As investor purchases in the housing market plummet at an unprecedented rate, dropping 29.7% year over year to 48,667 in Q3 2023—the lowest third-quarter level since 2016—the broader US real estate landscape faces a significant slowdown.

Investors are withdrawing money from sustainable funds as the ESG enthusiasm of the past few years is waning amid high interest rates, poor returns, plunging renewable energy stocks, tightened SEC rules, and political backlash.

So this is why the push to get those forced out to come back?

Since August 2021, up to 100,000 or more members of the Armed Services were wrongfully discharged, kicked off active-duty, forced into early retirement, involuntarily transferred to the inactive ready reserve, or were denied pay or retirement benefits due to Department of Defense’s (“DoD”) COVID-19 vaccine mandate and refusing to take unlicensed, experimental vaccines.

Ever since its maiden flight almost 17 years ago, the US F-35 – an aircraft with a staggering per-plane cost of $70-$90 million – has been plagued by a long list of technical bugs affecting both hardware and software. The latest upgrade to the jet is again proving a challenge for defense giant Lockheed Martin.

The Pentagon has reportedly been scrambling to fix embarrassing delivery setbacks of its beleaguered F-35s due to upgrades hindered by software problems.

The US Defense Department is currently being forced to consider uploading "interim versions" of the Tech Refresh 3 (TR-3) software into the latest F-35s, reported a military outlet. The debut flight of an upgraded F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is said to have been carried out last week with an incomplete version of the software installed. The flight took place at the manufacturer Lockheed Martin’s Fort Worth, Texas, facility.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-abdollahian warned Wednesday that the threat of the Gaza war spreading would grow unless a truce between Israel and Hamas lasts, in an interview as he visited Beirut.

“If this ceasefire starts tomorrow, if it does not continue... the conditions in the region will not remain the same as before the ceasefire and the scope of the war will expand,” Amir-Abdollahian told the Beirut-based Al-Mayadeen television channel, according to Iran’s Fars news agency.

“We do not seek to expand the scope of the war,” he added. “If the intensity of the war increases, every possibility is conceivable for the expansion of the scope of the war.”

No Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza will be released before Friday despite the two sides having agreed to a truce, Israel's national security adviser has revealed.

Officials say negotiations for the four-day ceasefire and release of kidnapped Israelis are 'advancing and continuing', but the 10 women and children who were expected to be freed tomorrow will now not be released until Friday.

It was not immediately clear if the deal between Israel and Hamas blew up or if the delayed release of hostages stems from a technical matter.

News of the delay broke just hours after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed during a televised news conference to 'rescue all hostages held by Hamas' and 'obliterate' the terrorist group.

Webmaster addition: It's just been announced that the ceasefire will start 7AM local time Friday.

Social networking sites, mostly Meta-owned, have deleted thousands of pro-Palestinian posts since the outbreak of Israel’s brutal war in Gaza, in response to Tel Aviv’s request to do so.

The Israeli Attorney General’s Office has sent approximately 9,500 requests since October 7 to Meta - which owns Facebook and Instagram - as well as the video-sharing app TikTok, to remove content related to Israel’s brutal war in Gaza, according to a recent report published by Forbes.

As a result, around 94 percent of that content has been deleted, digital researcher Mona Shttayeh said in an interview with Al Jazeera Mubasher, citing the report.

Ukraine has significantly boosted its holdings of US government debt since the start of the conflict with Russia, the news agency RIA Novosti reported on Wednesday, citing data from the US Treasury and the Ukrainian Finance Ministry.

From February 2022 through the end of September of this year, Kiev’s investment in US debt jumped 1.8 times, or by $10.7 billion, according to RIA. The country’s current holdings of $24.5 billion are the highest since at least 2011. At the end of last winter, Ukraine’s US Treasury portfolio amounted to $13.8 billion, whereas at its lowest level, in mid-summer 2022, it stood at $7.9 billion, RIA's data shows.

During the same period, the Ukrainian government received $22.9 billion in financial assistance from Washington. RIA’s calculations show that Ukraine invested roughly half of the American aid in US debt bonds, thus effectively recycling half of what it received back to the US government.

Frontline casualties and conflict-related emigration are set to decimate the Ukrainian labor force, as they take away skilled workers and younger replacements, the German newspaper Die Welt reported on Monday.

Ukraine is having problems drafting new troops to fight Russia and intends to address the problem by widening the scope of conscription and cracking down on draft-dodgers. But the country’s long-term economic viability is being undermined by the “bloodletting” on a scope that is hard to estimate, the outlet warned.

Citing analysis by Yuliya Kosyakova, a labor market researcher at the University of Bamberg in Germany, who assessed the economic impact of the mass migration from Ukraine triggered by hostilities with Russia, the outlet concludes that the country's recovery prospects are dire.

A hostage exchange deal between Israel and the Hamas militant group will be postponed until Friday, a senior Israeli official has said. The arrangement was originally set to begin on Thursday, with Israeli forces expected to pause operations for four days to allow aid into Gaza.

