Month: November 2024

Authored by Anders Corr via The Epoch Times,

President-elect Donald Trump has declared war on the drug cartels in Mexico. “The drug cartels are waging war on America, and it’s now time for America to wage war on the cartels,” he said in one of his toughest videos ever.

Photos of fentanyl victims are displayed at The Faces of Fentanyl Memorial at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration headquarters in Arlington, Va., on Sept. 27, 2022. Alex Wong/Getty Images

And it wasn’t the first time. He strongly advocated for many of the same actions in his first term and got results.

Trump’s incoming appointees support that tough approach. The potential future “border czar,” Thomas Homan, said on Nov. 12 that Trump is committed to deploying the “full might of the United States Special Operations to take them out.” The appointed defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, said in 2023 that military “precision strikes” on the cartels might be needed to deter them from operating “in the open with impunity.”

The United States has every ethical reason to launch a war on the cartels. They use chemical precursors from China to produce the vast majority of the illegal fentanyl that causes most of the 82,000 opioid overdose deaths in 2022 in the United States. That’s over 27 times more deaths every year than happened from the 9/11 attacks.

Fentanyl poisoning is deliberate and far worse in the number of deaths than anti-U.S. terrorism. Those who sell illegal fentanyl in the United States, when it results in death, are justly convicted of murder.

Yet China and Mexico get off scot-free. Beijing uses its supply of precursors as leverage against the United States on issues like Taiwan, which proves that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) intends the deaths that result when Washington does not submit. If we want Beijing to stop the shipment of precursors, the CCP demands that we stop following the law to supply Taiwan with the weapons it needs for its self-defense. Some have called these CCP actions a form of blackmail, chemical warfare, or genocide. Arguably, they are all three.

Just as the mullahs in Iran used Hamas to attack Israel, the CCP is using Mexican cartels to attack the United States. The risk for Hamas and now the cartels is that they could be targeted in response. Trump published an “action plan to destroy the drug cartels” in December. He is threatening to designate them as terrorist organizations, cut them off from the international financial system, hit them with cyberattacks, deport or execute foreign drug dealers and gang members, finish the border wall, and eliminate cartel leaders. This could be done with cruise or drone-fired missiles.

If Mexico fails to help or take over these tasks themselves, Trump could unmask the Mexican politicians who cooperate with the cartels, entirely close the border, impose tariffs on Mexico, and impose a naval blockade to stop precursor shipments.

The falsely glamorous image of being a cartel leader with a grand hacienda, pool, caravan, and armed guards posted on the perimeter wall will not seem so glamorous when these expensive homes and vehicles attract Hellfire missiles on a regular basis, forcing drug kingpins into less glamorous digs in hill camps and Mexico City’s back alleys. Neither will it be honorable to be a high government official in Mexico when Trump starts unmasking them as on the cartel payroll.

None of this will be particularly easy. The Mexican government opposes U.S. military force on Mexican territory. Designating the cartels as terrorists and using covert operations is one response. Mexico is America’s largest trade partner and could withhold drug enforcement and immigration cooperation, though there is not much of that anyway.

The United States should not attempt to take and hold territory permanently in Mexico, as this would be a violation of the U.S.-led international order that we help enforce by protecting Taiwan and Ukraine against China and Russia, for example. We should not become the enemy we oppose. But short cross-border targeted attacks on cartels would not be dissimilar to U.S. operations in Pakistan, including the killing of Osama bin Laden. America needs to rapidly and vigorously defend itself against all attacks, including novel offensives like fentanyl, or we lose our deterrent credibility.

Another difficulty is diplomatic. A naval, drone, or special operations campaign in Mexico could cause the United States stress at the United Nations and with our allies. But ethics are on our side because we are under attack with building U.S. civilian casualties that are greater than in any war in U.S. history. The new U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Elise Stefanik, is tough as nails and up to the job of defending us there.

Trump’s critics note that a finished border wall could still be tunneled under, from a house on the Mexican side to a house on the U.S. side, for example. Many such tunnels reportedly already exist, making it difficult for U.S. law enforcement to catch the smugglers. And none of this would stop fentanyl from coming in through the millions of small mail packages flown into the United States from China and around the world. If producing fentanyl is difficult in Mexico, it could be moved to Afghanistan, Burma (Myanmar), or Nigeria. There are plenty of global criminal organizations that would welcome the chance to profit and care little about the deaths of innocent Americans.

But not fighting the worst drug kingpins and most prolific illegal labs, wherever they are found, is to acquiesce in the deaths of U.S. innocents and is therefore not an option. Destroying as many of the cartel bosses and labs as possible serves to not only stop at least some of them but also strengthens deterrence against others.

Accelerating plans for a war on the cartels will make officials in Mexico, and those from around the world, much more pliable to Trump’s demands. Their caving in advance of Trump’s war would be the best of all worlds and something that happened in 2019 by Mexican negotiators when he made similar plans. However, Mexico quickly fell back into its old ways over the last four years.

