Authored by John Kiriakou via Consortium News,

I spent the past two weeks on my ancestral island of Rhodes, Greece, helping my cousin settle his late father’s estate. It’s no surprise that everybody — and I mean literally everybody — wanted to talk about this month’s US presidential election. 

Greece has long had an anti-American streak stemming from U.S. support for the 1967-1974 military dictatorship that killed, tortured, and imprisoned thousands of people just because of their political views. Indeed, the governing conservative New Democracy Party (ND) wins elections only because there are so many socialist and communist parties that they split the left-wing vote and allow the conservatives to govern.

But much to my surprise, every leftist I’ve spoken to, including just about everybody in my own family from the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) to the Socialist Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) has offered full-throated support to Donald Trump.

After hearing this over and over again, I decided to probe a little to get to the bottom of how lifelong socialists and communists can support a billionaire businessman who leads a capitalist and conservative political party. But the reasons for their admiration of Trump were quite simple. They saw Donald Trump as the anti-war candidate. 

The Greeks don’t know anything about American domestic policy; nor do they care. They generally give you a blank stare when you mention abortion or health care or the environment. But they care about war. 

They hate what is happening to the Palestinians and Lebanese, despite the fact that their government is unabashedly pro-Israel (as is Donald Trump.) They hate that the United States has armed one Orthodox Christian country, Ukraine, against another, Russia. And they hate that the United States has done nothing about the 50-year-long Turkish military occupation of Cyprus. 

The Greeks genuinely believe that if anybody is going to end the Ukraine war or tell the Israelis to stop killing civilians in Palestine and Lebanon, it’s going to be Donald Trump. (I disagree strongly that Trump has any love whatsoever for the Palestinians. Indeed, he’s been Benjamin Netanyahu’s lapdog for years.)

But the Greeks argue that Democrats have only made the international situation worse, so why not give Trump another chance to make things better, like he did with North Korea, at least temporarily.

There’s another issue that the Greeks agree with Trump on, too. That’s the issue of immigration. The Greeks are well known for their hospitality. There’s even a word for it: Filoxenia, which means “love of the stranger.”

When Afghanistan and Iraq began falling apart, private Greek citizens actually stood on the beaches to welcome them as they washed ashore in rafts and to give them food and clothes. That changed when the European Union gave Turkey billions of dollars to hold refugees in Turkey and the Turks instead began forcing them across the border into Greece and just pocketing the money.

The Greeks, in turn, built a wall along the land border with Turkey. That enraged the Turks, of course, but the wall actually worked. And when Trump started talking about building a wall along the southern border with Mexico, the Greeks were all in. 

As a progressive American voter, and a truly independent one at that, I’m not optimistic about the next four years. Abortion is of primary importance to me. So are the environment, workers rights, health care and education. I support easier immigration and an easier and quicker path to citizenship. Donald Trump will likely destroy all of that.

With that said, I believe that there are two areas where Trump is right.  One is his support for a less interventionist foreign policy. The other is criminal justice reform. Trump issued a lot of pardons when he was president. He issued a lot of commutations. And he worked to do something about the sentencing disparities between white people convicted of crimes compared to people of color. At least there was that.

Donald Trump already has served one term as president. Consequently, he’ll be a lame duck beginning the moment he takes the oath of office on Jan. 20 with nobody on Capitol Hill owing him anything. He’ll be permanently out of office in four years. 

Is it possible that we could be pleasantly surprised, then, on some of these issues? I expect to be far more disappointed than anything else. But I don’t want to be a Debbie Downer. I’m going to try to convince myself that some good will come of this. I don’t know exactly what it’ll be. 

John Kiriakou is a former C.I.A. counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act—a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration’s torture program.

Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News,

Jews and homosexuals are no longer safe in Berlin and should hide their identity in certain neighborhoods, Berlin police chief Barbara Slowik has claimed.

In a wide-ranging interview with Berliner Zeitung about security risks, anti-Semitic danger zones in Berlin, and the effects of austerity measures on police work, Slowik warned that the German capital has become less tolerant in areas with high Arab populations and the police have insufficient resources to tackle the problem.

While she maintained that Berlin is “as safe as many other cities in Germany and safer than some other European capitals,” Slowik admitted there are parts of the city where heightened vigilance is necessary.

“Basically, there are no no-go areas,” she said.

“However, there are areas — and we have to be honest at this point — where I would advise people who wear a yarmulke or are openly gay or lesbian to be more careful. In many metropolises, you should be vigilant in certain public places to protect yourself from any crime.”

