In what may be a watershed moment in Western society’s approach to purportedly transgendered children, the UK’s National Health Service is now warning that such feelings “may be a transient phase, particularly for pre-pubertal children.”

The NHS points to “scarce and inconclusive evidence to support clinical decision making…and a lack of evidence to support families in making informed decisions about interventions that may have life-long consequences.” 

The NHS says healthcare providers therefore shouldn’t hastily push children into changing their names, pronouns or bodies — and should consider mental health issues that are frequently present among this universe of children. 

“Just consider all of the young children, all of the young people whose lives have been irreversibly ruined by the NHS, like other health authorities across the western world, not taking this simple, sensible, adult and pragmatic approach years ago,” Douglas Murray, author of The Madness of Crowds: Gender Race and Identity, told Sky News. 

The NHS’s cautionary tone is struck in a pair of new documents by which the agency is proposing changes to its delivery of “specialist gender dysphoria services for children and young people.” 

In a move seemingly intended to impose greater discipline, one such proposed change would require that the clinical lead for handling “gender incongruence” cases must be a medical doctor.

Currently, there’s no specification for which type of professional can take that role. “Oversight of the service by a medical doctor is appropriate given that the service may provide medical interventions to some children and young people,” says the NHS. 

Similarly, the NHS seeks to significantly narrow the range of people with authority to make patient referrals:

“The current service specification for [Gender Identity Development Service] states that referrals can be made by staff in health and social services, schools, colleges of further education and by voluntary organisations. The new interim service specification proposes that referrals may be made by GPs and NHS professionals.”

The NHS notes an explosion of referrals into its Gender Identity Development Service, from under 250 in 2011-12 to over 5,000 in 2021-22. The enormous increase has been accompanied by a striking shift in the composition of the group, from predominantly “birth-registered males” a decade ago to predominantly “birth-registered females” today. 

What’s more, “a significant number of children are also presenting with neurodiversity and other mental health needs and risky behaviours, which requires careful consideration.” 

Perhaps most importantly, the NHS warns about the perils of hastily moving a child down the gender transition path: 

“The clinical approach has to be mindful of the risks of an inappropriate gender transition and the difficulties that the child may experience in returning to the original gender role upon entering puberty if the gender incongruence does not persist.” 

The NHS also issues a warning about “social transition” for pre-pubescent children — a term that refers to children publicly proclaiming a new gender, changing their names, pronouns, clothing, haircuts, restrooms, etc. 

Noting “evidence that in most cases gender incongruence does not persist into adolescence,” the NHS says: 

“The current evidence base is insufficient to predict the long-term outcomes of complete gender-role transition during early childhood…it is important to acknowledge that it should not be viewed as a neutral act...it may have significant effects on the child or young person in terms of their psychological functioning.” 

A variety of people have long warned that many or most of these children are simply going through a phase — encouraged by a woke-hijacked society gone mad — and that doctors and parents shouldn’t be so quick to plunge into name changes, restroom changes, hormone treatments and surgeries.

People warning about the trend have been vilified as intolerant bigots. Now, however, the UK’s NHS is putting forth very much the same cautions. As with those whose once-taboo stances against vaccine mandates and lockdowns have now been vindicated, those who’ve been right all along about the gender-transition mania shouldn’t expect any apologies. 

By Alex Kimani of OilPrice.com

Whereas supplies of Russian pipeline gas–the bulk of Europe’s gas imports before the Ukraine war–are down to a trickle, Europe has been hungrily scooping up Russian LNG.

Europe has been working hard to wean itself off Russian energy commodities ever since the latter invaded Ukraine. The European Union has banned Russian coal and plans to block most Russian oil imports by the end of 2022 in a bid to deprive Moscow of an important source of revenue to wage its war in Ukraine.

But ditching Russian gas is proving to be more onerous than Europe would have hoped for. Whereas supplies of Russian pipeline gas–the bulk of Europe’s gas imports before the Ukraine war–are down to a trickle, Europe has been hungrily scooping up Russian LNG. The Wall Street Journal has reported that the bloc’s imports of Russian liquefied natural gas jumped by 41% Y/Y in the year through August.

“Russian LNG has been the dark horse of the sanctions regime,” Maria Shagina, research fellow at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, has told WSJ. Importers of Russian LNG to Europe have argued that the shipments are not covered by current EU sanctions and that buying LNG from Russia and other suppliers has helped keep European energy prices in check.

LNG Deluge

Maybe Europe’s LNG imports from Russia can be justified on a purely economic basis.

Natural gas prices in Europe have plunged over the past few weeks with CNBC reporting that a  “Wave of LNG tankers is overwhelming Europe in an energy crisis and hitting natural gas prices.” According to MarineTraffic via CNBC, 60 LNG tankers, or  ~10% of the LNG vessels in the world, are currently sailing or anchored around Northwest Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Iberian Peninsula. Such vessels are considered floating LNG storage since they cannot unload, something that is impacting the price of natural gas and freight rates.

It’s a fair bet that a good chunk of those vessels originated from the United States.