Israeli National Security Council Director Tzachi Hanegbi announced the delay in a statement on Wednesday, stressing that the negotiations were still underway and that the deal was set to be finalized.

“The contacts on the release of our hostages are advancing and continuing constantly. The start of the release will take place according to the original agreement between the sides, and not before Friday,” Hanegbi said.

A US official admitted that 10 American servicemen were injured in a missile attack in Iraq. On Monday, the US Barracks and storage facilities in the Ain al-Asad airbase in Anbar province of Iraq were targeted by a missile attack by the Iraqi Islamic Resistance.  Today, the US Struck Back . . .

Late Tuesday the US launched strikes directed against “Iran and Iranian-Backed Forces” in Iraq who U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) claims are both responsible for the recent attacks on U.S. Troops.

A world-renowned oncologist has warned it is “no coincidence” that turbo cancers are soaring among those vaccinated for Covid with mRNA shots.

Professor Angus Dalgleish recently wrote an open letter to the editor-in-chief of the medical journal The BMJ.

He is urging the journal that the harmful effects of Covid injections be “aired and debated immediately” because turbo cancers and other diseases are rapidly progressing among “boosted” people.

Professor Dalgleish is a Professor of Oncology at St George’s, University of London.

His letter to Dr. Kamran Abbasi, the Editor in Chief of the BMJ, was written in support of a colleague’s plea to Dr. Abbasi that the BMJ make valid informed consent for Covid vaccination a priority topic.

Russian President Vladimir Putin questioned on Wednesday why world leaders are "not shocked" by the words of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that Gaza has turned into a huge children's cemetery.

At the virtual G20 summit, Putin noted the words of other world leaders who said they were shocked by Russia's actions in Ukraine and the loss of life.

"I understand that this is a war, the death of people is shocking. And the bloody coup in Ukraine in 2014, followed by the war of the Kiev regime against its people in the Donbass, is it not shocking? And the extermination of the civilian population in Palestine, in the Gaza Strip today is not shocking? And the fact that doctors have to do operations on children, abdominal operations, operate with a scalpel on a child's body without anesthesia, is it not shocking? And the fact that the UN Secretary-General said that Gaza has turned into a huge children's cemetery, is it not shocking?" Putin said, speaking at the G20 summit.

As global debt skyrockets to nearly $310 trillion and gold reclaims its position above $2,000, investor @Frank_Giustra warns of an impending crisis dwarfing the impact of the 2008 recession. 

The revelation of the ‘Hemisphere’ program, a covert surveillance initiative operating from the White House, has unleashed a bombshell report exposing the unprecedented access and scrutiny of trillions of American phone records without the requirement for warrants.

No one could have predicted this.

The recent ruling by the German constitutional court, declaring the government’s Climate Budget fund as illegal and unconstitutional, has delivered a sudden blow, tearing a significant 60-billion-euro hole in the budget virtually overnight.

From World War I to the Present: Dollar-denominated debt has been the driving force behind all US led wars.

Thanks for reading Michel Chossudovsky! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Wall Street creditors are the main actors.

They were firmly behind Nazi Germany. They financed Operation Barbarossa and the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. 

Webmaster addition:

Tucker Carlson, co-founder of the Daily Caller, recently made a bold prediction at a conference, stating that the year 2024 will be "like nothing we've ever seen."

His statement was in reference to the forthcoming presidential election and the prevailing political and cultural climate in the United States.

Carlson was a speaker at the Risk On 360! Global Success Conference held in Las Vegas. He took the opportunity to share his perspective on the current state of affairs in America, both politically and culturally. He began his address by noting the prevalent sentiment of anger and paranoia among the majority of Americans he interacts with.

In a significant development, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has upheld a previous ruling by the U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire, thereby ensuring that former President Donald Trump remains on the ballot in the state.

This decision comes in the wake of an attempt by a relatively unknown Republican presidential candidate, John Anthony Castro, to have Trump removed from the ballot.

Castro's argument hinged on the assertion that Trump had violated the insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment. This Civil War-era clause prohibits anyone who has "engaged in an insurrection or rebellion" against the Constitution from holding political office. However, the court found Castro's claims to be unconvincing.

A leading American neurosurgeon has announced that he has uncovered a shocking link between Covid mRNA shots and brain damage.

Dr. Russell Blaylock recently gave an in-depth presentation on the adverse effects the spike proteins, induced by Covid-19 vaccination, have on the body.

The doctor shared shocking discoveries about neurological damage, cancer rates, cardiac arrest and other exacerbating health issues as well as their connection to mRNA technology.

