The Biden administration’s radical southern border policies have led to the greatest invasion of migrants this nation has ever seen, including a significant number of military-aged men from around the world. This situation has raised alarm bells within the FBI, prompting the head of the federal agency to alert local law enforcement agencies across the US in a meeting last week.  

On Wednesday, Ohio Sheriff Richard K. Jones held a press conference where he shared details about a meeting in Washington, DC, that he attended alongside sheriffs from across the nation. The meeting featured discussions with Christopher Wray, the director of the FBI.

Jones explained the president has refused to meet with the 3,300 sheriffs and police chiefs across the US amid the border crisis and eruption in violent crime nationwide. 

“We were also told by Mr. Ray, the FBI director, that there are more red flags going off now than before 9-11,” Jones said. 

Here’s part of the transcript of the sheriff’s press conference where he explains Wray’s warning for America (transcript courtesy of Wall Street Apes): 

“China has safe houses in every state in the United States.” 

“They’re bringing something here to cause us harm. You have to believe that. China has safe houses in every state in the United States. My name is Rick Jones. I’m the Butler County Sheriff, Butler County, Ohio. I just came back from the National Sheriff’s Training in DC three days ago, two days ago. We were briefed by the FBI director Ray, the director of the FBI, and several federal agencies. There’s 3,300 sheriffs in the United States. 

The President of the United States refuses to meet with the sheriffs of the 3,300. We have a hierarchy. We have a president. We have a vice president. The President of the United States refuses to meet with the sheriffs. 

He also refuses to meet with the police chiefs of the United States. They have a hierarchy also. He refuses to meet with them to talk about border issues or talk about crime that’s going on because of the border issue. We were also told by Mr. Ray, the FBI director, that there are more red flags going off now than before 9-11. Okay? 

When I say red flags, meaning people that are here in this country that are wanting to do harm to us. We were also explained we’re bombing two countries right now. Two countries. These people do not like us before this started. There’s thousands of people here from other countries, 160 different countries. They’re here not to be our friends. 

Some of them are coming because they’re wanting to come here to the best country in the world, the way we see it. Some are coming here to do harm to us. And we were told by the FBI director, it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when. We were also told five sheriffs went to Israel five weeks after the attack. The only thing that saved the Israelis, their government was the local police. They were outgunned, outmanned. They came over. The Palestinians did. They came over. They killed, raped. The sheriffs were there. They talked to the police. The local police are what saved that country. You can’t just call, even in Israel, you can’t just call the military up, and they’re going to be there, okay? They went house to house, raping, killing. The Israeli police. 

When our guys got there, the sheriffs said, they just don’t hate us. They hate you guys equally. And the same people that train them are the same people that train people to hate us. 

The FBI director said when 9-11 hit, there’s more red flags now than then. So, and he said, these are people that want to kill us and do harm to us. Now, so you’re wondering, I want everybody to know what I know. 

I can’t tell you everything, but I want the public to know that we are in a terrible way right now. The United States, and I’m going to get to the local. 

The United States, we’re on the defense. You can’t be just defense and not have an offense. We have no offense. We’re just defense. We’re absorbing these attacks. We’re in other countries. We’re supplying them with weapons. We’re supplying them with our treasure, our money. And we’re not doing much back home. So. 

With that in mind, we were also told that they’re going, this is from the federal government, three days ago. They’re going to attack our elections.” 

Ohio Sheriff Richard K. Jones Warning The Amercian People

After Meeting With Director Of The FBI Christopher Wray, Sheriff Says The Illegal Immigrants Entering America Will Do Us Harm “It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when”

“China has safe houses in every state in the… pic.twitter.com/SJ9DJlk8sY

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) February 9, 2024

The sheriff also noted, “We’re going to start training civilians – we’ve offered uh classes to train civilians.” 

This planned border invasion (via open southern border policies and shadowy networks of NGOs) by the radicals in the White House is happening in an election year.

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The U.S. Supreme Court on Feb. 8 rejected an attempt by the Biden administration to avoid a lawsuit stemming from false debt reporting, with the landmark ruling opening the door for consumers to sue federal agencies.

