Via Remix News,

Germany’s Christian Democrat Union (CDU) candidate for chancellor Friedrich Merz says that Germany cannot accept more Syrians from Syria and that those Syrians who are not integrated should return to Syria.

Notably, Merz is pointing to the sky-high levels of unemployment among many of the country’s Syrian population. The chancellor candidate, during an appearance on ARD, said the “one-third” who “work and are integrated” in Germany can stay, “but the two-thirds do not work, they are overwhelmingly young men, many of them can go back, and many must go back.”

He said that a push to return many of these migrants must occur, saying:

 “We must now speak very openly with them and say: You have no place in Germany in the long term… We have long been of the opinion that at least people could have returned to the north a long time ago, and now to other parts of the country as well.”

There are currently 1 million Syrians in the country, and those not working have become a major burden for German taxpayers. According to government data, 210,000 are employed, while 250,000 are currently “looking for work.” Another 150,000 are unemployed.

Following the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s government, there is a European-wide push to return Syrians to their country; however, the ruling German government has expressed caution about the security situation in the country.

🇩🇪🚨 Germany’s far-left Interior Minister Nancy Faeser says that no “repatriations” will happen yet to Syria.

However, this “wait-and-see” approach could stretch into years. Meanwhile, more and more Syrians are obtaining German citizenship.

Ireland’s taking the same approach. pic.twitter.com/aLtB6npesR

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) December 13, 2024

Merz himself said there should be a halt to accepting new refugees from Syria and that “those who come could also have been members of Assad’s militias and we have no use for them in Germany.”

The CDU under Merkel is responsible for most of the Syrians in Germany after Merkel gave the greenlight to allow them to settle in the country. Many of the Syrians in Germany have shown no interest in returning home.

This Syrian migrant famously took a selfie with Merkel back in 2016.

Now, he says he has no plans to return to Syria.

The same applies for hundreds of thousands of Syrians. Even if conditions improve in Syria, many receive benefits in Germany they’ll never willingly give up. pic.twitter.com/wkXGhacFDV

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) December 13, 2024

Both the CDU and their sister party, the Christian Socialists (CSU), are pushing for rapid deportation of criminals. The head of the CSU in the Bundestag, Alexander Dobrindt, told the Rheinische Post that “if reasons for protection no longer apply and the right of residence expires in many cases, then repatriation to Syria must also be possible.” He said he is pushing for the quick deportation of criminals first and foremost and financial support for voluntary departures.

The Alternative for Germany (AfD) has also called for Syrians to return to their country, and the CDU may have trouble implementing its agenda on this issue. It has already signaled it will refuse to work with the AfD following February elections and will instead join a coalition with the Green Party. The Greens, in turn, have already rejected calls to return Syrians.

2.54 million recipients of welfare benefits in Germany have a foreign background, making up 63% of the overall total. https://t.co/09crBq8Xls

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) November 20, 2024

“By demanding immediate return and combining this with incentives, the Union (CDU) shows once again that it is using migration policy for its election campaign and disregarding the reality in the Middle East,” said Lamya Kaddor, the Greens’ domestic policy spokeswoman in the Bundestag,

She said she hopes that every Syrian who wishes to return voluntarily will be able to do so safely.

“At the same time, many Syrians have been naturalized and have become native here. Many are making a valuable contribution to our society, their children are German and they are building a life for themselves in Germany,” she said.

Meanwhile, the Social Democrats are attacking what they say is the un-Christian stance of the Christian Democrats.

🇩🇪 Germans say they’re “shocked” about the mass stabbing by a Syrian national at the “Festival of Diversity” in Solingen.

But there is nothing to be shocked about. Knife crime in Germany is soaring, predominately due to mass immigration.

That is a statistical fact. pic.twitter.com/NWAxJp2gBe

— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) August 28, 2024

“The fact that the CDU and CSU are talking about deportations first after the fall of the dictator Assad and against the backdrop of a still unclear situation in Syria is shabby and cynical,” SPD parliamentary group vice-chairman Dirk Wiese told the Rheinische Post .

“The Union would be consistent in its stance if it were to remove the C from its name,” said Wiese. “Our support should clearly go to the Syrians who have had to live under a terrible regime for years – towards a free and safe Syria.”

Read more here…

Authored by Kenin Spivak via RealClearPolitics,

It’s time to defrock the word police.

The election, polls, and anecdotal evidence confirm that Americans want to end the obnoxious recitation of pronouns – “Latinx,” “birthing persons,” and other entries in the radical left lexicon – except in eulogies for progressive virtue signaling.

In a March Gallup poll of more than 12 million adults, 4.4% identified as bisexual, 0.9% as transgender, and 0.1% as pansexual. In exit polls this year of more than 110,000 voters conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago, just 1% identified as “nonbinary,” a subset of the Gallup categories. Some of these individuals, most often nonbinaries, dominate use of non-standard pronouns such as “they,” “zir” and “hir.”

