Whew.

I was worried there.

I was beginning to doubt that AIPAC owns Congress. /s

On December 1, the Russian Ministry of Defense held another monthly conference, which among other things is aimed to sum up the interim results of the ongoing special military operation in Ukraine.

The head of the Russian military department, Army General Sergei Shoigu headed the meeting. In his speech, he revealed the losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine over the past 6 months.

According to the Russian military, the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) lost over 125 thousand servicemen and 16 thousand units of various military equipment in six months of the so-called counteroffensive.

“The mass mobilization in Ukraine, the supply of Western weapons and the deployment of strategic reserves by the Ukrainian command did not change the situation on the battlefield. These desperate actions only increased the number of casualties in the units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” said Army General Sergei Shoigu.

Germany's appeal as an investment haven keeps plummeting, haunted by an impending €24 billion budgetary deficit — stirring apprehension among business executives and companies that rely on it.

Germany's electric vehicle sector is battling tough challenges from infrastructure and economic difficulties, limited budgets, and general automotive industry challenges.

A key issue is the lack of adequate charging facilities and diminishing government incentives, hindering the expansion of EV sales in the country.

A recent court ruling has raised uncertainties about Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government allocating a €212 billion fund for essential initiatives such as establishing charging stations and semiconductor manufacturing facilities.

Actress Julianna Margulies is being slammed for saying Palestine supporters have been 'brainwashed to hate Jews'.

The Good Wife star made a string of offensive remarks during an appearance on the The Back Room podcast on November 1.

The 57-year-old claimed Palestine supporters are mostly made up of black and gay people who need to stop 'spewing anti-Semitic hate'.

The bizarre rant also saw her state that black people and the LGBTQ+ community are 'lower than the Jews' , also suggesting that non-binary people would be 'decapitated' in Muslim countries.

The Jewish actress, who plays a gay journalist in The Morning Show but is married to Keith Lieberthal in real life, said she was 'offended as a lesbian' over the lack of support offered by the LGBTQ campaigners.

Americans are sharply divided on Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.

Yes, I know.

Public opinion is irrelevant when it comes to Standing With Israel.

EV owners report far more problems with their cars and trucks than owners of gas-powered vehicles, according to a new survey.

Vehicles in the burgeoning electric vehicle segment, from model year 2021 through 2023, encountered 79 percent more problems than those with combustion engines, according to a Consumer Reports survey of more than 330,000 car owners.

The research said EV owners most frequently reported troubles with battery and charging systems as well as flaws in body panels and the fit of interior parts.

It noted that EV manufacturers are still learning to construct new types of vehicles, and suggested that their build quality will improve over time and teething issues will be ironed out.

It’s the ‘leaning tower’ that has stood tipsily – but steadily – for nearly 1,000 years. But now, the days of the Garisenda tower in Bologna, Italy, could be numbered. Following investigations last month, the city is instigating a civil protection plan for the “sudden and unexpected collapse of the tower,” which has dominated the Bologna skyline since the 12th century.

A protective metal cordon will be erected to “contain debris resulting from a possible collapse, to reduce the vulnerability of surrounding buildings and the exposure to the population, as well as blocking access to the off-limits area,” the city council said in a statement.

The cordon will be fixed into the ground, and will include specially designed rockfall protection nets, also made of metal and also anchored to the ground.

Reports are coming in claiming CTV News, one of the largest news broadcasters in all of Canada, has told employees IN WRITING, they may not use the word "Palestinian" in __any__ news coverage.  They must also report only accurate ISRAELI deaths, but "summarize" Palestinian Deaths with the words "hundreds" or "thousands."

They are also censoring all coverage of Pro-Palestinian Rallies or Protests, and limiting Palestinian guests on their shows to only those who are "crying" ostensibly.

Here is the video making the revelations:

When people reach the ripe old age of 75, there is usually a tendency to slow down and take things easier; often there’s a lack of cohesion, sentences often aren’t completed, delusion and incompetence become more noticeable if not plain idiocy on a scale not previously seen. In some cases, relatives might even talk of assisted suicide to put the old bugger out of his misery, with some even as going as far to talk about being “brain dead”.

NATO’s 75th birthday is coming around soon, with celebrations planned for July of next year in Washington. Yet the organisation has a bit of a problem with the party and celebrations. What’s there to celebrate with Ukraine more or less a war that even die-hard Republicans in America admit is a war which cannot be won? 75 years old, NATO is looking more and more like an outdated institution which, if anything, is going to fall on its sword at some point when the world wakes up and realises what a con it is.

But the old git has to be kept alive at all costs, largely to keep up appearances for new members and also to protect the reputations of western leaders who have staked theirs on the war in Ukraine being a righteous win.

During the temporary ceasefire, I was able to visit several shelters housing displaced people who have come in from northern Gaza, mainly at the European Hospital and an UNRWA-run school in Khan Younis. The stories I heard from people in multiple shelters are difficult to believe, even now after everything we’ve seen. Most of the stories center around how they evacuated the north and were expelled to the south, including the harrowing journey on Salah al-Din Street, which has been designated a “safe passage” by the Israeli army. It became apparent from the testimonies I heard that the road was not designed to facilitate the flight of civilians but to systematically humiliate, degrade, and, in some cases, kill them. Not everyone survived the journey south, and even now, Salah al-Din Steet is littered with dozens of bodies — men, women, and children — in different states of decomposition. 