Slowik pointed to neighborhoods with large Arab populations as particular areas of concern.

“Unfortunately, there are certain neighborhoods in which the majority of people of Arab origin live who also have sympathies for terrorist groups,” she explained.

“Open anti-Semitism is expressed there against people of Jewish faith and origin. We have initiated over 6,200 investigations since Oct. 7, 2023. A large proportion are hate postings on social media, another large proportion are damage to property, and a significant proportion are propaganda crimes.”

She added, however, that 1,300 of these investigations involved violent crimes, many of which were directed at police officers during protests and public gatherings. “I am very concerned that people from the Jewish-Israeli community in Berlin are aware of the total number of anti-Semitic crimes and that this increases their fear of becoming the target of an attack.”

Protests against Israel have become a daily occurrence in Berlin following the Israeli response to the Hamas terror attack in October 2023. Slowik detailed the difficulty of managing these intimidating demonstrations, stating, “Various organizers have been registering meetings regularly since Oct. 7 last year. Sometimes there is hysterical chanting and slogans that are difficult for the majority of society to bear. But all of this is allowed on German roads.”

When asked whether hardcore demonstrators could be quantified, Slowik said, “We have had over 360 meetings, a large proportion of which were loud. We are registering people in the lower three-digit range who commit crimes at gatherings. However, as the police, we regularly supervise and accompany meetings with thousands of participants who behave largely peacefully.”

She acknowledged the challenges of banning demonstrations, which are protected under German law. “A ban is not a panacea or a permanent solution. After Hamas’ attack on Israel, we banned 24 gatherings in the weeks that followed. It was about celebrating those murdered in Israel. So criminal offenses were approved under the guise of the right to assembly. Since then, it has been about current topics that are covered by freedom of expression.”

The depleted police force is struggling financially

Beyond the challenges of managing public safety, Slowik expressed deep concern about the financial state of Berlin’s police force. Chronic budget shortfalls have left officers struggling to maintain operations.

“For years, the police have only been equipped in such a way that the funds are usually spent in the fall, and we then have to juggle our way through until the end of the year and find leftovers, also to finance fuel or to pay support staff for large locations,” Slowik said.

She revealed that 2024’s investment funds fell far short of requirements. “This year, instead of €14 million in investment funds, which we urgently needed, only €6 million was made available to the (State Criminal Police Office) LKA. This despite the fact that the senator for the interior has already asked all areas of her department to pay in order to support her police. In 2025, we will have even less, even though we have fully justified that we need €100 million more. Criminals are taking advantage.”

Slowik stressed the urgent need for technological upgrades, including AI-driven video surveillance, to relieve pressure on officers. “We urgently need object-related video surveillance, especially at embassies, also using AI. That would relieve us enormously. When it comes to property protection, we have never had such a dire situation.”

The lack of funding extends to infrastructure and staffing. Slowik described the dire state of police properties, revealing that the renovation backlog has doubled under her tenure. “When I took office, the renovation backlog in police properties was €1.1 billion. It has now grown to €2.2 billion. This is also and especially due to the increased construction costs, but also because the deterioration of buildings is progressing exponentially.”

She also highlighted issues with the police vehicle fleet. “Our fleet now needs €50 million immediately in order to be properly positioned again. Up to 40 percent of our cars are in the workshop every day. This will also affect the response times of the radio cars.”

Despite some improvements, such as modernized control centers and faster water patrol boats, Slowik emphasized that these advancements are overshadowed by the scale of the challenges. “We currently need 380 law enforcement colleagues from the police and criminal police to support the 1,500 property security forces to meet the calls for protection since Oct. 7. This roughly corresponds to the number of personnel in a police department and two operational units. This will be noticeable in the city,” she explained.

Slowik’s candid remarks underscore the multifaceted challenges facing Berlin’s police force. From rising intolerance and safety concerns in Arab neighborhoods to protests and financial shortfalls, the city’s law enforcement is stretched thin at a time when cultural segregation and crime are on the rise.

Read more here…

Authored by Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov via Headline USA,

It was recently revealed that President-elect Donald Trump surpassed one of the most famous pop stars, Taylor Swift, in Twitter followers, proving that Americans like him more.

“BREAKING: Donald Trump (@realDonaldTrump) has surpassed Taylor Swift in followers to become the 8th most-followed account on [Twitter],” popular conservative commentator @alx reported.

