The steps taken by Hunter to evade taxes are impressive, but not nearly as impressive as the efforts of the Justice Department to evade any direct implications for his father, President Biden.

I promise there is nothing you can say to me that will cause me to cease opposing the murder of thousands of children in Gaza. There is no name you can call me, no accusation you can scream at me, no talking point you can regurgitate at me that will ever make me shut up and accept this.

The unexamined premise behind the frenetic push to reignite outrage over October 7 using rape allegations is that if Hamas fighters did sexually assault any Israeli women during the attack, then everyone has to shut up and let Israel keep murdering children by the thousands. This is self-evidently stupid.

Western and Israeli propagandists are going to keep trying to find new reasons for you to reignite your outrage over October 7, because October 7 is their side’s only justification for a months-long mass atrocity that is far, far worse than anything that happened on October 7.

The late Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz applied the term “Judeo-Nazis” back in the late 1980s when he referred to former Supreme Court Judge Meir Landau, who effectively legalized torture, by that description. He made his arguments strongly: “The State of Israel represents the darkness of a state body, where a creature of a human form who was the president of the Supreme Court decides that the use of torture is permitted in the interest of the state.” 

I took it as a kind of moral exaggeration. It was bad — Palestinians were being tortured systematically, but somehow I thought, we’re not quite as genocidal as Nazis. 

But today, I feel differently. Yesterday, Jerusalem’s Deputy Mayor Arieh King tweeted a photo of over a hundred naked Palestinians who were kidnapped by the Israeli military in Gaza, handcuffed, and sitting in the sand, guarded by Israeli soldiers. King wrote that “The IDF is exterminating the Nazi Muslims in Gaza” and that “we must up the tempo”. “If it were up to me,” he added, “I would bring 4 D9’s [bulldozers], place them behind the sandy hills and give an order to bury all those hundreds of Nazis alive. They are not human beings and not even human animals, they are subhuman and that is how they should be treated,” King said. He ended by repeating Netanyahu’s biblical Amalek genocidal reference: “Eradicate the memory of the Amalek, we will not forget.” 

While the US is running out of money to support Kiev in its war with Moscow, in despair, President Joe Biden has turned to a seeming alarmist talk to “scare” Congress into paying more aid to Ukraine as soon as possible. But, in fact, no matter what the future holds for Ukraine, one thing is certain: For the sake of their selfish, geopolitical interests, the US and NATO will continue regarding Russia as their biggest enemy.

On Wednesday, a bill authorizing tens of billions of dollars in emergency spending, including aid to Ukraine, faltered in the Senate. Earlier, Biden called on Congress to pass supplemental funding for Kiev before the holiday recess. He claimed that if Moscow wins the war with Kiev, keeps going, and then attacks a NATO ally, “then we’ll have something that we don’t seek and that we don’t have today – American troops fighting Russian troops.”

As some media in the US points out, this is Biden’s sternest warning regarding the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Biden acts like a cat on a hot tin roof on this issue because his fate in next year’s presidential election is tightly linked to the fate of Ukraine.

As the end of the year approaches, it was reported that Starbucks has lost almost $11 billion in market value, due to intense boycotts and employee strikes in support of Palestine, in addition to a lukewarm holiday promotion.

To counter the losses Starbucks surely predicted, and as the holidays approached, the corporation announced its Red Cup Day; a marketing strategy that gives consumers the chance to receive a free reusable holiday cup with every purchase. However, since the announcement of the promotion in mid-November, Starbucks saw a decline of 8.96 percent in its shares, which equals $10.98 billion in losses, the lowest it has ever experienced since 1992. 

This is because of the recent global call to boycott brands and franchises that directly or indirectly benefit "Israel" economically. The Starbucks employee union was transparent in its support for Palestine, as "Israel" launched a genocide in Gaza in October, and took the opportunity to demand better work conditions, including scheduling and the freedom to negotiate contracts. Since then, employee strikes have been consistent. 

Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Hamas Resistance movement, announced this evening, that it had completely or partially destroyed 79 Israeli military vehicles in the Gaza City areas during the last 72 hours.

Al-Qassam said in a statement that its fighters booby-trapped a tunnel entrance in the Sheikh Radwan area, and as soon as an Israeli force advanced on it, it was blown up. As a result, members of the Israeli force were killed and wounded.

Al-Qassam also reported that its fighters were able to snipe two Israeli soldiers in the Shujaiya neighborhood, east of Gaza City.

Israeli media claimed today that the number of military deaths has risen to 92 since the start of the ground invasion of Gaza.

Money supply growth fell again in October, remaining deep in negative territory after turning negative in November 2022 for the first time in twenty-eight years. October’s drop continues a steep downward trend from the unprecedented highs experienced during much of the past two years.

The Ukrainian president and First Lady Olena Zelenska sparked controversy after posing for a series of glamor shots with the US edition of “fashion bible” magazine Vogue. The shoot got hundreds of thousands of likes on Instagram, but also sparked questions about whether the president has anything better to do with his time.

