Month: November 2024

Ukraine’s Air Force Command says that Russia has, for the first time in the multi-year war, launched an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) targeting the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro. This unprecedented escalation follows Ukraine’s recent use of US-made MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) and British Storm Shadow missiles to strike military targets deep within Russia. The use of an ICBM is Russia demonstrating its greater capabilities in response to Ukraine’s long-range missile strikes.

A senior Ukrainian military official told the Financial Times that Russia launched an ICBM called “RS-26 Rubezh” that has a range of 3,700 miles and can strike any European capital.

Although RS-26 Rubezh can be used to deliver a thermonuclear warhead or an Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle, Thursday morning’s attack on the Dnipro region was non-nuclear, instead some sort of conventional warhead. 

“Using these kinds of missiles, whether RS-26 or a true ICBM, in a conventional role does not make a lot of sense because of their relatively low accuracy and high cost,” Pavel Podvig, a senior researcher at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, wrote on X.

“But this kind of a strike might have a value as a signal,” Podvig added.

And yes, it does.

Malcolm Davis, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, told CNN that the ICBM strike on Ukraine is a “message” to Kyiv’s Western backers. He emphasized that this week’s escalations, including the Biden-Harris administration greenlighting Ukraine’s use of ATACMS and Storm Shadow missiles to strike military targets in Russia, have likely prompted this escalation. 

Earlier this week, Russian President Vladimir Putin lowered the threshold for nuclear weapons use. He stated, “The use of Western non-nuclear rockets by the Armed Forces of Ukraine against Russia can prompt a nuclear response.” 

Davis continued, “Clearly, what the Russians have done here is to take the nuclear warheads off the missile and launch the missile either as an inert missile without anything on it or maybe with some sort of conventional warhead.” 

“They are trying to send a message. They’re trying to massively say to the West, ‘Look, the use of these Storm Shadow and ATACMS missiles maybe is challenging Russia’s critical interests.’ And so they’re trying to intimidate us into backing down here,” he added. 

Videos posted on X show what could be warheads from the ICBM striking targets in Dnipro. 

BREAKING:

New video shows a Russian intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) striking Ukraine.

The video shows reentry vehicles from its MIRV hitting the city of Dnipro.

It’s the first time in history that an ICBM is used in war. pic.twitter.com/o198cJXvXm

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) November 21, 2024

BREAKING: Russia has launched a non-nuclear Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) against Ukraine, marking a first in history.

The missile hit the Ukrainian city of Dnipro.

ICBMs can be equipped with nuclear warheads.

This is seen as a dire warning. pic.twitter.com/UqgJplbWzz

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) November 21, 2024

What’s clear is that the Biden-Harris administration knew exactly what they were doing by provoking Russia with the deployment of ATACMS and British missiles. US officials have since closed the US Embassy in Kyiv “out of an abundance of caution.”

In markets, Goldman’s Ece Kepekci commented on the situation: 

“Think particularly in Europe, there is a real geopolitical risk premia now as Ukraine/Russia following a series of escalations. Europe gave up its early rally yday on the back of further missile  attacks (early this morning “Ukraine says Russia Fired ICBM”). Off ramps not obvious but again this is not a new conflict and you’re supposed to fade geopolitical escalation. Sentiment has come down quite a bit “the bull-bear spread in the American Association of Individual Investors (AAII) weekly survey was 8.1 vs 21.5 last week.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, “It’s a very dangerous position that the outgoing administration is taking,” adding, “There is a new escalation happening.”…

Democrats endgame? Start WW3 before Trump enters the White House? 

By Ed Crooks of Wood Mackenzie

“Personnel is policy.” That aphorism about the realities of US presidential government was coined by Scot Faulkner, who was director of personnel for Ronald Reagan’s triumphant election campaign in 1980. What he meant was that, while US presidents can do almost anything, they can’t do everything. The day-to-day business of the administration is carried on by appointed officials. And if presidents want to make real progress towards their policy objectives, they need to make sure that their officials are as committed to those goals as they are.

That is why President-elect Donald Trump’s first two picks to be his senior energy officials are particularly significant. There is still a great deal of uncertainty around exactly how energy policy will play out in his second administration. But the announcements he has made give a clear sense of the direction he wants to set and the objectives he wants to achieve during his four-year term.

Last week, President-elect Trump named Chris Wright, the chief executive of oilfield services company Liberty Energy, to be his energy secretary, and Doug Burgum, governor of North Dakota, to be the interior secretary and head of a new National Energy Council at the White House.

The common thread in the thinking on energy expressed by both Wright and Burgum is that they want to boost production of all types of energy, including fossil fuels. They do not deny that human-caused climate change is a real threat that needs to be addressed. But they argue that there are other priorities for policy that are more important and more urgent, and that oil and gas can continue to play the central role in the global energy system into the indefinite future.

If they get to take the reins of energy policy-making under the Trump administration, they will undoubtedly aim to help the oil and gas industry in every way possible. But several low-carbon sectors could also benefit, or at least not be hit as hard as they might have feared.

Meet Chris Wright and Governor Doug Burgum

Announcing their nominations, President-elect Trump said that Wright and Burgum would be working on cutting red tape, enhancing private sector investment and focusing on innovation, with the aim of boosting energy production to cut prices and “win the AI arms race with China (and others)”.

Chris Wright has become one of the highest-profile CEOs in the industry thanks to his tireless advocacy for American energy in general, and oil and gas in particular. He has made his case in a variety of public forums, including YouTube videos and in a 180-page report titled ‘Bettering human lives’.

That report makes its argument in 10 key points, which include: “Global demand for oil, natural gas, and coal are all at record levels and rising — no energy transition has begun” and “Zero Energy Poverty by 2050 is a superior goal compared to Net Zero [emissions] 2050.”

Wright summarises his position on climate change like this:

“Climate change is a real and global challenge that we should and can address. However, representing it as the most urgent threat to humanity today displaces concerns about more pressing threats of malnutrition, access to clean water, air pollution, endemic diseases, and human rights, among others.”

