Dec 01

Today’s News 1st December 2024

  • The Five Reasons Why Syria Was Caught By Surprise
    The Five Reasons Why Syria Was Caught By Surprise

    Authored by Andrew Korybko via substack,

    The disaster in Aleppo was avoidable and is just as bad as it looks…

    The Turkish-backed terrorists’/“rebels’” advance on Aleppo, which was analyzed here, came as a shock to most observers.

    There was almost half a decade of peace between the March 2020 ceasefire and now, yet practically nothing was done to prepare for this possibility.

    This was in spite of the front line remaining roughly two dozen kilometers away from Aleppo, which should have reminded Assad of how vulnerable his country’s second city is.

    Here are the five reasons why Syria was caught by surprise:

    1. Complacency & Corruption

    The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) rested on its laurels because it took the Russian-brokered ceasefire for granted, after which the country’s infamous corruption kicked in to degrade its capabilities. There’s no excuse for why even basic drones weren’t used for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) to detect the buildup that preceded this advance. A large part of why the SAA didn’t do anything is likely because it assumed that its Russian and Iranian allies would shoulder these responsibilities for them.

    2. The Russian-Iranian Rivalry

    Russia and Iran fought together against terrorism in Syria, but they’re also rivals who are competing with each other for premier influence over Damascus. So intense is their competition that Russia always does nothing other than occasionally complain whenever Israel bombs the IRGC there, never once giving Syria the means to intercept these attacks or retaliate afterwards. Had they not been rivals, then Russia and Iran could have jointly strengthened the SAA, carried out ISR in Idlib, and bolstered Aleppo’s defenses.

    3. Distracted & Crippled Allies

    To make matters even worse for Syria, the terrorists’/“rebels’” advance on Aleppo came precisely at the moment when Russia is distracted with the special military operation (SMO) and Iran has been crippled by its West Asian Wars with Israel. Without sufficient Russian airpower and Iranian manpower, including that which the latter could have called upon from Hezbollah, it’ll be extremely difficult for the SAA to push the attackers away from Aleppo. This factor, more than any other, might have even sealed its fate.

    4. Ignoring The SMO’s Lessons

    Even amidst the Russian-Iranian rivalry and its allies’ aforesaid problems, the SAA could have learned the SMO’s lessons on its own and correspondingly prepared much better for what ultimately came to pass. Masterful drone tactics and strategically dispersed units have characterized the attack thus far, both of which are hallmarks of the SMO, yet the SAA was totally unprepared for this. It must therefore take final responsibility for failing to do its duty in learning from that conflict and adapting its defenses accordingly.

    5. Not Compromising For Peace

    The last reason why Syria was caught by surprise is because it didn’t compromise for peace by accepting 2017’s Russian-written “draft constitution”, which was constructively critiqued in detail here. It’s chock-full of concessions so one can sympathize with Syria for rejecting it, but in hindsight, this could have finally resolved the conflict and thus averted the ongoing fiasco in Aleppo. For this reason, it could be revived during these desperate times, but the “opposition” might now demand even more concessions.

    The disaster in Aleppo was avoidable and is just as bad as it looks.

    It’s not part of a “5D chess master plan” to “trap the terrorists in a cauldron” like some members of the Alt-Media Community have implied or claimed.

    Observers should reject the “insight” shared by those who already discredited themselves with their fantastical takes on the SMO and the West Asian Wars.

    The “politically inconvenient” truth is that Syria was caught by surprise, the SAA is on the backfoot, and the worst might be yet to come.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 11/30/2024 – 23:20

  • 'God Of Darkness' Asteroid Will Pass Extremely Close To Earth In 2029
    ‘God Of Darkness’ Asteroid Will Pass Extremely Close To Earth In 2029

    Authored by Leslie Eastman via LegalInsurrection.com,

    Asteroid Apophis, named after the Egyptian god of chaos and destruction, is a near-Earth asteroid that has garnered significant attention due to its close approach to our home planet.

    Discovered in 2004, Apophis is classified as a potentially hazardous object. Due to swing close enough to the planet in 2029, the gravitational influence will be enough to cause tremors.

    A recent study led by Ronald-Louis Ballouz from Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory suggests that the asteroid 99942 Apophis may experience tremors—similar to earthquakes—due to Earth’s gravitational pull during its close flyby on April 13, 2029, with simulations indicating significant surface changes.

    Apophis, approximately 340 meters in size, will pass within about 32,000 kilometers of Earth, closer than many satellites in orbit.

    When Apophis was discovered on June 19, 2004, by Roy Tucker, David Tholen, and Fabrizio Bernardi during the University of Hawaii Asteroid Survey (UHAS), initial calculations indicated that it could approach Earth with a risk of collision, especially during its pass in 2029. It didn’t help that it is named after the Egyptian god of darkness and chaos.

    The original estimates for collision were as high as 2.7%, and Apophis achieved the highest rating ever on the ‘Torino scale’ – a method used to evaluate the threat that an asteroid poses to Earth.

    However, new calculations and observations have led scientists to conclude that there will be no impact….for at least 100 years.

    ….Using the data available at the time, astronomers believed that there was a chance that the flyby could alter the trajectory of Apophis in a way that would line it up for a collision with Earth in 2068.

    However, radar observations of Apophis made by NASA’s Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in California and the Green Bank Observatory, West Virginia, in March 2021 greatly improved our knowledge of the asteroid’s current orbit and allowed astronomers to finally rule out any chance of Earth impact for at least 100 years.

    And while it won’t strike Earth, Apophis will be bright enough in the skies to be visible to the unaided eye. So, the viewing parties could be fun!

    As I mentioned, the viewing parties of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) are currently making their own plans for up-close-and-personal observations.

    The OSIRIS-APEX mission is slated to visit the asteroid. It continues the OSIRIS-REx mission, which successfully collected and returned samples from asteroid Bennu (which I reported on in a 2023 post).

    OSIRIS-APEX is a mission to study the physical changes to asteroid Apophis that will result from its rare close encounter with Earth in April 2029. That year, Apophis’ orbit will bring it within 20,000 miles (32,000 kilometers) of Earth’s surface — closer to Earth than our highest-altitude satellites. Our planet’s gravitational pull is expected to alter the asteroid’s orbit, change how fast it spins on its axis, and possibly cause quakes or landslides that will alter its surface.

    OSIRIS-APEX will allow scientists on Earth to observe these changes. Additionally, the OSIRIS-APEX spacecraft will dip toward the surface of Apophis ­– a “stony” asteroid made of silicate (or rocky) material and a mixture of metallic nickel and iron ­ – and fire its engines to kick up loose rocks and dust. This maneuver will give scientists a peek at the composition of material just below the asteroid’s surface.

    Other satellite projects, including those related to planetary defense, are also being planned.

    Under the auspicious “NEAlight” project, a team from Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) and led by space engineer Hakan Kayal has revealed three concepts for such spacecraft. Each of the suggested satellites will aim to exploit this asteroid passage because Earth experiences just once such event every millennium.

    The goal? To collect data that could help scientists better understand the solar system, and perhaps even aid in the development of defense measures against dangerous asteroids.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 11/30/2024 – 22:45

  • How America's East- And West-Coast Economies Compare
    How America’s East- And West-Coast Economies Compare

    America’s East and West Coasts together contribute about half of the country’s $27 trillion GDP. For context, these two regions are home to 17 states and 160 million people.

    But how do they stack up against each other?

    In this map, Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao takes a look at which states constitute both coasts and also measure their combined economic productivity.

    Data is sourced from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Census Bureau, as of 2023.

    So, Which Coast is the Best Coast?

    The Eastern Seaboard, where a third of Americans live, has a combined GDP of $9 trillion, also about a third of the U.S. economy.

    Note: All figures rounded.

    On the other hand, the West (figures listed below) comes in at about $5 trillion. And despite the smaller overall number, it’s punching above its weight, with less than half the population. This is better seen in how the GDP per capita shakes out for both: $98,000 for the West versus $84,000 for the East.

    California leads the way for its coast, with its economy nearing $4 trillion, just by itself.

    Note: All figures rounded.

    Of course, the East has the pedigree, the history, and the people. It’s where the original 13 states declared independence in 1776 after all. On the other hand, California joined the union in 1850, followed by Oregon (1859) and Washington (1889).

    But even before Silicon Valley changed California (and the West, and perhaps the world?), the Golden State has been central to America’s economic growth.

    California King

    The gold rush set off the largest inter-state migration in U.S. history and fueled wild dreams. After it ended, agriculture became California’s largest sector, followed by oil at the start of the 20th century. In fact, as recently as 2012, California was the third-largest oil producing state.

    All of that has now been eclipsed now by California’s booming tech sector, home to four trillion-dollar companies—Alphabet, Apple, Meta, and Nvidia. Further noth, Washington has another two: Amazon and Microsoft.

    In stark contrast, the East Coast has none, though it is home to several finance giants: JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citi, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley.

    Looking for more comparison graphics? Take a look at How State Economies Compare to Entire Countries where five U.S. states could replace countries in the top 20 by GDP.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 11/30/2024 – 21:35

  • Turkey-Backed Jihadists Eye Hama Next After Capturing Central Aleppo, International Airport
    Turkey-Backed Jihadists Eye Hama Next After Capturing Central Aleppo, International Airport

    Update(1425ET): After capturing the central and northwestern parts of Aleppo, Syria’s largest northern city, armed jihadist insurgents led by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) are reportedly seeking to take the west-central city of Hama next.