In a 9–0 decision on Feb. 8, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government is not immune from lawsuits brought under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), a law that lets consumers sue creditors for failing to fix false credit information that the consumer has requested be corrected.

The ruling stems from a lawsuit brought under the FCRA by Reginald Kirtz, a Pennsylvania man whose credit score was damaged when the Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) Rural Housing Service wrongly stated on his credit report that some of his loans were overdue.

The government claimed that it was immune from Mr. Kirtz’s lawsuit and moved to dismiss the case, with several rounds of adjudication in lower courts leading to a request for Supreme Court review.

The high court agreed in June 2023 to review an appeals court ruling that allowed Mr. Kirtz to sue the USDA for false debt reporting.

At issue in the case was whether Congress waived U.S. sovereign immunity from lawsuits when it modified consumer protection laws nearly 30 years ago.

The question that was presented before the high court was whether the civil-liability provisions of the FCRA “unequivocally and unambiguously waive the sovereign immunity of the United States.”

“We think the Third Circuit reached the right decision in this case: The FCRA effects a clear waiver of sovereign immunity,” Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, wrote in the Feb. 8 opinion.

Public Citizen Litigation Group attorney Nandan Joshi, who argued the case before the Supreme Court, praised the decision.

“Today’s decision confirms that federal agencies cannot escape accountability when they fail to comply with their responsibilities to consumers under the FCRA,” he said in a Feb. 8 statement.

“As the court explained, FCRA’s text means what it says: The FCRA allows consumers to sue any ‘person’ that violates the statute and defines ‘person’ to include any government agency.”

The USDA did not respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment on the ruling.

Background

Congress amended the FCRA decades ago to impose new requirements on lenders.

The additions require that if a consumer challenges the accuracy of his or her credit reports, the “person” who carried out the report must look into the matter and, if appropriate, correct inaccurate information.

Mr. Kirtz accused the USDA of violating the FCRA when the agency reported his loans as delinquent even though he had paid them off.

After he sued the USDA in 2020, the agency moved to dismiss the case, arguing that the FCRA did not clearly indicate that Congress meant to waive the federal government’s immunity from lawsuits.

The district court sided with the USDA, but that decision was later reversed on appeal.

Mr. Kirtz’s team argued that the USDA incorrectly suggested that Congress must enact an explicit statutory waiver of sovereign immunity for a waiver to be effective.

In siding with Mr. Kirtz, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals pointed to the definition of “person” in the FCRA, which includes “any ‘government or governmental subdivision or agency.’”

The appeals court also said allowing lawsuits against federal agencies would be in line with Congress’s aim of ensuring “fair and accurate credit reporting” because the federal government is the largest employer and creditor in the United States.

The USDA disagreed and asked the Supreme Court to review the case.

In the Crosshairs of SCOTUS

The USDA argued that the Supreme Court should weigh in because if the appeals court’s ruling in favor of Mr. Kirtz is allowed to stand, it would allow the government to “routinely be threatened with substantial monetary liability for its everyday employment and lending activities.”

The agency argued in its petition that waivers of federal sovereign immunity must be “unequivocally and unambiguously expressed” but that the FCRA does not contain the kind of unambiguous and unequivocal waiver of sovereign immunity that is required by law.

The USDA stated that the question presented before the Supreme Court concerns a “matter of great importance” because even if the government were to prevail in lawsuits, “an ultimate victory on the merits would not vindicate the interests protected by sovereign immunity.”

Sovereign immunity, the USDA argued, is an immunity from lawsuits, not just being immune to liability.

“The foundational principle of sovereign immunity also is an important issue in its own right, irrespective of dollars and cents,” Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in the petition.

“Immunity from suit protects ’the nation from unanticipated intervention in the processes of government,’” Ms. Prelogar said.

She argued that Congress is the body charged by the U.S. Constitution with “striking the balance” between creating federal rights and duties and establishing private remedies to vindicate and enforce them.

