Authored by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times,

The White House said on Friday that President Joe Biden is not considering raising the Stars and Stripes to full-staff for President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration.

President Jimmy Carter died on Dec. 29 at the age of 100 in his hometown of Plains, Georgia. According to the U.S. flag code, the death of a sitting or former president is observed by flying the American flag at half-staff for 30 days from the date of death on all public buildings and grounds, military posts, naval stations, and naval vessels.

Trump will be sworn in as the 47th U.S. president on Jan. 20, which falls within the 30-day national mourning period. This would make it a rare moment for American flags to be flown at half-staff during a presidential inauguration.

The U.S. flag code is a set of rules enforced by traditions rather than laws. While Biden could theoretically order the flags to be raised for the inauguration, he has expressed no intention of doing so.

At Friday’s press briefing, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked whether Biden might reconsider “reversing or reevaluating” the decision to keep flags at half-staff for the inauguration.

She replied, “No,” without elaboration.

On Friday, Trump reacted to the decision, saying that no one, except the Democrats, was happy about it.

“The Democrats are all ‘giddy’ about our magnificent American Flag potentially being at ‘half mast’ during my Inauguration. They think it’s so great, and are so happy about it because, in actuality, they don’t love our Country, they only think about themselves,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, adding that “nobody wants to see this, and no American can be happy about it.”

There have been instances of flag accommodations for significant events while the nation mourns a passing president. For instance, President Richard Nixon temporarily raised flags to full-staff on Feb. 13, 1973, to honor the return of prisoners of war from Vietnam, even though they were initially lowered for the death of his predecessor, Lyndon B. Johnson, on Jan. 22, shortly after Nixon’s second inauguration.

Carter, a Democrat whose single term in the Oval Office ran from 1977 to 1981, will receive a full state funeral in Washington on Jan. 9. Trump has said he plans to attend the funeral.

Carter will lie in state in the Capitol rotunda from the afternoon of Jan. 7 through the morning of Jan. 9. According to a schedule published by the Carter Center, a 24-hour public visitation will begin at 7 a.m. on Jan. 8.

Carter will be laid to rest in Plains beside his wife, Rosalynn.

Cars, SUVs, small vans, and pickup trucks entering Manhattan below 60th Street from 5am to 9pm on weekdays, and from 9am to 9pm on weekends, are going to have to pay a $9 fare for the privilege, starting on Sunday.

City officials implemented the plan, which will of course disproportionately affect low-income New Yorkers, to fund highly ambitious upgrades to the city’s aging transit systems. That said, those who make under $50,000 per year can take advantage of discounted pricing after their 10th commute in a given month.

How generous.

While the standard fare will be set at $9, the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) has provided a detailed plan with pricing levels that vary based on vehicle type and time of entry. Between 9pm and 5am on weekdays and 9pm – 9am on weekends, that $9 fare drops to $2.25 for drivers of cars, SUVs, small vans and pickups – while small trucks and buses will pay $14.40 during peak hours, and $2.25 during non-peak hours.

Motorcycles will pay $4.50 during peak hours and $1.04 during non-peak times.

The fee applies to ridesharing vehicles such as Ubers as well.

Basically, it’s a shitshow – and in 2028, the fares will go up, subject to the governor’s and MTA’s approval.

The Epoch Times has more below:

Was $9 Always Envisioned?

No. The standard fare was originally set to be $15, but supporters of the scheme hit a political roadblock, as advocates for commuters argued that amount was too high for the average worker to meet.

Why Is It Taking Effect in January?

Congestion pricing has been the subject of a protracted political and legal battle. New York Governor Kathy Hochul has wavered on when it should start.

After having put a pause on the policy’s implementation, and having acknowledged at a June 2024 press conference that working families might have trouble paying a new $15 toll every day, Hochul reversed course.

At a Nov. 14 press conference, she announced that congestion pricing would come into effect in January with the lower $9 fare.

On Nov. 18, the Metropolitan Transit Authority Board gave its imprimatur to the revised policy, voting 12–1 to approve the January start date.

What Is Its Goal?

Advocates of congestion pricing say it will help fund 23,000 jobs in New York State.

Supporters also argue that the plan is necessary so that the city will be solvent enough to qualify for the issuance of $15 billion worth of bonds.

Those funds will go toward repairing, refurbishing, and upgrading New York’s mass transit systems, including the installation of elevators in subway stations in compliance with the letter and spirit of the Americans With Disabilities Act.