    Regional media has cited HTS sources to say they’ve “begun marching towards Hama, successfully capturing six towns and villages in the countryside, including Morek, which lies along an important highway connecting central Syria to the north.” The Syrian government has denied that many of these towns or villages were captured, amid conflicting social media reports.

    Importantly, the jihadists also now claim control of Aleppo city’s international airport, which has long been a key regional hub. Russian and Syrian airstrikes have continued to pound the central occupied parts of Aleppo. These mark the first such major aerial bombardments of the city since the anti-Assad insurgents were driven out in 2016.

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    Amid rapid and stunning gains on Saturday, HTS and other allied al-Qaeda splinter groups have also captured the strategic city of Khan Sheikhoun in southern Idlib region. Dozens of civilians, Syrian Army soldiers, as well as HTS militants have died Friday into Saturday, especially as airstrikes ramp up against the black-clad and well-armed invaders.

    The Syrian Army has acknowledged a temporary retreat from Aleppo in order to regroup, also as Moscow is demanding that President Assad quickly restore order:

    The military said on Saturday that dozens of its soldiers had been killed or wounded in fierce battles with “armed terrorist organisations” in the governorates of Aleppo and Idlib over the previous few days and that it was now regrouping, redeploying troops to strengthen its defence lines as it prepared a “counterattack”.

    It said that rebel groups had launched “a broad attack from multiple axes on the Aleppo and Idlib fronts”, reporting clashes “over a strip exceeding 100km [60 miles]”.

    The army said the rebels had entered large parts of Aleppo but army bombardment had stopped them from establishing fixed positions. It promised to “expel them and restore the control of the state … over the entire city and its countryside”.

    Al Jazeera correspondent Resul Serdar has remarked, “That this happened in just four days is unbelievable.”

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    One of the more interesting revelations and admissions from mainstream media has been that this new assault is being directed from NATO member Turkey. The AFP has bluntly said Turkish intelligence gave the greenlight for the attack on Aleppo.

    AFP writes that “Opposition sources in touch with Turkish intelligence said Turkey had given a green light to the offensive.” AFPs correspondent in HTS/AQ-held Idlib additionally reported that “The jihadists and their Turkey-backed allies took orders from a joint operations command.”

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    And this is precisely how Idlib was taken over by various Al-Qaeda factions in 2015: an operations room in southern Turkey staffed by NATO allies’ intelligence officers supported it from start to finish.

    The Syrian Army reportedly has a strong presence in Hama in preparation for possible attack:

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    Meanwhile, below is a brief trip down memory lane to understand how all of this began over a decade ago, and Washington’s direct role in the regime change efforts in Syria…

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    * * *

    Hours after thousands of Syrian Islamic militants entered Syria’s largest city of Aleppo, facing little resistance from government troops, and fanned out inside the city in vehicles with improvised armor and pickups, deploying to landmarks such as the old citadel on Saturday, Russian fighter jets stationed in Syria carried out airstrikes against the jihadist militants attacking the northern city of Aleppo, the spokesman for Moscow’s expeditionary force has said. The escalation follows after the Al-Qaeda linked Hayat Tahrir-al-Sham or HTS (an offshoot of Al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra) insurgent group, which was added by the US State Department to the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations in 2018, and allied militias attacked government-controlled territory in northern Syria on Wednesday, breaking a fragile truce mediated by Russia and Turkey in 2020.

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    “Providing support to the Syrian Arab Army, the Russian Aerospace Forces are carrying out missile and bomb strikes on the equipment and manpower of illegal armed groups, command posts, warehouses, and artillery positions of terrorists. Over the past 24 hours, at least 200 militants have been eliminated,” Colonel Oleg Ignasyuk, the deputy head of the Russian Reconciliation Center for Syria, told reporters in a briefing on Friday. He added that another 400 militants were killed by Russian and Syrian forces the day before.

    A HTS rebel fighter in Aleppo

    Also on Saturday, Syria’s armed forces said that to absorb the large attack on Aleppo – which is located 350 kilometers north of Damascus – and save lives, it has redeployed and is preparing for a counterattack. The statement acknowledged that insurgents entered large parts of the city but said they have not established bases or checkpoints.

    Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) fighters kneel to pray in a street in Aleppo

    Terrorists were filmed outside police headquarters, in the city center, and outside the Aleppo Citadel. They tore down posters of Syrian President Bashar Assad, stepping on some and burning others.

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    The surprising takeover of Aleppo following the blitz campaign is an embarrassment for Assad, who managed to regain total control of the city in 2016, after expelling insurgents and thousands of civilians from its eastern neighborhoods following a grueling military campaign in which his forces were backed by Russia, Iran and its allied groups.

    Aleppo has not been attacked by opposition forces since then. The 2016 battle for Aleppo was a turning point in the war between Syrian government forces and rebel fighters after 2011 protests against Assad’s rule turned into an all-out war.

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    Before adopting its current name in 2017, HTS was known as Jabhat al-Nusra, and was one of the main Sunni islamist factions opposing President Bashar Assad’s government during the Syrian Civil War. Jabhat al-Nusra was originally founded as an offshoot of Al-Qaeda in Syria.

    The jihadists launched their shock offensive in the Aleppo and Idlib countryside on Wednesday and wrestled control of dozens of villages and towns before entering Aleppo on Friday. The pro-government Al-Watan newspaper reported airstrikes on the edge of Aleppo city targeting rebel supply lines. It posted a video of a missile landing on a gathering of fighters and vehicles, in a street lined with trees and buildings.

    The timing is remarkable: over the past decade, Syria has become a focal point of rapid foreign military escalation with the CIA-backed Islamic State emerging out of nowhere in 2014 and destabilizing the region for the next 4 years, and now – during a time of upheaval for the Deep State – it is once again Syria that is the focus of CIA escalatory tactics, this time involving another Al-Qaeda-linked terrorist organization, the HTS.

    The push into Aleppo followed weeks of simmering low-level violence, including government attacks on opposition-held areas. In its amusing commentary, the AP notes that Turkey, which has openly backed Syrian opposition groups, “failed in its diplomatic efforts to prevent the Syrian government attacks”, which were seen as a violation of a 2019 agreement sponsored by Russia, Turkey and Iran to freeze the line of the conflict. What the AP really means is that Turkey has once again been quietly seeking to destabilize the region and has succeeded.

    The latest offensive comes as Iran-linked groups, primarily Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which has backed Syrian government forces since 2015, have been preoccupied with their own battles at home. A ceasefire in Hezbollah’s two-month war with Israel took effect Wednesday, the day the Syrian opposition factions announced their offensive. Israel has also escalated its attacks against Hezbollah and Iran-linked targets in Syria during the last 70 days.

    According to social media reports, government troops remained in the city’s airport and at a military academy but most of the forces have already filed out of the city from the south. Syrian Kurdish forces remained in two neighborhoods. The redeployment “is a temporary measure and (the military central command and armed forces) will work to guarantee the security and peace of all our people in Aleppo,” the military statement said.

    There was light traffic in the city center on Saturday according to AP. Opposition fighters fired in the air in celebration but there was no sign of clashes or government troops presence. Earlier in the day, HTS told Al Jazeera and Türkiye’s Anadolu news agency that its fighters had entered several neighborhoods of Aleppo. The group claimed to have taken control of over 400 square kilometers of land in Aleppo and Idlib provinces and captured heavy weaponry and other equipment from the Syrian Army.

    Videos shared on social media purportedly show HTS gunmen moving through Aleppo on foot and in armored vehicles.

    The government in Damascus said its troops have “inflicted heavy losses” on the attackers and regained control of some areas. Local media reported the arrival of Syrian Army reinforcements to both Idlib and Aleppo on Friday. Meanwhile Russian fighter jets stationed in Syria carried out multiple airstrikes against jihadist militants attacking the northern city of Aleppo. Twenty fighters were killed in the airstrikes, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Aleppo residents reported clashes and gunfire. Some fled the fighting.

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    Schools and government offices were closed Saturday as most people stayed indoors, according to Sham FM radio, a pro-government station. Bakeries were open. Witnesses said the insurgents deployed security forces around the city to prevent any acts of violence or looting.

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    Russia intervened in the conflict in 2015, helping Assad retake much of the country from al-Nusra, the Islamic State, and dozens of US-supported armed groups described by Washington as ‘moderate rebels’.

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    Syrian forces lifted the nearly five-year siege of Aleppo in December 2016 and pushed al-Nusra and other groups west into Idlib province. Türkiye took responsibility for Idlib in 2018, vowing to separate terrorists from “legitimate rebels,” but never did so. A March 2020 agreement between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was meant to permanently end the fighting around Idlib.

    * * *

    Appendix: A Primer on the Islamic group HTS, Who They Are, and why Iran, Israel are wary of al-Qaeda-linked jihadists? (via The Week)

    Syria’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) is once again in the news after a fresh rebel offensive in Aleppo put the government forces on the back foot. Bashar al-Assad’s government troops lost significant ground to the sudden attack by HTS-led fighters, losing control of several villages and military establishments in Aleppo — located almost 350 kilometres away from Damascus.

    In an already volatile Middle East, reports of unrest and gunfights returning to Syria are bad news. As the country braces for the return of conflict-ridden days, the focus is back on the HTS, which was once affiliated with terror group al-Qaida. Here is what you need to know about Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which is the principal rebel fighting force behind the fresh violence in Syria.