So this time, Trump may not be as willing to make a deal. He might just start with the public disclosure of bribery in Mexico City as justification for his military strikes against the worst of the cartel leaders and their illegal fentanyl labs out in the country. The nexus between the cartel bosses and corrupt politicians is a target-rich environment, and Trump has appropriate plans for both.

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

Russian media reports have said the Swiss government is willing to play host to any future direct negotiations between Moscow and Ukraine to end the war.

Switzerland’s Federal Department of Foreign Affairs was cited in Izvestia as responding to a question on whether it would mediate by hosting talks: “Traditionally, Swiss foreign policy is centered on offering its services as a mediator whenever both parties agree,” the Swiss government agency said.

TASS writes of potential Kremlin reluctance as follows: “However, Moscow remains highly skeptical about Bern’s neutrality, given Switzerland’s support for anti-Russian sanctions and its active cooperation with NATO forces, the newspaper reports.”

“Experts suggest that, alongside Switzerland, several countries in Asia, Africa, and South America could also serve as potential hosts for negotiations between the two leaders,” the state media commentary continues.

Russia is likely to prefer a host country which is neither in the EU or NATO, which could rule out candidates like Hungary or Turkey.

Things are beginning to thaw in terms of diplomatic openings, especially given the Friday phone call between German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Russian President Vladmir Putin. Such efforts have been boosted given Trump is vowing to end the Ukraine war as soon as he takes office.

Scholz had urged the Russian leader to “negotiate with Ukraine” in order to enact a “just and lasting peace.”

But Ukraine is angry, worried about getting pressured into a ‘bad deal’ which will result in conceding territory with inadequate security guarantees. Zelensky is worried that the West is ‘normalizing’ communications with Putin, essentially. But that is how diplomacy has to happen in the real world.

Chancellor Scholz told me that he planned to call Putin. His call, in my opinion, opens Pandora’s Box. There may now be other conversations and phone calls. Just a lot of words.

And this is exactly what Putin has long sought. It is critical for him to weaken his isolation, as… pic.twitter.com/zcTydmnxsM

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) November 15, 2024

Zelensky blasted the call and accused Scholz of opening “Pandora’s box” – with Ukraine’s foreign ministry saying in a statement: “Talk only give[s] Putin hope of easing his international isolation.”

“What is needed are concrete, strong actions that will force him to peace, not persuasion and attempts at appeasement, which he sees as a sign of weakness and uses to his advantage,” a statement said.

The Kremlin in turn hailed the Scholz phone call, which we detailed earlier, as “positive”. Russia is in the diplomatic driver’s seat at this point, which is a result of the reality of Ukraine fast losing ground in the east.

Authored by Ray McGovern via ConsortiumNews.com,

The next director of national intelligence needs courage, political smarts and strong presidential backing to fulfill her duty to oversee and provide advice on covert action…

President-elect Donald Trump’s selection of Tulsi Gabbard to be director of national intelligence (DNI) will cause shockwaves in and among the 18 fiefdoms that now comprise the U.S. intelligence community.

Gabbard will be fighting an uphill battle if she tries to herd those 18 cats into a cohesive whole and restore integrity to intelligence analysis. The hill’s incline will be still steeper, if she takes seriously her duty to warn the president of the frequently noxious blowback of C.I.A. covert actions. I cannot overcome the urge to quote from “The Princess Bride”: Good luck stormin’ the castle, Tulsi … It will take a miracle!

In short, the odds are against her. Whether she succeeds depends, first and foremost, on how strongly the president backs her.  Unlike most former DNIs, she has already demonstrated uncommon courage, as well as smarts and political skill.

On the other hand, she has had virtually no experience managing a large institution, much less a “community” well versed in internecine warfare to protect individual rice bowls, and populated with careerist bureaucrats all too accustomed to telling the ultimate boss, the president, what he wants to hear.

Important Duties

The DNI is in charge of preparing The President’s Daily Brief (PDB), National Intelligence Estimates and the annual Threat Assessment required by Congress. What is less well known is her role in covert action — a favorite of the C.I.A.’s clandestine service.

 Executive Order 12333 (July 2008) stipulates:

“The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) shall oversee and provide advice to the President and the NSC with respect to all ongoing and proposed covert action programs.”

Thus, what the EO says. My own experience suggests that this covert-action-related duty has been more honored in the breach than in the observance, so to speak. Director of Central Intelligence William Colby was, in my personal experience, the only director to give intelligence analysts a look at some covert action proposals and ask for comment. I served directly under Colby as an acting national intelligence officer in the mid-70s.

Colby, at left, briefing President Gerald Ford and his senior advisers on the deteriorating situation in Vietnam, April 28, 1975. (David Hume Kennerly, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Public domain)

Will DNI Tulsi Gabbard (assuming she is confirmed by the Senate) step up to this task? It would take uncommon courage. Was the current DNI, Avril Haines, informed beforehand that the C.I.A. would blow up the Nord Stream pipelines? If so, did she give it her blessing? Or was she kept in the dark?

