Month: December 2024

The billionaire has openly supported the right-wing AfD party as Germany’s “last spark of hope”

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz took a veiled swipe at tech billionaire Elon Musk during his annual New Year’s Eve address, warning that the country’s future will be decided by its citizens, not the owners of social media platforms.

In his televised message on Tuesday, Scholz emphasized national unity and called for solidarity amidst economic challenges. However, he also addressed a more contentious issue: alleged “foreign interference” in German politics, particularly by Musk, who has openly supported the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party as the country’s “last spark of hope.”

“Where Germany goes from here will be decided by you – the citizens. It will not be decided by the owners of social media channels,” Scholz said, without calling the X owner out by name.

“In our debates, one might be forgiven for thinking that the more extreme an opinion is, the more attention it garners. But it won’t be the person who yells the loudest who will decide where Germany goes from here. Rather, that will be up to the vast majority of reasonable and decent people,” he added.

We are a country that stands together. Also when times are tough, as we know they are. Many are wondering where we go from here. My answer: With mutual respect, trust, interest and engagement, we can make 2025 a good year. #Newyearsaddress pic.twitter.com/pybHh2PAaU

— Bundeskanzler Olaf Scholz (@Bundeskanzler) December 31, 2024

Musk’s recent endorsements of the AfD, which is under surveillance by domestic intelligence for its alleged “extremist” views, has drawn widespread criticism from German officials. The billionaire, a key adviser to US President-elect Donald Trump, has been vocal on social media and in opinion pieces, praising the AfD and criticizing mainstream German politicians.

Read more

Musk labels German chancellor ‘Oaf Schitz’

Friedrich Merz, head of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), called Musk’s endorsement “overbearing and presumptuous.” Lars Klingbeil, a co-chairman of Scholz’s Social Democrats, went further, comparing Musk to Russian President Vladimir Putin, claiming that both aim to weaken Germany and plunge it into chaos.

A government spokeswoman, Christiane Hoffmann, stated at a news conference on Monday that while everyone has the right to an opinion, Musk is attempting to influence the German election.

Scholz’s coalition government collapsed in November over disagreements regarding Ukraine aid and economic policies. The chancellor lost a confidence vote in December, leading to the dissolution of parliament and the scheduling of snap elections on February 23.

Read more

German government accuses Musk of election interference

The chancellor’s New Year’s Eve address also touched on other pressing issues, including Germany’s flagging economy, the recent attack on a Christmas market in Magdeburg, and the upcoming 35th anniversary of German reunification. Scholz urged Germans to resist manipulation and “not let ourselves be played off each other.”

According to Statista, 56% of Germans believe Scholz has done a poor job, while 37% are satisfied with his performance. This rating reflects concerns over Germany’s economic stagnation, his migration policies, and a general perception of ineffective governance.

READ MORE: Musk’s big bet: Could Germans kick out their liberal elites?

The AfD is currently polling second with around 20%, behind the CDU/CSU bloc at about 31%. However, a strong performance by the AfD could make forming a government more challenging, as all mainstream parties have ruled out a coalition with it.

31 December 2024, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

On December 27th, HUD (the Department of Housing and Urban Development) headlined obscurely (perhaps so as not to draw attention to it) “HUD Releases January 2024 Point-In-Time Count Report” and reported: “The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) today released its 2024 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report: Part 1: Point-in-Time Estimates, an annual snapshot of the number of individuals in shelters, temporary housing, and unsheltered settings. The report found more than 770,000 [1 out of every 448] people were experiencing homelessness on a single night in [it was, as explained on page 15 of the detailed report, the average from among the final 10 days of] January 2024, an 18% increase from 2023.” It was the all-time high, but America’s population likewise was at an all-time high, and, for example, back in 2010 (when America’s population was 10% less than today’s), there were 649,917 homeless Americans on a typical night. So, on a per-capita basis, America’s performance on homelessness is horrible, and it’s not getting any better. If anything, it’s getting a bit worse, over the long term.

Just as a point of comparison, Russia had 64,077 homeless in 2010 but 11,285 homeless in 2021. The U.S., as I said, had 649,917 homeless in 2010. It had 582,462 homeless in 2022.

Russia had 144,237,000 population; U.S. had 333,288,000.

