“The Islamic regime in Iran has had a bad run lately. The collapse of its ally in Syria. The weakening of its proxy militias in Gaza and Lebanon. Embarrassing intelligence failures. Bombardments by Israel. Rarely has Tehran been more isolated. Yet on Tuesday, when supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed in a public address that ‘The resistance [to Israel and the West] is not over’, he also spoke of a vulnerability from within. ‘Everyone, especially women, should be vigilant about the enemy’s soft tactics and not be deceived by slogans and temptations,’ he said. By ‘advocating for women’s rights … they incite unrest in the country.’ The ayatollah’s warning comes amid a resurgence of the women’s rights movement that erupted two years ago when a young woman died while in police custody after being detained for not covering her hair properly.” (12/19/24)
“A Chinese national was arrested Thursday on charges of acting as an illegal agent for Beijing when serving as the campaign manager for an unnamed politician elected to a city council in Southern California two years ago. The arrest of Yaoning ‘Mike’ Sun, 64, came at a time of rising concerns that the Chinese government has cultivated a network of operatives to influence local elections in the U.S. to install politicians who are friendly to Beijing and can help promote Chinese interests. … Sun is accused of conspiring with Chen Jun, who was sentenced to 20 months last month for acting as an illegal agent of the Chinese government. Chen, 71, also a Chinese national, pleaded guilty in July to using Chinese money to bribe federal agents to undermine the anti-Beijing spiritual group Falun Gong. The charge against Sun shows that Chen also conspired to interfere with local elections.” (12/19/24)
“When Northern Gaza was placed under a complete siege, the Biden Administration issued a warning that if conditions didn’t improve within 30 days, he would stop weapons shipments to Israel. At the time of the announcement, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians faced imminent starvation because the Israeli military was blocking trucks of humanitarian aid from entering Northern Gaza. As children and their parents either starved to death or suffocated under the rubble of their homes that were deliberately bombed – Biden told them to wait thirty days. When the thirty days were up, Israel correctly called Biden’s bluff. They knew he wasn’t going to stop sending weapons, and they were right. I began this hunger strike to demand that my government end the siege on Gaza. It’s clear to the entire world that Israel acts with full backing from the United States and both governments are responsible for the death and human suffering happening in Palestine.” (12/19/24)
“How many times have you heard someone say something along the lines of the problem with Congress being we need term limits? I hear it weekly, if not almost daily. It always makes me cringe a little and I try to be polite, or at least as polite as I can be, and respond that term limits won’t change anything because voters are the real problem. … Have you noticed how the fight over the continuing resolution (the one now or any of them ever) always contains new surprises and a ton of new spending? The name starts off with the word ‘continuing’, which implies it is simply an agreement to keep things as they are – continuing them for a while – but it always included new, horrible things that cost hundreds of million or billions of dollars.” (12/19/24)
“White House aides covered up President Biden’s apparent mental decline from Day 1 of his presidency, shielding the aging commander-in-chief from the public and even rearranging his schedule after scatterbrained performances, an explosive report revealed Thursday. The lack of access to the nation’s oldest-ever president has been well known in Washington — with Biden hosting the fewest large press conferences in modern history and frequently descending into gaffes at the podium when he appeared — but how much the White House made up for the haziness had until now been hidden, according to aides, Democratic lawmakers and donors who spoke with the Wall Street Journal. Presidential staff formed a tight shell around Biden, 82, right after he took office amid the COVID-19 pandemic, with staff immediately limiting his in-person interactions in January 2021.” (12/19/24)
“A former Bay Area high school sports coach was arraigned on Tuesday afternoon on charges that he paid two teenage boys to produce sexually explicit materials for later sale online. Todd Baldwin, who was employed as a sports coach at Valley Christian High School in San Jose, was charged on Oct. 10 with enticing a minor and receiving child pornography. He surrendered to authorities on Oct. 28, the United States Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of California said in a Tuesday news release. Baldwin, 44, is accused of paying two students to create child pornography between December 2022 and August 2023, which he sold on Reddit, according to a criminal complaint. The two students were 16 and 17 years old at the time. The first teenager, a 17-year-old, began to provide images and photos in December 2022, sending via Snapchat and Gmail, after Baldwin allegedly persuaded him, the complaint said.” (12/19/24)
“We’ve gotten a preview of the next four years in the space of a few hours on Wednesday. Elon Musk provided the shock troops to topple an end-of-year spending deal, and Donald Trump provided the final blow. To say the commotion was based on rumor and myth would be an insult to rumor and myth; even now, Trump is calling for a ‘clean’ funding bill while keeping the $100 billion in disaster funding and $30 billion for farmers, which comprises virtually all of the additions from a monetary standpoint. But Trump also added an entirely new demand: take the debt limit off the table, rather than forcing him to deal with it next year. And he doesn’t just want the debt limit raised; he explicitly wants it eliminated.” (12/19/24)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“Both Israel and the incoming Trump administration are reportedly eager to start bombing Iran ASAP now that Assad’s out of the way. Israeli media reports that the IDF now sees airstrikes on Iran as much easier to execute now that its pilots don’t have to worry about Syrian air defenses along the way, while The Wall Street Journal reports that the Trump team is weighing its options for airstrikes on Iran to prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon (which there’s no evidence Iran is currently trying to do). A new article from The Washington Post titled ‘Syria’s collapse and Israeli attacks leave Iran exposed’ reports that ‘Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has signaled a desire to capitalize on gains against Hamas and Hezbollah and take on Tehran more aggressively under a new U.S. administration.'” (12/18/24)
“Democrats have a plan to take on Donald Trump in 2025; just ask them. But you’d have to ask all of them, because they all have a different plan. John Fetterman thinks Democrats should give Trump a pardon on his ‘bullshit’ hush-money case, and support his executive branch nominees, even the controversial ones. Jim Clyburn also favors a Trump pardon, but to create ‘a clean slate’ for the future. Many Democrats, from Adam Schiff to Ro Khanna to Bernie Sanders, are citing points of possible agreement with Trump and shadow vice president Elon Musk. Some are doing this ‘to look reasonable’, others perhaps to move some discrete items forward where Trump has made a rhetorical overture, others perhaps to set up an attack later if the common ground fails to emerge.” (12/18/24)
“The 1986 American Heritage Dictionary defines fascism as … ‘A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism.’ We’re about to be there. The power of government to both reward and punish is awesome. No other entity can legally take money away from citizens at gunpoint and hand it to others it favors. No other entity has the power to deprive people of their freedom and even their lives. No other entity can use both of those powers to regulate how business must be conducted. Any company so willing to engage with such tainted government leadership should alarm us all. When Disney, a $248 billion dollar company, decided to give a $15 million donation to Donald Trump’s presidential library slush fund, they didn’t do so because they were worried about losing a defamation lawsuit.” (12/18/24)