Blowing Up Pipelines …

My guess is that DNI Gabbard would have promptly recognized the folly in that C.I.A. “can-do” attitude/escapade and would have briefed the president on its longer-term implications. She is a good listener to analysts who she asks to brief her. I know that, too, from personal experience responding to her questions when she was one of Hawaii’s representatives in the House.

It would take a courageous and politically astute person and strong backing and trust from the president for any DNI to be able to fulfill the duty to  “oversee and provide advice … on covert action programs.”

… and Blowing Off the Analysts

Sizable covert action programs require a sanity check from analysts with substantive expertise, as sad experience has shown. Recall the Bay of Bigs operation of April 1961.  At President John Kennedy’s request, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. investigated the affair. His conclusion, set down in a MEMORANDUM FOR THE PRESIDENT dated June 30, 1961, speaks for itself:

“The trouble with the Cuban [Bay of Pigs] operation, for example, was not that the intelligence and operations were combined, but precisely that the Cuban operation evaded systematic intelligence judgment. The Intelligence Branch (DDI) of the CIA was never informed of the existence of the Cuban operation. The Office of National Estimates was never asked to comment on the assumption, for example, that discontent had reached the point in Cuba where a successful landing operation would provoke uprisings behind the lines and defections from the Militia.

I gather that if its opinion had been invited, DDI would have given quite a different estimate of the state of opinion in Cuba from that on which the operation was based. …

The Bureau of Intelligence and Research of the Department of State knew even less about the Cuban operation.”

DNI Position: A Creature of 9/11

As most are aware, there was enough intelligence available before 9/11 to prevent it. But the cats would not be herded. C.I.A. would not share with F.B.I. and vice versa. NSA would share with no one. Here’s one account that will turn your stomach.

Tenet listening to President George W. Bush’s address on Sept. 11, 2001, in the President’s Emergency Operations Center. (U.S. National Archives via Flickr, Public domain)

The congressional oversight committees as well as the administration and the intelligence community were not only intent on covering up what had happened, but needed to make it appear that remedial action was being taken.

Enter the 9/11 Commission and its recommendations. Here, they said, was the problem: George Tenet, as director of central intelligence (head of the whole community) as well as chief of the C.I.A. was overburdened.

In fact, Tenet was the antithesis of an effective head of the intelligence community; he screwed up royally. But he also knew “where the bodies were buried” — which key administration and congressional officials had been exposed to some of the disregarded intelligence. So it was not deemed safe to lay the blame where it clearly belonged.

A fiction was devised. The problem was said to be that “no one was in charge of the intelligence community.” So the 9/11 Commission recommended that a new superstructure be created to coordinate the community (and let no one be held accountable).

On July 22, 2004, immediately after the 9/11 Commission report was released, I found myself with 9/11 commissioner (and former senator from Washington) Slade Gorton in the BBC blue room in Washington. I had the temerity to remind him that it was far from the case that “no one was in charge” of the intelligence community; that Tenet had all the authority he needed.

Gorton turned to me, smiled and said: “Of course we know all that; but we in the Commission and in Congress just had to do something so the American people would see that we were doing something.”

Yuck.

The national intelligence director, and the newly created bureaucracy, is what it is. Maybe Tulsi Gabbard can take the reins and make the community work. It will take a miracle; let’s hope for one.

Netflix is reportedly paying at least $60 million in purses to make history in its first-ever, live, non-pay-per-view sports broadcast tonight.

The streaming giant’s venture into live programming pits 27-year-old YouTuber-turned-boxer Jake Paul against 58 year-old ‘Iron’ Mike Tyson.

The big fight between “Iron Mike” and “The Problem Child” is scheduled to take place at AT&T Stadium, the Arlington, Texas home of the Dallas Cowboys.

The venue, which holds 80,000, has hosted some major boxing matches over the years, including multiple fights featuring former champion Manny Pacquiao current pound-for-pound No. 1 Canelo Álvarez.

Tyson will be fighting out of the red corner on Friday night, and weighs in at 228.4 pounds.

“This fight is not going to change my lifestyle financially,” Tyson said.

“I feel I can beat this guy.”

Paul will fight from the blue corner of the ring and enters the fight at 227.2 pounds.

“I’m here to make $40m and knock out a legend,” Jake Paul told interviewers.

The fight has garnered a great deal of attention as nobody knows how a 58-year-old Mike Tyson is going to look in his first sanctioned competitive fight since 2005.

Things got a littel heated at the weigh-in…

For now, the betting markets favor Paul over Iron Mike, with Tyson’s odds fading today…

Jake Paul’s Advantages:

• Age and Stamina: Paul is significantly younger, at 27 years old, which gives him an edge in terms of stamina, recovery, and physical condition. Boxing is indeed a sport where youth can be a substantial advantage.

• Recent Activity: Paul has been active in the ring, fighting several times in recent years. This regular competition keeps him in fighting shape and provides him with recent experience against diverse opponents.

