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Federal Reserve holds interest rates at 22-year high, signals 3 cuts next year
The Federal Reserve maintained its benchmark interest rate on Wednesday in a range of 5.25%-5.50%, the highest in 22 years, but signaled it will likely cut interest rates by a total of 75 basis points, or 0.75%, in the year ahead.
In September, the Fed's forecasts had suggested the central bank would cut interest rates by 0.50%. The Fed has moved in 25-basis-point increments over the last year, indicating the central bank now expects to cut interest rates three times in 2024.
These projections come as the central bank now expects inflation to fall to 2.4% next year — down from 2.5% forecast in September — and drop further to 2.2% by 2025.
Wednesday's policy statement tweaked language leaving room for rate hikes.
"In determining the extent to which any additional policy firming may be appropriate," the statement read, "… the Committee will take into account the cumulative tightening of monetary policy, the lags with which monetary policy affects economic activity and inflation, and economic and financial developments."
Earlier statements had not included "any" before the mention of additional rate hikes, suggesting the central bank is now biased against further interest rate increases. This policy meeting marks the third meeting in a row the central bank has held rates at current levels.
Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said at a press conference Wednesday afternoon that "we added the word 'any' as an acknowledgement that we are likely at or near the peak rate for this cycle."
He added, though, that "participants did not want to take the possibility of further hikes off the table, so that’s what we were thinking."
-Jennifer Schonberger, yahoo!finance
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RNC Research
Hunter Biden defies a GOP congressional subpoena. ‘He just got into more trouble,’ Rep. Comer says
WASHINGTON (AP) — Hunter Biden on Wednesday defied a congressional subpoena to appear privately for a deposition before Republican investigators who have been digging into his business dealings. He insisted he would only testify in public.
The Democratic president’s son slammed the GOP-issued subpoena for the closed-door testimony, arguing that information from those interviews can be selectively leaked and manipulated.
“Republicans do not want an open process where Americans can see their tactics, expose their baseless inquiry, or hear what I have to say,” Biden said outside the Capitol in a rare public statement. “What are they afraid of? I am here.”
GOP Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, has said Republicans expect “full cooperation” with the private deposition. Comer and Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, who leads the House Judiciary Committee, told reporters later Wednesday that they will begin looking at contempt of Congress proceedings in response to Hunter Biden’s lack of cooperation.
“He just got into more trouble today,” Comer said.
For months, Republicans have pursued an impeachment inquiry seeking to tie President Joe Biden to his son’s business dealings. So far, GOP lawmakers have failed to uncover evidence directly implicating the elder Biden in any wrongdoing.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the president was familiar with what his son would say. “I think that what you saw was from the heart, from his son,” she said. “They are proud of their son.”
Democrats have been united against the Republican impeachment push, saying it’s “an illegitimate exercise” merely meant to distract from GOP chaos and dysfunction.
-Farnoush Amiri, AP News
REPORT: Biden Having ‘Fits Of Rage’ Over Hunter’s Criminal Charges
President Joe Biden is not only “consumed” by the legal woes of his son Hunter; he is now flying into “fits of rage” according to confidants who detailed his reaction to a bevy of news about Hunter’s ongoing federal prosecution.
Insiders who spoke with Axios described a leader at times either frustrated, angry, or saddened by the slow drip of scandals surrounding Hunter. Last week the embattled first son was indicted on nine new counts related to tax fraud by special counsel David Weiss. Nothing, they say, is more likely to suddenly shift the president’s mood than the topic of his son and the multiple federal cases he is facing while struggling to maintain sobriety.
The irritation was apparently during a recent press conference where President Biden swatted away questions from a reporter who pointed out that 70 percent of Americans and 40 percent of Democrats believe he acted unethically related to his family’s business dealings.
“It’s just a bunch of lies,” replied Biden before waving his hand and walking away.
Weighed down by guilt, President Biden has expressed remorse for running for a second term, confiding that he believes Hunter would not be charged with tax and gun crimes if he decided to not seek reelection. The president’s relationship with U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland has become frigid following Garland’s decision to grant Weiss special counsel powers, a move that Biden believes is meant to appease bad-faith GOP critics while abdicating his authority to approve or deny the cases against his son. One person close to the president compared Garland to former FBI Director James Comey, saying both were obsessed with the appearance of integrity rather than making the right decision.
