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By Stuart Chris of FreightWaves

Suez Canal revenue has plunged 60% this year, a loss of $7 billion for Egypt, amid attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and ongoing regional tensions.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in a statement blamed rising geopolitical challenges for the decline but offered no other details, according to published reports.

Egypt collects tolls on vessels that transit the canal, a key route for maritime commerce. 

Since late 2023, Houthi fighters based in Yemen have disrupted global trade by attacking merchant and naval vessels in the Red Sea, just south of the canal. Most major container ship operators have diverted ships away from the region and on longer, more expensive voyages around the Horn of Africa, for services connecting Asia with the United States, Mideast and Mediterranean. The diversions have pushed up shipping rates and boosted carriers’ profits by billions of dollars.

A multinational force of American and European military has patrolled the area, providing escorts for merchant vessels.

The Iran-backed Houthis have said the missile and drone assaults are in solidarity with Palestinians in the Israel-Hamas war. But the attacks have recently tailed off as Iran grapples with its own internal issues, and the Houthis have increasingly targeted Israel itself. The fall of the Assad regime in Syria and withdrawal of Russia from ports there have added to the uncertainty surrounding events in the Middle East.   

Some observers forecast a return of Red Sea shipping services as security improves, but likely not until the second half of 2025.

Authored by Drieu Godefridi via the Gatestone Institute,

Solar and wind power production falls drastically during unfavorable weather conditions. It happens, in fact, every year. This condition, however, now has far-reaching economic and environmental repercussions, revealing the flaws in an energy policy based on intermittent renewable energies. Why does Germany, while having one of the highest carbon footprints, now consume the most expensive electricity in Europe? How did the country lose its energy autonomy?

For the last fifteen years, Germany invested massively in solar and wind energy, while sabotaging its own nuclear power stations. By 2023, renewable energies accounted for 55% of electricity production in the country. In 2022, it was only 48%.

The main contribution to renewable energy has comes from wind power, at 31% of total production, followed by solar power at 12%, biomass at 8%, and other renewable sources such as hydroelectricity for the remaining 3.4%. In 2024, renewable energy accounted for almost 60% of German electricity production in the first half of the year. This production level, however, is smoothed out over a given period and does not reflect moments of crisis such as the “Dunkelflaute.”

Dunkelflaute

Literally “flat, dark calm,” Dunkelflaute is characterized by a simultaneous lack of wind and sun in winter, when demand for electricity in Germany is at its highest. These episodes last from a few days to several weeks, with wind and solar production sometimes falling to less than 20% of their capacity, and sometimes nothing. On December 12 of this year, for example, German electricity production from wind and solar power was thirty times lower than the demand for it.

Renewable policies would be bearable if they were based on a sustainable energy source — indifferent to the weather — such as nuclear power. In 2011, however, in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, Germany abruptly decided to phase out nuclear power, and gradually shut down fully operational plants. This decision reduced the country’s capacity to produce stable, predictable electricity and instead made heating, cooling and so on cruelly vulnerable to fluctuations in renewable energy sources. In short, when there is neither wind nor sun in Germany, the lights go out.

The phase-out of nuclear power has left Germany incapable of being self-sufficient in energy, especially during Dunkelflaute. The country imports electricity on a massive scale from France, Denmark and Poland, and has to use coal and lignite to produce electricity. Germany’s massive imports of electricity also lead to colossal increases in electricity prices for its neighbors.

The prices are indeed staggering. In 2024, the household price of electricity in Germany was the highest in Europe, at €400/MWh, reaching peaks of €900/MWh during Dunkelflaute episodes, compared to a much lower European average. By comparison, the average price in nuclear-powered France and Finland was €250/MWh over the same period (2024). And, in the United States, rates are 30% lower than in France. How is all that “sustainable” for Europe?

But this is “for the planet”, right? Not even close. Despite its commitment to so-called green energies, Germany still has a high carbon footprint due to its increased reliance on coal and lignite to make up for energy shortfalls. In 2024, the country remains the second-largest emitter of CO2 per unit of energy produced in Europe, with a significant proportion of electricity coming from fossil sources. Ten times more CO2 per unit of energy produced than France.

Economic and geopolitical repercussions

Germany’s high electricity prices are leading to the relocation of its industry, as companies look for sites where energy costs are more affordable. How can you stay viable when you pay three times more for electricity than your competitors? (Natural gas prices are even worse: five times more expensive in Europe than in the USA.)

Whole swathes of Germany’s proud industry are collapsing. We only remember the big names — VW, BASF, Mercedes-Benz — but every big company that disappears or downsizes takes with it a myriad of small and medium-sized enterprises that end up collapsing along with it. Energy-intensive sectors such as metallurgy and chemicals are particularly hard hit.

Finally, Germany’s increased dependence on its neighbors for energy supplies has been creating tensions in Europe. High electricity prices in Germany are being passed on to neighboring countries, making electricity unaffordable there and generating growing frustration. Discussions are emerging in Europe about withdrawing from certain energy agreements, particularly those relating to electricity imports.

In short, the Dunkelflaute is the symptom of a profound energy crisis, caused by an ideological, authoritarian, irrational and failed energy transition. Dependence on unreliable energy sources (wind, solar), combined with the hasty phase-out of nuclear power, has made Germany’s electricity the most expensive in Europe and compromises the country’s — and ultimately the continent’s — energy autonomy. The consequences are manifold: environmental, with high CO2 emissions; economic, with industry in steep decline, and geopolitical, with Germany’s neighbors fed up with its failing energy diktat.