Tackling those other more pressing problems, he argues, would be helped by the strongest possible growth in US oil and gas production. This would displace supplies from authoritarian regimes and geopolitical rivals of the US and substitute for dirtier fuels, including coal and traditional biomass.

On policy, Wright warns that the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which extended and expanded tax credits for a range of low-carbon energy technologies, “appears poised to drive the U.S. electricity grid along the European path [to] higher prices and more grid stability problems”.

He is not opposed to all forms of low-carbon energy, but says the world needs a massive increase in research and innovation, as opposed to subsidies for existing technologies. His company has worked on low-carbon energy sources, including advanced geothermal, small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) and sodium-ion batteries. The world needs more and better energy, which means contributions from “all viable energy technologies,” Wright says.

One of the peculiarities of the US system of government is that the energy secretary – the job that Chris Wright is being proposed for – does not have primary responsibility for many of the decisions most relevant to the energy industry. A US energy secretary does have responsibility for overseeing energy policy, but the most vital part of the job relates to nuclear weapons. The secretary is tasked with “maintaining a safe, secure and effective nuclear deterrent” for the US, and reducing the threat of nuclear proliferation.

Many of the key decisions related to energy, such as oil and gas leasing programmes, lie with the Department of the Interior. So the proposal that Governor Burgum of North Dakota should head that department, as well as the new White House energy council, is also highly significant for the industry.

Governor Burgum, like Wright, has a record of recognising the need to act on climate change while also aiming to boost oil and gas production. In 2021, he set a goal of reaching net zero emissions for North Dakota – described as “carbon neutral status” – by 2030. That is a much more ambitious schedule than California’s – the Golden State is aiming for net zero by 2045.

Another crucial difference is that Governor Burgum has envisaged his state reaching net zero largely through carbon capture and storage (CCS). As he has pointed out, North Dakota hit the “geologic jackpot” in its potential for sub-surface storage of carbon dioxide. Its estimated capacity of 250 billion tons could take all of the US’s carbon dioxide emissions from energy for almost 50 years.

In a sign of North Dakota’s enthusiasm for CCS, the state’s Public Service Commission last week voted unanimously to approve the route permit for Summit Carbon Solutions’ proposed US$8 billion carbon dioxide pipeline system, which would take captured emissions from ethanol plants for storage.

But despite his support for decarbonisation, Governor Burgum has also been a strong critic of the Biden administration’s energy policies. He signed up to a joint statement with other Republican governors in June, arguing that the president’s “rhetorical and regulatory hostility towards traditional energy” was holding back US oil and gas production.

One sector that could be particularly favoured under the new administration is gas-fired power generation. President-elect Trump said in the statement announcing Governor Burgum’s nomination that he wanted to “undo the damage done by the Democrats to our Nation’s Electrical Grid, by dramatically increasing baseload power”. That will certainly mean acting on his pledge to scrap President Biden’s emissions rules for power plants, which could potentially have ended up forcing gas-fired generation to shut down. But he could go further. A national version of the Texas system that subsidises gas-fired power plants is possible.

Wood Mackenzie view

Some of the critical issues for energy policy under the second Trump administration remain highly uncertain. The future of the IRA tax credits for low-carbon energy is likely to be decided by a tight vote in the House of Representatives, given the Republicans’ slender majority there. Energy industry leaders – including Darren Woods, chief executive of ExxonMobil, who last week attended the COP29 climate talks in Azerbaijan – have urged President-elect Trump not to sweep away all of President Biden’s energy policies.

“I don’t think the stops and starts are the right thing for businesses,” Woods told the Wall Street Journal. “It is extremely inefficient.”

But while the prospect of a sharp reversal in policy is a concern, the appointment of two senior officials who have been champions for investment in energy, with a brief to continue that work in the federal government, will be welcomed by many in the industry.

The power and renewables sector is threatened by the potential curtailment or elimination of the production and investment tax credits (PTC and ITC) for wind, solar and storage. But it could benefit from other changes under a Trump administration, including permitting reform and regulatory changes that could make it easier to add new transmission capacity.

Wood Mackenzie’s “severe downside scenario” represents a worst-case outlook, with total installations of wind, solar and storage over the next decade about 30% lower than in our previous base case forecast. But for that to play out, several factors have to turn against the industry, including not only a phase-out of the PTC and ITC, but also increased permitting challenges. If the new administration lives up to its rhetoric about supporting investment in all kinds of energy, permitting and regulation could become easier, not harder.

However, the new administration’s plans raise important questions about the balance of supply and demand for energy, and especially for natural gas. President-elect Trump has promised to end immediately the “pause” on approvals for new LNG export projects, which will add to demand for US gas over time. A surge in gas-fired power generation, which the new administration sees as important for supplying new data centres for AI, would add additional demand pressure.

On the supply side, Wood Mackenzie analysts think government regulations and access to acreage are not the most important issues. US oil and gas production is determined principally by commodity prices, cash flows and corporate capital allocation strategies. The federal government can take actions that will help, including expediting investment in new pipeline infrastructure. But it cannot guarantee that additional production will flow.

Those conditions, with stronger demand but a limited supply response, would be bullish for energy prices. Although President-elect Trump’s stated goal is to drive down energy costs for American consumers, it is possible that his policies could have the opposite effect.

COP29 makes little progress in its first week

The election victory for President-elect Trump, who plans to take the US out of the Paris climate agreement for a second time, cast a shadow over the first week of the COP29 climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan. There were more signs of disharmony among the assembled nations, with Argentina withdrawing its official delegation, and France’s environment minister choosing not to attend after a diplomatic spat with the hosts Azerbaijan.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, negotiators are attempting to secure a global agreement on climate finance, which could pledge more than US$1 trillion a year in investment, loans and grants to low- and middle-income countries to support emissions reductions and adaptation to the impacts of climate change. So far, there appears to have been little movement on agreeing a deal.