As the only other family member to survive a 1972 car crash, Hunter holds a special place to President Biden, though their relationship is “particularly deep and complicated,” aides said. Only several of the most senior and long-serving staffers to the president feel comfortable broaching the topic of his son, knowing it can cause Biden to respond with fury or dejection.
House Republicans are expected to formalize an impeachment inquiry against President Biden as they search for evidence that he schemed with Hunter, Sara and James Biden, and associates to enrich themselves through foreign business dealings that traded on the family name. Even some Democrats like Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) have admitted that the charges against Hunter, some of which relate to unpaid taxes from those deals, are “legally justified.”
President Biden has also lost touch with Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC), one of the few Republicans on Capitol Hill who go back decades with him and held a collegial relationship for years. Biden believes Graham, who backs the investigation into Hunter, broke an unspoken code about never going after the children of political opponents. He continues to vent privately about his former friend, admitting in a fundraiser last year, “He used to be a friend; I don’t know what happened to him — Lindsey Graham.”
-Mark Steffen, Trending Politics
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Biden Administration Asking States to Pass Gun Ban that U.S. Senate Rejected
Image Credit: AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast
One week after Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D) failed to secure passage of an “assault weapons” ban the Biden Administration is shifting its attention to state legislatures, asking them to ban AR-15s and similar rifles.
On December 6, 2023, Breitbart News reported that Schumer brought an “assault weapons” ban to the Senate that Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) and other Republicans rejected and defeated.
Image Credit: U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) (Nathan Howard/Getty)
On December 13, 2023, The Washington Post noted that the Biden administration is shifting the focus to state legislatures, urging them to pass the gun ban that could not be passed in the U.S. Senate. The administration also wants states to pass laws that would allow gun companies to be sued over the criminal use of legally made firearms.
One hundred legislators from 39 states gathered at the White House Wednesday to hear Vice President Kamala Harris announce the shift in focus. Harris said, “We are fighting just for what is reasonable and, of course, what is right.”
Stefanie Feldman, director of the White House office of gun violence prevention, said, “We are going to continue to call on Congress to act but in the meantime, we are going to be working hand in hand with states to advance all these agenda items.”
Rep. Lucy McBeth (D-GA) tried to encourage gun control advocates by pointing out the shift in focus does not mean an end to the administration’s gun control goals. She said, “We’re certainly not finished.”
Gun Owners of America’s (GOA) director of federal affairs, Aidan Johnston, took a different view, saying, “[The] shift to state-level actions indicates a reluctance to push new anti-gun measures through Congress.”
Johnston suggested the shift in focus “underscores [GOA’s] success in resisting federal gun control.”
-AWR Hawkins, Breitbart News
FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr Suggests Denial of Starlink Follows Biden Giving Federal Agencies “The Green Light To Go After” Elon Musk After He Bought Twitter
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has rejected Starlink’s request for an $885 million subsidy, a decision that has sparked controversy, especially among its commissioners. Brendan Carr, an FCC Commissioner, has voiced a strong dissent, suggesting the decision is politically motivated and not based on objective legal, factual, or policy grounds.
According to the FCC, “After reviewing all of the information submitted by Starlink, the Bureau ultimately concluded that Starlink had not shown that it was reasonably capable of fulfilling RDOF’s requirements to deploy a network of the scope, scale, and size required to serve the 642,925 model locations in 35 states for which it was the winning bidder.”
The FCC also alleged that, “At the time of the Bureau’s decision, Starship had not yet been launched. Indeed, even as of today [i.e. over a year later], Starship has not yet had a successful launch; all of its attempted launches have failed. Based on Starlink’s previous assertions about its plans to launch its second-generation satellites via Starship, and the information that was available at the time, the [Wireline Competition] Bureau necessarily considered Starlink’s continuing inability to successfully launch the Starship rocket when making predictive judgment about its ability to meet its RDOF obligations.”
Carr asserts that the decision is part of a broader pattern of regulatory actions against Elon Musk’s businesses, particularly following Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, his unfiltered political expressions, and his commitment to free speech. Carr references a statement by President Biden, suggesting a governmental inclination to scrutinize Musk.
-Dan Frieth, Reclaim the Net
The US Navy Bought Surveillance Data Through Adtech Company Owned by Military Contractor Which Harvests Location Data From Smartphones
A report from 404 Media, for the most part based on Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, has put the pieces of a puzzle together to reveal that the US Navy was in business with an adtech company – that “just” happened to be owned by a major military contractor.