Given Germany’s demographic and economic weight, this latest German misstep is proving to be yet another European catastrophe.

Drieu Godefridi is a jurist (University Saint-Louis, University of Louvain), philosopher (University Saint-Louis, University of Louvain) and PhD in legal theory (Paris IV-Sorbonne). He is an entrepreneur, CEO of a European private education group and director of PAN Medias Group. He is the author of The Green Reich (2020).

Despite advancements in car safety technology and stricter traffic laws, driving remains one of the leading causes of preventable deaths in the United States.

In 2022, 46,027 people died in motor vehicle crashes in the United States—a rate of 13.8 per 100,000 people.

This map, via Visual Capitalist’s Kayla Zhu, visualizes the number of motor vehicle deaths per 100,000 people by state in 2022.

The figures come from the National Safety Council, with data pulled from the National Center for Health Statistics and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Mississippi Has the Highest Number of Fatal Crashes

With 26 vehicle deaths per 100,000 people—nearly double the national average—the southern state of Mississippi has long been the worst state for fatal vehicle accidents per capita.

Rank	State	Motor vehicle deaths per 100,000 people
1	Mississippi	26.0
2	New Mexico	23.0
3	South Carolina	21.6
4	Arkansas	21.4
5	Louisiana	20.7
6	Montana	20.6
7	Alabama	20.5
8	Oklahoma	19.3
9	Tennessee	19.0
10	Wyoming	18.9
11	Arizona	18.6
12	South Dakota	18.4
13	Missouri	18.0
14	Georgia	17.5
15	Kentucky	17.4
16	North Carolina	17.3
17	Florida	16.7
18	West Virginia	16.3
19	Alaska	15.9
20	Kansas	15.6
21	Texas	15.3
22	Delaware	15.2
23	Indiana	14.8
24	Oregon	14.5
25	Maine	14.5
26	Colorado	14.3
27	Nebraska	14.2
28	Idaho	14.0
29	North Dakota	13.9
30	Nevada	13.8
31	California	12.9
32	Virginia	12.5
33	Vermont	12.5
34	Michigan	12.2
35	Iowa	12.0
36	Ohio	11.9
37	Wisconsin	11.2
38	New Hampshire	11.0
39	Washington	10.8
40	Illinois	10.7
41	Connecticut	10.7
42	Pennsylvania	10.3
43	Maryland	10.2
44	Minnesota	9.7
45	Utah	9.6
46	District of Columbia	8.8
47	Hawaii	7.8
48	New Jersey	7.7
49	Rhode Island	7.0
50	New York	7.0
51	Massachusetts	6.9

Speeding, drunk driving, and distracted driving are some of the most common reasons for car accidents in Mississippi. In 2016, drunk driving accounted for 18% of total traffic deaths in the state.

Additionally, as a predominantly rural state, accidents on Mississippi’s poorly-maintained rural roads usually happen far from hospitals, delaying life-saving measures.

Specifically, driving at night on Mississippi’s rural roads can often be deadly, as seen in this graphic. In Mississippi, as well as in second-ranked South Carolina, which also has a substantial rural population, the number of fatal traffic accidents peaked between 8 to 9 p.m.

While 2022 saw the first decrease (-2%) in motor vehicle deaths since 2019, over the past decade, motor vehicle deaths have increased by 30%, according to data from the National Safety Council.

Which country is the deadliest place to drive? See which nations top the list in this visualization on Voronoi, Visual Capitalist’s new data discovery app.

Authored by Andrew Korybko via substack,

CNN cited an unnamed US official to report that the crash of Azerbaijan Airlines flight J2-8243 in Kazakhstan, which was traveling from Baku to Grozny before suddenly veering off course towards the Caspian Sea, might have been caused by Russian air defenses mistakenly firing on it.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov cautioned against indulging in speculation and to wait until the investigation is concluded, but his advice obviously went unheeded by the US, which has an interest in shaping the narrative.

In this case, it wants to absolve Ukraine of responsibility after it turned out that it had launched long-range drone strikes on Grozny around the time of the incident, which could have either led to Russian air defenses mistakenly firing on the plane or the shrapnel from a destroyed drone could have hit it instead. RT reported that the preliminary investigation hypothesized that a bird strike was to blame, but footage of the crashed plane appearing pockmarked prompted speculation that something else happened.

The viral spread of CNN’s report, which carries an air of authority for some since it cites an unnamed US official, necessitates that it be challenged despite Peskov cautioning against any speculation.

The sequence of events that unfolded does indeed suggest that something happened in the air on the way to Grozny that resulted in the plane suddenly veering off course towards the Caspian, but the post-crash footage suggests that it might have been hit by drone debris instead of a direct air defense hit.

Regardless of whichever explanation one deems to be more credible, the point is that both were caused by Ukraine’s reckless drone attacks against Grozny, which is far away from the special operation zone.

This week’s weren’t the first, and the reason why that city has been targeted likely has to do with Ukraine’s belief that these attacks can spark political unrest in that formerly separatist region, thus opening up a so-called “second front” for diverting Russia’s attention and forces from the primary one.

A supplementary objective can be intuited by what a top Ukrainian official told CNN in their report.