BREAKING: Donald Trump (@realDonaldTrump) has surpassed Taylor Swift in followers to become the 8th most followed account on 𝕏 pic.twitter.com/3fzL11JIqh

— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) November 18, 2024

As of Nov. 18, Trump had 94.8 million followers, and Swift had 94.7 million followers.

“OVERTAKEN,” conservative commentator and senior editor at Human Events Jack Posobeic wrote in response to the recent news.

OVERTAKEN https://t.co/qXLU7yScWr

— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) November 18, 2024

Like almost any other Hollywood celebrity, Swift publicly expressed her far-left political beliefs, specifically her opposition to Trump.

Even though Swift refused to endorse Hillary Clinton for president in 2016, she supported Joe Biden for president while he was still in the race, which resulted in Trump attacking her on social media.

“I signed and was responsible for the Music Modernization Act for Taylor Swift and all other Musical Artists. Joe Biden didn’t do anything for Taylor, and never will,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. 

“There’s no way she could endorse Crooked Joe Biden, the worst and most corrupt President in the History of our Country, and be disloyal to the man who made her so much money.”

Trump, however, stated that Swift is “unusually beautiful” even though she is a leftist.

Swift endorsed Kamala Harris in her Instagram post after Democrats orchestrated a coup against Biden and replaced him with Harris.

“I think she is a steady-handed, gifted leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos. I was so heartened and impressed by her selection of running mate @timwalz, who has been standing up for LGBTQ+ rights, IVF, and a woman’s right to her own body for decades,” she wrote.

However, Swift’s endorsement didn’t affect Americans, with only 6% saying that they were now more likely to vote for Harris.

Authored by Ellen Wan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Blood types play a crucial role not only in ensuring safe blood transfusions but also in influencing various health risks. Numerous studies suggest that genetically determined blood types may increase susceptibility to both infectious and non-infectious diseases, including COVID-19, heart disease, and allergies.

Blood is categorized into four main types—A, B, AB, or O—based on the types of antigens present on the surface of red blood cells. Antigens are proteins found on red blood cells that trigger an immune response when encountering unfamiliar substances, such as certain bacteria, Dr. Douglas Eric Guggenheim, a physician at the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital, explained in a 2020 Penn Medicine article.

Increased Risk of Viral Infections

A 2023 study from Harvard Medical School, published in the journal Blood, found that the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, preferentially targets type A blood cells.

“We show that the part of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein that’s key to enabling the virus to invade cells displays affinity for blood group A cells, and the virus in turn also shows a preferential ability to infect blood group A cells,” Dr. Sean R. Stowell, of Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, said in a press release.

Type A blood cells are more susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection than type O blood cells, Stowell noted. “Among a group of several thousand people, some studies suggest that those with blood group A may be 20 percent more likely to be infected after exposure to SARS-CoV-2 compared with those who have blood group O.” Subsequent experiments indicated that the Omicron variant demonstrated an even stronger preference for infecting type A blood cells than the original virus.

Other recent studies have explored the mechanisms linking blood type to susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2.  One study showed that levels of ACE2 protein, the receptor that the virus binds to for cell entry, were significantly higher in people with type A blood compared to other blood types. The researchers also found that the binding rate of the spike protein to red blood cells was highest in people with type A blood and lowest in people with type O.

Despite these associations, when assessing a person’s risk of severe SARS-CoV-2 infection, factors such as age and pre-existing chronic conditions, like heart disease, tend to have more significant effects on the risk of severe SARS-CoV-2 infection than blood type.

Increased Risk of Cancer

Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest types of cancer because it tends to grow quickly, can rapidly invade surrounding organs, and is often difficult to detect early. One study found a statistically significant association between ABO blood group and pancreatic cancer risk. Compared to people with type O blood, those with blood types A, AB, and B had a 32, 51, and 72 percent higher risk of developing pancreatic cancer, respectively.

Additionally, a comprehensive review found that people with type A blood were more susceptible to Helicobacter pylori, a known risk factor for stomach cancer, thus increasing their likelihood of developing the disease. In contrast, type O blood was associated with a lower risk of several cancers, including colorectal, gastric, and breast cancer.

Higher Risk of Other Serious Conditions

Blood type has been found to be associated with an increased risk of other several serious health conditions.

Increased Risk of Heart Disease

Blood type may also be linked to the risk of developing heart disease. A meta-analysis from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, analyzing health data from nearly 90,000 individuals over more than 20 years, found that people with type O blood had the lowest risk of developing coronary heart disease. After adjusting for cardiovascular risk factors, participants with blood types A, B, and AB had an increased risk of coronary heart disease by 6, 15, and 23 percent, respectively, when compared to people with type O blood.