The company, nContext, is owned by Sierra Nevada Corporation, and what this triangle of surveillance was “keeping in the family” is the business of personal data changing hands, and reportedly, global (globally collected) data, at that.
404 Media writes that the public records it has seen show that the Navy was able to use a software tool (called, the Sierra Nevada nContext Vanir) that the US Department of Defense (Pentagon) uses for its surveillance operations around the world.
nContext, supposedly in the adtech (i.e., marketing) business, is behind developing that tool. However, the publicly available documents do not detail what kind of data the company had at its disposal, that was up for sale.
Above all, this is yet another example of how the ad industry – supposedly innocuous, other than for the suspicious amount of money it generates – actually can, and does at times work in insidious ways.
With this context in mind, the complexity and murkiness of the industry is perhaps not haphazard, but there to muddle up things as much as possible: because what this case shows is that an ad company can be collecting people’s data, allegedly for ad purposes (in and of itself, a highly controversial business) – but it then also gets available to all sorts of contractors, including those working closely with the US government, including the military and law enforcement.
The big picture: a government/country that is actively creating workarounds around its own laws and Constitution, which are supposed to mandate protecting citizens (including their right to privacy) – in this case, their private digital data.
“Crucially, when government agencies buy this data from a commercial entity, they can bypass legal restrictions put in place to protect the transfer and use of that information” – is how 404 Media describes this in its report.
In the specific case explored here, and in some previous Wall Street Journal articles, it appears that the information in question is location data taken from people’s phones and computers.
-Didi Rankovic, Reclaim the Net
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U.S. Warship Responds To Houthi Terror Attacks In Red Seas
An American warship had responded to reports that a Houthi speedboat had been terrorizing commercial vessels in the Red Sea. Houthis are militants in Yemen and have been escalating attacks on ships traversing the Red Sea, one of the world’s busiest maritime routes, including for oil shipments.
An oil and chemical tanker Marshall Islands-flagged Ardmore Encounter had come under attack by the militant group. The Ardmore Encounter had been traveling north toward the Suez Canal in the Red Sea from India at the time.
According to a report by ZeroHedge, the vessel, which had a security crew aboard, reported an “exchange of fire” with a speedboat some 55 nautical miles (or just over 100km off Yemen’s main port of Hodeidah, according to emerging Associated Press reporting. The approaching speedboat claimed to be the Yemeni Navy and ordered the commercial vessel to halt, but a nearby warship identified as a “coalition” naval vessel told the Ardmore Encounter to maintain its course. When the hostile boat approached within 300 meters, it unleashed small arms fire.
This conflict is going to ratchet up tensions in the Middle East, and as that tension builds, so does the chance of this war exploding into a global war.
This attack marks at least half a dozen serious attacks against commercial shipping vessels in the Red Sea. Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis have threatened to close the whole area to shipping due to the ongoing Israeli onslaught in Gaza. The group weeks ago “declared war” on Israel and has sent several ballistic missiles toward Israel.
In some instances, US warships have been able to intercept the missiles, which has also included increased drone launches.
War Expands: Yemen Houthis Strike 3 Commercial Ships In The Red Sea
Yemen’s Houthi militants have joined the war, meaning Iran is also a proxy.
The Path To WW3: Yemen’s Houthis Have Joined The War
The U.S. Navy has already warned it will continue to act against threats to international shipping in the Red Sea. “These attacks represent a direct threat to international commerce and maritime security,” a recent U.S. military statement said. “They have jeopardized the lives of international crews representing multiple countries around the world.”
-Mac Slavo, SHTFplan
Millions of Ukrainians forced offline: who’s behind one of the biggest ever cyberattacks
Image Credit: Getty Images / Alexey Surgay
Ukraine’s primary mobile network provider, Kyivstar, has been brought down by what is described as one of the biggest cyberattacks ever, leaving millions of customers without mobile phones and home internet service on Tuesday.
What happened?
Ukraine's largest telecommunications provider suffered a major hacker attack on Tuesday, knocking out mobile phone service to millions of people. Mobile communications and access to the internet were down throughout the day. The attack on Kyivstar, which has 24.3 million mobile customers and over 1 million home internet subscribers, has led to a ripple effect that has caused outages of IT infrastructure and disrupted services at banks and some state institutions.Who was affected?
