Ukrainian soldiers preparing attack using Chemical Weapons

 

 

A video published by Ukrainian military apparently shows them preparing to use #chemicalweapons, possibly #phosgene, prohibited by @UN CWC, against Russian military. Letters “OB” stand for toxic munition. This also explains why the gas cylinders need to be stored in the fridge. pic.twitter.com/eDmB43605g

— Russian Embassy, UK (@RussianEmbassy) January 13, 2023

Code me out

 

I don't like

Big Tech

snooping on me

every minute 

of my life.

 

What I eat,

wear,

what I think.

Wanna know my heart rate 

and vax status too.

 

Where I go,

that's my business.

 

I don't own

a cell phone,

and don't want digital banking

or digital money.

 

If we let Mr. Big

control all our financials,

they can turn us off

anytime they wish.

 

We'd go hungry fast.

Cheap way to 

neutralize folks.

 

Even in a restaurant,

they want us to order

our pizza 

by touching a phone

to their QR code.

 

Helps reduce the need

to pay

wait staff.

 

How are people

going to live

in 10 or

20 years?

 

Who will have jobs

and who will be

sleeping on the

cold, dark,

wet streets?

 

While robots

snuggle in their warm

and dry cubicles.

 

America is run

by the corporate mafia

and they don't give a damn

about the people. 

 

We are superfluous

and Mr. Big

is working on 

eliminating alot of us. 

 

Beware.

Bruce  

MSM admits Russiagate farce proven by CN in 2018

 

Consortium News

The MSM has finally admitted it was wrong about Russian influence in the 2016 U.S. election, as Gareth Porter made clear for CN way back in 2018.

New York University this week released a study that found “no evidence of a meaningful relationship between exposure to the Russian foreign influence campaign and changes in attitudes, polarization, or voting behavior” in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

In other words, the relatively tiny amount of social media posts from Russia’s Internet Research Agency, many of which came after the election, had zero effect on the election’s outcome.

But that was a major theme of mainstream media’s manic coverage after the election in a failed attempt to pin Donald Trump’s victory on Russian influence. In reporting the NYU study, the MSM has now finally admitted it was wrong.

Consortium News knew that back in 2018. In this article written by Gareth Porter on Nov. 2, 2018, Facebook said 80,000 Russian posts were buried in 33 trillion Facebook offerings over a two-year period further undermining The New York Times‘s case at the time.

Read the article by Gareth Porter here

South Korean witch-hunt mounts against Yoon’s opponents

 

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol faces low approval ratings. Beset by popular protests, the right-wing administration resorts to outdated, draconian national security laws.

By K J Noh 

Asia Times

The Yoon Suk-yeol administration’s coordination and co-militarization with Japan in the service of the US efforts to contain China, along with its neo-liberal policies and massive labor suppression, and its general incompetence has resulted in fierce opposition by large numbers of South Korean citizens.

To date, they have taken to the streets in mass “candlelight” demonstrations 23 times, on occasion approaching a turnout of half a million according to organizers. The protests show no signs of abating.

These huge demonstrations have demanded President Yoon’s immediate resignation along with prosecution of his wife for alleged corruption. The demonstrations also express strong opposition to US militarization of the country and military exercises, demand the return of South Korean sovereignty, and charge Yoon with selling out and betraying the nation. The Yoon administration has a 24% approval rating, according to recent figures.

To counter this, the Yoon administration has been stifling and shutting down opposition to its policies with allegations that such opposition is derived from pro-Pyongyang sentiment or even alliance with North Korea.

It is currently engaged in a massive political witch-hunt of its opponents. It has arrested key top officials of the previous progressive administration, has raided the opposition party headquarters, raided opposition party candidate Lee Jae-myung’s house many times and has just subpoenaed him, acts unprecedented in South Korean constitutional history. 

It is widely feared that Yoon will try to imprison the former progressive president, Moon Jae-in, possibly for acts of commission or omission in his policy toward North Korea.

Even the South Korean military is alarmed: A former four-star general, deputy commander of the ROK/US Combined Forces Command, denounced Yoon’s administration as a “dictatorial regime” that is “suppressing freedom” – a military first.  

Republic of prosecution

President Yoon, a former chief prosecutor sometimes dubbed a “Korean J Edgar Hoover,” promised during his election campaign that he would create a “republic of prosecutors.”

Needless to say, the US backed Yoon’s candidacy: He received the blessing and endorsement of top US leaders and the US power establishment.