According to Brian Fritsch, associate director of the Permanent Advisory Council to the MTA, it should soon be possible to add 23 new elevators within the transit system, making it much more user-friendly for persons with disabilities.

The governor also expects funding to become available for the continued expansion of the Second Avenue subway, electric buses, new signals, and other transit-related investments.

Moreover, supporters argue that encouraging drivers to find alternate means of transportation into the city, such as bicycles, carpooling, and mass transit as opposed to cars, will help relieve toxic emissions and keep the city’s air breathable.

Why Is Congestion Pricing Controversial?

Far from everyone regards congestion pricing as a just and workable solution to the need for overhauls, upgrades, and cleaner air.

Many opponents of the policy have framed their objections in terms of the severe impact they believe it will have on commuters.

City Councilman Joseph Borelli, a Republican representing Staten Island’s south shore, has made a case that the implementation of congestion pricing in London has been a “complete disaster” and has only made gridlock on that city’s streets far worse.

New York is likely to experience similarly disappointing results, Borelli has argued, citing recent research from INRIX, an organization that studies global traffic patterns and has found London to have some of the worst traffic on the planet.

The policy has also faced opposition from lawmakers whose districts overlap with New York City suburbs, and whose constituents will find commuting into the city significantly costlier starting next month.

Still, others such as Jack Nierenberg, vice president of the transit advocacy organization Passengers United, have criticized the MTA for seeking to place an expanded fiscal burden on commuters without having dealt with internal mismanagement that has allowed it to accrue nearly $50 billion of debts.

In Nierenberg’s view, the failure to hold contractors to account has contributed to a snowballing effect that has seen the MTA’s debts grow fourfold in the past two decades.

Authored by Roger Kimball via American Greatness,

If you visit the State Department’s website for the Global Engagement Center, you will read that “The Global Engagement Center closed on December 23, 2024.”

Not really.

As has been often observed, the nearest thing to immortality this side of the pearly gates is a government initiative. I have noted in this space and elsewhere that the innocuous-sounding “Global Engagement Center” was actually (in Vivek Ramaswamy’s accurate summary) a “key node of the censorship industrial complex.” According to its mission statement, the GEC was supposed to be focused on “foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining or influencing the policies, security, or stability of the United States, its allies, and partner nations.” I thoughtfully added the italics to the word “foreign.”

The point is that the GEC—like the State Department as a whole (like, indeed, the CIA and the rest of the alphabet soup that makes up our “intelligence” services tout court)—is supposed to be focused outward: on foreign threats. Thanks in part to reporting by people like Matt Taibbi, we know that much of our government has been weaponized against the American people, at least against those of whom the regime disapproves. On issues ranging from COVID to Hunter Biden’s laptop, Taibbi has shown that “every corner of government”—“the FBI, DHS, HHS, DOD,  . . . even the CIA”—has leaned on virtually all social and traditional media companies to toe the approved government line. The GEC has played a small but not insignificant role in this clandestine effort to monitor opinion and suppress entities and individuals emitting “Wrongthink” (what George Orwell called “Crimethink”).

Item: Because the GEC could not operate against Americans directly, it did so indirectly by funding entities like the British-based Global Disinformation Index, which compiled a list of publications and individuals that said things the regime did not like. That list was consulted by advertisers wary of winding up on the wrong side of the government. The Washington Examiner made the list. So did RealClearPolitics, Reason, The New York Post, Blaze Media, the Daily Wire, the Federalist, the American Conservative, Newsmax, and many conservative entities. Result? Millions of dollars of ad revenue dried up, imperiling the future of those outlets.

Funding for the GEC was in the original 1500-page obscenity that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson had the temerity to bring to his colleagues as a “continuing resolution” last month. That monstrosity instantly drew some portion of the contempt and ridicule it deserved, not least from Elon Musk, whose fingers got a workout on the platform formerly known as Twitter. A 120-page, slimmed-down version of the bill was hastily cobbled together minus the GEC funding and other objectionable features (a raise for the legislators, for example). That passed, and so a putative “government shutdown” was avoided.

There was modified joy over this seeming victory. The fact that funding for the GEC was cut was one of the principal goads to celebration. Here at last was proof that a bad government activity could actually be zeroed out. No money, no activity.

But the joy was short-lived. Deploying a pragmatic version of the Juliet Principle (“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet”), the deep staters in the State Department just cooked up a new name.