The cyberattack caused a widely felt technical failure and disrupted the operations of many of Ukraine’s major financial institutions. The largest state-owned bank, PrivatBank, was affected by the hack as the work of some of its offices, ATMs, and point-of-sale (POS) terminals used by businesses to process card payments was disrupted because they rely on Kyivstar SIM cards. Some cash machines of other big banks, including Oshadbank and Monobank, were not working either. Air raid alert systems in the city of Sumy also reportedly malfunctioned due to the outage.Why is it significant?
The incident has heavily impacted Kiev and far beyond, including major cities and regions, affecting mobile and fixed-line services with a knock-on impact on sectors, including airstrike alert systems and banking. The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said on Wednesday that the attack on Kyivstar has inflicted critical damage to its digital infrastructure, with IT systems being partially destroyed. Restoring operations will take time, the service said.
The Ukrainian military relies heavily on smartphones and mobile data to communicate and coordinate operations, especially on encrypted messaging applications. While the country has other cell phone providers and the military uses Starlink satellite connection extensively, the Kyivstar outage could affect Ukrainian troops’ ability to coordinate in some places.-RT News
Germany may declare emergency over Ukraine – Scholz
Germany may have to declare an emergency at home in order to provide additional assistance to Kiev next year if the situation in Ukraine gets any worse, Chancellor Olaf Scholz warned in a government statement to the parliament on Wednesday. The opposition has branded his plan “financial trickery” and vowed to never let it happen.
Scholz’s coalition government has just reached a deal on its 2024 budget following weeks of tense negotiations. The cabinet agreed to keep existing debt restrictions while cutting the operational costs of various departments and slashing certain climate-related subsidies. Further military and financial aid to Kiev was still named as one of Berlin’s top priorities, alongside Germany’s green-economy transformation and the strengthening of social cohesion.
“I will advocate sustainable, reliable support for Ukraine, because it is about the security of Europe,” Scholz told the Lower House of parliament, the Bundestag. According to the chancellor, Berlin plans to spend €8 billion ($8.63 billion) on arms for Kiev next year, along with an unspecified amount of money allocated for financial aid to the Ukrainian budget, and another €6 billion ($6.47 billion) to support Ukrainian refugees living in Germany.
He also admitted that international support for Kiev was waning and might force Berlin to spend even more of its funds to aid Ukraine. Russia is supposedly counting on Kiev’s Western backers abandoning Ukraine, he added, and “the danger that calculation could work cannot be dismissed.”
“It is… clear that, if the situation worsens… because other supporters withdraw their aid, then we have to react to it,” Scholz explained, adding that doing so might require the government to trigger a special emergency clause and circumvent legislation on the national debt.
“We have already decided to propose a debt-brake exception resolution in the Bundestag” in case of such a development, the chancellor said. Enacted in 2009, a fiscal rule known as the ‘debt brake’ in Germany limits the national budget deficit to 0.35% of the GDP and restricts the issuance of new government bonds. A special clause still allows the government to bypass these restrictions in case of an “unforeseen emergency.”
Scholz’s cabinet already faced what was called a “no-debt crisis” in November when the German constitutional court ruled its 2024 budget to be illegal due to violating this debt-brake rule and banned the government from repurposing unused Covid-19 funds.
The chancellor’s plan was blasted by the opposition as “financial trickery” as lawmakers accused him of essentially abusing the legal loopholes to push for more aid for Kiev. “What you have presented as an orderly procedure has been a tangible government crisis,” Friedrich Merz, the leader of the biggest opposition party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), said in response to Scholz.
“We won’t let this trick go through,” he added. The CDU chief also said that the situation in Ukraine was becoming increasingly “more dramatic.” “You know that, under the current circumstances, this country has no chance at all of winning this war,” he told Scholz.
Another prominent MP and a former transport and infrastructure minister, Alexander Dorbrindt, accused Scholz of being willing to literally throw the German budget into chaos for the sake of aiding Kiev. “You are not the solution to the budget problem, you are the budget chaos per se,” he told the chancellor, adding that the government “will never get our consent” to bypassing the debt-brake rule.