He was commissioned to publish an article – a public confession of the doctrine of the faith – for the Council on Foreign Relations’ journal Foreign Affairs, where he detailed his hawkish concordance with US policy against China and his desire to be a global “pivot state” – a clear reference to the “pivot to Asia.” 

The Barack Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” had started the momentum for military encirclement and escalation against China; Obama’s successor Donald Trump escalated this hybrid war into the economic domain, initiating a trade and tech war against China. 

 

The current US president, Joe Biden, rebranded the pivot to Asia as the US Indo-Pacific Strategy and Trump’s neo-mercantilist trade war as the IPEF (Indo-Pacific Economic Framework), and has since escalated even further with full spectrum sanctions designed to destroy key Chinese industries.

Yoon’s roadmap article for Foreign Affairs was widely welcomed and lauded, celebrated as an early Christmas present in Washington, in effect the fulfillment of Biden’s wish list for its Korean-backed anti-China strategy.

After squeaking into office on the tightest of margins in South Korea’s electoral history, President Yoon has been making good on his promises to the US, shaping, sculpting, and subordinating South Korean military, economic, and foreign interests to align with US policy and goals.

To backstop what are clearly unpopular, dissent-and-hardship-generating, extreme far-right policies – and in fulfillment of his promise of creating a “republic of prosecutors” – Yoon has appointed prosecutors who were subordinate to him to the majority of top administration positions, and prosecuting his opponents without mercy.

Anyone who shows the slightest sign of opposition to his foreign or domestic policy has been put in the cross-hairs of his army of prosecutors.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that Yoon has sent his prosecutorial clown car barreling straight down on the road mapped out in his FP article, with “values” attached as a hood ornament, and “democracy” attached to the bonnet as road kill. The vehicle deployed has been “rule of law,” in particular, South Korea’s national-security laws.

For example, Yoon is claiming that the recent labor strikes organized by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) “were upon orders from North Korea,” a hyperbolic claim completely denied by the organizers.

The devil in democracy

South Korea’s national-security laws are a relic of the past red-baiting military dictatorships, and are some of the most draconian in the world. They have been applied to destroy lives and livelihoods, despite their commonsense-and-human rights-contravening extremism and punitiveness.

Revised and massaged several times over the years, they are still imprinted with the core genes of their intent: a political version of the Malleus Maleficarum (a medieval guide for witch hunting) to destroy “subversive” thought and movements in the South and to squelch political opposition.

Like the Malleus, during South Korea’s military dictatorships, they were broadly written, malleable in interpretation and application, and relied heavily on confession extracted under torture. They are outdated and incompatible with any notion of a modern state, let alone South Korea’s much self-promoted  “freedom and democracy” and “respect for individual rights.”

Read the rest of this important article here

~ K J Noh is a journalist, political analyst, writer, and teacher specializing in the geopolitics of the Asia-Pacific region.

Adding fuel to the fire

 

 

🇺🇦Ukrainian Azov burn down another Ukrainian Orthodox MP church in Ovadnoe village, Volinskaya oblast after congregation refuses to join Zelensky's "new" Ukrainian "church".😡 pic.twitter.com/FBOyWEigJ0

— Bernadette (@Bernade58733135) January 12, 2023

Can Ukraine regain control of Crimea?

"The answer is absolutely yes," says ex-general Wesley Clark pic.twitter.com/Z1nphmKEzT

— Alain Jaillet (@JailletAlain) January 12, 2023

Kiev's military recruitment policy

 

 

As Ukraine (under US-NATO direction) continues sending waves of their soldiers into impossible situations they are becoming desperate to replace the tens of thousands who are being killed and wounded.

Recently they have reduced the draft age to 16 years old. And increasingly they are grabbing men off the streets and forcing them to go to the front lines as certain cannon fodder.

Reports over and over again reveal that these hijacked men are given at most 2-3 weeks of training. Often once at the front their officers high-tail it back to safety as these new soldiers are either killed or the smart ones surrender.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) recently told the media that the US-NATO would provide the bullets and the Ukrainian troops would provide their blood. A 'good deal' for the US warmongers.

This video below, from 2016, clearly indicates the US always has planned for a full war with Russia inside Ukraine.

The truth can't be more clear.

Bruce
 

U.S. on alert as UAE seeks to join Turkish-Syrian reconciliation talks

 

As the UAE tries to join Russia in mediating between Ankara and Damascus, the US is looking to establish a middle ground between Turkiye and the SDF in hopes of preventing normalization with Syria 

The Cradle

During a speech in Ankara on 5 January, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hinted that a meeting with his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad may soon take place, “as part of efforts for peace.” He added that a tripartite meeting between the foreign ministers of Turkiye, Russia and Syria is scheduled to be held in the near future for the first time since 2011.

