As an Army veteran, Taylor respected orders and deadlines and the chain of command. But he sat under his own boss within a corporate structure that prized moving its cargo as quickly as possible. Bakken crude was big business, and that year, as oil production outstripped pipeline capacity, there had been significant increase in shipping crude by rail.

Taylor’s boss, who had been with him during the inspection, gave him a conflicting order, Taylor would later recall in a court deposition and in interviews with ProPublica; the words marked the start of the seven worst years of his life:

If you keep reporting these track defects, you will no longer have a job at Union Pacific.

The Australian government is moving to ban all physical cash and mandate that all members of the public will require a “digital passport” to take part in society.

The World Economic Forum-infiltrated government is laying the groundwork for the establishment of “cashless societies” as part of a broader scheme to clamp down on public freedoms, according to a news report from Australia.

The government is claiming that the “digital passport” seeks to tackle “bad behavior” from dissenting citizens.

“Essentially it will work the same as a passport,” said the Today Show reporter.

“Australians will be forced to submit 100 points of identification like their driver’s license or their passport when using social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.”

Saudi Arabia is detaining worshippers displaying shows of solidarity for Gaza and praying for Palestine at holy sites in Mecca and Medina. 

A British actor and presenter who was on a religious pilgrimage with his family in Mecca said he was detained by soldiers for wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh. 

Islah Abdur-Rahman decided to go on the Islamic pilgrimage in late October, and has raised concerns over the crackdown on any symbols or displays of solidarity for Palestine in Saudi Arabia. 

“I was stopped by four soldiers for wearing a white keffiyeh around my head and a Palestinian coloured tasbih [rosary beads] around my wrist,” he told Middle East Eye.

The latest detentions came after a fifth Palestinian died in Israeli jails since 7 October. On Tuesday, both the Palestinian Prisoners' Club and Addameer Prisoner Support Association reported the death of 33-year-old Abdul Rahman Marei from the village of Qarawa Bani Zeid, near Salfit, in the Megiddo prison in northern Israel.

Marei was the father of four children, the oldest at 11 and the youngest at four years old. His older brother, Mohammad Marei, was killed by Israeli forces in 2005. He was arrested in February, and according to Addameer, he had no health issues at the time of his arrest.

The United States will tighten sanctions on Iran’s oil industry amid the Israel-Hamas conflict aiming to bring exports down by more than 1 million bpd, White House energy security adviser Amos Hochstein told Bloomberg.

“We are going to enforce those sanctions,” Hochstein said. “Those numbers will come down.”

“I think the best anecdote to revenues in Iran is keeping their exports at a lower level, but also to make sure prices are lower,” he said.

Talk about tighter sanctions against Iran’s oil industry intensified in the wake of the latest war in the Middle East with hawks in Congress blaming Iran of helping plan the Hamas attacks and advising pre-emptive action against Tehran before it became more involved in the conflict.

Tehran has denied any involvement in the Hamas attacks on Israel that ignited the war. At the same time it has repeatedly warned that the violence will escalate.

Central banks are stuck, and the way governments handle money is causing trouble. Many people who suggest where to invest don’t have much gold in their plans right now. 

As you can see from the chart, a rise in bond yields typically ends with a financial accident. 

Under heavy bombardment, manhunts and food shortages, 19-year-old Ghassan Jnaynati and his friends set up their own bakery to allow people a space to prepare food with what they still had left.

Israel’s siege of Beirut in 1982 cut the western half of the city of food, water, electricity, and transportation - a situation that has some similarities with what is currently happening in Gaza.

Recalling his experience, however, Jnaynati believes the situation in Gaza is too dire to entirely resemble what happened in Beirut.

The head of the UN Palestinian refugee agency said on Thursday he believed there was a deliberate attempt to "strangle" its humanitarian work in Gaza, warning that the agency may have to entirely suspend its operations due to a lack of fuel.