Europe’s natural gas demand has skyrocketed as the EU tries to lower its reliance on Russian natural gas following its invasion of Ukraine. Europe has displaced Asia as the top destination for the U.S. LNG, and now receives 65% of total exports. The EU has pledged to reduce its consumption of Russian natural gas by nearly two-thirds before the year’s end while Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have vowed to eliminate Russian gas imports outright. Unlike pipeline gas, supercooled LNG is much more flexible and can be shipped from far-flung regions, including the U.S. and Qatar. 

Europe is not alone here. Shipping data has revealed that China has imported nearly 30% more gas from Russia so far this year, typically at a steep discount.

Thankfully, there’s a clear upside to imports of Russian LNG to Europe: the continent  has managed to fill its gas stores well ahead of schedule, with Reuter’s gas meter revealing that 93.8% of the EU gas storage is currently filled.

Financing Putin’s war machine

Still, it’s hard to argue that buying Russian LNG even in relatively small quantities is not playing a part in financing Putin’s war machine. Although Russian LNG has accounted for just 8% of the European Union and U.K.’s gas imports since the start of March, the trade runs counter to the EU’s efforts to deprive Russia of fossil-fuel revenue.

A lot of blame falls on Switzerland, with 80% of Russian raw materials traded via the Central European nation and its nearly 1,000 commodity firms. Switzerland is an important global financial hub with a thriving commodities sector despite the country being far from all the global trade routes and without access to the sea;  no former colonial territories and without any significant raw materials of its own. In fact, Oliver Classen, media officer at the Swiss NGO Public Eye, says that “this sector accounts for a much larger part of the GDP in Switzerland than tourism or the machinery industry.” According to a 2018 Swiss government report, commodity trading volume reaches almost $1 trillion ($903.8 billion). 

Deutsche Welle has reported that 80% of Russian raw materials are traded via Switzerland, according to a report by the Swiss embassy in Moscow. About a third of it are oil and gas while two-thirds are base metals such as zinc, copper and aluminum. In other words, deals signed on Swiss desks are directly facilitating Russian oil and gas to continue flowing freely.

This definitely is a big deal considering that gas and oil exports are the main source of income for Russia, accounting for 30 to 40% of the Russian budget. In 2021, Russian state corporations earned around $180 billion (€163 billion) from oil exports alone.

Again, unfortunately, Switzerland has been handling its commodities trade with kid gloves.

According to DW, raw materials are often traded directly between governments and via commodities exchanges. However, they can also be traded freely, and Swiss companies have specialized in direct sales thanks to an abundance of capital.

In raw materials transactions, Swiss commodity traders have adopted letters of credits or L/Cs as their prefered instruments. A bank will give a loan to a trader and as collateral receive a document making it the owner of the commodity. As soon as the buyer pays the bank, the document and thus ownership of the commodity are transferred to him/her. What this does, in effect, is grant traders more credit without checking their creditworthiness, while the banks get the commodity value as security.

This is a prime example of transit trade, where only the money flows through Switzerland but actual raw materials usually do not touch Swiss soil. Thus, no details about the magnitude of the transaction land on the desk of the Swiss customs authorities leading to highly imprecise information about the flow volumes of raw materials. 

“The whole commodities trade is under-recorded and underregulated. You have to dig around to collect data and not all information is available,” Elisabeth Bürgi Bonanomi, a senior lecturer in law and sustainability at Bern University, has told DW.

Obviously, the lack of regulation is very appealing to commodity traders–especially those that deal with raw materials mined in non-democratic countries such as the DRC.

 “Unlike the financial market, where there are rules for tackling money laundering and illegal or illegitimate financial flows, and a financial market supervisory authority, there is currently no such thing for commodity trading,” financial and legal expert at Public Eye David Mühlemann told the German broadcaster ARD.

But don’t expect things to change any time soon.

Calls for a supervisory body for the commodities sector based on the model of the one for the financial market by the likes of Swiss NGO Public Eye and Swiss Green Party proposal have so far failed to bear fruit. Thomas Mattern from the Swiss People’s Party (SVP) has spoken out against such a move, insisting that Switzerland should retain its neutrality, “We do not need even more regulation, and not in the commodities sector either.”

French President Emmanuel Macron revealed in an interview with Le Point that he urged Pope Francis in a meeting at the Vatican to attempt to arrange direct dialogue between Presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin in an effort to make peace in Ukraine. 

The interview was published the day after Macron met with the Pope at the Vatican Monday. “I encouraged Pope Francis to call Vladimir Putin and [head of the Russian Orthodox Church] Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, but also Joe Biden,” Macron began.

“We need the United States to sit at the table to promote the peace process in Ukraine,” Macron continued. “Joe Biden has a real relationship of trust with the Pope. The Pope can have an influence on him for American re-engagement in Haiti and Ukraine.” Biden is the second sitting US president in history who is Roman Catholic, with the first being John F. Kennedy.

On Tuesday in addressing a peace conference hosted at the Vatican, Francis compared the current conflict in Ukraine and nuclear-armed super powers lined up on either side of it to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 60 years ago:

In his address to several thousand people, delivered after various religious groups prayed separately, Francis decried today’s “bleak scenario, where, sad to say, the plans of potent world leaders make no allowance for the just aspirations of peoples”.

Referring to the possibility of the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine, Francis said: “Today, in fact, something we dreaded and hoped never to hear of again is threatened outright: the use of atomic weapons, which even after Hiroshima and Nagasaki continued wrongly to be produced and tested.”