Increased Risk of Allergic Diseases

There is also a clear association between blood type and allergic diseases. A review found that people with type O blood were more prone to allergic rhinitis and asthma compared to those with non-O blood group. In contrast, people with non-O blood types had a higher likelihood of developing atopic dermatitis, with the highest prevalence among those with type B blood, followed by type A.

Read the rest here…

Wealth distribution varies significantly across the world’s regions, reflecting the economic disparities shaped by differences in development, resource availability, and financial access.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Kayla Zhu, visualizes the share of adults in each global region who fall into four wealth bands (figures in USD):

• Under $10K

• $10K to $100K

• $100K to $1M

• Over $1M

The data comes from the UBS Global Wealth Report 2024 and encompasses 56 markets representing an estimated 92.2% of total global wealth.

The UBS report’s data does not include a majority of African countries.

Global Wealth by Region in 2023

The majority of adults in the lowest wealth bracket (under $10K) are concentrated in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, where nearly 70% of people in this wealth bracket being from the region.

On the other end, the highest wealth bracket (over $1M) is dominated by the Americas along with the grouped region of Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA).

The Americas, which includes North and South America, have the highest share (42.7%) of global adults with wealth over $1 million, showing a concentration of high net worth individuals in this region.

At the country level, the U.S is home to nearly 22 million people with a wealth exceeding one million dollars, the highest number of millionaires in any country according to analysis by UBS.

This means that in 2023, the U.S. hosted 38% of the world’s millionaires.

Mainland China ranked second with just over 6 million millionaires, almost twice the number of the third-ranked country, the United Kingdom.

To see the global distribution of the ultra-wealthy, check out this graphic that visualizes where the 626,619 individuals with a net worth of $30 million or more live.

Authored by Jeffrey A. Tucker via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Trying to gain a greater understanding of what is happening in the United States today, history provides some guidance.

We can skip most of the presidencies of the 20th century for comparison.

Ronald Reagan was more in the mold that Donald Trump is breaking.

Richard Nixon was popular but was hamstrung by the Vietnam War and the dollar crisis.

FDR was popular but his sweeping victory in 1936 reflected economic panic. While he had the House and Senate, he faced a hard barrier with the Supreme Court that struck down his beloved legislation.

Woodrow Wilson won in 1912 only because the opposition was split.

There is a greater prospect of fundamental change with the second Trump term than in any living memory.

For an illuminating comparison, let’s return to the year 1824. Andrew Jackson ran for president and won a plurality of the popular and electoral votes. But he did not get the majority. The election was thrown to the House of Representatives, which produced a surprising result: John Quincy Adams became president thanks to the support of Henry Clay who was promised the position of Secretary of State.

That sense of being robbed of the presidency festered deeply among Jackson’s fan base and he came back four years later, more fired up than ever. The election of 1828 was utterly sweeping. He ran an unapologetic populist campaign against the national bank and corrupt insiders in Washington. The turnout broke all records, and so did the results. Jackson won by a landslide, securing 178 electoral votes against John Adams’ 83.

With this mandate, Jackson and his followers utterly destabilized Washington, firing vast numbers of executive bureaucrats who were considered disloyal, and fought the national bank while pushing for gold and silver as money. His hiring of loyalists to top positions was decried as the “spoils system” that was ended fully by the Progressive Era, which amounted to a revenge of the professional bureaucrats.

The policies he pursued–keeping the government mostly constrained by the Constitution, keeping the peoples’ interests front and center, and devolving power to the states–prepared the ground for the United States to rise from a small post-colonial outpost to the world’s greatest economic and military power by century’s end.

There were two major missteps that have ruined his reputation in the history books. Jackson was a states’ right guy on all matters but for matters of the tariffs (he threatened an invasion of South Carolina during the so-called Nullification Crisis) and, in addition, he pursued a cruel policy regarding Native lands, which he ordered to be taken, leading to ghastly humanitarian results including the famous Trail of Tears.

That said, he did return government to the people and his impact on Washington was enormous, especially as regards his fight against the National Bank and paper money.