"I do believe there is a deliberate attempt to strangle our operation and paralyse the operation," UNRWA commissioner-general Philippe Lazzarini told journalists in Geneva, calling it "outrageous" to force humanitarian aid agencies to beg for fuel.

He added that the agency, which supports more than 800,000 displaced people in Gaza, was at risk of suspending its operations entirely.

“I’m horrified by the ongoing civilian deaths in Gaza. Iceland condemns all violations of international humanitarian law,” Katrín Jakobsdsóttir posted on X on Wednesday.

“Nothing can take priority over the duty to provide medical services to people in need,” she added.

Jakobsdóttir supported calls for a “humanitarian pause” in the besieged Palestinian enclave last month as well.

It would be hard to miss the increasingly strong rhetoric voiced by Jordanian officials as Israel has continued to pummel Gaza.

Jordan’s Prime Minister Bisher al-Khasawneh warned last week that the kingdom will interpret any attempts to displace Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank as “a declaration of war”.

Soon after, Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, rejecting Israeli attempts to decide who will administer a post-war Gaza, described Hamas as an “idea that doesn’t die”.

Ai Weiwei has said his London exhibition has been "effectively cancelled" over a Gaza war post, telling The Art Newspaper that he was looking to "avoid further disputes and for my own well-being".

The famed Chinese artist, who has vocally supported the Palestinians, was due to open an exhibition at the Lisson Gallery this week but was axed after uproar over comments on Israel deemed by some to be "antisemitic".

The gallery owners have been involved in "extensive conversations" with Ai about the exhibition possibly being rescheduled.

Speaking at the Islamabad Policy Research Institute, Durrani said that they will act simultaneously with other countries to recognize the government of Afghanistan.

“We will recognize the Taliban regime simultaneously. We will not recognize the Taliban regime unilaterally,” Durrani added.

Pakistan's Special Representative for Afghanistan further stated that the level of corruption and drug cultivation have decreased in Afghanistan.

“The positive thing in Afghanistan is that there is less corruption, which is internationally recognized. They have raised their revenues which is internationally recognized. The security in the country ... is internationally recognized. And then, drug or opium cultivation are at its all-time low,” Asif Durrani noted.

The US State Department has approved the potential foreign military sale of two missile systems to South Korea for $702.1 million.

The first request, approved on November 14, was for up to 38 Standard Missile 6 (SM-6) Block I missiles manufactured by Raytheon.

Dubbed “three missiles in one,” the SM-6 is designed to perform anti-air warfare, ballistic missile defense, and anti-surface warfare missions with a recorded maximum operational range of 370 kilometers (230 miles).

It’s wild to me how much people can ignore

Bank failures dwarfing 08/09

Swiss Gov sealing records of Credit Suisse failure for 50 years...

Myanmar’s military regime has admitted it is facing “heavy assaults” by anti-coup forces who began a coordinated offensive at the end of last month, claiming to have taken control of several towns in border areas and dozens of military outposts.

Spokesperson Zaw Min Tun said troops were under “heavy assaults from a significant number of armed rebel soldiers” in Shan State in the north, Kayah State in the east and Rakhine State in the west.

Pakistan and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have reached a preliminary deal for the release of $700m from a $3bn bailout package after two weeks of talks with the global lender.

The IMF on Wednesday said it reached a staff-level agreement with Pakistan’s caretaker government on the first review of the $3bn fund.

Inflation in essential areas, including car insurance, car repair, transportation, rent, homeowner costs, and food away from home, far exceeds the 3.2% CPI headline rate, challenging the notion of a broader decline in prices and signaling an ongoing affordability crisis for consumers.

Congressional decisions could lead to widespread repercussions in the trucking industry, particularly impacting small and mid-sized fleets, potentially causing financial strain and increased bankruptcy filings.

New York City is moving migrants out of shelters and offering them plane tickets to anywhere in the world.

As the late Tatiana Gracheva never tired of pointing out, the key component in the collective West’s battle plan is cultural and spiritual fragmentation of its perceived Russian adversary. Once the divisive groundwork had been successfully laid, the expectation is that political disintegration, creating opportunities for plunder on an epic scale, would follow as a matter of course.