The conference began with an announcement of significant progress towards finalising the rules for international carbon markets under Article 6 of the Paris agreement. But on that issue, too, much work remains before the market can start working as intended.

One group of leading figures in international climate policy has argued that the entire process of COP negotiations is “no longer fit for purpose”.

Amid major conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, which country do Brits think is the biggest threat to global peace?

To find out, Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu visualized data from a YouGov UK survey conducted in April 2024 with a sample size of 5,248 adults.

Data and Key Takeaways

The data featured in this infographic is also listed in the table below.

From these results, we can see that almost half of Brits believe Russia is the biggest threat to world peace. This is of course, due to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, along with a variety of historical reasons.

When asked about which side was winning the conflict, a majority (44%) of Brits believed neither side had an advantage. 26% believed Russia had the advantage, while only 6% said the same for Ukraine.

The country with the second-highest share of responses is China, at 11%. This could be due to the looming threat of China’s potential invasion of Taiwan by 2030.

According to other YouGov surveys, 60% of Brits believe China is a rival or enemy of the UK, while only 12% believe the country is an ally or friend.

If you enjoy infographics like these, check out the Public Opinion category on Voronoi.

By Alex Kimani of OilPrice.com

Two months ago, Nigeria’s beleaguered energy sector witnessed a very significant event: the Dangote Oil Refinery began producing gasoline and selling it domestically to Nigeria’s state oil firm, Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC), marking the first time in decades Africa’s largest oil producer is refining its own crude. The state-of-the-art $20 billion refinery was launched in January 2024, but only began producing gasoline in September, expected to reach full operations in November. The giant refinery has a capacity to process 650,000 barrels of crude per day, more than enough for the country’s needs. To sweeten the deal further, the facility is buying crude and selling refined fuels in Nigeria in the local currency, saving the country’s much-needed foreign exchange, especially the US dollar.

Unfortunately for Aliko Dangote, Africa’s second richest man and owner of the refinery, his bold move has put him on a collision course with what he refers to as Nigeria’s ‘oil mafia’.

“I knew there would be a fight. But I didn’t know that the mafia in oil, they are stronger than the mafia in drugs,“ Mr Dangote told an investment conference in June.

“They don’t want the trade to stop. It’s a cartel. Dangote comes along and he’s going to disrupt them entirely. Their business is at risk,” says Mr Emmanuel, a Nigerian oil expert.

According to the BBC, since oil was discovered in the West African nation in 1956, the country’s downstream sector has largely been a cesspit of shady deals with little accountability by the NNPC. For decades, Nigeria has been producing and exporting its crude which is then refined abroad. NNPC swaps Nigeria’s crude oil for refined products, including petrol, which are shipped back home. Incredibly, it only started publishing its accounts five years ago, despite the fact that oil revenue accounts for nearly 90% of Nigeria’s export earnings. In other words, until recently, only the NNPC knew exactly how much money changed hands and who was involved in these “oil swaps”.

Dangote’s new refinery should definitely be a boon for the country. Unfortunately, its arrival has coincided with developments completely out of his control. Since the 1970s, the NNPC has been subsidizing fuel prices for local buyers. Every year, the state-owned firm has been gradually clawing this money back by depositing lower royalty payments with the Nigerian treasury. However, Nigeria’s new President Bola Tinubu was forced to scrap the subsidy in 2023 after it cost the government $10bn, more than 40% of the total money it collected in taxes. Further, he stopped the policy of artificially propping up the value of the naira, and let market forces determine its value. Nigerians are now paying ~$2.30 per gallon of gasoline, dirt-cheap by U.S. standards but triple what they were paying just a couple of years ago.

Only time will tell whether the Dangote Refinery is able to achieve its full potential. Nigeria is the home of the famous Bonny Light crude, a light-sweet crude oil grade produced at the Bonny oil hub and an important benchmark crude for all West African crude production. Bonny Light has particularly good gasoline yields, which has made it a popular crude for U.S. refiners, particularly on the U.S. East Coast. Two years ago, Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCGROUP) CEO Melee Kyari revealed that Nigeria is losing nearly all the oil output at oil hub Bonny,

“As you may be aware, because of the very unfortunate acts of vandals along our major pipelines from Atlas Cove all the way to Ibadan, and all others connecting all the 37 depots that we have across the country, none of them can take delivery of products today. The reason is very simple. For some of the lines, for instance, from Warri to Benin, we haven’t operated for 15 years. Every molecule of product that we put gets lost. Do you remember the sad fire incident close to Sapele that killed so many people? We had to shut it down, and as we speak, we have a high level of losses on our product pipeline,” he said.

Oil theft remains a major problem for the Nigerian energy sector, and could hinder the refinery from buying all of its crude locally.

“NNPC doesn’t have enough crude for Dangote. Despite all this instruction to give ample supply of crude to the refinery, NNPC can’t supply Dangote with more than 300,000 barrels per day,” says Mr Akinosho of the Africa Oil+Gas Report told BBC.

Meanwhile, the oil and gas multinational divestment from the Niger Delta that kicked off over a decade has hit a peak.  Numerous oil and gas majors have exited the Nigerian market over the past few years despite Africa’s largest economy opening its doors for wider exploration courtesy of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) 2021. Nigeria’s oil production has declined to 1.3 million barrels per day currently from around 2.1 million barrels per day in 2018.

In yet another development which sets up the Western allies and Russia for a future potential direct military clash, the United Kingdom and Moldova have inked a new defense pact to counter ‘Russian aggression’.

It was announced and confirmed by British Foreign Secretary David Lammy while he visited the Moldovan capital of Chisinau on Wednesday. The tiny Eastern European nation bordering Ukraine has experienced the same kind of internal political pro-EU vs. pro-Russia tug of war historically on display in other countries such as Ukraine or Georgia.

The UK foreign ministry described the new defense agreement as about “building on extensive cooperation between the two countries and strengthening Moldovan resilience against external threats.”