France’s Macron has remained among the few world leaders to directly engage Putin, having held a series of phone calls with the Russian president throughout the invasion, as part of efforts to find a diplomatic way forward toward ending the war. 

As for Macron’s suggestion to the Pope to get both sides to the table in direct dialogue, the Kremlin responded positively to the possibility, with Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying Macron’s goal appears genuinely “aimed at finding a possible resolution” to the Ukraine crisis, according to state-backed media.

“That said, the remarks said nothing about anyone calling President Zelensky and settling the issue of the legal system, which currently forbids any talks with Russia,” he added. Zelensky previously stated he would not engaged Moscow in ceasefire talks so long as Putin remains president, something he said has been codified into Ukrainian law.

Authored by John Cody via Remix News,

This is the second German court ruling in a week backing the conservative AfD party…

In a number of German states, the country’s main conservative opposition party, Alternative for Germany (AfD), is already listed as a “potential threat” to democracy and is being monitored by security services. However, in Bavaria, the party just won at least a partial victory against similar surveillance efforts.

The Administrative Court of Munich has blocked the Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Germany’s main domestic intelligence service, from monitoring the Bavarian state chapter of the AfD party. In other states like Thuringia, the BfV can read all emails and monitor the telephone calls of all AfD members without a warrant, but the Munich judges blocked these methods in Bavaria. The judges found that such an operation “severely interferes with the party’s activities with the risk of clandestine spying.”

In addition, the BfV is prohibited from making public statements claiming the AfD was threatening democracy or the German constitution.

There is “the danger of an impairment of the equal chances of the party in particular regarding the future federal state election campaign,” the court ruled. However, the party must accept “at least to be observed from publicly accessible sources.”

Currently, there is a push to list the entire AfD as suspects in an anti-democracy case at the federal level, essentially putting the entire party structure under surveillance. In addition, politicians from a wide range of parties, including the Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens, the Left, and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), have pushed for an outright ban on their electoral rival during a time when, according to polling, the AfD has exploded in popularity,

However, the Munich court only issued an interim ruling, and proceedings are still ongoing. The judges indicated that they want to “carry out their own evaluation of the material submitted, which comprises several thousand pages.”

The Bavarian Interior Ministry can also appeal the decision within the next two weeks.

The AfD expressed its support for the decision.

“Neither in the pre-trial proceedings nor in court could the Office for the Protection of the Constitution substantiate its reasons for the surveillance,” the state AfD branch wrote.

The party’s state organization chairman and Bundestag representative Stephan Protschka also accused the BfV of being “incapable of any orderly record keeping.”

“In court, they presented 4,000 chaotically pieced together documents, some of them illegible and unsorted, which they dumped as justification,” Protschka said.

The BfV lost a similar case in Hessen last week, with the court in Wiesbaden ordering the BfV to halt investigations into the AfD.

Both Bavaria and Hessen will see elections take place next year, raising fears among the left that the AfD could make major gains. In Bavaria, the AfD has improved from 10 to 12 percent, according to the latest polling.

Authored by John & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

“You see them on the street. You watch them on TV. You might even vote for one this fall. You think they’re people just like you. You’re wrong. Dead wrong.”

–  They Live 

We’re living in two worlds.

There’s the world we see (or are made to see) and then there’s the one we sense (and occasionally catch a glimpse of), the latter of which is a far cry from the propaganda-driven reality manufactured by the government and its corporate sponsors, including the media.

Indeed, what most Americans perceive as life in America—privileged, progressive and free—is a far cry from reality, where economic inequality is growing, real agendas and real power are buried beneath layers of Orwellian doublespeak and corporate obfuscation, and “freedom,” such that it is, is meted out in small, legalistic doses by militarized police and federal agents armed to the teeth.

All is not as it seems.

Monsters with human faces walk among us. Many of them work for the U.S. government.

This is the premise of John Carpenter’s film They Live, which was released in November 1988 and remains unnervingly, chillingly appropriate for our modern age.

Best known for his horror film Halloween, which assumes that there is a form of evil so dark that it can’t be killed, Carpenter’s larger body of work is infused with a strong anti-authoritarian, anti-establishment, laconic bent that speaks to the filmmaker’s concerns about the unraveling of our society, particularly our government.

Time and again, Carpenter portrays the government working against its own citizens, a populace out of touch with reality, technology run amok, and a future more horrific than any horror film.

In Escape from New York, Carpenter presents fascism as the future of America.

In The Thing, a remake of the 1951 sci-fi classic of the same name, Carpenter presupposes that increasingly we are all becoming dehumanized.

In Christine, the film adaptation of Stephen King’s novel about a demon-possessed car, technology exhibits a will and consciousness of its own and goes on a murderous rampage.

In In the Mouth of Madness, Carpenter notes that evil grows when people lose “the ability to know the difference between reality and fantasy.”

And then there is Carpenter’s They Live, in which two migrant workers discover that the world is not as it seems. In fact, the population is actually being controlled and exploited by aliens working in partnership with an oligarchic elite. All the while, the populace—blissfully unaware of the real agenda at work in their lives—has been lulled into complacency, indoctrinated into compliance, bombarded with media distractions, and hypnotized by subliminal messages beamed out of television and various electronic devices, billboards and the like.

