Deep in a Cambodian old-growth forest, Buddhist "ecology monks" wrap trees in saffron clerical robes before ordaining the trees into the Buddhist faith.

The practice is an example of "forest activism" that spread to Cambodia after Thai monks in the 1990s began ordaining trees as they would a new monk.

Ordained trees become sacred and protected from illegal logging because harming an ordained monk is taboo in the Buddhist religion.

The recognition that religion can be a powerful tool when applied to selling the global warming narrative has been gaining traction at the United Nations and the World Economic Forum (WEF), where faith has traditionally been kept at arm's length.

The release of more video and cell phone tapes from January 6 by new House Speaker Mike Johnson shows further evidence of a setup by the Feds that their so-called insurrection was staged.

All sides will acknowledge the fact that then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused to have extra security on January 6.

However, there is a bigger question that no one, Left, Right or Center, seems to be asking:

Why?

Why wouldn’t Pelosi want to be sure that “Democracy was secure” so that Vice President Mike Pence could certify the Electoral College vote? Making sure that the Capitol was safe and sound would mean that Joe Biden’s presidency would be assured. After all, the election of 2020 was “the most secure in American history,” so why wouldn’t you want that obvious fact certified and rubber-stamped by Congress?

The only obvious answer to why Pelosi wanted to guarantee a riotous breach of the Capitol was what she knew would be the actual results of the Electoral College vote if the process were allowed to run its course. Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, among others, had previously made noise about challenging election results in several swing states. And despite what many have debated, there was tangible potential for Pence to delay the certification for a couple of weeks to look into the evidence of significant vote-tampering and fraud.

The rise of generative AI applications like ChatGPT, Midjourney or Bard already leads to increased demand in the world's data center network due to its sometimes hefty requirements for the underlying large language models.

This computing demand will only increase in the upcoming years, necessitating the building of new data centers and expanding the capacities of existing ones.

As Statista's Florian Zandt shows in the following chart, based on 2022 data collected by commercial real estate company Cushman & Wakefield, the race between the global superpowers China and the United States also extends to data centers.

Immigrants who illegally cross the border into Arizona are being handed $5,000 in good-as-cash gift cards, along with cell phones and costly plane tickets, all of which are being paid for by the American taxpayer, according to Arizona Sheriff Mark Lamb.

“I was absolutely in shock when these agents came forward,” said Mr. Lamb. “I had known we handed out free cell phones and plane tickets, but to give out $5,000 Visa gift cards to people who break our laws and come into our country illegally when the average American is struggling to pay their bills is just tough to swallow.”

“People need to know the truth and let their representative lawmakers hear about it. This needs to end,” added Mr. Lamb.

The House of Representatives on Dec. 6 voted to pass a bill that will block a proposed rule by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to effectively mandate that most cars produced in the United States be fully electric by 2032.

The bill, H.R. 4468, dubbed the Choice in Automobile Retail Sales Act of 2023, passed the House by a 221–197 vote. That included total GOP support; Democrats, meanwhile, sought to have the bill sent back to committee.

The bill would block an EPA rule that would require roughly 68 percent of cars manufactured in the United States be fully electric by 2032. The rule has won the support of President Joe Biden's administration.

Republicans have rallied against the proposed standards, which they say are unrealistic and threaten to undermine consumer freedom—as well as to increase U.S. dependence on China.

Around 90 percent of the rare earth minerals used to create electric vehicles (EVs) are sourced from the top U.S. adversary.

In a landmark ruling, a Japanese court has convicted a non-profit executive of facilitating illegal overseas organ transplants for Japanese citizens.

On Nov. 28, the Tokyo District Court sentenced 63-year-old Hiromichi Kikuchi, chairman of the Association for Patients of Intractable Diseases, a non-profit organization. Kikuchi received an eight-month prison term and a fine of 1 million yen (around $6,800) for arranging organ transplants abroad for two Japanese citizens without government approval. His organization, which has been working with transplant patients for over fifteen years, is now under scrutiny.

The case, the first of its kind in Japan, has prompted widespread media coverage and heightened concerns over illegal organ transplants.

