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Investigator and Attorney Mike Cernovich: Jeffrey Epstein Was an Asset of the FBI
On Wednesday, Judge Loretta Preska confirmed the release of the initial names from Jeffrey Epstein’s extensive client list, comprising over 150 individuals. Concurrently, a collection of previously sealed documents was made public.
Following the release, the Court Listener website experienced a crash due to the overwhelming public interest.
** The Gateway Pundit posted the collection of files released by the New York judge here.
However, The Gateway Pundit managed to secure a backup of this crucial information.
Three individuals, known in the court documents as Doe 105, Doe 107, and Doe 110, have made appeals. Documents related to Does 105, 107, and 110-110 are being withheld.
Following the release, attorney, filmmaker and author, Mike Cernovich went on Twitter-X to discuss what was missing in the document dump.
Mike Cernovich was one of the early investigators who filed lawsuits for the release of the Epstein files.
For the record, The Gateway Pundit ALSO filed a lawsuit for the release of the Epstein files.
Cernovich on Wednesday claims Jeffrey Epstein was an asset of the FBI.
Via Mike Cernovich on X and Thread Reader.
The Epstein Files. Today a tranche of documents were released in a case involving Jeffrey Epstein. There’s no revelations. Jeffrey Epstein’s case was covered up. I can explain why.
In 2017, my lawyer Marc Randazza found a wonky freedom of the press case. There was a defamation case, and although Jeffrey Epstein wasn’t named as a defendant, the case was central to some “conspiracy theories.” Marc asked me if I wanted to file a motion to intervene. We expected it to be a simple matter.
Media interest was almost zero. No one in the “free press” cared. Then Trump nominated Alexander Acosta to the Secretary of Labor. Acosta had handled the original Epstein criminal case, and said Epstein was given kid gloves treatments due to protection from the intelligence community.
Epstein was an asset of the FBI. What his exact relation was remains sealed.
By 2019 the case I sought to intervene in had an ORANGE MAN BAD angle because Acota was Trump’s Labor Secretary. Even if the motives were impure, at least we were on to the races.
Hundreds-of-thousands of dollars later, a trip to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, and a lot of fighting, we had a batch of documents ready to be unsealed.
The weekend before the documents were made public, SDNY arrested Epstein quietly when he landed his private jet on an airport from a trip he took in France. No perp walk for Epstein.
2019 I wrote the following after a press conference was held re: Epstein’s arrest:
” Why didn’t the SNDY charge Jeffrey Epstein under the Mann Act? Under the Mann Act, it’s unlawful to transport an underage girl through interstate travel, including on an airplane.”
-Jim Hoft, The Gateway Pundit
Nikki Haley Previously Said Americans Should Not Call Illegal Aliens ‘Criminals’ Because It’s ‘Disrespectful’ and ‘They’re Not’
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley previously said that Americans should not call illegal aliens “criminals” because “they’re not” and it’s “disrespectful.”
Haley made the comments while she was the governor of South Carolina in July 2015, during a panel for the Aspen Institute.
The panel took place about one month after former President Donald Trump announced his candidacy.
“As a family of immigrants from India, how does that inform your thinking on the immigration debate and what do you feel about the tone of the immigration debate as it has recently turned?” then-Aspen Institute CEO Walter Isaacson asked Haley.
Haley began, “So I think that what we have to remember and what I’ve always believed is that we’re a country of laws. That is what’s made us strong so it’s incredibly frustrating for a lot of people when they see the illegal immigrants being able to come across. It really is astonishing that after all these years, D.C. can’t figure out how to build a wall. It really is, after all of what they spend.
“Having said that, we are a country of immigrants,” Haley continued.
“I am the proud daughter of Indian parents who reminded us every day how blessed we are to live in this country. They resent when people come here illegally. But let’s keep in mind, these people who are wanting to come here, they’re wanting to come for a better life too. They have kids too. They have a heart too, so we don’t need to be disrespectful. We don’t need to talk about them as criminals, they’re not. They’re families that want a better life and they’re desperate to get here.”
Haley continued, “What we need to do is make sure we have a set of laws that we follow and we go through with that. I think that some things have been said that are unfortunate and wrong but I think we also need to remember, especially for all of us … tone and communication matters and people matter. We don’t ever need to talk about this in a cold-hearted way … be kinder than necessary.”
Watch:
A Conversation with Republican Governors: What the Future Holds
Breitbart News noted that these comments stand in stark contrast to her statements while running for president:
Haley’s prior comments are contrasted against her recent statements, wherein she has vowed a “catch and deport” policy where the federal government is barred from releasing illegal aliens into the U.S. interior.
“What we need to do is when you catch them, you deport them back from where they came,” Haley told Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matt Boyle in an interview last year.
