Francisco Goya Witches’ Sabbath 1797-98
Alina: It’s called desperation
https://twitter.com/i/status/1841955852825063617
OMG
Line in the Sand
Assange
Presler
$42 billion, zero people connected. And then this.
• Musk Says FEMA ‘Blocking’ Delivery Of More Starlinks In Devastated Areas (JTN)
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk accused the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) of blocking the delivery of additional Starlink units to help residents in areas devastated by Hurricane Helene to stay connected to the Internet. “FEMA is not merely failing to adequately help people in trouble, but is actively blocking citizens who try to help!” Musk wrote Friday in a post on X which included the following note he received from a SpaceX engineer on the ground in North Carolina. “Hey Elon, update here on site of Asheville, NC. We have powered up two large operating bases for choppers to deliver goods into hands. We’ve deployed 300+ starlinks and outpour is it has saved many lives,” the engineer wrote.
“The big issue is FEMA is actively blocking shipments and seizing goods and services locally and locking them away to state they are their own. It’s very real and scary how much they have taken control to stop people helping. We are blocked now on the shipments of new starlinks coming in until we get an escort from the fire dept. but that may not be enough,” he added.
A text message Musk revealed in a second post said that the Federal Aviation Administration is throttling private flights in the North Carolina airspace which has made it harder to keep delivering more Starlink units and other emergency supplies. Former first daughter Ivanka Trump handed out Starlinks, hot meals and critical supplies in North Carolina on Wednesday. According to the texts from Musk’s team on the ground, FEMA showed up there and “starting blocking us.” The text message is consistent with comments made by Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg regarding “temporary flight restrictions” that have been imposed on private flights and drones over areas damaged by the storm.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1841946537170972786
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“The counties most impacted by the storm disproportionately vote in ways the current regime does not like.”
• The Regime Wants Appalachia To Suffer (Bishop)
Americans from Florida to North Carolina continue to deal with the devastating consequences of Hurricane Helene, now the deadliest hurricane to hit the US since Katrina. The stories emerging from the region are heart breaking. The economic damage to property and the infrastructure will take years to recover from. Large parts of the area will never return to what they were. Many Americans may be unaware of the extent of the damage. Unlike Hurricane Katrina, which received non-stop coverage on cable news for weeks, with primetime anchors like Anderson Cooper visiting on location covering stories of human tragedy and government incompetent, Helene’s aftermath has received far less coverage. It is on social media platforms like X where folks will find horrifying stories of the stench of death still strong in difficult to reach areas, the lack of government assistance for those in need, and the courage of private efforts serving the area.
Some of this is explained by the time period we are living in. Escalation in the Middle East. A national election is on the horizon. A court decision releasing documents that allows the salivating press to re-litigate the events of January 6th, 2020 yet again. What cannot be ignored, however, is the extent to which the open hostility to which the nation’s most powerful institutions have had to the sorts of people that are overwhelmingly impacted by this storm, predominantly white, working class, and politically conservative. This horrific natural disaster is a reminder of the extent to which the regime hates the people who live there.
This was true prior to Helene, where Washington policies have impoverished this areas with policies ranging from the national impact of inflation and financialization to more specific regional impacts stemming from regulatory policy with specific impacts on the region impacted. The immediate aftermath, however, demonstrates the extent to which state reaction to a disaster impedes voluntary efforts to quickly mobilize and assist those in need. A combination of heavy-handed federal and state action has attempted to undercut recovery efforts, from grounding private helicopters seeking to rescue stranded victims, to the demands of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to stop citizens from flying drones near impacted areas seeking to locate those in need of help. Given the logistical strains that even the best organized response to a severe crisis would create, the voluntary organization of local human resources on the ground is essential to meaningful and quick recovery. Here, the priority of government actors has been to elevate their control over the situation at the expense of these efforts.
The allocation of emergency resources itself is deserving of extended scrutiny as well. The victims of this tragedy, like all Americans, have their wealth extracted by Washington to fill the coffers of large federal agencies like FEMA. This same agency, whose nominal priority is to assist Americans in the case of emergency, are already pleading poverty. Of course, these same agencies oversaw the redirection of over a billion dollars in recent years to subsidize migration into the country. The priorities are clear, emergency funds take a back seat to a regime that cares more about new arrivals than the families who lived in this country for generations. This predatory relationship between the regime and its citizens is systemic. The priorities of Washington will always stand in conflict with the people of Appalachia.
DC sees no problem with ordering the Tennessee National Guard to the Middle East at a time when their fellow Tennesseans are facing their own crisis. This relationship is also bipartisan in nature. Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, who has become very rich off the backs of the people who elevated him to political power, ignoring the victims of Helene on social media, while very focused on Israel and Iran. The regime will always prioritize its own interests, including the interests of what it has identified as their special privileged classes, over the interests of its people. Changing this parasitic relationship requires more than a change of political party in the White House, but a determined effort by those who seek to represent the interests of these people to strike at the root of this relationship.
Unfortunately, while elections alone are not adequate to address the victimization of Appalachia, it is reasonable to consider what impact the specter of politics is having on their current neglect. The counties most impacted by the storm disproportionately vote in ways the current regime does not like. Would America’s federal government deliberately undermine recovery efforts to try to achieve its own desired political ends? Would the corporate press deliberately fail to cover the inadequacy of these efforts, hoping to prevent a candidate it fears doesn’t win? For those that understand the true nature of the state, the answer is an obvious one. Our prayers are with the victims of Hurricane Helene, that they receive the help they need as recovery efforts continue, that they have the ability to build back their communities strong, and that they will one day be free of a regime that cares so little for them.