“This [Covid] injection is an injection of artificial exosomes … The brain is one of the most complex things in the entire universe … [The medical profession] really doesn’t understand this injection.  They don’t understand what it does to the neurological apparatus of the brain and spinal cord,”

On the day meant to honor Hezbollah’s own martyrs, the group’s secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, dedicated a considerable portion of his speech to fighters elsewhere in the region. In a televised address on November 11, Nasrallah praised not just Hezbollah’s strikes on Israel launched from southern Lebanon, but also “supporting fronts” in Iraq and Syria, where armed groups have carried out more than 60 attacks on American troops in the past month.

“These actions reflect great courage because it is the Americans they are fighting, the Americans whose fleets, aircraft carriers, and bases fill the region,” Nasrallah said of his Iraqi allies. “If you Americans want these operations on the supporting fronts to stop, if you don’t want regional war, you must stop the aggression and war on Gaza.”

Nasrallah’s words indicate growing unity among the so-called axis of resistance, a network of Iran-backed actors in the Mideast that includes Hamas, Hezbollah, the Syrian government, the Houthis in Yemen, and armed groups in Iraq and Syria. Though this unity and the violence it threatens to unleash has not yet translated into major military action, it marks the most significant backlash to the U.S. presence in the region in recent years.

A series of advertisements dehumanizing and calling for violence against Palestinians, intended to test Facebook’s content moderation standards, were all approved by the social network, according to materials shared with The Intercept.

The submitted ads, in both Hebrew and Arabic, included flagrant violations of policies for Facebook and its parent company Meta. Some contained violent content directly calling for the murder of Palestinian civilians, like ads demanding a “holocaust for the Palestinians” and to wipe out “Gazan women and children and the elderly.” Other posts, like those describing kids from Gaza as “future terrorists” and a reference to “Arab pigs,” contained dehumanizing language.

As the death toll in Gaza surpasses 13,000 Palestinians, including more than 5,500 children, the Israel Defense Forces propaganda machine has sought to use Al-Shifa Hospital as its main exhibit in justifying the unjustifiable. It is clear that the Israeli strategy centers on a belief that if the IDF can convince the world that Hamas used the hospital as a base of military operations, all of the carpet bombing — the attacks on refugee camps, schools, and hospitals — will retroactively be viewed as just acts of war against a terrorist enemy.

Both Israel and the White House, including President Joe Biden personally, have staked their credibility on the claim that there is a massive smoking gun lying below Al-Shifa Hospital. The U.S. said publicly it was not relying exclusively on Israel to back up its own assertions. Leaving aside the fact that both the U.S. and Israel have track records as long as the Gaza Strip of lying about the alleged crimes of their adversaries, the key question is not whether a tunnel or rooms exist under Al-Shifa, but whether they were being used for a clear military or combat purpose by Hamas, as the U.S. and Israel have alleged.

Border crossings between the United States and Canada are closed after an explosion from what is alleged to be an attempted terrorist attack with a car at the border security checkpoint between the two countries.

All four international border crossings between the U.S. and Canada in western New York were closed after the incident, according to WIVB 4.

Fox News reported that according to "high-level police sources" the explosion was an attempted terrorist attack. There were explosives in the car; two passengers in the vehicle were killed and one Border Patrol officer was injured.

Webmaster addition: My read is that these "terrorists" were heading to New York, specifically to the Macy's parade, got selected for a search, and panicked.

“Donald Trump is running for president again in the United States, as you know,” said Tucker. “What advice would you give him?”

“He should continue his fight against socialism because he is one of the few who truly understood that we are fighting socialism, that we are fighting the statists. He understood perfectly that the generation of wealth comes from the private sector. The state does not create wealth; the state destroys it. The state can give you nothing because it produces nothing, and when it attempts it, it does so poorly,” Milei answered.

“So I’d say, if I could humbly offer advice, all I could say would be to double down on his efforts in the same direction: defending the ideals of freedom and refusing to give an inch to the socialists.”

Away from the media spotlight which remains on Israel’s war on Gaza, there are reports of growing confrontations between the Shia militias of Syria and Iraq and the American soldiers stationed in these countries. There are even reports, eagerly suppressed by both the US and Iran, of an increasing number of American casualties being treated in the region’s hospitals, which makes the situation all the more dangerous and susceptible to an unintended and sudden escalation. 

Since the beginning of this latest Gaza war, the international community found solace in the fact that Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Iran-backed Lebanese militia Hezbollah, has publicly tried to de-escalate the situation and made clear that he is not seeking an immediate direct engagement with Israel or its allies. The fact that he had to come out and do so twice within a week, however, speaks volumes about the build-up of pressure in the region, which might get out of control at any moment.

To infinity and beyond?

A NASA spacecraft has beamed a near-infrared laser nearly 10 million miles into space breaking new ground for the agency.

The laser, which is encoded with test data, was fired from NASA’s Psyche spacecraft and then sent back to Hale Telescope at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California, the agency said. 

The test data was transmitted about 40 times farther than the distance between the moon and the earth, which NASA says is about 238,900 miles. The SpaceX Starship, for context, traveled around 93 miles into space last week.