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Top Three Reasons Why Trump Won

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 06.11.2024

Donald Trump has been declared the winner of the 2024 presidential race, prompting a meltdown in the Kamala Harris camp and the US corporate media – who are struggling to understand what went wrong.

Wall Street analyst Charles Ortel gives the top three reasons behind Trump’s victory:

  • Abject Failure of “Bidenomics” Despite Borrowing and Spending Trillions of Dollars: “Americans vote thinking first about their economic welfare and prospects,” Ortel told Sputnik. “The only beneficiaries of the Biden-Harris administration were connected political donors and insiders. Wages after taxes and inflation for private sector workers – the core slice – are way down and under continuing threat.”
  • Soaring Crime, Especially in Cities: “The Biden-Harris Open Borders approach, coupled with George Soros-funded district attorneys refusing to prosecute and the ‘defund the police’ movement, pushed moderates and first-time voters into the MAGA movement.”
  • “An Arrogant Slate of Idiots on the Democrat Ticket Backed by Out-of-Touch and Classless ‘Celebrities'”: “The 2024 Democrat ‘campaign’ was even less competent than Hillary in 2016 and Joe in 2020,” the Wall Street analyst points out. “This time, Harris and Walz were obviously inauthentic, incompetent and abysmal at connecting with likely voters, whereas Trump built a diverse Dream Team of authentic heroes – while Trump himself is a master leader and salesperson.”

Ortel drew attention to a high number of black, Latino and women’s votes for Trump, even though those demographics have long been considered pro-Democratic.

The analyst believes Democrats tried to rig the 2024 election “in countless ways” but the wave of support from Trump’s supporters “was too big to rig.” Misconduct by Democrats can only be fully exposed after Trump gets his cabinet picks confirmed into key positions, Ortel believes.

Trump’s Focus Will Be on Domestic Issues, Not Overseas Wars

Donald Trump’s first job when he takes office will be to clean house, Ortel believes.

“The largest single piece of the American economy is a woefully-bloated and ineffective slew of ‘government’ actors that will swiftly be put on a rigorous diet,” Ortel said. “Here, Elon Musk and other truly-accomplished standouts will play key roles.”

The analyst suggests that Robert F Kennedy Jr could be instrumental in reforming “the absurdly expensive ‘healthcare’ mess that actually seems to be hurting all Americans while enriching corrupt actors.”

The Trump administration also needs to bring down the cost of education and “strip away political indoctrination” in teaching, Ortel continues.

“In addition, the Trump team can finally bring countless crooked charities to a justice that is long overdue,” says the analyst, who has been investigating the Clinton Foundation’s alleged fraud for several years.

“Once Trump restores confidence in the Department of Justice, the IRS and the Judiciary branch of government, I believe trillions of dollars in investment capital will flow back inside America and many valuable private sector jobs will be created by entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and others,” Ortel predicts.

November 6, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Economics | | Leave a comment

Moscow reacts to Trump’s vow to ‘stop wars’

RT | November 6, 2024

US presidential election winner Donald Trump’s promise to end international conflicts should be backed up by concrete actions once he returns to the White House, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said.

During his speech on Wednesday in which he declared victory in the US election, Trump also stated that during his first term from 2017 to 2021 “we had no wars, except we defeated ISIS (Islamic State/IS).” The 78-year-old dismissed claims by his opponents that he would “start a war” once he returns to office. “I am not going to start a war. I am going to stop wars,” the Republican insisted.

When asked to comment on Trump’s promise, Zakharova told the Russia 24 TV channel that “of course, those theses must be followed by actions, concrete actions.”

According to the spokeswoman, the international community will be judging Trump’s second presidency based on what he does, rather than what he says.

She also suggested that Trump’s promise to end foreign wars was an acknowledgment that the US needs to focus on its own problems.

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev reacted to Trump’s victory by pointing out that he has “one useful quality” for Russia.

“As a businessman to the core, he hates spending money on various freeloaders,” which includes the government in Ukraine, Medvedev, who now serves as the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, wrote on Telegram.

However, he added that he does not expect the US funding of Ukraine to stop completely under the new president. “Trump might be stubborn, but the system is stronger,” Medvedev argued.

During his campaign against Democratic rival Kamala Harris, Trump repeatedly claimed that he would end the fighting between Russia and Ukraine within 24 hours if reelected, but did not explain how he would achieve this.

Last month, Trump said that the Ukraine conflict was “a loser” and that Zelensky “should never have let that war start.” He described the Ukrainian leader as “one of the greatest salesmen I have ever seen,” referring to his ability to persuade the administration of US President Joe Biden to provide him with more military aid every time he went to Washington.

In June, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov commented on media reports that Trump’s team was developing a roadmap for settling the Ukraine conflict, and stressed that “the value of any plan lies in the details and whether it takes into account the situation on the battlefield.”

On Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated that Moscow is ready for talks to find a diplomatic solution to the conflict. He recalled that the two sides had already negotiated in Istanbul in late March 2022 and had reached a “mutually acceptable agreement.” However, Ukraine later rejected it, acting on “external advice,” Putin said.