Murray Rothbard summarizes Jackson’s presidency as follows:

“It is difficult to generalize about Jackson; his fiery temperament, his capacity for bitter personal hatred, his autocratic taste for personal power which blossomed in his early military campaigns, and his weak grasp of political principles led him into many inconsistent and wrong-headed acts. Underneath these weaknesses, petty whims, hatreds, and inconsistencies, however, there is clearly discernible a basic set of political and economic principles. These were, in brief, the principles of pure Jeffersonian Democracy: thorough-going ‘hard money,’ with the eradication of inflationary paper money and reliance on gold and silver; laissez-faire-strict adherence to free enterprise in a market unhampered by government subsidies, tariffs, heavy bureaucratic expenditures, special privileges, or heavy taxation; firm insistence on states’ rights. In foreign policy, the guide is America first, last, and always, with no entangling alliances and an attitude of firmness, cordiality, but profound suspicion toward all foreign countries, particularly Great Britain.”

Rothbard concludes: “Jackson deserves a cherished place in the hearts of all Americans: By the time Jackson left office, for the first time and the last time in the history of America, we had wiped out all of our public debt. Old Hickory’s success in liquidating the national debt is one of the most glorious accomplishments in American annals. And it provides us with a vital clue to the true nature of his political philosophy.”

This is the strongest historical precedent we have for the meaning of what is happening right now. Donald Trump astonished the world with his victory in 2016. His loss four years later followed the calamitous policy response to the arrival of a respiratory virus. Trump initially pushed for lockdowns. Once having changed his mind about the policy, he was unable to restrain the bureaucracies that had been unleashed on the population with the ostensible goal of minimizing infection and then forcing public adoption of an experimental shot.

There was a widespread belief among his supporters that something was sketchy about the 2020 results, which had been unduly influenced by mail-in ballots pushed by the CDC, which had said that standing in voting lines was too dangerous for the spread of the virus. Trump himself never tired of arguing that the election itself was stolen. While that claim was inadmissible in polite society, and never seriously considered by the courts, Trump’s team and his followers were thoroughly convinced that he otherwise would have won.

For four years, Team Trump plotted their return, with an election strategy based on three key pillars. First, they would work to minimize voter fraud and mail-in ballots, urging the passage of voter ID laws and cracking down on possible corruption of the rolls. Second, they would push disenfranchised voter blocs among men under 40 to get themselves registered and vote. Third, they would work to create a mass cultural movement deploying Trump to do what he does best, which is to rally people at mass events.

Later in the campaign, the Trump coalition grew dramatically with the inclusion of a parallel effort by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. A lifetime litigator, RFK had written the most compelling books to explain how it is that Trump’s first term came to be subverted by the pharmaceutical industry in combination with national-security bureaucracies. His broader interests have long concerned health freedom and the elimination of subsidies for big agricultural interests that had driven smaller and organic farmers to the margins of food suppliers.

Kennedy attempted to challenge sitting president Joseph Biden for the nomination but found himself locked out. Next he attempted an independent bid but found himself blocked at every turn, plus worried that his presence in the election would operate as a spoiler bloc that could put Biden back in power.

Once he decided to link up with Trump over issues of food and medical freedom, they both found common interests in battling Big-Tech censorship, which in turn attracted the interests of Elon Musk. This disruptive entrepreneur had purchased Twitter with the goal of turning it into a free-speech platform in defiance of all the throttling and bans of the years prior.

This combination of RFK, Jr., Trump, and Musk amounts to one of the biggest realignments in modern American history. It combines 1990s-era “crunchy liberalism,” with a pro-peace America First foreign policy, with a 2000s-era disruptive tech focus, with a populist push against big everything (media, government, academia, medicine, corporations, finance).

Much of this realignment comes in the wake of the tumultuous years of COVID, in which businesses, schools, churches, and travel were shut in the name of health, with the very opposite result.

The modern incarnation of the Jacksonian movement has embodied itself in a series of popular acronyms that summarize the agenda: MAHA (Make America Healthy Again), MAGA (Make America Great Again), and DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency).

There is simply no chance that even the finest political prognosticator could have anticipated this merger of interests in defiance of all the old categories of left and right. As regards the old categories of race and religion, there has never been a popular political movement to draw from such a wide diversity of people, united more in their celebration of working-class interests than in opposition to professional and overclass hegemony.

Something very similar came together in the coalition that brought Andrew Jackson to power in 1828, complete with a storied past of struggle and triumph and a hard-core promise to return government to the people while taking it away from the privileged special interests. So far Trump’s picks for his cabinet posts seem to be following the Jacksonian script as well: people loved by the base but loathed by the establishment. Jackson got away with the same mainly by leveraging his personal popularity and carefully deploying that political capital against all resistors.