Lammy said, “Moldova is a vital security partner for the UK, which is why, to reinforce their resilience against Russian aggression and to keep British streets safe, I am deepening cooperation on irregular migration and launching a new defence and security partnership.”

The British top diplomat called out Russia directly in his comments, accusing it of interference in Moldova’s sovereign affairs. “With Ukraine next door, Moldovans are constantly reminded of Russia’s oppression, imperialism and aggression,” he said.

Lammy continued, “Despite unprecedented Kremlin interference, the people of Moldova have chosen freedom, democracy, and independence. A decision we must help them protect.”

A broader foreign ministry statement also described that “The Foreign Secretary has committed to working with President Sandu, who won re-election earlier this month, despite unprecedented Russian interference, to bolster Moldova’s resilience against the growing Russian hybrid threats they face. He will also offer UK support to tackle corruption in the region.”

An additional £5 million of UK humanitarian funding for Moldova was also announced. The Kremlin has long complained that Western NGOs in Eastern Europe play a dual purpose, using aid as well as their status to spread influence on behalf of foreign powers.

One thing which has long alarmed the West is the presence of Russian ‘peacekeeping’ troops in Moldova’s breakaway Transnistria region. Pressure also heightened after last June the European Union formally launched accession talks with Moldova, putting yet more distance between it and Russia.

As for Transnistria, although it has diverse ethnic demographics almost equally apportioned between Russians, Moldovans, Romanians and Ukrainians, the Russian demographic slightly ekes out its counterparts with a plurality of 29% of Transnistrians belonging to the group.

The pro-Russian cultural sentiment of the region is exemplified by its flag, which has remained the same as it was when Transnistria was a part of the Soviet Union. That representative Russian demographic, coupled with broader dissatisfaction of the Moldovan government, has fostered support for assimilation into the Russian Federation for quite some time.

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Modernity.news,

A school in the UK announced to parents that it was removing all Christmas references from a panto in order to make children feel “safe”.

Yes, really.

The head teacher of Wherwell Primary School in Andover, Hampshire, banned any reference to the festive season from a Jack and The Beanstalk show so as not to offend any non-Christians who were attending.

Mandy Ovenden said the embargo was necessary in order to make children feel “safe” and “valued”.

“When we chose to invite the travelling pantomime to Wherwell, our request was a practical step to ensure all children at the school would be able to attend and enjoy the show,” said the school.

“Our aim, as always, is to foster inclusivity in our school community, and be a place where children and their families feel safe, welcomed and valued.”

Ovenden said the school had requested the company putting on the play “that the show contain no reference to Christmas.”

According to a report by the Telegraph, parents were outraged, asserting that the decision “shouldn’t be allowed” in order to merely ensure that “a few people will not be offended.”

In order to ensure a “fully inclusive event,” the head teacher asked that all Christmas references be eradicated because, “We have a number of families who either do not celebrate Christmas or do so in a different way.”

Chaplins, the company behind the Jack and The Beanstalk play, said it normally included references to Christmas at this time of year.

Because God forbid children in a supposedly Christian country be exposed to anything related in any way to Christmas during Christmastime.

EU elites and globalists with extensive political influence have been on the war-path the past several years as it has become increasingly evident that the European populace is shifting more conservative with each new election.  In Germany, leftist officials are attempting an outright ban of the conservative AFD Party, primarily because they stand against mass immigration (a position which progressives claim is “xenophobic”). 

The AFD is currently the second most popular political party in Germany and is expected to gain substantial influence in the 2025 federal elections, unless their candidates are blocked from participation.    

In Austria, the conservative Freedom Party won a parliamentary election victory in September, though left wing and centrist parties are seeking to cement a coalition to nullify the FP’s ability to govern.  The European media has consistently compared the success of the Freedom Party to the rise of the Third Reich – The only fallback of failing leftists is to claim their opponents are “literally Hitler.”

A similar coalition coup was exploited in France under Emmanuel Macron in order to stop Marine Le Pen’s National Rally Party.  The coalition is a fragmented mess but it served its purpose of disrupting the will of French voters seeking smaller government and secure borders. 

Keep in mind, the same people that constantly howl about “threats to democracy” are now trying to silence some of the largest political parties in Europe because they won’t submit to progressive ideologies.  For example, if the AFD is banned, who is going to represent the will of millions of conservative German voters?  The leftist establishment does not care about those voters or their concerns, nor do they care about fair elections.  Their vision of democracy is a sham.

There is, in fact, a coordinated effort by the leftist regime in Europe to shut down any and all public dissent, starting with opposition movements and their access to the ballot box.  Recent news from France highlights this reality, as efforts are now underway under the French government to pursue legal actions against Marine Le Pen. 

Le Pen has been accused by Paris prosecutors of using money intended for EU parliamentary aides to instead pay staff who worked for the party between 2009 and 2016.  One problem is that the law Le Pen is being charged with was not created until 2016.  Furthermore, Le Pen argues that National Rally employees can also work within the EU parliament and that the two roles often overlap.  She assert that no laws were broken and no one received EU funds that were not already owed to them.

If convicted Le Pen could receive up to 5 years in prison (3 suspended) and extensive fines of €300,000, but the real kicker is that she could also be banned from participating in elections for five years even if she files an appeal.  Government officials admit that Le Pen might not spend any time in jail (she might become a conservative martyr if that happened), but her inability to run for office would effectively end the chances of the National Rally in the 2027 elections.  It’s an election which many analysts suggest could catapult the NR to power in France.   

“It’s no surprise,” Le Pen told reporters after the prosecution’s closing arguments. “I note that the prosecutors’ claims are extremely outrageous.”

Le Pen said she felt prosecutors were “only interested” in preventing her from running for president in 2027. “I understood that well,” she said.  The case is set to conclude in early 2025.