November 6, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

A Looming Political Earthquake

The Inflation Reduction Act’s unprecedented climate spending — much of it uninvestigated — may soon lead to unprecedented scandals

By Mark P. Mills | City Journal | November 4, 2024

If it weren’t for the election season swamping news coverage, odds are more people would be talking about the revelation that, to quote a Bloomberg headline, “The World Bank Somehow Lost Track of at Least $24 Billion.” In fact, that may understate the reality: the World Bank’s “accounting gap” could be as big as $41 billion. The missing funds in question were for “climate finance” projects, “financed by taxpayer dollars from its member countries, the biggest being the US.”

According to the Oxfam report that was the source for the Bloomberg story, “There is no clear public record showing where this money went or how it was used, which makes any assessment of its impacts impossible.” It is possible that much, maybe even most, of the missing money went to the intended people and purposes. But only the hopelessly naïve would dismiss the probability of rampant waste, malfeasance, graft, and outright theft as explanations for that “gap.” Spending of such magnitude and velocity with sloppy oversight is an invitation to thieves.

But the oversight scandal at the World Bank is chump change compared with the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and its massive planned “climate finance” program. The misnamed IRA is, in the words of its advocates, the “largest climate policy in US history.” [emphasis added] The law’s ambitions dwarf those of the World Bank. By various estimates, the IRA will lead to some $3 trillion in direct spending on grants, subsidies, and the like, plus another $3 trillion in related spending induced by mandates and rules. For perspective, that’s far more than the cost of Obamacare, and even more than the $4 trillion the U.S. spent (inflation adjusted) to fight World War II.

It makes zero difference which side you’re on regarding the urgency of climate change: the associated policies and spending are almost entirely about trying to create an “energy transition.” Nor does it matter what you think about whether such a transition is sensible (it isn’t): the sheer immensity of IRA spending represents a “whole of government” opportunity for waste, abuse, and fraud on an unprecedented scale.

If the likelihood for waste and abuse doesn’t strike you as obvious, consider a few well-documented features of federal spending in general. A March 2024 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on overall federal government spending in FY2023 found that “more than $175 billion of errors were overpayments—for example, payments to deceased individuals or those no longer eligible for government programs,” and “$44.6 billion were unknown payments.” [emphasis added] The only “good news,” the GAO wrote, was that the “unknown” was $11 billion less than in the previous fiscal year, when Covid money was still being liberally ladled out. Again, only the naïve would conclude that waste, fraud, and abuse didn’t account for any of those “unknown” payments and “errors” in the normal course of our government’s $6 trillion annual budget.

Now along comes the IRA, another federal government gusher, with its overall $6 trillion directed at “climate finance,” with far fewer administrative and oversight guardrails than one normally finds in federal programs. What could go wrong?

Where are all the curious investigative journalists? Fortunately, a few still exist, notably James Varney at RealClearInvestigations, who has recently published a preliminary investigation: “Overnight Success: Biden’s Climate Splurge Gives Billions to Nonprofit Newbies.”

The purpose of Varney’s investigation wasn’t to question the efficacy of the underlying spending policies, their cost-effectiveness, or their capacity to achieve their stated goals. (For the record, we have good reasons to question both the policies’ efficacy and goals. For example, a new analysis from the National Bureau of Economic Research reveals that the “IRA spends $23,000 to $32,000 per incremental EV sold.”) Rather, Varney sought answers to simple questions that fall under the purview of investigative journalism: Who’s getting the money, and what is it being spent on? Let’s hope Varney will inspire more reporters to dig in, because the massive scale of this “whole of government” spending program cannot possibly be covered by one person.

By necessity, Varney focused on just one tiny corner: the White House’s $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. As an EPA press release announced this past April: “Biden-Harris Administration Announces $20 Billion in Grants to Mobilize Private Capital and Deliver Clean Energy and Climate Solutions to Communities Across America.” Varney found that there isn’t “much public information” about many of the organizations receiving the funding, nor about what they’re doing or planning to do with the money.

Merely reading the EPA press release would raise some reasonable questions about the potential for waste and the relevance to “climate.” For instance, the EPA announcement says that one of the awards aims to “[d]edicate over $14 billion toward low-income and disadvantaged communities, including over $4 billion for rural communities as well as almost $1.5 billion for Tribal communities—ensuring that program benefits flow to the communities most in need and advance the President’s Justice40 Initiative.” Need it be said that poor communities consume far less energy than wealthier ones? Thus, changing behaviors or purchases among them would do nearly nothing to achieve the IRA’s stated climate goals. Regardless, one would want to know more about what, exactly, the grant-receiving organizations are doing or will do, and who runs them.

Varney reported that one award recipient obtained nonprofit status in 2023 and eight months later received a $940 million award. Another awardee received $2 billion just one month after obtaining nonprofit status and showing a prior reported income of $100 (not a typo). Varney doesn’t accuse any of these organizations of misdeeds; he merely sets out to establish some clarity on who got what, when, and where the money is going. However, when he contacted various recipients, he received either no responses or elliptical ones.