The conflict in Ukraine raises the practical question of how realistic such expectations actually are. That question is very serious.

We would contend that more likely than not the indicated expectation is based on a colossal misreading of the target’s mentality and on woeful ignorance of its impressive historical record of resilience. The target, of course, is the Russian world as such, in the broad sense of the term, encompassing three pivotal components, Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, but more than that as well.

Estrangement on all levels of Ukraine from Russia (Brzezinski: “Without  Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire”) is a fundamental objective in the multi-layered conflict engendered by the West between Russia and  Ukraine.

Iran's foreign minister has revealed the content of secretive back channel talks with Washington, and this marks rare positive news to come out of a Middle East which remains on knife's edge amid the Gaza conflict. The very fact of these quiet discussions over red lines suggests both sides are legitimately interested in restraint related to broader tensions outside Gaza. However, a dangerous tit-for-tat has ensued at US bases in Iraq and Syria.

Iran's top diplomat Hossein Amirabdollahian has said in a fresh interview with FT that Tehran does not want to escalate with Israel and the United States, and doesn't want to see the war centered on Israel and Hamas spiral further. He said this despite the now daily exchanges of fire involving Hezbollah along the Lebanese border. In the backdrop, Washington is rumored to be very hesitant at this point on censuring Iran over any development on its nuclear program.

Webmaster addition: That will be hard with Israel already attacking Syria and Lebanon!

The fighting in Gaza has left tens of thousands of Palestinians dead or injured, media workers among them. Israeli journalist and political activist Haggai Matar, executive director of +972 Magazine, said his colleagues there had paid with their lives for "doing an incredible job."

Israeli forces have killed dozens of Palestinian journalists reporting from inside the Gaza Strip, says their Israeli colleague.

Following a month-long bombing campaign against the besieged Palestinian enclave, home to 2.3 million people, the Israeli Defense Forces have surrounded Gaza City and are assaulting government buildings and hospitals. More than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed so far and almost 30,000 wounded, according to the Palestinian Authority's health ministry based in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Among them are dozens of journalists.

Israeli journalist Haggai Matar told Sputnik that his colleagues inside Gaza have done invaluable work in documenting the results of the Israeli military offensive and humanitarian conditions there.

The Israeli occupation army has blown up the Palestinian Legislative Council building in Gaza after it was occupied by the Golani Brigade, Yedioth Ahronoth has reported. The army announced on Tuesday that it had taken control of several government buildings in Gaza City, including the Legislative Council headquarters and the police headquarters.

As usual when destroying civilian infrastructure, the Israeli occupation forces claimed that the buildings were being used by Hamas for “military purposes”.

Suicide rates for American service members and veterans are nothing short of catastrophic, with recent estimates claiming almost 17 vets take their own lives in the U.S. every day. Many of them suffer from post-traumatic stress and debilitating brain injuries, which traditional medications have largely failed to cure.

As many veterans with PTSD remain desperate for healing, a growing number are turning to psychedelic-assisted treatment in Mexico — using substances the government they fought for says are illegal.

One of those former service members is Herb Daniels, who spent 14 years as a Green Beret and nearly four years in active combat. After he retired from the military, he said he faced a profound darkness that started to consume him. 

The suicide rate among veterans rose slightly in 2021 as federal officials struggled to make more progress in their outreach and emergency response efforts designed to curb self-harm.

According to estimates released by the Department of Veterans Affairs on Thursday, suicides among veterans were up 1.8% from 2020 to 2021, the most recent year for which state death data is available. The totals had dropped each of the two years before the 2021 reversal.

An estimated 17.5 veterans died by suicide every day in 2021. That’s the second lowest rate since 2007 but still translates into nearly 6,400 preventable veteran deaths that year.

Elon is done FA'ing with these people.

He is going after Media Matters and anyone related to or funding the organization, and ALL of their related entites!!