The upcoming meeting aims to enhance communication after Russian-sponsored talks between the Turkish and Syrian defense ministers were held in Moscow on 28 December. The meeting was the highest-level of official meetings between Ankara and Damascus since the start of the Syrian war.

In a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on 5 January, Erdogan called on the Syrian government to “take the steps to achieve a tangible solution concerning the case of Syria.”

The US seeks to establish a middle ground between Ankara and the SDF in order to prevent Turkish-Syrian reconciliation

The Syrian-Turkish rapprochement via declared Russian mediation was paralleled by Emirati-Syrian rapprochement – the latest of which was a “brotherly” meeting aimed at strengthening cooperation and restoring historical relations between Assad and Foreign Minister of the UAE Abdallah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, according to SANA.

Saudi newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat reported that the UAE seeks “to join Russia in sponsoring Syrian-Turkish relations at a high level,” noting that the Emirati foreign minister’s visit to Damascus sought to arrange Turkiye’s participation in the tripartite meeting of Syrian-Turkish-Russian foreign ministers, making it a quadripartite meeting.

The meeting is meant to pave the way for a presidential meeting between Erdogan and Assad in the presence of Putin. Reportedly, the UAE has offered to host this summit, with a possibility of a high-level UAE official being present at the meeting if it will be held in Moscow.

Asharq Al-Awsat added that Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu plans to visit Washington on 16-17 January to brief US officials on the developments of Turkish-Syrian normalization, his meeting with Syrian Foreign Minister Faysal Mikdad, and the “roadmap” sponsored by Moscow in the context of security, military, political and economic fields – as agreed upon by the defense ministers as well as the intelligence chiefs in Syria, Turkiye and Russia over the past weeks.

As Turkiye has been launching successive operations against Kurdish groups both on the Turkish-Syrian border as well as within Syria itself under ‘Operation Claw Sword,’ a Western official informed Asharq Al-Awsat that a high-ranking US official will be visiting Ankara in the coming hours as part of efforts to mediate between Turkiye and the SDF in northeastern Syria.

Ankara has demanded that Moscow and Washington commit to the implementation of the bilateral military agreements signed at the end of 2019. The agreements stipulate the withdrawal of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to beyond 30 kilometers from the Turkish border, and from the areas of Manbij and Tal Rifaat, in addition to the withdrawal of all heavy weaponry.

The SDF says that it has fulfilled its obligations, and will not withdraw its police force – known as the Asayish – nor dismantle its local councils, despite Turkiye’s insistence on dissolving all Kurdish military and civil institutions in the area.

Meanwhile, Cavusoglu told media on 29 December that Ankara is willing to withdraw from the territory it occupies in northern Syria and hand it over to Damascus in the event that “political stability” is reached – after cooperation in “neutralizing ISIS members, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the YPG.”

The Saudi newspaper’s report stated that US mediation seeks to reach a “compromise” between the Kurdish groups and Ankara without a new Turkish incursion taking place ahead of the Turkish presidential and parliamentary elections in mid-2023. This mediation seems to be an attempt at circumventing the imminent Syrian-Turkish reconciliation.

Another official source disclosed that Ankara was “uncomfortable with the leaks following the meeting of the Syrian, Turkish and Russian defense ministers in Moscow, and that it had agreed to a full withdrawal.” However, the source confirmed that, “it is true that Ankara and Damascus consider the PKK a common threat, and will work against any separatist agenda, because it is an existential threat to both countries,” adding that the two countries will “work to open the Aleppo-Latakia Highway.”

Following the UAE’s visit to Damascus, which came after the US called on its allies and international partners to refrain from normalizing ties with Syria, Asharq Al-Awsat quoted an official as saying that the US has been the only western country to issue a statement against normalization, and is working alongside Paris, Berlin, and London to assume a united stance against normalization with Syria.

Communication is currently underway for a meeting between the representatives of Paris, Berlin, London, and Washington and UN Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pederson in Geneva on 23 January. This meeting will take place before Pedersen’s visit to Damascus to meet with the Syrian foreign minister to “confirm the position against normalization, and support the provision of funding for electricity projects within the timeline of early recovery,” stipulated by a resolution for international aid that will be extended before 10 January.

Asharq Al-Awsat said that the UAE has proposed to contribute to the funding of economic and electrical projects in Syria – within the confines of the Caesar Act.