Andrey Kovalenko, who’s the head of the “Center for Countering Disinformation” that’s part of the National Security and Defense Council, told them that “Russia should have closed the airspace over Grozny but failed to do so.”

In other words, these drone attacks were deliberately meant to create an unsafe environment, which would either coerce Russia into closing its airspace or cause a tragedy.

Closing its entire southern airspace indefinitely as a precaution due to the long range of Ukrainian drones would have objectively been an overreaction with incalculable financial costs just like if the US would have done the same in response to mysterious drone sightings over the East Coast earlier this month.

Nevertheless, precisely because Russia didn’t do so, Ukraine and its media allies will now predictably claim that this was irresponsible after what happened even though Kiev is to blame as explained.

What Russia needs to do as soon as possible is push back against this emerging information warfare narrative by maximally emphasizing how reckless it is for Ukraine to carry out drone attacks so far away from the special operation zone, let alone against civilian infrastructure like local airports.

Pandora’s Box of speculation was already opened by the US and Ukraine so there’s no need for Russia to restrain itself from injecting its own speculation, albeit that which is much more reasonable, into the global discourse.

By Stuart Chris of FreightWaves

Ocean container carrier Hapag-Lloyd announced two surcharges ahead of a potential strike by unionized longshore workers at U.S. East and Gulf Coast ports in January.

The Work Disruption Surcharge (WDS) and Work Interruption Destination Surcharge (WID) are effective Jan. 20, 2025, in the event of a strike, the German company said in an announcement on its website. 

“This surcharge covers additional costs from labor disruptions, strikes, slowdowns, unrest, congestion, and other unforeseen events that may delay operations and incur extra handling, storage, and feeder service costs,” the announcement stated.

The surcharges take effect on Jan. 20, the same day President-elect Donald Trump will be inaugurated and just after the current longshore contract extension expires Jan. 15. 

.rump earlier this month publicly backed the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) in its contract dispute with port employers represented by the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX).

After bargaining resumed following a three-day strike in October, the union broke off negotiations in November, charging ocean carriers and terminal operators were trying to eliminate union jobs by forcing provisions for automated container-handling into a new contract. Employers fired back, saying semiautomated container cranes were desperately needed to improve efficiency and make U.S. ports globally competitive, which they claim will create more dockworker jobs.

“We want to avoid another strike, and hope that our employers represented by United States Maritime Alliance will respect our demands for a fair and decent contract,” wrote ILA President Harold Daggett in a Christmas message to members posted on the union’s website.

The WDS is $850 per 20-foot container and $1,700 per 40-foot box, covering all equipment types. The surcharge covers imports from all ports in North Europe, the Mediterranean, Africa, the Middle East, the Indian Subcontinent, Oceania and Latin America to the U.S. East and Gulf Coast ports.

The WID is also $850 per 20-foot, and $1,700 per 40-foot, containers of all types. It applies to imports from all ports in East Asia-Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, Macau, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Indonesia and the Philippines to the U.S. East and Gulf Coast ports.

Hapag-Lloyd said the surcharges will be waived if no disruptions take place. They do not apply to containers already on the water or in terminals before Jan. 20.

Authored by Tilak Doshi via The Daily Sceptic,

It’s that festive time of the year when interesting tales get told around a fireplace. So here goes (minus the fireplace).

Once upon a time there lived a country that was the envy of the world. It was among the world’s pre-eminent producers of manufactured goods. From chemicals and pharmaceuticals to precision engineering and the brewing of beer, it was second to none. Its people’s work skills, industriousness and discipline became the national hallmark of civilisational success. The country gained fame and fortune in bringing the luxuries of fine automobiles to the world’s rich and aspiring middle classes.

Alas, a blight visited that once great country not more than a score of years ago, though its destructive seed had been planted earlier. It was not some external force or act of God. Rather it was a sickness of the mind, a debilitating disease of the soul, that vexed that country’s ruling class. In restless search for virtue, the country’s rulers paid obeisance to the Goddess Gaia and promised the nation’s blood and treasure to satiate her inviolable sovereignty over her earthly domains.

This, then, is a tale of woe and misery. This Christmas shall not have been one of unalloyed merry times and good cheer. And while beer will have been drunk and dinners eaten in many a hearth and eating place, the lifeblood of that nation shall be constricted and its breathing blocked by a cursed phlegm as normal life resumes in the New Year.

Within the fateful score of years of becoming afflicted by the primordial cult of Gaia, the world’s envy has now become a sad basket case. Its economy has been tarnished as “the sick man of Europe”.

The beginning of the end of the German miracle

While the travails of Germany along with the economic stagnation of Europe as a whole have been apparent for some years now, the spate of dire headlines have gathered pace in recent weeks as the coalition government collapsed.

“Behind Germany’s Political Turmoil, a Stagnating Economy” — New York Times (December 17th)

“Germany Is Unraveling Just When Europe Needs It Most” – Bloomberg (December 15th)

“Europe’s Economic Apocalypse Is Now” – Politico (December 19th)

If Europe – and its economic powerhouse Germany – remains on its current trajectory, its future, Politico says, “will also be Italian: that of a decaying, if beautiful, debt-ridden, open-air museum for American and Chinese tourists”.

The economic rot induced by the adoption of Energiewende policies for the “energy transition” in 2010 resulted ultimately in the recession of the German economy in the last two years.

