The head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has thrown support behind the implementation of carbon consumption charges, a move that has sparked debates and concerns during COP28. While the intention is to address environmental concerns, the repercussions are already causing ripples.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), one of the Senate’s most prominent progressives, on Monday stated his opposition to sending $10.1 billion to the “Netanyahu government to continue its current offensive military approach,” lambasting the siege and assault of Gaza as “immoral.” 

“I do not think we should be appropriating $10.1 billion for the right-wing, extremist Netanyahu government to continue its current military approach. What the Netanyahu government is doing is immoral, it is in violation of international law, and the United States should not be complicit in those actions,” Sanders argued on the Senate floor.  

Sanders is taking issue with the more than $10 billion the Biden administration has requested for the Defense Department to resupply Israel’s Iron Dome and David’s Sling missile defense systems, as well as to replenish military stocks being drawn down by the war.  

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on Sunday announced for the first time that not only are its air strikes extending to the south of the Gaza Strip, where the bulk of civilians from the north have fled, but it is expanding its ground operations to the whole of Gaza.

Following the collapse of the week-long truce on Friday, spokesman Daniel Hagari said in a press briefing, "The IDF is resuming and expanding the ground operation against Hamas’ strongholds across the whole Gaza Strip."

"Our policy is clear — we will forcefully strike any threat posed against our territory," he emphasized in words that came the day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged "total victory" and that the war will be taken to Hamas "until the end." 

Saudi Arabia's energy minister has slammed the door shut to agreeing to phase down fossil fuels at the UN's COP28 climate talks, setting the stage for difficult negotiations in Dubai.

A tentative "phasedown/out" was included in a first draft of an agreement on climate action that delegates are haggling over during talks that are scheduled to finish on December 12.

But Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, a half-brother of de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, told Bloomberg that Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter, would not agree.

The price of gold soared over $2,100 per troy ounce on Monday, reaching an all-time high. What signal does this send about the US dollar's strength?

The unfolding gold price rally has prompted some economists to suggest that the yellow metal's cost above $2,000 is here to stay through 2024 due to political uncertainties, possible interest rate cuts and, probably, a weaker dollar.

The most recent hike could be triggered by a 3.1% fall in the US dollar against a basket of major six currencies since the beginning of November. The drop occurred amid growing suspicions among investors that the US Federal Reserve could cut interest rates early next year.

The safe corridor in the central Gaza Strip has turned into a battlefield, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman Avichay Adraee said on Monday, calling on the population of the enclave to evacuate along the coast.

"The fighting and IDF military offensive in the Khan Yunis area prevents the movement of civilians through Salah ad-Din ... The Salah ad-Din direction is a battlefield, making it extremely dangerous to reach! IDF will allow humanitarian movement of civilians through the bypass road located west of Khan Yunis," Adraee wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Unlike so many people around the world, those of us that live in the United States were fortunate enough to grow up in a relatively civilized society.  Unfortunately, we have turned our backs on the values that our forefathers handed down to us, and so now we are starting to find out what is beneath the thin veneer of civilization that we have all been taking for granted all these years.

Factory orders tumbled even more than expected, down 3.6% MoM – the biggest drop since the COVID lockdowns (April 2020). September was also revised lower (making October’s decline even worse) from +2.8% MoM to +2.3% MoM…

Elon Musk has hit out at Disney again after the company pulled ads from X, calling the company’s output “unwatchable” because of how woke it is attempting to be.

Musk responded to a post by author Scott Adams, saying that Disney has “a major content problem” and that “They are the world’s biggest example of go woke, go broke.”

Webmaster addition: We canceled our Disney+ subscription.

The repeated release of crude oil from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) by the Biden administration has left the national stockpile at its lowest in more than 30 years, according to US Oil and Gas Association President Tim Stewart.

In an interview with Fox News on Sunday about the Biden administration’s approach to domestic energy policy, Stewart said the White House had sold off more than 40% of the SPR (180 million barrels) during 2022 in an effort to tame rising fuel prices.

“Originally, the strategic petroleum reserve was designed to address disruptions in the crude supply but not necessarily the high prices,” he said.

The Secretary of the Treasury and the Financial Stability Oversight Council would like you to believe that climate-change and unregulated non-bank financial institutions are the biggest threats to financial stability. If financial regulators were actually safeguarding the integrity of banks and financial markets, they would recognize, and do something about, the largest immediate threat to financial stability: the nearly $1.3 trillion of unrealized interest rate related losses in the regulated banking system.  This is the real systemic risk today.