    Syria’s Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham rebels

    The US Department of State added Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) to the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) in 2018. Traced back to the early days of the Syrian civil war, HTS is an offshoot of al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra.

    Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham loosely translates to the “Organization for the Liberation of the Levant” in English. Based out of Idlib, the organization enjoyed operational presence in Syria’s Aleppo, Hama, Dera’a, and Damascus during its prime.  According to Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED), Hayat Tahrir al-Sham remains the most powerful anti-government armed group in northwest Syria.

    Who leads HTS? What is its take on Israel?

    Initially, the organization was funded by sympathizers from the Persian Gulf. Its style of taxing territories under control and effective insurgent attacks attracted more fighters to its ranks despite the presence of numerous outfits in the region.

    In 2017, the group guided by Salafi-jihadist ideology openly split from the al-Qaeda and is currently led by Abu Mohammed al-Golani. According to US-based Center For Strategic and International Studies, despite the split, HTS, in theory, continues to have a secret relationship with al-Qaeda and receives strategic and operational guidance from the Islamic terror organisation.

    Also called Muhammad al-Jawlani and Muhammad al-Julani, the 42-year-old led the al-Nusrah Front (ANF) before its merger with the HTS. On May 16, 2013, the US Department of State designated al-Jawlani as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist for carrying out several terrorist attacks targeting civilians across Syria.

    HTS: An Islamic organization with “local” goals

    The major difference between HTS and al-Qaeda is the fact that unlike the latter, HTS in recent times has distanced itself from the dream of establishing an Islamic Caliphate across the world.

    The organisation has declared its ultimate objective to be the establishment of Islamic rule in Syria and the expelling of Iranian militias from the country. The toppling of the Assad government remains the aim of “modern” HTS, CSIS says, despite Abu al-Jolani having made statements like “With this spirit… we will not only reach Damascus, but, Allah permitting, Jerusalem will be awaiting our arrival” in the past.  

    This indicates the Zionist ideology and the Jewish state of Israel is a sworn enemy of the HTS like most other Islamic militant groups.

    A rebel group that governs Syrian regions!

    In 2017 of the Syrian Salvation Government (SSG), a body made up of independent and HTS-linked technocrats, was formed to function as the HTS’s governance wing. Through the SSG, HTS administers various welfare services, delivers essential goods, and runs food aid programs.

    It also has a monopoly on the economy through control of al-Sham Bank and the oil sector through Watad Company. SSG has established itself as the de facto administrative authority in the territories under its purview and controls the Bab al-Hawa border crossing with Turkey, through which flows the humanitarian aid on which 90% of the four million people living in northwest Syria depend, the ACLED report claims.

    HTS has pushed the theory that it is “an independent entity that follows no organization or party, al-Qaeda or others” hard in recent years. HTS leadership went to the extent of arresting al-Qaeda-linked individuals in its territories to prove its independent existence. Yet, the West has reasons to believe secret ties exist between the two groups and refuses to engage in talks with its leadership.

    Hayat Tahrir al-Sham today: War in Aleppo and total strength

    The Russian-Turkish truce of March 2020 ended Syrian government offensives against rebel factions. This gave HTS and its sworn ally al-Fath al-Mubin Operation Room to regroup. US reports show that since 2022, Syrian forces have come under constant attacks by the two groups. Sniper fire has been the common strategy of HTS fighters to target government troops in its strongholds and many lives have been lost in these frequent skirmishes.

    HTS commanded the allegiance of a fighting force of between 12,000 and 15,000 militants as of October 2018. It is unknown how many new fighters were recruited ahead of the fresh offensive. It is reported that HTS is supported by several Turkish-backed factions in the recent offense. Although many of these groups dislike each other, they have come together under the ‘Syrian National Army’ due to their mutual hatred for Assad.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 11/30/2024 – 21:11

  • Airlines Charge Billions In 'Junk Fees' To Boost Revenue: Senate Report
    Airlines Charge Billions In ‘Junk Fees’ To Boost Revenue: Senate Report

    Authored by Chase Smith via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    As millions of Americans prepare for record-setting air travel this holiday season, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI) released a report on Nov. 26 detailing the growing reliance of major airlines on ancillary fees.

    A plane sits on the tarmac at San Francisco International Airport in California on June 10, 2015. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

    These charges, sometimes referred to as “junk fees,” have become a vital revenue stream for the airlines while travelers “confront more and increasingly complex fees and fewer options for avoiding them,” according to the report.

    The report, led by the chairman of the subcommittee, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), examines practices by American Airlines, Delta Airlines, Frontier Airlines, Spirit Airlines, and United Airlines.

    It highlights the use of dynamic pricing, incentive programs, and other strategies the committee said are used to generate revenue from services that were previously included in ticket prices.

    “Our investigation has exposed new details about airlines exploiting passengers with sky high junk fees,” Blumenthal said in a statement accompanying the report. “As we head into the Thanksgiving weekend, we regret that travelers will be charged millions of dollars in fees that have no basis in cost to the airlines but simply fatten their bottom lines.”

    Among the findings, the report revealed that Spirit and Frontier paid $26 million to gate agents and personnel between 2022 and 2023 for enforcing baggage policies.

    These incentives were designed to identify passengers who exceed baggage allowances, often leading to additional fees, the report stated. Frontier agents, for example, can earn up to $10 per bag flagged for a fee at the gate.

    The report also explored how airlines use algorithms to adjust ancillary fees based on customer data. This approach allows fees for services like seat selection to vary significantly, even on the same flight.

    Between 2018 and 2023, the five airlines generated $12.4 billion in seat fee revenue, with some charges reaching as high as $899 for premium seats.

    The subcommittee further noted that these fees are not consistently tied to the airlines’ costs of providing the associated services. Airlines reported that they do not maintain granular cost data to calculate the expenses of baggage handling or seat assignments, raising questions about fee transparency.

    In some cases, airlines classify charges as “optional” services to avoid federal transportation taxes, which are applied to the airfare. The report found that such practices create inconsistencies in how services are taxed across carriers, potentially complicating price comparisons for travelers.

    Executives from the five airlines are scheduled to testify before the subcommittee on Dec. 4 during a hearing titled “The Sky’s the Limit—New Revelations About Airline Fees.” Topics for discussion include consumer complaints about fee practices and potential measures to improve transparency and fairness in airline pricing.

    Delta and American Airlines referred The Epoch Times to industry lobbyist group Airlines for America (A4A) for a comment, who said they were deeply disappointed in the report.

    “The report demonstrates a clear failure by the subcommittee to understand the value the highly competitive U.S. airline industry brings to customers and employees,” A4A told The Epoch Times. “Rather, the report serves as just another holiday travel talking point.”

    A4A defended the use of ancillary fees, stating that these charges provide consumers with greater flexibility and affordability.

    The lobbyist group said that modern air travel is more accessible than ever, a development they attribute to pricing models that allow travelers to pay only for the services they need.

    A4A further noted that airlines fully disclose fees at the time of purchase and comply with all laws and regulations, including those governing taxes and fees, which can comprise over twenty percent of ticket prices. They described any suggestions of noncompliance as “uninformed and inaccurate.”

    Delta in a separate emailed statement said: “Delta looks forward to the continued dialogue with the Subcommittee including appearing at next week’s hearing. For more than a year, Delta has voluntarily responded to the Subcommittee’s sweeping requests, including providing documents and information, responding to numerous rounds of requests and follow-ons, and providing a senior level employee and subject matter expert at the Subcommittee’s request for a lengthy interview to discuss ancillary fees.”

    Spirit Airlines told The Epoch Times that the company has “a long history of offering affordable, low-fare flights, which has made travel more accessible for the public.”

    “We are transparent about our products and pricing, our airport policies ensure Guests are treated fairly and equally, and we comply with all tax laws and regulations. We respectfully disagree with numerous statements and conclusions contained in the report.”

    Spirit said they look forward to explaining their position at the December hearing and believe that it’s “time to come together and discuss meaningful initiatives that would even the playing field between larger and smaller airlines to benefit all travelers, including those who rely on airlines like Spirit.”

    United Airlines declined to comment to The Epoch Times. Delta and Frontier Airlines did not respond to a request for comment from The Epoch Times.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 11/30/2024 – 21:00

  • Trump Nominates Kash Patel For FBI Director
    Trump Nominates Kash Patel For FBI Director

    After weeks of speculation, President-elect Donald Trump announced on Saturday that he’s picked Kash Patel to replace Christopher Wray as the head of the FBI.

    Patel has been a longtime critic of the bureau who has called for shutting down the agency’s Washington headquarters, cleaning house when it comes to top leadership, and bringing the nation’s law enforcement agencies “to heel.”

    According to a Saturday post to Truth Social, Trump called Patel a “brilliant lawyer, investigator, and “America First” fighter who has spent his career exposing corruption, defending Justice, and protecting the American People.”

    “He played a pivotal role in uncovering the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, standing as an advocate for truth, accountability, and the Constitution,” Trump continued.

    Patel has been open about what kind of changes he’d pursue if given the chance. His various proposals include reducing the FBI’s footprint in Washington and “dramatically” limiting its authority. He hopes to curb the power of the Justice Department’s Civil Division and jettison a Pentagon office that produces classified assessments of long-term trends and risks, arguing it is just a tool of the “deep state.”