Simultaneously, Jordan, who was the first to open high-level channels of communication with Damascus, is leading efforts alongside other Arab countries to reach a “united Arab position that defines Arab demands in order to make normalization possible.”

The newspaper quoted another western official as saying that Jordan is calling for coordination to put pressure on Damascus to provide political and geopolitical steps for the coming phase in southern Syria, as Amman confirmed that there has been an increase in the smuggling of Captagon, weapons and ammunition across the Syrian border following the start of the normalization process. Additionally, Amman has said that the Iranian presence in southern Syria near the Jordanian border has not diminished, and that there has been an expansion of ISIS activity in the area, according to the official.

Syria’s Arab League membership was suspended in November of 2011 following the start of the Syrian war, and it has been excluded ever since.

Call for street protest this week

 

 

Join the antiwar groups at @UNAC1 protests
Jan 13-18. See you in the streets for Peace!
Money for healthcare not warfare! @BruceKGagnon @KeepSpace4Peace @UNAC1 @PopResistance https://t.co/uVoD2UzxEp

— MaeveJoy63 (@MAEVEJOY63) January 11, 2023

What comes next?

 

 

The Duran

How will the US-NATO now justify further spending on their Ukraine war against Russia?

Surely there is no conceivable way that Kiev can win this war without full-bore US-UK-NATO troops, aircraft, Navy and more being sent into the war.

What happens then? 

Will opposition to this proxy war grow?

Dems surrender to war industry

Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) becoming Speaker may reduce the defense budget by $75 billion. 

So. who is the REAL war party now?

$31 trillion US debt now - how can Washington continue to fund endless war$?

Dissecting 'liberalism' in South America

 

 

The Grayzone

Renowned Argentine sociologist and author Atilio Boron joins The Grayzone to discuss the legal assault on his country's former president, Cristina Kirchner, the attempts to sabotage leaders from Brazil's Lula da Silva to Peru's Pedro Castillo, and the elite forces behind what he considers a continent-wide program akin to the notoriously bloody Cold War-era Plan Condor.  

They also discuss growing fascism in many capitalist nations around the world. 

Are the Ukrainian people turning against Zelensky?

 

 Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom

US going to train Ukrainian troops at Fort Sill in Oklahoma to run the Patriot missile system.... 

 

Who is running this war and why?

 

How much longer will the beleaguered Ukrainian people support their government's ill-fated war against Russia?

Will US-NATO be forced to send more of their own troops to rescue the near defeated Kiev puppet government? (There are 'secretly' many Polish, UK, US and other NATO troops inside of Ukraine now.)

This is America

 

The American dream starts to look like a nightmare.

I honestly don’t understand, why they can’t allocate money solve internal US problems, just print more on top of the Ukraine money or send a bit less.

Video by @GarlandNixon pic.twitter.com/2CwF4Xaqfn

— Lord Bebo (@MyLordBebo) January 8, 2023

Number of Germans rejecting military service skyrockets

 

RT

The figure has increased almost fivefold since the Ukraine conflict began, a news agency reports, citing officials

The number of Germans rejecting military service has nearly quintupled since the start of the conflict in Ukraine, RND news agency reported on Friday, citing figures provided by the Federal Office of Family and Civil Affairs (BAFzA).

“In 2021, the Federal Office of Family and Civil Affairs received 201 applications for exemption from military service, and in 2022 there were 951 such applications,” a BAFzA spokesman said.

The Defense Ministry provided slightly different numbers to RND, saying that last year’s applications came from 223 active-duty soldiers, 266 reservists, and 593 people who had not served in the military.

The ministry noted that not only active-duty soldiers are eligible to become conscientious objectors.

According to RND, many explained their applications by saying they did not expect the Ukraine conflict to occur.

Conscientious objectors still make up a small fraction of the roughly 183,000 people currently serving in the German Armed Forces (the Bundeswehr). But the rise in those refusing to serve is considered a growing problem, given that Germany suspended compulsory military service in 2011 and is now planning to boost its defensive capabilities.

The Bundeswehr’s personnel management office told RND that “the actual number of applicants for military service has been declining since the beginning of 2022.”

In 2018, Berlin announced plans to increase the number of troops to 203,000 over the course of seven years. After Russia launched its military operation in Ukraine in late February, Germany has been supplying Kiev with heavy weapons, including armored vehicles and self-propelled howitzers.

