BREAKING Yemen Fires on USN Destroyer

Republicans are searching for political momentum heading into the 2024 presidential election. A mix of wins and losses at the state level across the country has the GOP celebrating any wins.

Getting through to voters in long-held Democrat areas has been tough for Republicans in recent years. Urban areas have been particularly rough for the GOP with Democrats holding most offices in major cities.

On Tuesday the strength of the Democrat armor weakened when a Republican pulled off a narrow win in a seat held by Democrats for decades. The win was a point of celebration, and positive headlines, heading into the holiday season.

The financial crisis that kicked off in March continues to bubble under the surface...

Total outstanding loans in the Federal Reserve’s bank bailout program jumped by just over $5 billion in November.

There was a sudden spike in banks tapping into the bailout program during the first week of the month with financial institutions borrowing $3.87 billion from the Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP). There was another surge in borrowing between Nov. 15 and Nov. 22, according to Fed data.

Haha, some American AI said the US’ moon landing was fake, and there’s nothing wrong with the Chinese lunar rover photo. Putin said it’s “very interesting.” Many Chinese netizens find it interesting too

Webmaster addition: I guess AI has a long way to go!

 House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner (R-OH) raised concerns over the weekend about the way that the Biden administration has gone about conducting negotiations with Qatar as it seeks the release of numerous Americans who were taken hostage by Hamas terrorists last month.

 President Joe Biden got snippy with a reporter who asked him about how his age might affect his prospects for seeking re-election in 2024.

In an interview that aired on Sunday, Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith (R-MO) explained to Fox News anchor Maria Bartiromo how his panel’s “tax focus” is part of the impeachment inquiry against Biden.

 An attorney for former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin criticized the federal prison system over the weekend, alleging a “lack of institutional control” and dismal communication with his client’s family after another inmate stabbed Chauvin in prison last week.

 Iranian-backed Houthi terrorists in Yemen fired two ballistic missiles at a U.S. destroyer in the Gulf of Aden just after midnight on Monday after the vessel thwarted an attempt by terrorists to seize a tanker connected to an Israeli businessman.

In Fulton County, Georgia, serious flaws in the 2020 election recount operations were identified. The Secretary of State and his staff originally lied about these mistakes, but then collaborated with the Attorney General’s office and the State Elections Board to exonerate the Secretary of State.

Georgian Joseph Rossi discovered 36 errors in the Fulton County data in the RLA report posted on the SOS website. Despite being turned down and ignored, Rossi managed to get these errors in front of Governor Kemp’s office. Kemp and his team took action when errors were pointed out, putting a team of four individuals on the 36 errors identified by Rossi and spending 8 weeks confirming their work.

The Georgia State Elections Board (SEB) initiated an investigation into the Fulton County data from the RLA report, labeled SEB2021-181. The SEB identified violations and errors in the 2020 Election recounts in Fulton County. Another complaint for Fulton County was filed July 8, 2022, specifically calling out 3125 duplicate ballot counts and 17,852 votes counted that do not have a corresponding ballot image. This complaint resulted in the creation of investigation SEB2023-25, which is complete and will be presented to the SEB on December 19, 2023.

Officials from a Chinese Communist Party conglomerate linked to President Joe Biden’s son and high-level foreign policy advisors to the White House conspired to illegally sell weapons to Qatar – a prominent financial backer of Hamas – and Libya, which has funneled arms to the Palestinian terrorist group.

The company, CEFC China Energy, counted President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, as its Managing Director and has hosted the current National Security Council Coordinator for the Indo-Pacific Kurt Campbell as a keynote speaker at its events. Campbell has been identified as Biden’s "Asia Czar.”

Revealed in the indictment of Gal Luft, a whistleblower against the Biden family, members of CEFC China Energy can be seen engaging in and serving as intermediaries for illicit arms trafficking to countries including Qatar and Libya.

Qatar is the key financial backer and ally of the Palestinian militant organization Hamas, funneling billions of dollars to support the Muslim Brotherhood group. Hamas has also frequently used weapons from Islamist groups in Libya.

As revealed in Luft’s indictment, CEFC China Energy members engaged illicit trafficking of arms to countries including Libya and Qatar. Luft often referenced the weapons as “toys” in correspondence evidenced in the indictment.

While Independent Media readers understand the difference between a false flag operation and a hoax, it was brought to my attention by a social media follower, that not everyone does know the difference, so we'll start there on the off chance that someone who does not understand the difference is reading this.

In simplistic terms, a hoax is a claim of an event or events that never really happened, and a false flag is an act orchestrated in a manner that makes it appear to have been carried out by a party that was not responsible.

With that out of the way, conditions across the globe, wars, nuclear saber-rattling, the economy, both internationally and nationally,  are all events that leave America ripe for a false flag event geared to "unite" Americans against a common enemy.

While Russia has always been the boogeyman our government, with a lot of help from the media, the Russian collusion hoax, damaged the media and multiple federal agencies' reputation and ability to continue to use just Russia to terrify Americans.

Now it is the Russia and China alliance against America holding the "superpower" status, and creating the perfect opportunity for the Biden regime to keep Americans under control with the use of a false flag event.

Miscreants are actively exploiting two new zero-day vulnerabilities to wrangle routers and video recorders into a hostile botnet used in distributed denial-of-service attacks, researchers from networking firm Akamai said Thursday.

Both of the vulnerabilities, which were previously unknown to their manufacturers and to the security research community at large, allow for the remote execution of malicious code when the affected devices use default administrative credentials, according to an Akamai post. Unknown attackers have been exploiting the zero-days to compromise the devices so they can be infected with Mirai, a potent piece of open source software that makes routers, cameras, and other types of Internet of Things devices part of a botnet that’s capable of waging DDoSes of previously unimaginable sizes.