“You can’t allow them in this country. My parents always said, ‘If someone doesn’t follow the law to come into this country, they won’t follow the law when they get into this country.’ We have got to stop the bleeding,” she said.
-Cassandra MacDonald, The Gateway Pundit
Psychic predicts Trump and Biden’s 2024
Mayorkas Says Millions of Military-Age Men Have Invaded Southern Border on Biden’s Watch Because of Climate Change (VIDEO)
DHS Chief Alejandro Mayorkas on Thursday said millions of military-age men have invaded the southern border on Joe Biden’s watch because of climate change.
More than 300,000 illegal aliens crossed over the US border on Biden’s open border invitation in December, according to Customs and Border Protection.
More than 11 million illegals – mainly military-age males – have invaded the US on Joe Biden’s open border invitation.
The border invasion got so bad on Monday that authorities suspended railway operations at the border to free up agents to help with the onslaught of illegals.
According to Union Pacific, the suspended railway operations at the border impacted:
• Agricultural products (grain held in six Midwest states)
• Food and beverages (beer and dry food products)
• Automotive (finished vehicles and parts)
• Consumer goods
• Industrial commodities (metals and cement)Mayorkas, who is now facing impeachment for overseeing the invasion, blamed climate change for the flood of illegals.
“Border Patrol, in the month of December, processed more migrants entering the United States illegally than any month in the history of that agency. Why is that happening?” MSNBC asked Mayorkas.
Mayorkas said illegals from all over the world are coming to the US because of the effects of “climate change, poverty, increasing level in authoritarianism…”
WATCH:
-Cristina Laila, The Gateway Pundit
Watch:
High School Shooter in Perry, Iowa Who Killed a Sixth-Grader and Shot Five Others Identified – Social Media Desperately Tries to Erase Evidence of His Identity
Image Credit: tooktoomuch on Tiktok
As the Gateway Pundit reported, multiple people were shot by a crazed gunman in a small Iowa town Thursday. Now, the suspect responsible for this evil act has been identified and social media is panicking.
Dallas County Sheriff Adam Infante said during an earlier press conference at least three people were injured during the attack at Perry High School in Perry, Iowa. These include two students and an administrator.
This number has since increased to six total victims, including four students. A sixth grader was killed in the attack.
NBC confirmed the shooter is dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He went out exactly as he lived: a total coward.
WHO 13 has identified17-year-old Dylan Butler, who was a senior at Perry High School, as the gunman who shot up the school. More facts that are inconvenient to the corporate media narrative are now starting to emerge.
Iowa Starting Line has identified the shooter as Butler as well. The outlet also spoke to several students who said they were friends of his.
According to the outlet, Butler sent farewell messages to his friends about 20 minutes before the first reports of the attack, which the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office said began at 7:37 a.m.
One friend said Butler had been bullied since elementary school.
“He was hurting. He got tired, he got tired of the bullying, he got tired of the harassment. Was it a smart idea to shoot up the school? No! God, no!” the friend said.
Police have now confirmed Butler was the gunman.
Butler had a Tiktok profile called @tooktoomuch before the Chinese-owned company scrubbed it. But journalist Collin Rugg captured a screen recording of the account before it disappeared.
The recording features chilling music and features some genuinely bizarre footage.
-Cullen Linebarger, The Gateway Pundit
House Democrats Accuse Trump of Taking Millions in Foreign Bribes While President to Distract From Biden’s Crimes
House Democrats accused Trump of taking millions in foreign bribes while president after a seven-year investigation in an effort to distract from Biden’s crimes and impeachment inquiry.
Democrats, once again, accused Trump of violating the Constitution’s emoluments clause.
The emoluments clause is a provision that bars US presidents from accepting gifts from foreign governments without permission from Congress first.
House Democrats targeted Trump and accused him of violating the very rarely litigated emoluments clause of the US Constitution by claiming his luxury hotels which, at the time, were blocks from the White House were evidence Trump was receiving benefits.
“It is true that $7.8 million is almost certainly only a fraction of Trump’s harvest of unlawful foreign state money, but this figure in itself is a scandal and a decisive spur to action,” Ranking member of the House Oversight Committee Rep. Jamie Raskin said in the 156-page report.
USA Today reported:
Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released a 156-page report Thursday morning accusing Trump of exploiting the presidency to financially benefit himself and members of his family. Trump’s businesses, according to the report, received at least $7.8 million from corrupt and authoritarian governments including China, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
The report is the culmination of a nearly seven-year investigation. It says records and documents obtained by House Oversight Democrats reveal “a stunning web of millions of dollars in payments made by foreign governments and their agents directly to Trump-owned businesses, while President Trump was in the White House.”
Among the report’s findings and records available to the committee, China made the most payments to Trump’s businesses during his tenure, spending more than $5.5 million at Trump Tower in New York and two of Trump’s hotels in Washington and Las Vegas.