Among the manifestations of this rot are the growth of corporate bankruptcies in double digits, soaring layoffs as the Federal Employment Agency said that the unemployment figure could exceed the three million mark for the first time in 10 years at the beginning of 2025, and the crown jewel of German industry, its automative sector, announcing massive job cuts.

According to a recent poll, 40% of industrial companies are currently considering reducing their production in Germany or relocating it abroad due to the energy situation; among industrial companies with more than 500 employees, more than half are now considering this. High labour costs, caused by the myriad regulations of a hyperactive administrative state, and among the world’s highest energy prices brought about by its Energiewende folly, have led to the nation’s de-industrialisation.

Germany’s governing coalition collapsed after Chancellor Olaf Scholz fired Finance Minister Christian Lindner, plunging Europe’s largest economy into political chaos. This occurred barely hours after Donald Trump’s U.S. election victory triggered existential questions about the future of the Continent’s economy and its energy security. Mr. Trump – a climate sceptic who has promised to bring the U.S. out of the UN’s Paris Agreement and its financial commitments for large scale transfers of funds to developing countries – will pull the rug out from under the EU’s famed if quixotic climate leadership.

Europe’s economic implosion is self-induced. Its ruling elites over-tax and over-regulate the private sector and obsess with promoting unreliable renewable energy to replace fossil and nuclear fuels in its crusade to ‘save the planet’ from an alleged impending climate apocalypse. Its attempt to blame Russia’s President Putin for high energy prices is hollow and self-serving.

Perhaps most revealing of Europe’s regulatory hubris is the Qatari Energy Minister’s recent statement that “I am not bluffing”. He warned that Qatar, one of the world’s largest natural gas suppliers, would cease gas exports to the EU if the bloc’s countries imposed penalties under recently adopted legislation on “sustainability due diligence”. For Europe to tell the world that it would punish foreign countries that did not buy into their “sustainability” beliefs might seem to most non-European observers as the height of arrogance. But such is the delusionary might of the Gaia cult.

The EU’s “Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive”, which entered into force in July, allows for fines of up to 5% of a company’s annual global revenue “if the management fails to address adverse human rights or environmental impacts”. Bumptious Brussels bureaucrats seem to believe that their ideas of “sustainability” command universal acceptance. This, in a world where China, India, Indonesia, Vietnam and other populous developing countries, accounting for most of the world’s population, are busy expanding their capacity to mine coal and other fossil fuels so as to afford their citizens access to affordable and reliable energy.

Back to barbarism

“Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.”

So said Adam Smith, the great sage of political economy, over 250 years ago.

Germany has shown that the converse may also be true.

To go from opulence to poverty and potential barbarism is but a short road, assured by the burden of high taxes in service of an alleged climate crisis, and an intolerable administration of “climate justice” that demands suffocating regulations on the private sector.

Authored by Jeffrey A. Tucker via the Brownstone Institute,

Brownstone Institute has been tracking a little-known federal agency for years. It is part of the Department of Homeland Security created after 9-11. It is called the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency or CISA. It was created in 2018 out of a 2017 executive order that seemed to make sense. It was a mandate to secure American digital infrastructure against foreign attack and infiltration. 

And yet during the Covid year, it assumed three huge jobs. It was the agency responsible for dividing the workforce between essential and nonessential. It led the way on censorship efforts. And it handled election security for 2020 and 2022, which, if you understand the implications of that, should make you spit out your coffee upon learning. 

More than any other agency, it became the operationally relevant government during this period. It was the agency that worked through third parties and packet-switching networking to take down your Facebook group. It worked through all kinds of intermediaries to keep a lid on Twitter. It managed LinkedIn, Instagram, and most of the other mainstream platforms in a way that made you feel like your opinions were too crazy to see the light of day. 

The most astonishing court document just came out. It was unearthed in the course of litigation undertaken by America First Legal. It has no redaction. It is a reverse chronicle of most of what they did from February 2020 until last year. It is 500 pages long. The version available now takes an age to download, so we shrunk it and put it on fast view so you can see the entire thing. 

What you discover is this. Everything that the intelligence agencies did not like during this period – doubting lockdowns, dismissing masking, questioning the vaccine, and so on – was targeted through a variety of cutouts among NGOs, universities, and private-sector fact-checkers. It was all labeled as Russian and Chinese propaganda so as to fit in with CISA’s mandate. Then it was throttled and taken down. It managed remarkable feats such as getting WhatsApp to stop allowing bulk sharing. 

It gets crazier. CISA documented that it deprecated the study of Jay Bhattacharya from May 2020 that showed that Covid was far more widespread and less dangerous than the CDC was claiming, thus driving down the Infection Fatality Rate within the range of a bad flu. This was at a time when it was widely assumed to be the black death. CISA weighed in to say that the study was faulty and tore down posts about it. 

The granularity of their work is shocking, naming Epoch Times, Unz.org, and a whole series of websites as disinformation, often with a crazy spin that identified them with Russian propaganda, white supremacy, terrorist activity, or some such. Reading through the document conjures up memories of Lenin and Stalin smearing the Kulaks or Hitler on the Jews. Everything that is contrary to government claims becomes foreign infiltration or insurrectionist or otherwise seditious. 

It’s a very strange world these people inhabit. Over time, of course, the agency ended up demonizing much authentic science plus a majority of public opinion. And yet they stayed at it, fully convinced of the rightness of their cause and the justness of their methods. It seems never to have occurred to this agency that we have a First Amendment that is part of our laws. It never enters the discussion at all. 

