In recent months, ominous signs have emerged, painting a bleak picture of the economy as it heads into what appears to be a looming recession. One striking concern is the prolonged dip in manufacturing new orders, which have lingered at recessionary levels for a troubling 14 consecutive months.

A badly burned toddler screaming for the mother he doesn’t know is dead – and screaming because doctors do not have enough painkillers to relieve his suffering. An eight-year-old boy whose brain is exposed as bombing damaged parts of his skull. A teenage girl, her eye surgically removed, because every bone in her face is smashed. A three-year-old double amputee, whose severed limbs are laid out in a pink box beside him.

And in the background is the stench of rotting flesh as maggots “creep out of untreated wounds”.

This is the daily reality at the European Hospital inside the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, as described by veteran British war surgeon Tom Potokar, who works for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

While the United Nations warns that the humanitarian situation in Gaza is “apocalyptic”, the Israeli military has expanded a ferocious ground campaign from the north of the besieged territory into the south, where an estimated 1.9 million Palestinians have been displaced.

The US military said Thursday that it would conduct flight operations in Guyana amid tensions between the Caribbean nation and its neighbor Venezuela over the disputed Guayana Esequiba region.

Guayana Esequiba is an oil-rich region that makes up about two-thirds of the territory of the state of Guyana, which gained independence from Britain in 1966. In 1899, an American-British tribunal ruled that the territory belonged to the UK, a position that was rejected by Venezuela.

Venezuela, the UK, and then-British Guiana reached a new agreement in 1966, known as the Geneva Agreement, to reach a mutually satisfactory solution to the dispute. The International Court of Justice opened a case into the dispute in 2018, but a decision is still expected to be years away.

Tensions have risen in recent years over the dispute as more oil discoveries in Guayana Esequiba continue to be made. The American energy giant ExxonMobil discovered massive oil reserves off the coast of Guyana in waters claimed by Venezuela and has been involved in a major offshore drilling project.

The “extremist” march at Al Aqsa Mosque complex in Jerusalem on Thursday evening was aborted after police asked participants to leave.

According to a police spokesperson, given the racist chants and protestors disobeying police, it was decided not to allow the continuation of the protest "to prevent friction and maintain public order in the place."

"The Israel Police will continue to allow freedom of expression and protest within the limits of the law, but will not allow the violation of public order contrary to the law," the spokesperson said.

A massive deployment of police officers was sent to the Damascus Gate ahead of the march.

Israelis were chanting slogans such as “Death to Arabs”, “We Must build the Third Temple” and “The Third Temple (Al Aqsa Mosque) is ours!”

The US White House Strategic Communications Coordinator, John Kirby, announced on Wednesday that the United States continues to oppose a permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and supports a temporary ceasefire.

“We do not support a ceasefire at this time,” Kirby said. “We support the continuation of the ceasefire in specific areas and for specific purposes.”

He added that “these humanitarian vigils must be implemented in order to release the hostages.”

Israeli occupation forces continue their military operations in the north and south of the Gaza Strip, targeting buildings and residential communities.

Webmaster addition:

The US risks sleepwalking into another Vietnam War-style debacle by backing Kiev in its fight with Moscow, Sergey Naryshkin, the head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), has said.

In an opinion piece for Razvedchik magazine issued by the SVR and published on Thursday, Naryshkin predicted tectonic geopolitical shifts in the coming year. They would be marked, he warned, by an intensified confrontation between the West and those countries that oppose its hegemony.

The intelligence chief suggested that the Western bloc would try to defend the dominance that is slipping from its grasp, with the ripples of the struggle likely to spread across the world.

Webmaster addition: Afghanistan was the US' second Vietnam. Ukraine will be the third!

Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been questioned over the partygate scandal which happened during the pandemic at the UK's COVID inquiry.

Mr Johnson said 'I continue to regret very much what happened".

Nearly half a million Israelis have fled the occupied territories since the start of Israel’s brutal aggression on the besieged Gaza Strip early in October, a report says.

The Population and Immigration Authority estimated that around 470,000 Israelis have fled since October 7, and it is unclear if they will return or not.

"Therefore, there is a negative migration of about half a million people, and this does not include thousands of foreign workers, refugees, and diplomats who left” the occupied territories, Zman magazine said.

That period also saw a decline of more than 70 percent in the number of Jews “immigrating” to Israel.

According to data from the Ministry of Aliyah and Integration, only about 2,000 people “immigrated” to Israel between October 7 and November 29.

De-dollarization events that would once have been a big deal have become common lately. Some examples:

UAE officially stops using dollar for oil trades

(Watcher) – The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is asking BRICS countries to settle oil trade in local currencies and not the U.S. dollar. The Middle Eastern nation is aiming to diversify its economic partnerships by renewing payment methods for oil trade deals. The UAE is approaching China, Russia, India, and Egypt, among other nations to pay local currencies for oil settlement and sideline the U.S. dollar.