Establishment media outlets accuse Le Pen of using “Trump-style rhetoric” to distract from her charges.  The Guardian claims:

“Yet just as January 6 did not stop Trump from being able to move back into the White House, Le Pen’s strategy may well work in her favour. The longer her claims of a political trial get airtime without proper contextualisation, the more likely the French public may think there is some truth to it – it chimes with the widespread anti-elite sentiment among French voters…”

This constitutes considerable gaslighting on the part of The Guardian.  The “contextualization” is that Le Pen is innocent until proven guilty, and there has been a clear and observable pattern of persecution of right-leaning political figures across the western world in order to stop their constituents from having a say in the governmental process.  Trump is just one example of lawfare being used to create accusations of criminality from the thinnest of threads.  The American public was savvy enough to see through the smoke and noise. 

It’s undeniable that Le Pen’s situation rings rather similar and The Guardian is pretending as if she’s being conniving for pointing it out.

The establishment acts as if it is the purveyor of law and order, but only when it serves their purposes and keeps them at the bureaucratic helm.  The will of the people is only acceptable when it aligns with the designs of the elites.  They are actively conjuring a narrative in which the political process is only democratic so long as conservative groups are rejected.  Their mere presence is painted as an abomination and their success is treated as an existential threat to civilization.

The fact that progressives are taking the mask off and going full authoritarian to stop right wing movements from winning fair and square suggests they are deeply afraid and clinging to the last vestiges of their unnatural reign.         

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday announced he has chosen former acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker to be the U.S. ambassador to NATO.

In a statement released on social media, the president-elect said Whitaker was selected because he is a “strong warrior and loyal patriot, who will ensure the United States’ interests are advanced and defended.”

A former acting attorney general during his first term in office, Whitaker will also “strengthen relationships with our NATO allies, and stand firm in the face of threats to peace and stability,” Trump said.

Whitaker, he also suggested, will promote Trump’s “peace through strength” foreign policy agenda and has “full confidence” in his abilities.

Other than Whitaker, Trump also selected former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee to be his U.S. ambassador to Israel and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. All three roles require confirmation in the Senate unless Trump opts to use recess appointments.

Whitaker, a former University of Iowa football tight end, started his role as acting attorney general in November 2018 before leaving in February 2019, after Trump’s then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions resigned at the then-president’s request.

Before that, he served as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Iowa between 2004 and 2009. Later, he was Sessions’s chief of staff from October 2017 until November 2018.

So far, Whitaker has not publicly commented on Trump’s announcement.

Since leaving office, Whitaker has frequently appeared on Fox News, giving his opinions on the many of legal issues Trump had faced since he left the White House in early 2021.

About two weeks ago, he told Fox News that he believes Trump should be granted a “clean slate” from his legal cases, following Trump’s election win on Nov. 5.

In that segment, he also responded to questions on whether he would serve as Trump’s attorney general. However, Trump last week named former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) to be his attorney general, although some Republican senators have signaled in media interviews that Gaetz’s nomination may turn into a protracted, uphill battle for Trump to get him nominated.

Earlier this week, Whitaker wrote on X that “weaponization of the” Department of Justice will be “rooted out once and for all” under Trump.

As ambassador to NATO, also known as the U.S. permanent representative to NATO, Whitaker will be tasked with advancing the United States’ foreign policy interests within the 32-member military alliance.

“The permanent representative helps formulate and articulate the U.S. position on NATO security matters as well as U.S. policy toward NATO. At National Security Council (NSC) meetings, they outline U.S. policy toward NATO and potential opportunities for cooperation with NATO allies,” the Council on Foreign Relations states. “They further advise NSC participants on the positions and actions of other NATO member states.”

In the past two years, NATO allowed both Finland and Sweden to join its ranks in the midst of the Russia–Ukraine war, which started in February 2022. Members of NATO, including the United States, have been continually supplying Ukrainian troops with weapons in the conflict.

The U.S. Embassy in Kyiv closed down on Wednesday after it received “specific information of a potential significant air attack” and after Russia’s Ministry of Defense claimed that Ukraine used U.S.-made long-range army tactical missile systems (ATACMSs) to strike its territory for the first time since the war began.

On the campaign trail, Trump has said that he wants to quickly end the war in Ukraine after taking office. A member of Trump’s transition team and his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., claimed on social media that the current administration provided the ATACMSs to Ukraine to “get World War 3 going.”

Submitted by Alastair Crooke 

There Are No “Easy Wars” Left To Fight, But Do Not Mistake The Longing For One

Israelis, as a whole, are exhibiting a rosy assurance that they can harness Trump, if not to the full annexation of the Occupied Territories (Trump in his first term did not support such annexation), but rather, to ensnare him into a war on Iran. Many (even most) Israelis are raring for war on Iran and an aggrandisement of their territory (devoid of Arabs). They are believing the puffery that Iran ‘lies naked’, staggeringly vulnerable, before a US and Israeli military strike.  

Trump’s Team nominations, so far, reveal a foreign policy squad of fierce supporters of Israel and of passionate hostility to Iran. The Israeli media term it a ‘dream team’ for Netanyahu. It certainly looks that way.

The Israel Lobby could not have asked for more. They have got it. And with the new CIA chief, they get a known ultra China hawk as a bonus.

But in the domestic sphere the tone is precisely the converse: The key nomination for ‘cleaning the stables’ is Matt Gaetz as Attorney General; he is a real “bomb thrower”. And for the Intelligence clean-up, Tulsi Gabbard is appointed as Director of National Intelligence. All intelligence agencies will report to her, and she will be responsible for the President’s Daily briefing. The intel assessments may thus begin to reflect something closer to reality. 

The deep Inter-Agency structure has reason to be very afraid; they are panicking — especially over Gaetz.

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have the near impossible task of cutting out-of-control federal spending and currency printing. The System is deeply dependent on the bloat of government spending to keep the cogs and levers of the mammoth ‘security’ boondoggle whirring. It is not going to be yielded up without a bitter fight.

So, on the one hand, the Lobby gets a dream team (Israel), but on the other side (the domestic sphere), it gets a renegade team.  

