closing, CAF says, “I think we are going see collisions at a spiritual, legal, financial and physical level increasing all over the planet. This is a real war, and we are in World War III now. The US is going to defend the dollar. . .”
“..Clinton has denied ever being on the island..”
• Bill Clinton To Be Identified Over 50 Times In Jeffrey Epstein Doc Dump (PM)
In an upcoming release of court documents related to the late Jeffrey Epstein, former President Bill Clinton will reportedly be identified as “John Doe 36,” as disclosed in a recent report by ABC News. The documents, pertaining to a 2015 lawsuit filed by Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre, mention Clinton over 50 times, with speculations suggesting that these references are linked to Giuffre’s efforts to compel the ex-president to testify against Epstein and his alleged accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell. Some mentions of Clinton are also anticipated to involve joint endeavors by Maxwell and Giuffre to press Epstein to disclose information in 2016, following his repeated invocations of the Fifth Amendment during a deposition in the same lawsuit.
“U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska ruled earlier this month there was no legal justification for continuing to conceal the ex-president’s name and more than 150 names other ‘John and Jane Does’ mentioned in the records. Preska ordered the unsealing to begin after Jan. 1” ABC reports. Individuals mentioned in the documents have already had their connections to Epstein and his abhorrent sex-trafficking network revealed. The forthcoming release is anticipated to disclose the identities of numerous accusers, alleged victims, former associates of Epstein, members of his inner circle, and individuals purportedly involved in his criminal activities. Among those mentioned is Prince Andrew, who, according to allegations, Giuffre was instructed by Maxwell and Epstein to engage in sexual activities with on multiple occasions.
Giuffre sought to issue a subpoena for Clinton’s testimony in her legal proceedings, asserting that she encountered the ex-president on Epstein’s secluded Caribbean island, Little St. James. Clinton has denied ever being on the island. The impending release is set to unveil the identities of more than 170 individuals, previously known as John and Jane Does, connected to Epstein. Judge Preska ruled for the unsealing of these documents just before Christmas, and they are slated to be made public starting January 2, after the New Year’s Day holiday.
“..The election of 2024, whether it is actually allowed to happen or not, will probably commence the extinction of the DC blob..”
• The Great Clarification (Kunstler)
I’m already liking 2024. Consequence is itching to return to the American scene. Somewhere around 2016, cause and effect got a divorce. After that, things just happened or unhappened with no further orders of effect, like some brute existence without purpose, meaning, or even awareness, except for the feeling of the lash on your back. After a long journey through a dark place, treading ever-deeper into the unknown, knowing you are in the presence of demons from one footstep to the next, worrying incessantly that God has abandoned you. . . the alarm bell is ringing, the light is shining through, your eyes roll up like window-shades, and it’s time to get your mind right! Yes, even nations have bad dreams. Welcome to the Great Clarification.
We are waking to the stupefying criminality of public life, to the immersive obvious bullshit of people in charge who don’t deserve your respect or compliance. How they got into these positions is only another feature of that totalistic criminality. What was hidden in plain sight will be revealed to those suffering mere hysterical blindness. It was fitting that the last extravagant political act of ’23 was Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows chucking Mr. Trump off the ballot there because. . . she felt like it. To save our democracy, you understand. That might be the terminal absurdity of the derangement we are leaving behind, the signature for much that has gone down in this country the past three years: women on the verge of a nervous breakdown throwing the crockery of law around the room at Daddy.
All this accomplishes, of course, is to disgrace authority in general and to turn America into one big broken home, making us a population of frightened runaways clinging desperately to a few square feet of ground, alone under the freeway ramp in the rain. That is no way to live. The way to live is to make yourself useful to your fellow humans and to get paid for it, and to find some joy and meaning in that human fellowship based on fair, consensual transactions — a pretty simple formula that has been supplanted by the evil idea that life is nothing but a shakedown. The election of 2024, whether it is actually allowed to happen or not, will probably commence the extinction of the DC blob. This entity has made itself malignantly inimical to the proper functioning of self-governing people, and everybody knows it. The blob will die of irrelevance and impotence as the “trust horizon” devolves downward and we are thrust back into the awesome task of reconstructing our local communities. There is so much to do.
X thread.
“Journalism is nothing if it’s not about humanity – it has to be about people’s lives.”
• 10 Vital Quotes From The Late John Pilger (Vitacchi)
John Pilger, the investigative anti-war journalist who spoke up for China and humiliated the western corporate media, had died—and every single report on this in the western media I have seen has carefully omitted this fact. Here are ten things he said that the world needs to know about the legendary journalist who died in London on Saturday, at the age of 84.
1) The west demonizes China to punish it for being good at business, Pilger said in a documentary, The Coming War Against China. Standing in modern Shanghai, he says to the camera: “Today, China has matched America at its own great game of capitalism – and that is unforgivable.”