The picture that emerges is not a “humanitarian road” but a death march. These are some of the testimonies I gathered from dozens of eyewitnesses.

One of my viewers wrote to me with a letter in which he was outraged with his GP and told him that he wasn't going to use their services again.

Thousands of car dealerships are begging President Biden to “tap the breaks” on electric vehicle mandates. In a letter to the president, close to 4,000 dealers have asked the administration to repeal regulations that push electric vehicle adoption. Why? Because consumers aren’t buying them. Also because they are NOT environmentally friendly or reliable.

The peaks of Hawaii's highest mountains were dusted with snow on Friday, as a Kona weather system which drenched the lower lands coated the top with snow.

Snow was recorded on the top of Big Island's highest mountains, Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, which both tower almost 14,000 ft above sea level.

Around five inches of snow was recorded on Friday.

Webmaster addition: I remember just a few years ago when Mauna Kea got hit with a blizzard ... in July!

This Is A Huge Lie - Here Are Pages About Palestine From A 1929 Encyclopedia

Home sales fell in October to their lowest level on record, declining at a faster rate than during the 2008 housing collapse, new figures show.

The Pending Home Sales Index from the National Association of Realtors (NAR) found transactions slumped 1.5 percent in a month. Over the year it means sales dropped 8.5 percent.

It brought the NAR's index down to 71.4 out of 100 - its lowest figure since it began in 2001. An index of 100 indicates it is equal to the level of activity at the start of the millenium. 

Soaring mortgage rates and still-high house prices have poured cold water on America's property market. 

A Five Guys customer's video complaining about the extremely high prices of the items at the fast-food chain has resurfaced on multiple social media platforms. 

Michelle Newell posted the clip to TikTok explaining that she and her husband had paid $42 for two cheeseburgers, a side of fries and two milkshakes. 

The visibly upset patron told viewers that the couple had visited a Five Guys location on a Saturday afternoon for lunch. Newell shared her anger last year - but a check by DailyMail.com Friday evening confirmed it remains just as expensive to buy the same meal. 

Newell said she ordered a regular cheeseburger for herself, another cheeseburger with mushrooms for her husband and a side of fries. The couple also got two milkshakes. 

She said that 'we're absolutely done' and businesses are 'playing with their customers' . 

The Elites believed their experiment of transforming America into a "multiracial democracy" had come to fruition with Obama's installation.

What in the world is going on?  Last week, we were getting reports that hospitals in China were being absolutely overwhelmed by sick kids that had developed a condition known as “white lung syndrome”.  Unfortunately, now we are learning that large numbers of children in the United States and Europe are also developing “white lung syndrome”.  In many of these cases, “white lung syndrome” is being caused by “a bacterial infection that many antibiotics cannot fight”…

VMware has fixed a critical authentication bypass vulnerability in Cloud Director appliance deployments, a bug that was left unpatched for over two weeks since it was disclosed on November 14th.

Cloud Director is a VMware platform that enables admins to manage data centers spread across multiple locations as Virtual Data Centers (VDC).

The auth bypass security flaw (CVE-2023-34060) only impacts appliances running VCD Appliance 10.5 that were previously upgraded from an older release. However, VMware says it doesn't affect fresh VCD Appliance 10.5 installs, Linux deployments, and other appliances.

Remote attackers can remotely exploit the CVE-2023-34060 bug in low-complexity attacks that don't require user interaction.

The attacker, identified as former FBI informant and gang member John Turscak, 52, has been charged with attempted murder, and told officers he would have killed the disgraced former cop if they had not responded quickly, prosecutors said. 

Chauvin was targeted in the law library at the Federal Correctional Institution in Tucson, Arizona, last Friday, with Turscak telling FBI agents he had been planning the attack for around a month. 

The inmate also said he chose Black Friday as the date of his attack for symbolic connection to the Black Lives Matter movement, which were in-part sparked by Chauvin after he killed Floyd in May 2020. 

Turscak was sentenced to 30 years behind bars in November 2001 for a number of crimes while in the Mexican Mafia gang, and was acting as an undercover informant for the FBI at the same time. 

Far-right Deputy Knesset Speaker Nissim Vaturi of Israel is raising eyebrows for comments he recently made about how Israel's invasion of Gaza is "too humane."

Vaturi, whose party wants to ban the preaching of Jesus Christ in Israel, thinks Israel is actually being too kind to the Palestinians.

"All of this preoccupation with whether or not there is internet in Gaza shows that we have learned nothing," Vaturi, who is also a member of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party, scoffed in a letter about Israel's controversial decision to cut off all resources to Gaza.

"We are too humane. Burn Gaza now, no less! Don't allow fuel in, don't allow water in until the hostages are returned back!" Vaturi added, referring to the approximately 240 Israelis and others who were kidnapped during the October 7 Hamas incident.