Mr. Kikuchi's conviction shows Japan's efforts to crack down on organ trafficking and forced organ harvesting. The transplants that led to his arrest took place in Belarus in 2022. However, the case has drawn attention to the grim reality of forced organ harvesting in China, as Mr. Kikuchi admitted that the vast majority of the transplants he has orchestrated since 2007 involved organs from China.

The one thing progressive corporate media and the radical left in the White House cannot stand is Elon Musk deepening his ties with the Department of Defense from rocket launches to providing the military with high-speed internet beamed from low-Earth orbit. 

According to Bloomberg, Musk's satellite internet service called "Starlink" successfully completed a nine-month pilot test in the harsh, snowy environment in the Arctic.

Brian Beal, principal engineer with the Air Force Research Laboratory's Integrated Capabilities Directorate, stated that StarLink was a "reliable and high-performance communications system in the Arctic, including on-the-move applications." 

Beal said the test ended in June and evaluated Starlink's usefulness for high-speed internet in remote areas that can be set up in minutes.

Ireland’s “Hate Speech Bill” or The Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill 2022 is a radical update to Irish hate crime law. It is a blueprint for authoritarianism, threatening jail time for the possession of memes and even reversing Ireland’s constitutionally guaranteed presumption of innocence – you are presumed guilty until you can prove yourself innocent.

Interest in the revised hate speech laws has been spurred by recent rioting in Dublin following the stabbing of three children and an early childhood worker outside of a school last month.

Australian media outlet Defence Connect reported that the riots prompted Irish Prime Minister (Taoiseach) Leo Varadkar to encourage a review of Ireland’s hate speech legislation. “I think it’s now very obvious to anyone who might have doubted us, that our incitement hatred legislation is just not up to date,” Varadkar said.

“It’s not up to date for the social media age, and we need that legislation through. And we need it through in a matter of weeks because it’s not just the platforms that have a responsibility here, and they do, it’s also the individuals who post messages and images online that stir up hatred and violence. We need to be able to use laws to go after them individually.”

It's not just the US that retaliates against credit agency downgrades: China - which is almost as authoritarian as the US but at least does not pretend to be some beacon of democracy or virtue - does too, only in China's case Moody’s, which on Tuesday downgraded the outlook for China’s A1 long-term local and foreign-currency issuer rating to negative from stable, had a pretty good idea what would happen after its action became public and advised staff in China to work from home ahead of its cut to the outlook for the country’s sovereign credit rating.

According to the FT, some Moody’s department heads in the country told associates on Friday that non-administrative staff in Beijing and Shanghai should not go into the office this week, they said.

“They didn’t give us the reason . . . but everyone knows why,” said one China-based Moody’s employee, referring to the request to work from home. “We are afraid of government inspections.”

In 1992, comedian George Carlin noted that after the Cold War politicians in Washington were always declaring war on things at home, “We got a war on poverty, the war on crime, war on litter, the war on cancer, the war on drugs.” Carlin believes politicians never declared a war on homelessness because “there is no money to make in this problem.”

However, since George W. Bush’s war against terrorism there has been a three-legged stool to the pro-war coalition: ideologues (neo-conservatives and liberal internationalists), greedy war pigs who benefit financially from these conflicts, and a silent majority of patriotic Americans who are well-intentioned but are only now beginning to accept that these forever wars are not serving their or national interest.

It is likely that many of these patriots are never going to be anti-war, but they are certainly against taxpayer’s money being spent for losing wars while the war pigs have powerful incentives to prolong these wars for as long as possible.

Kristalina Georgieva, a Bulgarian economist who serves as the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, said Monday that the IMF wants to see countries implement punishing new carbon taxes to “fight climate change.”

She delivered her dire message at the United Nations COP28 climate summit, where globalists in attendance flew in on jets and you can bet they are being chauffeured around in luxury automobiles and dining on the finest cuts of beef and other delicacies.

“We are very keen to give the biggest possible incentive for decarbonization, which is putting a price on carbon,” Georgieva said at the summit in the United Arab Emirates. “That price needs to go up, up, up if we are to speed up decarbonization.”

The IMF boss also tried to justify carbon taxes by saying they would raise revenues for governments.

Webmaster addition: My concern is what government does with that revenue!

Getting SSSS on your boarding pass means you are under FBI investigation and they are tracking and surveilling you.

The US government loves to use this tool against journalists they dislike.

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.