In January 2021, the US Supreme Court dismissed the previous emoluments clause lawsuits against Donald Trump.
In an order that was issued with no dissent, the Supreme Court instructed lower courts to toss out opinions against Trump since he is no longer in office.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden has made millions selling his public office to the highest bidder.
House Oversight Chairman James Comer identified the NINE Bidens who are implicated in the corruption.
“Bank records show the Biden family, their associates, and their companies received over $10 million from foreign nationals and their companies,” Comer said.
“Joe Biden’s son. Joe Biden’s brother. Joe Biden’s brother’s wife. Hunter Biden’s girlfriend/Beau Biden’s widow, Hunter Biden’s ex-wife. Hunter Biden’s current wife. And 3 children of the president’s son and the president’s brother. So we’re talking about grandchildren – a grandchild. That’s odd. Most people that work hard every day a grandchild doesn’t get a wire from a foreign national,” Comer said.
-Cristina Laila, The Gateway Pundit
Florida Surgeon General Confirms Dark Secret About the mRNA COVID-19 “Vaccines”
This wasn’t disclosed to the public when the COVID-19 shots rolled out.
“These vaccines are not appropriate for use in human beings,” Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo declared in a statement calling for a complete halt of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.
Dr. Joseph Ladapo issues this warning based on overwhelming evidence that the COVID-19 shots that Pfizer and Moderna assured us were “safe” are contaminated with plasmid DNA.
This wasn’t disclosed to the public when the COVID-19 shots rolled out. In fact, the Pfizer COVID-19 “vaccine” injected into billions of arms was not the same one used in Pfizer’s clinical trials. There was a “bait-and-switch.” The human population received COVID-19 injections produced by “Process 2,” while Pfizer’s initial clinical trials tested vaccines manufactured by “Process 1.” The so-called vaccines rolled out to the human public, unlike the ones in the clinical trials, were contaminated with excess amounts of DNA plasmids.
Safety Concerns
The negative implications of such DNA contamination are astounding, as outlined by Dr. Ladapo:
“DNA integration poses a unique and elevated risk to human health and to the integrity of the human genome, including the risk that DNA integrated into sperm or egg gametes could be passed onto offspring of mRNA COVID-19 vaccine recipients. If the risks of DNA integration have not been assessed for mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, these vaccines are not appropriate for use in human beings.”
Additionally, Dr. Ladapo warned:
DNA integration could transform a healthy cell into a cancerous cell.
DNA integration may result in chromosomal instability.
Biodistribution of DNA vaccines and such integration could affect unintended parts of the body, including blood, heart, brain, liver, kidney, bone marrow, ovaries/testes, lung, draining lymph nodes, spleen, the site of administration and subcutis at the injection site.
I Took the Shot. Now What?
Luckily, there are a number of potentially helpful therapies to “detox” from the so-called vaccines. One of the best interventions is to incorporate daily supplementation of nattokinase, an enzyme derived from the fermentation of soy. It has been traditionally used in Japan for its cardiovascular benefits. However, preclinical trials show it degrades the harmful spike protein the COVID-19 shots instruct the cells to produce.
The Health Benefits of Nattokinase”: explore.globalhealing.com
Dr. Peter McCullough, one of the world’s most renowned cardiologists and Chief Scientific Officer of The Wellness Company, published the first-ever spike detoxication protocol to appear in a US medical journal. Dr. McCullough recommends taking 2000 fibrin units (100 milligrams) of nattokinase orally twice a day without food.
EMBED THIS VIDEO ON RUMBLE: https://rumble.com/v3cdxui-first-ever-spike-detox-protocol-appears-in-medical-journal-heres-how-you-ca.html
For best-in-class nattokinase, Dr. McCullough recommends Spike Support Formula, which also contains dandelion root, selenium, and a host of other promising ingredients that can help protect you and your family from the prolonged effects of Spike proteins.
“The Wellness Company has brought the best news to those who suffer from long COVID or regret COVID-19 vaccination,” Dr. McCullough said in a previous statement. “Our Spike Support product is the bedrock of the recently-published ‘Base Spike Detoxification Protocol,’ the first and only regimen to help people recover from post-acute sequelae after COVID-19 and vaccination.”
If you are concerned about the long-term implications of the COVID-19 shots for you, a family member, or a close friend, click the image below to order Spike Support Formula to get a head start on treatment today.
Click Here to Order Spike Support Formula
-The Gateway Pundit
Joe Biden Calls Millions of Americans “Extremists” in First Campaign Ad of 2024 (VIDEO)
Joe Biden’s campaign launched its first propaganda video of 2024. In it, Biden calls millions of Americans “extremists” with images of Trump supporters made to look bad.
In the video, Biden arrogantly says: “There is an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs of our democracy.”
Biden is referring to patriotic Americans who love this country and support Trump.