AFL summarizes the document as follows. 

• CISA’s Countering Foreign Influence Task Force (CFITF) relied on the Censorship Industrial Complex to inform its censorship of alleged foreign disinformation narratives regarding COVID-19.

• Unelected bureaucrats at CISA weaponized the homeland security apparatus, including FEMA, to monitor COVID-19 speech dissenting from “expert” medical guidance, including President Trump’s comments about taking Hydroxychloroquine in 2020. Many of these “false” narratives later turned out to be true, calling into question the government’s ability to identify “misinformation,” regardless of its authority to do so.

• To determine what was “foreign disinformation,” CISA relied on the Censorship Industrial Complex’s usual suspects (Atlantic Council DFR Lab, Media Matters, Stanford Internet Observatory) — even those discredited for erroneously attributing domestic content to foreign sources (Alliance for Securing Democracy). CISA even relied on foreign government authorities (EU vs. Disinfo) and foreign government-linked groups (CCDH, GDI) that advocated for the demonetization and deplatforming of individual Americans to monitor and target constitutionally protected speech by American citizens.

For years, this story of censorship has unfolded in shocking ways. This document among tens of thousands of pages is surely among the most incriminating. And discussing it is apparently still taboo because the Subcommittee report on Covid never once mentions CISA. Why might that be? 

In the strange world of D.C., CISA might be considered untouchable because it was staffed out of the National Security Agency which itself is a spinoff of the Central Intelligence Agency. Thus does its activities generally fall under the category of classified. And its many functioning assets in the civilian sector are legally bound to keep their relationships and connections private. 

Thank goodness at least one judge believed otherwise and forced the agency to cough it up.

Authored by Darlene McCormick Sanchez via The Epoch Times,

Sheriffs will likely play a key role in helping federal agents secure the border and deport illegal immigrants under President-elect Donald Trump.

Trump made mass deportation of illegal immigrants a key part of his campaign to win a second term as almost 11 million people flooded into the country illegally since 2021.

The president-elect’s incoming border czar, Tom Homan, has signaled a new era of federal, state, and local cooperation when it comes to deporting illegal immigrants.

Homan, the former acting head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), indicated he will first target those who have criminal convictions or are wanted for crimes.

“The nation wants a safe country. We’ve had enough crime in this country,” Homan said during a stop at the Texas border in November.

Sheriffs in the nation’s 3,100 counties could play an essential role in helping ICE to identify and detain illegal immigrants, said Sam Bushman, CEO of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA), a conservative organization that opposes “unconstitutional” government overreach.

As chief law enforcement officers in their counties, elected sheriffs have more latitude than appointed police chiefs. They have authority over criminal investigations, serving warrants, managing county jails, and providing court security within the county.

Bushman foresees cooperation between willing county, state, and federal authorities to deport illegal immigrants, possibly through the creation of a new coordination agency or command center.

“I think that we could create an organization that communicates with this trifecta, and that would be very effective,” he said.

Richard Mack, a former Arizona sheriff and founder of CSPOA, has been in contact with Homan and believes sheriffs will be an integral part of border security and deportation efforts because of their unique understanding of their jurisdictions.

“Who in this country knows their counties better than the sheriff?” he asked.

Because of their local knowledge, sheriffs are in a unique position to help make deportation safer and easier, Mack told The Epoch Times.

Regardless of politics, sheriffs must protect their constituents from crime and criminals, both tied to illegal immigration in terms of drug and human smuggling along with violent gang activity, he said.

Policy experts have suggested that the federal government could deputize local law enforcement under its 287(g) program to aid ICE because the agency likely doesn’t have the manpower to do so alone.

The 287(g) program currently provides a framework of cooperation wherein local jails work with ICE to identify illegal immigrants as they are booked for a crime. ICE and designated local law enforcement can then hold that inmate for up to an additional 48 hours so that ICE can take custody of the inmate.

Homan has touted the program as a safe deportation pipeline, as ICE officers can pick up deportees within the safety of a jail setting, rather than having to organize an operation out in the community.

ICE has about 20,000 employees, including support personnel. ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) has 6,100 deportation officers and more than 750 enforcement removal assistants who are assigned to 24 field offices, according to an agency website.

Former Chief of the U.S. Border Patrol Rodney Scott, who served under both Trump and Biden, said in a previous interview with The Epoch Times that Trump could expand the 287(g) program to help with deportations, as he did during his first term.

Scott was recently nominated by Trump to serve as the incoming Customs and Border Protection commissioner.

He said the 287(g) program also allows the creation of a task force and hybrid model that would enable local and state law enforcement to arrest illegal immigrants.

In the blue state of Maryland, Frederick County Sheriff Chuck Jenkins, a longtime Republican, recalls when the task force model was operational in 2008.

Frederick County Sheriff Chuck Jenkins at a meeting about illegal immigration issues in Bethesda, Md., on Oct. 17, 2017. Benjamin Chasteen/The Epoch Times

“We had deputies on the street that could work at the direction of ICE and with ICE to take into custody people who had deportation warrants and so forth,” Jenkins told The Epoch Times.

Reinstating the task force model would help expedite the deportation of criminals in the country illegally, he said.

The Trump administration could also send representatives to local sheriff departments to recruit them to join the program, he said.