Allow me to introduce you to the “Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Hub,” a polysyllabic, “rebranded” version of the GEC. Many of the people employed by the GEC are now employed by the new “hub.” They’ll need new business cards, stationery, and signs for their offices. Doubtless, there will be other expenses. But since much of the GEC’s budget has been “realigned” to the new shop, that won’t be a problem.

That’s not the end of the story. Donald Trump takes office in two weeks.

As The New York Post reported, news about the rebranding of the GEC has sparked outrage. Said one GOP aide, Trump and incoming Secretary of State Marco Rubio will have “to track every single office, down to every single staffer, if they want to end the weaponization of the federal government against conservatives.”

The question remains: will that happen? How serious is Donald Trump about rooting out the ideologically driven waste in government? How serious is he about reining in the surveillance apparat of the deep state, about surfacing the deep state as a destroyer surfaces an enemy submarine?

The truth is that we do not know. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have made a splash with DOGE, the “Department of Government Efficiency.” Will they actually be able to accomplish much? At first, I thought the news that the GEC had been zeroed out and shuttered was proof that DOGE could actually make a difference.

News that they were instantly reconstituted under a different name gives me pause. What if the National Endowment for the Arts and other left-wing playgrounds are zeroed out but then rebranded under other names? Not “The National Endowment for the Arts” but “The Creative Center for Gender, Equity, and Narcissistic Self-Indulgence.” Not the “Department of Education” but “The Department of Reeducation.” Will it be the same thing under different names?

That brings me to the big question facing the republic as we await Donald Trump’s second term. Among Trump’s supporters, there has been a lot of justified euphoria. There has also been a lot of talk about a “vibe shift,” a change in the Zeitgeist in the culture at large, as more and more Trump skeptics become former Trump skeptics and embrace the MAGA agenda. All of that is encouraging. But now for the hard part: moving from talking the talk to walking the talk. It may well be that the woke consensus that has gripped the culture like a boa constrictor is disintegrating. Maybe what just happened with the GEC is just the twitching of a dead or dying animal, the anatomized frogs’ legs of an exploded ideology.

But we don’t know yet what will happen. Hercules, when he set out to kill the Lernean Hydra, found the beast surprisingly robust. It was not enough to smash its many heads. Hercules had to enlist the services of his nephew Iolaus to cauterize each stump with a torch; otherwise, two new heads would burst forth to take the place of the one that was destroyed.

We know how to decapitate the hydra-like monstrosity that is the woke-inspired administrative state. Completely defund its activities. I believe Donald Trump has the gumption to do that. We will know within days of his taking office whether he does.

But even if he comes riding into Dodge with a satchel of world-changing executive orders, the regenerative powers of Leviathan are awesome. Trump will need to find a way to let Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy be like Hercules and Iolaus. He will, in fact, need a battalion of such crusaders. Let’s see if they appear.

President Biden late last week notified Congress that he will approve a last massive arms sale to Israel before leaving office. Axios reported on Friday, “The State Department has notified Congress ‘informally’ of an $8 billion proposed arms deal with Israel that will include munitions for fighter jets and attack helicopters as well as artillery shells.”

The Biden White House is persisting in this despite being punished in the polls by the Progressive wing of Democrats, including in key states like Michigan, which has a large Arab-American population. The Israel issue assisted with Trump’s sailing to an easy victory as these communities wanted to ‘punish’ Biden and the Democrats.

At this point Gaza health sources have said that at least 45,000 Palestinians have died in the Gaza war since the Hamas terror attack of Oct.7, 2023.

Amnesty International is among those humanitarian bodies alleging that Israel is conducting a genocide in Gaza and is calling on all countries to cut off the flow of arms. 

“States that continue to transfer arms to Israel at this time must know they are violating their obligation to prevent genocide and are at risk of becoming complicit in genocide,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty’s secretary-general.

“All states with influence over Israel, particularly key arms suppliers like the USA and Germany, but also other EU member states, the UK and others, must act now to bring Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza to an immediate end,” she added.

Below is a partial list of the most controversial items to be included in the new sale:

• AIM-120C-8 AMRAAM air-to-air missiles
• Hellfire AGM-114 missiles
• 155 MM artillery rounds
• small-diameter bombs
• JDAM kits
• 500-pound bombs

Many of the above US weapons, especially the 500-pound bombs, have been condemned by rights groups and among some European politicians as causing mass civilian casualties. Israel has claimed it hits Hamas targets in precision strikes, but a 500-pound bomb is by design meant to inflict destruction with a large radius.