If 100% of bisexuals, transgenders, and pansexuals used non-standard pronouns (they do not) and all are offended if the remaining 94.6% of us do not publicly proclaim our pronouns in our signature cards and profiles (also untrue), then the pronoun kerfuffle risks offending 5.4% of Americans. From 10 to 20 times more Americans are offended by this babble. According to a Pew study published in June, nearly 56% of registered voters are uncomfortable with someone using the pronouns “they” or “them,” rather than “he” or “she.” Most of the 53% of Americans who consider religion to be “very important” in their lives likely agree.

Even in Canada, where polls show greater support for gender fluidity, a survey of 3,016 adults from the Angus-Reid Institute found that 66% opposed (36% strongly) and just 22% supported (6% strongly) that “everyone should put their pronouns in their social media profiles/emails.” Media savvy squad member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez deleted her pronouns from her X profile.

The core question is not whether those who choose non-standard pronouns, other than “they,” should be dissuaded from doing so, but whether we must all subjugate ourselves to pronoun activists by beclowning our signature cards and profiles to confirm that we are adhering to at least 2,000 years of gender identification, and whether we must adopt idiosyncratic pronouns when describing others.

At the least, no one should use the pronoun “they.” The use of “they” to describe an individual is grammatically incorrect in nearly all circumstances. It is narcissistic and pompous. When discussing multiple people and also using “they” as a pronoun for one or more of them, the result is indecipherable. (Try to understand the sentence I just wrote if the word “them” could mean both more than one individual, and one or more specific individuals.)

More than a few times I have had the following conversation with a professional whose firm uses pronouns in its signature cards. Me: Does anyone in the firm use pronouns other than him or her? Partner: “No” (or, rarely, “a few”). Me: Why then do you do this, since it must be off-putting to many more people than the number who like it? Partner: Some variation of, “We only care about the feelings of the few.”

This goes even further when people are penalized for refusing to participate in this farce. Being LGBTQ may be protected by law or common decency, but the Constitution unambiguously protects free speech and the exercise of religion. It does not protect an individual’s right to force others to refer to him or her as a “they.” At least 10 states have passed legislation to ensure that teachers, staff, and students aren’t required to use students’ pronouns or names if they don’t align with the student’s sex at birth.

Nothing, of course, is more absurd that the misogynistic “birthing person,” or that a nominee for the Supreme Court can’t define “woman.”

U.S. passport applicants now may select any gender, or an “X” gender, as may residents of 16 states on birth certificates, and at least 25 states and the District of Columbia on drivers’ licenses and other identification, defeating the purpose of identification.

French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish assign gender to most nouns. Hence, Americans from South America refer to themselves as “Latino,” “Latina,” or just “Hispanic.” The same misogynistic pathology that causes progressives to insist there are more than two immutable sexes, erase women, and put biological males in girls’ sports, drives them to the despised slur “Latinx.”

A 2021 poll of 800 registered voters of Latin American descent for Bendixen and Amandi International, a Democratic firm, found that only 2% described themselves as Latinx, and 40% found the term offensive. A Pew survey in September found that only 4% of Hispanics use it, 51% have never heard of it, and 75% of those who have, oppose it. In October, a study conducted by professors from Georgetown and Harvard found that the use of Latinx by Democrats was increasing Hispanic support for Donald Trump and other Republicans.

The progressive lexicon is based on tenuous connections (“grandfathered” is racist), wordy (“people experiencing homelessness” for “homeless”), kooky (“assigned female at birth” for “girl”) and offends vast number of Americans, including women and members of minority groups whom the progressives claim to be supporting.

According to Future Forward, Kamala Harris’ lead PAC, variants of Trump’s campaign advertisement about her support for taxpayer-funded sex reassignment surgery for transgenders with the tagline “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.” shifted the race 2.7% in Trump’s favor.

Trump’s success among most demographic groups, and exit and post-election polling (see here, here, here, and here) tell us that Americans don’t want to be told by the radical left what to think or how to speak about social issues. It is time to put pronouns, Latinx, and other progressive terminology in the waste basket.

Kenin M. Spivak is founder and chairman of SMI Group LLC, an international consulting firm and investment bank. He is the author of fiction and non-fiction books and a frequent speaker and contributor to media, including The American Mind, National Review, the National Association of Scholars, television, radio, and podcasts.

“Strengthening the Golan is strengthening the State of Israel, and it is especially important at this time. We will continue to hold onto it, cause it to blossom and settle in it,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday, confirming reports that Israel will expand its settler population there.