JD
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“Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’s brand-new VP pick, is a fanatical far-left lunatic wearing the friendly armor of hapless, bloated oaf from the sticks” — Peachy Keenan
• October Surprise (Kunstler)
That same obvious void of conviction you see on Tim Walz’s labile face is on display with the feds’ response to mass tragedy in the Appalachian hurricane zone. It was a point in my book, The Long Emergency, that our national government would become increasingly impotent, ineffectual, and incompetent as conditions worsened — and now here it is. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), could not bestir itself to aid stricken citizens around the flood-ravaged region in North Carolina and Tennessee. Sec’y Mayorkas of Homeland Security said that FEMA was out of money which, in this season of political weirdness, is especially weird, seeing as how the nation’s fiscal year began Oct 1, and Congress’s continuing resolution for funding US agencies should assure that FEMA’s checkbook is full. What was up with that?
Well, everybody and his uncle has heard by now that FEMA (and many other agencies under Mayorkas’s DHS) commits tons of money to pamper the millions of mutts from foreign lands sneaking over the US border, with lots of assistance from NGO cut-outs funded by your tax dollars, who marshal groups of aliens south-of-the-border for the crossing, and then fly or bus them around our country for the special purpose of distributing them in swing voting districts to then coordinate with other NGOs devoted to registering non-citizens to vote in order to “harvest” their ballots. Quite an operation. Completely lawless and corrupt. And official! So, no aid for you, baskets of deplorables, shivering in the dark in your hills and hollows of Appalachia, your houses splintered, scant chattels lost, and your beloved hound-dogs carried away in the roaring torrents.
The money that might have helped you begin to recover from the complete devastation of your lives is paying for Guatemalans to bunk in the Roosevelt Hotel and order-in quesadillas and churros, and refill their government-issued debit cards so they can afford a few nice things as they wait for mysterious others to cast ballots in their names. This is the work of your Democratic Party, the party of chaos, party of the Woke mentally ill, party of wrecking the country, of America’s end times. And you’re going to vote for more of it? Of course not. And despite the attempts to knock him out of the arena with scores of utter bullshit lawfare cases, and efforts to shoot him dead, Mr. Trump keeps coming at them, an implacable, relentless force, the true Golden Golem conjured up by their catamite news media. Their inability to destroy him has wrecked their minds.
One surprising October surprise is advanced by whistleblower Mike McCormick on Substack (Midnight in the Laptop of Good and Evil). Mr. McCormick was White House stenographer under Presidents Bush II, Obama, and Trump. His job was to transcribe meetings, speeches, and interactions between major political figures. He was the proverbial fly-on-the-wall for years and years. He has seen and heard a lot and still hears a lot from people who know a lot. He says the Obama-Biden-Harris faction of the Deep State blob is anti-Israel and that Israel understands what this means. He says that Benjamin Netanyahu has told “Joe Biden” (or, let’s say, told errand-boys Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan) that if the blob engineers a phony victory for Kamala Harris, he will blow up the oil fields in Iran and the anti-Israel Democrats will have to pick up the pieces.
There it is, raw power politics, like so much meat on the table. “Joe Biden” cannot control Bibi. “Joe Biden” is too far gone and two weak, and Israel does not aim to let itself get wiped off the map, as Iran’s leadership never tires of saying. The blob, McCormick says, has to ask itself: does it help rig the election for Harris or stand down on all its ballot harvesting and other trickery and actually allow a real election to roll out? Surprise! Now, take your Kit-kat bar and go home.
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“What FEMA being broke today means not just that we have pissed away the money that we could have allocated for it to non-U.S. citizens — it’s far more insulting than that.”
• The Reprehensible Audacity Of FEMA Being Broke (QTR)
After the devastating effects of Hurricane Helene, FEMA has all of a sudden come out and said it doesn’t have enough funds to make it through hurricane season. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas warned this week that FEMA is running low on funds. “We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have. We are expecting another hurricane hitting,” Mayorkas said. “FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season.” While Mayorkas didn’t specify the exact funding needed, his comments reflect growing concerns from President Biden and lawmakers that a supplemental spending bill may be necessary this fall to support recovery efforts.
I’ve spent the last four years watching as millions of people have crossed unchecked through our southern border and have been treated like royalty by the Biden administration while everyday citizens struggle with rising prices, crumbling infrastructure, and the negative effects of suffocating regulation. I’ve also spent the last four years watching the United States dole out close to $50 billion in foreign aid, mainly to Ukraine to help it press on with a war that realistically it has little chance of winning, while shaking down waitstaff, Uber drivers and anybody using Venmo for purposes of more than $600 for tax receipts. And in my short time in the world of finance, I’ve seen enough omnibus spending bills—with funds allocated for things like border security in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia and Oman and family planning to halt population growth that “threatens biodiversity or endangered species”—to have developed a deep loathing for how our government and our Treasury manage finances.