Biden’s video showed images from the January 6 Capitol protest and the Charlottesville march.
Watch:
Under Biden, American patriots are in jail without due process, and his main political opponent President Donald Trump has been indicted four times. Let’s not forget that numerous blue states are trying to remove Trump from the 2024 ballots.
Biden exploits January 6th to push his leftist agenda.
TGP reported on Wednesday that crooked Joe will be at Valley Forge this Saturday to talk about the dangers of white supremacy. Apparently, all Trump supporters are white supremacists according to Biden.
Saturday will be the third anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021 fed-surrection where Capitol Police Officers fired on unsuspecting Trump supporters without warning and killed three Trump supporters through violence. A fourth Trump supporter died that day from a heart attack.
No Capitol police officers died in the riots.
Joe Biden will use the J6 anniversary to accuse Trump supporters of being white supremacists.
Biden’s speech this weekend will likely be similar to his Moloch speech.
In September 2022, Biden delivered the most divisive and evil speech in US history.
The imagery was shocking.
The red glow.
The shadowy Marines standing behind Joe Biden as he threatened millions of Trump supporters.
“MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution, they do not believe in the rule of law … They promote authoritarian leaders and they fan the flames of political violence,” said Biden.
-David Greyson, The Gateway Pundit
Biden’s Weakness to Spark World War 3 in 2024? Blackwater Founder Erik Prince’s Prediction
Will President Joe Biden’s weakness end up causing World War 3 before the year is out? At least one man very familiar with war very much thinks so.
In an interview last week with British conservative outlet GBNews, Erik Prince — former Navy SEAL and founder of private military-contracting firm Blackwater — said he expected that China would “take Taiwan in spring 2024.”
The prediction came after the host — U.K. Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, who also works as a commentator and host for the network — noted that Chinese President Xi Jinping “warned President Biden at the summit in [San Francisco] that China will reunify with Taiwan.”
Xi didn’t set a timetable for this, but Prince argued that China would make a try for Taiwan during the Biden administration because of Biden’s weakness on foreign policy — and that, due to weather conditions, it was most likely going to happen in the spring.
“It seems as an American — it seems like we’re in a second version of the Carter administration, from ’77 through 1980,” Prince said, referencing a miserable period of American history that covered everything from the second oil shock to the Iranian takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran and subsequent hostage crisis.
“The weather window, if they are going to do something by force in Taiwan, opens around May or June because during most of the months of the year, it’s too windy.
“If they are going to take Taiwan by force I would predict that they are going to do something this spring,” he added, saying he “would be surprised if they didn’t try something under the Biden administration because, for them … it has to feel like the door is wide open for them to do whatever it is they want to do.”
And, indeed, the door was wide open to a move that might start World War 3 on a number of fronts, as Prince pointed out.
“The foreign policy setbacks that we’re experiencing are often and increasing in occurrence,” Prince told Rees-Mogg.
“Now, apparently, you can shoot at U.S. Navy warships hundreds of times and shoot at Americans in the Middle East without consequence,” he said, referencing the current unrest caused by Iranian-backed Houthi terrorists.
“Now you have the Houthis that have even blocked one of the busiest waterways in the planet,” the Red Sea, “taking out more than 50 percent of the global container trade,” he added.
“Again, it’s a catastrophic loss of American credibility and deterrence.”
The left — and indeed, some of the libertarian-leaning right — might despise Price for his role as founder and former CEO of Blackwater, which played a critical role in contracting military services during the post-9/11 conflicts and Afghanistan and Iraq.
-C. Douglas Golden, The Western Journal via The Gateway Pundit
AS CBDCS ROLL-OUT, ELITE-BACKED DIGITAL PAYMENT SYSTEMS VIE TO BUILD THE “GLOBAL PAYMENT STANDARD”
Idris Elba stars in a promotional video for Stellar’s “Real World” campaign, where he touts Stellar’s more “equitable” vision of finance, a future where opportunities are “borderless.”
SOURCE: UNLIMITED HANGOUT
As Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) pilots proliferate, a myriad of elite-gilded and blockchain-powered digital payment networks are vying for their technologies and payment systems to be incorporated in the developing digital currency infrastructures of tomorrow. Their end game? A digital financial grid prime for abuse.
“If ideas are borderless, opportunities should be too,” A-list actor Idris Elba recently exclaimed in a video for cryptocurrency player Stellar’s “Real World” campaign.
In the elaborate promotional video featuring Elba, traditional currencies are portrayed as unreliable and especially detrimental to marginalized people. An immigrant, working class-coded woman in the video asks, “I can send money to my family, but how much will arrive?” Meanwhile, an older man counting his paper monies in the video says “[t]he more I save, the more I feel unsafe.”