The $1.3 trillion is my estimate of the banking system’s total unrealized interest rate related losses as of June 30, 2023. Using bank regulatory data, I estimate that the banking system has total unrealized losses of about $548 billion on bank-owned securities and about $726 billion in interest rate driven losses on bank loan and lease portfolios.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will visit the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia on Wednesday to discuss bilateral relations, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and oil cooperation, among other issues, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday.

“Tomorrow, President Putin’s working visits to the UAE and Saudi Arabia will take place,” the spokesman told reporters.

The Kremlin official was asked what will the agenda of talks include, in addition to the cooperation in the oil field.

“Bilateral relations, of course. Bilateral relations, the exchange of views on the international agenda, [and] on the regional agenda. This, of course, is the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. But first and foremost, we are talking about bilateral relations," Peskov said.

The Russian Army established a special radio frequency for Ukrainians wishing to surrender and see their loved ones again. This initiative has proven to be a life-saving measure, as it has successfully rescued numerous individuals.

Twenty-five Ukrainian servicemen were shelled by their own comrades when they attempted to surrender, a Russian military officer who goes by the code name “Kupol” (“Dome”) told Sputnik.

“They got in touch with us along frequency 149.200, and said they wanted to stay alive and see their families. We established contact and pinpointed them a location where they needed to go to surrender. Apparently, the Kiev regime found this to be detrimental, so they eradicated their own servicemen,” the officer said.

Pharmaceutical giant Moderna is policing what it calls “vaccine misinformation” online through its disinformation department aimed at shutting down dissenting voices and anything that might undermine COVID-19-related policies, such as lockdowns, vaccine passports, and mass vaccination.

According to an exclusive report by investigative journalists Lee Fang and Jack Poulson published on Nov. 20 in UnHerd, Moderna isn’t just manufacturing COVID-19 vaccines; it has an entire team dedicated to monitoring a wide range of social media platforms, government agencies, and news websites in the name of addressing the “root cause of vaccine hesitancy” by identifying and “shutting down misinformation” that may negatively affect the vaccine debate.

The internal documents show a “sprawling effort to monitor basically everything said online, on social media, and in the news media about vaccine policy, COVID policy, about Moderna, and other vaccine companies,” Mr. Fang told The Hill.

More than 1,500 trucks are stuck at the border between Ukraine and Hungary, The ATV channel has reported.

A 22km-long queue of lorries has formed as Ukrainian truckers seek alternative ways to enter the EU amid a border blockade by their Polish and Slovak counterparts, the broadcaster said on Sunday.

A local official told ATV that the Zahony border crossing “continues to operate at full capacity,” but it’s not enough to resolve the situation and queues continue to grow.

One of the truckers said he had been waiting in line for three days. However, he added that he had expected this to happen and brought extra food and fuel with him. “It’s part of our job, so we can’t complain too much. We chose this profession for ourselves,” he explained.

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky is bypassing General Valery Zaluzhny, the country’s top military leader, to give orders directly to commanders, the Ukrainskaya Pravda news outlet reported on Monday, citing sources close to the leadership in Kiev.

Zaluzhny sometimes only learns of what the military is doing from his subordinates, the report claimed. Zelensky and the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces have been at loggerheads for months, and Kiev’s failed summer counteroffensive has worsened the tensions, according to insiders.

The president has created “parallel tracks” of communication with senior military leaders, including Aleksandr Syrsky, commander of the ground forces, and Nikolay Oleshchuk, commander of the air force, the report added. Zelensky’s office is said to find this convenient, but the practice has disrupted the normal chain of command, much to Zaluzhny’s chagrin.

Units of the expeditionary volunteer assault corps have blocked off the last highway used to deliver supplies to the Ukrainian forces near Artyomovsk and Soledar, the unit’s spokesman Alexey Selivanov has told TASS.

"The corps’ four columns reached the Artyomovsk-Chasov Yar road north of Artyomovsk. The columns of the North and Vostok V brigades, the Yenisei Cossack detachment and the Nevsky detachment cut the last supply road leading to the Ukrainian Bakhmut-Soledar group," Selivanov said.