It is only when homeless drifter John Nada (played to the hilt by the late Roddy Piper) discovers a pair of doctored sunglasses—Hoffman lenses—that Nada sees what lies beneath the elite’s fabricated reality: control and bondage.

When viewed through the lens of truth, the elite, who appear human until stripped of their disguises, are shown to be monsters who have enslaved the citizenry in order to prey on them.

Likewise, billboards blare out hidden, authoritative messages: a bikini-clad woman in one ad is actually ordering viewers to “MARRY AND REPRODUCE.” Magazine racks scream “CONSUME” and “OBEY.” A wad of dollar bills in a vendor’s hand proclaims, “THIS IS YOUR GOD.”

When viewed through Nada’s Hoffman lenses, some of the other hidden messages being drummed into the people’s subconscious include: NO INDEPENDENT THOUGHT, CONFORM, SUBMIT, STAY ASLEEP, BUY, WATCH TV, NO IMAGINATION, and DO NOT QUESTION AUTHORITY.

This indoctrination campaign engineered by the elite in They Live is painfully familiar to anyone who has studied the decline of American culture.

A citizenry that does not think for themselves, obeys without question, is submissive, does not challenge authority, does not think outside the box, and is content to sit back and be entertained is a citizenry that can be easily controlled.

In this way, the subtle message of They Live provides an apt analogy of our own distorted vision of life in the American police state, what philosopher Slavoj Žižek refers to as dictatorship in democracy, “the invisible order which sustains your apparent freedom.”

We’re being fed a series of carefully contrived fictions that bear no resemblance to reality.

Tune out the government’s attempts to distract, divert and befuddle us and tune into what’s really going on in this country, and you’ll run headlong into an unmistakable, unpalatable truth: what we are dealing with today is an authoritarian beast that has outgrown its chains and will not be restrained.

Through its acts of power grabs, brutality, meanness, inhumanity, immorality, greed, corruption, debauchery and tyranny, the government has become almost indistinguishable from the evil it claims to be fighting, whether that evil takes the form of terrorism, torture, disease, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, murder, violence, theft, pornography, scientific experimentations or some other diabolical means of inflicting pain, suffering and servitude on humanity.

We have let the government’s evil-doing and abuses go on for too long.

We’re being fed a series of carefully contrived fictions that bear no resemblance to reality.

Despite the fact that we are 17,600 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist attack; 11,000 times more likely to die from an airplane accident than from a terrorist plot involving an airplane; 1,048 times more likely to die from a car accident than a terrorist attack, and 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist , we have handed over control of our lives to government officials who treat us as a means to an end—the source of money and power.

As the Bearded Man in They Live warns, “They are dismantling the sleeping middle class. More and more people are becoming poor. We are their cattle. We are being bred for slavery.”

We have bought into the illusion and refused to grasp the truth.

From the moment we are born until we die, we are indoctrinated into believing that those who rule us do it for our own good. The truth is far different.

The powers-that-be want us to feel threatened by forces beyond our control (terrorists, pandemics, mass shootings, etc.).

They want us afraid and dependent on the government and its militarized armies for our safety and well-being.

They want us distrustful of each other, divided by our prejudices, and at each other’s throats.

Most of all, they want us to continue to march in lockstep with their dictates as fearful, controlled, pacified zombies.

This brings me back to They Live, in which the real zombies are not the aliens calling the shots but the populace who are content to remain controlled.

When all is said and done, the world of They Live is not so different from our own. As one of the characters points out, “The poor and the underclass are growing. Racial justice and human rights are nonexistent. They have created a repressive society and we are their unwitting accomplices. Their intention to rule rests with the annihilation of consciousness. We have been lulled into a trance. They have made us indifferent to ourselves, to others. We are focused only on our own gain.”

We, too, are focused only on our own pleasures, prejudices and gains. Our poor and underclasses are also growing. Injustice is growing. Inequality is growing. A concern for human rights is nearly nonexistent. We too have been lulled into a trance, indifferent to others.

Oblivious to what lies ahead, we’ve been manipulated into believing that if we continue to consume, obey, and have faith, things will work out. But that’s never been true of emerging regimes. And by the time we feel the hammer coming down upon us, it will be too late.

So where does that leave us?

The characters who populate Carpenter’s films provide some insight.

Underneath their machismo, they still believe in the ideals of liberty and equal opportunity. Their beliefs place them in constant opposition with the law and the establishment, but they are nonetheless freedom fighters.

When, for example, John Nada destroys the alien hypno-transmitter in They Live, he delivers a wake-up call for freedom. As Nada memorably declares, “I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I’m all out of bubblegum.”

In other words: we need to get active and take a stand for what’s really important.

Stop allowing yourselves to be easily distracted by pointless political spectacles and pay attention to what’s really going on in the country.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the real battle for control of this nation is taking place on roadsides, in police cars, on witness stands, over phone lines, in government offices, in corporate offices, in public school hallways and classrooms, in parks and city council meetings, and in towns and cities across this country.

All the trappings of the American police state are now in plain sight.

Wake up, America.

If they live (the tyrants, the oppressors, the invaders, the overlords), it is only because “we the people” sleep.