So when sorry-ass Alejandro Mayorkas—who has sworn up and down for the last three years that there’s no crisis at the southern border while parts of the country have been overrun and overwhelmed by unchecked, undocumented, and sometimes criminal migrants—takes to publicly decrying that FEMA is out of money in the midst of one of the largest domestic disasters in the country’s history, it’s absolutely revolting to watch. Not only is it grotesque because of how we have squandered away hundreds of billions of dollars on things that everyday U.S. citizens are not going to see an impact from, but it’s even worse when examined under the umbrella of how we run monetary policy in this country. There once was a day when, if you needed to fund government entities, you actually had to have the revenue coming in from taxpayers because we couldn’t just print dollars ad infinitum anytime we wanted. Those were the days of sound money, and they are long gone.
What FEMA being broke today means not just that we have pissed away the money that we could have allocated for it to non-U.S. citizens — it’s far more insulting than that. It means that in a day and age where we can theoretically print endless fiat dollars and have an ‘infinite amount of cash’—an idea that I think is completely batshit insane, but our Fed governors don’t—that we still have not stocked the coffers of our domestic agencies with the bare minimum necessary for them to help the American people when they need to. In other words, if the money is all fake, and we can conjure up as much of it as we want without any consequences, as both political parties would have you believe over the last several decades, why should FEMA ever be asking for more money to help hurricane victims?
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The Trump team comes together one at a time: RFK Jr, Elon Musk, JD Vance, Vivek Ramaswamy, Tulsi Gabbard, Tucker Carlson, Mike Flynn, etc etc.
“The martyr lived. Last time America had a candidate this tough was Theodore Roosevelt..”
• Elon Musk to Attend Trump Rally at Site of Attempted Assassination (ET)
Elon Musk said on Oct. 3 that he will attend former President Donald Trump’s upcoming rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. “I will be there to support!” Musk wrote on X, the social media platform that he mostly owns. Trump has a rally scheduled for Saturday at the Butler Farm Show, where he was struck by a bullet during an event in July. Authorities say Thomas Crooks, who was shot dead by a U.S. Secret Service agent, attempted to assassinate Trump. About 30 minutes later, Musk shared video footage of Trump rising to his feet and holding a fist up after surviving the attempted assassination. Musk said he endorsed the former president. “I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery,” Musk wrote at the time. “The martyr lived. Last time America had a candidate this tough was Theodore Roosevelt,” he wrote in a follow-up post.
The business mogul, who is also CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, said in another post on Thursday that backing Trump has become “essential to saving America!” Musk’s posts frequently support Trump and Republicans while denigrating Vice President Kamala Harris and members of the Democratic Party. Trump welcomed Musk’s endorsement at the time and said in a September speech that, if elected, he would, on Musk’s advice, create a government efficiency commission tasked with improving government operations. The exact security protocols in place for Trump’s next Butler rally have not been disclosed but the U.S. Secret Service says it is prepared. A spokesman told The Epoch Times in an email that the agency has, since the attempted assassination attempt, “made comprehensive changes and enhancements to our communications capabilities, resourcing, and protective operations.” Trump, he said, is receiving heightened protection.
The agency has said previously that Trump is receiving the same level of protection as President Joe Biden and Harris in the wake of the assassination attempt by Crooks and another apparent attempt by a man at a golf course in Florida. “Regarding the October 5th event in Butler, PA, we are coordinating closely with the Pennsylvania State Police as well as local law enforcement in and around Butler Township. We are also leveraging other federal security resources to expand personnel and technology,” the spokesman said. “To maintain the integrity of our protective operations, we cannot go into the specifics regarding the security enhancements. Residents in the area should expect traffic delays and an increased presence of state, local, and federal law enforcement as part of our efforts to ensure a safe and secure event.”
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“..Trump moves out to a 13-point lead from just five points earlier in the week.”
• Donald Trump Takes His Biggest Lead Yet In Daily Mail Election Model (DM)
With a month to go until the only poll that matters, former President Donald Trump has roared back into a substantial lead in our election model. A slew of recent surveys has shown him with leads in key battleground states. And when the data are processed through our DailyMail.com/J.L. Partners model it shows the former president winning in 56.7 percent of the simulations. As ever, the road to the White House appears to run through Pennsylvania, with its 19 electoral college votes. For weeks it has been in ‘tossup’ territory. Now the model moves it to ‘lean Trump’ in what could be a decisive moment in the election race. Lose that state, and Vice President Kamala Harris would struggle to triumph even if she wins Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin. With fewer paths to electoral college victory, Harris wins in only 43.2 percent of the simulations. It means that, overall, Trump moves out to a 13-point lead from just five points earlier in the week.
To be clear, this is not like a poll lead. Instead, it shows the frequency with which Trump wins the electoral college when our model crunches through all the thousands of possible permutations of states using all the latest available data (along with decades worth of election results combined with economic data.) Until now his highest point was a 10-point advantage last month, but that number has waxed and waned with fresh inputs of data. And the race remains incredibly close. Harris is on course to win the popular vote (as Democrats have done in seven of the last eight elections.) Minnesota is looking safer than ever for her, solidifying her electoral college floor, and she is two points stronger in Michigan, where both she and Trump campaigned Thursday. But the latest model outcome shows a clear direction of travel, said Callum Hunter, data scientist with J.L. Partners.
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“Harris and Walz are the dream team for the anti-free speech movement.”