Jackson made some terrible errors but also did good as president. There is much from which the Trump team can learn from this experience. There is every reason to believe that the next four years could be equally as disruptive and leave a permanent mark on the history of this nation.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

The world’s second-largest economy sometimes suffers from its own success: it’s hard to comprehend how big it really is.

To help put things in perspective, this map, via Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao, compares China’s economy with East, Southeast, South, and Central Asia: a combined entity of 30 other countries labeled as “Rest of Asia”.

Data is sourced from the UN and the IMF as of 2024. Countries from Western Asia (i.e. the Middle East) and Russia (which spans Europe and Asian continents) haven’t been included, and data was unavailable for North Korea.

How China Stacks Up vs. Asian Economies

With an $18 trillion economic output in 2024, China’s GDP is nearly $2 trillion larger than 30 economies combined: $16.5 trillion.

That list of 30 countries includes other Asian heavyweights like: Japan ($4.1 trillion), India ($3.9 trillion), and South Korea ($1.87 trillion), the world’s 4th, 5th, and 12th largest economies.

More than 2.9 billion people inhabit this bloc of countries, compared to China’s 1.4 billion residents. The per capita GDP reveals the imbalance in productivity: $12,870 for China versus $5,583 for the rest of Asia.

Why the Chinese Economy Slowdown Matters

Now that comprehending the size of China’s economy is somewhat more feasible, it makes more sense why the post-pandemic slowdown has rung alarm bells for economists around the world.

It’s easier to think of it less as one country in an economic slump, and more as, say, 30 countries in a bit of a bother.

Since 2010, China’s economy has added roughly $1 trillion—the size of Saudi Arabia—every single year. From 2012–2021, China contributed nearly 39% to global growth by itself, more than the G7 countries combined.

It’s not an exaggeration to say the world economy would look very different without China—especially for the manufacturing and industrial sectors, where it commands a dominant market position.

Falling Chinese demand hurts all the countries who export to China—and this includes large parts of Asia and Africa.

Meanwhile, in an effort to sell elsewhere, Chinese businesses have shifted focus to international markets, already putting them in confrontational crosshairs with the U.S. and EU over unfair trade practices. More tariffs could raise the cost of goods and services to consumers around the world.

This map is part of a series where we visualize how different countries around the world stack up against their neighbors. Check out how Germany Compares to Half of Europe, or How Africa Can Be Divided into Two Halves for more interesting conversation starters.

Russian crude oil shipments dropped to a two-month low as loadings from Russia’s Western ports slumped, tanker-tracking data monitored by Bloomberg showed on Tuesday.

In the four weeks to November 17, Russian crude oil exports by sea dipped to 3.28 million barrels per day (bpd), down by 150,000 bpd compared to the previous four-week average to November 10, according to the data reported by Bloomberg’s Julian Lee. The decline in exports was the biggest since the end of July.  Daily crude flows in the week to Nov. 17 slumped by about 740,000 barrels to 2.83 million, dropping to their lowest since the first seven days of July.

The decline was driven by lower flows from the country’s Baltic, Black Sea and Arctic ports, while shipments from the Pacific remained unchanged.

A total of 26 tankers loaded 19.8 million barrels of Russian crude in the week to Nov. 17, vessel-tracking data and port-agent reports show. The volume was down sharply from a revised 24.98 million barrels on 32 ships the previous week.

The weekly decline was mostly the result of a 30% slump in shipments from Russia’s export terminals on the Baltic and Black Seas. It could have been the result of increased refining rates in the second week of November, which left lower volumes of crude available for exports, according to Bloomberg.

In October, as available refinery capacity in Russia dipped, crude oil shipments hit a four-month high, as heavy domestic refinery maintenance left more crude available for export.

Russia exported on average 3.47 million bpd of crude in the four weeks to October 20, up by 140,000 bpd compared to the four-week average to October 13, Bloomberg data showed at the time.

That was a consequence of refining rates at Russian crude processing facilities dropping to their lowest level for more than two years, since May 2022.

Crude exports from Russia could soon rise again, as some refineries are struggling with losses amid the gasoline export ban, currently in place until December 31, 2024.

Russia’s refineries have reportedly started to reduce run rates and some are considering shutting in operations, as the facilities are struggling with hefty losses amid export restrictions, rising oil prices, sanctions, and Ukrainian drone attacks.