-RT News
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"Oil And Water": America Only Has 178 Flagged Cargo Carriers Vs. China's 7,362
By Michael Every of Rabobank
Oil and Water
Today will be all about US inflation, as the market continues to give itself this year’s and next year’s generous Xmas presents in advance of its projected retreat. However, I am still focusing less on gift-wrapped data, and more on the lumps of coal that point to upside risks to 2024 inflation.
‘COP28’s watered down draft text criticised for omitting fossil fuel ‘phase out’’, screams one headline. “Phase out” was phased out as the COP28 draft text suggests “reducing” use of fossil fuels instead after heavy Middle East oil-producer lobbying, making it COP-OUT28 in the eyes of some. It remains to be seen what this means in terms of the outlook for energy prices.
Meanwhile, in the Middle East, it’s oil and water which matter. Especially as Yemen’s Houthis have officially announced they will attack Israeli vessels and any ships carrying cargo to or from Israel via the Red Sea or Arabian Gulf. Welcome to how the world used to work before British, then US, naval supremacy. This is what a multipolar world is going to look like, if we see one.
We are likely to get a US naval reaction. Combined Task Force 153 Operations was set up in 2022 to stop Red Sea piracy, but will need to be expanded from the US and Egypt: France already helped out last weekend by shooting down Yemeni drones aimed at Israel. Yet it’s still only reactive to attacks on shipping, not proactive at the source. That maintains the risk shipping diverts from Suez round the Cape of Good Hope: if so, global carriers would only be able to make 3-4 Asia-Europe roundtrips per year, not 4-5, a massive structural drop in supply capacity. The Financial Times warns ‘Global pre-Christmas Trade at risk from twin Canal crises’, including the drought in Panama cutting passages there. But it’s far more than just pre-Christmas trade at risk.
Indeed, we are likely to get an Israeli reaction to this Yemeni (slash Iranian) casus belli to stop it at source; and Israel is also close to establishing a fixed deadline for Hezbollah to retreat north of the Litani river, after which it will attack them south of it. In short, key dominoes could yet topple towards a regional escalation impacting both the Suez Canal and energy markets.
There are also other maritime developments of concern. In the South China Sea, China has used water cannons against Filipino vessels resupplying their maritime territory, which Beijing claims as its own: tensions remain high, yet the Philippines’ furious protests were just dismissed by the former editor of China’s Global Times as “blustering” by “an American minion”. This follows a recent dangerous sonar incident between the Chinese and Australian navies, and Chinese PLAN vessels entering a new naval base built in Cambodia, which Beijing had promised would not be for military use. Watch these spaces.
Moreover, the maritime logistics industry says ‘The shift of manufacturing out of China is shaking up shipping’. Indeed, “Container rates have collapsed. Logistics executives foresee a freight recession dragging into 2024... There is one bright spot, though: intra-Asia shipping. As manufacturers seek to diversify their supply chains by shifting certain production segments out of China, there’s been more demand for transporting raw materials and intermediate products within Asia.” The winners: Bangladesh; Cambodia; India; Vietnam. The loser: China. For example, in 2019, Vietnam had 13 direct shipping routes to the US, but in Q3-2023, that was 23. The US and China totals were 56 and 58. Echoing what the BIS showed recently, “Governments and companies are diversifying beyond China, but they won’t be fully substituting the world’s industrial powerhouse anytime soon. One effect is that supply chains are getting longer.” And no less risky – yet.
-Tyler Durden, Zerohedge
UK Government Justifies Using Royal Air Force To Monitor Online COVID Speech, Calls “Disinformation” a “Serious Threat”
The Mail on Sunday reported that UK Royal Air Force (RAF) intelligence agents participated in a covert operation run by Whitehall, which was suspected of surveilling private citizens speaking out against Covid lockdown measures. This secretive operation was led by The Army’s “information warfare brigade,” tasked with analyzing online commentary—a charge the Ministry of Defence repeatedly rebuffed publicly until the recent reveal.
Documentation furnished by this publication suggests the Armed Forces, particularly those located at RAF Wyton in Cambridgeshire, assisted various government bodies, such as the Department for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport’s Counter Disinformation Unit and the Cabinet Office’s Rapid Response Unit. Their engagement in these initiatives was much more substantial than formerly known, per this latest revelation.
The clandestine operations in focus took on the challenge of countering “disinformation” and “harmful” narratives throughout the pandemic. However, they also garnered severe backlash for allegedly gathering data from lawful social media posts that challenged the Government’s lockdown maneuvers.