Presenting itself as the solution to such problems, the Stellar network promises to make opportunities “borderless,” helping the video’s characters to save and send money to others without the traditional financial system’s various obstacles.
Indeed, Stellar’s “Real World” campaign portrays the Stellar protocol as an agent for dignified opportunities, making the financial system work for all. And, generally, many cryptocurrency and bitcoin enthusiasts put stock in such networks because they see them as a medium that ensures financial freedom. But Stellar, like other altruistic-branded financial organizations in the crypto space, is getting involved in other projects that suggest “financial inclusion,” as most would understand it, isn’t their biggest priority. A prime example is Stellar’s intense interest in facilitating the rise of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), which are a programmable, central bank-issued digital version of a country’s fiat currency.
While CBDC proponents tout them as fast, convenient, and ideal for cheaper international transactions, Unlimited Hangout has previously elaborated on CBDCs’ propensity to undermine anonymity, foster surveillance and even, in terms of programmability, be used to enforce policies or otherwise be weaponized to manipulate or control peoples’ financial activities and behavior. If rolled out on a wider scale and introduced in tandem with other tools, like Digital IDs, UH contributor Iain Davis and UH contributing editor Whitney Webb (among others) have posited that CBDCs could “be used to monitor our whereabouts, limit our freedom of movement and control our access to money, goods and services.”
With nation states fearing that falling behind in digital currencies could compromise their competitiveness or sovereignty, the CBDC race feeds itself, thus bypassing critical public discussions around CBDCs’ potential societal harms. As per the Atlantic Council’s CBDC tracker, 130 countries representing 98 percent of the world’s GDP are now exploring a CBDC. Juniper Research recently estimated that the global value of CBDCs will jump from around $100 million today to $213 billion by 2030.
Naturally, as interest in CBDCs proliferates, so have CBDC pilots involving both the public and private sectors. In the process, a myriad of elite-gilded and blockchain-powered digital payment networks and organizations, including Stellar, Ethereum, Ripple and/or the people and forces behind them, are vying for their technologies and payment systems to be incorporated into the developing digital currency infrastructures of tomorrow.
As we shall see, these organizations’ collective facade of inclusivity and altruism obfuscates their true nature as elite-backed or otherwise compromised groups helping centralize, digitize, and even possibly program or otherwise weaponize money in ways unaccountable to traditional policymaking processes and the public, thus bringing them immense power while helping facilitate what could functionally amount to a financial digital control grid.
HE CBDC PILOT RACE
As the CBDC race heats up, major players in the crypto world are playing key roles in ongoing CBDC pilot projects globally. While many crypto players are interested in facilitating CBDCs, I will focus on Ripple, Stellar, and Ethereum, all of which are blockchain-based platforms being utilized in multiple CBDC pilots, for the purposes of this article.
Blockchain, a distributed digital ledger technology system, is known for its ability to securely store information and transaction records. Key to the functioning of cryptocurrencies, blockchain is often described as a cornerstone for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, an ongoing and controversial technological revolution popularized by elite-gilded groups like the World Economic Forum, Deloitte, and Ernst & Young, that seeks to blur the boundaries of the physical, digital, and biological spheres.
Originally founded in 2012 as OpenCoin, Ripple is a blockchain-based digital payment network and transaction protocol that facilitates the cryptocurrency XRP, one of the world’s most popular cryptocurrencies. According to its X/Twitter profile, Ripple’s mission is to “build breakthrough crypto solutions for a world without economic borders.”
Developing a CBDC platform for central banks to use, Ripple is “in talks” with over a dozen governments for the purposes of CBDC development. Namely, Ripple is or has participated in CBDC pilots for Montenegro, Palau, Bhutan, and Colombia. It was also tapped to facilitate the National Bank of Georgia’s CBDC pilot. Ripple website visitors will additionally find extensive efforts to promote the protocol’s CBDC capacities, which emphasize the platform’s “stability, security and resilience,” accessible and sustainable nature, and potential for interoperability.
-Blacklisted News
Jeffrey Epstein documents name A-list celebrities
Leonardo DiCaprio, Bruce Willis and Michael Jackson are among the A-list celebrities' names that appear in a trove of newly released documents relating to Virginia Giuffre's lawsuit against Jeffrey Epstein's former lover and accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.
Epstein had many high-profile connections, including former U.S. presidents, foreign prime ministers and Britain's Prince Andrew, as well as Hollywood stars, leading academics, people in the modeling and fashion industries and other public figures. Some of the names were previously known through other means despite having been withheld from the public eye in the lawsuit.
Many of the names belong to people who have not been accused of wrongdoing.
The celebrities who appear in the court docs, obtained by Fox News Digital, were mentioned by Giuffre and another alleged Epstein victim, Johanna Sjoberg.