• Walz Makes the Case for the Most Anti-Free Speech Ticket in History (Turley)
In the vice presidential debate Tuesday, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz pulled the fire alarm. His opponent, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, cited the massive system of censorship supported by Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate. Walz proceeded to quote the line from a 1919 case in which Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said you do not have the right to falsely yell fire in a crowded theater. It is the favorite mantra of the anti-free speech movement. It also is fundamentally wrong. In my book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I discuss the justice’s line from his opinion in Schenck v. United States. Holmes wrote, “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.” As I discuss in the book, the line was largely lifted from a brief in an earlier free speech case. It has since become the rationale for politicians and pundits seeking to curtail free speech in America.
For example, when I testified last year before Congress against a censorship system that has been described by one federal court as “similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth,’” Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., interjected with the fire-in-a-theater question to say such censorship is needed and constitutional. In other words, the internet is now a huge crowded theater and those with opposing views are shouting fire. Goldman and Walz both cited a case in which socialists Charles Schenck and Elizabeth Baer were arrested and convicted of violating the Espionage Act of 1917. Their “crime” was to pass out flyers in opposition to the military draft during World War I. Schenck and Baer called on their fellow citizens not to “submit to intimidation” and to “assert your rights.” They argued, “If you do not assert and support your rights, you are helping to deny or disparage rights which it is the solemn duty of all citizens and residents of the United States to retain.” They also described the military draft as “involuntary servitude.”
Holmes used his “fire in a theater” line to justify the abusive conviction and incarceration. At the House hearing, when I was trying to explain that the justice later walked away from the line and Schenck was effectively overturned in 1969 in Brandenburg v. Ohio, Goldman cut me off and said, “We don’t need a law class here.” In the vice presidential debate, Walz showed that he and other Democratic leaders most certainly do need a class in First Amendment law. As I have said, the Biden-Harris administration has proved to be the most anti-free speech administration in two centuries. You have to go back to John Adams’ administration to find the equal of this administration. Harris has been an outspoken champion of censorship in an administration that supports targeting disinformation, misinformation and “malinformation.” That last category was defined by the Biden administration as information “based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.”
In the debate, Walz also returned to his favorite dismissal of censorship objections by saying that it is all just inflammatory rhetoric. Recently, Walz went on MSNBC to support censoring disinformation and declared, “There’s no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech, and especially around our democracy.” That is entirely untrue and shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the right called “indispensable” by the Supreme Court. Even after some of us condemned his claim as ironically dangerous disinformation, Walz continues to repeat it. This is why, for the free speech community, the prospect of a Harris-Walz administration is chilling. Where President Joe Biden was viewed as supporting censorship out of political opportunism, Harris and Walz are viewed as true believers. We are living through the most dangerous anti-free speech movement in American history. We have never before faced the current alliance of government, corporate, academic and media forces aligned against free speech.
A Harris-Walz administration with a supportive Congress could make this right entirely dispensable. Others are laying the groundwork for precisely that moment. University of Michigan Law School professor and MSNBC legal analyst Barbara McQuade has said that free speech “can also be our Achilles’ heel.” Columbia law professor Tim Wu, a former Biden White House aide, wrote a New York Times op-ed with the headline, “The First Amendment Is Out of Control.” He told readers that free speech “now mostly protects corporate interests” and threatens “essential jobs of the state, such as protecting national security and the safety and privacy of its citizens.” Walz said in the debate that Vice President Harris is promoting the “politics of joy.” Indeed, the wrong people are perfectly ecstatic. Harris and Walz are the dream team for the anti-free speech movement.
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“The only relevant decision in the world at this time is whether Washington decides that Putin means what he says or that Putin is so averse to war that he will stand down..”
• There Is Only One Important Decision Waiting to be Made (Paul Craig Roberts)
Except for the neoconservatives whose agenda it is, I sometimes wonder if I am the only other person who understands what the Ukraine conflict is about. While we await Washington’s decision about firing missiles into Russia, I will explain how we reached the current crisis. In 2007 Washington declared war on Russia without announcing it. Putin provoked Washington’s secret declaration of war when he rejected Washington’s uni-polar hegemony at the Munich Security Conference. Washington’s first attack was a year later when, while Putin was distracted at the Beijing Olympics, Washington sent a US trained and equipped Georgian army into South Ossetia. The purpose was not to defeat Russia militarily. Instead, it was a calculated risk that Putin might stand down and to avoid a military conflict that the West could misrepresent as restoring the Soviet Empire, and allow the Russian protectorate to be absorbed into Georgia.
The American neoconservatives were gambling with lives not their own that Putin and thereby Russia would be weakened by giving in, thus opening more paths of aggression against Russia. The neoconservatives’ plot against Putin might have worked except the Georgian invaders killed Russian peace-keepers. In 2008 Putin was trying to resurrect Russian pride, which was lost with the Soviet collapse 1991, and could not turn his back on dead Russian soldiers in South Ossetia. He returned from China, sent in an army, and smashed the US trained and equipped Georgian army in 5 days.
All of Georgia, a province of the Soviet Union until 1991, was in Putin’s hands. The Western propaganda is that Putin is dangerous because he intends to recover the Soviet empire. Obviously, this is a lie, because Putin pulled the Russian army out and left Georgia an independent state. Following the US neoconservative’s failure in South Ossetia, which they mischaracterized as a “Russian invasion of Georgia,” the neoconservatives began pouring billions of dollars into Ukraine in order to create cadres, NGOs, and purchased politicians that would support the “Maidan Revolution,” which was Washington’s overthrow of the democratically elected government of Ukraine that was living in profitable peace with Russia.