Authored by Forrest Marrion via RealClearPolitics,

In the mid-1990s, Brig. Gen. Terryl J. Schwalier “was a rising star in the Air Force,” as Dr. Rebecca Grant wrote in 2006. A decade earlier, in June 1996 he was finishing his one-year tour as a provisional wing commander in Saudi Arabia and was slated for promotion to major general. Then disaster struck. On June 25, 1996, a terrorist truck-bomb – “unprecedentedly large” – exploded outside the building in which his airmen were billeted. Nineteen died. Two hundred forty were wounded. Khobar Towers was among the worst losses of U.S. Air Force life at a deployed location in a single hostile incident in memory. In the investigation that followed, defense secretary William Cohen faced political pressure to assign blame. He buckled, going against his military advisors’ counsel, and, instead, denying Schwalier his second star. The scapegoated general retired.

The decision was unjust in the eyes of many in the know. For starters, Schwalier had not been lax in terms of “force protection (FP).” In fact, he had implemented some one hundred thirty separate FP measures during his deployment and made nearly all the changes recommended by a vulnerability assessment. As the writer recalls, Schwalier’s story and the tragedy of Khobar Towers was part of the assigned readings at the Air Force’s Air Command and Staff College the following year. Furthermore, a key part of the Pentagon’s “outside probe” headed by a retired four-star was badly flawed on the size of the bomb used. The actual bomb – containing “at least 20,000 pounds of TNT” according to the Defense Special Weapons Agency – was at least four times larger than stated in the report, skewing further the judgment against Schwalier. In the years after Schwalier’s retirement, several attempts to overturn the denial of his promotion fell short.

In July 1997, days prior to the announcement of Cohen’s decision to deny Schwalier his promotion, Air Force chief of staff General Ron Fogleman resigned. He did so based on principle, stating to Aerospace Power Journal, “I just could not begin to imagine facing the Air Force after Secretary Cohen made the decision to cancel General Schwalier’s promotion.” In another forum, the chief stated, “I simply lost respect and confidence in the leadership that I was supposed to be following.”

For the record, I have zero relationship with the brigadier general. About ten years ago I was privileged to meet General Fogleman – though unplanned – at the top of the escalator outside the Pentagon, as each of us waited to meet someone. We had three minutes together. Even those who have never met General Fogleman hold him in highest regard. He is universally respected and admired. As far as I know, he was the last four-star to resign on principle.

We need more like him. In the last several years, as more and more are realizing – or at least are finding the courage to speak up – the Air Force has lost its way. Despite the Service infamously prioritizing its pilots’ pigmentation over their proficiency – claiming “too many white pilots” – based on leadership’s commitment to a racist ideology (DEI), how many senior officers have resigned as General Fogleman did?

Meanwhile, following President Trump’s reelection, some, like retired one-star and former defense policy senior official Anthony Tata, are reporting, “The Pentagon is hyper politicized and needs a thorough vetting to include senior active duty military personnel” who are participating in discussions on how to undermine the new administration. National security reporter Haley Britzky, warns, “Pentagon officials are having informal conversations about how the [defense department] would respond if Donald Trump issues orders to deploy active-duty troops domestically [or] fire large swaths of apolitical staffers.” This is not news, but common knowledge.

Precedent exists for holding special administrative boards to determine who stays and who goes among Air Force (and all Services’) senior leaders once the new Trump administration takes over. Recently I wrote about General George C. Marshall’s “plucking board” at the outset of World War Two (RealClearDefense, Sep. 26, 2024). As the U.S. Army chief of staff, Marshall was finally in a position to address the seniority system both he and the Army had long suffered under. As the army expanded in 1940 and ‘41 Marshall built a command system “to be able to put my finger on the man I wanted” for particular leadership posts. Marshall biographer Forrest Pogue wrote, “. . . he was preparing an army for war and felt that the selection of those who could lead in battle was a duty he owed the state.”

To ensure impartiality in the process of eliminating unfit senior officers from consideration for higher-level and combat commands, Marshall appointed six retired officers, headed by his predecessor, General Malin Craig. Marshall’s plucking board was “empowered to remove from line promotion any officer for reasons deemed good and sufficient.” Those removed were given one year to retire. As Marshall told the board, “Critical times are upon us.”

We’re in the same boat today. Except that today’s threats come not only from overseas: since the Obama administration, our once-professional military has been politicized, thanks to neo-Marxist ideology, personal enmity, or misguided judgment.