“ICE can’t do it alone, or certainly not enough,” Jenkins said. “We need to be a force multiplier for them.”

Tying federal grant money to sheriff department cooperation with ICE would likely convince many to come on board, he said.

Even if sheriffs don’t participate in arresting illegal immigrants, they could help in other ways, such as providing transportation and logistical support and workspace for ICE, he said.

Jenkins said Frederick County’s jail-based detainer program has been successful, resulting in the removal of about 2,000 illegal immigrant criminals in the county.

Under the 287(g) program, sheriff’s office employees are trained to file a detainer and prepare the paperwork under the supervision of ICE in an effort to streamline the process, he said.

Illegal immigrants stand along the U.S.-Mexico border as they await processing by the U.S. Border Patrol in Jacumba Hot Springs, Calif., on Dec. 1, 2023. Mario Tama/Getty Images

San Diego County Sheriff Kelly Martinez, who serves in the nation’s fifth most populous county, has vowed to defy a new county policy to limit cooperation with federal deportation efforts.

Earlier this month, San Diego County supervisors voted to ban its sheriff department from working with ICE on the federal agency’s enforcement of civil immigration laws, including those that allow for deportations.

California law generally prohibits cooperation but makes exceptions for those convicted of certain violent crimes.

Martinez, whose office is nonpartisan but considers herself a Democrat, said she wouldn’t honor the new policy and that the county government doesn’t oversee her office.

“Current state law strikes the right balance between limiting local law enforcement’s cooperation with immigration authorities, ensuring public safety, and building community trust,” Martinez said.

In the blue state of Michigan, Barry County Sheriff Dar Lief said it is important to remove violent criminals from the streets.

“I’m on board with that,” he told The Epoch Times.

Lief echoed the belief of Trump and his surrogates during the presidential campaign that many of the illegal immigrants coming into the country were from prison systems or asylums.

“Nonetheless, our governor here asked residents to take in illegal immigrants,” he said. “Who are you opening up your house to?”

Lief said he warned the citizens of Barry County against taking in illegal immigrants, which Gov. Gretchen Whitmer called “new Americans,” because there was no guarantee they were properly vetted.

Not all blue states or city leaders are against Trump’s deportation plan to remove criminal illegal immigrants.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams met with Homan recently to discuss deporting illegal immigrants who commit violent crimes in the Democrat-run city.

“We will not be a safe haven for those who commit violent acts. We don’t do it for those who are citizens, and we’re not going to do it for those who are undocumented,” Adams said during a press conference.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams speaks at a media availability event after meeting with border czar Tom Homan in New York City, on Dec. 12, 2024. Oliver Mantyk/The Epoch Times

Adams said law-abiding illegal immigrants are welcome in the city. Still, it was a “terrible mistake” to allow those in the country unlawfully to commit violent crimes repeatedly, especially those associated with gangs.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said in November during a press conference that she supports “legal” immigrants, including asylum-seekers, but not criminals here illegally or those committing crimes.

“Someone breaks the law—I‘ll be the first one to call up ICE and say, ’Get them out of here,’” she said.

Homan said blue city officials don’t have to cooperate, but he has repeatedly warned them not to stand in his way.

Homan recently announced he would begin deportations in Chicago, criticizing Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker for resisting the removal of criminal immigrants.

“If he impedes us, if he knowingly harbors and conceals an illegal alien, I will prosecute him,” Homan said of the Chicago mayor.

Tom Homan, tapped to be President-elect Donald Trump’s border czar, addressed Operation Lone Star members at the Texas border on Nov. 26, 2024. Darlene McCormick Sanchez/The Epoch Times

Texas Model

Homan said during a visit to the Texas border town of Eagle Pass before Thanksgiving that the state’s operation to stop illegal immigration could become a national model.

He praised Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s Operation Lone Star, a $10-billion border mission to string razor wire along the border, place buoy barriers in the Rio Grande, help build a border wall, and bus illegal immigrants to sanctuary cities.

The operation consists of Department of Public Safety law enforcement and Texas National Guard members.

The program also focuses on arresting illegal immigrants for trespassing on private ranchland along the border—offering a unique roadmap for how counties could help deport illegal immigrants.

Brent Smith, the county attorney for Kinney County, has plenty of experience dealing with illegal immigrants in his county, which sits along the Texas–Mexico border.

Kinney County has prosecuted the largest number of illegal immigrants for trespass and related misdemeanors under Operation Lone Star.

In 2019 and 2020, the small, rural county dealt with just 254 and 132 misdemeanor cases, respectively, mostly involving U.S. citizens.

The U.S. citizen caseload has remained somewhat constant, but because of illegal immigration, the total number of misdemeanor cases shot up to 6,799 in 2022 and 5,826 in 2023, according to numbers obtained from the county attorney’s office.

Smith told The Epoch Times that trespassing arrests in Kinney County under Operation Lone Star offered valuable lessons on how to run a border security initiative.

At first, funding went to provide law enforcement, but Smith said it became clear that there needed to be more funding for the entire county justice system for prosecutors, public defenders, clerks, and judges to process illegal immigrants charged with trespassing.

“What I foresee is some very strong 287(g) agreements being entered into, and state and local law enforcement actually becoming an arm of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) immigration enforcement,” he said.

Law enforcement responds to a crash and fire of a suspected smuggling vehicle near Brackettville, Texas. Courtesy of Kinney County Sheriff’s Office

He said that after undergoing a DHS training program, local officers are considered immigration officers under the supervision of an ICE agent.