“Judicial decisions allowing ‘private suits for money damages’ against the sovereign absent its consent would upset that balance and ’place unwarranted strain on the [government’s] ability to govern in accordance with the will of [its] citizens,’” Ms. Prelogar said, asking the Supreme Court to reverse the appeals court’s decision.

During oral arguments in November 2023, USDA attorneys faced pointed questions from Supreme Court justices.

Justice Clarence Thomas said that “the statute defines a person as [including] any government or governmental subdivision or agency,” which he said seemed to at least “suggest that it applies to the U.S. government.”

“Isn’t that sufficient to waive sovereign immunity?” he asked.

When attorneys representing the USDA suggested that the real question at hand was what the “logical implication” of the statute is, Justice Elena Kagan replied that the logic appears clear—namely that the government is liable to lawsuits.

“The necessary logical implication of what Congress has done is authorize a suit against … persons, as defined in the definitions section,” she said.

“Then you go to the definitions section. Then you discover that what Congress has done is authorize a suit against natural persons, enterprises, and governments.”

Justice Gorsuch said during oral arguments that concern about sovereign immunity made little sense when it was “the sovereign itself speaking” about being liable.

In the Feb. 8 opinion, he reiterated this argument, pointing to a number of legal provisions that underpin the argument that the FCRA authorizes consumer lawsuits against federal agencies.

“Through this series of statutory directions, no less than those we encountered in Kimel, Congress has explicitly permitted consumer claims for damages against the government,” Justice Gorsuch wrote.

“Dismissing suits like Mr. Kirtz’s would effectively ‘[negate]’ suits Congress has clearly authorized.”

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Modernity.news,

Nigel Farage says Democrats will ditch Joe Biden before the Democratic convention in July because he is clearly suffering from “senile dementia”.

The controversy has exploded once again after special counsel Robert Hur concluded that Biden’s memory is so poor that he “did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended, and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began.”

Hur also noted that Biden “did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died.”

“The man’s got senile dementia, I’ve been saying that for some months,” Farage told GB News.

Joe Biden has senile dementia. I have been saying this for some months now.

pic.twitter.com/GoSplIBhUm

— Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) February 9, 2024

“He’s got senile dementia, he’s not just the leader of America, he’s the leader of the free world and under his tenure many of these awful things around the world have happened…he is totally incapable of the job,” he added.

The former Brexit Party leader predicted that Biden wouldn’t make it to a presidential run off against Trump.

“I don’t think it will be a Trump-Biden run off, I think they’ll ditch him before the Democrat convention takes place in July, I think he’s just too embarrassing,” said Farage, noting that Biden’s approval ratings are plummeting.

Farage drew attention to the fact that even Biden’s supporters in the media are now accepting the reality of his mental incompetence after another car crash of a press conference last night.

NOW – Biden says there are “green states” in the U.S.pic.twitter.com/p3uoE9uusF

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) February 8, 2024

As we highlighted earlier, Biden shouted angrily at reporters for asking questions about his cognitive state, asserting that his memory was fine before referring to Egyptian president El-Sisi as the “president of Mexico”.

“Every single day now something happens that is literally cringemaking, so no, I think they’ve got to get rid of him,” said Farage, while expressing skepticism over the prospect of Michelle Obama being chosen as Biden’s replacement.

The Telegraph also reported earlier that Biden’s embarrassing press conference and the reaction to Hur’s report marks a shift in the narrative because Biden’s cognitive decline can no longer be dismissed as a purely partisan attack.

*  *  *

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For the first time in its history, the State of Israel has seen its credit rating downgraded, as Moody’s on Friday took the country’s rating down one notch to A2, and said the rating outlook going forward is negative. 

The country’s ongoing war with Hamas and occupation of Gaza will “materially raise political risk for Israel as well as weaken its executive and legislative institutions and its fiscal strength, for the foreseeable future,” said Moody’s, which added that the conflict will create deficits over upcoming years that “will be significantly larger than expected before the conflict.”