President Volodymyr Zelensky’s photo shoot with his wife for Vogue photographer Annie Leibovitz has gotten social media’s creative juices flowing, with detractors posting dozens of meme-worthy photoshopped images maligning the president and accusing him of corruption and NATO puppet status.

Users took a particular liking to a shot of Zelensky closely embracing his wife, cropping her out and replacing her with a Ukrainian soldier, showing the First Couple at a table before piles of cash, or, in one instance, showing US President Joe Biden joining in on the love fest by affectionately sniffing Zelensky’s neck.

The plea was made as polling shows Americans increasingly believe the country has sent too much money to Ukraine.

Olena Zelenskaya, the wife of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, appeared on British media Saturday to admonish Americans against growing “tired” of sending military aid.

“We really need the help,” the Ukrainian First Lady said in an interview with the BBC taped on Thursday. “In simple words, we cannot get tired of this situation, because if we do, we die.”

The interview was aired the day after the US Congress shot down $60 billion worth of military aid to the country. The United States has so far sent $113 billion in funding to Ukraine since February 2022.

In a sign that a default cycle may have initiated, a Texas-based apartment syndicator is facing the loss of two multi-family properties in Austin after defaulting on a substantial $125 million loan. This comes on the heels of the same firm defaulting on $288 million in loans tied to properties in Houston. The Real Deal attributes the surge in apartment foreclosures across Texas and the Sun Belt to a combination of factors, notably the Federal Reserve’s decision to raise rates, resulting in skyrocketing debt payments for property owners who relied on floating-rate debt amid slowing rent growth.

As the icebox of the Northern Hemisphere, Russia’s Siberia is notorious for its frigid weather. But the cold so far this December — the most severe in decades in some areas — is extreme even by its own bone-chilling standards.

Temperatures around minus-58 degrees (minus-50 Celsius) and even lower have spread over northeastern Siberia in recent days and will persist for several more. The mercury has dipped as low as minus-73.7 degrees (minus-58.7 Celsius) thus far.

Farmers in the Brittany region of France on Wednesday staged a protest using tractors in the city of Rennes in response to the government’s agricultural policies.

The protesting farmers argue that they are burdened with excessive regulations in the context of their agricultural activities.

According to local reports, upon reaching the headquarters of the Brittany Regional Council, the farmers spread straw in the parking lot and scattered official documents.

Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of the Russian Security Council and the country’s ex-president, has accused German Chancellor Olaf Scholz of “lying” after the latter shared his take on the roots of the energy crisis in Europe.

Speaking at a meeting of the ruling Social Democratic Party (SPD) in Berlin on Saturday, Scholz accused Russia and, personally, President Vladimir Putin of halting the gas supply to the EU.

“It was the Russian president who stopped gas supplies through undamaged gas pipelines. Thus, 50% of Germany’s gas supply was called into question. 50 billion cubic meters of gas that went through them became inaccessible,” Scholz claimed during the event, hailing the government’s efforts to buy gas elsewhere.

The remarks drew the ire of Medvedev, who took to the social media platform X, formerly Twitter, to flatly accuse the German chancellor of “lying” and trying to shift the blame for their own actions on Moscow.

More than 5,000 Israeli soldiers have been wounded in fighting in Gaza since 7 October, while Israeli officials are warning of a looming mental health crisis, an Israeli newspaper reported on Saturday.

Specialists from Israel's Ministry of Defence said its rehabilitation department had received 60 wounded soldiers every day since the start of the war in Gaza. 

Limor Luria, deputy director general and head of the ministry's Rehabilitation Department, told Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper that at least 2,000 Israeli soldiers had been declared disabled, with health officials "in a hurry to release the wounded so it can admit new patients".

Violent crime is quickly spreading to suburbia. A new report shows gangs from South America have targeted mansions in wealthy neighborhoods across the Detroit metro area. This comes as the Biden administration's disastrous open border policies have flooded the country with millions of illegal migrants, as well as progressive cities fail to enforce 'common sense' law and order.

...rhymes with 'dig karma'

"An American citizen is in prison in Ukraine after we sent over a $100 billion?"

The solution is not to crack down on anti-Israel speech, which seems to be what Republicans want. Speaker Mike Johnson said schools are not doing enough to “enforce their own rules” against antisemitism. The GOP also hosted Jewish students at a press conference to describe the antisemitic abuse they say they’ve had on campus. Conservative pundit Kayleigh McEnany, said idiotically on Fox News that “of course we shouldn’t allow white nationalists to go to Harvard.” “White nationalists” aren’t leading the demonstrations.