While Israel denies using white phosphorus in Gaza, evidence suggests otherwise.

Markings on the white phosphorus munitions photographed Oct. 11 indicate they were manufactured at Arkansas’s Pine Bluff Arsenal, the only remaining manufacturer of white phosphorus munitions in North America. You can see the photo in this recent report from the human rights group Amnesty International.

Brian Castner, a weapons investigator at Amnesty International, told the Arkansas Times his group had “verified several videos that almost certainly show that white phosphorus smoke projectiles were used in Gaza.”

Last Friday the Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR), a repo rate serving as the Fed’s new target reference rate , jumped 6 basis points (6 bps, 0.06) to above the Fed’s target range.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raeisi has called for an immediate stop to the Israeli “genocide and crimes against humanity” in the besieged Gaza Strip as he met his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Thursday.

President Putin greeted his Iranian counterpart in the Kremlin, where their talks centered on the Israeli invasion and expanding relations between Tehran and Moscow.

“Gaza is a land where a child is martyred every ten minutes, so it is necessary to stop these bombings as soon as possible and find a quick and immediate solution,” President Raeisi said, adding “what is happening in Palestine is a genocide and a crime against humanity”.

New information has come out showing how 11,000+ politicians and wealthy elites in New Zealand were given COVID vaxx exemptions as they were forcing people to take these deadly injections. So much for being safe and effective.

This comes after they arrested a whistleblower who exposed how certain COVID-19 batches killed around 20 percent of the people who got them.

With Republicans controlling the House, most of Biden’s agenda has come to a halt. The Democrat has been unable to push through any of his bills, which are almost entirely large spending measures.

Recently, Biden made a demand for yet more money to be sent to Ukraine. Much of the money Biden has allocated for Ukraine has gone to corporations that make weapons. Republicans refused to allow more funding, without addressing a much bigger problem close to home.

From Fox News:
Senate Republicans on Wednesday blocked billions of dollars in additional security aid to Ukraine, Israel and the Indo-Pacific, including Taiwan, as they pressed President Biden to focus on tougher measures at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Throughout the primary season, we have been stunned over who is supporting which candidate. Some very hitters have waited for months before issuing endorsements or donations.

It is possible people have been watching to see if there is a GOP candidate who can rival Donald Trump.

One particular candidate has been pulling ahead of other frontrunners. And now, a major donor has dropped a large donation. But this person, a billionaire co-founder of Linked-In, is actually a Democrat.

From The Post Millennial:
A major Democrat donor is financially supporting Republican Nikki Haley’s presidential campaign in an attempt to defeat former President Donald Trump from winning the GOP nomination.

Many Americans have been critical of the Biden administration. Polls show that Americans think the country is worse off since he took office.

Some say Biden has put corporations, progressive groups, and foreign nations ahead of Americans in need. He has prioritized sending billions to other countries, as the U.S. struggles with inflation.

Recently, he actually intended on making a move that could have saved lives. His administration was going to ban menthol cigarettes. But he suddenly changed his mind, for this one reason.

From The Post Millennial:
The Biden administration has delayed its ban on menthol cigarettes after strategists warned President Biden that it could negatively impact his support among black voters…

Since the black community has drastically dwindled its support for Biden over the past few years, the president’s administration isn’t taking any chances despite updated health guidance from the FDA and CDC.

According to data from the CDC, 81 percent of black smokers opt for menthol cigarettes.

Joe Biden is facing an increasingly difficult situation, regarding his son Hunter Biden. Republican investigators have been blasting holes in Biden’s claims that he had zero interaction with his son’s businesses.

New documents reveal that Hunter made payments from a business account into Biden’s personal bank account. Numerous photos and testimonies reveal Biden even interacted with Hunter’s business associates, including speaking on conference calls.

Biden appears to be struggling to refute these claims. His prior excuses shattered, he recently went as far as to say Republicans were lying, despite hard-to-ignore evidence. Now, one of Hunter’s own former allies is calling out Joe.

From Fox News:
“I’m not going to comment. I did not, and it’s just a bunch of lies,” Biden responded. “They’re lies. I did not. They’re lies.”

One of Hunter’s former business associates reacted to Biden’s comments by telling Fox News Digital that his claim was “complete malarkey” and said there is “plenty of evidence” to refute his denial.

The race is on to alter Ohio’s marijuana law before it goes into effect Thursday. 

Rep. Gary Click, R-Vickery, recently introduced House Bill 341 — which would change how the revenue funds would be allocated and allow municipalities to ban marijuana dispensaries and home grow. 