The war, now in its fifth month, began on Oct. 7, when Hamas militants shocked Israel with an invasion from Gaza in which military raids and terrorist acts took the lives of 1,139 people, including 695 civilians. The death toll from the Israel Defense Force’s retaliation is now reportedly approaching 28,000.  

There’s no end in sight. Indeed, Israel is on the threshold of a new phase that promises to be militarily and economically costly while further isolating the country politically: Having herded Palestinian civilians from northern Gaza into the southern part of the strip, the IDF now plans to order them out of the southernmost city of Rafah, as a precursor to an invasion. The move promises to compound the ongoing humanitarian disaster.  

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to Moody’s announcement with a rare statement issued on Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest, in which he was dismissive of the historic downgrade: 

“The Israeli economy is strong. The rating downgrade is not connected to the economy, it is entirely due to the fact that we are in a war. The rating will go back up the moment we win the war — and we will win the war.”

The Moody’s credit downgrade comes on the heels of a failed attempt by House Speaker Mike Johnson to advance a stand-alone aid package that would have shipped off another $17.6 billion in American wealth to Israel. In a sign of growing exasperation with the relentless funding of foreign wars while the national debt races above $34 trillion, 14 Republicans voted against the proposal. 

One of them, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, ridiculed the idea of sending money to a government that, by some measures, is in better financial shape than America’s. “Israel has a lower debt to GDP ratio than the United States,” Massie said on Twitter. “This spending package has no offsets, so it will increase our debt by $14.3 billion plus interest. I’m a No.” 

Israel now shares the same debt rating as Poland and Chile. However, the credit markets are imposing a lower de facto rating on Israeli debt: Bloomberg notes that 5-year credit default swaps (CDS) insuring against Israeli default cost more than the same protection against Indonesian or Mexican default.  

The Israeli Knesset is currently working on its 2024 budget. A current proposal imposes a 3% across-the-board spending cut on almost all government agencies, as it targets a deficit equal to 6.6% of GDP. 

In the wake of the Oct. 7 attack, S&P and Fitch both switched their outlook on Israeli debt to negative. S&P has said it will update its rating on May 10.  

Authored by Rob Jenkins via The Brownstone Institute,

Dear self-styled “global elites:”

No doubt, should this missive ever come to your attention, you will simply dismiss me as a “conspiracy theorist.” But no theorizing is necessary when the conspirators keep admitting to it, repeatedly speaking the quiet part out loud.

Your creepy Bond-villain in chief, Klaus Schwab, Chairman of the World Economic Forum, has openly called for “permanent interaction between governments and regulatory agencies on the one hand, and business on the other”—in other words, for a kind of global fascism 2.0. Meanwhile, Schwab’s oily henchman, Yuval Harari, asserts that “human rights exist only in the imagination.” 

One needn’t be a prophet to see where this is heading.

Not only are you not trying to hide your agenda, you’re obviously quite proud of it. As another of your number said in a speech at Davos in 2022, “The good news is that the elites across the world trust each other more and more. So we can come together and design and do beautiful things together. The bad news is that…the majority of people trust their elites less. So we can lead, but if people aren’t following, we’re not going to get to where we want to go.” 

How to respond to this stunning example of tone-deaf arrogance, which I believe accurately represents the attitude of most “elites” these days—especially the elitest of the elites, the Davos crowd? 

Let’s start with this: You’re right—we are not following. And we have no intention of doing so, for several reasons. 

First, anyone who describes themselves as an “elite” betrays a breathtaking egotism. They are openly acknowledging that they think themselves better than the rest of us—smarter, more knowledgeable, morally superior, better equipped to lead. So we should all just shut up and do as we’re told. 

No. We’re not going to do as we’re told. Not by you. We don’t accept that you know more than we do about anything that matters, and certainly not about how to live our lives. If we had any doubts—if we ever wondered whether, after all, maybe your way was best—the last four years have proven unequivocally otherwise. 

Calling your pandemic response “botched” would be the greatest understatement in history. Everything you told us to do—lock down, mask up, “socially distance,” offer ourselves as human guinea pigs—not only didn’t stop the virus but made things exponentially worse. A health crisis morphed quickly into an economic, social, and political one as well, not to mention an even worse health crisis.