Netanyahu has now declare the Golan to belong to Israel ‘forever’ in the wake of the fall of the Assad, and Israel is expected to double the amount of settlers living there. “Multiple Middle Eastern nations and Israel’s ally Germany on Monday denounced Israel’s decision to double the Israeli settler population in the illegally occupied Syrian territory,” Al Jazeera writes.

At this point Israeli tanks are positioned a mere couple dozen miles from the capital of Damascus, and Israel has established a forward base on the Syrian side of Mt. Hermon.

Russia has been among those countries strongly warning Israel not to expand its hold on Syrian territory. The Golan was first taken by Israel in 1967 and it was annexed in 1981.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov on Monday issued the following strong words telling Israel to stop exploiting the situation:

“I would like to warn certain ‘hotheads’ in West Jerusalem against being intoxicated by opportunities,” Ryabkov said, stressing that “the annexation of the Golan Heights, which many are talking about now, is absolutely unacceptable.” 

Turkey too has said something similar. “This decision is a new stage in Israel’s goal of expanding its borders through occupation. This step by Israel is a source of grave concern, taken together with Israel’s entry into the area of separation, in violation of the 1974 disengagement agreement, its advance into adjacent areas and airstrikes in Syria,” its foreign ministry said.

Al Jazeera further notes the following countries’ statements:

• Qatar rebuked the scheme as a “new episode in a series of Israeli aggressions on Syrian territories”.
• Jordan called it a “blatant violation of international law”.
• Turkiye denounced the move as a bid by Israel to “expand its borders”.
• Saudi Arabia slammed “continued sabotage of Syria’s chances of restoring its security and stability”.
• Egypt condemned the plans as “a flagrant violation of Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”.

Israeli occupation forces continue to send military equipment into the buffer zone along the Syrian border. Mohammad Al-Kassim has more from the occupied Golan Heights pic.twitter.com/q1yHfMJYxE

— TRT World Now (@TRTWorldNow) December 16, 2024

Despite many acknowledging that Turkish intelligence was behind the rapid Hayat Tahrir al-Sham takeover of the country, Israel has by and large been a big ‘winner’ on a geostrategic level from Assad’s ousting. 

But it’s ironic and hypocritical that Turkey would do any condemning of annexing Syrian land here… given Turkey has long occupied northern Syria, and its troops have now moved into the environs of Aleppo while supporting its proxies there.

It’s another one of those “do as I say, not as a do” examples that continue to emerge during President Biden’s administration…

This time, it was two Homeland Security agents in Utah, who allegedly sold seized drugs through an informant, earning up to $300,000 per to court documents and according to Yahoo Finance.

According to an FBI affidavit, the agents sold “bath salts” to the informant weekly from spring to December, with each ounce sold for $5,000 and resold at a higher price.

The informant, recruited by federal agents while in prison, was initially tasked with legitimate controlled buys. However, the affidavit claims the agents also pressured him into illegal drug sales.

Yahoo reported that Homeland Security Agent David Cole was arrested in Salt Lake City on Friday and charged in federal court with conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance. During a Monday hearing, a judge ordered him detained. If convicted, Cole faces a potential prison sentence of 10 years or more.

Court documents also implicate a second agent, identified as “Person A,” in selling drugs to the informant, though it’s unclear if charges will follow. Cole’s attorney, Alexander Ramos, declined to comment on the allegations, citing ongoing case review.

Ramos commented: “Dave has many years of service to his community as an outstanding agent with HSI and holds a great reputation among the federal law enforcement community.”

Searches of the agents’ homes, vehicles, phones, and workspaces uncovered over $67,000 in cash, suspected bath salts, and other evidence, according to the affidavit.

FBI Special Agent Tristan Hall commented: “Based on an average of one or two drug buys per week, involving 25 grams of bath salts and the amount of $5,000 each buy, it is estimated that Cole and Person A have profited approximately $150,000 to $300,000 in illegal proceeds.”

The investigation began after the informant’s attorney reported that two Homeland Security agents had coerced him into illegal activities, the report says. 

The informant, cooperating with the FBI for money and personal safety, alleged the agents sold him drugs seized as evidence, meeting in public locations like Panera Bread and Shake Shack. Details were confirmed through surveillance, and while the agents’ credentials were suspended, they remain employed.

Authored by Derek Henry, Holistic Health Coach for Healing the Body,

At the root of every disease process is inflammation, a first defence process used by the body in order to try and heal itself. The problem is that when your body is in that state chronically it creates an overactive immune system, which brings crippling pain with it. This compromises your ability to do anything, which includes living a normal and productive life. So what do you do if you want to heal inflammation naturally? You consider astaxanthin.

Astaxanthin 101

Astaxanthin (asta-zan-thin) is a deep red coloured phytonutrient synthesized by microalgae called Haematococcus, and is also known as the “King of Carotenoids”. It’s grown in fresh water using sophisticated techniques that encourage the algae to grow its own powerful medicines protecting it from oxidation, UV radiation and other environmental stressors.