• Size and Reach: Paul has a height advantage and possibly a reach advantage, which could help him keep Tyson at bay if he chooses to fight more defensively.

• Boxing Skill Development: Over his fights, Paul has shown improvement in his boxing technique, particularly in his footwork, jab usage, and defensive maneuvers.

Mike Tyson’s Advantages:

• Experience: Tyson’s vast experience as a former undisputed heavyweight champion cannot be overstated. He knows how to fight at the highest levels, how to read opponents, and how to end fights quickly.

• Power: Even at an advanced age, Tyson’s punching power is legendary. If he can land a clean shot, his power could still be devastating.

• Motivation: This fight could serve as a significant motivator for Tyson to prove he still has what it takes, which might lead to an exceptional performance.

Fight Predictions:

Betting odds generally favor Paul due to his youth and recent activity, but there’s a significant portion of the public and some experts betting on Tyson, driven by nostalgia and his raw power.

• Scenario 1 – Early Knockout: If Tyson can replicate his old explosive starts and land a significant punch early, he could potentially knock out Paul.

• Scenario 2 – Endurance and Strategy: If the fight goes beyond the initial rounds, Paul’s superior conditioning and strategy might wear Tyson down, leading to a win either by knockout or decision.

• Scenario 3 – Fight Integrity: There’s always the possibility in such high-profile, exhibition-like bouts that the fight might not be as competitive as it could be due to various external factors, but given the statements from both fighters and the sanctioning of the bout, this seems less likely.

Conclusion:

While many factors could play into the outcome, if one were to go by the majority of expert opinions and odds:

Jake Paul is likely to win due to his youth, recent fighting experience, and physical advantages. However, Mike Tyson’s power and experience make him a dangerous opponent, and if he can catch Paul with a solid punch, nothing can be ruled out.

The fight’s result might also depend on how Tyson has prepared, considering his age and health conditions.

Remember, in boxing, one punch can change everything, especially when it comes from someone with Tyson’s history.

*  *  *

Netflix will start coverage of the full fight card at 2000ET.

Who are the Jake Paul-Mike Tyson Ring Girls?

• Lexi Williams – Instagram superstar; 1.4M followers; “I’m so excited to be a part of this moment,” she wrote on Instagram. One of the true titans of the Instagram modeling world

• Sydney Thomas – Making her second career ring girl appearance

• Raphaela Milagres – Brazilian model who worked the Jake Paul vs. Andre August fight in 2023

• Virginia Sanhouse – Venezuelan model with 5.5M TikTok followers

• Delia Sylvain – Veteran ring girl who worked the Jake Paul vs. Mike Perry fight in July.

Full Card:

• Heavyweight: Mike Tyson vs. Jake Paul

• Super Lightweight: Katie Taylor vs. Amanda Serrano for Taylor’s IBF, WBA, WBC and WBO women’s super-lightweight titles

• Welterweight: Mario Barrios vs. Abel Ramos for Barrios’ WBC welterweight title

• Super Middleweight: Neeraj Goyat vs. Whindersson Nunes

• Super Middleweight: Shadasia Green vs Melinda Watpool for vacant women’s WBO super middleweight title

• Super Lightweight: Lucas Bahdi vs. Armando Casamonica

• Featherweight: Bruce Carrington vs Dana Coolwell

As PJMedia’s Scott Pinsker warns, make no mistake, Mike Tyson is still a master artist. He’s still an all-time great. 

Jake Paul is scribbling with crayons. 

On their merits, if Tyson has ANYTHING left, he will flatten Paul. It shouldn’t go more than a couple of rounds, two minutes or not. Mike Tyson on Testosterone Replacement Therapy is probably less like a guy pushing 60 and more like an athlete in his 40s.

If the fix is in, it’s almost certainly for Tyson to take the dive. That’s how it’s always been in boxing: The old lion makes way for the younger (and more marketable) lion. 

Some boxing insiders suspect as much.

After all, Paul has exponentially more to lose: If Tyson loses, he’s still Mike Tyson, but if Paul loses, he’s done.

Authored by Charles Cornish-Dale via The Epoch Times,

Scientists at the University of Texas, Dallas recently discovered that a common food additive can make flesh translucent – literally. Applying a solution of the yellow food colouring tartrazine to the skin of live mice allowed scientists to see right through the skin, into the tissues beneath, potentially offering a simple and inexpensive alternative to conventional imaging technologies like ultrasound.

Through the skin covering the skull, the scientists could look directly at blood vessels on the surface of the murine brain, and through the skin of the abdomen they observed internal organs and even the process known as peristalsis, the contractions that move food through the digestive passage.

Pretty cool, huh?

The physics behind this discovery aren’t actually all that complicated. Basically, when added to water, tartrazine changes the water’s refractive index—the way it bends light—so that it matches the refractive index of molecules like lipids in the skin, reducing the degree to which light scatters as it passes through the skin. Instead of scattering, the light travels straight and true, meaning you get to see what’s on the other side.