Again, setting aside the question of whether the spending will be useful, a reasonable person might object that we’re still in the early days and that it’s hard to spool up such an ambitious program. All true. But of course, the beginning is precisely the time when opportunities for waste and fraud get baked into a program. Varney reports: “The [$27 billion] awards were made by the Environmental Protection Agency, which is new to the world of major grantmaking. The agency acknowledges it has never handed out such gigantic sums of money, and its inspector general told Congress last month it marked a ‘fantastically complex’ and ‘unusual’ setup that his small staff would be hard-pressed to follow.”

Thus, we come back to obvious questions, such as: How is the grant-giving entity organized to evaluate and monitor funding recipients? How many of the groups were formed by political insiders? Regarding the latter, such arrangements can be perfectly benign, since insiders know where the money and opportunities reside. But the public has a right to know more. Certainly, one would hope Congress will put in place effective oversight. It is a huge amount of money. Again, from Varney’s reporting: “‘I can’t say enough about how complex this system will be,’ EPA Inspector General Sean O’Donnell testified to a House subcommittee in September. ‘It’s like they created an investment bank. It’s fantastically complex. I think it’s unusual.’”

Democrats have been eager to extol the IRA’s virtues. (The law was passed without a single Republican vote, only the second time something so consequential was so partisan. The other was Obamacare, which, it bears noting, didn’t create a “whole of government” lallapaloosa of multibillion-dollar grant-giving programs.) Given the stated claims and goals of the IRA, and the quantity of money already ladled out, one would expect to have seen far more news and press releases touting program successes. The IRA is, after all, the most expensive effort ever made to restructure an entire U.S. sector.

In the absence of further information, we can make a few reasonable suppositions: if the IRA is subject to typical levels of waste, abuse, and fraud for government largesse, then odds are that a major political tectonic shift is on the horizon. Perhaps more than any other single factor, the undoing of the climate-industrial complex could come from the volume of money being pushed into the economy to accelerate an impossible goal: the “energy transition.”

The popular expression “follow the money” comes from the iconic 1976 movie, All the President’s Men, which dramatized the Watergate investigation and the subsequent political earthquake. IRA spending dwarfs anything that precedes it. If serious investigative journalists do follow the money, it’s a good bet that we’ll see gargantuan scandals emerge.

Mark P. Mills is a City Journal contributing editor, the executive director of the National Center for Energy Analytics, and author of The Cloud Revolution.

November 5, 2024 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | | Leave a comment

Appeals Court Rules Against CHD, RFK Jr. in Landmark Censorship Case

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | November 5, 2024

Children’s Health Defense (CHD) is weighing next steps after an appeals court late Monday ruled against CHD and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in their landmark censorship case against the Biden administration.

The 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled the plaintiffs — CHD, Kennedy and news consumer Connie Sampognaro — have no legal basis to sue the Biden administration for pressuring tech giants to censor their social media posts.

Monday’s ruling overturned a lower court decision, made in August by Judge Terry Doughty from the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, who ruled the plaintiffs do have standing to sue the administration.

Standing is the legal doctrine requiring plaintiffs to show they’ve suffered direct and concrete injuries and that those injuries could be redressed in court in order to sue.

The lawsuit, Kennedy v. Biden — filed in March 2023 — alleges top government officials and federal agencies “waged a systematic, concerted campaign” to compel the nation’s three largest social media companies to censor their constitutionally protected speech.

“We are, of course, disappointed with and disagree with the 5th Circuit’s decision here,” CHD General Counsel Kim Mack Rosenberg told The Defender.

Mack Rosenberg added:

“We believe that the additional evidence CHD presented more than sufficiently established standing for Children’s Health Defense. We pointed the court to ongoing censorship activities by the government and we demonstrated that the government has a significant and improper role in the social media platforms’ censorship of CHD.”

Mack Rosenberg said that plaintiffs are weighing the next steps.

Censorship lawsuits against Biden administration continue to drag on

The decision marks the latest major development in the ongoing anti-censorship litigation against the Biden administration.

Two separate cases — Murthy v. Missouri (originally Missouri v. Biden) and Kennedy v. Biden were filed in May 2022 and March 2023 respectively against the Biden administration in Louisiana District Court.

The cases have different plaintiffs but make similar allegations: that the administration colluded with social media companies to censor plaintiffs’ speech.

Both cases cited the disclosures of secret communications between social media companies and federal officials — in the “Twitter Files,” other lawsuits and news reports — revealing threats by President Joe Biden and other top officials against social media companies if they failed to aggressively censor content that ran counter to official narratives, including those on COVID-19 origins and vaccines.

Doughty consolidated the two cases, allowing them to share processes, such as discovery of evidence. However, the courts continued to hear and rule on the cases separately.

Plaintiffs in Missouri v. Biden sought and won a preliminary injunction in the lower court to prevent the Biden administration from pressuring social media companies to censor certain content. The administration appealed in July 2023 and in June 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the injunction.

The Supreme Court ruled the plaintiffs lacked standing because there was insufficient evidence they were directly injured by the government’s actions.

The Louisiana District Court later granted a preliminary injunction in the Kennedy v. Biden case; however, the court simultaneously issued a stay pending the Supreme Court’s decision on the injunction in Missouri v. Biden.