Again Putin was inattentive, this time distracted by the Sochi Olympics, and this time he did nothing. It is unclear why Putin allowed Ukraine to become Washington’s puppet state hostile to Russia and a candidate for NATO. The neo-Nazi state that Washington created began a number of operations against the Russian population in Donbas. The use of the Russian language was banned. Russians were accosted and killed in the streets by bands of Stepan Bandera’s followers. (Bandara fought for Nazi Germany against Russia during World War II.) The Russian parts of Ukraine, Donbas and Crimea, which were separated from Russia by Lenin and Khrushchev, asked Putin to protect them by re-admitting them to Russia. Putin accepted Crimea’s request as the Russian Black Sea naval base is in Crimea, but Putin refused the requests from Donbas, which had formed into two independent republics to protect themselves from slaughter by the Ukrainian army.
Putin, always cautious, was advised that if he accepted Donbass he would give credence to Western propaganda that Russia was restoring the Soviet Empire. Nevertheless, Putin knew he had to do something to protect the Donbas Russians. He concocted the Minsk Agreement. The Minsk Agreement kept Donbas as part of Ukraine, but gave the territory some autonomy, such as its own police and courts, to prevent persecution by Washington’s puppet in Kiev. Kiev and the two Donbas republics signed the Minsk agreement, and Germany and France promised to enforce it. Believing that the West had integrity, Putin was taken for a ride. Both the German Chancellor and French President later publicly admitted that they deceived Putin for eight years while Washington built and equipped a strong Ukrainian Army capable of conquering the two break-away republics in Donbas.
When during December 2021 and February 2022 Putin and Lavrov’s efforts to secure a mutual defense agreement between Russia and the West were met with extremely cold shoulders from Washington, NATO, and the European Union, Putin was faced with a large Ukrainian army about to invade the Donbas republics. Putin’s false hopes and mistaken belief in the West’s integrity left him unprepared, but he was forced to intervene and Russia, due to unpreparedness was forced to rely on a small private military force, the Wagner Group. As Putin had not prepared for the obvious conflict staring him in the face, he limited his intervention to Donbas to clearing out the Ukrainian forces, not to quickly prevailing in the conflict. The long conflict has given the West two years and eight months to involve itself and widen the conflict. As Putin never enforced any of the announced red lines, he has no credibility in the West. Recently, the NATO Secretary-General said NATO does not pay any attention to Putin, because he talks but never does anything.
Consequently, the world has reached the precise point I said would be reached. Putin has backed up so much that he has no more room. His back is to the wall. NATO, the British Prime Minister, and the neoconservatives are lobbying Washington to give a green light to US/NATO firing missiles into Russia from Ukraine territory. Understand, Ukraine hasn’t the capability and satellite targeting systems to fire the missiles. A missile attack on Russia can no longer be characterized as a “proxy war.” Putin himself has made this clear. Putin said that missiles fired into Russia means the US and NATO are at war with Russia and that Russia reserves the right to respond with nuclear weapons. A crisis is upon us. The only relevant decision in the world at this time is whether Washington decides that Putin means what he says or that Putin is so averse to war that he will stand down from his threat in order to avoid a wider conflict involving nuclear weapons.
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“..efforts to boost conscription are becoming increasingly deceitful, coercive and violent..”
• Ukraine’s Mobilization Campaign ‘Gets Dirty’ – The Times (RT)
Ukraine’s mobilization campaign is falling far short of targets, while the effort remains marred by violence, mistrust and rampant corruption, The Times reported on Thursday, citing local officials. According to the paper, Kiev has so far called up about one million soldiers and plans to increase that number by another 200,000 by the end of the year, but that mark remains difficult to reach. Moreover, “efforts to boost conscription are becoming increasingly deceitful, coercive and violent,” the outlet noted, citing the example of an Odessa conscript who was technically exempt from the service due to a chronic kidney condition, but was lured to the conscription office and sent to a training base anyway. An unnamed conscription officer in Odessa told The Times that “we’re not mobilizing even 20% of what is required.”
He noted that there is little enthusiasm among potential soldiers to respond to the summons, while his department is plagued by corruption, mismanagement and disillusionment. The bribes, the officer, added, can reach thousands of dollars while staff shortage means that employees have to perform multiple duties at once, including patrolling the streets. In addition, employees are threatened with being sent to the front if they underperform. In other cases, many of those who answer the mobilization call are often found to be unfit for service due to serious health conditions, including tuberculosis, hepatitis or HIV, the Times’ source said. Meanwhile, a 47-year-old Ukrainian recalled that he was eager to be called up and go to the front early in the conflict, but was denied at the time, and now has no desire to do so.
“Our government doesn’t support soldiers. They don’t have proper equipment and are forgotten about if they get injured,” the man explained. Ukraine announced general mobilization in February 2022 shortly after the outbreak of hostilities, barring most men aged between 18 and 60 from leaving the country. This spring, faced with mounting losses, Kiev lowered the draft age from 27 to 25, and significantly tightened mobilization rules, obliging potential service members to report to conscription offices for “data validation,” which in practice often means a ticket to the front. “font-size:11px;color: #353535;”As Ukraine’s mobilization campaign intensified, so did draft evasion, filling social media with videos of recruiters trying to catch eligible men on the streets, in gyms, and in shopping malls, sometimes leading to clashes.