This must be deliberate. Trump knows that Biden’s legacy of bloating GDP with government jobs and excessive public spending is the real ‘time bomb’ awaiting him. Again the withdrawal symptoms, as the drug of easy money is withdrawn, may prove incendiary. Moving to a structure of tariffs and low taxes will be disruptive.

Whether deliberate or not, Trump is keeping his cards close to his chest. We have only glimpses of intent — and the water is being seriously muddied by the infamous ‘Inter-Agency’ grandees. For example, in respect to the Pentagon sanctioning private-sector contractors to work in Ukraine, this was done in coordination with “inter-agency stakeholders”. 

The old nemesis that paralyzed his first term again faces Trump. Then, during the Ukraine impeachment process, one witness (Vindman), when asked why he would not defer to the President’s explicit instructions, replied that whilst Trump has his view on Ukraine policy, that stance did NOT align with that of the ‘Inter-Agency’ agreed position. In plain language, Vindman denied that a US president has agency in foreign policy formulation.

In short, the ‘Inter-Agency structure’ was signalling to Trump that military support for Ukraine must continue.

When the Washington Post published their detailed story of a Trump-Putin phone call — that the Kremlin emphatically states never happened — the deep structures of policy were simply telling Trump that it would be they who determine what the shape of the US ‘solution’ for Ukraine would be.

Similarly, when Netanyahu boasts to have spoken to Trump and that Trump “shares” his views regarding Iran, Trump was being indirectly instructed what his policy towards Iran needs to be. All the (false) rumours about appointments to his Team too, were but the interagency signalling their choices for his key posts. No wonder confusion reigns.

So, what can be deduced at this early stage?  If there is a common thread, it has been a constant refrain that Trump is against war. And that he demands from his picks personal loyalty and no ties of obligation to the Lobby or the Swamp.  

So, is the packing of his Administration with ‘Israel Firsters’ an indication that Trump is edging toward a ‘Realist’s Faustian pact’ to destroy Iran in order to cripple China’s energy supply source (90% from Iran), and thus weaken China? — Two birds with one stone, so to speak? 

The collapse of Iran would also weaken Russia and hobble the BRICS’ transport-corridor projects. Central Asia needs both Iranian energy and its key transport corridors linking China, Iran, and Russia as primary nodes of Eurasian commerce. 

When the RAND Organisation, the Pentagon think-tank, recently published a landmark appraisal of the 2022 National Defence Strategy (NDS), its findings were stark: An unrelentingly bleak analysis of every aspect of the US war machine. In brief, the US is “not prepared”, the appraisal argued, in any meaningful way for serious ‘competition’ with its major adversaries — and is vulnerable or even significantly outmatched in every sphere of warfare.

The US, the RAND appraisal continues, could in short order be drawn into a war across multiple theatres with peer and near-peer adversaries — and it could lose. It warns that the US public has not internalized the costs of the US losing its position as the world superpower. The US must therefore engage globally with a presence—military, diplomatic, and economic—to preserve influence worldwide.

Indeed, as one respected commentator has noted, the ‘Empire at all Costs’ cult (i.e. the RAND Organisation zeitgeist) is now “more desperate than ever to find a war it can fight to restore its fortunes and prestige”.  

And China would be altogether a different proposition for a demonstrative act of destruction in order “to preserve US influence worldwide” — for the US is “not prepared” for serious conflict with its peer adversaries: Russia or China, RAND says. 

The straitened situation of the US after decades of fiscal excess and offshoring (the backdrop to its current weakened military industrial base) now makes kinetic war with China or Russia or “across multiple theatres” a prospect to be shunned.

The point that the commentator above makes is that there are no ‘easy wars’ left to fight. And that the reality (brutally outlined by RAND) is that the US can choose one — and only one war to fight.  Trump may not want any war, but the Lobby grandees — all supporters of Israel, if not active Zionists supporting the displacement of Palestinians — want war. And they believe they can get one. 

Put starkly and plainly: Has Trump thought this through? Have the others in the Trump Team reminded him that in today’s world, with US military strength slipping away, there no longer are any ‘easy wars’ to fight, although Zionists believe that with a decapitation strike on Iran’s religious and IRGC leadership (on the lines of the Israel’s strikes on Hizbullah leaders in Beirut), the Iranian people would rise up against their leaders, and side with Israel for a ‘New Middle East’.  

Netanyahu has just made his second broadcast to the Iranian people promising them early salvation. He and his government are not waiting to ask Trump to nod his consent to the annexation of all Occupied Palestinian Territories. That project is being implemented on the ground. It is unfolding now. Netanyahu and his cabinet have the ethnic cleansing ‘bit between their teeth’. Will Trump be able to roll it back? How so? Or will he succumb to becoming ‘genocide Don’?  

This putative ‘Iran War’ is following the same narrative cycle as with Russia: ‘Russia is weak; its military is poorly trained; its equipment mostly recycled from the Soviet era; its missiles and artillery in short supply’. Zbig Brzezinski earlier had taken the logic to its conclusion in The Grand Chessboard (1997): Russia would have no choice but to submit to the expansion of NATO and to the geopolitical dictates of the US. That was ‘then’ (a little more than a year ago). Russia took the western challenge — and today is in the driving seat in Ukraine, whilst the West looks on helplessly.

This last month, it was US retired General Jack Keane, the strategic analyst for Fox News, who argued that Israel’s air strike on Iran had left it “essentially naked”, with most air defences “taken down” and its missile production factories destroyed by Israel’s 26 October strikes. Iran’s vulnerability, Keane said, is “simply staggering”.

Kean channels the early Brzezinski: His message is clear — Iran will be an ‘easy war’. That forecast however, is likely to be revealed as dead wrong. And, if pursued, will lead to a complete military and economic disaster for Israel. But do not rule out the distinct possibility that Netanyahu — besieged on all fronts and teetering on the brink of internal crisis and even jail — is desperate enough to do it. His is, after all, a Biblical mandate that he pursues for Israel!