The process is totally reversible. It only takes a few minutes, the tartrazine solution can be washed off, and when it is the effects disappear. What tartrazine is absorbed by the skin is metabolized and excreted through the urine.

The researchers’ next goal is to test the solution on humans. Human skin is about 10 times thicker than a mouse’s, so it’s likely a larger dose will be needed, and it’s not clear if the delivery method—just rubbing the stuff on the skin—will be adequate.

A miraculous discovery, for sure, and one that will no doubt benefit medicine. But it’s also a reminder of an unpleasant, dangerous truth about the food supply in America today: that it’s full of substances whose properties and safety we know virtually next to nothing about. There are thousands upon thousands of additives—texturizers, colorings, humectants, anti-fungals, anti-caking agents, preservatives—in Americans’ food that have never been independently tested by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or by scientists who aren’t employed by the companies that make those chemicals and add them to their food.

As we’re discovering, many of those additives—the ones we know about and have begun to test—turn out to be extremely harmful, with links to every single chronic health condition you could care to name, from cancer and obesity to neurological and behavioral conditions like Alzheimer’s and autism. Tartrazine, which is found in Twinkies, Mountain Dew, candy, and cereals, among other foods, has been linked to hyperactivity in children and cancer. In the European Union, foods containing tartrazine must carry a warning label: “May have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children.”

It sounds absurd—insane, actually—but it’s not a glitch or an organized system of corporate deception. We’re not talking about companies lying to regulators or acting beyond the boundaries of the law. No, this is all above board. The system even has a name. The FDA calls it “generally recognized as safe” or “GRAS” for short.

The GRAS system was first introduced by the FDA in 1958 after the passage of the Food Additive Amendments, to “grandfather” through additives that were already used in food. The new additive regulations were intended to ensure ingredients capable of causing long-term harm never entered the food supply, but something very different happened. The GRAS designation mutated into a system that allowed companies to introduce and safety-test additives themselves without the FDA ever getting a look-in.

This happened in large part because the FDA simply couldn’t keep up with demands from companies to test their new additives for the burgeoning processed-food category. So companies started testing additives themselves and adding them to their food products without any consultation with the regulator.

Companies did this for decades, and instead of stepping in to assert its authority, the FDA did what any poorly staffed, hopelessly compromised organization would do: It simply chose to regularize the process, which was completed in 2016.

According to one study, since 2000, there have been only 10 applications to the FDA for full approval of a new food additive, out of a total of 766 that have been added to the American food supply. The safety of the other 756 was self-determined by the manufacturers themselves, in secret.

And so we’ve ended up in a situation where a company can produce a new food additive, decide it’s safe by whatever means it chooses, and then bring it to market without any scrutiny at all from the FDA. Like I say, nobody knows the exact amount, but a common estimate is that there are as many as 10,000 food additives in use in the United States, compared to around 2,000—all known quantities, by contrast—that are permitted in the EU.

Thankfully, the FDA and the GRAS system are now firmly in the sights of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has been tasked by president-elect Trump with Making America Healthy Again.

The “FDA’s war on public health is about to end,” Kennedy said in a Tweet last month.

He listed a whole range of compounds and treatments that he claims the FDA has suppressed, from psychedelics and peptides to “sunshine, exercise, nutraceuticals and anything else that advances human health and can’t be patented by Pharma.”

“If you work for the FDA and are part of this corrupt system, I have two messages for you,” he continued.

“1. Preserve your records, and 2. Pack your bags.”

Strong stuff.

Although Trump has yet to specify exactly what role Kennedy will play in the new administration, Kennedy himself has already made clear that other priorities, beside root-and-branch reform of agencies like the FDA, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the United States Department of Agriculture, will include fluoridation of the water supply, vaccinations, environmental pollution, and processed food. This is a comprehensive program, and if Kennedy can make meaningful changes in all of these areas in four years, he will have done the American people and their health an enormous service.

If anybody can get to the bottom of why Americans are so sick, it’s Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a man who has spent decades campaigning on environmental and health issues, and suffered personal loss and public vilification as a result—but still kept on going.

He knows as much as anybody the corruption that lies beneath the façade of public health in America, and now, at long last, he’s in a position to do something about it.

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

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson,

On January 3, 2020, the Trump administration conducted a drone strike near Baghdad International Airport, killing Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani.

Soleimani had a long record of waging surrogate wars against Americans, especially during the Iraq conflict and its aftermath.

After the Trump cancellation of the Iran Deal, followed by U.S. sanctions, Soleimani reportedly stepped up violence against regional American bases—most of which Trump himself ironically wished to remove.

A few days later, Iran staged a performance-art retaliatory strike against Americans in Iraq and Syria, assuming Trump had no desire for a wider Middle East war.