    Patel has said he also intends to aggressively hunt down government officials who leak information to reporters, and change the law to make it easier to sue journalists. During an interview with Steve Bannon in December, Patel said he and others “will go out and find the conspirators not just in government but in the media.” –AP

    Patel has served as both a federal prosecutor and a public defender, and filled a number of administrative roles at the tail end of Trump’s first term, including on the National Security Council and in the Pentagon.

    And in a sign this is a good move – in 2021 when Trump floated Patel for deputy director of the CIA or the FBI, former AG William Barr said that would happen “over my dead body.”

    Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe said that no part of the FBI would be “safe” with Patel in a leadership position.

    In response, Patel told the Washington Post: “Those calling me a danger, let’s just ask them for a proof, a piece of evidence that actually shows I’ve committed any constitutional violations or any ethical quandaries, and I’d love to hear their response to this.”

    Current FBI Director Christopher Wray will now either have to resign or be fired, assuming Patel makes it through Senate confirmation.

    And as noted above, Patel has vowed to investigate and possibly prosecute regime-puppet journalists.

    “Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections — we’re going to come after you,” Patel said last year. “Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 11/30/2024 – 20:25

  • Australian Senate Passes 'World First' Law Banning Under 16 Kids From Social Media
    Australian Senate Passes ‘World First’ Law Banning Under 16 Kids From Social Media

    Authored by Monica O’Shea via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Late into the night on Nov. 28, the Australian Senate passed a “world first” law that bans under 16-year-old children from accessing social media.

    The new law, once in effect, means young Australians will be barred from accessing platforms like TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit, and X—age verification technology will be implemented by the Big Tech firms to ensure compliance.

    AAP Image/Lukas Coch

    Certain social media programs will be allowed, including YouTube and educational apps.

    The centre-left Labor government achieved passage of the Bill with support from the centre-right Liberal-National Coalition amid a blitz of Bills on the last sitting day of Parliament in 2024.

    The ban passed the lower house a day earlier.

    Keeping Phones From Kids Unrealistic: Senator

    Liberal Senator Dave Sharma speaking in the Senate on Nov. 28, argued that parents need assistance managing social media for children.

    “I think parents need help with this, and this is why I think there is a case for government intervention,” he said.

    “Partly because parents have to grapple with the ubiquity of phones and electronic devices, and the crude measure that some suggest—which is take away your kid’s phone, or give them a non-smartphone without adding any apps—I don’t think is particularly realistic,” Sharma said.

    “I think in today’s era we expect our children to be able to be contacted and be contactable, and this is especially true in situations in many households today where both parents are working, and they are often not home when the children might be home or coming home from school.”

    Sharma added he did not discount that there were some benefits to children using social media, providing a way for them to stay in touch and stay connected.

    “We all saw this during the COVID pandemic, when our children weren’t going to school and they stayed in touch through messaging platforms, through social media platforms, and it allows them to build and maintain a social circle,” he said.

    “I also appreciate that the people who are isolated geographically or socially or otherwise, it provides them a way to build a community which might not be available to them in the real world.

    Greens Oppose

    Greens Senator David Shoebridge, however, described the bill as “deeply flawed” and was a proposal that appeared to come from people who have “never been on the internet.”

    “It’s a bill to appease [media mogul] Rupert Murdoch,” he claimed.

    Shoebridge also described the short Senate inquiry into the legislation as a “sham” and said the evidence against a social media ban was “overwhelming.”

    Labor Minister Jenny McAllister noted the law would not come into force for a year, emphasising that keeping “Australians safe online” was a top priority of the government.

    “Through extensive consultation and with the input of states and territories, the government is agreeing that until a child turns 16, the social media environment as it stands is not age-appropriate for them,” the speech said (pdf).

    “Critically, this legislation will allow for a twelve-month implementation period—to ensure this novel and world-leading reform can take effect with the care and consideration Australian’s rightly expect.”

    What Social Media Companies Will Be Impacted?

    The Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024, which will come into force within a year, will require social media platforms to take “reasonable steps” to stop Australian children from holding an account.

    “The penalty amounts are intentionally large, which reflects the significance of the harms the Bill is intended to safeguard against,” the government said in its explanatory memorandum (pdf).

    “It will also strongly signal the expectation that age-restricted social media platforms treat the minimum age obligation seriously.”

    Companies that do not comply face fines of up to $49.5 million (US$32 million).

    Social media platforms will also need to roll out technology to verify the minimum age of users.

    “The Bill does not dictate how platforms must comply with the minimum age obligation,” the explanatory memorandum states.

    “However, it is expected that at a minimum, the obligation will require platforms to implement some form of age assurance as a means of identifying whether a prospective or existing account holder is an Australian child under the age of 16 years.”

    X Corporation’s Concerns With Legislation

    X Corporation raised concerns about the legality of the legislation and failure to incentivise parents, in a submission to the Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee.

    “We have serious concerns as to the lawfulness of the Bill, including its compatibility with other regulations and laws, including international human rights treaties to which Australia is a signatory, as further detailed below,” X said in a submission (pdf).

    “By design, the Bill ignores the realities of the wider technology ecosystem and goes as far as to exclude entire industries and parts of society, including parents and caregivers, all of whom should be motivated and supported to work together to keep young Australians safe online.”

    Billionaire Elon Musk also weighed into the debate on the social media ban personally on Nov. 21, responding to a post from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese touting the ban.

    “Seems like a backdoor way to control access to the Internet by all Australians,” Musk posted to X, in reference to the possible rollout of a national ID or age verification technology.

    Catholic School Parents in Favour

    The Senate Committee also heard views in favour of the bill, with the New South Wales government presenting a survey of 21,000 people that showed 87 percent of people supported a minimum age standard for social media.

    Catholic school parents in Western Australia also argued that social media could impact children’s behaviour.

    “Parents are worried that children and young people are becoming desensitised to some of the content that they are seeing, and that it is leading to a distorted understanding of some serious topics,” the advocacy group told the inquiry.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 11/30/2024 – 19:50

  • Majority Will Rely On Financing For Black-Friday/Cyber-Monday Despite Discounts
    Majority Will Rely On Financing For Black-Friday/Cyber-Monday Despite Discounts

    Millennials are the most likely among the four generations to resort to financing with credit cards or Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) schemes for this year’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday purchases, while only 55 percent of Baby Boomers will likely resort to these tactics to take full advantage of discounts offered by e-commerce platforms and retailers.

    This data stems from a Deloitte consumer survey conducted in October 2024.

    As Statista’s Florian Zandt details below, among all financing methods surveyed, credit cards were the most popular at 53 percent respondent share.

    Infographic: Majority Will Rely on Financing for BFCM Despite Discounts | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Despite shoppers planning to stretch their budget either by paying at a later date or shouldering more credit card debt, the survey results suggest that average per-consumer spending will increase to $650 for the period between Thanksgiving Thursday and Cyber Monday.

    This spending expectation is seemingly unaffected by the multiple crises like the war in Ukraine and the coronavirus pandemic influencing the world’s economy; since 2019, spending has increased at a compound growth rate of almost ten percent per year.

    While annual credit card payments have shot past 50 billion transactions in 2022, schemes like BNPL have only recently become popular. According to Worldpay’s 2024 Global Payments Report, BNPL was utilized for five percent of domestic e-commerce payments in the U.S., up three percentage points from 2020.

    Out of the 41 countries and territories surveyed, BNPL was especially popular in Sweden, Germany and Norway with e-commerce purchase shares of 21, 21 and 15 percent. Sweden ranking as highly is unsurprising, since Klarna, one of the premier BNPL providers, was founded in 2005 in Sweden’s capital of Stockholm.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 11/30/2024 – 19:15

  • Canadian Town Fined And Mayor Sent For Compulsory Education After Failing To Hoist Pride Flag
    Canadian Town Fined And Mayor Sent For Compulsory Education After Failing To Hoist Pride Flag

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    CBC News is reporting that the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal has ordered the small town of  Emo to pay damages after failing to hoist an “LGBTQ2 rainbow flag” in celebration of Pride Month. One problem is that the town of fewer than 2000 inhabitants does not have a flagpole (though you could presumably “show the flag” in other ways).

    The National Post reports, that there has been a lengthy arbitration process between the tribunal and the town.

    In a decision handed down last week, the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario found that Emo, its mayor, and two councilors violated the Ontario Human Rights Code. The tribunal admitted in a later opinion that “the record indicated the Township did not receive many requests for declarations or proclamations or requests for display of a flag.”

    Indeed, in a single 12-month period, they received only four — two from Borderland Pride.

    Emo does not have a central flagpole, other than the Canadian flag over the front door of the Emo Municipal Office.

    One issue that factored greatly in the tribunal hearings occurred during the debate over the flag proposal, which the council rejected by a vote of three to two. In the meeting. Mayor Harold McQuaker stated, “There’s no flag being flown for the other side of the coin … there’s no flags being flown for the straight people.”

    Doug Judson, a lawyer and a member of Borderland Pride’s board of directors, said that “the important thing we were seeking here was validation … as 2SLGBTQA plus people.”

    The tribunal ruled that Borderland Pride will be awarded $15,000, with $10,000 coming from the township and $5,000 from Emo mayor Harold McQuaker.

    At first, the fine against “McQuaker” in the town of “Emo” for failing to hoist an “LGBTQ2 rainbow flag” on a non-existent flagpole seemed too contrived.