Iran likely will launch a painful response to Israel before the 20 January Presidential Inauguration. Its riposte will demonstrate Iran’s unexpected and unforeseen military innovation. What the US and Israel will then do may well open the door to wider regional war. Sentiment across the region seethes at the slaughter in the Occupied Territories and in Lebanon. 

Trump may not appreciate just how isolated the US and Israel are among Israel’s Arab and Sunni neighbors. The US is stretched so thin, and its forces across the region are so vulnerable to the hostility that the daily slaughter incubates, that a regional war might be enough to bring the entire house of cards tumbling down. The crisis would pitch Trump into a financial crisis that could sink his domestic economic aspirations too.

Authored by Susan Crabtree via ReaalClearPolitics,

It just might be the most personal hiring decision President-elect Trump will ever make, but if he’s already chosen, he’s keeping the contenders in suspense.

After surviving two assassination attempts in roughly two months, Donald Trump is in the awkward position of owing his life to the Secret Service agents and officers who intervened to protect him, even as he remains deeply critical of the failures that allowed the near-misses to occur.

And the threats against Trump, Vice President-elect J.D. Vance, and the leaders of the incoming administration aren’t going away. In late September, then-Rep. Matt Gaetz, Trump’s controversial choice for attorney general, said he was briefed by senior members of the Department of Homeland Security that there were five known assassination teams threatening Trump’s life, three of which he said were foreign. Just three days after the election, the Justice Department charged three people in connection to an alleged Iranian plot to assassinate Trump.

Still, just days after the second attempt on this life, Trump heaped praise on the agent for quick action after spotting suspect Ryan Routh’s rifle sticking out of the bushes along the perimeter of his Florida golf course and then opening fire. Trump contrasted that swift intervention with the first attempt July 13 when a bullet grazed his ear.

“And, in this particular case, you had a very sharp agent, as good as you could find, and did a fantastic job,” Trump said in an interview on Fox News’s “Hannity.” 

“But somebody could have missed the barrel of that rifle,” he added. “Somebody of lesser talents or somebody that was distracted could have missed or could have been shot, I mean, frankly, could have also been shot.” 

Trump acknowledged the incident at his golf club in West Palm Beach ”worked out very well” but said the July 13 incident in Butler, Pennsylvania, when shooter Thomas Crooks killed rally goer Corey Comperatore and wounded two others before being shot by a Secret Service counter sniper, “was a very different story.”

“Somebody should have been on that building. And that’s a different story. But they also showed great … they were very brave, because, when those bullets were flying, they were … they were … trying to protect me.” 

The dual sentiments no doubt factor into Trump’s decision-making regarding his choice to lead the beleaguered Secret Service. Even before the two assassination attempts, the agency was facing criticism over its DEI hiring priorities, lack of thorough applicant vetting, and the lowering of its training and physical fitness standards. At the same time, Secret Service morale hovered among the lowest of all federal agencies.

The congressional reports and a review panel’s findings also cite the inexperience of two agents in charge of security for the Butler rally, as well as the failure of supervisors to re-check their work and make the necessary changes. They also chronicled a litany of mistakes, including failing to check whether a local law enforcement agent was posted on the building where the Crooks perched, not including that building in the official event perimeter, and maintaining siloed communications between the Secret Service and local law enforcement partners.

Even though Trump was thankful for the eagle-eyed agent who spotted Routh hiding in the bushes at his West Palm Beach golf course, critics faulted his Secret Service detail for failing to sweep the perimeter. The 58-year-old had been camping out on the perimeter of the course 12 hours ahead of time but went unnoticed until Trump was within several hundred feet of his loaded rifle. Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe explained the decision not to search the perimeter of the golf course because the golf game was considered off-the-record, or “OTR” in agency parlance, meaning it was not on Trump’s official schedule even though he regularly played the course on the weekends.

After the attempts on Trump’s life, the agency faced an avalanche of criticism from congressional committees, internal agency whistleblowers, and a scathing report from a bipartisan Independent Review Panel recommending a thorough overhaul of the Secret Service leadership.  

The two assassination attempts within two months were the lowest point for the Secret Service since President Ronald Reagan was shot in early 1981. But Trump’s big win has boosted confidence within the agency that major reforms will begin once he names and installs a new director.

Now that Trump has won, and Secret Service employees expect the incoming president to choose new leaders, agents and officers are deeply divided on who is the best candidate to thoroughly overhaul the agency. The top reform many seek is to allow the Secret Service leaders to jettison DEI priorities and return to making hiring decisions instead of delegating recruiting and vetting to administrative personnel unfamiliar with the rigors of the protective assignments.

The top two names circulating among current and retired Secret Service agents and officers are Sean Curran, the leader of Trump’s personal detail, and Dan Bongino, a conservative commentator and host of a popular podcast who previously served for 12 years in the Secret Service.

Both were with Trump Saturday night for the Ultimate Fighting Championship match between Jon Jones and Stipe Mocic at Madison Square Garden. Curran was a part of Trump’s security team that night, and Bongino was part of Trump’s entourage of Cabinet picks, politicians, and celebrities, including Elon Musk, Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr., Dana White, Joe Rogan, Speaker Mike Johnson, Kid Rock, and Jelly Roll.

During the event, according to a Secret Service source, Bongino told other special agents protecting Trump that “Help is on the way.”

During Bongino’s Monday podcast, however, he was far more coy about Trump’s, and his, intentions.

“So, I know a lot of you are interested in a lot of the behind the scenes about who’s what … I’m just here again to repeat, none of this stuff is my decision, okay – about anything,” he told his listeners.

“You guys know what I’m talking about. And there’s a lot to think about if that decision were to happen, and you guys will be the first to know,” he added. “Because I love you, and you guys matter. And so just hang with me, you know?”

Curran was caught that night at the Madison Square Garden fight in an elevator pic with Trump and Musk. Curran usually tries to operate behind the scenes, though his image is immortalized in the iconic photo of Trump in the immediate aftermath of the first assassination attempt. Curran appears to Trump’s left as the then-GOP nominee pumps his fist in the air, blood trickling down his cheek and an American flag fluttering in the background.