2) After his film was shown in 2016, he said: “The true story of China and America needs to be told, especially in Australia, where, fuelled by America, an anti-China propaganda campaign seems to be inviting a military reaction.” However, the western corporate media refused to follow his lead, instead choosing to double down on their part in what he saw as a global scam in which the US stirs up conflicts in places such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the South China Seas, while the western media makes sure China is blamed for everything.
3) The Sinophobia of journalists and politicians in the global west was rooted in racism, he said. “The elite salivates for a deeply racist war against China,” he tweeted on a visit to Australia in March, 2023.
4) His main message in recent years has been about the importance of people developing scepticism about the narrative that the world is fed, and instead, realise we are being taught to hate the people America wants us to hate. “The United States dominates the Western world’s media. All but one of the top ten media companies are based in North America. The internet and social media – Google, Twitter, Facebook – are mostly American owned and controlled,” he told a conference audience in Norway on 6 September, 2022. Pilger regularly said that it was vital that the world’s public abandoned the western corporate media and turned to the new, small, independent voices rising up, using the internet to tell the truth about the world.
5) The Australia-born journalist was a major supporter of Julian Assange, whose Wikileaks organization in 2011 revealed a set of diplomatic cable messages which showed that there was no Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing in 1989. While fighting occurred elsewhere in the city, the protesters left the square peacefully, diplomats on site reported to their masters. Pilger regularly reminded the world how western leaders reacted when Assange revealed a series of important truths that punctured the “official” narrative. “Vice President Biden called him a ‘hi-tech terrorist’,” Pilger noted. “Hillary Clinton asked, ‘Can’t we just drone this guy?’”
6) In the 2022 speech, Pilger explained how the real China, an industrious community focused on itself, had been turned by the media into a fantasy-based monster trying to take over the world. “In less than a decade, a ‘good’ China has been airbrushed and a ‘bad’ China has replaced it: from the world’s workshop to a budding new Satan.”
7) He warned that journalists were leaving the most important elements out of their reports about China. “News about China in the West is almost entirely about the threat from Beijing. Airbrushed are the 400 American military bases that surround most of China, an armed necklace that reaches from Australia to the Pacific and south east Asia, Japan and Korea. The Japanese island of Okinawa and the Korean island of Jeju are loaded guns aimed point blank at the industrial heart of China. A Pentagon official described this as a ‘noose’,” Pilger said.
8) The independent Australian journalist railed against the fact that the astonishing story of China’s successful battle to lift its people from extreme poverty was almost never mentioned in the mainstream narrative, a fact that left him disgusted. “Epic achievements, such as the eradication of abject poverty in China, are barely known. How perverse and squalid this is,” Pilger said in his 2022 speech in Norway. He told a UK radio interviewer: “Journalism is nothing if it’s not about humanity – it has to be about people’s lives.”
9) The problem was not just that the media was pushing a false narrative about countries in the east, like China and Russia, but that it was doing so at the behest of the world’s most dangerous nation. “In my lifetime, the United States has overthrown or attempted to overthrow more than 50 governments, mostly democracies,” he told a conference audience. “It has interfered in democratic elections in 30 countries. It has dropped bombs on the people of 30 countries, most of them poor and defenceless. It has attempted to murder the leaders of 50 countries. It has fought to suppress liberation movements in 20 countries.” And yet the western corporate media still shoehorns every story to reinforce the “west is best” narrative.
10) In one of his last major speeches, in Sydney in March 2023, Pilger railed against the ridiculous diversion of hundreds of billions of dollars of Australian public money to the US war machine to protect the country against a non-existing invader. “China as the Yellow Peril fits Australia’s history of racism like a glove,” he said. True to form, the very western media groups he condemned for leaving out key facts, are this week printing obituaries about his death—and leaving out the very insights that made him respected by the public as a man not afraid to speak truth to power.
John Pilger will be missed. But his mission will be carried on by a thousand independent voices.
Rad
https://twitter.com/i/status/1741749165481173214
DNA
There is enough DNA in your body to stretch from the Sun to Pluto and back — 17 times.
There are about 37.2 trillion cells in the human body whose DNA sums to a total length of 2×10¹⁴ meters — enough for 17 Pluto round-trips.pic.twitter.com/3G8Tq4Yq5I
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) December 31, 2023
Kudu
Perspectives
Perspectives
📹birdbox studio
pic.twitter.com/46EMEc3qJy— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) January 1, 2024
Bottle cage
Bottle Cage Lagerstroemia Indica, several plant stems woven to make a vase. The plants are still alive in this shape pic.twitter.com/qkQgvcJpZA
— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) January 1, 2024
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