An American-Palestinian funded a temporary school in a warehouse in North Gaza. They put this sign on the roof but today Israel bombed the building pic.twitter.com/biWRHTKKKU

— Christian Henderson (@CjvHenderson) November 3, 2024

The Washington Post wrote in October, “The Biden administration has received nearly 500 reports alleging Israel used U.S.-supplied weapons for attacks that caused unnecessary harm to civilians in the Gaza Strip.”

As for the incoming Trump administration, it is expected to sustain massive US taxpayer funded support to Israel’s defense, despite the “America First” mantra. Both sides of the aisle in Congress are united especially in their unwavering and blank check support to Israel. It is a key element of US foreign policy that never changes.

More than $19 trillion in transactions settled over the Bitcoin network in 2024 – more than double the $8.7 trillion settled over the network in 2023 – reversing two years of declining transaction volume since 2021.

As CoinTelegraph’s Vince Quinn reports, according to data from vice president of research at Riot Platforms Pierre Rochard, Bitcoin transaction volume peaked during the 2021 bull market at approximately $47 trillion and sharply declined in 2022 and 2023.

Rochard wrote:

“The Bitcoin network finalized more than $19 trillion worth of BTC transactions in 2024, decisively proving that Bitcoin is both a store of value and a medium of exchange.”

Bitcoin had a momentous 2024, which included the introduction of a BTC exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the United States, the April 2024 halving event, and a new all-time high of roughly $108,000.

Bitcoin network transaction volume 2019-2024. Source: Pierre Rochard

Bitcoin hashrate breaks records in early 2025

The hashrate of the Bitcoin network — the total computing power securing the Bitcoin protocol — hit a new all-time high of 1,000 exahashes per second (EH/s) on Jan. 3, 2024.

However, the hashrate quickly fell back to around 775 EH/s at the time of this writing, data from CryptoQuant shows.

US-based Bitcoin mining pools accounted for over 40% of the global hashrate in 2024, as hashrate dominance — the country controlling the most computing power on the Bitcoin network — continues to be debated.

The Bitcoin hashrate hit a new all-time high in early 2025 and has been steadily increasing over time. Source: CryptoQuant

According to TheMinerMag, two US-based mining pools, Foundry USA and MARA Pool, accounted for over 38.5% of all blocks mined in 2024.

Despite the increase in hashing power, China-based mining pools still control a majority of the hashrate on the Bitcoin network.

An accurate gauge of hashrate dominance is difficult to establish due to the pseudonymous and geographically distributed nature of Bitcoin mining.

Mining pool operators and companies may be headquartered within a country but often rely on hashrate contributed by individual miners living all around the world.

Moreover, virtual private networks (VPNs) allow users to mask their IP addresses — further obfuscating the true geolocation of miners.

Authored by James Rickards via DailyReckoning.com,

There has been a lot reported in recent days about the return of currency wars. With Trump 2.0 about to begin, let’s review his last term and what to expect in the second.

Trump badly bungled his transition after first being elected president in 2016. He was not ready with a long list of loyal appointees. Many of his senior appointments such as Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State, James Mattis as Secretary of Defense, and John Kelly as Chief of Staff secretly disliked Trump but accepted their roles as so-called “adult supervision” around the supposedly reckless Trump.

They thwarted his agenda. That backstabbing came on top of the large number of Obama holdovers in the Deep State who saw themselves as a “resistance” movement.

Trump is doing a better job of preparing for a second term as president, but the resistance is not sitting still either. As reported in The Washington Post, Politico, The Wall Street Journal, Yahoo Finance and other outlets, Trump is working on a secret plan to devalue the U.S. dollar. The goal would be to cheapen U.S. exports and thereby help the U.S. balance of trade and create exported-related jobs.

But critics say that this will only increase U.S. inflation as Americans have to pay more for their imported goods using cheaper dollars. The critics also say that other countries will retaliate against the U.S. by cheapening their own currencies (that’s the essence of a currency war) and no country will be any further ahead. In fact, the entire world will be worse off.

Rules of (Currency) War

Before looking more closely at what’s actually going on, some basics about a currency war should be explained.

The first rule is that the world is not always in a currency war. The periods from 1944 to 1971 (the original Bretton Woods era) and from 1987 to 2010 (the period of the Washington Consensus) were times of currency peace. This contrasts with 1921-1936 (Currency War I), 1967-1987 (Currency War II), and the current period since 2010 (Currency War III).

The second rule is that when we are in a currency war, they can last for fifteen years or longer. It comes as no surprise that the currency war that commenced in 2010 is still going strong 14 years later in 2024. And that points to another key aspect of this debate.

