House Republicans alleged on Thursday that President Joe Biden and his son Hunter each received a $5 million payment from the Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma to shake off a corruption probe. 

Reps. Anna Paulina Luna and Marjorie Taylor Greene were among those given access to an FBI document from June 2020 that detailed testimony given to agents from an informant who had spoken with Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky. 

That informant claimed that Zlochevsky said he had doled out $5 million to each Biden to call off an ongoing investigation by the Ukrainian prosecutor general at the time, Viktor Shokin.

A source close to the Republican investigation confirmed to DailyMail.com confirmed the contents of the FBI document that members have been viewing behind closed doors in a SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility).

Ukrainian prosecutors first launched an investigation into Bursima - the company on which Hunter had a board position for five years - over allegations of money laundering, tax evasion, and corruption in 2012.

A Washington women's spa with compulsory nudity has been ordered by a judge to admit trans women with penises after the owner tried to ban them and an activist complained. 

The Olympus Spa had attempted to sue the Washington State Human Rights Commission (WSHRC) after being ordered to change their rules. 

Trans woman Haven Wilvich had attempted to apply to join the Korean spa but was denied, alleging the spa told her 'transgender women without surgery are not welcome' and complained to the commission.

Now, a Washington District Court has dismissed the lawsuit filed by the spa and upheld the original ruling by the WSHRC.  The Pacific Northwest state is one of several Dem-run areas where trans people are permitted to use facilities which align with their gender without question. 

Webmaster addition: And the rest of the world will rush in to plunder South Africa's mineral wealth!

A 'supervolcano' in a densely populated part of Italy could be on the verge of its first eruption since 1538, researchers have warned. 

The Campi Flegrei volcano near Naples, southern Italy, has become weaker and more prone to rupturing, making an eruption more likely, the experts say. 

Located about nine miles (14.5 km) to the west of Naples, it is one of the few active supervolcanoes in the world.

Around 360,000 people live at Campi Flegrei and may need to evacuate if experts think it's in immediate danger of an eruption, although scientists say there's no guarantee one will occur anytime soon. 

Saudi officials have snubbed US Secretary of State’s latest push for the Kingdom’s normalization of relations with the Israeli regime and his bid to win further concessions on oil prices and Riyadh’s recent resumption of ties with Syria and Iran during his high-profile visit to Saudi Arabia.

Speaking in a news conference alongside Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud in Riyadh on Thursday, the visiting Antony Blinken reiterated that Washington will continue to play an integral role in expanding normalization between the Tel Aviv regime and Saudi Arabia.

Blinken, who was in the kingdom as part of a US push to defuse rows that have touched on oil prices, and Riyadh’s opening to Iran, further insisted that normalizing relations between Israeli regime and its neighbors was a priority for Washington.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink defended the environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards in a 2017 video that has resurfaced on social media, In particular, Fink stressed the need to “force behaviors.”

The aforementioned clip showed Fink boasting how his investment firm forced companies to accept the ESG system alongside the diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) system during a 2017 DealBook conference sponsored by the New York Times.

“Behaviors are going to have to change, and this is one thing we are asking companies. You have to force behaviors – and at BlackRock, we are forcing behaviors,” the BlackRock CEO said. “If you don’t force behaviors – whether it’s gender, race, or just any way you want to – say, the composition of your team, you’re [going to] be impacted. That’s not just recruiting; it is development.”

Webmaster addition: First there was the theocratic-state, then the nation-state, and now comes the corporate-state!

“We may congratulate ourselves that this cruel war is nearing its end.
It has cost a vast amount of treasure and blood. . . .
It has indeed been a trying hour for the Republic; but
I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes
me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war,
corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places
will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong
its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth
is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.
I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety
of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war.
God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless.”

—U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864
(letter to Col. William F. Elkins)

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson has acknowledged that “massive immigration just doesn’t work” as he announced changes to the country’s border control policy that would make it the strictest in the European Union.

Kristersson made the comments to mark the National Day of Sweden as he insisted that it was too easy for migrants who can’t even speak Swedish to obtain citizenship.

“Let me be clear: Massive immigration and poor integration just doesn’t work,” wrote Kristersson.

“That is why we are now changing Sweden’s migration policy and making it the strictest in the EU.”