So, Iran launched 12 missiles that hit two U.S. airbases in Iraq. Supposedly, Tehran had warned the Trump administration of the impending attacks that killed no Americans. Later reports, however, suggested that some Americans suffered concussions, while more damage was done to the bases than was initially disclosed.

Nonetheless, this Iranian interlude seemed to reflect Trump’s agenda of avoiding “endless wars” in the Middle East while restoring deterrence that prevented, not prompted, full-scale conflicts.

Yet in a second Trump administration, rethreading the deterrence needle without getting into major wars may become far more challenging. The world of today is far more dangerous than when Trump left in 2021.

An inept Biden administration has utterly destroyed U.S. deterrence abroad through both actual and symbolic disasters:

• the Chinese dressing down of U.S. diplomats in Anchorage;

• the humiliating skedaddle from Afghanistan;

• the brazen flight of a Chinese spy balloon across the U.S.;

• the invasion of Ukraine by Russia;

• the October 7, 2023 massacre of 1200 Israelis;

• the serial Houthi attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea;

• the visible restraint of Israeli from fully replying to Iranian missile attacks on its homeland;

• and renewed bellicosity on the part of both North Korea and China toward American allies such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.

Of course, a second-term Trump must radically reform the Pentagon and beef up the military while warning enemies of the consequences to follow from any unwise aggression.

But if opponents believe such admonitions remain only vocal threats, then empty verbiage surely will erode deterrence further—such as Joe Biden’s serial and empty braggadocio, “Don’t!”

Biden’s past theatrical finger-shaking translated into aggressors like Putin going into Ukraine, Iran sending missiles into Israel, and the Houthis serially hitting shipping in the Red Sea.

Given the past messes of the Iraqi, Libyan, and Syrian interventions, and the catastrophic Biden humiliation in Afghanistan, Trump in 2024 is much more emphatic about the need to avoid such overseas dead-end entanglements or even the gratuitous use of force that historically can sometimes lead to tit-for-tat entanglements.

Still, Trump’s selection of J.D. Vance as vice president, along with Tulsi Gabbard, RFK, Jr., and Tucker Carlson as close advisors, coupled with the announcements that former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and prior UN Ambassador Nikki Haley will not be in the administration, may be misinterpreted by scheming foreign adversaries as proof of Trump neo-isolationism.

Moreover, the U.S. is battered by an unsustainable $37 trillion national debt and a nonexistent southern border that saw 12 million illegal aliens enter with impunity.

So, the use of force abroad is now often seen in a zero-sum fashion as coming at the expense of unaddressed American needs at home.

Moreover, a woke, manpower-short military has not achieved strategic advantages from wars abroad, while disparaging and alienating the very working-class recruits who disproportionately fight and die in them.

Recently, even as President-elect Trump’s inner circle emphasized an end to endless conflicts, Trump warned Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin not to escalate his attacks against Ukraine. Yet that advice was followed by a Russian massive drone onslaught against civilian Ukrainian targets.

Putin no doubt wishes to encourage American enemies to test Trump’s deterrent rhetoric against his campaign’s domestic promises to mind America’s own business at home.

Is there a way to square the deterrence circle?

Trump will have to speak clearly and softly while carrying a club. And for the first few months of his administration, he will be tested as never before to make it clear to Iran and its terrorist surrogates, China, North Korea, and Russia that aggression against US interests will be swiftly and quietly met with disproportionate and overwhelming repercussions.

Yet Trump will likely have to rely on drones, missiles, and air strikes and not on major engagements, to deter enemies from aggression—and his domestic critics from claiming he turned into a globalist interventionist.

He is not.

Trump remains a Jacksonian. But such deterrence entails warning from time to time the reckless and adventurous abroad that our allies have no better friend than America and our adversaries no worse enemy.

In other words, Trump must remind Americans only by periodically deterring enemies can he prevent endless wars.

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

Money market funds saw massive inflows for the second straight week (+$81.6BN), pushing the total assets under management to a new record high of $6.66TN…

Source: Bloomberg

And while MM funds surged, total US bank deposits dropped modestly (-$7.5BN on a seasonally-adjusted basis)…

Source: Bloomberg

Though interestingly, on a non-seasonally-adjusted basis, total deposits rose by a modest $3.7BN during the week ending 11/6 (which included the election)…

Source: Bloomberg

Excluding foreign deposits, US banks saw domestic deposits rise on both an SA (+$12BN) and NSA (+$16.7BN) basis…

Source: Bloomberg

Loan volumes shrank significantly during election week…

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, the decoupling between bank reserves at The Fed and the total US equity market capitalization has reached an extreme…

Source: Bloomberg

With liquidity being drawn down from The Fed’s reverse repo facility at a pace, we wonder how long that spread can be maintained.