Prominent public figures, like David Davis MP, who voiced skepticism over the Covid mortality rates’ computed projections, and journalist Peter Hitchens, were the subjects of government reports. Insiders from the defense department conceded that the military’s contribution to such operations might be portrayed as spying on UK citizens, a segment from the furnished documents revealed.
However, the MoD alleged that the absence of Armed Forces support in overseeing online discourse could catalyze the propagation of “misinformation,” which could cause harm.
Jake Hurfurt, representing the advocacy group Big Brother Watch, didn’t mince his words, slamming these activities asking for a review on how the government monitored the British people throughout the pandemic period. He stated to the Mail on Sunday, “The revelations that the RAF as well as the Army spied on the British people during the pandemic is yet more evidence that the MoD misled the public about the role of its psyops troops in 2020.”
The government responded to these allegations stating, “Online disinformation is a serious threat, which is why in the pandemic we brought together expertise from across government to monitor disinformation about Covid.”
They alleged that all data collected were from public sources and the units did not target individuals or interfere with public discussions.
-Cindy Harper, Reclaim the Net
German climate activists defile Christmas trees in 7 cities
German climate protesters defiled Christmas trees in seven different cities Wednesday, spraying them orange in the name of climate activism.
The Letze Generation (Last Generation) activists account posted a video of one of the incidents to X, showing some of the young adults unleashing long streams of paint onto a very large and intricately decorated public tree while others scrambled to hold a sign up which does not face the camera.The group claimed they committed the same act in Berlin, Oldenburg, Kiel, Leipzig, Rostock, Nuremberg and Munich and simply stated in the first post "We color Christmas trees orange."
A follow-up post, which showed two more of the locations, included a motive for targeting the Christmas trees.
"Amidst the flashing lights, shiny jewelry and festive atmosphere, it's easy to forget: We're racing full speed towards catastrophe and our governments are failing miserably to pull the emergency brake in Dubai," a woman proclaimed in German in a video.The COP28, a UN climate change conference held in Dubai, ended Wednesday and resulted in nations agreeing to transition away from fossil fuels.
A second picture showed a young man holding a sign that read:
"BESINNLICH IN DIE KATASTROPHE?"
It roughly translates to:
"CALMNESS IN CATASTROPHE? LOVE FOR EVERYONE = CLIMATE PROTECTION"-Jessica Barshis, Human Events
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UN Celebrates! COP28 Agreement Signals ‘Beginning of the End’ of the Fossil Fuel Era – UN brags it is ‘ratcheting up climate action’
UN Climate Change News, 13 December 2023 – The United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) closed today with an agreement that signals the “beginning of the end” of the fossil fuel era by laying the ground for a swift, just and equitable transition, underpinned by deep emissions cuts and scaled-up finance.
In a demonstration of global solidarity, negotiators from nearly 200 Parties came together in Dubai with a decision on the world’s first ‘global stocktake’ to ratchet up climate action before the end of the decade – with the overarching aim to keep the global temperature limit of 1.5°C within reach.
“Whilst we didn’t turn the page on the fossil fuel era in Dubai, this outcome is the beginning of the end,” said UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell in his closing speech. “Now all governments and businesses need to turn these pledges into real-economy outcomes, without delay.”
The global stocktake is considered the central outcome of COP28 – as it contains every element that was under negotiation and can now be used by countries to develop stronger climate action plans due by 2025.
The stocktake recognizes the science that indicates global greenhouse gas emissions need to be cut 43% by 2030, compared to 2019 levels, to limit global warming to 1.5°C. But it notes Parties are off track when it comes to meeting their Paris Agreement goals.
The stocktake calls on Parties to take actions towards achieving, at a global scale, a tripling of renewable energy capacity and doubling energy efficiency improvements by 2030. The list also includes accelerating efforts towards the phase-down of unabated coal power, phasing out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, and other measures that drive the transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, with developed countries continuing to take the lead.
In the short-term, Parties are encouraged to come forward with ambitious, economy-wide emission reduction targets, covering all greenhouse gases, sectors and categories and aligned with the 1.5°C limit in their next round of climate action plans (known as nationally determined contributions) by 2025.