    However, the mayor of Emo is a McQuaker, and the Canadian press is standing by the story.

    For years, the Canadian human rights tribunals have been the spearhead of the anti-free speech movement. We have previously discussed the tribunals (here, here, and here) in such controversies.

    Not only must the town pay the fines, but McQuaker and Emo’s chief administrative officer were ordered to complete an online course called “Human Rights 101” and “provide proof of completion … to Borderland Pride within 30 days” as recompense for their disobedience.

    The Post report notes the course being offered by the Ontario Human Rights Commission. The animated video begins with what McQuaker must feel is a tad Orwellian with a statement that the Human Rights Code “is not meant to punish.” After all, being retrained to be a better human can hardly be viewed as punishment.

    Hoist that on your nonexistent flagpole.

    *  *  *

    Here is the opinion: Ontario Human Rights Tribunal 

    Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 11/30/2024 – 18:40

  • Armed Terrorists Attack Iranian Consulate In Syria, Tehran Says
    Armed Terrorists Attack Iranian Consulate In Syria, Tehran Says

    On Saturday as the new jihadist assault on Aleppo was unfolding, the Iranian government announced that “some terrorist elements” attacked the Iranian consulate located in the large northern Syrian city.

    Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei in a statement said his country “strongly condemned the attack” by “some armed terrorist elements” on the consulate of the Islamic Republic, and noted that all its staff members are safe.

    Iranian consulate. Source: Mehr News Agency

    While few other details were given, Baghaei stressed further that Tehran plans to provide a “serious” response to the attack, “both legally and internationally.”

    Iran has also branded the new offensive launched out of Al-Qaeda held Idlib as “an American-Zionist” plot. The past ten decades of proxy war in Syria did see Israel team up with the Sunni anti-Assad insurgency, which also had the support of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the US, Turkey, and some European countries.

    This appears to be happening again, crucially at a moment Hezbollah is distracted and bogged down in the war with Israel. 

    Broadly, the Syrian proxy war pit the Shia axis against hardline Sunnis supported by extremists Gulf clerics, who had Western guns. While part of the self-styled ‘resistance’ axis which includes Hezbollah, Damascus represents one of the last secular and nationalist states in the Middle East (under the Ba’ath party).

    The radical group Hayat Tahrir-al-Sham or HTS (an offshoot of Al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra) has launched a rapid surprise assault which has resulted in its militants reaching the center of Aleppo city.

    Moscow has meanwhile blasted the “attack on Syria’s sovereignty in the region” and urged the Assad government to restore “order there as soon as possible.” Russian aircraft have reportedly been helping the Syrian Army do just that. But the insurgents now control key neighborhoods of Aleppo.

    HTS/Nusra terrorists waiting the flag of jihad in historic central Aleppo:

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    But what’s become clear to many is that the Syrian Army was caught on its backfoot in Aleppo, following years of grueling war and devastating Western sanctions, which has caused a drain on both manpower and resources, also amid runaway inflation.

    The HTS jihadists are now threatening other parts of Syria, and may be eyeing the central Syrian city of Hama next. The war appears to have returned to northern and central Syria with a vengeance.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 11/30/2024 – 18:05

  • Rumble Sues California; Says State's "War Against Political Speech Is Censorship"
    Rumble Sues California; Says State’s “War Against Political Speech Is Censorship”

    Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

    Video streaming site Rumble has filed a lawsuit against the state of California in response to legislation forcing social media platforms to censor political speech.

    Rumble is being represented by The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), which filed suit against AB 2655, aka the “Defending Democracy from Deepfake Deception Act of 2024,” in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, Sacramento Division.

    The legislation is Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom’s response to a deepfake satire video of Kamala Harris that was shared on X by Elon Musk among others.

    ADF stated in a press release that the law “deputizes” Rumble to restrict its user’s free speech, while another law, AB 2839, “Protecting Democracy Against Election Disinformation and Deepfakes,” uses vague standards to punish individuals posting political content about elections.

    “California’s war against political speech is censorship, plain and simple. We can’t trust the government to decide what is true in our online political debates,” said ADF Senior Counsel Phil Sechler.

    “Rumble is one of the few online voices stepping up against this trend of censorship while other platforms and sites cave to totalitarian regimes censoring Americans,” Sechler further urged.

    He added that “Rumble is standing for free speech even when it is hard. Other online platforms and media companies must see these laws for what they are — a threat to their existence.”

    Chris Pavlovski, Chairman and CEO of Rumble, further urged that “The very thought of the government judging the content of political speech, and then deciding whether it should be permitted, censored, or eliminated altogether is about the most chilling thing you could imagine.”

    “Rumble
will always celebrate freedom and support creative independence, so we’re delighted to work with ADF to help protect lawful online expression,” Pavlovski asserted.

    The Democratic Party is pushing hard to enact laws that force censorship.

    As both Hillary and Bill Clinton have noted, its a response to them losing ‘total control’ over the free flow of information.

    *  *  *

    Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 11/30/2024 – 17:30

  • NFL, NBA Issue "Security Alert" After Migrant Gangs Target Players' Mansions
    NFL, NBA Issue “Security Alert” After Migrant Gangs Target Players’ Mansions

    America’s top professional sports leagues have warned players about the growing threat of illegal alien criminal gangs targeting their mansions. This comes after a string of break-ins of athletes’ homes, including Kansas City Chiefs stars Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce. 

    NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero published a note about how the sports league issued a “security alert” to teams after “organized and skilled criminals” targeted players’ homes. 

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    Pelissero continued:

    Sources say the FBI is investigating the crime wave as international organized crime. The league, the NFL Players Association and team security forces also have been monitoring the crime spree, which is believed to be tied to a South American crime syndicate. At least one other current NFL player’s home was burglarized in the past week.

    “It’s legit,” said one source familiar with the situation. “It’s a transnational crime ring, and over the last three weeks, they’ve focused on NBA and NFL players, and it’s all over the country.”

    …

    The homes of Mahomes and Kelce were burglarized on consecutive days last month in the Kansas City area. The Minnesota home of former Vikings defensive tackle Linval Joseph, who now plays for the Dallas Cowboys, was part of a series of burglaries last weekend, according to police.

    Multiple people with knowledge of the crimes said the perpetrators are nonconfrontational and do not burglarize homes while residents are inside. Instead, they use public records to find players’ addresses and conduct extensive surveillance. Then, by tracking team schedules and the social media accounts of players and their families, they wait until homes are empty — often during games — and gain access and quickly steal items such as cash, jewelry, watches and handbags, focusing mainly on master bedrooms and closets.

    The alert issued on Wednesday by NFL Security confirmed the modus operandi and offered a number of recommendations, including not posting in real time on social media, installing security systems and keeping valuables out of plain sight.

    Separately, NBC News confirmed a memo sent by the NBA to teams, citing FBI intelligence, about crimes linked to “transnational South American Theft Groups” that target “professional athletes and other high-net-worth individuals.”

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    An alarming trend of illegal alien crimes has spread nationwide to major cities because of the Biden-Harris administration’s nation-killing open southern border invasion (championed by globalists) that rolled out the red carpet to ten-plus million unvetted migrants. 

    One of the worst transnational South American gangs is Tren de Aragua, spreading across the nation like stage four cancer, setting up operations in major cities. 

    Source: NYPost

    Just months ago, investigative reporter James O’Keefe published a US Army North Division memo that warned an estimated 5,000 TdA gangsters were in the US. We suspect that number is a lot higher. 

    The American people have given President-elect Donald Trump and incoming Border Czar Tom Homan a mandate to fix this illegal alien invasion crisis. It’s time to hold accountable those who rolled out the red carpet for dangerous illegal aliens.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 11/30/2024 – 16:55

  • Schedule F: Trump's Plan A For Emptying The Swamp
    Schedule F: Trump’s Plan A For Emptying The Swamp

    Authored by Tim Donner via Liberty Nation news,

    Ever since Election Day, much talk has focused on President-elect Donald Trump’s appointments – in record time – of his Cabinet, advisors, and agency directors. This new administration is a diverse mix, but they all have one thing in common: The returning president sees them as loyal to him and his outsized agenda.

    But what about all the other, more entrenched denizens of DC?

    Enter Schedule F – Trump’s bold plan to “drain the Swamp.”

    Washington is abuzz with the extraordinary diversity of beliefs among the new designees. This is far from typical for incoming presidents, who ordinarily populate their administrations with political veterans in lockstep with their ideology. But after assembling a largely forgettable team upon his arrival in DC as a novice in 2017, the road-tested 47th president has broken the mold, as is his wont, by selecting Republicans and Democrats, hawks and doves, neoconservatives and populists, corporatists and unionists, insiders and outsiders.

    Trump’s most famously ambitious objective, however, is to drain and ultimately empty the DC swamp of its unelected, unaccountable, and obstructionist bureaucrats who can thwart the will of the president, as they did so often during his first administration. The arrogance of these supercilious apparatchiks is due to the iron-clad protections they enjoy as civil servants. They cannot be fired no matter their behavior, except in the rarest of circumstances. Presidents come and go, they tell themselves, but we will outlast them all and can act accordingly.