The currency war being written about today by the media is not a new currency war. It’s the same one that has been going on since 2010. We’re simply in a new phase or a new battle.

It is true that cheapening your currency can import inflation. Sometimes that’s a legitimate policy goal if your country has been suffering from deflation. That’s obviously not the case in the U.S. today.

It’s also true that cheapening your currency can export deflation as trading partners pay less for your goods. That’s what China was doing to the entire world from 1994 to 2010 and that’s why the U.S. launched a currency war in 2010 – to fight back against disinflation and borderline deflation caused by cheap Chinese goods.

Currency wars can also shift jobs overseas and destroy domestic manufacturing as the terms of trade shift based on changing currency values. Retaliation is always waiting right around the corner in any currency war. The U.S. dollar hit an all-time low in August 2011, which was consistent with the U.S. goal of trying to import inflation.

But Europe struck back, and the EUR/USD cross-rate crashed from $1.60 to $1.04 as a result. So, it is correct that no one wins a currency war, and everyone is damaged in the process due to volatility, uncertainty, and the costs of conducting the war.

Trump’s Plan: Currency Peace

So, are the critics right that Trump has a secret plan to devalue the dollar? And are they right that this new stage in the currency war will bring inflation and hurt the U.S. economy?

The critics are wrong and don’t understand what Trump is actually trying to do. Trump is not trying to start a currency war; he’s trying to end it once and for all.

In the first place, no president has the power to unilaterally devalue the dollar. That might have been possible under the gold standard or some standard of fixed exchange rates, but that has not been the state of the world since 1973.

Exchange rates fluctuate based on a number of factors including interest rates, industrial growth, exchange controls, central bank interventions, capital flows, tax rates and many other macroeconomic variables. But the idea that the president can just wave his hand and devalue the dollar is false.

Far from the reckless, inflationary process the media claim, Trump’s actual plan is based on the highly successful model developed by James Baker for Ronald Reagan and implemented in the Plaza Accord of 1985 and the Louvre Accord of 1987.

After the severe economic recession of 1982 and Paul Volcker’s policy of moving interest rates to 20%, inflation in the U.S. was finally reigned in. Inflation dropped from 13.5% in 1980, to 6.1% in 1982, and then 3.2% in 1983. Investment in the U.S. went on a tear. U.S. real growth was 16% from 1983 to 1986. Everyone wanted dollars to invest in the U.S. and the dollar boomed reaching an all-time high in 1985.

Finally, the Reagan administration decided the U.S. dollar was too strong and was hurting U.S. exports and jobs. Treasury Secretary James Baker convened a meeting of the finance ministers of France, Germany, Japan, the UK, and the U.S. at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. The purpose was not to fight a currency war. The purpose was to create order in currency markets out of the chaos that had prevailed since 1973.

The parties reached a joint agreement that would devalue the U.S. dollar in an orderly fashion versus the French Franc, Japanese Yen, UK pounds sterling, and the German Deutschemark. Once the targeted level for the dollar was achieved, the parties would use their best efforts, including market intervention as needed to maintain those levels within narrow bands.

A separate meeting in Paris at the Louvre in 1987 agreed that the devaluation phase was over, and the dollar would be maintained at the new parities. This was not currency war; it was currency peace achieved by agreement and implemented in a cooperative fashion. The Louvre Accord (this time including the U.S., UK, France, Germany, Japan and Canada) ushered in a period of global prosperity that lasted twenty years until the Global Financial Crisis of 2008.

Trump’s goal is to repeat the success of the Plaza and Louvre Accords. Trump’s advisor on this is Robert Lighthizer, who is one of the most brilliant financial minds around and was Trump’s U.S. Trade Representative (2017-2021).

Lighthizer was also USTR for Ronald Reagan from 1983 to 1985 so he’s a veteran of prior currency wars and was in the administration around the time the Plaza Accord was being developed. Lighthizer is the perfect individual to help Trump achieve the kind of success that Reagan and Baker had in the 1980s.

The media are trying to portray Trump as reckless when in fact he’s proposing something highly beneficial for U.S. jobs and U.S. industry. Don’t be fooled by false claims of new currency wars. Trump is trying to achieve a new era of currency stability and lasting prosperity.

The terrorist who killed 14 people and hurt 35 more in New Orleans in the early hours of New Year’s Day prepositioned bombs that used an extraordinarily rare explosive compound, senior law enforcement officials have told NBC News. The two devices didn’t detonate, but authorities are scrambling to learn how Shamsud-Din Jabbar was able to incorporate a type of explosive that has never before been used in a terror attack in America or Europe.   