In support of the Palestinian people and the Palestinian Resistance in the Gaza Strip, the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon - Hezbollah, executed five operations against Israeli military sites in occupied northern territories.

At 4:00 PM (local time) Hezbollah announced that their fighters targeted a grouping of "enemy soldiers in the vicinity of the Jal al-Aallam" Israeli military site. It is worth noting that, the targeted site is located near the coast of occupied Palestine and is equipped with high-tech military-grade surveillance and spyware systems.

Later, at 4:43 PM (local time) the Lebanese Resistance conducted two simultaneous operations on the al-Marj military site and the "Ramim" Barracks.

In the al-Marj military site, Resistance fighters targeted a grouping of Israeli occupation soldiers in the vicinity of the site, which is located opposite the Lebanese town of Markaba, in southeastern Lebanon.

It is the fifty-sixth day since the Hamas attack on October 7 that resulted in the deaths of about 1,200 Israelis. The ensuing Israeli onslaught has by now killed over 15,000 Palestinians, including over 6,000 children. A negotiated temporary ceasefire, with extensions, has seen the exchange of several hostages between Israel and Hamas, freeing the initially agreed 150 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for 50 Israeli captives, with a few extensions raising those figures to 180 Palestinians and 105 Israelis (and other nationalities). The Israeli bombings have now resumed, with Israel now urging residents in the south of the strip to evacuate (earlier, residents in the north were urged to evacuate south).   

The mind is overwhelmed by the scale and the pace of the destruction in Gaza, the likes of which we have not witnessed at any point in recent memory. Many may justifiably be left wondering whether Israel has officially gone mad, or whether the indiscriminate devastation that is overwhelmingly slaughtering Palestinian civilians, by Israel’s own account, remains part of a calculated strategy. Paradoxically, the answer is yes to both: Israel has gone mad, and its madness is being rationally employed in the service of a well-worn military playbook. That playbook is called “the Dahiya Doctrine.”

Webmaster addition:

Yoni Leviatan, a writer and musician whose articles have been featured in the Times of Israel, Newsweek and the Jewish Daily Forward, laid out in explicit detail why he and other Israelis "couldn't care less" about dead Gazans and want to see Israel wage "all-out war" against Gaza "without mercy."

"Yoni Leviatan is a British-born, American-raised, Israeli-blooded musician, content producer and writer," his profile on the Times of Israel states. "Originally from Coral Springs, Florida, he's been living in Tel Aviv since 2009 where he spends his free time writing about Israel and politics with articles featured in Newsweek, Times of Israel and The Forward."

Leviatan wrote Friday on X:

To those who reply to me with pictures of the damage and destruction in Gaza as if this is supposed to be something that moves me, you should know how much I really, truly in my heart don't care. In fact, this is what the saying "I couldn't care less" was made for.

At least 109 Palestinians have been killed since the conclusion of a week-long ceasefire, the Gaza Ministry of Health reported on Friday. Hundreds more have been wounded as Israel resumed its high-intensity bombardment of the enclave.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed it had struck more than 200 targets since the ceasefire expired at 7am local time on Friday, noting that the assault has resumed across ground, air, and sea on both north and south Gaza, including the cities of Khan Younis and Rafah. 

After releasing 110 hostages during the ceasefire, Hamas still holds 137 captives, Israeli government spokesperson Eylon Levy told reporters on Friday, promising to deliver “the mother of all thumpings” to the Palestinian militants for “failing to release all the kidnapped women.” The vast majority – 126 – are Israelis. 

Israeli spies are preparing to assassinate Hamas leaders living in Lebanon, Türkiye, and Qatar once the war with the militant group is over in Gaza, officials have told the Wall Street Journal. The operation was reportedly planned more than a month ago, but postponed so that hostage negotiations could take place.

The Israeli intelligence services began drawing up plans for the assassination campaign after Hamas’ October 7 attack on the Jewish state, the American newspaper reported on Thursday, citing anonymous officials. Some reportedly wanted to embark on the campaign immediately, but were ordered to wait so that negotiations to free the roughly 240 hostages held by Hamas could progress.

The killings have been authorized by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the officials said, adding that it is now a matter of when, not if, the campaign will begin.

In the cutthroat world of asset management, my gig as an investment banker at Zurich’s top Swiss joint was a tightrope walk between challenge and monotony. Crafting portfolios for the high rollers at the biggest Swiss bank needed a delicate mix of precision and strategy. The daily grind of summarizing, stacking up, and shaping portfolios for the wealthy wasn't just a skill; it was a meticulous drill where financial stability was the goal and the payoff.

In the established 60-40 asset allocation doctrine – a fundamental principle in wealth management – the goal was straightforward: allocate 60% to stocks and 40% to bonds. This implicit guideline, honed through market wisdom, provided clients with a safeguard against the unpredictable nature of individual stocks. However, the intricacies of my role extended beyond the numerical aspects of asset allocation. Placing emphasis on securing a resilient lending value for portfolios became paramount, evolving beyond a mere metric to become a vital component ingrained in each client’s investment strategy.

Amid financial turmoil, stock selection gained extra importance, and in recent years, the spotlight turned towards ESG funds.