Astaxanthin is actually what gives salmon their reddish colour and allows them to perform heroic feats like swimming upstream against the current and leaping up waterfalls.

When it is harvested from the algae and concentrated into a tiny liquid capsule it becomes the most powerful antioxidant known in the natural world, with research showing that it is 550 times the antioxidant power of vitamin E! These antioxidants slow down the ageing process and protect us from free radicals that can cause DNA damage, nerve cell damage, and accelerated ageing of our internal organs.

Astaxanthin for Inflammation

Inflammation is a first response defence and healing mechanism that becomes active before our immune system does. It is an extremely complex system and in general causes redness, swelling, heat, and pain. These effects occur due to a wide spectrum of inflammation mediators that are released after a detected injury or attack. Some of the mediators are known as prostaglandins, tumor necrosis factors, interleukins, and nitric oxide.

Some of the strongest pharmaceutical anti-inflammatories limit the production of prostaglandins and therefore ease swelling and pain. However, these drugs can cause side effects as it is very unnatural and unbalanced for the body to deal with extreme suppression of one single mediator, without affecting the balance of the others.

Alternatively, naturally occurring anti-inflammatory foods will ease inflammation by gently inhibiting several mediators, including prostaglandins, to calm the system as a whole.

Even though astaxanthin is not as powerful as leading pharmaceutical anti-inflamamtories, it is found to be one of the strongest ones in nature. Several double blind, placebo controlled animal and clinical trials shows that astaxanthin naturally inhibits many of the known inflammation mediators, which eases inflammation and pain without the side effects.

Authors Note: I personally used astaxanthin in a period where I dealt with debilitating inflammation, and had no desire to use pharmaceutical drugs. I can accurately state that it extinguished 80-90% of my systemic inflammation.

Other Benefits of Astaxanthin

The best part of astaxanthin is that the healing benefits don’t stop at pain management due to inflammation. However, since it is such a strong anti-inflammatory it also deals effectively with a number of other health issues, including:

• Reduces joint pain
• Reduces the risk of cancer and proliferation of breast cancer tumour cells
• Protects brain from dementia and other brain related disorders
• Reduces damage to your DNA by up to 40%
• Reduces blood sugar levels in diabetics
• Improves fertility
• Promotes cardiovascular health
• Reduces or eliminates carpal tunnel syndrome
• Boosts immune system
• Protects against infections
• Prevents asthma by normalizing histamine levels
• Protects body from highly oxidative foods
• Increases endurance, muscle recovery, and workout performance
• Protects kidneys from damage due to high blood sugar
• Protects eyes and reduces cataracts
• Prevents UV damage to eyes and skin (works as an internal sunscreen)

Since astaxanthin is fat soluble (unlike most antioxidants) it gets carried by fat molecules directly to your muscles, tissues, and organs where it is needed most, like your brain, breast tissue, prostate tissue, skeletal muscles, and retina. This way it prevents oxidation right at the site of stress or potential oxidation.

Read the rest here…

Check out Derek Henry here.

And snag some Astaxanthin here:

In a wide-ranging question and answer session from the press, President-elect Donald Trump speculated over what was behind the collapse of Syria and the fall of President Bashar al-Assad.

He said the jihadist rebel victory in Syria was really an ‘unfriendly takeover’ by Turkey. The explanation he gave at first generated headlines which made it appear he was condemning and lashing out at Turkish action; however, the full comments were a bit more sympathetic and deferential to Erdogan and to Turkey.

In the comments he hailed Turkey’s regional role as a major power and his personal ties with President Erdogan.

“Turkey is a major force, by the way, and Erdogan is somebody I got along with great but he has a major military force. And he has not been worn out with war,” Trump told reporters at the briefing held at Mar-a-Lago estate. “He’s built a very strong, powerful army” – he said in reference to Erdogan.

“[Erdogan] is a very smart guy and very tough, but Turkey did an unfriendly takeover without a lot of lives being lost. I can say that Assad was a butcher here what he did to children.”

Trump also explained that “Turkey is the one behind it” and stressed “They wanted it for 1000s of years, and he got it, and those people that went in are controlled by Turkey, and that’s okay. It’s another way to but no, I don’t think that.”

He said that while “nobody knows” the future of post-Assad Syria, he still thinks “Turkey is going to hold the key to” the nation. “Actually, I don’t think you’ve heard that from anybody else, but I’ve been pretty good at predicting,” Trump followed with, but without saying whether he will eventually pull US forces out of Syria.

Turkey’s leader of the opposition believes Israel and US have reached an agreement to topple Assad by sending HTS to Damascus.