Image Credit: From left: Leonardo DiCaprio, Bruce Willis and Michael Jackson were all mentioned in documents released relating to a lawsuit brought by Virginia Giuffre against Jeffrey Epstein's associate Ghislaine Maxwell. (Getty Images)
Here's a look at the celebrities mentioned in the 40 documents so far:
Naomi Campbell
In a deposition dated May 3, 2016, Giuffre described going on foreign trips with Maxwell and Epstein, including several trips to France. On one trip to southern France, Giuffre claimed she had sexual contact with Maxwell before attending a birthday party for supermodel Naomi Campbell.
"We were going to Naomi Campbell's birthday party," Giuffre clarified in her deposition. "[The sexual encounter] wasn't at the birthday party."
In 2019, Campbell explained that she did know Epstein and that she had been introduced to him through her ex-boyfriend, Flavio Briatore.
Naomi Campbell previously explained she knew Jeffrey Epstein but denied knowing about his crimes. (Reuters)
"What he's done is indefensible," Campbell said in a video uploaded to YouTube. "And when I heard what he had done, it sickened me to my stomach just like everybody else, because I've had my fair share of sexual predators, and thank God that I had good people around me that protected me from this. Right now, I stand with the victims. I can't — you know. They're scarred for life. For life."
Campbell was responding to photos of herself with Epstein saying, "I find it extraordinary that of all the hundreds of thousands of people that I've stood next to to take a picture at a public event, they've only chosen these few."
She later added, "The frightening conclusion here, is that if the negative action of your neighbor, colleague, or even an associate can somehow make you guilty too, simply by association, then we indeed live in very worrying times. This affects us all. It's wrong, it's unfair and it must be stopped."
A representative for Campbell did not respond to Fox News Digital's immediate request for comment.
Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, Bruce Willis and Cameron Diaz
Jeffrey Epstein accuser Johanna Sjoberg spoke about Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, Bruce Willis and Cameron Diaz during her deposition. All four celebrities were brought up during the same line of questioning and mostly in passing. None of them are accused of wrongdoing.
Cate Blanchett's name appeared in newly released documents relating to a lawsuit involving Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. (Noam Galai/Getty Images
"I did not meet them, no," Sjoberg claimed when asked. "When I spoke about them, it was when I was massaging [Epstein], and he would get off — he would be on the phone a lot at that time, and one time he said, Oh, that was Leonardo, or, that was Cate Blanchett or Bruce Willis. That kind of thing."
Sjoberg noted that Epstein was "name-dropping" the celebrities and that she had not met any of them.
Later, she was also asked whether she had met Cameron Diaz — to which she responded, "No."
-Lauryn Overhultz, Fox News
BRICS welcomes new members in push to reshuffle world order
JOHANNESBURG, Aug 24 (Reuters) - The BRICS bloc of developing nations agreed on Thursday to admit Saudi Arabia, Iran, Ethiopia, Egypt, Argentina and the United Arab Emirates in a move aimed at accelerating its push to reshuffle a world order it sees as outdated.
In deciding in favour of an expansion - the bloc's first in 13 years - BRICS leaders left the door open to future enlargement as dozens more countries voiced interest in joining a grouping they hope can level the global playing field.
The expansion adds economic heft to BRICS, whose current members are China, the world's second largest economy, as well as Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa. It could also amplify its declared ambition to become a champion of the Global South.
But long-standing tensions could linger between members who want to forge the grouping into a counterweight to the West - notably China, Russia and now Iran - and those that continue to nurture close ties to the United States and Europe.
"This membership expansion is historic," Chinese President Xi Jinping, the bloc's most stalwart proponent of enlargement, said. "It shows the determination of BRICS countries for unity and cooperation with the broader developing countries."
Originally an acronym coined by Goldman Sachs chief economist Jim O'Neill in 2001, the bloc was founded as an informal four-nation club in 2009 and added South Africa a year later in its only previous expansion.
The six new candidates will formally become members on Jan. 1, 2024, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said when he named the countries during a three-day leaders' summit he is hosting in Johannesburg.
"BRICS has embarked on a new chapter in its effort to build a world that is fair, a world that is just, a world that is also inclusive and prosperous," Ramaphosa said.
"We have consensus on the first phase of this expansion process and other phases will follow."
FRIENDS AND ALLIES LEAD CANDIDATES
The countries invited to join reflect individual BRICS members' desires to bring allies into the club.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva had vocally lobbied for neighbour Argentina's inclusion while Egypt has close commercial ties with Russia and India.
The entry of oil powers Saudi Arabia and UAE highlights their drift away from the United States' orbit and ambition to become global heavyweights in their own right.
Russia and Iran have found common cause in their shared struggle against U.S.-led sanctions and diplomatic isolation, with their economic ties deepening in the wake of Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.
"BRICS is not competing with anyone," Russia's Vladimir Putin, who is attending the summit remotely due to an international warrant for alleged war crimes, said on Thursday.