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“..the name of the (new, deadly) game is U.S./Israel vs. Russia/Iran..”
• They lie. They cheat. They steal. They bomb. And they spin (Pepe Escobar)
Hezbollah has a seriously though spell ahead. Resources – especially supply of weapons and military equipment, through Syria and by air from Iran to Lebanon – will become increasingly scarce. Compare it to Israel’s unlimited supply chain from Exceptionalistan – not to mention tons of money. Israel intel is far from shabby – as commandos went deep, in secret, into Hezbollah territory collecting info on the fortification network. When – in fact if – they reach populated areas in Southern Lebanon, then it will be bombing dementia plus heavy artillery against residential areas. That operation might well be called Gaza-on-the Litani. It will happen only if Hezbollah’s complex network in southern Lebanon is cracked – a major “if”. Jeffrey Sachs, for all his good intentions, went as far as he could to characterize Israelis as judeo supremacist extremist terrorists. Virtually the whole Global Majority is now aware of it.
What comes next in Talmudic-Zio-con planning may include a ghastly false flag, possibly after the U.S. presidential election, for instance on a NATO vessel or on U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf, to lock up the new administration into the long-planned U.S. war on Iran. Dick Cheney will have an orgasm – and croak.The BRICS summit in Kazan under the Russian presidency is less than three weeks away. In sharp contrast to genocide and serial wars in West Asia, Putin and Xi will be standing by the – open – door on behalf of BRICS+, welcoming scores of nations that are fleeing the collective West like the plague. Russia is now fully behind Iran – and as much as in floundering Ukraine, that means Russia at war with the U.S./Israel; after all the Pentagon is directly shooting down Iranian missiles, while Israel is the U.S.’s de facto pre-eminent state, fully, fiscally supported by U.S. taxpayers.
It gets trickier by the minute. Immediately after a very important meeting between Alexander Lavrentiev, Putin’s special envoy to Syria, and Ali Akbar Ahmadian, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Tel Aviv went Full Dementia – what else – and targeted warehouses of Russian forces in Syria.There was a joint Russia-Syria air defense response. What that shows is the Talmudic psychos not only obsessed on breathing fire against the Axis of Resistance but now also going after Russian national interests. This can get very ugly for them in a flash – and is yet one more illustration that the name of the (new, deadly) game is U.S./Israel vs. Russia/Iran.
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He’s real important.
• Biden on Israel Response to Iranian Attack: ‘That’s Between Me and Them’ (Sp.)
When asked for his opinion on how Israel should respond to the latest Iranian missile strike, US President Joe Biden said on Friday that it was between him and the Israelis. “That’s between me and them,” Biden told reporters. Israel has not yet determined how it will strike Iran but they should consider other options than targeting oil fields, President Biden noted. “The Israelis have not concluded … what they’re going to do in terms of the strike, that’s under discussion,” he said during the press briefing. “If I were in those shoes, I’d be thinking about other alternatives than striking oil fields.” Biden also elaborated that the United States is considering imposing sanctions on Iran “right now”, including on the country’s oil sector. “That’s under consideration right now, the whole thing,” he elaborated, adding that he will not discuss the issue further at present.
POTUS also noted that he does not know whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to influence the presidential election in the United States, adding that he is “not counting on that.” “Whether he’s trying to influence the election, I don’t know, but I’m not counting on that,” he told reporters during his first visit to the White House press briefing room. According to US media reports, Democrats, and in particular Senator Chris Murphy, have expressed their concerns that Netanyahu, with his harsh actions in the Middle East, is playing into the hands of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, as this gives the latter the opportunity to accuse Biden of failing to resolve the conflict in the Middle East.
“I certainly worry that Prime Minister Netanyahu is watching the American election as he makes decisions about his military campaigns in the north end of Gaza. I hope this is not true, but it is certainly a possibility that the Israeli government is not going to sign any diplomatic agreement prior to the American election, as a means potentially to try to influence the result,” CNN quoted Murphy as saying in an interview for CNN. The Biden administration has made several attempts to resolve the conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon through ceasefire agreements, which have so far failed.
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“An attack by Israel and the U.S. is reportedly imminent on Iran’s oil industrial facilities. Biden has the braindead temerity to call this intended U.S.-Israeli aggravation a “proportionate response..”
• US, UK Digging Their Grave In Catastrophic War In The Middle East (SCF)
The American and British leaders are fully backing Israel to escalate its criminal aggression in the Middle East. In so doing, Washington and London are being exposed for the arch-criminal regimes that they are. An all-out war against Iran is on the brink. The consequences will be abysmal, yet the U.S. and British rulers are shameless, reckless – and ultimately stupid – in their complicity. In a few days, on October 7, the Israeli regime will have conducted 12 months of non-stop genocidal destruction of Gaza. There is no sign of that monstrous war of extermination coming to an end. The Israeli regime is completely out of control, acting with impunity and shocking violation of all laws and moral norms. More than 41,000 Palestinian people have been killed. Some estimates put the real death toll at over 100,000 and even as high as 200,000.