“They agreed that the army would not resist, the prime minister would surrender, and Assad would say he resigned and flee as planned.” pic.twitter.com/BhBLs3vKY6

— Ragıp Soylu (@ragipsoylu) December 16, 2024

The presence of US forces in Deir Ezzor and Hasakeh regions has frequently outraged Turkey, especially given US troops are training and arming Syrian Kurdish YGP forces (which form the core of the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF). But Ankara views this group as but an extension of the outlawed PKK.

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

The term “False Flag” gets thrown around rather haphazardly these days and it’s important to recognize that a real false flag requires a particular end result – The public blaming the wrong culprit for an event that someone else (usually our own government) perpetrated. When it comes to the increasing fervor over major drone activity across the US, I have very little doubt that what we are witnessing is a false flag scenario.

First, let’s outline what has happened so far: Drone sightings have exploded across the country involving a wide variety of devices – but the incidents that concern me the most are those involving the SUV-sized UAVs in places like New Jersey. The sightings have been happening for months. US government agencies including the FBI, DHS and national security officials claim they have no idea who is behind this activity, even though drones have been seen operating over highly protected areas like US military bases.

There’s a lot of information to be gleaned here if you know what you’re looking for. I have written extensively about drones and drone warfare in my survival newsletter over the years, primarily on new developments in the technology and ways for civilians to defeat that technology. However, I have also written on how civilians can use drones for their own self defense.

I know enough about tracking technology to say with relative certainly that officials are lying about the drones over New Jersey, and probably about most of the covert drone activity in other parts of the country. They know who is controlling these drones, and it’s most likely our own government.  What we are witnessing is some form of false flag in progress.

First and foremost, drones can indeed be tracked rather easily depending on where they fly. Remote signals going back to the operator can be tracked with the right equipment. The stronger the remote signal the easier it is to find the operator. In New Jersey, for example, US Air Force Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst partnered with AeroDefense, a local business specializing in tracking technology and drone detection, to produce a system to track drones across the installation as well as pinpoint perpetrators who fly them. They started this program back in 2020.

Drone company DJI, which controls around 90% of the consumer drone market, has their own proprietary drone tracking technology that can be purchased by governments and various agencies. There’s likely dozens more companies out there right now producing similar products to the DJI tracking tech.

Under new FAA regulations instituted this year, all drones operating in US air space (except very small drones) are required to carry a Remote ID module which broadcasts operator information and location. Most drones now have Remote ID integrated into their software and removing it can be a pain. For example, DJI drones are basically no longer used by Ukrainian forces because the built-in Remote ID gives away their positions. They now build most of their drones from scratch.

There are ways around drone tracking (to a point). Remote ID spoofing devices can be built and programmed for as little as $20. These broadcasting modules can create the illusion of dozens of drones in the sky with false operator data included.  Anyone trying to use Remote ID tracking to find you will have no idea which drones are real and which are fake.

Drone signal repeaters (which function much like ham radio repeaters) are not uncommon and are used in Ukraine by both sides to help confuse tracking attempts. Signal repeaters and antennas are easy to hide, and pinpointing an exact location is difficult. In Ukraine, trackers would simply find a general area where the antenna or operator might be and then hit it with artillery. If they only hit a repeater, then the operator is out about $200 and that’s it.

The Russians use drones connected to long spools of fiber optic cable which allows them to send the devices into areas protecting by jamming.  The direct connection also keeps the operators from being tracked.

Then there are drones with AI software which bypass a lot of tracking tools. If the drone is controlling itself then there’s no operator signal to trace. The drone might be broadcasting a video signal but that’s not going to give up the location of the people who deployed the drone.

Most of these techniques would never be used by common civilians or even small terror groups (AI flight software in particular would only be used by governments). On top of that, access to large drones or car-sized drones is very rare for civilians and requires extensive permits. The cost of such devices is prohibitive (tens-of-thousands or hundreds-of-thousands of dollars depending on the drone).

My point is, there is no way civilian operators or small terror groups are behind the majority of these events. The level of sophistication involved here requires military or government agency oversight. Beyond that, there aren’t enough  countermeasures in the world to prevent tracking over sensitive government locations.  The US military and DHS have extensive means to track down drones (especially large drones) flying in close proximity to bases and protected sites.

Triangulation would not be hard given the drone operators would have to fly through the middle of multiple detection equipped facilities. And, even if the drones are AI operated, large drones are not very fast or nimble. They could be followed without much trouble by helicopters or other drones.

Lack of public knowledge on this issue is being exploited by government officials and the media. I have seen multiple agency representatives claim that there’s “not enough restrictions in place” to keep the threat of domestic drones in check. I have also seen government reps claim these drones are being operated by a foreign enemy like Iran.  Recently, at least two men were arrested for flying a small drone too close to an airport in Long Island – Federal agencies and the media have tried to link these men to the covert drone sighting across the country when it’s likely they have nothing to do with the situation.