Akamai researchers said one of the zero-days under attack resides in one or more models of network video recorders. The other zero-day resides in an “outlet-based wireless LAN router built for hotels and residential applications.” The router is sold by a Japan-based manufacturer, which “produces multiple switches and routers.” The router feature being exploited is “a very common one,” and the researchers can’t rule out the possibility it’s being exploited in multiple router models sold by the manufacturer.

Democratic Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota said in a tweet Saturday that claims that President Joe Biden could defeat former President Donald Trump were “delusional.”

Phillips cited Biden’s declining poll numbers, sharing a report by Politico in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Saturday morning. Trump led Biden in polls by NBC News, Quinnipiac, Fox News and Morning Consult. (RELATED: Things Are Going From Bad To Worse For Joe Biden, Polls Show)

“As a member of House Democratic Leadership, I supported and promoted the Biden agenda,” Phillips posted. “I campaigned for him, voted for him, and respect him. But how can anyone read this and conclude he’s positioned to defeat Donald Trump?”

President Joe Biden's poll numbers are continuing to slide downward, while former President Donald Trump, the clear front-runner in the race for the GOP presidential nomination, is enjoying poll numbers that are at a higher point than at any time over the past year, spelling trouble ahead for Biden's chances at reelection.

Biden's standing, when matched in head-to-head polling against Trump, is showing worse in all but two of the latest surveys from 13 pollsters. Earlier this month, Trump was showing as being ahead in four of the six swing states in a New York Times/Siena College poll, reported Politico.

Even though the polls suggest that most of Biden's drop is coming from voters abandoning him, that doesn't mean that they are swinging over to back Trump.

Since October 7, Israeli police have implemented full dictatorship from the river to the sea. This has included preventing any anti-war protest within the Green Line and filling the prisons with ‘freedom-of-expression’ prisoners. Today, November 18, after a month and 11 days of massive bloodshed, there was the first anti-war demonstration in Tel Aviv. I joined the protest mostly because I felt obliged to support the call for immediate ceasefire and call for an “all for all” captives and prisoners’ exchange. But I also wanted to assess what this demonstration teaches us about the current policies of the repressive Israeli regime and about the protest movement.

Court ruling allows demonstration

Hadash (“The Democratic Front for Peace and Equality,” organized around the Israeli Communist Party) applied for a license to demonstrate in Tel Aviv against the war and for a prisoners’ exchange. Their initial application was refused by the police, which suggested they hold a meeting in a closed venue instead. Then Hadash, with the help of ACRI (The Association for Civil Rights in Israel), appealed to the Bagatz (Hebrew acronym for “High Court of Justice”), which finally forced the police to allow the demonstration.

As cases of pneumonia rise among children in China, the ruling class is now blaming it on “multiple pathogens,” and not a novel disease. The World Health Organization is investigating the illnesses and says that

WHO Investigates Mysterious Pneumonia Cases In Children In China

The first suspicion of Dr. Michael Osterholm, the director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) is that this is “a series of already recognized respiratory pathogens,” due to the fact that illnesses are reportedly occurring in children. “If it was a new pathogen, it would be showing up in kids and adults equally, ” he told Fortune.

According to a report by NDTV World, influenza is one of the main causes of the spike in cases. National Health Commission spokesman Mi Feng said at a press conference on Sunday that rhinovirus, mycoplasma pneumonia, and respiratory syncytial virus are also circulating. Because of these pathogens, China should guarantee medicine supply and open more areas for medical treatment, Feng said.

Pope Francis has canceled a series of meetings this week after falling ill, the Vatican said on Monday.

The Pope is suffering breathing difficulties due to inflammation of the lungs and has postponed some of his meetings until he recovers, the Vatican told the Daily Caller News Foundation. He does not have pneumonia or a fever and has begun taking antibiotics to treat his ailment.

“Today I cannot appear at the window because I have this problem of inflammation of the lungs,” the Pope said during his weekly Angelus address on Sunday, adding that a priest would read the day’s reflection.

North Korea launched a small military spy satellite Tuesday on the country's first successful orbital launch since 2016. This, alone, would be newsworthy, but this launch comes with a twist.

An automated camera operated by Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea, captured the launch. The camera is part of a worldwide network of all-sky cameras to detect meteors streaking through Earth's atmosphere. On Tuesday night, it caught a glimpse of North Korea's Chŏllima 1 rocket climbing higher in the night sky until its booster engine cuts off. Then an upper stage engine fires to continue powering its payload into orbit, leaving behind the rocket's spent expendable booster to fall into the Yellow Sea west of the Korean Peninsula.

Then, the night vision camera recorded a bright fireball. Instead of plunging into the sea, the booster explodes. It's unusual to see a spent booster blow up during the launch of expendable rocket, so this raises questions. Did North Korea intentionally explode its rocket?

 With the Thanksgiving holiday weekend coming to an end, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) announced his plan for a quick vote on President Joe Biden’s request for roughly $106 billion in funds for Israel, Ukraine, and other national security priorities.

 A U.S. Destroyer took five individuals into custody on Sunday after they attempted a terrorist hijacking of an Israeli owned tanker in the Gulf of Aden.

Webmaster addition: Israel has lost the war in the court of public opinion!

 Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) said during an interview over the weekend that the only way to stop Iranian attacks against U.S. forces in the Middle East would be to launch a “massive retaliation” against the country.

 Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al-Thani dodged a question during an interview over the weekend about what would happen to Hamas’ leaders that are living inside the country.