The Wall Street Journal of March 31, 2023 (page A20, if you must know) featured this headline: “Turkey’s Parliament Ratifies NATO bid.” Here is the first paragraph of this entry:

“The Turkish parliament ratified Finland’s entrance into the NATO on Thursday, removing the last obstacle to a historic expansion of the alliance in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.” [Emphasis Added]

Waitasec. If event B is a response to event A, A must necessarily come first in time, B only afterward. If B occurs first, this event can hardly be considered a response to A.

Let us do a little bit of history here. During the Cold War, NATO and the Warsaw Pact contended with one another. Then, in 1991, the Soviet Union ended. What should have then happened, for a true peace, was both military alliances should have disbanded. Or perhaps, turned into an organization that comprised both of them. But the Warsaw Pact dissolved, and NATO remained.

A group of Republican senators on Thursday introduced a bill to repeal the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) that was passed in the wake of the September 11th attacks and is still being used to justify wars today.

The End Endless Wars Act was introduced by Senators Rand Paul (R-KY), Mike Lee (R-UT), JD Vance (R-OH), and Mike Braun (R-IN). The legislation would repeal the 2001 AUMF 180 days after its enactment.

“If there exists any desire to reclaim our Constitutional power and send a message to the world that we are a nation of peace, Congress should pass this bill and repeal the 2001 Authorization for war. After all, the 2001 AUMF never intended to authorize worldwide war, all the time, everywhere, forever,” said Sen. Paul, according to a press release from his office.

Webmaster addition: The AUMF was specific to nations suspected of being behind 9/11, mainly Iraq and was never applicable to any other war. In any event, Biden will veto it.

Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said Thursday that Russian forces repelled a Ukrainian attack in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia Oblast as Western media outlets are reporting Ukraine’s counteroffensive has officially begun.

“At 1:30 am, the enemy made an attempt with up to 1,500 troops and 150 pieces of armor from the 47th mechanized brigade to break through our defense,” Shoigu said, according to the Russian news agency TASS.

“The enemy was halted in all four directions and retreated with heavy casualties,” the Russian military chief said. He claimed that Ukraine lost “30 tanks, 11 infantry fighting vehicles, and up to 350 personnel.”

Shoigu’s claims haven’t been confirmed as Ukrainian leadership is keeping quiet about its offensive plans. A US official told The New York Times that it appeared the “main thrust” of Ukraine’s counteroffensive has begun.

Las Vegas news station KLAS-TV published a wild investigative story Wednesday — all about a falling flash of light in the night sky captured on video and a 911 call minutes later from a man who told a dispatcher he was looking right at 10-foot-tall "aliens" with "big eyes" in his backyard and that "they are not human."

"I swear to God this is not a joke, this is actually — we’re terrified," the man added to the dispatcher, according to a recording of the call the station obtained.

Around 11:50 p.m. April 30, a Las Vegas Metro police officer’s bodycam recorded something streaking low across the sky, KLAS said, adding that the American Meteor Society said people across eastern California, Nevada, and Utah reported seeing the flash.

Webmaster addition:

Tucker Carlson posted a second episode of his new Twitter show on Thursday after dropping an enormously successful inaugural episode on Tuesday.

"Cling to your taboos!" the tweet containing Carlson's new video declared.

In the new episode, Carlson said that American society is "governed by taboos" and that those taboos have been changing, but not naturally. "What we're allowed to dislike is being dictated to us from above, sometimes by force," he said.

He went on to say that while it was previously taboo to target people based on their race, punishing individuals on the basis of skin color is now "mandatory" in the realms of business, government, and higher education, provided that "the victims are white."

He claimed that adultery was once a serious liability in politics that would be viewed as "disqualifying," but said this is no longer the case. Carlson claimed that "Barack Obama had a strange" as well as "highly creepy personal life."

Tucker's Triumph Marred By UFO Talk

The first episode of Tucker Carlson's new Twitter show debuted yesterday, and as ZeroHedge put it, it was a triumph: As of this writing, Tucker's ten minute video was retweeted more than 186,000 times and had nearly 81 million views.