After the Supreme Court struck down the injunction in Missouri v. Biden, the 5th Circuit sent the Kennedy v. Biden case back to the District Court to rule on standing, where plaintiffs presented supplementary evidence.

The Kennedy v. Biden plaintiffs argued they had a stronger case for standing than the plaintiffs in Missouri v. Biden because there is explicit evidence that both Kennedy and CHD were specific targets of censorship and that they continue to be censored.

In a declaration by CHD President Mary Holland, Holland said CHD was deplatformed from Facebook and YouTube in August and September 2021 and continues to be deplatformed from major social media sites to this day.

Doughty found the government’s conduct is traceable to direct statements and instructions to social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. He said Kennedy and CHD showed they faced ongoing injuries that could be redressed by the court.

In October, a three-judge panel in the 5th Circuit heard oral arguments in the Kennedy v. Biden case.

In its ruling late yesterday, the 5th Circuit disagreed with Doughty and concluded CHD, Kennedy and Sampognaro lacked standing for the same reasons the Supreme Court found the Missouri v. Biden plaintiffs lacked standing.

The court didn’t deny that pressure to censor and subsequent censorship of Kennedy and CHD had happened. Instead, it said the meetings between the government and social media companies had stopped in 2022.

Even if pressure exerted at that time led to the platforms censoring CHD, the organization could not tie ongoing censorship to government action, the court ruled. Therefore, plaintiffs have a “redressability problem,” and don’t have standing, it concluded.

Kennedy’s campaign Chief of Staff Brigid Rasmussen also described a series of content moderation actions taken by social media platforms against the Kennedy campaign.

The court ruled that Kennedy’s argument that he would be subjected to future censorship is speculative — and even more speculative now that his presidential campaign is suspended — and that he also therefore lacks standing.

The 5th Circuit’s decision voided the preliminary injunction and sent the case back again to the District Court.

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

November 5, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Lavrov warns NATO of missiles red line

RT | November 5, 2024

Moscow would not hesitate to respond to “aggressive actions” by NATO, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has warned. Allowing the Ukrainian military to use Western-supplied long-range weapons for strikes deep inside Russia would be treated as one such step, the diplomat told Rossiya Segodnya on Tuesday.

Kiev’s forces would not be able to operate such weapons independently, and would require the presence of NATO specialists as well as intelligence data obtained through the bloc’s satellite systems, Lavrov stated.

“If such weapons are used, that would mean that not just Ukraine but the NATO nations are openly at war with Russia,” the diplomat stressed. “The nature of this conflict, which the Western leaders sought to conceal… would literally come out.”

According to Lavrov, Moscow is well aware of the US-led military bloc’s aggressive policies. It has designated Russia as the biggest direct threat to its security, and NATO troops are being trained to launch offensive operations based on this, the diplomat added.

“Europe is being militarized at a quickened pace,” Lavrov stated.

“Our opponents should not be mistaken. In case of any aggressive actions by NATO or its member states against our nation, adequate retaliatory measures will be taken in full compliance with Russia’s right for self-defense embodied in the UN Charter,” the diplomat said, adding that Moscow would use “any means to ensure its security.”

“No one will be able to sit it out either beyond the Atlantic or the English Channel,” the minister warned.

Russia has repeatedly stated that it would treat Ukrainian attacks deep inside its territory using Western-supplied long-range missiles as a direct assault by the countries that supplied those weapons. Last month, President Vladimir Putin expressed hope that NATO had “heard” Moscow’s warning about the possible consequences of such actions.

Moscow would have to respond accordingly, the president said at that time, adding that “our military is thinking about this and will be offering various options.”

Kiev has for months been pushing the US and its allies to lift a ban on strikes deep inside Russia with Western-supplied long-range weapons. Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky included this request in his so-called ‘victory plan’. The recently unveiled wish list for a conclusion to the ongoing conflict has been met with caution by many Western leaders.

The New York Times reported in late October that Zelensky had secretly asked Washington for Tomahawk missiles in order to strike deep into Russia. With a range of up to 1,500 miles (2,400km), Tomahawks have a greater reach than any of the Western-made weapons previously supplied to Kiev.

The Kremlin responded to the news by saying that Kiev is only seeking to drag its Western backers “into war as quickly as possible.”

November 5, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

EU will not lift Russia sanctions – MEPs

RT | November 5, 2024

EU restrictions on Russia are unlikely to be lifted in the foreseeable future due to pressure from the US, two members of the European Parliament told Izvestiya newspaper on Tuesday.

Even an eventual end to the Ukraine conflict would not necessarily mean a scaling back of Western barriers to trade, finance and travel, French MEP Thierry Mariani told the Russian daily.

“It would be logical to lift them, but I am not sure that this will happen,” the lawmaker said. “It is likely that the US will ask to keep the sanctions in place to make sure that… economic relations with Russia do not resume immediately.”

America’s energy sector has benefited greatly from the EU’s sanctions against Russia, which was previously a leading energy supplier to the bloc, Izvestiya wrote. Following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, Brussels chose to shun Russian natural gas, replacing cheap pipeline supplies with more expensive liquified natural gas (LNG).

Last year, the US was the largest LNG supplier to the EU, representing almost 50% of total LNG imports, having tripled the supply volume since 2021, according to the European Council data.