Helping countries strengthen resilience to the effects of climate change
The two-week-long conference got underway with the World Climate Action Summit, which brought together 154 Heads of States and Government. Parties reached a historic agreement on the operationalization of the loss and damage fund and funding arrangements – the first time a substantive decision was adopted on the first day of the conference. Commitments to the fund started coming in moments after the decision was gaveled, totaling more than USD 700 million to date.
There was more progress on the loss and damage agenda with an agreement also reached that the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction and the UN Office for Project Services will host the secretariat of the Santiago Network for Loss and Damage. This platform will catalyze technical assistance to developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change.
Parties agreed on targets for the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) and its framework, which identify where the world needs to get to in order to be resilient to the impacts of a changing climate and to assess countries’ efforts. The GGA framework reflects a global consensus on adaptation targets and the need for finance, technology and capacity-building support to achieve them.
-Marc Morano, Climate Depot
UK could come to a halt at any moment by a cyberattack, report warns
Image Credit: Pixabay
The UK could be brought to a halt at ‘any moment’ by a cyberattack, a report from the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy (JCNSS) warned, Sky News reported.
UK could be brought to a halt “any moment” by a large-scale cyberattack, a report warns
The report suggests that dealing with ransomware attacks should no longer be the Home Office’s job, as it’s accused of focusing more on other matters. Instead, it proposes transferring this responsibility to the Cabinet Office, directly supervised by the deputy prime minister.
According to the report, former home secretary Suella Braverman did not seem interested in the issue and concentrated more on topics like illegal migration and small boats.
Ransomware is a cyberattack where hackers break into a system and lock up the data and files. They then demand payment to release the files or prevent them from being leaked. This method involved significant cyberattacks, like the Wannacry attack on the NHS in 2017.
JCNSS states that the UK’s rules and regulations for handling these situations are not good enough and need updating. It also warns that many crucial parts of the country’s infrastructure are at risk of ransomware attacks because they still use older IT systems.
Despite warnings from government agencies like the National Cyber Security Center, the report highlights a lack of adequate investment in protective measures to prevent a major crisis. These warnings specifically address ransomware attacks, particularly those associated with Moscow, Beijing, and Pyongyang.
Urgent call for action to address cyber threats and protect democracy
Dame Margaret Beckett, chair of the JCNSS, said: “The UK has the dubious distinction of being one of the world’s most cyber-attacked nations.
“It is clear to the committee that the government’s investment in and response to this threat are not equally world-beating, leaving us exposed to catastrophic costs and destabilising political interference.”
“If the UK is to avoid being held hostage to fortune, it is vital that ransomware becomes a more pressing political priority, and that more resources are devoted to tackling this pernicious threat to the UK’s national security.”
As part of its report, the committee has requested a private briefing from the NCSC to learn about the preparations to safeguard Britain from cyberattacks, especially with the upcoming general election. This request is made due to concerns about potential interference in the democratic process.
-Brendan Byrne, Insider Paper
World’s first self-amplifying COVID-19 vaccine approved in Japan despite lack of safety data
Japan has just given the stamp of approval to a pioneering, self-amplifying mRNA vaccine despite a dearth of evidence that it is safe or effective.
The Japanese company Meiji Seika Pharma is behind the vaccine, which is known as the Kostaive sa-mRNA COVID-19 vaccine and is considered the first in the world of its kind. It works by self-amplifying after being delivered into the body’s cells. This leads to what they claim is a “strong immune response and the potential for extended duration of protection.”
When conventional mRNA vaccines are injected into the body, the mRNA tells cells to create a specific protein, which spurs an immune response. With self-amplifying mRNA vaccines, multiple mRNA copies are made, which creates even more spike protein – and if the current mRNA vaccines have taught us anything, it’s that this is unlikely to end well.
Much like the traditional mRNA COVID-19 vaccines forced upon the world in recent years, the plan for these vaccines is to convince people they need two doses of primary immunization followed by boosters.
Lack of testing raising concerns
Although there is a lot to be worried about here, one of the biggest concerns is the lack of testing the jab has undergone. A trial took place from December 2022 to February 2023 involving just 828 individuals. To put this in perspective, 40,000 people took part in the phase 3 study for Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.
Meiji Seika Pharma claims that its clinical trials showed that the booster of its vaccine led to “higher and longer-lasting neutralizing antibody titers against the original strain” and a subvariant of Omicron than Pfizer’s vaccine. And while recipients of the Kostaive vaccine did experience fewer localized reactions like pain and swelling at the jab site, they actually had higher numbers of several specific side effects, such as muscle pain, headache, chills, nausea, myalgia, malaise, dizziness and diarrhea.