    Trump and the “All of Government” Edict

    You may recall the so-called “all-of-government” approach to the DEI agenda during the current administration, where the goal of equity must be embraced and adopted not only in social planning and policies but across all agencies and cabinet departments. Well, the incoming president will employ that same broad, sweeping approach to weeding out the most unproductive and recalcitrant employees among the federal government’s 2.2 million-strong civilian workforce. And while DOGE – the newly formed non-governmental Department of Government Efficiency to be headed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy – has been the talk of Washington, it faces severe limits in its attempts to affect systemic reform. No less than 60% of the government’s $6.8 trillion budget is “non-discretionary” and largely untouchable because it is devoted to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and interest on the exploding national debt, now more than $36 trillion. Another 13% is devoted to defense, which Trump has pledged to increase. Thus, Musk’s stated goal of cutting $2 trillion in unnecessary federal spending will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.

    However, taking an axe to the bloated budget ultimately figures to have less permanent impact than Trump’s audacious plans to alter the federal government’s modus operandi and its entrenched culture. The linchpin for his game-changing reforms is reinstating the innocuous-sounding Schedule F, instituted by Trump in the waning days of his first term but immediately reversed by Joe Biden upon taking office. It will empower massive changes in the bureaucracy, re-classifying thousands of careerists as political appointees. It refers to a section of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, exempting some federal employees from civil service protections, specifically those “whose position has been determined to be of a confidential, policy-determining, policy-making or policy-advocating character.” Under Trump’s plan, the number of such employees would jump from roughly 4,000 to about 50,000, signaling a sea change in the way Washington does business.

    The outgoing Biden administration, deeply fearful of Trump’s bold plans to upend the DC establishment, is working overtime to “Trump-proof” (as much as possible) the federal government, hoping to minimize the damage to its familiar and comfortable way of life.

    The Downside of Schedule F

    The danger inherent in Schedule F is the likelihood that the next Democratic president could use the same expanded executive control over the bureaucracy to reverse course from Trump and bring in committed progressives who could do even more damage than the present embedded bureaucrats. So, to make these plans stick beyond Trump’s next term, his administration might attempt to move one or more executive agencies out of Washington. This would wrench thousands of civil servants out of their comfort zone, likely leading to a significant number of resignations by those accustomed to life inside the DC beltway.

    Despite setting a risky precedent that could backfire on Republicans in the years ahead, Trump is focused on the here and now, believing the addition of Schedule F will force permanent structural change on what has effectively become a fourth branch of government, namely, the administrative state. Everyday Americans have complained about federal bureaucratic hegemony for as long as we can remember, but now they will finally have a president in place with specific plans to do something about it.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 11/30/2024 – 16:20

  • Zelenskyy Offers To End 'Hot Phase' Of War In Exchange For NATO Membership
    Zelenskyy Offers To End ‘Hot Phase’ Of War In Exchange For NATO Membership

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he’s willing to end the “hot phase of the war” with Russia – including ceding captured territory – in exchange for NATO membership that includes Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders.

    Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks to Sky’s Stuart Ramsay

    “If we want to stop the hot phase of the war, we need to take under the Nato umbrella the territory of Ukraine that we have under our control,” he told Sky News, adding “We need to do it fast. And then, on the occupied territory of Ukraine, Ukraine can get them back in a diplomatic way.“

    Zelenskyy said that a ceasefire was needed to “guarantee that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin will not come back” to take more Ukrainian territory,” or that “he [Putin] will come back.”

    In short, to end the war, Zelenskyy wants the thing that started the war.

    The comments are a drastic departure from previous statements – as Zelenskyy has long-asserted that Ukraine’s sovereignty is non-negotiable, including over Crimea.

    Putting things in recent perspective, Zelenskyy’s comments come as NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte admitted to Fox News that Ukraine is not in a strong enough position to negotiate an end to the war, explaining that there is not enough battlefield leverage to “prevent the Russians from getting what they want.”

    “I think that’s crucial that we have a good deal because the whole world will be watching what type of deal will be struck between Russia and Ukraine when it comes to it,” Rutte said.

    “We have to make sure that Ukraine is in a position of more strength than they are at the moment,” Rutte continued, “so that a deal can be struck which is favorable not to the Russians — and therefore to China, North Korea and Iran — because they all will be watching.”

    It also comes amid pressure from the Biden administration to lower the draft age in Ukraine to 18 so it has enough troops to continue fighting Russia, aka more meat for the grinder.

    Former British PM Boris Johnson – who allegedly scuttled early peace talks in Turkey that might have ended the Ukraine war – has called for NATO troops on the ground in Ukraine, again.

    Johnson also asserted that if Russia gets the upper hand in the conflict then Britain may deploy it’s forces regardless in order to “defend Europe.”  Ukraine’s eastern defenses are currently being overrun by ongoing Russian attrition tactics. This reality in combination with Trump’s avalanche election win seems to have triggered establishment ghouls into a frenzy of escalation with Joe Biden giving the greenlight on long range missile strikes coordinated directly by NATO forces.   

    Watch the entire interview below:

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    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 11/30/2024 – 15:55

  • FinTech CEOs Expose How Feds Colluded In 'Debanking' Schemes After Andreessen 'Opened The Floodgates' On Rogan
    FinTech CEOs Expose How Feds Colluded In ‘Debanking’ Schemes After Andreessen ‘Opened The Floodgates’ On Rogan

    Last week Marc Andreessen sat down with Joe Rogan for three hours, where the billionaire investor and founder of VC firm Andreessen Horowitz dropped an aerial bombardment of redpills on the general public – spanning everything from the US government’s designs to completely control AI, to a weaponized government effort to secretly ‘debank’ 30 tech founders in an effort to destroy political opponents, particularly those in crypto.

    Following the interview, former PayPal president, Facebook executive, and Coinbase board member (2017-2018) David Marcus revealed on Friday how political pressure and red tape led to the demise of Facebook’s cryptocurrency project, Libra (later rebranded as Diem).

    Libra was an advanced blockchain paired with a stablecoin aimed at solving global payment inefficiencies at scale. Despite extensive efforts to address regulatory concerns, including financial crime prevention, reserve management, and consumer protections, the project was ultimately derailed—not by legal obstacles but by political opposition.

    “Prior to announcing the project, we spent months briefing key regulators in DC and abroad. We then announced the project in June 2019 alongside 28 companies. Two weeks later, I was called to testify in front of both the Senate Banking Committee and the House Financial Services Committee, which was the starting point of two years of nonstop work and changes to appease lawmakers and regulators,” Marcus writes on X.

    According to Marcus, the turning point came in 2021 after having “addressed every last possible regulatory concern across financial crime, money laundering, consumer protection, reserve management, buffers, and so much more” in advance of launch. 

    Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell appeared ready to greenlight a limited pilot of the project, but Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen allegedly intervened. In a private meeting, Yellen reportedly warned Powell that supporting Libra would be “political suicide,” a move that Marcus describes as the definitive blow. Shortly thereafter, Federal Reserve representatives discouraged participating banks from moving forward, effectively intimidating the financial institutions into withdrawing their support. For Marcus, this marked not just the end of Libra but also a disheartening realization about the political dynamics within the U.S. financial system.

    “Shortly thereafter, the Fed organized calls with all the participating banks, and the Fed’s general counsel read a prepared statement to each of them, saying: “We can’t stop you from moving forward and launching, but we are not comfortable with you doing so.” And just like that, it was over.” -David Marcus

    Marcus emphasized that there was “no legal or regulatory angle left for the government or regulators to kill the project. It was 100% a political kill—one that was executed through intimidation of captive banking institutions.”

    [ZH: Hey PayPal, can we get our account back now?]

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    Gemini COO Marshall Beard replied to Marcus’ post, saying “We were closely aligned with his team during this and saw first hand went they went through.”

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    After Andreessen then brought up the ‘critical question’ of “Who has been making these decisions? Management? The government? Or both,” Dennis Porter, CEO and Co-Founder of the Satoshi Act Fund, a US-based nonprofit which advocates for Bitcoin adoption, replied “the banks themselves. But the reason they do it is totally out of their control.”

    Porter and team wrote a paper on the problem, highlighting how the feds pressure banks to classify certain industries as “risky,” and then threaten to investigate.

    The federal regulators (OCC, FDIC, and the Federal Reserve) apply soft-power pressure to banks. Federal regulators started by classifying certain industries (such as crypto) as risky and by default any crypto account holders as a risk to any bank that banked them. If a bank is discovered to be banking “risky” businesses that gave Federal regulators the authority to dig deeper and audit the bank to see if anything else they are doing is “risky”. Banks don’t like to be audited. It’s expensive and time consuming. So banks “voluntarily” began to debank their “risky” customer. Also, a “risky” bank may have its FDIC payments (premiums) increase due to its “risky behavior” of banking risky industries. So the banks once again prefer to debank these customers voluntarily to avoid increased costs. –Dennis Porter

    Gemini co-founder Tyler Winklevoss chimed in, saying “This is how debanking works.”

    Meanwhile, Andreessen highlighted that Melania and Barron Trump were debanked – to which the recently redpilled Bill Ackman replied “Which bank?”

    Turns out at least Donald Trump was debanked by Bank United, Signature Bank, and Professional Bank: 

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    Others reflected on Marcus’ account:

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    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 11/30/2024 – 15:45

  • Commercial Real Estate Bond Distress Reaches Record High
    Commercial Real Estate Bond Distress Reaches Record High

    Via SchiffGold.com,

    From the national debt to negative jobs reports, data has been piling up that suggests America’s economic bubble is ready to burst. Now, with the Fed’s most recent round of rate cuts moving through the economy, fault lines are appearing in the commercial real estate sector.