"But it's also obvious that this process of the emerging of a new world order still has fierce opponents."
Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi celebrated his country's BRICS invitation with a swipe at Washington, saying on Iranian television network Al Alam that the expansion "shows that the unilateral approach is on the way to decay".
Beijing is close to Ethiopia and the country's inclusion also speaks to South Africa's desire to amplify Africa's voice in global affairs.
LOFTY AMBITIONS, LITTLE RESULTS
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres attended Thursday's expansion announcement, reflecting the bloc's growing influence. He echoed BRICS' longstanding calls for reforms of the U.N. Security Council, International Monetary Fund and World Bank.
"Today's global governance structures reflect yesterday's world," he said. "For multilateral institutions to remain truly universal, they must reform to reflect today's power and economic realities."
BRICS countries have economies that are vastly different in scale and governments with often divergent foreign policy goals, a complicating factor for the bloc's consensus decision-making model.
Though home to about 40% of the world's population and a quarter of global gross domestic product, internal divisions have long hobbled BRICS ambitions of becoming a major player on the world stage.
It has long been criticised for failing to live up to its grand ambitions.
The regularly repeated desire of its member states to wean themselves off the dollar, for example, has never materialised. And its most concrete achievement, the New Development Bank, is now struggling in the face of sanctions against founding shareholder Russia.
Even as BRICS leaders this week weighed expanding the group - a move every one of them publicly supported - divisions surfaced over how much and how quickly.
Last-minute deliberations over entry criteria and which countries to invite to join extended late into Wednesday evening.
Bloc heavyweight China has long called for an expansion of BRICS as it seeks to challenge Western dominance, a strategy shared by Russia.
Other BRICS members support fostering the creation of a multi-polar global order. But Brazil and India have both also been forging closer ties with the West.
Brazil's Lula has rejected the idea that the bloc should seek to rival the United States and Group of Seven wealthy economies. However, as he departed South Africa on Thursday, he said he saw no contradiction in bringing in Iran - a historical arch-foe of Washington - if it advanced the cause of the developing world.
"We can't deny the geopolitical importance of Iran and other countries that will join BRICS. ... What matters is not the person who governs but the importance of the country."
-Carien du Plessis, Anait Miridzhanian and Bhargav Acharya, Reuters
As the new international order takes hold, what can we expect from China and the rest of Asia in 2024?
Image Credit: Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, Indonesian President Joko Widodo and Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev head to a group photo session at the third Belt and Road Forum on October 18, 2023 in Beijing, China. © Getty Images / Getty Images
The formation of a new international order is inevitably accompanied by a conflict between the powers seeking to preserve their status and rivals whose development determines the creation of new rules and customs of interaction on the world stage. The military and political conflict between Russia and the West, as well as the gradually accelerating confrontation between China and the US, determine the central position of Greater Eurasia and Asia in international politics. This is, first and foremost, because this vast region is a space where stability and development are important for Moscow and Beijing, while crises and conflicts are highly desirable for the United States and its European satellites. The year 2023 has shown that Greater Eurasia and Asia have so far been resistant to the negative external influences that are having the most dramatic consequences in Europe and Middle East.
The fact that there are no opposing military and political alliances in Asia and Eurasia, and that the so-called geopolitical fault lines exist only in the imagination of particularly impressionable readers of American newspapers, is due to the peculiarities of this space’s political culture, but also to the general trends of international life at the present time.
Firstly, although this macro-region has its own experience of resolving interstate contradictions, conflict as the best way to achieve goals is not a central part of its foreign policy culture. In other words, where Western nations like to take up arms and see the solution to complex situations in confrontation, Asia and Eurasia prefer to resolve disputes peacefully.
Secondly, the emerging associations of states in Asia and Eurasia are not aimed at achieving aggressive goals against third countries. They are primarily aimed at achieving their members’ development goals and maintaining their internal stability. Therefore, there are no alliances in Asia and Eurasia that are created to ensure the privileged position of their members vis-à-vis the rest of the macro-region.
Thirdly, there are no relatively large states within the macro-region that would act as “agents” of extra-regional actors. The only countries that might be exceptions in this sense are Japan and South Korea.
It is true that they have limited sovereignty and are dependent on the US for their basic security. But even in the case of Japan, achieving its development goals and acquiring the necessary resources is not absolutely dependent on an aggressive policy towards its neighbors. This is unlike the European Union, whose leading powers were interested in cornering Russia and gaining monopoly access to its resources. Finally, the comparative resilience of Asia and Eurasia to the challenges of destabilizing interstate relations is due to the fact that all the countries of the macro-region belong to the global majority, i.e. they share common strategic goals, even if the specific tasks required to achieve them may differ.