The company hopes to have the vaccine ready for the market next year.
Potential side effects of sa-mRNA vaccines
Some experts are concerned that because these vaccines amplify the action of the current mRNA vaccines, they could also amplify the long and deadly list of adverse effects associated with them.
The spike protein in particular has been singled out as a factor in four domains of disease linked to the jabs: blood clots, immunological abnormalities, neurological diseases and cardiovascular effects.
Molecular biologist Klaus Steger told the Epoch Times that small amounts of self-amplifying mRNA lead to greater antigen production.
“Due to increased antigen levels, one injection of saRNA—whether linear or circular—may cause adverse events comparable with repeated (booster) injections of modRNA,” he cautioned.
A study published in the journal Trends in Biotechnology pointed to other potential safety issues with these vaccines despite declaring them promising overall. It points out that these replicon vaccines can persist in people who are immunocompromised and may therefore not be able to clear them from their bodies. The authors also drew attention to the ability of these vaccines to recombine with circulating viruses, which is something that needs to be studied further.
The study also said there could be safety concerns for pregnant women using these types of vaccines, especially when they are made with replicon vectors that were derived from viruses that may cause congenital infections. Although they say “it is not expected to affect the development of the fetus,” this is hardly a confident statement, and the study’s authors insist that further studies are needed to explore the effects of these vaccines in vulnerable people.
-Cassie B., Natural News
Heart failures spiked 1,000% among pilots in 2022, Pentagon data show
The latest data from the United States Department of Defense (DOD) reveals that Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) "vaccines" are high-risk drugs that carry significant health risks, including the risk of heart damage.
Lt. Ted Macie, an active-duty officer with the U.S. Navy Medical Service Corps, uploaded a video to social media citing a July letter from U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel & Readiness Gilbert Cisneros Jr. acknowledging the authenticity of Pentagon data showing a massive uptick in heart failure and other serious conditions in 2021 and 2022 after Operation Warp Speed was launched.
All along, Lt. Macie and his wife Mara, who is currently running for Congress in Florida's Fifth District, have been outspoken in their opposition to the Pentagon's COVID jab mandate, as well as its mistreatment of servicemembers who objected to it.
The data Lt. Macie unpacks in his video covers the following diseases that increased by the following percentages within the military after COVID shots were mandated on servicemembers by the Pentagon:
Hypertension: 2,181 percent
Neurological disorders: 1,048 percent
Multiple sclerosis: 680 percent
Guillain-Barre syndrome: 551 percent
Breast cancer: 487 percent
Female infertility: 472 percent
Pulmonary embolism: 468 percent
Migraines: 452 percent
Ovarian dysfunction: 437 percent
Testicular cancer: 369 percent
Tachycardia: 302 percent
US Navy Medical Officer Exposes DoD Reports of Surge in Cardiac Problems Post COVID-19 Vaccination
COVID jabs destroyed health of U.S. military
The data above and in the above video originally came to light in January 2022 when attorney Thomas Renz at a COVID jab hearing arranged by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) presented it. Sen. Johnson's revelations were immediately dismissed by the military-industrial complex as being false and stemming from a "data corruption" glitch, but this turned out to be a lie.
In Cisneros' letter to Sen. Johnson this past July, he tried to argue that when Pentagon officials attempted to replicate the whistleblower's analysis, producing "similar" results, that the true cause of all these excess injuries "was more likely to be infection and not COVID-19 vaccination." Sen. Johnson refuted this by pointing out that the data did not cover servicemembers who were both jabbed and infected, which Cisneros conceded does make the data complete.
"I went in today, I'm doing the same thing, five-year average, however, I'm comparing it to 2022," Lt. Macie said about how he approached the data. "And I only am using fixed-wing pilots and helicopter pilots on active-duty."
Lt. Macie ultimately identified major spikes in several heart-related ailments over the previous five-year average. These include the following increases in the following diseases:
Hypertension: 36 percent
Ischemic heart disease: 69 percent
Pulmonary heart disease: 62 percent
Heart failure: 973 percent
Cardiomyopathy: 152 percent
Other non-specified heart diseases: 63 percent
-Ethan Huff, Natural News