    The following article was originally published by the Mises Institute. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of Peter Schiff or SchiffGold.

    Commercial real estate continues to suffer despite the Federal Reserve’s attempt at ameliorating the capital markets with a 50-basis point rate cut in September.

    The pain is especially apparent in the so-called “CRE-CLO” bond market. CRE-CLO bonds are packaged commercial real estate mortgages comprising short-term floating rate loans. These bridge loans were recently, and most notably, used to facilitate the biggest apartment investment bubble in history, but were also used in financing other commercial real estate sectors including office, retail, hotel, industrial, and self-storage.

    Most of the current batch of bridge loans originated in the 2020-2022 period—when benchmark rates were near zero and commercial real estate prices were peaking—and carried maturities of three to five years. Benchmark rates are now much higher, prices much lower, and property performance far worse than anticipated. Thus, a wall of maturities is staring borrowers, lenders, and bondholders in the face, all while underlying property performance disappoints.

    Despite attempts by lenders to extend and pretend—kicking the can down the road in the short term to avoid defaults until the Federal Reserve lowers rates enough to bail them out—their delusions of reprieve may be fading fast.

    Apartment Investors Play Checkers Instead of Chess

    At the end of Q3, the distress rate for CRE-CLO loans across all commercial real estate sectors reached 13.1 percent, an all-time high. Distress in this instance is defined as any loan reported 30 days or more delinquent, past the maturity date, in special servicing (typically due to a drop in occupancy or a failure to meet certain performance criteria), or any combination thereof.

    Figure 1

    While roughly one in seven loans meets these criteria, the weakness is concentrated in two or three sectors.

    Unsurprisingly, office properties have the highest rate of distress, with nearly one in five CRE-CLO office loans experiencing current distress. This is to be expected after the covid panic of 2020, subsequent to which various “work-from-home” directives essentially made the office market obsolete.

    For similar reasons, distress is also high in the retail segment, as all but the most well-heeled retailers were forced under by the maniacal and criminal government edicts of the time.

    However, the real story here is in the apartment, or multifamily, sector. Seen in Figure 1, the distress rate for apartments touched 16.4 percent in August. An astonishing number, indicating that one in six apartment bridge loans were distressed. The improvement to 13.7 percent shown for September is seasonal, as renters settle in at the start of the school year.

    While this picture is bad enough, the reality under the surface is far worse. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, using Q2 data from MSCI, the batch of currently distressed apartment bridge loans comprise roughly $14 billion in total loans, but there exists an additional $81 billion in potentially distressed loans. MSCI categorizes loans as “potentially distressed” if they have seen delinquent payments, forbearance (when the lender lets interest payments accrue rather than taking a default action), or where key performance metrics like occupancy and net operating income are dangerously low.

    Figure 2

    The arithmetically-aware will note that if the $14 billion of currently distressed apartment bridge loans comprise a roughly 14 percent distress rate at the end of Q2 (as shown in Figure 1) and there are an additional $81 billion in potentially distressed loans not yet categorized as “currently distressed” (as shown in Figure 2), then MSCI data implies that 95 percent of all apartment bridge loans are either currently distressed or in imminent danger of distress.

    While astounding, this level of distress will come as no surprise to veterans of the apartment market. In the 2020-22 period, bridge loans of this variety were ubiquitous above a certain minimum loan size. And, because of the extreme and reckless nature of money printing undertaken by the Federal Reserve during this time—when interest rates were effectively zero—lenders underwrote property acquisitions with a 1.0x debt service coverage ratio (“DSCR”), meaning the initial net operating income of the property was projected to just cover interest payments, with nothing left over.

    Bridge loan interest rates floated at a spread (typically around 350 basis points, or 3.5 percent) to the Secured Overnight Financing Rate (“SOFR”), which was essentially 0 percent until mid-2022. Because of the 1.0x DSCR standard, a property acquired during this period that had net operating income of $1 million would have also had interest payments of $1 million at the then-prevailing interest rate of 3.5 percent.

    SOFR is now 4.9 percent, indicating a total interest rate of 8.4 percent (SOFR + 3.5 percent spread). This same property now has interest payments of $2.4 million while net operating income is unlikely to have increased to any significant extent, if at all. Insurance and property tax increases in particular have damaged apartment profitability while rent increases have been difficult to execute in the face of stagnating real wages. By the same token, absurdly optimistic renovation plans have been impossible in the face of cash flows increasingly shunted towards paying interest.

    The Amazing Disappearing Rate Cut

    The high amount of potential distress in CRE-CLO bonds, and the loans that underlie them, indicate an expectation on the part of lenders that help is coming in the form of lower interest rates. After all, capital markets have become used to being bailed out by the Federal Reserve, all but demanding that the taxpayer—not they—be held responsible for their poor decisions. Nevertheless, the Fed’s recent rate cut is proving not to be the magic bullet on which lenders relied.

    By August of this year, futures markets had fully priced in a 25-50 basis point Fed rate cut in September, and were expecting additional 25 basis point cuts in November and December. This expectation for the Fed Funds Rate carried over into Treasury yields, a key benchmark for the commercial real estate industry. Particularly important in the case of distressed bridge loans since any hopes of refinancing are placed not on more bridge loans—which are now much less pervasive—but on the fixed-rate agency market comprising Fannie- and Freddie-backed apartment loans, which prices loans off a spread to treasuries.

    At the beginning of August, as markets priced in 75-100 bps of Fed rate cuts by year-end, 10-year Treasury yields reacted accordingly, dropping from 4.30 percent in late July (they had been 4.70 percent in April) to 3.65 percent in the middle of September. As of early November, most of that move had been erased—with yields back near 4.30 percent—roughly where they were prior to market pricing in this year’s Fed rate cuts.

    Fear and Trembling

    Undeniably, participants in the commercial real estate market—apartment bridge lenders in particular—are relying on loose monetary policy for their immediate salvation. They may get their wish. While Treasury rates have moved stubbornly higher, market forces only mean so much if the Fed decides to supplement rate cuts with purchases of treasuries, driving yields lower—another round of quantitative easing.

    Nevertheless, to the extent they’re allowed to be heard, market signals are unmistakable. A regime that can’t stop spending and continues to appropriate the property of its citizens through inflation will provide upward pressure on Treasury yields, all else equal. In a free market context, the rent-seekers that comprise the commercial real estate market will have to work out their own salvation.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 11/30/2024 – 15:10

  • Israel Lifts Restrictions In Northern Israel As Ceasefire Holds; Hezbollah Chief Claims 'Victory'
    Israel Lifts Restrictions In Northern Israel As Ceasefire Holds; Hezbollah Chief Claims ‘Victory’

    The Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire began four days ago, and has held enough to where for the fist time in more than a year tens of thousands of Israelis who’ve remained forcibly evacuated form their homes in the north can return to assess the situation.

    The IDF Home Front Command on Saturday announced for the first time in many months that it is easing restrictions in northern Israel, allowing larger gatherings and for schools to finally reopen, in the clearest indicator so far that the ceasefire is holding and both sides are taking it seriously.

    “Under the changes, schools in the northern frontier communities and the north Golan Heights will now be able to operate if adequate shelter can be reached in time,” Israeli media writes. 

    All restrictions previously in place throughout all areas of the country have now been lifted, which was approved by Defense Minister Israel Katz. Some 80,000 Israelis had been displaced by daily Hezbollah rocket and drone fire in the north.

    On the other side of the border, tens of thousands of previously displaced Lebanese have been viewing their homes and communities for the first time in months. The opening couple days of the ceasefire, which took effect early on Nov.27, saw reports of some intermittent fire – especially from the Israeli side.

    The 60-day US and French-brokered ceasefire has been widely viewed as off to a successful start, ending over 14 months of cross-border fire between Iran-linked Hezbollah and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

    Source: Al Jazeera

    Despite the assassinations of its upper-tier leadership, including Hassan Nasrallah who died in an Israeli airstrike on September 27, the new head of Hezbollah, Naim Qassem, claimed ‘victory’ in the war. Yet Hezbollah’s top command ranks have been devastated, suffering historic losses after over two months of bombs falling on Beirut.

    Still, he hailed that the group had achieved a “divine victory” in a Friday speech. “To those that were betting that Hezbollah would be weakened, we are sorry, their bets have failed,” he said.

    But he also pledged that the ceasefire deal with Israel will be upheld, and that Hezbollah leadership had agreed to it “with heads held high.” Qassem explained Hezbollah had “approved the deal, with the resistance strong in the battlefield, and our heads held high with our right to defend [ourselves].”

    A Reuters report at the end of this week claimed that Hezbollah’s internal numbers are that it lost 4,000 of its fighters, which is a much higher tally than what the Lebanese government lists.

    But what is very evident is that the death and destruction surpasses even the 2006 Lebanon war, which up till this year was the deadliest on Lebanese soil in the last several decades.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 11/30/2024 – 14:35

  • Legal Plunder: Indiana Police Prey On Packages Transiting Huge FedEx Hub
    Legal Plunder: Indiana Police Prey On Packages Transiting Huge FedEx Hub

    Via Brian McGlinchey at Stark Realities

    From a federal government operating far beyond the bounds of the Constitution to law enforcement agencies routinely entering private property without warrants, tyranny takes many forms in the United States. However, few are as shocking to the sensibilities as civil asset forfeiture, the controversial practice that empowers police to seize money, cars, trucks, houses or anything else they merely accuse of having a link to criminal activity — regardless of whether the property owner is charged with a crime.