It’s a hugely alarming scenario when world leaders and government officials representing nuclear-armed superpowers appear to increasingly be spouting nuclear rhetoric and warnings in an almost casual manner.

US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman on Tuesday said Washington is ready to protect its Asian allies using nukes if they came under attack, spelling out the US would deploy its “nuclear, conventional and missile defense.”

Washington “will use the full range of US defense capabilities to defend our allies, including nuclear, conventional and missile defense capabilities,” the deputy secretary told a Tuesday meeting with South Korean and Japanese officials, ahead of a series of talks this week. She hailed America’s commitment to defense of Seoul and Tokyo as “ironclad”.

The region is currently on edge after early this week South Korea announced that its intelligence concluded Pyongyang has finalized preparations for what will be its first nuclear test in a half-decade. These warnings of an imminent North Korean nuclear test have been growing louder since early August, with the US backing Seoul’s assessment. 

Sherman in her comments condemned the recent series of ballistic missile launches by North Korea, calling the record number of tests over the course of the year “deeply irresponsible, dangerous, and destabilizing.”

One of the more provocative among the latest tests saw a ballistic missile soar over Japan itself. The Asian officials meeting with Sherman in Tokyo agreed that Pyongyang is “creating serious tension on the Korean Peninsula.”

U.S. to cooperate with South Korea, Japan for Taiwan’s self-defense – Dep. Secy. of State Wendy Sherman.
I didn’t hear Sherman’s counterparts second that assertion. Also haven’t heard Seoul and Tokyo have policies to provide for Taiwan’s self-defense. https://t.co/TgUgpS83As

— Anthony Kuhn (@akuhnNPRnews) October 26, 2022

Patrol ships from the north and south exchanged warning fire along the shared marine-time border on Monday in but the latest sign tensions are at boiling point. The north is meanwhile angry that the US military has in the last month stepped up its presence in waters off the peninsula, while participating in joint military drills with South Korea.

We’ve come across many companies debuting futuristic designs of electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft. Some have even tested (see: here & here) and/or have begun selling eVTOLs on the market (see: here). But when it comes to a driveable eVTOL, Alef Aeronautics has a revolutionary design.

California-based Alef is the only eVTOL with street-driving capabilities. Alef’s Model A prototype was first unveiled last Wednesday.

The Alef Model A is not a distant dream, expected to enter series production with first deliveries in 4Q25. The cost of the eVTOL that drives on roads and soars over traffic starts at around $300,000. It has a driving range of 200 miles and flies about 110 miles. 

Reuters said, “The unusual appearance—which features a body that flips on its side to become the wing after lift-off—is just one aspect that attracted Tim Draper, an early investor in Elon Musk’s Tesla Inc and SpaceX whose Draper Associates Fund V has backed Alef with $3 million in seed money.” 

Draper told Reuters via email: “The design is extraordinary. The sides of the car become the wings when the plane goes horizontal.”

In a company release, Alef’s CEO, Jim Dukhovny, said the eVTOL is a “modern solution for both urban and rural transportation needs in the 21st century because it is the fastest and most convenient transport ever created from the point of origin to the final destination. By enabling consumers to choose driving or flying mode, the Alef flying car allows the optimal path depending on road conditions, weather and infrastructure.”

Dukhovny told CNET: “We can actually solve all traffic in the world for the next hundred years.”

… and there goes Elon Musk’s idea of building tunnels to reduce major cities’ traffic congestion problems. 

During the opening months of the Ukraine war top US generals and officials went on record predicting that the conflict is likely to drag on for “years” to come. For example a headline in March observed it will turn into a quagmire, and that lawmakers at the Capitol were briefed “it is likely to last 10, 15, or 20 years.”

And now, fast-forward to the invasion’s eight-month mark, where it does look to be settling in to a protracted stalemated situation. All the while speculation over the future of “Putin’s war” and even his personal health abounds, with sensational headlines such as this in the UK Times this month: “Putin at 70: isolated, irrational and fearing for his health.”

Speculation over whether the 70-year old Putin will stay in power (and good health) long enough to see his own war in neighboring Ukraine through to a conclusion has naturally given way to questions over a potential successor for leadership, at a moment US and EU sanctions and global condemnation have left Russia more isolated than ever, and at the same time power under Putin’s administration has become the most centralized since the collapse of the USSR.

A fresh report in The Telegraph this week suggests that a career politician and Kremlin insider is likely Putin’s top pick to inherit power, as he was singularly hailed for overseeing the ‘successful’ annexation of the four occupied regions of Ukraine. “For 60-year-old Sergei Kiriyenko, this was the culmination of a mission that he’d been given by Putin,” the report introduces. “Everybody was celebrating and he’d played a major role in the enlargement of Russia.”

“Kiriyenko was in charge of referendums in these regions even if it was the FSB that managed them in the end,” said think tank analyst and Russia-watcher Tatiana Stanovaya. The Telegraph observes, “And now, perhaps mischievously, Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine’s military spy chief, has said that Putin is even lining up the loyal Mr Kiriyenko as a successor.”

The report gives a further snapshot of Kiriyenko’s early political career, who in the late 1990’s served as prime minister under Boris Yeltsin, as follows:

Nobody knows the paranoid Putin’s succession plans but the Russian leader trusts Mr Kiriyenko, who has made the philosophical journey from supporting Western liberalism in the 1990s to promoting Putin’s authoritarianism now.