This slaughter of women and children is supposed to be justified by the incursion of Palestinian militants on October 7 last year in which some 1,200 Israelis were killed – many of them by their own security forces using reckless firepower. The Hamas incursion was in response to years of inhumane, genocidal siege on the Gaza Strip by Israel. The actions of the Israeli regime are wholly indefensible. Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli leaders have gotten away with mass murder because of the diplomatic and – more importantly – military support from the United States, Britain and other Western states. The genocide in Gaza and the other Palestinian enclave of the West Bank has been infernally compounded by Israel’s expansion of aggression in the region. The past two weeks have seen Israeli forces indiscriminately bombing Beirut and other Lebanese civilian areas, causing 2,000 deaths and over one million people displaced from their homes.
The orgy of violence is engulfing the entire region. The Israeli regime is also bombing Syria, Iraq and Yemen, as well as Iran in assassination missions. Israel’s murderous conduct has been going on for decades – indeed for 76 years since its inception as an illegal colonial state in 1948, established by British and American machinations at the then newly formed United Nations. Invasions, annexations, air strikes, terrorism, assassinations, and much more are routine for the Western colonialist project known as Zionist Israel. But now the regime is spinning out of control in its bloodlust and psychopathic mania fostered by the impunity afforded by Western sponsors. This history of state terrorism has – and is – all fueled by Western imperialist powers who also believe in supremacy (euphemistically called exceptionalism) and privilege despite their disingenuous virtuous rhetoric to the contrary.
The Israeli regime and its fascist barbarism are a manifestation of the Western powers in their fundamental nature. The same nefarious violence and plunder was – and is – carried out in every corner of the planet that had the misfortune of Western encounter. Zionism is but a variant of Western imperialism. Iran hit back this week with a massive attack involving at least 200 missiles, including hypersonic missiles, raining down on Israeli targets. The response from Iran has been up to now incredibly restrained despite the relentless provocations and acts of war perpetrated by Israel. Even in the latest Iranian attacks, the targets were mainly military centers and aimed at avoiding civilian casualties. Yet immediately, the United States and Britain rushed to condemn Iran for “barbaric aggression” and perversely declared their support for Israel’s right to self-defense. Such a travesty of lies and distortion. The truth is, that Iran was finally acting in legitimate self-defense.
U.S. President Joe Biden is coordinating with Israel to conduct “severe repercussions” on Iran. An attack by Israel and the U.S. is reportedly imminent on Iran’s oil industrial facilities. Biden has the braindead temerity to call this intended U.S.-Israeli aggravation a “proportionate response”. Iran has warned the United States that its policy of unilateral restraint is now definitively over. Tehran has repeatedly said it does not want a regional war, but if Israel follows through on its latest threats of retaliation, then Iran will hit back with even greater force than already shown. Ominously, Iran said it will deploy “unconventional” tactics. This is taken to mean closing the vital oil trade route through the Strait of Hormuz. The Middle East is the source of a third of the world’s oil supply. If Iran shuts down the global oil supply then the world economy is heading for an unprecedented calamity. Already oil prices have begun to spike. If a war should engulf the region, the impact on the world economy will be catastrophic.
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“But, make no mistake, this genocide is absolutely only happening because the US is allowing it to happen.”
• US, Israel Reportedly Downplay Level of Destruction by Iran (Sp.)
At least two dozen long-range Iranian ballistic missiles were able to break through both Israeli and other Western air defenses on Tuesday night, the Washington Post reported. The missiles struck or landed near at least three military and intelligence installations, a review of videos and photos of the attack and its aftermath showed. “The findings raise questions about the full scope of the damage to Israeli military bases and suggest that Iran was more successful in evading Israel’s defenses than in April,” the report wrote. The Pentagon declined to comment on the report’s findings, the Post said. And the Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment, either. Phil Kelly, a political commentator and socialist activist based in Belfast joined Sputnik’s Political Misfits on Friday, and suggested that Western media is “struggling” to “give credence to Israeli propaganda”.
“…it’s interesting when the Washington Post […] newspaper, which is not a go-to read for me anymore, is starting to find itself struggling to give credence to Israeli propaganda and more and more things you’re starting to find that where the lurid kind of propaganda of the Israeli regime is just too much. It’s, the stenographers at the Washington Post and various Western media just struggle to bring themselves to go that far because of its ridiculousness,” Kelly explained. “It’s clear Israel was hit hard. The Iron Dome was not so secure that Iran made a point and will probably be forced to make further points, I would imagine, because Israel is hell-bent on escalation. It wants to drag other parties into this abyss with it,” he added.
Using commercial satellite imagery, researchers have identified more than 30 points where Iranian missiles may have impacted an air base in southern Israel, a report from NHPR (New Hampshire and NPR) revealed. The images showed damaged hangars, buildings, taxiways and a crater on one of the runways at Nevatim Airbase, the report writes. However, both Israel and the US have attempted to downplay the amount of damage that Israel has suffered: “This attack appears to have been defeated and ineffective,” said U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan. Sputnik’s Michelle Witte also noted that the US has a law that dates back to the 1990s which restricts the quality of commercial satellite imagery that US companies can sell if they depict Israel and Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. An unusually specific restriction, she added, that seems to give Israel a special level of protection other countries do not receive from the US.
“But, in terms of that special relationship, it shouldn’t shock anyone when you look at the Israeli lobby that basically owns [the US] political system. It would seem that it would go to these lengths to stop people looking under the rock that is Israel, stop people seeing the reality of the situation, whether it is how much damage they’ve sustained or the mass graves that they are filling with innocent civilians.” “…when Israel commits its crimes, when Israel commits its invasion, when Israel keeps bombing different sovereign countries, the response of the West is to help them cover it up, help them help their propaganda dominate, make sure it’s the Israeli narrative that we hear and do not allow people to see the truth of what is unfolding in this conflict. It should set alarm bells ringing,” the analyst added.