If America in 2010 had the same percentage homeless as Russia did in 2010, it would have had 144,660 homeless in 2010. If America in 2021 had the same percentage homeless as Russia did in 2021, then it would have had 26,666 homeless in 2021.

But the U.S. Government calls Russia an ‘autocracy’ and a ‘dictatorship’, and is trying to overthrow its Government, by declaring itself to be a “democracy.”

On December 31st, Gallup headlined a press-release “12 Threats to American Democracy in 2025” and linked to that day’s edition of their “Front Page.” It reported a “Record-Low Percentage of Americans Satisfied With the Way Democracy Is Working in the U.S.” — down from 60% until 1990, to 28% today. It reported “United States Lags Behind OECD for Confidence in Courts” — whereas the OECD median has been around 54% since 2009, America’s has declined from 61% then to 35% now. It reported that “Confidence in U.S. Judicial System Declines More Than Any Other Institution” — from 61% in 2009, to 35% now. (However, for the entire U.S. Government, the decline was from 50% down to 26% now, which was even steeper than merely for the Courts.) Then it broke down the current job-ratings that the American people gave to 10 divisions of the U.S. Government, and every one of them were abysmal. Then it reported the “State of Americans’ Trust in the Mass Media” — which declined from 72% in 1976 down to 31% today. And then it showed that almost every President since Truman received higher approval-ratings when he came into office than he did when he left office. So: ever since 1945, we’ve actually been living under a dictatorship, and only the names of the leaders have changed but the policies remained basically the same and never what the leader had been promising. The 12th item is also interesting: “U.S. Employees’ Perceptions of Their Organization Caring About Their Wellbeing” — it was around 25% until 2019, then catapulted up to 49% in 2020, plunged down to 21% in 2022, and is now 24%. So: whereas Americans have long thought that their employers didn’t much care about them, Americans’ disillusion about their Government has been steady ever since at least 2009 and basically since the 1970s. It’s a long time to be living under a dictatorship, and the American people are increasingly recognizing that we do. So: when Gallup headlined “12 Threats to American Democracy in 2025” the only REAL ‘threat’ (to America’s Deep State, which actually rules us) is that Americans are increasingly coming to recognize that this is no democracy and that the place where regime-change is needed the most is right here at home. (And THEN, our Government wouldn’t be perpetrating it abroad like it has so routinely been doing ever since 1947.)

On December 29th, I headlined and documented “America the Brutal”, and Gallup’s polls seem to be showing that Americans are coming to recognize that it is so. The U.S. Government’s job-approval ratings have already gone so low so that it’s hard to imagine a future for this Government other than either a Second American Revolution or else a World War Three in which a startlingly high percentage of Americans will be reluctant to support the U.S. Government against its alleged ‘enemies’. That’s how low America’s billionaires have driven it.

PS: If you like this article, please email it to all your friends or otherwise let others know about it. None of the U.S.-and-allied ‘news’-media will likely publish it (nor link to it, since doing that might also hurt them with Google or etc.). I am not asking for money, but I am asking my readers to spread my articles far and wide, because I specialize in documenting what the Deep State is constantly hiding — what the ‘news’-media ignore if they can, and deny if they must. This is, in fact, today’s samizdat.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.

Ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s gov’t is accused of killing hundreds of protesters last summer.

Meeting comes as new authorities seek to reassure minorities of their safety in post-Assad Syria.

A judge has ordered 16 military members to remain behind bars while a probe into the deaths continues.

 

In tonight’s edition, a fierce debate has emerged in Tunisia over how to repatriate fighters who joined extremist groups in Syria and their children.

Also, a new animal park in Gabon that used to be frequented only by ousted president Ali Bongo and his powerful friends and acquaintances is now open to all. 

And after a busy 12 months trying to scratch the surface of the endless stories about and in Africa, we take a whistle-stop tour through some of the team helping us do so.

Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara said in an end-of-year address on Tuesday that the French military would hand over control of its military base in the capital Abidjan in January 2025 and noted that Ivorians should be proud of their own armed forces.

Washington has claimed that the ‘Center for Geopolitical Expertise’ has interfered in the 2024 election by using “AI tools”

The US Treasury Department expanded sanctions against Russian and Iranian entities on Tuesday. In particular it added to its blacklist the ‘Center for Geopolitical Expertise’ (CGE), a think tank founded by a Russian philosopher, Aleksandr Dugin, claiming that CGE had allegedly waged a disinformation campaign targeting this year’s presidential elections won by Donald Trump.