“The end of the military operation in Ukraine will undoubtedly push some economic players in the West to demand that the sanctions, especially in the energy sector, be lifted,” Luxembourg MEP Fernand Kartheiser told Izvestiya. The lawmaker went on to warn, however, that “influential circles” in the West, including American shale gas producers, will seek to maintain the restrictions, as they benefit from them.

“So far, no senior EU official has given any indication that sanctions could be lifted if the Ukraine conflict ends… Even if Russian negotiators succeed in convincing the EU to lift the restrictions, it will not happen immediately, and it would take years for trade relations to get back to normal,” according to EU law expert and former MEP Gunnar Beck.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who was reelected in July for another five-year term, has been one of the main backers of increasing pressure on Russia.

Last month, Politico reported that Brussels was preparing its 15th package of sanctions, aimed mainly at Russian LNG exports that are still sold to the EU. According to the newspaper, the bloc’s members plan to resume discussions on new restrictions in January.

No new measures will be introduced against Russia this year during Hungary’s presidency of the bloc, Polish media reported earlier this week. Officials in Brussels are reportedly waiting for Warsaw to take over the Council’s leadership on January 1 before they roll out any new restrictive measures.

November 5, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Manipulations Possible in US Elections to Prevent Trump’s Win – French Politician

Sputnik – 05.11.2024

PARIS – There is a possibility of manipulation in the upcoming US presidential election to prevent former President Donald Trump from winning, French politician and leader of the Patriots party Florian Philippot told RIA Novosti.

“We are seeing a trend in Trump’s favor in the US, there are many indicators — polls, voting intentions. But I am afraid of manipulation. In 2020, we faced machinations, and they can happen now from the deep state and the Kamala Harris camp,” Philippot said.

According to the French politician, the EU and France openly support Harris’ candidacy against Trump, who advocates ending the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East.

“The EU, of course, wants Harris to win: [European Commission President] Ursula von der Leyen, [French President Emmanuel] Macron. The whole system that supports NATO and the European Union, globalization, is on the side of Kamala Harris. The system that promotes war is on the side of Kamala Harris, that’s obvious, while the support for patriotism and the sovereignty of the nation is on the side of Trump,” Philippot said.

November 5, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , , , | Leave a comment

Brussels’ persecution of Hungary and war against X could spark ‘yuge’ retaliation

Remix News | November 5, 2024

Today, voters head to the polls to decide who will run the United States for the next four years. If Trump should win, relations with the EU could become extremely tense, as a Trump administration could begin to wield powerful sanctions against countries — and even Brussels itself — it deems to be in violation of democratic principles and protections of free speech.

For one, Brussels has been hitting Hungary with sanctions, freezing billions owed to Budapest over “rule of law” and generally working to oust the ruling government. Viktor Orbán has openly come out in support of Trump, and both of them enjoy a warm relationship, and more importantly, they share the same ideology on many key issues, including migration and a pro-peace path in Ukraine.

It will likely not be business as usual if Trump comes back to power. Countries like Hungary would no longer be facing the full weight of the Western left. In fact, Trump could very well start playing hardball, issuing sanctions, travel restrictions, and new executive orders to prevent democratic backsliding in Europe. Notably, the rule-of-law sanctions being wielded by Brussels against member state governments it deems undesirable would likely be viewed from Washington as an anti-democratic form of blackmail. In turn, the U.S. could quickly counter such moves, including with “rule-of-law” sanctions of its own against Brussels.

If Germany moves to ban the Alternative for Germany (AfD), a Trump administration could move to counter this as well, including with sanctions against Germany due to democratic backsliding. Many may have already forgotten about the commando raid on a German publisher and journalists’ home over the summer. The German government, without so much as a court order, shut down an entire publication overnight. The publisher of Compact magazine, Jürgen Elsässer, was splashed across newspaper and television stations across the country in his bathrobe surrounded by officers in ski masks.

This is not normal behavior for a democratic country, and Trump’s administration may take action if further attempts are made to persecute journalists and shut down the free press in Germany.

https://twitter.com/RMXnews/status/1813205996531003470

What actions could Trump’s administration take in such a scenario? With Germany cut off from its traditional source of Russian gas, a move to restrict energy exports to Germany would be devastating. In other key areas, Germany and Europe are far more dependent on the U.S. than on vice versa.

Obviously, such a move would come with serious risks, including for the global economy, and potentially sparking a trade war. However, the U.S. would have most of the leverage in such a scenario. Europe needs U.S. energy, end of story.

The EU’s plan to restrict free speech and throttle X with fines could also result in sanctions on European companies, tariffs, and other forms of retaliation. Trump will likely be very willing to defend free speech across the world, especially after his own experience facing censorship across social media, and willing to use U.S. might to ensure this fundamental right on the web. His backers, most notably Elon Musk, will have a strong voice in the administration, and should Trump suddenly grow cold feet, he will face withering pressure from Musk and others.

Under Trump, free speech would still have a chance on platforms like X and others, even if free speech is already limited on those platforms. In turn, European conservatives, libertarians, and those opposed to mass immigration will be allowed to voice their opinions and influence the political debate in the coming years.