Authored by James Howard Kunstler,

“The meltdown has gotten so heavy liberal bureaucrats are ready to form antigovernment militias and fretting about black helicopters”

– Max Blumenthal

“Many Democrats were considering how to navigate a dark future, with the party unable to stop Mr. Trump from carrying out a right-wing transformation of American government. Others turned inward, searching for why the nation rejected them. They spoke about misinformation and the struggle to communicate the party’s vision in a diminished news environment inundated with right-wing propaganda”

– The New York Times

In July 27, 1794, the non-insane members of the Convention, or national legislative body in Paris, suddenly turned on the rabid Jacobin leader Maximillian Robespierre and overthrew his ruling tyrannical bunch — who had killed 40,000 of their fellow countrymen in the paranoid orgy known as The Reign of Terror.

The next day, Robespierre rode the tumbrel to his own appointment with “the national razor” and the Thermidorian Reaction was on!

By the way, in one of their many acts disordering French society, the Jacobins had changed the calendar, renamed all the months, and changed the weeks from seven to ten days (to eliminate Sundays as a holy day of rest in their anti-church crusade). Thus, Thermidor, the month of mid-summer.

This was but a small part of their proto-communist agenda, but you see in it the flavor of their radical extremism.

The Woke Democrats of recent times were our Jacobins, and the election of November 5, 2024, marks the kick-off of America’s Thermidorian Reaction. The crazies have been overthrown and our country awaits a restoration of norms in culture and law. No more sexualizing of children, no more flood of criminal mutts across the US border, no more furtive censorship of public speech, no more creative lawfare, no more women on the battlefield, no more “anti-racist” racism in the workplace, no more intel takeover of everyone’s private life. . . you get the picture.

Many abiding mysteries about how this happened — even of what exactly did happen — remain to be sorted out by law and by history. That is probably because so much of the Woke Revolution was provoked by state-of-the-art mind-fuckery out of the giant intel blob’s psy-ops lab.

This blob, you understand, had grown to be a colossal racketeering operation with many branches and ever-spreading roots, and it cast its spells over the populace to protect these interests — which, of course, involved huge revenue streams.

Perhaps its most potent spell was the manipulation of women’s emotion, harnessing female psychodrama as the propellant for mass social discord. In a nation of absent fathers, damaged children, and broken male-female relations, Donald Trump was painted as the ultimate archetypal tyrant Daddy figure to deflect the public’s attention from the actual tyranny growing under the US intel blob and its Globalist sidekicks. Case in point: RussiaGate, a long-running hysteria of fabricated accusations, a fabulous medley of scurrilous gossip, engineered at the highest levels of our government for the express purpose of wrecking Mr. Trump’s first term in office. “Witch hunt” was exactly the right term.

Many more psychodramas followed, all of them artificially cooked up by various branches of the blob: impeachments #1 and #2; the FBI-induced J-6 riot and the fake House J-6 inquiry that followed; the roll-out of DOJ-inspired fake criminal and civil cases that tied-up Mr. Trump in courtrooms through the year, and most especially the hostile news media’s presentation of all these things as one great big everlasting frenzy of on-screen women shrieking at the Daddy-figure, Donald Trump, like thirteen-year-old girls in fugues of hormonal disruption.

The voters, subject to years of trips laid on them, were eventually able to see through all this induced psychodrama as to how they were being manipulated, and on November 5, they finally revolted. Their quandary was probably epitomized by the absurdity of watching men in women’s sports — spiking volleyballs on the girls’ heads, bashing them on the lacrosse field, humiliating them in the swim lanes — and, more to the point, being helpless to do anything about it, because the officials in-charge under “Joe Biden” said it must be, no matter what you think and feel about what you are seeing.

The New York Times, your field-guide to blob-think, is warning its dwindling readership of psychodrama addicts that Donald Trump will now take out his “grievances” on the noble, self-sacrificing bureaucracy that manages things so well in this land. As usual, The Times misleads and misinforms. These are the grievances of the nation that has seen its law and its culture twisted into new orders of wickedness that leave daily life in the USA perverted, dishonored, and grotesquefied.

So now Mr. Trump has picked a cabinet that scares the blob to death — for good reason. They are aiming to systematically disarm and disassemble the blob. They are a team of serious and intelligent warriors and they mean business, in particular Gaetz, Gabbard, Kennedy, Ratcliffe, and Homan, with Elon and Vivek riding shotgun. (A new FBI Director has not yet been named.) You must wonder how the blob is planning to defend itself, for it surely will resist.

Many of us believe that the two recent assassination attempts against the now-President-elect were blob-sponsored operations. Everybody expects they’ll try again. But it’s possible that the American system still has enough mojo to self-correct. A whole lot of public officials have a whole lot of ‘splainin’ to do. It looks like they will be compelled to now, including the public health officers who brought us Covid-19 and the mandated, ineffective-and-harmful mRNA vaccines.

There’s every reason to believe that the ‘splainin’ can take place in correct proceedings according to law: hearings, grand juries, courts. We do have actual laws against racketeering, abuse of power, election fraud, bribery, malicious prosecution, sedition, treason, and conspiracy to commit all those crimes. Pay attention: all that is distinct from lawfare, which is making-up crimes, faking crimes, and faking procedure. You are going to see a demonstration of how law differs from lawfare. It ought to have a salutary effect on our national esprit. And that should motivate us to get on with the job of repairing the damage done to our country.