In other words, if we divide the international community into two groups of countries – those that parasite on the rest and those that rely on their own resources (natural or demographic) – we will not see representatives of the first group in Asia and Eurasia. This makes their interests common, even if their methods of achieving their goals may be different.
-Timofey Bordachev, RT News
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Want to Understand 2024? Look at 1948.
In the era of modern consumer confidence data, there has never been an economy quite like this recent one — with prices rising so high and unemployment staying so low.
But just a few years before the consumer sentiment survey index became widely available in 1952, there was a period of economic unrest that bears a striking resemblance to today: the aftermath of World War II, when Americans were near great prosperity yet found themselves frustrated by the economy and their president.
If there’s a time that might make sense of today’s political moment, postwar America might just be it. Many analysts today have been perplexed by public dissatisfaction with the economy, as unemployment and gross domestic product have remained strong and as inflation has slowed significantly after a steep rise. To some, public opinion and economic reality are so discordant that it requires a noneconomic explanation, sometimes called “vibes,” like the effect of social media or a pandemic hangover on the national mood.
But in the era of modern economic data, Harry Truman was the only president besides Joe Biden to oversee an economy with inflation over 7 percent while unemployment stayed under 4 percent and G.D.P. growth kept climbing. Voters weren’t overjoyed then, either. Instead, they saw Mr. Truman as incompetent, feared another depression and doubted their economic future, even though they were at the dawn of postwar economic prosperity.
The source of postwar inflation was fundamentally similar to post-pandemic inflation. The end of wartime rationing unleashed years of pent-up consumer demand in an economy that hadn’t fully transitioned back to producing butter instead of guns. A year after the war, wartime price controls ended and inflation skyrocketed. A great housing crisis gripped the nation’s cities as millions of troops returned from overseas after 15 years of limited housing construction. Labor unrest roiled the nation and exacerbated production shortages. The most severe inflation of the last 100 years wasn’t in the 1970s, but in 1947, reaching around 20 percent.
According to the historian James T. Patterson, “no domestic issue of these years did Truman more damage than the highly contentious question of what to do about wartime restraints on prices.”
Mr. Truman’s popularity collapsed. By spring in 1948, an election year, his approval rating had fallen to 36 percent, down from over 90 percent at the end of World War II. He fell behind the Republican Thomas Dewey in the early head-to-head polling. He was seen as in over his head. The New Republic ran a front-page editorial titled: “As a candidate for president, Harry Truman should quit.”
In retrospect, it’s hard to believe voters were so frustrated. Historians generally now consider Mr. Truman one of the great presidents, and the postwar period was the beginning of the greatest economic boom in American history. By any conceivable measure, Americans were unimaginably better off than during the Great Depression a decade earlier. Unemployment remained low by any standard, and consumers kept spending. The sales of seemingly every item — appliances, cars and so on — were an order of magnitude higher than before the war.
Yet Americans were plainly dissatisfied. Incomes in 1948 were twice what they were in 1941, but statistically their dissatisfaction is probably best explained by the decline in real incomes in 1947, just as real incomes declined in 2021-22. The polling in the run-up to the 1948 election — archived at the Roper Center — bears the hallmarks of voter dissatisfaction:
Despite the extraordinarily positive developments of the last decade, voters were pessimistic about the future. They believed a depression was likely in the next few years. As late as summer 1948, they were likelier to think things in America would get worse in the years ahead than to get better. They expected prices to keep rising.
In November 1947, Gallup found that more than two-thirds of Americans said they were finding it harder to make ends meet than the year before, while almost no one said it was easier.
In polling throughout 1947 and 1948, a majority supported reinstating wartime rationing and price controls.
In December 1947, more than 70 percent of adults said they would want their own wages to decline in order to bring prices down.
Prices seemed to weigh heavily on Americans heading into the election. Voters said that if they got a chance to talk with Mr. Truman about anything, it would be the cost of living and getting the economy back to normal. Ahead of the conventions, voters said a plan to address high prices was the No. 1 priority they wanted in a party platform. More voters said they wanted prices to be addressed over the next four years than any other issue.
The importance of the economic issue faced stiff competition from the rising Cold War, the enactment of the Marshall Plan, the Berlin airlift, the formation of Israel and the subsequent First Arab-Israeli War, Mr. Truman’s decision to desegregate the military and the rise of the Dixiecrats.
The Cold War, civil rights, Israel and other domestic issues combined to put extraordinary political pressure on an increasingly fractured Democratic coalition. On the left, the former vice president Henry Wallace ran against Mr. Truman as a Progressive; he also ran as someone who was unequivocally pro-Israel, threatening to deny Mr. Truman the support of Jewish voters who had voted all but unanimously for Franklin D. Roosevelt. On the right, the segregationist South defected from the Democrats at the convention over the party’s civil rights plank, again threatening to deny him the support of an overwhelmingly Democratic voting bloc.
-DNYUZ