A technocrat and a follower of the philosopher-founder of the Moscow Methodological Circle, which believes that people and society can be programmed, Mr Kiriyenko has had to rely on patronage from more powerful Russians to make his career.

He was appointed Russia’s youngest prime minister at the age of 35 in 1998 by then-president Boris Yeltsin on the suggestion of Boris Nemtsov, the poster boy of Russian liberalism who was murdered on a bridge next to the Kremlin in 2015.

Currently he serves as First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Administration of Russia – a role he’s occupied all the way back to 2016, when he was appointed by Putin. Some European outlets have lately dubbed him the ‘Viceroy of the Donas’ for his role in the annexation votes in eastern Ukraine.

Kiriyenko is also considered the man who is personally responsible for Putin’s path to the presidency, being the first to put him forward to head up the FSB intelligence agency under Yeltsin in 1998.

France24 recently featured the following description of Kiriyenko: “The bald and stern-faced 60-year-old entered Putin’s deepest inner circle in 2016, when he was named first deputy head of the presidential office.”

His influence has only grown alongside Putin’s in the meantime, as France24 writes further, “Since then, and thanks to the convenient catch-all title he was given, Putin has been able to task him with any mission he desires, including last week’s sham referendums in the disputed regions in Ukraine, according to American geopolitical think tank GlobalSecurity.org.”

As for Kiriyenko playing the role of personal envoy overseeing political assimilation of occupied regions of Ukraine, this has seen some very “hands on” moments. The Telegraph notes that recently, “Videos show him inspecting damage to the Crimea Bridge and unveiling a statue of a patriotic granny in Mariupol, the Ukraine city that Russian forces had bombed to the ground.”

Russian spetsnaz providing security for First Deputy CoS of the Presidential Office Sergei Kiriyenko during a visit to Kharkiv Oblast. https://t.co/8wq63uAyGL pic.twitter.com/euYq2UJT9R

— Rob Lee (@RALee85) July 2, 2022

However, the report also concludes there are reasons to think that his power won’t outlast Putin’s own… “But Mr Kiriyenko doesn’t have his own power base and no influence within Russia’s powerful security services. His closeness to Putin is a strength and weakness, said Prof Petrov.”

Petrov told the publication, “He is strong now because of his proximity to Putin but with Putin weakening this could change,” as it remains that Kiriyenko “is a tool, a loyal tool for his boss.”

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

Newly published federal data reveals that close to a hundred individuals listed on the FBI terror watchlist have been apprehended at the Southern border in the last year, a record high and a huge uptick in recent months.

The Customs and Border Protection agency data, released without fanfare on Friday night, reveals that so far this year 98 individuals apprehended attempting to get into the U.S. at the southern border were suspected terrorists or closely affiliated with terrorist organizations.

BREAKING ~ FRI PM DUMP ~ @CBP rls record-breaking migrant encounter numbers for Sept – 227,547 – bringing the FY22 total to: 2,378,944 – the highest ever in history.

Also unprecedented – 20 arrests of known/suspected terrorists on FBI list – for total of 98 in FY22 @FoxNews pic.twitter.com/BA7mCyLeCf

— Griff Jenkins (@GriffJenkins) October 22, 2022

The figure has jumped from just 27 in early April.

In September alone, 20 terror suspects were arrested on the border, up from 12 in August.

The data was highlighted by Fox News reporter Bill Melugin in a report this week, as he noted that the figure is almost four times the previous five years combined:

BREAKING: There were 20 arrests of known or suspected terrorists on the FBI’s terror watchlist at the border in September, according to new CBP numbers.

FY’22 ended with 98 terror watchlist arrests.

That’s almost quadruple the previous 5 years combined.

FY17-FY21 = 26@FoxNews

— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) October 22, 2022

Previous data from 2019 indicated that zero terror suspects had been encountered at the border.

If you would like to view the numbers for yourself, here is a CBP link to the data. Scroll down to the “Terrorist Screening Dataset Encounters”, and look at Border Patrol arrests (in between ports of entry), OFO is ports of entry which is CBP, not BP. https://t.co/RqigZLtdrt

— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) October 24, 2022

As Melugin previously highlighted, CBP sources say there have been more than half a million ‘gotaways’ this year alone (that figure is now close to 600,000), and close to a million since the beginning of last year, begging the question how many of them were on the terror watchlist and are now roaming around the country freely?

ARTICLE: https://t.co/40nuLq6EwL

— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) September 20, 2022

Fox News’ @BillFOXLA: 78 people on the terror watchlist have been arrested at the border in 2022, “triple the previous 5 years combined.”

How many of the 850,000 “gotaways” are on the terror watchlist? pic.twitter.com/s2RurD4UY8

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) September 20, 2022

The number of migrants encountered at the border now stands at almost 2.4 million for the year, with over 227,000 in September alone.

BORDER RECAP

– 227,547 migrant encounters in September ‘22, highest Sept. ever recorded.
– 2.37 million encounters in FY’22, the highest fiscal year ever recorded.
– 856 migrant deaths at border in FY’22, highest ever recorded.
– 599,000 *known* gotaways in FY’22.@FoxNews

— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) October 22, 2022

There were also a record number of deaths.