There are, of course, many open questions about how relations between Trump and the EU would develop, but it may obviously be a pointless thought experiment. In a matter of hours, days, or even weeks, Kamala Harris may be the decided winner. In such a scenario, the globe can also expect X to be shut down within a year or two, buried under fines and violations of the EU’s Digital Service Act. Brussels will continue to attack conservatives with its powerful sanctions mechanism. New forms of harassment and persecution, including arrests of politicians, journalists, and academics who support the “wrong opinion,” are likely as well.

https://twitter.com/RMXnews/status/1852324197084668098

The majority of Europeans may not like Donald Trump. As polling shows, Europeans, most notably Western Europeans, are very much opposed. Only a few countries from the east, such as Hungary, Bulgaria, and Serbia, support the former president, but in the end, he may be the only thing between a free web and a closed web, especially on the most important topics Europeans are increasingly not allowed to talk about. Furthermore, as opposition to mass immigration grows and other left-liberal agendas, there is no telling where European sympathies will likely be in the coming years.

In short, much is at stake for Europe in the outcome of this vote. The deck remains stacked against Trump. The U.S. voting system is in shambles, with votes being counted for days and weeks after election day, with ballots stuffed in drop boxes weeks before the election, and with ballot harvesters collecting ballots outside of any real oversight. Even basic safeguards like voter ID are nowhere to be found in many states. It will be a miracle if Trump wins, but we’ll know the results soon enough and will have to deal with the outcome — for better or worse.

November 5, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

Washington Storefronts Getting Boarded-Up Early Indication of Harris’ Defeat – Wall Street Analyst

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 05.11.2024

Washington DC is seeing a lot of boarded-up storefronts and buildings. The New York Times is even hinting at the possibility of violence from disenchanted Donald Trump supporters. Wall Street analyst Charles Ortel doesn’t buy into the assumption.

“Republicans are a tiny percentage of registered voters [in DC] so it is pure fiction and likely projection that they are poised for mayhem,” Ortel told Sputnik.

“The truth in a fair contest is that Trump and Vance are set to trounce Harris and Walz – deluded Democrats and reliable Antifa and Black Lives Matter mobsters are the ones set to riot, and certainly not Republicans, because they will be celebrating,” he continued.

It seems that the efforts by the corporate media and influencers to sell the Biden-Harris Administration as a “transformative success” have fallen flat. It’s becoming clear that things are actually worse now than they were under Trump, pre-Covid, according to the analyst.

“Political insiders know that Harris is a far worse candidate than Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden were in 2016 and 2020 and that Trump and Vance are a potent slate backed by tens of millions of motivated and enthusiastic voters, who likely will win decisively, absent widespread cheating,” Ortel said.

He doesn’t rule out that those who poured a whopping $1 billion into the Harris-Walz ticket are preparing to throw a spanner in the works for Trump and JD Vance. They might even try to invalidate the 2024 results if the former president and his running mate win.

“I hope cooler heads prevail in what remains of the Democrat party. As of this moment, Trump and Vance seem poised to win a decisive mandate against the Deep State swamp, likely with control of the Senate and a stronger majority in the House,” Ortel concluded.

November 5, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

Musk Calls Harris’ Statement on US Troops Not Being Deployed in Combat Zones Flat-Out Lie

Sputnik – 05.11.2024

US billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has designated as a lie the statement made by US Vice President and Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris that US troops are not deployed in any war zones.

During the presidential debate with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on September 10 Harris said that there currently was “not one member of the United States military who is in active duty in a combat zone in any war zone around the world.”

“I know [US] troops [are] in war zones. As vice president, you’re privy. You know the official troops and the unofficial troops. What she said was a flat-out bold-faced lie. Next-level bold-faced lie. An absurd lie,” Musk said in a podcast with Joe Rogan released on Tuesday.

The United States presidential election is being held on November 5. Harris and Trump are competing for the country’s top job.

November 5, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Militarism, Wars for Israel | | Leave a comment

Healthcare Workers Reject COVID, Flu Shots Amid ‘Tremendous Erosion of Trust’ in Health Agencies

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | November 4, 2024

The number of healthcare workers receiving COVID-19 and flu vaccines declined during the 2023-24 cold and flu season, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Only 15.3% of acute hospital workers and 10.5% of nursing home personnel received a COVID-19 vaccine during the 2023-24 season — down from 17.8% and 22.8% respectively, the CDC said in its Oct. 31 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Based on data from the CDC’s National Healthcare Safety Network, flu vaccine rates for the same healthcare worker groups were higher than COVID-19 vaccine rates — 80.7% for acute care hospital personnel and 45.4% for nursing home personnel.

However, the rates remained “persistently below the levels during the prepandemic period.” For example, the flu vaccine rate for hospital workers in 2019-20 was 91%.

The CDC figures also showed that nearly 1 in 100 healthcare workers reported “a medical contraindication” to receiving either the COVID-19 (0.71%) or flu (0.89%) vaccine. The CDC figures did not provide information on the rate of vaccine side effects reported by healthcare workers.

The CDC said more research is needed “to identify effective strategies to improve vaccination at a time when health care personnel are susceptible to low vaccine confidence.”