At least 215 people in the US are believed to be dead as a result of the recent storm, Hurricane Helene. In May, NOAA National Weather Service forecasters at the Climate Prediction Center predicted above-normal hurricane activity in the Atlantic basin this year. Despite their prediction, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced this week that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will not have enough funds to last the rest of the hurricane season. Yet, just a week ago, Israel announced that it had secured an $8.7 billion aid package from the US to support its military goals. “The reality is that most US politicians, when they talk about putting country before politics, they’re talking about Israel,” Kelly explained. “And that should really enrage ordinary US citizens who have struggled for a long time, seeing that their living standards drop and wondering why in hell your government is sending billions of dollars to a racist, colonial regime, a small regime in the Middle East, which is committing genocide…”
“…the myth of America, I think, is over. It was struggling long before it went all in on genocide Joe’s watch to push Europe into World War III and to facilitate [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. But the rest of the world sees the US for what it is, and that is why you’re seeing real concrete moves in the global side to disengage,” he added. “That the war in Ukraine was really a starting point for that, and it’s gained momentum because the US cannot be trusted.” “Europe’s starting to get a bit worried. Macron made a few noises about how Europe needs to keep an eye on the US – slow learner there, Mr. Macron. As Kissinger said, the US doesn’t have friends, it has interests. The world’s awakening to that,” the analyst said. “But, make no mistake, this genocide is absolutely only happening because the US is allowing it to happen.”
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Cute excuse for two murder attempts.
• US Secret Service Struggling To Keep Staff – NYT (RT)
The US Secret Service went into 2024 having lost almost a fifth of its veteran agents, with the rest overworked, underpaid, inadequately trained, and lacking the latest technology, the New York Times has reported. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned in July after an assassin nearly killed former President and current Republican candidate Donald Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. “The service was not ready,” the Times noted on Thursday. The attempt on Trump’s life “revealed deep problems in the Secret Service,” from lack of technology to “failures in command” and communication. For instance, the Butler shooter scouted the venue with a drone, while the protective detail did not have one and their radios did not work properly.
The biggest problem, however, has been “an exodus of the best-trained people,” the Times reported, citing current and former agency employees. At least 1,400 of 7,800 Secret Service employees left in the fiscal years 2022 and 2023, the biggest loss in two decades. While the agency has expanded its workforce to 8,100 – the highest level ever – by this summer, this was still short of the numbers it said it needed. There were concerns about the fitness of new hires and the problems with how to train them and where. The main training facility is so “decrepit” that it often floods in heavy rains, according to the Times. The agency has resorted to using a scale model of the White House built in Atlanta by filmmaker Tyler Perry, because Congress would not authorize funds to build their own.
The chief reason most veterans quoted for leaving was “crushing amounts of overtime work,” sometimes for no pay, because of a federal salary cap. In a survey conducted by a federal police association 68 of the 153 agents who responded said they had “maxed out” on their overtime last year, missing as much as $30,000 in pay. “You ride your horse until it dies, and then you eat it,” Jonathan Wackrow, who left the Secret Service after 14 years, told the Times about management’s view of their workforce. Another former agent, Louis Fitzig, claimed that “nepotism, favoritism, [and] corruption” are part of the agency’s culture. Meanwhile, a scheme to make up the attrition by rehiring recently retired agents backfired spectacularly as agents rushed to retire early, so they could get both a pension and a salary, while not serving in the field where bodies were needed the most.
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“..they are all are NATO allies now after Finland and Sweden’s admission to the military bloc. “There are no neutral countries in the North any more..”
• New NATO Arctic Group is No Match for Russo-Chinese Cooperation (Sp.)
The Western Arctic states are planning to coordinate on defense, intelligence and cyber activities, as they are all are NATO allies now after Finland and Sweden’s admission to the military bloc. “There are no neutral countries in the North any more,” Mikael Valtersson, former Swedish Air Defense officer told Sputnik, commenting on Canada’s push to form a security group to counter Russia and China in the Arctic. Earlier this week, Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly told Bloomberg News that Canada and its allies need an “Arctic security dialogue” to discuss defense matters in light of Russia and China’s growing activities in the region. Russia, an Arctic state, maintains security cooperation with China in its territorial waters. It was reported on October 2 that patrol ships of the China Coast Guard entered the waters of the Arctic Ocean for joint patrols with coast guard vessels of the Russian FSB Border Service. Valtersson expects the new “security dialogue” to work closely with NATO.
“It might develop into an evolved Arctic military command within NATO and also a political body where politicians co-ordinate their actions before meetings in the Arctic Council,” Valtersson said. The pundit warned that NATO’s potential build-up in the region could “increase the risk for both an arms race in the Arctic and incidents in the region.” But Valtersson believes that the creation of the new Arctic body would neither upset the established balance of power in the Arctic nor endanger Russia’s positions in the region. “The Nordic countries and Canada are too small to challenge Russia, and even more a Russian-Chinese cooperation,” he said. “The US has a lot of other interests in the world and will not focus on the Arctic in the way Russia already does, and should increase doing.”
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EVs
Elon 21 years ago
IgG4
Potoo
P&K
Soul
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