Misinformation like this suggests an attempt to pin the drone activity on civilian sources, or, a foreign adversary working with civilian sources. 

In other words, they are preparing the ground for one of two outcomes:

1. More aggressive restrictions on civilian drones, or,

2. a drone attack that is blamed on a foreign government.

The size of the drones is what worries me most. If the goal of a foreign government was to monitor sensitive sites and collect information, they wouldn’t use car-sized drones. Large drones would be too easy to trace.  They would use small mid-range drones outfitted with thermal that fit in a backpack.

But, our own government could fly fleets of large drones over cites and military bases with impunity.  If our government wanted to, say, blow up a sacrificial military facility, damage a nuclear power plant or hit a civilian center, car-sized drones would be very useful because they are designed to carry considerable weight.  Drones like those sighted over New Jersey could carry 500-1000 pounds of ordnance (maybe more). A swarm of these drones could cause total havoc in a heavily populated area.

I worry about this outcome because the Biden Administration and the globalist establishment have been very active in the past several months trying to create as many ignition points for world war as they possibly can before Donald Trump takes office in January. A false flag at this time makes perfect sense.

My second theory is based on the strange comments by defense officials linking the activity to lack of restrictions on the civilian drone market.  As noted, there is NO WAY civilians are flying car-sized drones in US airspace over protected sites without being followed.  The drones are too expensive, too big to move around without people noticing and that kind of operation requires insider knowledge of DoD and DHS tracking methods.

Some have speculated that there may be an agenda to get legislation (like a new Patriot Act) passed in the near future. 

I believe this may be a ploy to get traction on legislation restricting or banning civilian ownership of drones. Some people might be skeptical about that idea, but consider for a moment how useful drones are to a potential populist rebellion…

For over a century, governments and national armies have had a monopoly on aerial surveillance and the ability to engage enemies from the sky.  With the invention of drones many patriots and survivalists have viewed the technology as the biggest threat to future attempts at rebellion against the establishment. The devices are cheap to produce, can operate in forests and urban environments and even small drones can carry enough explosives to maim or possibly kill with precision.

In the past, smaller forces using asymmetric tactics could still gain the upper hand against governments, even when fighting an advanced military with air superiority.  Drones are now treated as the end game for insurgencies.  But the truth is quite the opposite; drones are the end game for standard armies and a huge advantage for asymmetric rebellions.  Drones are the biggest game changer in warfare for civilians since the invention of the repeating rifle.

We have seen the face of combat change dramatically in the war in Ukraine as drones become increasingly vital for both sides. Medium-sized drones have disrupted typical maneuver warfare tactics using high explosives to disable armored columns. Small drones allow operators to monitor the battlefield from the sky for miles and make discreet troop movements impossible.

Drones can be easily used by civilians for the same purposes. For the first time ever, patriots have access to the air for surveillance and defense. I would not be surprised to see governments fabricate reasons why the technology “needs to be banned” – They will try to sell the American people on the idea that drones are a danger to public safety, even if that requires bankrolling a terror attack to frighten people into compliance.

In either case – A trigger for WWIII or a test case for banning the civilian drone market, the establishment gains an advantage.  As far as I can tell, no one else benefits from these drone incidents.  All signs point to a false flag.  If this reality is exposed widely enough, I expect that the government will finally admit that they were behind the drone flights, but only as an effort to “protect the public” from an insidious threat that they could not tell us about beforehand.

*  *  *

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President-elect Donald Trump does not have immunity in the so-called “hush money” case in New York, Judge Juan Merchan ruled in a decision on Dec. 16.

The conduct described by the 34 felony counts of which Trump was convicted earlier this year is related “entirely to unofficial conduct entitled to no immunity protections,” Merchan wrote.

As Joseph Lord reports for The Epoch Times, the decision, coming in the wake of Trump’s sweeping victory in the 2024 presidential election, is tied to a U.S. Supreme Court decision earlier this year that reaffirmed the longstanding precedent that official presidential conduct enjoys “presumptive immunity” from criminal prosecution.

The Supreme Court’s decision forced Merchan to determine whether the charges were presumptively immune under the law.

Trump’s attorneys contended that New York prosecutors introduced evidence during his seven-week trial that was protected by the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity doctrine.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) urged the judge to reject Trump’s arguments, arguing that no evidence placed before the jury was protected, and even if it was, it paled in comparison to “other overwhelming evidence of defendant’s guilt.”

Merchan agreed, finding that none of the challenged evidence was protected.

Even if immunity did extend to the evidence in question, Merchan wrote he “would still find that the People’s use of these acts as evidence of the decidedly personal acts of falsifying business records poses no danger of intrusion on the authority and function of the Executive Branch, a conclusion amply supported by non-motive-related evidence.”