It wasn’t Covid that did that. It was you, our “global elites.” 

Indeed, we have come to realize—and many of us knew all along—that the severity of the disease was oversold from the beginning. Sure, it was bad, worse than the seasonal flu, maybe, but not that much worse. It was nowhere near the mass extinction event you made it out to be. It affected almost exclusively the elderly, the infirm, and the morbidly obese. Schools, churches, and businesses could have stayed open all along and it would have made little or no difference in the course of the pandemic, as places like Sweden and Florida have shown. 

Yet you insisted on keeping us locked in our homes. On keeping our kids out of school. On covering our faces and shuttering our churches and bankrupting our businesses. All while holding out hope of a magical “vaccine.” And when your jabs turned out not to work so well—when it was obvious they didn’t stop infection or transmission—instead of admitting you were wrong, you simply doubled down on your failed pre-jab strategies. 

Perhaps, in the beginning, it was just ignorance. You didn’t know what was going on any more than the rest of us did. Maybe you were just doing your best to “save mankind.” 

Somehow, I doubt it. Evidence that this entire debacle might well be attributable to your own perfidy and malfeasance argues against that generous interpretation. So does the fact that you steadfastly refuse to admit your now obvious mistakes and instead persist in your folly. At the very least, it is clear that you have exploited this crisis for all it’s worth, in an attempt to remake the world to your liking—to initiate, as you call it, “The Great Reset.” 

Unfortunately for you, the professor was right: We the people are not on board. We reject your Great Reset. We reject your vision of the world. We reject globalism. We have nothing against other countries, but we prefer our own, warts and all, and we have no intention of surrendering our national sovereignty to any form of world government. 

We reject your multiculturalism.

Other cultures may offer much to admire and emulate, but we have our own culture, thank you, and it suits us just fine. 

We reject your vision of a tightly controlled, centrally planned economy.

We prefer free markets, messy as they are, as the engine for producing the greatest possible individual liberty, prosperity, and human flourishing. 

We reject your nouveau fascism, in which world governments collude with global corporations, notably Big Tech and Big Pharma, to surveil, harass, and ultimately control the rest of us. We don’t care if it’s “for our own good” (although we sincerely doubt it). We’d much rather have self-governance, the freedom to decide for ourselves what is best for us and our families. 

In short, we reject you, the self-styled elites, the smug sanctimonious limousine leftists who fly your private jets into Davos then lecture the rest of us about our “carbon footprint.” We don’t think you’re in any way smarter or better than us. Indeed, you have proved to our satisfaction that you are not. We do not trust you. We do not want your “leadership.”

We suspect, based on hard experience, that the “beautiful things” you intend to “design and do” are not beautiful at all but rather hideous and loathsome—for us, at least. They may be beautiful for you as they increase your power, wealth, and influence. But we care about the magnificent edifice you are constructing for yourselves only to the extent that we wish to tear it down. 

If the past four years have taught us anything, it is that you “elites” are awful people. Your ideas are awful. Your vision for the future is awful. The society you wish to create, with yourselves in charge, would be unspeakably awful. We reject it, and we reject you. So go away and leave us alone—or else suffer the consequences. 

While the EU caved earlier this week to demands that they drop key climate provisions and punitive taxes aimed at cutting greenhouse gas pollution, Polish farmers on Friday launched a series of protests against EU climate policies as well as the economic prioritization of cheap Ukrainian imports over their own.

The strike, scheduled to last around 30 days, will include more of what we’ve seen across Europe over the past month; blocked roads, protests at government offices, and likely clashes with the police.

There have been more than 250 protests scheduled around the country, which began at 10 a.m. local time on Friday by farmers who say their “patience has run out,” according to Notes from Poland.

“We have no other choice,” said  Marcin Wilgos, an organiser of the protest in Dorohusk at the border with Ukraine, in a statement to AFP, while standing next to a banner demanding that the EU ban Ukrainian grain and sugar.