HIGHEST NUMBER EVER RECORDED: FY 2022 had 856 migrant deaths.
In addition, CBP reports:
-Migrant Encounters Sept 2022: 227,547
-Migrant Encounters FY 2022: 2,378,944@BillFOXLA continues to cover live from Eagle Pass:@BillHemmer @DanaPerino pic.twitter.com/A42prYE1kt

— America’s Newsroom (@AmericaNewsroom) October 24, 2022

Responding to the latest data release, Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH), the top Republican on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said in a statement Monday “Our adversaries know they can enter our country through our failed border.”

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), the top Republican on the Senate homeland security appropriations subcommittee, added that the Border Patrol is “overrun” and the “consequences of these lax enforcement actions should concern every single American.”

In addition, the new data shows that Feds seized close to 15 thousand pounds of fentanyl from smugglers attempting to get it across the border, seven times as much compared to five years ago.

One port of entry, one weekend. 5 major fentanyl smuggling busts by CBP. https://t.co/t78zlMmYqc

— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) October 25, 2022

HAPPENING NOW: @TxDPS disrupted a human smuggling attempt on IH 35 in Cotulla. The driver attempted to smuggle 60+ illegal immigrants concealed inside a dump truck. Driver arrested & illegal immigrants turned over to #USBP – more details to come. #OperationLoneStar pic.twitter.com/7AbYwP2AFg

— Chris Olivarez (@LtChrisOlivarez) October 25, 2022

The driver, seen smirking in a photo, was an 18-year-old U.S. citizen, per @TxDPS. They say he had 10 bundles of what turned out to be 240lbs of marijuana. The other drug smugglers successfully made it back to Mexico without apprehension. @FoxNews pic.twitter.com/s6cQMFBjVu

— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) October 24, 2022

Biden officials continue to claim the border is secure.

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Authored by Susan Crabtree via RealClear Wire,

Earlier this week, Republican Sen. Marco Rubio stood his ground on a debate stage at the Lake Worth campus of Palm Beach College. His opponent is seasoned Democratic lawmaker Val Demings, a black congresswoman and former police chief, and the discussion had turned to abortion rights – terrain that Democrats believe favor them and give Demings and other Senate candidates a chance to alter the expected outcome of the 2022 midterms.

“I’m 100% pro-life not because I want to deny anyone their rights but because I believe that innocent human life is worthy of the protection under the law,” Rubio said. While noting he has supported legislation that includes exceptions for rape, incest, and the mother’s health, he then went on offense, arguing that “the extremist on abortion in this campaign” is his opponent.

Like Democrats around the country, Demings had been running ads hitting her Republican opponent on abortion for more than a month. During their debate, Rubio delivered his rebuttal. “She supports no restrictions, no limitations of any kind – she’s against a four-month ban, she voted against a five-month ban,” he said. “She supports taxpayer-funded abortion on demand for any reason any time up until the moment of birth.”

Demings, the former chief of police in Orlando who investigated rape and incest cases while in uniform, was equally forceful in her response. She accused Rubio of being dishonest with Florida voters because he had previously said he personally opposes all abortions without exceptions, including for victims of rape and incest. “How gullible do you think Florida voters are?” she retorted.  

Both sides strongly articulated their points and defended their views. But Rubio’s decision to come out swinging won rave reviews from pro-life groups. For months, these advocates have pressed Republicans to fight fire with fire when it comes to abortion because, they argued, Americans’ positions on the issue are much more nuanced than many topline poll results have shown.

“It’s a basic rule of politics that you identify the contrast with your opponent, and you leverage it to your advantage,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, told RealClearPolitics. “I think that after a little bit of clearing of the throat, our candidates are doing an excellent job. And in places where they don’t do that the abortion issue may get the better of them, but in places where they do, they’ll gain the advantage.”

Yet, if this summer’s headlines were to be believed, Republicans were doing far more serious faltering than minor throat-clearing.

“In sprint to November, Democrats seize on shifting landscape over abortion: No issue has upended the battle for Congress and state races so abruptly,” the Washington Post proclaimed in early September.

“‘Pink Wave’ Poised to Upend Republican Midterm Prospects,” proclaimed U.S. News & World Report, citing a surge in women planning to vote in November. 

In the weeks following the Supreme Court’s late June decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Democrats aggressively took the fight to Republicans, many of whom either downplayed their anti-abortion stances or sought to avoid the topic altogether. Democrats were especially jubilant in late August after Republicans lost a special election in a swing New York district in which their candidate laid out clear battle lines on abortion.

“Republicans can say good-bye to their ‘Red Wave’ because voters are clearly coming out in force to elect a pro-choice majority to Congress this November,” declared Sean Patrick Maloney, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. .

In the final sprint toward November, however, Maloney himself is in a more competitive race than expected, against GOP Assemblyman Mike Lawler in a newly redrawn district. Nearly every poll shows that voters’ concerns over inflation and the economy are greatly surpassing any other issue in the race, including abortion.

A few weeks ago, the political dynamic shifted as inflation continued to climb, and many economists predicted that the economy is on the brink of a recession. Several prominent voices on the left, including veteran strategist James Carville and Sen. Bernie Sanders, started warning fellow Democrats that their hyper-focus on abortion could backfire.