The Hill reports that Trump has separately argued that his White House victory compels the dismissal of the jury’s verdict and the case in its entirety.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) has pushed back, instead laying out alternatives like freezing the proceedings during Trump’s term.

The judge has yet to rule on that matter.

“Today’s decision by deeply conflicted, acting Justice Merchan in the Manhattan DA Witch Hunt is a direct violation of the Supreme Court’s decision on immunity, and other longstanding jurisprudence,” Steven Cheung, Trump’s spokesperson and incoming White House communications director, said in a statement.

In a separate letter, Merchan revealed that Trump also sent a Dec. 3 letter alleging juror misconduct. The judge provided sparse details but indicated the issue would be made public with redactions.

Syria’s toppled leader Bashar al-Assad has made a statement for the first time since fleeing Syria after jihadist groups led by US-designated terror organization Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) took over the country and the army peeled away without a fight.

The statement was posted Monday to the Syrian Presidency’s Telegram account; however, it can’t be independently verified that he personally made the statement. Assad is with his family in Moscow, where they have received asylum from the Russian government.

The posted letter describes that Syria’s collapse was the result of terrorism and that his leaving was not planned. He said he was evacuated to Russia from the Khmeimim airbase on the Syrian coast. This happened the evening of December 8, and the letter further describes that the base was coming under drone attacks and the security situation deteriorating. He suggested he wanted to stay and fight.

“My departure from Syria was neither planned nor did it occur during the final hours of the battles, as some have claimed. On the contrary, I remained in Damascus, carrying out my duties until the early hours of Sunday 8th December 2024,” the statement said.

“With no viable means of leaving the base, Moscow requested that the base’s command arrange an immediate evacuation to Russia on the evening of Sunday 8th December. This took place a day after the fall of Damascus, following the collapse of the final military positions and the resulting paralysis of all remaining state institutions,” the statement continued.

“At no point during these events did I consider stepping down or seeking refuge, nor was such a proposal made by any individual or party. The only course of action was to continue fighting against the terrorist onslaught,” it added.

But the statement does say that as state institutions collapsed that his position as president of the country quickly became “void of purpose” as by then Syria was overrun by “terrorists”.

“When the state falls into the hands of terrorism and the ability to make a meaningful contribution is lost, any position becomes void of purpose, rendering its occupation meaningless,” Assad added.

BREAKING🚨Bashar Al Assad has issued his version of events on the last days of #Syria 🇸🇾

But the question remains. Who ordered the army to retreat? Because it’s absolutely known they were given orders to retreat. pic.twitter.com/7aMNXqvscT

— Syrian Girl 🇸🇾 (@Partisangirl) December 16, 2024

Assad’s precise whereabouts or the timeline of events of his exit had been unknown for days even after he was in Moscow. It appears many of this top officials, including his brother Maher, had fled either across the Iraq border or to Dubai. For example, Assad’s top media advisor Bouthaina Shaaban was spotted in Dubai’s airport.

Western media sources are currently alleging that in recent years Assad had $250 million in cash flown from Syria to Russia. The media is presenting this as him having looted the country’s central bank, but the airlifts took place a number of years ago:

The Financial Times (FT) said that it had uncovered records showing that Assad’s regime flew two tonnes of banknotes into Moscow between 2018 and 2019 to be deposited at Russian banks. Newsweek has contacted the Russian foreign ministry for comment.

The FT says that Syria’s central bank airlifted $250 million in cash to Russia at a time when Assad was indebted to Moscow and the Middle Eastern country was desperately short of foreign currency.

Likely this was also done to bypass Western sanctions, and given Russia has long been a hub of Assad family finances. 

Meanwhile, Reuters reported last week that “The vaults in Syria’s central bank were left unscathed by looters in the turmoil that briefly engulfed the capital Damascus after the overthrow of president Bashar al-Assad, a senior business leader and three other sources told Reuters.” According to more breaking developments:

• SYRIA RETAINS NEARLY 26 TONS OF GOLD RESERVES INSIDE CENTRAL BANK VAULT – SOURCES
• SYRIA’S CENTRAL BANK HAS ROUGHLY $200 MLN IN U.S. DOLLAR RESERVES IN VAULTS – SOURCES
• SYRIA’S GOLD RESERVES WORTH $2.2 BLN AT CURRENT MARKET PRICES – REUTERS CALCULATIONS

Assad was corrupt no question, his cronies monopolized all aspect of Syrian economy, but when you look inside his homes in Syria, they looked normal for a family that was in power for 5 decades (not super lavished), and gold reserves untouched according to the below. https://t.co/qOIPGEDjto

— Bassem (@BBassem7) December 16, 2024

Bassel Hamawi, head of the Damascus Chambers of Commerce, said that “The most important point is that the amounts in the central bank are still as they were, there is no infringement on the central bank and the money in the central bank has been handed over to the new government” – despite other smaller cash stores at the bank having been stolen.