Such studies would also seek to improve “confidence about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines among health care personnel through, for example, providing additional education about the safety and effectiveness of vaccination to health care personnel.”

Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), told The Defender the data didn’t surprise her.

“It is no longer possible to deny safety signals and lack of effectiveness,” Orient said. “A large percentage [of healthcare workers] have themselves had several episodes of COVID, had adverse reactions themselves, or know someone who did.”

Pulmonologist Dr. Pierre Kory, founder of the Leading Edge Clinic and president emeritus and co-founder of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, said the CDC figures represent “a welcome trend” that he hopes will continue. He said:

“Regardless of the reasons for the decline, the data shows healthcare workers’ tremendous erosion of trust in our regulatory agencies. Allowing this distrust to continue will further undermine the public’s confidence in our healthcare agencies.”

Kory noted the symbolism of healthcare workers turning their backs on the COVID-19 vaccine in particular. “If the vaccine is not for us, it is certainly not for them,” Kory said.

Danielle Baker, a certified hospice and palliative care registered nurse injured by the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, agreed.

“With the current state of public healthcare, I am not surprised by the figures. In healthcare, there were positions where you agreed to some annual vaccinations upon hire, but the events of 2021 forever shook the core of even that practice,” Baker said.

Dr. Mary Talley Bowden, an ear, nose and throat specialist who was suspended by Houston Methodist Hospital for treating COVID-19 patients with ivermectin, said, “85% of healthcare workers are opting not to get the COVID shots because they know these shots are all risk and no benefit.”

‘Why should we trust you?’

Dr. Marty Makary, a public health researcher at Johns Hopkins University and author of “Blind Spots: When Medicine Gets it Wrong, and What It Means for Our Health,” said the disparity between the CDC’s COVID-19 vaccination recommendations and the actual coverage rate “is telling.”

“It’s also embarrassing for the CDC director [Dr. Rochelle Walensky], who has made pushing the new COVID booster a leading priority of her tenure,” Makary said.

Orient said that doctors and other healthcare personnel who stood up to vaccine mandates and pressure from their employers to get vaccinated “are vindicated” by the CDC’s data “and should be applauded.”

“The message to the public should be obvious,” Orient said. “Why should we trust you?”

Others, though, do not feel vindicated. Sarah Choujounian, co-founder of the Canadian Frontline Nurses, told The Defender that while “many have been awakened to the fact that vaccines are not safe,” she and other nurses who opposed vaccine mandates are still facing professional repercussions.

“This news does not bring vindication as I, amongst many others, am still in court being dragged through a disciplinary hearing for standing up to the corruption and standing up for what is best for our communities,” Choujounian said.

Dr. Danice Hertz, a retired gastroenterologist who was “horribly injured” after receiving the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, said lawmakers and policymakers need to open their eyes to the growing distrust of the COVID-19 vaccines by the medical community.

Hertz said:

“I personally have been injured by the Pfizer COVID vaccine. I believed what I was told by our agencies, that these vaccines are safe and effective. I learned the hard way that they were not telling the truth.”

Bowden said that doctors haven’t done enough to speak out. She said:

“Why are physicians not speaking out? Our profession has veered off course, and physicians today are more concerned with protecting their jobs over upholding the Hippocratic oath.

“We have an abundant amount of data showing adverse events from these shots, but we don’t have anyone in authority who will look at the data. Physicians need to get vocal and stand up to the government doctors who have taken over our healthcare system.”

Orient said more doctors are starting to speak out, but “intense indoctrination, financial incentives and fear of ostracism and licensure are huge barriers to overcome.”

Kory said if the medical establishment and the government are to have any hope of reestablishing trust, they need to “recognize the truth about the COVID-19 vaccines. Until that happens, no message from them will be taken seriously, and the little public trust left in these institutions will eventually be gone.”

Baker said he believes the public has reached a point where they no longer need to look to healthcare professionals for an answer when it comes to COVID-19 vaccination. He said:

“People pay attention. The mass media messages, governmental overstep, blanket mandates, lack of agency support for those adversely affected and unwillingness to see and hear responses to these things have caused an implosion.

“Enough of the general public has reached a consensus when it comes to this particular shot from the collective set of experiences over the past years.”

CDC data leave unanswered questions

The CDC data — self-reported by hospitals and nursing home facilities — also demonstrated regional differences in vaccine uptake. COVID-19 vaccine update was highest in the Pacific region and lowest in the Mountain and Southern states.

For the flu vaccine, uptake was highest in the Mountain region and lowest in the Pacific region for acute care hospital employees, while for nursing home personnel, uptake was highest in the Northeast and lowest in the South.

Figures for the current respiratory illness season are not yet available.

Pediatrician Dr. Michelle Perro told The Defender the data still leaves some unanswered questions.

“One criticism is that it did not delineate which types of healthcare employees were opting out of the flu and COVID vaccines. It appears that this data may not have been readily available,” Perro said.