    Civil asset forfeiture is an affront to anyone who’s sincerely committed to the American justice system’s cornerstone presumption of innocence. With law enforcement typically keeping some or all of the assets that are seized, the practice has rightly been called “policing for profit.”

    I’ve previously examined the raw tyranny of civil asset forfeiture, spotlighting the story of a Mississippi man who took $42,300 in cash to Houston with the intent of buying a second semi truck for his fledgling trucking business, only to have it seized — or, in legal jargon, “forfeited” — by Harris County police, who pulled him over for allegedly following the vehicle in front of him too closely.

    Now I’m compelled to share a new example of this legalized theft — the most brazenly unjust and opportunistic one I’ve encountered yet: In an ongoing, multi-million-dollar racket in Indianapolis, police are routinely seizing cash they find in FedEx packages that happen to be routed through that company’s second-largest hub.

    Like bears wading into a river teeming with salmon, state and local Indiana police officers routinely stride up to the conveyer belts at FedEx’s sprawling Indianapolis facility, where tens of thousands of packages flow by every hour, pouncing when they see a package with traits that meet their absurdly broad definition of “suspicious.”

    Ample opportunity for Indiana’s predatory police agencies: The FedEx hub in Indianapolis can sort up to 99,000 packages per hour (WRTV)​

    Review the criteria and you’ll quickly conclude you’ve sent and received many “suspicious” packages yourself. Supposedly damning attributes include:

    • A box that’s taped on all its seams — something FedEx itself recommends

    • A box that’s new

    • A package that was dropped off at a FedEx shipping center

    • A shipment paid by credit card, or “possibly by cash,” or by “unknown means” — a trio of criteria that seems to cover every possible means of payment.

    • A package being sent to or from a so-called “source state” — a state that police consider a prominent conduit of illegal drugs. Depending on the law enforcement agency, that could encompass, among others, California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. That sample list alone accounts for 29% of the US population.

    After plucking a package from the FedEx stream, police present it to a K-9. If the dog alerts — which dogs have been found to do unjustifiably up to 66% or more of the time — police obtain a warrant to open it. While they often find no drugs, they’re all too happy when they find cash, which is confiscated and held as prosecutors file suit for the government to take permanent ownership.

    In April of this year, Henry and Minh Cheng, who run a mom-and-pop jewelry wholesaling business in Los Angeles, were caught in Indiana’s unconscionable web, as police confiscated $42,825 in a FedEx package en route to them from a retailer in Virginia. The retailer had been slow to pay for jewelry the Chengs had shipped to them in January. When the Chengs followed up on the invoice, the retailer offered to pay immediately via cash. In a fateful move, the Chengs obtained a FedEx shipping label and transmitted it to the Virginia retailer.

    Henry and Minh Cheng sent this invoice to a Virginia jewelry retailer in January; when the retailer shipped cash in April, police seized it (Institute for Justice)

    “The next thing I know is the police and the prosecutor [are] forfeiting my money…based solely on suspicions,” Henry Cheng told Los Angeles station ABC7. “They didn’t even name the crime that I’ve committed, because I know I have not committed any crime.”

    Consistent with the inherent madness of civil asset forfeiture — in which property itself is put on trial — asset forfeiture cases are given bizarre case names such as “Nebraska v. One 1970 2-Door Sedan Rambler (Gremlin).” The case in which Indiana seeks ownership of the Chengs’ seized cash is “State of Indiana v. $42,825.00 in US Currency.”

    It’s bad enough when Indiana police seize cash out of a car they pull over for speeding somewhere in the state, baselessly assuming the money played some unknown role in the violation of Indiana law. However, in their exploitation of the FedEx facility, Indiana police are typically taking cash that’s only in Indiana because FedEx’s logistical algorithms routed it there rather than through another FedEx hub.

    (When asked by Stark Realities if the police presence at the facility requires FedEx’s consent, the company declined comment. FedEx likewise chose not to say if it was concerned about customers’ property being seized by police without any specific allegation of a crime.)

    The Marion County Prosecutor’s Office has sued to confiscate currency in FedEx packages traveling to and from states other than Indiana at least 130 times in just the past two years, never identifying any specific violation of Indiana law that’s the basis for the asset forfeiture. The prosecutor’s complaint typically only alleges that “the seized currency was furnished or was intended to be furnished in exchange for a violation of a criminal statute, or is traceable as proceeds of a violation of a criminal statute, in violation of Indiana law” — which is utterly implausible given the money was merely being shipped through the state, and not at the direction of the shipper or receiver.

    Asset forfeiture filings by Indiana prosecutors often specify no crime, leaving citizens perplexed as to how to proceed (via Institute for Justice)

    Civil asset forfeiture places a daunting burden on those are victimized by it, forcing them to spend time and money navigating the government’s house of mirrors in an attempt to prove their money or property wasn’t associated with a crime. In many cases, victims of this legalized theft find the situation hopelessly complex and expensive, and simply give up. That demoralizing dynamic is compounded where the Indianapolis FedEx hub is concerned, as victims often live several hundred or even thousands of miles away.

    Fortunately for the Chengs and hundreds of other victims of Indiana’s FedEx trap, their plight is now the focus of a class action lawsuit filed on their behalf by the Institute for Justice — a non-profit, public interest law firm that’s represented civil asset forfeiture victims across the country. Among other wrongs, the suit asserts that the police seizures of FedEx packages violate the US Constitution’s guarantees of due process, and the Indiana Constitution’s prohibition against prosecuting alleged crimes that occur outside Indiana.

    “This scheme is one of the most predatory we have seen, and it’s past time to put a stop to it,” said Institute for Justice attorney Sam Gedge when the suit was filed. “It’s illegal and unconstitutional for Indiana to forfeit in-transit money whose only connection to Indiana is the happenstance of FedEx’s shipping practices.”

    Perhaps seeking to thwart the class action suit, the Marion County prosecutor’s office last week said it would give the lead plaintiff Chengs their money back — some seven months after taking it without articulating any specific violation of Indiana law. The suit will proceed, however, with Institute for Justice lawyers asking the court to bar the state of Indiana and Marion County prosecutor Ryan Mears from initiating currency forfeitures like the one that targeted the Chengs.

    Reflecting on what police have done to him and continue doing to people across the country, Henry Cheng’s sentiments echo those of many Americans upon first learning about civil asset forfeiture: “I am just totally stunned that this can happen in America.”

    * * *

    Stark Realities undermines official narratives, demolishes conventional wisdom and exposes fundamental myths across the political spectrum. Read more and subscribe at starkrealities.substack.com  

    Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.

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    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 11/30/2024 – 14:00

  • Kremlin Warns Biden It Will Mount Response To 'Each' Use Of US-Supplied Missiles
    Kremlin Warns Biden It Will Mount Response To ‘Each’ Use Of US-Supplied Missiles

    The Kremlin has communicated to the Biden administration that its forces will hit back in major attacks on Ukrainian targets “each time” Russia is hit with US-supplied missiles.

    President Putin “had warned that the authorization to use U.S. and other foreign-made missiles was an irresponsible and escalatory step,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in a Friday briefing.

    “And if these missiles are used, there will be an appropriate response every time,” he warned.

    Prior illustrative image of drone attack, via The Guardian 

    This new warning came after President Putin said Russia could hit “decision-making centers” in Kiev with the new intermediate-range hypersonic ballistic missile, the Oreshnik. “As I have said repeatedly, there will always be a response from our side,” Putin stressed.

    This past week began with days of record-setting drone and missile attacks on Ukraine, chiefly targeting the country’s energy infrastructure. This has left vast swathes of Ukraine without power, or else on a rolling blackout rationing system.

    A Thursday overnight attack had additionally included 90 missiles and around 100 drones, according to Moscow’s description.

    Ukraine’s Energy Minister German Galushchenko has said the national power infrastructure was “under massive enemy attack.“

    “Once again, the energy sector is under massive enemy attack. Attacks on energy facilities are taking place across Ukraine,” Galushchenko said.

    Emergency power outages have been confirmed in the regions of Kyiv, Odesa, Dnipro and Donetsk. Ukrenergo said it “urgently introduced emergency power cuts,” as temperatures hover at around 32 degrees Fahrenheit.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Outside of Ukraine, a ‘dirty war’ and NATO escalation is taking shape. The below is a summary of events via Al Jazeera:

    • Russia is waging a “staggeringly reckless campaign” of sabotage in Europe, while also stepping up its nuclear sabre-rattling to scare other countries off from backing Ukraine, the head of the United Kingdom’s MI6 foreign spy agency said.
    • Poland has deployed Leopard 2 battle tanks in Latvia to reinforce the NATO brigade there.
    • German defence giant Rheinmetall and Lithuania signed deals to begin construction of a $190m ammunition plant to make artillery shells in the country.
    • German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius wants to order four new submarines to help meet NATO’s security requirements in Europe, a parliamentary budget committee source told the AFP news agency.
    • Germany’s BfV domestic intelligence agency has warned of possible attempts by other states to influence the upcoming federal election.

    When President-elect Donald Trump enters the White House on January 20, he will certainly have his hands full on the diplomatic front, if he hopes to negotiate a quick end to the war – as currently the conflict is only growing.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 11/30/2024 – 13:25

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