Nor is the GOP hosting press conferences about anti-white speech on campus, even though students can major in attacking “whiteness” and Western Civilization. Senator Ted Cruz said the slogan “Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea” is an endorsement of the “mass murder of Jews.” If so, what does it mean to say that America is built on “stolen land” and genocide? Republicans seem to be indifferent not just to anti-white hate, but even anti-American hate. They seem to forget that whites are the one group that still mostly votes Republican.

Republicans seem remarkably united on withholding funding for Ukraine unless something is done about border security—evidence of the pressure they’re feeling from the base. Even notorious squishes such as Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Texas’s John Cornyn, and Utah’s Mitt Romney advocate the tactic. “Dems want $106B—GOP wants a closed border. That’s the trade,” Romney said in a recent Tweet. “But clueless Dems want to negotiate the border bill. Not going to happen. Is an open border more important to Dems than Ukraine and Israel?”

Two-tiered justice? No. this is just the system in action. Recall, those individuals who burnt down the Wendy’s in Atlanta back in 2020 were nothing more than the shock troops of the establishment.

Rioters’ $500 Fine for Burning Down a Wendy’s Sparks Outrage, Newsweek, December 4, 2023

Conservatives are outraged after two people charged with burning down a Wendy’s restaurant in Atlanta in the summer of 2020 were fined just $500 each.

Prosecutors said Chisom Kingston, Natalia Hanna White and John Wesley Wade set a fire that destroyed the Wendy’s in June 2020 amid protests sparked by the fatal shooting of Rayshard Brooks, a 27-year-old Black man, by a police officer during an encounter outside the restaurant.

Kingston and White accepted plea deals on Thursday, just days before they were set to go on trial, WSB-TV reported. Both pleaded guilty to charges including arson in the first degree.

They will each have to pay a $500 fine, complete 150 hours of community service and serve five years of probation, according to the local station. Wade remains in federal custody.

Israel’s relentless bombardment of the Gaza Strip has hit areas it had told Palestinians to evacuate to in the territory’s south.

The strikes came a day after the United States vetoed a United Nations resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, despite its wide support.

Gaza residents “are being told to move like human pinballs – ricocheting between ever-smaller slivers of the south, without any of the basics for survival,” Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the UN Security Council before Friday’s vote.

Two hospitals in central and southern Gaza received 133 bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli bombings over the past 24 hours, health ministry officials in Gaza said on Saturday.

Civil society groups on Friday accused the UN climate secretariat (UNFCCC) of  "unprecedented" policing of their actions and expressions of solidarity with Palestine at the Cop28 climate summit in Dubai.

Officials from War on Want and Climate Action Network International (Can) reported that activists have been threatened with removal from the summit for wearing keffiyehs or pro-Palestine badges inside the conference centre's blue zone, one of the "dedicated spaces" for protests at the summit.

The blue zone is UN-administered and therefore subject to UNFCCC regulations, while UAE laws in general ban any expression of dissent outside the Cop28 venue.

But activists have reported increasingly tight restrictions on speech used during pro-Palestine protests within the blue zone.

The Palestinian resistance factions in the Gaza Strip said on Saturday that they targeted several Israeli military targets, Anadolu Agency reports.

The Al-Quds Brigades, the military arm of the Islamic Jihad Movement, claimed on Telegram that they targeted an Israeli military vehicle with two shells, injuring several soldiers west of Gaza City.

The Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, announced “targeting enemy (Israeli) command centers” in southern Gaza City with heavy-caliber mortar shells.

They also reported targeting “an Israeli Merkava tank in the eastern part of Khan Yunis city with a Yasin 105 shell.”

Al-Qassam also claimed shelling the invading enemy forces in northern Khan Yunis city with mortar shells, as well as launching a missile barrage at the Israeli settlement of “Magen” in Gaza.

Russia warned Israel against flooding the Gaza Strip tunnels with seawater, and said that this step would be a war crime, the US-based magazine Newsweek reported.

The warning came after Tel Aviv announced that it would establish a large system of pumps to flood the tunnels used by the Palestinian Resistance Movement Hamas,  in an attempt to expel its fighters.

According to Newsweek, “Russia said that reports of proposals to flood the tunnels were shocking and warned that ‘if done, this will be a war crime’.”

Webmaster addition: Pouring all that salt water into the ground will ruin all the water wells and make the soil unusable for agriculture. It may also weaken the soil making rebuilding the strip more difficult and costly.

Now denied a renewal of her visa by the Israeli authorities, Lynn Hastings is the current Deputy Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process and United Nations Resident Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territories. 

Having held her current title for three years, she now faces Israeli allegations of failing to be objective and impartial in her role.

Lynn Hastings, a Canadian Veteran UN official, has worked for decades across a multitude of conflict zones in a professional capacity. Prior to taking her current role in 2020, she had worked as Deputy Director in the Operations and Advocacy Division of OCHA, in New York. 

She was also Senior Advisor for the UN Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus, had been the Country Director for Pakistan of OCHA and Chief of Staff in the Office of the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process (UNSCO) between 2003 and 2011.