Washington also separately put the organization’s director, Valery Korovin, on the sanctions list as well, accusing him of overseeing the supposed disinformation campaign. According to the Treasury’s statement, the CGE was allegedly “directly” working with Russian military intelligence, the GRU, and used its financial and logistical support to facilitate a massive interference campaign targeting the November vote.

Read more

West’s hounding of Russia is futile – Putin

The list of measures allegedly taken by the CGE reportedly ranged from “creation and publication of deepfakes” and circulating “disinformation about candidates” to using AI systems and maintaining a “network of at least 100 websites used in its disinformation operations” as well as an “Ai-support server.” 

The Treasury did not provide any specific examples of the CGE’s supposedly malicious activities. Neither did it specify whether its purported actions had had any influence on the election campaign or the voting results. It only mentioned that the think tank allegedly “manipulated a video it used to produce baseless accusations concerning a 2024 vice presidential candidate to sow discord amongst the US electorate.”

Read more

EU countries pushing back against US sanctions on Russian bank – Bloomberg

Russian philosopher and political commenter Aleksandr Dugin has been described by Western media as ‘Putin’s brain’ for his supposed influence on the Russian president and the impact of his work on the country’s elite in general. A fervent critic of the West and a foreign-policy hawk, Dugin passionately supports Russia’s military operation against Ukraine. The philosopher was put on the US sanctions list as early as 2015 over his support for Donetsk and Lugansk at that time.

Tuesday’s sanctions list also included an Iranian entity accused by Washington of being an Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps subsidiary and of targeting the US elections as well.

Neither CGE nor the Russian officials have commented on the development yet.
Washington and its allies have imposed a record 22,000 sanctions on Moscow since 2014 when a Western-backed coup in Kiev prompted Crimea to rejoin Russia and led to a conflict between Ukraine and the Donbass republics. The number of measures spiked after the launch of the special military operation in February 2022.

In early December, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the West’s sanctions campaign against his nation was futile and senseless since Russia has successfully withstood the pressure so far and “no blackmail or attempts from outside to hinder us will ever yield results.”

The NYPD commissioner has promised a “tremendous amount of police resources” on Tuesday night

The New York Police Department (NYPD) has deployed drones, bomb squads, and hundreds of extra officers ahead of the city’s famous New Year’s Eve celebrations. The force’s commissioner said that officers are operating on high alert.

Speaking at a press conference on Monday, Commissioner Jessica Tisch said that while there are no credible threats to the New Year’s party at Times Square, the NYPD has been operating in a higher state of alert since October and will continue to do so through Tuesday night.

Tisch declared a “heightened threat environment” in early October, ahead of the one-year anniversary of Hamas’ attack on Israel, despite admitting that there were no concrete threats linked to the Palestinian militants or their sympathizers.

”We remain vigilant,” Tisch told reporters on Monday. “The public can expect to see a tremendous amount of police resources deployed throughout the area and across the city. That includes members of some of our elite specialized units.”

Read more

Foreigners in German city advised to avoid going out alone at night

In addition to 600 newly-qualified officers, the NYPD will deploy K-9 teams with bomb-sniffing dogs, helicopters, drones, and water units, the commissioner said. Precautions have also been taken to prevent ramming attacks using vehicles, like the fatal incident that occurred in early December at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg.

”Every year we formulate our plan based on incidents that are happening around the world,” NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence and Counterterrorism said at Monday’s press conference. “Christmas markets…they’re a persistent, high-risk target, and so, frankly, are New Year’s Eve celebrations around the world.”

More than a million visitors are expected to pack Times Square and the surrounding blocks to watch the crystal ball drop at the stroke of midnight. Ahead of the crowds, NYPD officers have welded manhole covers shut and removed mailboxes, vending machines, and garbage cans, Tisch said.

Extra security measures were also put in place across Europe, with 3,000 extra police officers to be deployed in Berlin and 10,000 police and military personnel mobilized in Paris, according to authorities in each city.

President Zelensky said his country would not allow Russia to “earn additional billions on our blood”.