According to Poland’s farmers’ trade union “Our patience has run out. Brussels’ position on the last day of January 2024 is unacceptable for our entire agricultural community,” adding “Additionally, the passivity of the Polish authorities… regarding the import of agricultural produce and food products from Ukraine leave us with no other choice but to declare a general strike.”

The farmers also called for the easing of ‘green’ requirements introduced by the EU, as well as those included in the bloc’s upcoming Green Deal.

“They’re talking about climate protection. But why should it be done at farmers’ expense?” said 62-year-old farmer Janusz Bialoskorski, protesting in Poznan, northwest Poland. “We do not produce plastics polluting the oceans, we do not build cruise ships that pollute the environment nor do we fly to Davos on our jets.“

As AFP reports further:

The protests came shortly after Polish truckers staged a two-month blockade of major border crossings to demand the reintroduction of restrictions to enter the EU for their Ukrainian competitors.

The hauliers have suspended the blockade until March but warned they will return to the border if their demands are not met.

Poland has been among Ukraine’s staunchest supporters during Russia’s nearly two-year invasion, but frictions over grain import restrictions introduced by Poland and four other EU countries in June have further strained ties between the allies.

Polish Agriculture Minister Czeslaw Siekierski told state radio on Friday that “complete” bans on imports could be imposed on other groups of products as well.

“It may be needed for sugar, if the influx is too large. It may be needed for poultry,” Siekierski said, adding that the government intended to raise the issue in talks with Kyiv.

Asked about the protests, Siekierski said the farmers had “legitimate expectations and demands” to limit imports from Ukraine, which farmers say are unfairly driving down prices.

According to Polish farmers, competition from Ukraine has crushed their earnings, as Ukrainian producers are not required to adhere to EU rules on regulations such as animal welfare.

“The glut of products from Ukraine, produced not in accordance with EU standards and procedures, is a huge burden for us,” said Wilgos.

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Modernity.news,

The London acid attacker is nowhere to be found, which police being ridiculed for saying he could be “north, south, east, west or abroad”.

12 people were injured, including two children, when Abdul Ezedi threw a “corrosive substance” at them in Clapham, south London last week.

Police initially failed to put out a proper description of the suspect for nearly 24 hours, and he has been on the loose ever since.

Now authorities are facing ridicule for basically admitting they have no idea where Ezedi has gone.

“He could have gone north, he could have gone east, south, west, or he could have gone abroad,” said Metropolitan Police Cmdr Savile, adding that his body could also be in the River Thames.

The Metropolitan Police, folks. They’ve narrowed down this dangerous criminal to “the Earth”. Groundbreaking news. pic.twitter.com/iqSAWHlU2L

— Will 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 (@anglofuturist) February 7, 2024

The ridicule followed.

“So where is Abdul Ezedi?”
“He could be here, he could be there, he could be anywhere, up, down, left, right, I mean when you really think about it, we’re all everywhere all of the time, on the plane of human existence. But really, we don’t know where he is.” https://t.co/yedR3gb7sm pic.twitter.com/mCWHliAkNB

— Will 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 (@anglofuturist) February 7, 2024

Maybe if Ezedi had sent a transphobic tweet, he would have been caught immediately.

Compare the manhunt for Ezedi, an illegal immigrant from Afghanistan, to that of Raoul Moat, a British native.

Moat’s disappearance was one of the biggest stories of the decade and the police operation to find him the subject of 24/7 news coverage, while Ezedi’s disappearance is now barely a headline at all a week later.

Ezedi should have been deported years ago after committing multiple sex crimes, although he was given asylum on his third application.

The woman who was sexually assaulted by Abdul Ezedi in 2017:

“If he’d been jailed for attacking me, then surely he would have been deported. But the failings didn’t end there because someone from a church gave him a reference so he could gain asylum. Who in their right mind…

— Matt Goodwin (@GoodwinMJ) February 7, 2024

Experts and authorities both say that Ezedi was likely helped by members of “the community” to disappear and hide, meaning other illegal immigrants, people traffickers and Muslims.