At around 3 am on Wednesday, Texas-born Houston resident Shamsud-Din Jabbar used a pickup truck to plow a path of carnage through a crowd of New Year’s partiers on Bourbon Street, before police killed him in a shootout. The 42-year-old US Army veteran’s plan had another dimension of death that he failed to execute: The FBI and ATF say he’d built two bombs that were rigged to be detonated with a transmitter that was found in his rented Ford F-150 truck.

The improvised explosive devices were placed in recreational coolers that Jabbar placed on Bourbon Street; that action was recorded on security cameras. Neither bomb exploded, and investigators are still trying to determine whether that fortunate fact springs from a design flaw, a malfunction or Jabbar’s failing to attempt to trigger the devices. 

The officials who told NBC News about the rare explosive apparently stopped short of naming it, but emphasized that it was the first time it had been used in the United States, and had likewise never been used by terrorists anywhere in Europe. Investigators are now trying to determine how Jabbar learned about the extraordinary compound and how he was able to manufacture it. 

Given the particulars of his military service, it’s unlikely Jabbar’s novel bomb-making knowledge was gained during his time in uniform. “Jabbar was in the regular Army as a Human Resource Specialist (42A) and Information Technology (IT) Specialist (25B) from March 2007 until January 2015 and then in the Army Reserve as an IT Specialist (25B) from January 2015 until July 2020,” a Pentagon official told Task & Purpose. “He deployed to Afghanistan from February 2009 to January 2010. He held the rank of Staff Sergeant at the end of service.”

The pickup truck that Jabbar used to murder 14 people and wound dozens more was adorned with an ISIS flag. Law enforcement officials say that he posted videos to Facebook hours before his attack. Seemingly created for the benefit of his family, the videos showed him pledging allegiance to the Salafist terror group as he was driving. Remarkably, he said he’d considered attacking his family and friends, but rejected the idea out of concern that ensuing news coverage would fail to properly focus on the “war between the believers and the disbelievers.”  After he was killed, police found he’d been armed with an AR-15 and a handgun. 

Before launching his attack on innocent revelers, Jabbar set his short-term rental house ablaze, but “the fire burned to a point that it extinguished itself prior to spreading to other rooms,” federal investigators say. The arson stopped short despite Jabbar having apparently positioned accelerants throughout the house. The house on Mandeville Street in New Orleans held bomb-making materials and what police believe is a homemade rifle silencer.  Similar bomb materials were found at Jabbar’s house on Crescent Peak Drive in Houston, in a predominantly Muslim neighborhood on the city’s north side. 

In its Friday statement, the FBI said it had brought an additional 200 personnel to New Orleans to boost the investigation, noting the bureau had received nearly 1,000 tips and was evaluating “terabytes worth of video and other data collected by street cameras monitored by the New Orleans Real Time Crime Center.” 

While the FBI earlier suspected that Jabbar had accomplices, the bureau now says otherwise. “We do not assess at this point that anyone else is involved in this attack other than Shamsud-Din Jabbar,” said Christopher Raia, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division, on Thursday. 

Jabbar’s younger brother, 24-year-old Abdur Jabbar, told the New York Times that his older brother’s mass murder wasn’t an exemplification of Islam. “What he did does not represent Islam. This is more some type of radicalization, not religion.”

Via Eurasianet.org

• Russia’s accidental shoot-down of an Azerbaijani civilian airliner has caused tension between the two countries.

• Kazakhstan is overseeing the crash investigation and is trying to remain neutral despite pressure from both sides.

• The incident highlights Kazakhstan’s delicate balancing act as it tries to maintain good relations with both Russia and Azerbaijan, both key economic partners.

Kazakhstan is treading delicately as it strives to keep two feuding neighbors happy amid a row over Russia’s accidental shoot-down of an Azerbaijani civilian airliner, which crashed outside the Kazakh city of Aktau. Kazakh officials have little to gain and a lot to lose as they oversee the crash investigation.

Relations between Azerbaijan and Russia remain fraught as Azerbaijani officials await the results of the official crash investigation. Kazakhstan’s vice minister of transportation, Talgat Lastayev, announced December 30 that preliminary findings are expected to be released in late January.