He pointed to former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was known for implementing the 287(g) task force successfully to arrest illegal immigrants in Arizona but came under fire during the Obama administration.

Maricopa County’s 287(g) program was canceled in 2011 after a Department of Justice investigation accused the sheriff of racial profiling.

In 2012, the Obama administration discontinued the task force and hybrid models of the program altogether.

Trump expanded the program in his first term to 150 agreements with local law enforcement and broadened the removal criteria to include misdemeanors.

Under the Biden administration, new 287(g) agreements were paused.

Smith said that once Trump ends the Biden administration’s catch-and-release policy, there will be more “gotaways,” which will require a shift in resources to focus on apprehension instead of processing those claiming asylum.

Money—or the lack of it—will be an essential tool in deportation and border security, he said.

On the state level, he has been discussing a bill with Texas lawmakers that would require sheriffs to apply for 287(g) agreements before receiving state grant funding.

The same principle could be applied to federal grant money for cities such as Chicago, he said.

“How much is your political leanings worth to you? Is it worth $1,000, or $100,000, or $2 million?” he said. “We’re going to find out.”

Via The Cradle

On Thursday, Syria’s de facto authorities appointed former Al-Qaeda commander and Nusra Front co-founder Anas Hassan Khattab as the head of the country’s general intelligence agency.

Khattab, also known as Abu Ahmed Hudood, was blacklisted as a “terrorist” by the UN Security Council in September 2014 for his close association with Al-Qaeda.

According to the listing, for several years, he was involved “in the financing, planning, facilitating, preparing, or perpetrating of acts or activities by, in conjunction with, under the name of, on behalf of, or in support of” and “otherwise supporting acts or activities of” the Nusra Front. This Al-Qaeda offshoot was rebranded as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in 2017.

Khattab served as the administrative emir of the Nusra Front as of early 2014 and was part of its shura council by mid-2013. He was also tasked with selecting personal bodyguards for HTS leader and Syria’s de facto ruler Abu Mohammad al-Julani, who dropped his nom de guerre earlier this month and now goes by his real name, Ahmad al-Sharaa.

In recent years, Khattab oversaw general security operations in Idlib. His involvement in intelligence gathering dates back to the period when HTS consolidated control over northern Syria with Turkish support; during this time, he managed surveillance of covert networks along the borders of HTS-controlled areas.

Syria’s new intel chief was sanctioned by the US Treasury Department in 2012 for his ties to Al-Qaeda.

Khattab is the latest HTS authority to be granted a top post in the so-called “transitional government” following the success of the Turkish and US-backed coup against the government of ousted Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

Last week, the General Command of the Armed Opposition Factions appointed Asaad Hassan al-Shibani, a founding member of Al-Qaeda in Syria, as the new caretaker foreign minister. This was followed by the appointment of Murhaf Abu Qasra, a top HTS leader known by his assumed name Abu Hassan 600, as defense minister.

It must have been a tense meeting yesterday in Damascus between HTS chief Jolani and the head of Iraqi intelligence. Especially for the Iraqi delegation a hard pill to swallow as Jolani before his time in Syria was in Iraq with Zarqawi blowing up Iraqis. pic.twitter.com/mojl2jTmEd

— Jenan Moussa (@jenanmoussa) December 27, 2024

As HTS continues to consolidate power with the full support of western nations, clashes have broken out in western Syria between the remnants of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and HTS-led extremists.

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

When Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life” was being filmed in 1945, just as the Second World War was closing and a few years before the Cold War was heating up, the FBI investigated it for its supposed anti-capitalist themes. A memo said:

“With regard to the picture It’s a Wonderful Life, [redacted] stated in substance that the film represented rather obvious attempts to discredit bankers by casting Lionel Barrymore as a ‘scrooge-type’ so that he would be the most hated man in the picture. This, according to these sources, is a common trick used by Communists. [In] addition, [redacted] stated that, in his opinion, this picture deliberately maligned the upper class, attempting to show the people who had money were mean and despicable characters.”

If it was a communist plot, it’s not a very good one. The film celebrates small-town life, family, hard work, faith, dedication to truth, and bottom-up prosperity, while villainizing theft (Mr. Potter effectively steals the money belonging to the small bank) and consolidation of finance.

Ask anyone what the message of the film is.

They will tell you: truth, decency, be happy with the opportunities you have, don’t be jealous or envious of others, count your blessings, remember how valuable you are as a person, rally around the life you have, serve your community, fight evil when necessary, and don’t ever take your good life for granted.

There’s nothing communist about that. As for the portrayal of the banker, Henry Potter in the film is a stand-in for ruling class power and the accumulation of unjust wealth and power, someone more akin to government than regular businesspeople.

In the nightmare sequence, Potter takes over the town and the place becomes a decadent and drunken place of squalor, crime, and sadness, fueled by credit schemes and power brokering.

Maybe that has a ring of truth to it?

Partisans of capitalism would not do their cause any favors by defending the big banker in this movie against the aspirations of the townsfolk. Rather than force-fitting this film into a Cold War narrative, the film can be more properly seen as part of a long line of Capra’s own populist impulses, most fully realized in his 1941 masterpiece “Meet John Doe.”