Tucker opened strong, calling out our credulous media for accepting at face value Ukrainian claims that Russian President Vladimir Putin blew up the Kakhovka dam, the destruction of which will threaten Crimea's water supply, as well as the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, among other Russian-held assets. But then he veered into X-Files territory, as ZeroHedge noted: 

Carlson then took the media to task for ignoring yesterday's "bombshell of the millennium,' in which a government whistleblower revealed that craft developed by non-human intelligence has been recovered by governments around the world in an 80-year race to reverse engineer materials for geopolitical advantages.

But as our friend Philippe Lemoine pointed out at Twitter, there's zero evidence any of our current technology originated from aliens. 

It’s turning into a banner year for corporate bankruptcy filings, after years of Easy Money that caused all kinds of excesses, fueled by yield-chasing investors, in an environment where the Fed had repressed yields with all its might. Those yield-chasing investors kept even the most over-indebted zombies supplied with ever-more fresh money. But that era has ended. Interest rates are much higher, and investors are getting a little more prudent, and Easy Money is gone.

At the peak of the Fed’s yield repression in mid-2021, “BB”-rated companies – so these companies are “junk” rated – could borrow at around 3% (my cheat sheet for corporate credit rating scales by ratings agency). Companies are junk rated because they have too much debt and inadequate cash flow to service that debt. In other words, investors risked life and limb to earn 3%, and now these investors are asked to surrender life and limb, so to speak. But that’s how it goes with yield-chasing.

These “BB” junk bond yields have risen to nearly 7%. This means these companies that had trouble producing enough cash flow to service their 3% or 5% debt, have to refinance this debt when it comes due, or add new debt, at 7%. That 7% may still be low, considering inflation running around near that neighborhood, but it puts a lot more strain on those companies.

Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods has urged companies to stop focusing on certain energy sources, such as renewable energy, to save the climate, warning that it would be a “huge mistake to be picking winners and losers and focusing on specific technologies”.

Instead, “we need to look more broadly and let the markets figure out which solutions deliver the most emissions reductions at the lowest cost," Woods told Nicolai Tangen, the CEO of Norway's Wealth Fund,one of the largest mutual funds in the world, on his podcast.

An attempt to move away from oil and gas immediately, with unchanged global demand, could be disastrous for clean energy, Woods suggested, adding that if we produce less LNG, for example, something else–like coal–would have to step in to fill the demand gap. 

As tensions between the U.S. and China continue to ratchet higher, Sequoia Capital isn't waiting for sanctions or interruptions to its business. Instead, it's taking the proactive step of splitting its China business out on its own. 

The firm is going to run its China business as a “completely independent” entity from its US operation, a new report from FT revealed this week. 

In addition to splitting from the main firm, the China business will spot a new name called "HongShan", which is a version of its previous Chinese name, which meant redwood. 

Similarly, Sequoia will reportedly be splitting off its Indian and south-east Asian businesses into another entity, the report says. 

“It really was a very complicated decision. Over the years, we have reassessed the cost-benefit trade-off of this arrangement and whether it was the right structure for the firm. We realised it was time for this," Roelof Botha, managing partner of Sequoia Capital told FT. 

The former civilian head of the NATO alliance is warning that some Eastern European states are prepared to send their soldiers to Ukraine if the bloc does not make significant pledges to Kiev during an upcoming summit. 

Anders Rasmussen, former NATO Secretary-General and current adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, is touring Europe and Washington to gauge the level of support Kiev should expect at the Vilnius Summit in July. “I think the Poles would seriously consider going in and assemble a coalition of the willing if Ukraine doesn’t get anything in Vilnius,” he said. “We shouldn’t underestimate the Polish feelings, the Poles feel that for too long western Europe did not listen to their warnings against the true Russian mentality.”

The manufacturers of “forever chemicals” used in products like nonstick pans and waterproof clothing knew about the dangers their materials posed more than 40 years before the general public, according to previously secret industry documents. By following the same playbook as Big Tobacco, including suppression of their own research, the companies successfully stymied regulation for decades while the cancer-causing chemicals became ubiquitous in the water, air, and soil.

Major manufacturers are already spending billions to settle lawsuits and millions fighting federal regulations, including landmark environmental rules proposed this spring. The revealing industry documents, analyzed in a new study from researchers at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), could bolster efforts to hold the companies accountable for widespread contamination from chemicals that take hundreds of years to break down. The manufacturer 3M is reportedly preparing to pay $10 billion to settle claims that it polluted thousands of public water systems, but the cost of cleaning up the chemicals in drinking water nationwide will likely top $400 billion.