He added that Ukrainian soldiers were using the Volga radio frequency to declare they were ready to lay down arms.

Russian forces struck Ukrainian troops and military hardware in 107 areas over the past day in the special military operation in Ukraine, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported on Monday.

"Operational/tactical and army aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles, missile troops and artillery of the Russian groupings of forces inflicted damage on Ukrainian manpower and military equipment in 107 areas," the ministry said in a statement.

Russian forces repulse Ukrainian attack in Kupyansk area over past day

Russian forces repulsed a Ukrainian army attack in the Kupyansk area, destroying roughly 35 enemy troops over the past day, the ministry reported.

Benjamin Netanyahu was told by a powerful Jewish religious figure that he would be Israel’s last leader and hand the sceptre to the Messiah. How does this so-called prophecy affect Netanyahu’s political calculations? And who is the mysterious religious figure, honoured by successive US presidents , simply known as The Rebbe?

I came across an interesting quote made last month by a retired Israeli major general named Yitzhak Brick about the ongoing IDF assault on Gaza.

“All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the U.S.,” Brick said. “The minute they turn off the tap, you can’t keep fighting. You have no capability. … Everyone understands that we can’t fight this war without the United States. Period.”

House Oversight Chairman James Comer on Monday released subpoenaed bank records revealing Joe Biden received direct monthly payments from Hunter Biden’s business entity, Owasco PC.

Hunter Biden is currently under federal investigation for using Owasco PC for tax evasion and other crimes.

Joe Biden has repeatedly claimed he never took a dime from China and was never involved with his son Hunter’s overseas business dealings.

Biden, in a ‘catch me if you can’ moment, taunted reporters in October inquiring about his family’s corruption and asked, “Where’s the money?”

Judge Aileen Cannon denied Special Counsel Jack Smith’s request to keep some documents hidden in the classified documents case against Trump.

Last month Jack Smith’s lawyers asked Judge Cannon to keep documents under seal because it is considered “highly sensitive classified information.”

Judge Cannon denied Jack Smith’s request to keep the records hidden.

“In light of the Special Counsel’s Response to Defendants Motion to Unseal 230, and mindful of the strong presumption in favor of public access to judicial documents, the Clerk is directed to unseal docket entries 223, 224, and 230,” Judge Cannon’s 4 order reads.

The Supreme Court of the United States could indirectly get involved in the January 6th charges against former President Donald J. Trump if it decides to hear the cases of three protesters charged with “obstructing an official proceeding,” which is the same charge Trump is facing.

NBC reports that the Supreme Court is in the process of reviewing three challenges from convicts Joseph Fischer, Edward Lang, and Garret Miller. Originally, the court was going to talk about these cases at their weekly meeting on Friday.  However, that meeting had to be canceled because former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor died. The case is most likely to be heard on December 8th.

The charge against Fischer, Lang, and Miller is an overextension of 18 U.S.C. 1512(c)(2), according to the defense attorneys, which says it is illegal to “corruptly” block, influence, or slow any official action. The defendants want the charge against them to be dropped. The law was passed in 2002 as a result of the Enron incident and is known as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Its purpose is to protect people from destroying evidence and not to protest or even fight.

Pro-Trump meme maker Douglass Mackey, AKA, Ricky Vaughn, was sentenced to 7 months in prison in October for trolling Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election.

Mackey was facing a maximum of 10 years in prison for speech crimes.

Mackey was indicted in January 2021 by the feds for using the social media platform to ‘spread election disinformation’ to Hillary Clinton voters in 2016.

The Pro-Trump meme maker was later found guilty for trolling Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election. Mackey posted a humorous meme telling Hillary voters to text in their vote on Wednesday after the election. It was obviously a joke. Unfortunately for Mackey, the Marxists have no sense of humor. Douglass Markey was indicted and convicted on Friday for posting jokes online.

Mackey was sentenced to 7 months in prison for posting an online joke in October.

According to the report, the Russian military hit the semiburied command post of the air defense control and warning center of the Vostok air command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the area of Dnepropetrovsk. In addition, Russian forces destroyed Ukrainian fuel depots in the area of Mirgorod in the Poltava region and Starokonstantinov in the Khmelnitsky region. Another target was an ammo depot near Ochakov in the Mykolaiv region of Ukraine. An arsenal in Liptsy in the Kharkiv region was also reportedly hit.