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

November 5, 2024 Posted by | Deception | , | Leave a comment

Betting the Farm on the Imaginary War

The Highway of Death, Iraq War, 1991
By William Schryver – imetatronink – November 4, 2024

It has now been ten years since I first turned my attention to the necessity of prudent financial investments in order to both preserve and hopefully enlarge the modest amount of wealth I had accumulated up to that time. I began by attempting to identify the wisest and most discerning “experts” in the field. This was no easy trick.

Fortunately, in the ten years preceding my late-2014 awakening to the importance of financial and macroeconomic matters, I had spent several years discovering that most of western academia is a sham dominated by highly credentialled ignoramuses. Therefore I was alerted to the likelihood that the so-called “experts” in other fields of study were similarly intellectually impaired, regardless of their seemingly impressive curricula vitae, how many framed certificates hung on their wall, and the size of their “assets under management”.

That said, it became apparent over time that even those I initially identified as reliable “experts” could be well-informed most of the time, and yet still be subject to blind spots that rendered them susceptible to fatal errors which could often nullify their seemingly correct judgment of everything else.

In the context of financial matters, it must be understood that the “Quantitative Easing” and near-zero interest rates that followed on the heels of the so-called “Great Financial Crisis” of 2007-2009 was a tide that floated a great many boats captained by fools whose folly would not be recognized until the consequences of central bank profligacy were revealed several years further down the road.

Even so, most of the investment “gurus” whose analysis I had come to respect managed to successfully navigate the hurricane of price inflation that roared ashore in the wake of the Covid hysteria – a storm that was then followed by the Federal Reserve’s subsequent raising of interest rates in a frantic attempt to stem the inflationary tide.

Then World War Three began.

Of course, even at this point, almost three years into that war, few people recognize it for what it is. Even fewer recognize the degree to which the geopolitical and military parameters of war itself have been radically altered in comparison to what they were during the “American Unipolar Interregnum” that commenced with the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Indeed, the overwhelming majority of Americans believe the “unipolar moment” continues essentially intact and unthreatened. In the highly insulated environs of Wall Street and Silicon Valley, faith in the overwhelming supremacy of American high-tech and military prowess remains almost entirely unshaken, notwithstanding the ever-increasing indications to the contrary – things about which I have been writing for several years now.

Most of the gods of American high-tech and finance, and those who worship them, simply cannot discern the degree to which American power in all its forms has steadily eroded over the course of the 21st century, and that this erosion has accelerated dramatically in recent years.

For most of the western elite and their acolytes, it is still early 1991, and Norman Schwarzkopf is leading a million-man army against the hapless Iraqis in a demonstration of military might that would finally expunge the bitter humiliation of Vietnam from the American psyche.

Such people have religiously embraced the Hollywood fantasies of unassailable American superpower dominance. And given the reality that Ukraine and Israel are considered merely appendages of this assumed American military supremacy, the eastern European and Levantine theaters of World War Three have given rise to extreme examples of an unprecedented tsunami of propaganda I have been wont to call “The Imaginary War”.

This phrase I coined in the early stages of the war in Ukraine has its origins in something allegedly said by an unnamed Israeli general in the aftermath of the 2006 war in southern Lebanon – a war whose ultimate outcome was a decisive strategic defeat for Israel, but which the Israelis subsequently attempted to spin into a great victory. It was in this context that the Israeli general reportedly said, “If you can’t win a real war, win an imaginary one.”

This is precisely the narrative-building approach we have seen in Ukraine over the past two-plus years.

Most Americans, and most people around the world who believe in mainstream western narratives, are convinced that the Russians have been dealt an overwhelming strategic defeat in Ukraine; that the Russian military has been exposed as a poorly trained drunken mob; that Russian military doctrine is imbecilic; that Russian equipment is junk; that Russian military technology is decades behind its western counterparts; that American and other NATO war toys sent to Ukraine have dominated the battlefield, etc., etc.

The same types of things are believed about China, its culture, and its military capabilities.

And, of course, even greater derision is directed towards the Iranians and the North Koreans.

Just today I read a short article from a fairly prominent Wall Street hedge fund CIO, in which he wrote the following paragraph of utterly fictitious (and yet widely believed) nonsense:

Israel sent 100 aircraft for a 2000km flight to attack Tehran. Zero were shot down. First, the IDF took out Iran’s air defenses. Those Russian S-300 anti-aircraft systems can now be found disassembled in large craters through the region (Russia’s newer S-400 system underperformed expectations in Ukraine and the S-500 is in test phase). With Iran’s air defenses offline, Israeli aircraft had their way with whatever targets they chose in Tehran. They skipped over the mullahs this time. Next time who knows. Such is the nature of warfare for those with superior tech.

Never mind that literally ALL of his assertions are demonstrably false – this would-be titan of American finance intends to bet the farm on the fallacious assumptions of the imaginary wars he has convinced himself are actually taking place.

Of course, both the major party candidates for President, almost the entirety of the United States Congress, and much of the sprawling swamp of American government bureaucracy in Washington are similarly convinced of the indomitability of American imperial military might, and they are anxious to teach the current “axis of evil” in Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran a lesson they will not soon forget.

In the end – and it will come sooner than later – the only thing that will not be soon forgotten is how briefly the American unipolar moment endured, and how shockingly and suddenly it all came crashing down.

November 4, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

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