The choice between Curran and Bongino is highly competitive, and each have constituencies pulling for them. Trump is very close to Curran, who served as the assistant special agent in charge of Trump’s security detail while he was president and then moved to lead the detail in 2021, when Biden won and Trump was out of office. That top leadership role continued while Trump was running for reelection. Curran’s supporters for the director job credit him for pushing back against the outmoded protocol that because Trump is technically a former president, he shouldn’t therefore be allotted more security assets.

Instead, Curran continually tried to persuade Secret Service top brass to allocate higher security resources because Trump obviously faced far more threats as one of the most well-known and controversial political figures in the world and could not be treated like other former presidents. Until the assassination attempts, however, Secret Service leaders rejected those requests, and sources say Curran has the receipts – a long-running written record of those leadership denials.

Curran was successful in obtaining more security resources for Mar-a-Lago even before the assassination attempts, although the agency was so slow in installing them that a juvenile managed to enter the property and jump into a pool late last year.

Secret Service sources say that just a few days after Trump’s decisive election win, Curran told fellow agents that he believed Trump would tap him for the top role. Many veteran agents have reached out to RCP to back Curran’s candidacy, arguing that he’s an even-keeled leader and exceptional agent regarding his training, drilling, and performance levels.

But others have faulted him for allowing an inexperienced female agent to serve as one of two agents in charge of security plans for the Butler rally, without supervisors modifying the plan after required walk-throughs and extra scrutiny. Others, including Erik Prince, a former Navy SEAL who runs the security firm Blackwater, have criticized the Secret Service leadership for a “lack of seriousness” in securing Trump throughout this campaign. He also said the perimeter should have been extended to 1,000 meters from the stage because that’s how far an expert sniper can accurately shoot.

Trump has repeatedly praised the agents who put themselves in the line of fire to protect him in the moments after he was shot in Butler, but Prince wasn’t as impressed.

“The Secret Service detail did an awful job getting Trump off the X and let him stand up again,” Prince told a panel of Republican House members at the Heritage Foundation in August.

“[It showed] great instincts of the president to come back defiant, having just been shot in the head to come back and say, ‘Fight, fight, fight,’” Prince acknowledged. “But he never should have had the opportunity to do that because his detail should have put him horizontal and moved him off there immediately.”

If Trump taps Curran to lead the Secret Service, he will reject the recommendations of two bipartisan blue-ribbon commissions who recommended in 2015 and again this year that the next president choose someone outside the agency to fill the director role.

Dan Bongino for many years has been highly critical of the Secret Service, and he was especially so after the July 13 attempt on Trump’s life. Bongino also sat on the Heritage panel to Prince’s left and took a broader view. The conservative commentator argued that the problems in the Secret Service were systemic and directly related to DEI initiatives and the lowering of meritocracy and training standards.

Rep. Cori Mills, a Florida Republican who had served as a member of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division before becoming a security specialist in the private defense sector, appeared on the same panel.  

Responding to Bongino’s testimony, Mills said, “I think you’re saying DEI plays a major role, not meritocracy, with regards to the current culture that has been fostered [at the Secret Service.]

Bongino provided a terse response: “Not a [role] – but the major role,” he stressed.

The former Fox News host has a solid following on social media and among active and retired Secret Service agents and officers who argue that he would go to the mat to overhaul the agency and end DEI and other non-meritocracy hiring priorities. But some fear Bongino has been away from the Secret Service too long to know how to sort out the bad apples in leadership. Others argue that it depends on who Bongino would tap as his deputy to run the day-to-day agency operations while he’s dealing with the bigger picture and broad reforms.

Because Trump will continue to face threats from Iran throughout his time in the Oval Office, the Secret Service director will no doubt have an elevated role in the Trump administration and will likely be constantly interacting with the intelligence community to assess the threat levels. If confirmed, that elite group of national security Cabinet members would likely include Tulsi Gabbard as the director of national intelligence, or DNI, and John Ratcliffe, who previously served as DNI and whom Trump nominated to become his CIA director, as well as whomever Trump names as FBI director.

Kash Patel, a former National Security Council official in the last Trump administration, and former Rep. Mike Rogers, who had served as an FBI agent for several years, are contenders for the FBI director job. Bongino’s brash style may be better equipped to square off with those outsized egos and cut through the agency’s bureaucracy and woke policies. Some in the Secret Service community are hoping Trump appoints a leader who is listening to the rank-and-file to distinguish the bad actors from the hard-working agents and push out the ineffective and manipulative leaders.

Besides Bongino and Curran, there are several other top contenders to lead the Secret Service and the necessary reforms, including Tom Armas, a U.S. Marine general who also previously served several years as a Secret Service agent but spent the majority of his career in the military. Armas worked with Bongino in the Secret Service’s New York Field Office and has received high praise for his 9/11 bravery. Armas ran into the collapsing World Trade Center buildings and carried many people to safety amidst the chaos, dust, and debris.

If selected, Armas would follow in the footsteps of Randolph “Tex” Alles, a formerU.S. Marine Corps general and the first Secret Service director selected from outside the agency in its 159-year history. Trump chose Alles to lead the agency from 2017 to 2019. During that time, Alles built a good rapport among rank-and-file agents, but many believed several agency leaders successfully sabotaged him. Alles was swept out of the agency when Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielson left her post in April 2019.

Secret Service sources are also touting Michael D’Ambrosio, a respected senior career agent and former platoon commander in the U.S. Marines, for a leadership post. D’Ambrosio aggressively helped rush Trump off stage during a Nevada campaign rally eight years ago when a protester rushed the stage.

Other names in the mix include Jim Lewis, a former Secret Service agent who now serves as a senior Department of Homeland Security official, and Billy Davis, a high-performing agent who retired in 2015 after 29 years with the Secret Service (Davis is also known as a former Clemson University football player).

Susan Crabtree is RealClearPolitics’ national political correspondent.