Authored by Joseph Lord via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt said that autonomous artificial intelligence (AI) is coming—and that it could pose an existential threat to humanity.

“We’re soon going to be able to have computers running on their own, deciding what they want to do,” Schmidt, who has long raised alarm about both the dangers and the benefits AI poses to humanity, said during a Dec. 15 appearance on ABC’s “This Week.”

“That’s a dangerous point: When the system can self improve, we need to seriously think about unplugging it,” Schmidt said.

Schmidt is far from the first tech leader to raise these concerns.

The rise of consumer AI products like ChatGPT has been unprecedented in the past two years, with major improvements to the language-based model. Other AI models have become increasingly adept at creating visual art, photographs, and full-length videos that are nearly indistinguishable from reality in many cases.

For some, the technology calls to mind the “Terminator” series, which centers on a dystopian future where AI takes over the planet, leading to apocalyptic results.

For all the fears that ChatGPT and similar platforms have raised, consumer AI services available today still fall into a category experts would consider “dumb AI.” These AI are trained on a massive set of data, but lack consciousness, sentience, or the ability to behave autonomously.

Schmidt and other experts are not particularly worried about these systems.

Rather, they’re concerned about more advanced AI, known in the tech world as “artificial general intelligence” (AGI), describing far more complex AI systems that could have sentience and, by extension, could develop conscious motives independent from and potentially dangerous to human interests.

Schmidt said no such systems exist today yet, and we’re rapidly moving toward a new, in-between type of AI: one lacking the sentience that would define an AGI, and still able to act autonomously in fields like research and weaponry.

“I’ve done this for 50 years. I’ve never seen innovation at this scale,” Schmidt said of the rapid developments in AI complexity.

Schmidt said that more developed AI would have many benefits to humanity—and could have just as many “bad things like weapons and cyber attacks.”

The Challenge

The challenge, Schmidt said, is multifaceted.

At a core level, he repeated a common sentiment among tech leaders: if autonomous AGI-like systems are inevitable, it will require massive cooperation among both corporate interests and governments internationally to avoid potentially devastating consequences.

That’s easier said than done. AI provides U.S. competitors like China, Russia, and Iran with a potential leg-up over the United States that would be difficult to achieve otherwise.

Within the tech industry as well, there’s currently massive competition among major corporations—Google, Microsoft, and others—to outcompete rivals, a situation that raises inherent risks of improper security protocols for dealing with a rogue AI, Schmidt said.

“The competition is so fierce, there’s a concern that one of the companies will decide to omit the [safety] steps and then somehow release something that really does some harm,” Schmidt said. Such harms would only become evident after the fact, he said.

The challenge is greater on the international stage, where adversarial nations are likely to see the new technology as revolutionary for their efforts to challenge U.S. global hegemony and expand their own influence.

“The Chinese are clever, and they understand the power of a new kind of intelligence for their industrial might, their military might, and their surveillance system,” Schmidt said.

That’s a bit of a catch-22 for U.S. leaders in the field, who find themselves forced to balance existential concerns for humanity with the potential for the United States to fall behind its adversaries, which could be catastrophic to global stability.

In the worst case, such systems could be used to engineer crippling biological and nuclear weapons, particularly by terror groups like ISIS.

For this reason, Schmidt said, it’s absolutely crucial that the United States continue to innovate in the field, and ultimately maintain technological dominance over China and other adversarial states and groups.

Industry Leaders Demand Regulation

Regulation of the field remains insufficient, Schmidt said. But he expects that governments’ focus on enhancing safeguards around the tech will accelerate dramatically in the coming years.

Asked by anchor George Stephanopoulos if governments were doing enough to regulate it, Schmidt replied, “Not yet, but they will, because they’ll have to.”

Despite some initial interest in the field—hearings, legislative proposals, and other initiatives—emerging during the current 118th Congress, this session seems to be on track to end without any major legislation related to AI.

President-elect Donald Trump, for his part, has warned of the vast risks posed by AI, saying during an appearance on Logan Paul’s “Impaulsive” podcast that it’s “really powerful stuff.”

He also spoke of the need to maintain competitiveness with adversaries.

“It brings with it difficulty, but we have to be at the forefront,” Trump said. “It’s going to happen, and if it’s going to happen, we have to take the lead over China. China’s the primary threat.”

Schmidt’s takes on both the benefits and the challenges of the technology aligns with other industry reactions.

In June 2024, OpenAI and Google employees signed a letter warning of “serious risks” posed by AI, and calling for greater government oversight of the field.

Elon Musk has put forward similar warnings, saying that Google is seeking to create a “digital God” through its DeepMind AI program.

In August, these concerns intensified after it was discovered that an AI took autonomous action to avoid being shut down—raising fears that humanity is already losing control over its creation as governments remain inactive.