As the above warnings from knowledgeable Pentagon observers indicate, the second Trump administration will need to conduct a thorough house-cleaning of the military officer corps, many of whom wear stars. This is where Brig. Gen. Terry Schwalier comes in. For the Air Force, arguably there are few (if any) retired senior officers as well-suited to join, or lead, a plucking board.

As one lifelong leading aerospace historian and scholar writes:

You want people who can think beyond their service, who don’t have a grudge and “score-settling” attitude . . . who are in their late 60s and 70s to give them detachment, who are recognized stand-outs, and preferably 3 or 4-star so they have “big picture” experience. Finally, and most importantly, all should be combat veterans AND combat commanders.

He adds: Schwalier “meets the criteria.” Should the President decide on that course of action and bring Schwalier back on active duty, promotion to 3-stars is most appropriate.

As in 1940, the United States faces rogue actors abroad, this time led by China and several lesser would-be aggressors. As countless military historians and others observe, leadership remains the key to authentic deterrence based on strength, and, should deterrence fail, to military success. Having decided to prioritize wasteful, degrading, and morale-killing pursuits such as diversity-equity, searching for imagined extremists in the ranks, and identity politics instead of merit-based combat readiness and unit cohesion, the current Air Force and Pentagon senior leadership must be vetted, corrected, or sent into retirement following a professional, impartial, timely evaluation. The clock is ticking before a real fight reveals very quickly that every DEI program and billet was terribly misguided and a waste of money that was needed for combat readiness.

To borrow the term of Marshall’s day, the senior officers complicit in such priorities and activities, are unfit. Whether it’s by a Schwalier-led plucking board or otherwise, they need to go.

Forrest L. Marion is a retired Department of the Air Force military historian. His most recent work is Standing Up Space Force: The Road to the Nation’s Sixth Armed Service (Naval Institute Press, 2023).

There are just two months before President-elect Donald Trump takes office, and Ukraine hawks are feeling the pressure. For them, apparently it’s time to flood Zelensky’s coffers with as much money as possible ahead of the possibility that Trump may cut off the tap, after having on the campaign trail called Zelensky “the greatest salesman on earth”.

“The Pentagon will send Ukraine at least $275 million in new weapons, US officials said Tuesday, as the Biden administration rushes to do as much as it can to help Kyiv fight back against Russia in the remaining two months before President-elect Donald Trump takes office,” The Associated Press reports Tuesday afternoon.

And alarmingly, the same report observes that “In rapid succession this week, President Joe Biden gave Ukraine the authority to fire longer-range missiles deeper into Russia and then Russian President Vladimir Putin formally lowered the threshold for using nuclear weapons.”

Contents or details of the new aid package have yet been made public, but there could be more missiles and equipment supporting the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), which was used by the Ukrainians Tuesday against Russian territory, marking a new escalation.

The geopolitical analysis blog Moon of Alabama has zeroed in on why US authorization for ATACMS attacks on Russian soil is such a big deal:

We do not know yet if the new authorized use for ATACMS munition on targets within Russia is only relevant for the cluster ammunition missile type or for high explosive ATACMS missiles with a reach of 300 kilometer.

However, the Russian President Vladimir Putin has correctly pointed out that ANY use of ATACMS requires the involvement of NATO (U.S/UK) assets for acquiring the targeting data and for planning and programming the missile’s mission.

Any use of ATACMS onto Russian proper is thus an act of war by NATO against the Russian Federation. The Russian response to such will be appropriate but may well surface in a theater far from Ukraine.

Indeed President Putin and Kremlin officials have echoed precisely this point of view of late, which is also why Putin signed into effect a new expansion of Russia’s nuclear doctrine.

According to the newly expanded doctrine, in the event Western powers assist another nation in a major attack on Russian soil, those same Western powers will also be held responsible. This can trigger Russian nuclear launch. But so far Russian officials have made it clear that they do not anticipate nuclear war.

Clearly the Kremlin is awaiting patiently the return of Donald Trump to the White House, hoping this will stop NATO’s steady escalation of involvement in the war on Ukraine’s behalf.

Meanwhile, with all that money for Ukraine floating around, and constant transfers of arms, this exchange is important to recall…

Stewart uses some bad language here, but consider for a moment her attitude. This is what elitism looks like. This is what people on on the left and right are upset about. Elites who laugh at millions of dollars being wasted, precisely because they can’t be found… pic.twitter.com/GnBeONkXDC

— Fr. George (@FrGeorgedeIdaho) November 19, 2024