A single judge on the High Court of England and Wales has rejected imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange’s nearly year-old request to appeal the British decision to extradite him to the United States to stand trial on espionage and computer intrusion charges.

Assange’s legal team has one last recourse in the U.K. and has five days to request a hearing before the court. 

Stella Assange, Assange’s wife, issued this statement on Thursday:

“On Tuesday next week my husband Julian Assange will make a renewed application for appeal to the High Court. The matter will then proceed to a public hearing before two new judges at the High Court and we remain optimistic that we will prevail and that Julian will not be extradited to the United States where he faces charges that could result in him spending the rest of his life in a maximum security prison for publishing true information that revealed war crimes committed by the U.S. government.”

The single judge on the court, Sir Jonathan Swift, issued the 3-page decision on Tuesday.  It is not yet publicly available on the High Court’s website.  

"President Joe Biden has been slow in providing military resources to Ukraine," former Vice President Mike Pence complained during a CNN town hall Wednesday. He launched his campaign for the 2024 Republican nomination this week.

"We are [still] waiting on F-16s to be transferred from somewhere," he said, arguing there should essentially be no limit to what Kiev receives from the United States.

"I believe the United States of America needs to continue to provide the courageous soldiers in Ukraine with the resources they need to repel … the Russian invasion and restore their territorial integrity," Pence declared just on the heels of his official campaign announcement.

After a-year-and-a-half of wave after wave of anti-Russia sanctions, along with tens of billions pledged and spent for Ukraine, Pence still thinks the real problem is that Biden is not doing "enough". 

So it seems the Neocon foreign policy wing of the GOP will be well-represented in the upcoming 2024 debates, given also presidential hopeful Nikki Haley has been loudly denouncing the positions of Trump and DeSantis on Ukraine...

Haley, the only woman in the race for the Republican nomination, lambasted DeSantis for saying this year that Ukraine was a “territorial dispute”, a comment that drew widespread criticism and that he has since walked back. “For them to sit there and say that this is a territorial dispute – that’s just not the case, or to say that we should stay neutral,” Haley told voters in the early nominating state of Iowa during a televised CNN town hall event.

She said: "It’s in the best interest of our national security for Ukraine to win."

For the sake of solar power, let's hope Canada can bring its rampaging arsonists to heel. That's because the shroud of smoke that covered much of the Eastern US seaboard, has sent solar power generation in parts of the eastern US plummeting by more than 50% as wildfires rage in Canada.

Webmaster addition: There are some satellite animations on social media showing that the fires in Canada erupted from multiple locations at the same time. And the climate nazis are screaming that we all have to give up our cars and such to save the Earth!

The commercial real estate space is experiencing stress following the recent turmoil in the regional bank sector, with the rapid rise in interest rates, tightening lending standards, and structural changes, such as sliding demand for office buildings. 

Some structural factors, such as remote work and hybrid work, have doomed the office space segment. This has left empty office buildings scattered across major US cities as the number of landlords falling behind on repayments due to the difficulty of refinancing and high vacancies has hit a five-year high. 

According to real estate data firm Trepp, more than 4% of office loans packed into commercial mortgage-backed securities were delinquent in the last 30 days as of May, the highest level since 2018. 

After his first episode topped 100 million views, Tucker Carlson is back with Episode 2, exploring how we, as a population, are controlled (or coerced) directly (through laws) or indirectly (through taboos).

Carlson observes the changing societal taboos in America, suggesting that they are being dictated from above rather than evolving organically, focusing explicitly on the shift in attitudes towards race-based attacks, adultery in politics, and child molestation.

"Let's say you wanted to control a country," the former Fox News man begins rather joltingly.

"Well," he explains "you'd want to make sure you had the complete obedience of everybody within your borders who was authorized to use deadly force... you'd start with the military... [and other agencies] like the IRS."

"Controlling the guns would be a top priority for you if ever wanted to go dictatorial."

But, Carlson, asks, what if you wanted more, not simply to control people's behavior, "but to control how they think."

"In that case," he remarks, "you'd need to take charge of its taboos."