Proving once again how “diversity is our greatest strength.”

*  *  *

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Swiss police killed a 32-year-old Iranian asylum seeker who boarded a train armed with an axe and a knife and held 15 hostages for four hours while traveling between Baulmes and Yverdon-les-Bains in the western region of the country.

After rounding up 14 hostages, the man forced the train driver to leave his post and join them with the train stopped with its doors closed at a station.

Police, who were alerted by other passengers on the train, were able to board it at around 10:15 p.m. After sealing off the area to allow negotiators to establish contact via the hostages’ mobile phones, the police attacked at around 10:15 p.m., killing the man while the hostages – some of whom were tied up, all escaped safely, swissinfo.ch reports. A stun grenade was used to distract the attacker – footage of which was uploaded to X.

#suisse #yverdon #prisedotage pic.twitter.com/RHPwaDGgvd

— hasanml (@Xilifok) February 8, 2024

“As the hostage-taker rushed with his axe in the direction of the intervention group, a police officer used his weapon to protect the hostages, fatally hitting the perpetrator,” said Christophe Sauterel, spokesperson for the Vaud cantonal police, who added that the man died on the spot.

The hostages and their families were supported by emergency support teams and a psychological unit. They were interviewed for the investigation at the end of the evening.

According to initial information, the 32-year-old man is an Iranian asylum seeker assigned to canton Neuchâtel who speaks Farsi and English. A Farsi-speaking interpreter took part in the negotiations.

The Vaud Public Prosecutor’s Office has opened a criminal investigation. “The man’s motivations have not been established, nor his psychological state,” said Attorney General Eric Kaltenrieder. It is also unclear where the hostage taker got on the train. -swissinfo.ch

Over 60 police officers and 30 rescue workers were involved in the incident.

Authored by Dan M. Berger via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

That the United Nations fired a dozen employees of its Palestine relief agency for involvement in Hamas’s gruesome Oct. 7, 2023, massacre seems underwhelming to scholars and policy experts on the issue.

They see it as a long time coming on a far deeper problem the U.N. consistently has refused to face and use terms such as “damage control” and “sweeping it under the carpet” to describe what’s happening.

“It’s wonderful to see people finally waking up to this fact,” said Simone Ledeen, a high-ranking Defense Department official during the Trump administration.

“They’re waking up to this fact, but also, my understanding is they were faced with undeniable proof. We already had proof, proof that existed prior to Oct. 7.”

The agency—the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, or UNRWA—has long been accused of having extensive involvement with Hamas, which has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2007.

The U.S. government has classified Hamas as a terrorist organization since 1997.

After Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, UNRWA is the Gaza Strip’s largest employer. Nearly all its employees are Palestinians, unique among U.N. relief agencies.

The agency, for almost 75 years, has made no effort to resettle Palestinians, instead keeping alive the increasingly unlikely hope that they will one day return to what is now the Jewish state of Israel.

UNRWA’s defenders say not resettling them is explicit in the agency’s charter.

Hamas has long used UNRWA schools, hospitals, and other buildings as human shields, a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention and sanctionable by a U.S. president under the 2018 Shields Act.

Hamas stores weapons in, near, or under UNRWA facilities and has built its extensive terror tunnel system under them. They’ve commandeered relief food and supplies that the agency was supposed to distribute to civilians.

Israel has long accused UNRWA schools of teaching hate, the sort on display on Oct. 7, 2023, when terrorists murdered, raped, tortured, and burned their way through Israel’s border communities. They even shot family dogs.

They filmed themselves doing it, posted those videos on social media, brought hostages back to Gaza, and abused them and the bodies of those they’d killed in front of cheering civilians.

U.S. Sens. John Kennedy (R-La.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) introduced legislation on Jan. 31 requiring the State Department to monitor what is being taught in Palestinian schools, an educational system U.S. taxpayers have been helping to pay for.

The State Department said on Jan. 26 that it had “temporarily paused” U.S. funding of UNRWA while it reviewed allegations against the agency.