Ohioans passed Issue 2 with 57% of the vote, which legalizes and regulates the cultivation, manufacturing, testing and the sale of marijuana to Ohioans 21 and up. It also legalizes home grow for Ohioans 21 and up with a limit of six plants per person and 12 plants per residence, and imposes a 10% tax at the point of sale for each transaction. 

Hunter Biden's Thursday indictment on federal charges in California revealed more than just his alleged failure to pay taxes over a years-long period, but rather what he was actually doing with the millions he was making in that time frame.

According to the indictment, filed by DOJ Special Counsel David Weiss in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Biden spent hundreds of thousands of dollars specifically on "adult entertainment" and "women," including a sex club membership and strippers.

Here are the 5 most salacious details contained in the indictment: 

Webmaster addition: Daddy will just pardon him.

Speropictures and Matt Thayer are releasing a new series of documentaries titled ‘State of Denial,’ aimed at exposing election fraud across the nation and saving our country from the radical left and uniparty’s stolen elections and anti-American agenda.

‘State of Denial: Arizona’ is the “first stop” in the series and will premiere on December 20, 2023. You can donate to the movie franchise here.

Watch the epic trailer below.

Matt and Joy Thayer, travelers and documentarians who founded Speropictures in 2009, previously created ‘The Trump I Know,’ the ‘RE:AWAKENING‘ docuseries, and ‘[S]election Code.’

For Christmas Gifts, Check Out The Gateway Pundit Discounts Page At MyPillow (Plus Free Shipping Through Dec 15)

The Gateway Pundit has reported extensively on Kari Lake and Abe Hamadeh’s fight against the stolen midterm election in Arizona. The election day anomalies and discrepancies included likely intentional machine failures at 60% of Maricopa County polling locations, misread votes statewide, and illegal mail-in ballots with no chain of custody or signature verification that tainted the results.

Asset manager Ross Stevens is withdrawing a donation to the University of Pennsylvania worth roughly $100 million.

Stevens' decision comes after the presidents of Harvard, Penn, and MIT appeared before Congress this week to testify about antisemitism on campus. They came under fire after they evaded questions on whether calling for the genocide of Jews would violate their institutions' codes of conduct.

In response to those questions, Penn President Elizabeth Magill said: "If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment."

The school's board of trustees held an emergency meeting Thursday as criticism mounted against her testimony, CNN reported.

The state of California is now facing an eye-popping deficit of $68 billion dollars, according to a non-partisan analyst.

It has become so expensive to live in California that people are buying fewer homes and businesses are hiring fewer people. Add the massive population loss suffered by the state for the last two years and there is much less money on the table for the state to collect in taxes.

This is what the leadership of Gavin Newsom and progressive policies have brought to California. Wreck and ruin.

Webmaster addition: And let's not forget the high cost of illegal immigrants; a problem afflicting many state budgets!

An independent tally of 2023 growth might accept Beijing’s official figures of 5% consumption growth as of the third quarter, but the other components of GDP remain flat or negative: government spending, net exports and business investment. Taken together, depending on how negative property investment is assumed to have been in 2023, China’s 2023 GDP probably grew 0 to 2.5%.

Unauthorized websites distributing trojanized versions of cracked software have been found to infect Apple macOS users with a new Trojan-Proxy malware.

"Attackers can use this type of malware to gain money by building a proxy server network or to perform criminal acts on behalf of the victim: to launch attacks on websites, companies and individuals, buy guns, drugs, and other illicit goods," Kaspersky security researcher Sergey Puzan said.

The Russian cybersecurity firm said it found evidence indicating that the malware is a cross-platform threat, owing to artifacts unearthed for Windows and Android that piggybacked on pirated tools.

Google has released an updated version of the Google Drive app for Windows and macOS that, along with some simple manual work, should resolve missing file issues.

A help page was published by Google yesterday that includes steps to resolve issues with missing files for "the small subset" of Drive for desktop users it said were experiencing the glitch. Per the company, affected users should install the latest version of Drive for desktop, which should be version 85.0.13.0 or newer.

Once installed, Google said users should run the app, click the Drive for desktop button in their menu bar or system tray, and while holding the Shift key, they should click Settings, where "Recover from backups" should appear. Click that to start the recovery process.

A series of attacks against Microsoft Active Directory domains could allow miscreants to spoof DNS records, compromise Active Directory and steal all the secrets it stores, according to Akamai security researchers.

We're told the attacks - which are usable against servers running the default configuration of Microsoft Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) servers - don't require any credentials.

Akamai says it reported the issues to Redmond, which isn't planning to fix the issue. Microsoft did not respond to The Register's inquiries.

The good news, according to Akamai, is that it hasn’t yet seen a server under this type of attack. The bad news: the firm’s flaw finders also told us that massive numbers of organizations are likely vulnerable, considering 40 percent of the "thousands" of networks that Akamai monitors are running Microsoft DHCP in the vulnerable configuration.