Azerbaijani-Russian tension revolves around the Kremlin’s reluctance to admit Russian air defenses brought the plane down on December 25, killing 38 of the 67 individuals on board. Kazakhstan got caught in the middle because the stricken jet, which had been bound for Grozny in the Russian region of Chechnya, crossed the Caspian Sea to make a crash landing in Aktau. That fact thrust Kazakhstan into a key role in an investigation in which the principal actors – Azerbaijan and Russia – have starkly differing agendas.

In the face of Russian silence over culpability for the crash, Azerbaijani leader Ilham Aliyev has pressed for a transparent probe. At the same time, he has accused Kremlin of trying to cover up its responsibility for the tragedy, pointing out that Russian officials initially offered several “absurd” alternate theories before evidence of the shoot-down came to light. Government-friendly news outlets in Baku even accused Russia of prompting the jet to attempt a landing in Aktau in the hope that it would crash into the Caspian, thus erasing all evidence of Russian involvement. Russia’s approach so far suggests the Kremlin is far from eager to see all the facts come out.

Ultimately, some of the 29 survivors have provided testimony substantiating a shoot-down, and the intact rear section of the plane shows signs of being hit by anti-aircraft flak. The black boxes have been recovered and sent to Brazil for analysis.

Despite their country’s central position in the investigation, Kazakh officials have tried to remain aloof from the festering controversy. In the first hours after the crash, Kazakh officials appeared to amplify alternative theories pushed by Russia to explain the tragedy, including the since discredited claim that an oxygen tank inside the aircraft exploded. Kazakh officials also initially backed a Russian proposal that a CIS commission handle the investigation, which would have given Moscow expanded influence over the probe’s scope and final report.

As evidence of a shoot-down, including survivor accounts, continued to mount, Kazakhstan has adopted a decidedly neutral tone. During the last days of December, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has had telephone conversations with both his Azerbaijani and Russian counterparts, Aliyev and Vladimir Putin, according to the presidential press service, which was notably silent on the substance of those discussions.

State-controlled media in Kazakhstan has largely refrained from reporting on what caused the crash. The leitmotif of official publications is that Kazakhstan is making every effort to find out what really happened. In recent days, Kazakh officials have been scrupulous in saying their actions are guided by international guidelines. For example, Transport Minister Marat Karabayev cited the International Civil Aviation Organization’s Chicago Convention in explaining why the crashed jet’s black boxes were sent to Brazil, action that seemed sure to rankle Russia, given the Kremlin’s apparent desire to suppress evidence of a shoot-down.

“Kazakhstan stands for objectivity in investigation of air disaster,” stated a December 30 commentary published by the government newspaper Kazakhstanskaya Pravda, quoting a Kazakh political scientist, Eduard Poletaev.

“The decision to send on-board recorders for decoding to Brazil is a manifestation of the independence, sovereignty and impartiality of Kazakhstan.”

Independent media outlets in Kazakhstan have covered the controversy over the crash’s cause. Accounts offered by Orda.kz, for example, have tended to highlight the assertions made by Aliyev and Western officials supporting the notion of Russian responsibility for the tragedy.

The reasons why Kazakh leaders are eager to avoid angering either Azerbaijan or Russia over their handling of the investigation are clear: both countries are key economic partners for Kazakhstan, and any hiccup in relations can have extensive financial repercussions for Astana.

One source of leverage for Russia is the pipeline that connects oil produced in Kazakhstan’s Tengiz oil field to export markets via a pipeline and oil terminal at the Russian port of Novorossiysk under the auspices of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium. The pipeline handles about 80 percent of Tengiz oil exports.

Russia, as a means of either influencing Kazakh decision-making or expressing its displeasure with Astana’s actions, could disrupt pipeline operations. “Moscow can stop the transportation of Kazakh oil to Europe under some pretext such as the repair of the CPC infrastructure, as they did during the summer of 2022,” Talgat Ismagambetov, a political scientist at the Almaty Institute of Philosophy, Politics and Religion, said in an interview. In such an instance, “Kazakhstan could suffer big losses again, and this would be a warning [or] punishment from Russia.”

At this point, Kazakhstan may have even more to lose by alienating Azerbaijan. The two countries are key transit nodes for East-West trade via the Middle Corridor route. In addition, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan are partners in a developing consortium to ship solar- and wind-generated power to Western markets. 

“For Astana, Baku is a very important partner, and in the future, an even more important partner, especially in terms of the joint development of the Trans-Caspian route,” Ismagambetov said.

While Russia maintains its silence about the investigation, Aliyev has voiced approval of Kazakhstan’s actions so far, describing the Kazakh emergency response to the crash and outpouring of public sympathy for the victims as “what true friendship and brotherhood look like.” 