The pause occurred a day after Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres about the need for a thorough investigation.

Mr. Guterres’s spokesperson said the secretary-general was “horrified” after learning of the Israeli allegations that a dozen U.N. staff participated in the raid, including seven who stormed into Israeli territory.

One of those allegedly participated in a kidnapping, and another helped steal a soldier’s body.

UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini on Jan. 26 described the allegations as “shocking” and “horrific” and said he was firing the implicated employees immediately.

Two are believed to be dead.

“They are positioning themselves as very surprised by the evidence,” Kobi Michael, a professor affiliated with two Israeli think tanks, the National Security Institute and the Misgav Institute, told The Epoch Times.

“They are trying to create the image that they are taking the issue very seriously, and they are going to tackle the problems immediately. ‘We fire 12 people,’ and they believe that this will silence the criticism.

“And it will enable the U.N. to continue operating UNRWA. Because UNRWA is a political tool that is operated by the U.N. for political purposes.”

Hillel Neuer, executive director of U.N. Watch, a pro-Israel watchdog group, testified to the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s subcommittees on Oversight and Accountability, and Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organizations, on Jan. 30.

Read more here…

Chinese bitcoin miners have officially arrived in Ethiopia.

With China banning bitcoin mining about two years ago, many miners look to be heading to Africa’s largest dam, the recently built Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, according to a new article from Bloomberg. 

Nuo Xu, founder of China Digital Mining Association, told Bloomberg: “Ethiopia will become one of the most popular destinations for Chinese miners.”

There they are being lured by some of the cheapest energy costs in the world – and the dam is providing power to run miners at electricity substations. 

Ethiopia’s closer ties with China and the construction of a $4.8 billion dam by Chinese companies for electricity supply underscore the move, the report says. The change of location comes as climate concerns and energy shortages elsewhere in the world have prompted some backlash against the lucrative Bitcoin mining industry.

This makes Ethiopia a uniquely appealing prospect, though it now faces competition in places like Texas, Bloomberg writes. Kazakhstan and Iran initially welcomed Bitcoin mining, but eventually turned on the sector due to its massive energy use. 

Jaran Mellerud, chief executive of Hashlabs Mining, said: “Firstly, countries can run out of available electricity, leaving no room for miners to expand. Secondly, miners can suddenly be deemed unwelcome by the government and be forced to pack up and leave.”

Ethiopian officials are still cautious about Bitcoin mining’s contentious nature, industry insiders reveal, prioritizing government relations. Despite new power sources, nearly half the population lacks electricity, making mining a sensitive issue yet a promising avenue for foreign currency.

The competition for electricity between miners, factories, and households can lead to political issues due to the sector’s high power demand. Bloomberg writes that in Kazakhstan, new restrictions and taxes devastated the mining industry, leaving facilities like the one owned by Hashlabs co-founder Alen Makhmetov unused.

Additionally, Bitcoin mining’s environmental impact, particularly its contribution to global warming, is under scrutiny despite claims of shifting towards clean energy. A United Nations University study found that two-thirds of the power for Bitcoin mining in 2020 and 2021 came from fossil fuels, highlighting the industry’s sustainability challenges. Bitcoin advocates point to the fact that nuclear energy is finally starting to become mainstream in several places across the world. 

Meanwhile the national power monopoly in Ethiopia has secured agreements with 21 Bitcoin miners, predominantly Chinese, making clear the country’s emerging role in the sector.

In a recent article called “Why I Bitcoin“, Zero Hedge contributor Quoth the Raven wrote: 

“If the people want the Bitcoin network, and they have power and an Internet connection, they’re going to get it. The network is like a slippery fish someone tries to hold onto — the harder you hold it and the more you try to control it, the quicker it slips from your grasp. If Canada bans it, it will drift to Mexico. If Mexico bans it, nodes will drift to Mauritius. If Mauritius bans it, nodes will drift to Russia. There’s always going to be somewhere on the globe – at least for the short to mid-term right now – that is going to embrace Bitcoin.”

In this case, that place is – at least for now – Ethiopia.