However, Berlin’s rush to aid Ukraine has also revealed several problems within the Bundeswehr, such as ammunition shortages and cases of faulty equipment. German media reported last month that the country was struggling to meet its commitments under NATO due to not having enough of certain types of weapons and munitions in stock.

Why we oppose today’s planned UK space launch

 

 

By Chris Cole

Tonight’s planned space launch from Newquay ‘spaceport’ is the latest step in a new era of expansion into space by the military with the UK wholeheartedly joining a space arms race which will inevitably lead to greater risk of instability and conflict.

Space is rapidly becoming a key domain for military operations as modern wars rely heavily on space-based assets for command and control,  surveillance,  intelligence gathering, missile warning and supporting forces deployed overseas. Satellites also enable communications links for military and security forces, including communications needed to remotely fly armed drones.

Over the past two years we have seen the setting up of UK Space Command, the publication of a Defence Space Strategy outlining how the MoD will “protect the UK’s national interests in space” and the announcement of a portfolio of new military programmes to develop space assets and infrastructure.   MoD ministers have openly stated that they now determine space to be a war fighting domain.

As well as today’s planned launch – which will see at least two pairs of military satellites placed in space – ground has been broken on a new spaceport in the Shetland Isles.

Our position:
 

• Rather than this military expansion into space the UK should be upholding and extoling the virtue of the Outer Space Treaty, signed in 1967, which recognises that space is a ‘global commons’ to be used for peaceful purposes and for the benefit of all countries and humankind. The treaty was aimed at preventing national and commercial exploitation of space and the damage that would cause.  Instead of upholding that common good, the UK and other states in conjunction with a gang of billionaires – are now doing the exact opposite.

• The cost to international security and the environment of a new space arms race should be at the front of our thinking – not an almost forgotten afterthought. Billions of pounds are going to spent launching military systems into space with an untold amount of harm being done to the environment as a result. There urgently needs to be proper and detailed research undertaken into the environmental impact of a UK space programme.

• It is simply not good enough to say that if we don’t do this then others will. The UK should be upholding the principles behind the Outer Space Treaty and working with its allies to update it to make it relevant to the current context and to technological developments.

• Outer space is a region of wonder and inspiration. It continues to challenge and inspire many people who wish to explore and discover. However, a growing number of space activities are now focussing on commercial exploitation and warfighting.

• We’re calling for more public discussion and debate about this new push to exploit space for military and commercial purposes. Currently, decisions with huge implications are being made by a small elite of policymakers and wealthy entrepreneurs for their own purposes and not for the benefit of humanity.  This must change.

See our joint briefing with CND ‘For Heaven’s Sake: Examining the UK’s Militarisation of Space’

Netanyahu can’t wait to start a war in Gaza

 

By Martin Jay

Strategic Culture Foundation

 

One wonders how long we have to wait in 2023 before a new intifada begins, orchestrated entirely by the Israeli government’s dirty work.

Is there anything quite so vomit-inducing than Israel’s new government with Benjamin Netanyahu at its helm? Barely days in office and he’s already frothing at the mouth like a sick dog looking at its next meal, in this case the Gaza Strip. One wonders how long we have to wait in 2023 before a new intifada begins, orchestrated entirely by the Israeli government’s dirty work, which in 2020, broke records with almost 1000 Palestinian homes stolen at gunpoint from humble Palestinians.

Years of neglect by the West, in particular the EU which can’t even make statements condemning Israel’s atrocities have culminated in human rights abominations on a scale once thought unimaginable. Also the Ukraine war. But now Netanyahu gleans in his new role as champion thief and warlord who will almost certainly reign supreme and enamour his political legacy in 2023 by bombing the Gaza strip this year. You could put money on it.

His latest announcement that his new far-right government will impose “sanctions” on senior Palestinian officials, after he slammed a UN decision to refer Israel’s handiwork to the International Criminal Court as “despicable”, adding that Israel is “not bound” by the UN vote.

The planned Israel sanctions are a response to the UN approval of a resolution requesting the International Court of Justice to evaluate Israel’s “annexation” policies and the “legal status of the occupation.”

VIP cars, which Netanyahu will ban, gives senior PA officials easy access to Israeli cities, easy passage at Israeli checkpoints, as well as travel through Ben Gurion Airport.

Wives, children and bodyguards of the PA officials, who hold the Israeli VIP cards, are able to pass through Israeli checkpoints without inspection and travel to Jerusalem through the gates of Separation Wall.

A decision on the package of sanctions against the Palestinians is expected to be taken by the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Defence Minister, Yoav Galant, and Foreign Minister Eli Cohen in coordination with others, Israeli sources reported.