“It’s a good issue. But if you just sit there and they’re pummeling you on crime and pummeling you on cost of living, you’ve got to be more aggressive than just yelling abortion every other word,” Carville told the Associated Press.

There was plenty of criticism on the right too, as anti-abortion groups griped that GOP candidates were overreacting to the Dobbs decision by cowering in fear and hoping the issue would somehow just go away.

Dannenfelser and others pointed to what they cast as encouraging data from a late June Harvard CAPS/Harris poll on the question of where Americans stand on late-term abortions. Even amid the huge media outcry over the overturning of Roe, 72% of Americans agreed that abortion should be banned no later than 15 weeks, while only 10% said it should be allowed up until viability, when the fetus can live outside the womb – or approximately 24 weeks.

Anti-abortion advocates argue that the findings directly undermine the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would enshrine Roe v. Wade protections into law and make abortion legal until the point of viability. Every House Democrat except one voted for the bill in the wake of Dobbs, but the measure sank in the Senate, where Republicans opposed it.

After the poll results were released, abortion opponents pressed Republicans to turn the tables and force Democrats to define precisely when during pregnancy they would draw the line and say abortion should be barred. “If candidates support laws that permit abortion all the way up to birth, they are out of step with the American public, and Republicans should not be afraid to call them out on it,” Dannenfelser wrote in a Washington Post op-ed in late August.

Over the last month, J.D. Vance and Blake Masters, as well as Rep. Ted Budd, GOP candidates running for Senate in Ohio, Arizona, and North Carolina, respectively, have been doing just that – vigorously defended their pro-life positions while calling on their Democratic opponents to define theirs more precisely.

“[Ryan] says he wants to codify Roe … he voted for a piece of legislation that would have overturned Roe and required abortion on demand at 40 weeks for fully elective reasons,” Vance said during his debate with Democrat Rep. Tim Ryan in mid-October. “He also voted for a piece of legislation that would have prevented doctors from providing medical care to babies who survived botched abortions.”

All three – Vance, Masters, and Budd – have remained ahead by roughly the same margin or have strengthened their standing in the polls. Other GOP candidates – from those running for governor to others trying to knock off Democratic House incumbents – have also sharpened their anti-abortion rhetoric in recent weeks. In some key battleground states, however, the abortion issue has put Republican candidates at a disadvantage.

During the Georgia Senate debate last week, football great Herschel Walker took Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock to task for what he cast as extreme abortion positions. But the issue was already causing Walker trouble after a former girlfriend accused him of asking her to have an abortion and paying for it. Walker has denied the story, but his standing in the polls has ticked down a few points from when the story first broke.

Adam Laxalt, Nevada’s former attorney general who is trying to unseat Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto in the decidedly pro-choice Silver State, is running a careful, focused campaign on the economy. Instead of pressing his opponent to define her limits on abortion, he’s accusing Democrats of mistakenly using all their energy and resources to make the midterms an abortion referendum when voters are far more worried about the skyrocketing cost of living.

Laxalt has promised to oppose a national abortion ban and said Nevada will remain a pro-choice state, arguing that the state level is where abortion should be decided. Aside from a few races, however, most Republicans appear to be finding their footing on abortion, while Democrats show no indication of taking their foot off the gas.

Three weeks ahead of the election, President Biden promised to codify Roe v. Wade if Democrats win the midterms – a pledge he could only keep if the party wins several more seats in the Senate and avoids the off-year midterm losses that so many of his predecessors have suffered. Ahead of his speech, Planned Parenthood, EMILY’s List and NARAL sent out a press release reminding reporters that they had pledged to spend an unprecedented $150 million mobilizing and energizing voters around the country “at levels never seen.”

Abortion rights activists argue that Republicans like Rubio and other unabashedly pro-life conservatives are throwing up smokescreens by focusing on late-term abortions to distract from their previously stated beliefs that there should be no exceptions for rape, incest, or the mother’s health.

“What they’re doing now is a clever political trick to try to change the subject and say a little bit about abortion and just move on,” Christina Reynolds, a spokeswoman for EMILY’s List, told RCP. “I hope that voters see through it and understand that, and we’re working to make sure they understand the real positions of people [in office or campaigning for office] and what they actually plan to do.”

Late-term abortions occur in a very small number of cases that usually involve “incredibly tragic medical issues and decisions that women need to make on their own with their doctors,” she said, adding that the decision comes down to whether you want the government involved in those decisions. Even if economic issues are front and center in voters’ minds, Democrats say they will keep fighting on abortion because it helps turn out the vote in an election year when their party is facing severe headwinds.

“We were facing a significant enthusiasm gap, and the Dobbs decision changed that almost overnight,” Reynolds said. “It’s energized people who maybe wouldn’t have otherwise turned out … it reminded us that you’ve got to get out there and fight in every election. People were talking about a huge Republican wave, and I don’t think we’re going to see that.”

Only the election returns – and the exit polls – will tell us for sure, but for now, both sides are using whatever abortion ammunition they have at their disposal. While Democrats up and down the ballot continue hammering away on the issue in television ads and debates, many Republicans are finally standing their ground, firing off their salvos with new confidence.