‘Good news’ was definitely ‘bad news’ this week as US macro data generally surprised positively…

Source: Bloomberg

…with both growth and inflation surprises soaring…

Source: Bloomberg

Not exactly the kind of data that supports a dovish Fed and the market has notably reduced its expectations for rate-cuts…

Source: Bloomberg

Interestingly, the ‘Trump Trade’ actually survived pretty well this week (Republican policy basket vs Democratic policy basket)…

Source: Bloomberg

But, Powell’s comments were a giant rug-pull for the market over all with all the US majors having a horrible week…

…Nasdaq’s worst week in the last ten…

The Nasdaq puked back to the same level it was at the last OpEx…

Energy and Financials were the only sectors to end the week green while tech and healthcare were clubbed like a baby seal…

Source: Bloomberg

Mega-Cap Tech stock have erased all the post-election gains…

Source: Bloomberg

Cyclicals remain well bid against Defensives still too…

Source: Bloomberg

‘Most Shorted’ stocks puked hard this week – the worst week since early August as last week’s short-squeeze ran out of ammo…

Source: Bloomberg

Treasury yields were all higher on the week led by the long-end, but trading was very volatile…

Source: Bloomberg

The 10Y Yield touched 4.50% at the highs today and reversed – the first time it has reached that level since May 2024…

Source: Bloomberg

It wasn’t just bonds and stocks that were hit, gold suffered its worst week since Jun 2021, falling back to two-month lows…

Source: Bloomberg

The dollar rallied for the seventh straight week top its highest since Nov 2022…

Source: Bloomberg

Bitcoin had another biog week – the best two-week run since March – hitting new record highs and holding above $91,000…

Source: Bloomberg

Bitcoin is also nearing a record high in terms of gold too…

Source: Bloomberg

Crude oil prices tumbled on the week back to post-Israel-Iran ‘optics’ battle lows…

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, here’s why The Fed is fucked… With The Fed funds rate still at 4.75% and the trajectory of cuts diminishing rapidly, US financial conditions are basically as ‘loose’ as they were before the rate-0hiking cycle started…

Source: Bloomberg

‘Animal Spirits’ and re-inflation imminent – ‘Proper fucked’…

A top Pentagon official responsible for purchasing arms for America’s defense stockpile has expressed ‘shock’ at the increasingly sophisticated arsenal possessed by Yemen’s Houthis.

Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Bill LaPlante spoke at an event hosted by Axios on Wednesday, where he said that Houthis are displaying and deploying advanced weaponry, especially missiles that “can do things that are just amazing.”

He described that Houthis “are getting scary” in terms of their capability on display for more than a year in the Red Sea, where they’ve gone to war against Israeli and international shipping.

“I’m an engineer and a physicist, and I’ve been around missiles my whole career,” LaPlante said before the summit, called the “Future of Defense” in Washington, DC.

“What I’ve seen of what the Houthis have done in the last six months is something that — I’m just shocked.”

Among the surprisingly advanced capabilities include anti-ship ballistic missiles. Analysts have widely asserted that without doubt Iran is directly supplying these and other capabilities.

The Houthis have also routinely scored direct hits on commercial shipping vessels with both aerial and drone boats.

The Shia group has also claimed many times to have scored hits on US, UK, and other allied warships; however, the US has kept a tight lid on the extent of this, or actual damage, perhaps wishing to not give the Houthis a propaganda win.

According to the latest attacks on US warships via an announcement this week from the Pentagon:

Houthi forces attacked two American destroyers with drones and missiles as the ships transited the Bab el-Mandeb Strait entering the Gulf of Aden on Monday, a Pentagon spokesman said today.

The Houthis launched at least eight one-way uncrewed aerial systems, five anti-ship ballistic missiles and three anti-ship cruise missiles at USS Spruance (DDG-111) and USS Stockdale (DDG-106), which engaged all the projectiles, Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder told reporters on Tuesday. U.S. Central Command has not yet issued a statement.

The Pentagon says that the warships were not damaged in the attack, which contradicts the account of Houthi spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Sare’e, who quickly claimed the attack on the pair of destroyers was successful.

The past year has seen a number of videos like the below showing destruction of large tankers off Yemen’s coast:

Footage released by the #Iran-backed Houthis of their targeting the Greek-owned and operated bulk carrier Tutor has sent shockwaves throughout the shipping industry, especially after it was confirmed Tutor sunk on 19 June.pic.twitter.com/MkfQMzlHKM

— Bachar EL-Halabi | بشار الحلبي (@Bacharelhalabi) June 20, 2024

The enduring conflict in the Red Sea has been widely acknowledged as the biggest naval battle that US forces have been engaged in since World War II. Several US and Israeli airstrikes have hit Houthi positions hard over the last months, but this appears to have done little to erode Houthi capabilities.