That film is actually better overall, in my view, the story of how a legitimate populist movement gets played by a wicked power broker who attempts to channel the people’s goodness into a fifth-column movement designed to subvert the Constitution. I have certain historical figures in mind (FDR perhaps?), but that’s for another time.

The most riveting scene in “It’s a Wonderful Life” concerns a run on the Building and Loan that is managed by George Bailey. Hearing of the other troubles in the industry, and a rumor spread by Henry Potter, the depositors panic and demand their money to be withdrawn immediately. There was nothing unfair or illicit about the demand. The people were worried about the viability of the institution in light of the rumors of missing funds.

At the same time, the whole idea of a Building and Loan is the pooling of resources to support home ownership in exchange for which depositors receive interest. They are nowhere promised a full and immediate return on all deposits on demand. The institution is built on trust—trust that the managers are not overleveraged, trust that its investments are wise, trust that the community is economically viable, trust that people will pay their mortgages.

Bailey gives an impassioned speech to the depositors that saves the institution. Here is what he said:

“Now listen to me. I beg of you not to do this thing. If Potter gets hold of this Building and Loan there’ll never be another decent house built in this town. He’s already got charge of the bank. He’s got the bus line. He’s got the department stores. And now he’s after us. Why? Well, it’s very simple. Because we’re cutting in on his business, that’s why. And because he wants to keep you living in his slums and paying the kind of rent he decides.

“Please, let me explain something to you. Your money’s in Joe’s house, right next to yours. And in the Kennedy house, and Mrs. Macklin’s house, and a hundred others. Why, you’re lending them the money to build, and then they’re going to pay it back to you as best they can. Now, what are you going to do? Foreclose on them?

“I’ve got $2,000 here. That’s what’s left of the Building and Loan. The rest is locked up in mortgages. Now, you’re not going to get your money tonight. But you’ve got my word that each one of you will get your money back as soon as we can possibly give it to you.”

Based on this speech, people calm down and decide to trust that something will work out. Bailey here proves himself to be a very good marketing manager of the institution, eloquently explaining how the system works here—or, rather, reminding them of how the institution functions as a matter of contract.

You can trace banking contracts through history to understand that there are many different types. Some institutions are purely for storage and safekeeping, essentially holding your resources in a safe deposit box or a grain elevator. The contract is a bailment: you get the whole of your deposit back on the asking. That is true for every depositor at any moment in time.

The Building and Loan is not set up to provide all depositors their money upon the asking. Its assets and liabilities balance, but its assets are in the nonliquid form of housing. There is nothing shady or noncontractual about this. Nor does this kind of leverage produce inflation. Its job is to put capital in the form of money to work in ways that pay returns over time.

In loan banking with clearing services, the situation is different. Your money is invested in other projects and the clearing services are free or depositors earn interest. It’s a straightforward business transaction.

By the 1940s, however, there was plenty shady about a bank of the type run by Potter, who is a stand-in for a long line of banking interests that become overleveraged and rely on its relationship with government and cartelized central bankers for bailouts when times get rough. We saw this in spades in 2008, when the Fed used its powers to recapitalize major banks and financial firms that had overleveraged in mortgage-backed securities.

In fact, the creation of the Federal Reserve itself in 1913 was advertised as a way to provide financial stability to the industry but it ended up centralizing it, creating a moral hazard, and subsidizing loan profligacy in a way that endangered the entire system.

After the Fed was tapped to provide liquidity for the Great War, the industry never really righted itself toward financial soundness. The bank runs of the early 1930s that ended with mandated bank holidays and devaluation make the point.

That’s not a failure of “fractional reserve banking” as such but simply a failure of signaling systems, clear contracts, transparent audits, and honest risk assessments. Central banking itself is the source of the problem. Nor did government-provided deposit insurance (started in 1933) work as a stabilizer, it only incentivized more risk-taking than the market would otherwise allow.

To be sure, there is a role for institutions that provide 100 percent backing for deposits. Even now, people are reluctant to keep more than $250,000 in a single bank account because this is the amount of government-provided deposit insurance. They are essentially seeking perfect liquidity on their accounts. The other option is to hold one’s money in financial firms that keep money invested in stocks and bonds that pay returns based on depositor risk assessment.

The case of Bitcoin is a good test case for what markets demand of banking. Most exchanges claim to offer 1:1 holdings of assets with zero leverage, though others market themselves as institutions for pooling resources and giving returns to depositors based on risk. This experiment has been fascinating because there is no deposit insurance and no Bitcoin central bank. Some exchanges have gone belly up precisely because not all promises have been kept.

As the industry matures, which we can hope will happen without government backing or intervention, it will become a complex mixture of self-custody (after all, becoming your own bank was the whole pitch of Bitcoin), full custody exchanges, loan operations, and leveraged services of various risk profiles. This is how a free market in money and banking should work.

In an ideal world, banking would work like any other business in a free market. It would bear all the risk for the investments it undertakes. It would have free entry and exit. There would be innovation driven by the entrepreneurial spirit. Government would have nothing to do with it. In some ways, that was the Building and Loan that George Bailey saved through his efforts.

The popularity of “It’s a Wonderful Life” owes so much to its messaging, and also to the perception for decades that the film was in the public domain, which permitted it to be widely aired on television, causing generations to regard it as the American classic it truly is. It is also a tribute to the enterprising spirit and its connection to family, community, and the values that make for the good life. The FBI was simply wrong and the film’s popularity to this day proves it.

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