A taboo is something that by popular consensus is not allowed, it is not illegal, but it doesn't need to be.

"Over time, social prohibitions are more powerful and more enduring than laws."

Small business owners are calling on Congress to address inflation by easing business regulations and taxes. They say Biden administration policies show disdain for small businesses.

Silvia Lee, executive vice president, and Chief Lending Officer for First Community Bank in Corpus Christi, Texas, said a commercial customer told her he felt targeted.

“He mentioned that he feels our government doesn’t want small businesses to succeed and only wants large companies in business,” she told the House Committee on Small Business at a June 7 hearing.

On Aug. 22, about 2½ months from today, the most significant development in international finance since 1971 will be unveiled.

It involves the rollout of a major new currency that could weaken the role of the dollar in global payments and ultimately displace the U.S. dollar as the leading payment currency and reserve currency.

It could happen in just a few years.

The process by which this will happen is unprecedented, and the world is unprepared for this geopolitical shock wave.

This monetary shock will be delivered by a group called the BRICS.

The acronym BRICS stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

This play for global reserve currency status by the BRICS will affect world trade, direct foreign investment and investor portfolios in dramatic and unforeseen ways.

According to sources familiar with the case, the DOJ declined to delay the planned indictment of Trump to investigate allegations that a senior prosecutor on the case tried to influence a key witness by discussing a federal judgeship with the witness' lawyer, Just the News reports.

Ugandan students from at least 13 universities have responded to President Joe Biden’s threat to cut aid to the country over its newly passed anti-homosexuality law. Students took to the streets, singing in front of Parliament, “We don’t want your pro-gay money. We want and love our country more than money.”

The protests come as Biden and the U.S. State Department have threatened to interfere with Uganda’s internal affairs and cut monetary aid to the country. At the same time, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni affirmed he would not be coerced by money. He declared, “If they cut aid, we shall sit down and discipline our expenditure, rearrange our budgets; if they interfere with our trade we shall trade with others.” 

The citizens and lawmakers of Uganda seem to be still keenly aware of the witness of the first Christian martyrs of their country, who were killed in horrific ways following incredible tortures because they refused to accept or consent to the homosexual acts of their king. They chose to suffer death rather than accept as something normal a sexual deviancy that Scripture calls a sin that cries to heaven for vengeance. 

The Pentagon is set to unveil another $2 billion in military aid for Ukraine, hoping to bolster the country’s air defenses as Kiev launches its much-touted counteroffensive against Russian forces, Bloomberg News has reported.

The announcement is likely to come later this week, the outlet said on Thursday, citing unnamed US officials. The arms will be provided under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI), which has furnished billions of dollars in American weapons to Kiev since fighting erupted with Moscow last year. 

The new aid package will include two types of Patriot missiles: the Patriot Advanced Capability Missile-3 (PAC-3) and the Guidance Enhanced Missile. Produced by Raytheon, the latter munitions are said to provide “improved ability to defeat tactical ballistic missiles, cruise missiles or enemy aircraft in complement to the PAC-3 missile,” according to the US weapons-maker.

Webmaster addition: The pattern that is starting to emerge is simple. Burisma paid then VP Joe Biden $5 million to use his influence to get the Ukrainian prosecutor looking into Burisma fired. Biden then threatened Ukraine that unless they fired that prosecutor he would withhold a billion dollars in aid. Ukraine then fired the prosecutor and Biden actually is on video bragging about what he did.

Fast forward to today and Zelensky is clearly in a position to blackmail Resident Biden into send billions of your dollars to Ukraine. So, as long as Biden is in  office, the flow of money will never stop!

Leftist Democrat 'squad' member Cori Bush led the charge in celebrating the imminent second indictment of former President Donald Trump, gloating in a tweet. 

Trump has been indicted for mishandling of classified documents and summoned to appear before a federal judge in Miami, he announced on Thursday. He has been charged with seven counts.  

Bush, member of the left-wing progressive 'squad' started by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, initially tweeted her joy over the potential charges.

'The former white supremacist-in-chief has been indicted, again. He must be held accountable,' she wrote, before deleting just minutes later. 

Webmaster addition: If the documents seized at Mar-a-lago were about CROSSFIRE HURRICANE, they were not classified. President Trump declassified them the day before he left office!