This move is an act of defiance against accountability from the UN and ICC where Western governments have failed to even bat an eyelid. For a few brief days in December, the Palestinians could dream of justice.

If the UN and ICC are serious, Israel’s impunity towards its wholesale looting of Palestinian property, not to mention its brutal treatment of Palestinians themselves, could be curtailed in 2023 as international law might be catching up with the apartheid state.

On December 30th, the UN General Assembly voted to seek the opinion of the International Court of Justice on the legality of Israel’s policies in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The Assembly voted 87-26 in favour of the move, with 53 abstentions. Western nations were divided over support for the resolution, but there was virtually unanimous support from the Islamic world, even from Arab states that have normalised relations with Israel, as well as from Russia and China.

Are we reaching a point where countries beyond what we call The West are drawing a line in the sand for Israel’s government? Possibly, given that even Arab countries which signed up to the Abraham Accords backed the decision to take Israel to The Hague. Unfortunately, this unified stance against the Netanyahu government won’t mean so much as its leaders immerse themselves with so much blinded dogma about Palestine and their daily genocide that it is more likely that Netanyahu will throw the lever and start a war again in Gaza just so as to throw up a dust screen for the media to miss the wholesale theft of property which surely will continue. If the UN and ICC are really serious, they will create a legal process though for Palestinians to get their land and houses back through a compensation scheme, rather than just make “tough love” statements condemning Israel. The silence from the EU, in particular the European Parliament, is deafening. How is it that since 2014 — the last time an EU official tried to introduce a labelling scheme for goods made in the occupied territories — that the EU has become mute when it comes to Israel’s own war crimes against Palestinians? Did the Morocco-Qatar bribery ring also extend to white-washing Israel’s human rights atrocities?

~ Martin Jay is an award-winning British journalist based in Morocco where he is a correspondent for The Daily Mail (UK) who previously reported on the Arab Spring there for CNN, as well as Euronews. From 2012 to 2019 he was based in Beirut where he worked for a number of international media titles including BBC, Al Jazeera, RT, DW, as well as reporting on a freelance basis for the UK’s Daily Mail, The Sunday Times plus TRT World.   

Here are the concessions McCarthy had to make for speakership

 

 

Kevin McCarthy approaches Gaetz and Boebert because he needed 216 votes to win. pic.twitter.com/o6VBsbwVVV

— The Republican Accountability Project (@AccountableGOP) January 7, 2023

 

By Tyler Durden

ZeroHedge

 

After four grueling days and 15 votes, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is finally Speaker of the House - but not without having made a pile of concessions to a group of hard-line Republicans who think he'll be too accommodating to uniparty interests.

During the final, 15th ballot, enough holdouts voted 'present' to bring the total required number of votes low enough for McCarthy to finally win around midnight.

Here's what McCarthy had to give up for the votes, according to The Epoch Times' Roger L. Simon, who interviewed first-year Congressman Andrew Ogles (R-TN), who has yet to be sworn in;

I spoke with Ogles by phone the night of Jan. 6, 2023, before the roll call vote during which, it was said, two of the remaining rejectionists who couldn’t accept McCarthy personally would absent themselves so that the magic number would be lowered and the new Speaker could go over the top.

For Ogles, the basis of all the negotiations was to establish the rules of the game in Congress that had been altered over the years beyond recognition. As he pointed out, the rules of a game almost always determine the winner.

He shared with me a list of some of what has been roughly negotiated to date. The devil, as always, is in the details.

1) As has been reported, it will only take a single congressperson, acting in what is known as a Jeffersonian Motion, to move to remove the Speaker if he or she goes back on their word or policy agenda.

2) A “Church” style committee will be convened to look into the weaponization of the FBI and other government organizations (presumably the CIA, the subject of the original Church Committee) against the American people.

3) Term limits will be put up for a vote.

4) Bills presented to Congress will be single subject, not omnibus with all the attendant earmarks, and there will be a 72-hour minimum period to read them.

5) The Texas Border Plan will be put before Congress. From The Hill: “The four-pronged plan aims to ‘Complete Physical Border Infrastructure,’ ‘Fix Border Enforcement Policies,’ ‘Enforce our Laws in the Interior’ and ‘Target Cartels & Criminal Organizations.'”

6) COVID mandates will be ended as will all funding for them, including so-called “emergency funding.”

7) Budget bills would stop the endless increases in the debt ceiling and hold the Senate accountable for the same.

Sunday song