Tokayev’s diplomatic background has proven beneficial in helping Kazakhstan negotiate a tricky situation so far, according to Ismagambetov. “Tokaev has acted subtly because he is a professional diplomat and this is his instinct,” he said.

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson,

Less than a year before the end of World War II, then-U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau drew up a nightmarish plan to punish postwar Germany.

After the serial 1870-1871 Franco-Prussian War, World War I, and World War II — along with the failed Versailles peace treaty of 1919 — the Allies in World War II wanted to ensure there would never again be an aggressive Germany powerful enough to invade its neighbors.

When the so-called Morgenthau Plan was leaked to the press in September 1944, at first it was widely praised.

After all, it would supposedly render Germany incapable of ever starting another world war in Europe.

Morgenthau certainly envisioned a Carthaginian peace, designed to ensure a permanently deindustrialized, unarmed, and pastoral Germany.

Postwar Germany would have resembled something akin to the ancient, pre-civilized frontier that the first-century AD historian Tacitus wrote about in his Germania.

The plan would have ensured that within six months of Germany’s surrender, all of its industrial plants and equipment were to be dismantled.

The Ruhr, the renowned center of European industrial strength, was to be permanently neutered, starved of its energy, raw materials, and infrastructure.

After the war, the plan demanded virtual complete disarmament of Germany. Its once-feared armed forces were to be rendered nonexistent.

There were also promised massive reductions in Germany’s borders. Various countries, such as the Soviet Union, Poland, and France, were to be given large slices of the old Third Reich.

Future German security would hinge only on the power and goodwill of the victorious United States and its allies.

When the dying Nazi Party got wind of the plan, Hitler’s propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, had a field day. He screamed to Germans that they were all doomed to oblivion if they lost the war, even growing opponents of the Nazi Party.

Even many Americans were aghast at the plan.

Gen. George Marshall, the Army chief of staff, warned that its mere mention had galvanized German troops to fight to the end, increasing American casualties as they closed in on the German homeland.

Ex-President Herbert Hoover blasted the plan as inhumane. He feared mass starvation of the German people if they were reduced to a premodern, rural peasantry.

But once the victorious allies occupied a devastated Germany, witnessed its moonscape ruined by massive bombing and house-to-house fighting, and discovered that their “ally,” Russia’s Joseph Stalin, was ruthless and hellbent on turning all of Europe communist, the Truman administration backed off the plan.

There is a tragic footnote to the aborted horrors of the Morgenthau Plan. Currently, Germany is doing to itself almost everything Morgenthau once dreamed of.

Its green delusions have shut down far too many of its nuclear, coal, and gas electrical generation plants.

Erratic solar and wind “sustainable energy” means that power costs are four times higher than on average in the United States.

Once-dominant European giants Volkswagen, BMW, and Mercedes are now bleeding customers and profits. Their own government’s green and electric vehicle mandates ensure they will become globally uncompetitive.

The German economy actually shrank in 2023. And the diminished Ruhr can no longer save the German economy from its own utopian politicians.

The German military is all but disarmed and short thousands of recruits.

German industries do not produce enough ammunition, tanks, ships, and aircraft to equip even its diminished army, navy, and air force.

Just a few hundred miles from Germany in Ukraine, more than a million Ukrainians and Russians are dead, wounded, or missing — in the costliest European battle since the horrors of Stalingrad.

Yet the once postwar German dynamo nation now lacks the manpower, munitions, and money to aid Ukraine in any meaningful way against an ascendant Russian invader.

More than 1 million immigrants have entered the country illegally, the vast majority of them from the Middle East. Many of them are hostile to European values and culture, as recent terrorist killings have shown. One-fifth of the population was not born in Germany.

The shrinking German people are growing angry, divided, and depressed. Their 1.4 percent fertility rate is one of the lowest in the Western world.

A tragic irony now abounds.

After World War II, the Truman administration rejected the notion of a pastoral, deindustrialized, and insecure Germany as a cruel prescription for poverty, hunger, and depopulation.

But now the German people themselves voted for their own updated version of Morgenthau’s plan — as they willingly reduced factory hours, curtailed power and fuel supplies, and struggled with millions of illegal aliens and porous borders.

Germans accept that they have no military to speak of that could protect their insecure borders — without a United States-led NATO.

Eighty years ago, Germany’s former conquerors rejected wrecking the defeated nation as too harsh. But now Germany is willfully pastoralizing, disarming, deindustrializing — and destroying — itself.