By Thi Thuy Van Dinh

At 4 am on Tuesday 9th July in Seville (Spain), I woke up alerted by a text to my phone. “We had a bad night with Hurricane Beryl. Your house still stands and the critters are safe, two big trees down, no electricity, no Internet, and poor phone service.”

My children and I were visiting Andalusia, one of the oldest and most gorgeous European regions, blessed with the best food and the warmest people. This is one of my favorite places on earth, but for now, my family and I are calling South of Houston (Texas, US) home.

I panicked, being instantly seized by maternal instinct. Our entire house is run by electricity. On our return in a few days, there would be no warm food, no milk, no air conditioning, no TV, no running water, no toilet flushing. In town, neither kid activities nor story time at local libraries. These conditions are undoubtedly hard for young children who have only known comfort so far, although hundreds of millions of children are growing up in such circumstances daily.

Then I calmed down. The first thing to do should be thanking God for protecting human lives there, and for our wonderful friends and community.

I understood what happened immediately. Trees have fallen everywhere, taking down most of the grid and affecting more than a million people. It would take a few weeks to fix it. Houston would be first, of course, the crowded and business-minded urban areas will be rightly prioritized and rural areas follow after. After such largesse provided for the solar industry by successive American administrations, why has there been no money to put wires and cables underground in hurricane-prone regions?

We always have a month of canned meat and dry salami, drinking water, olive oil, lard, animal feed (we have some farm animals,) and 750 gallons of water in storage, candles, matches, and flashlights. For emergency situations like a war or a natural disaster. We have a pool conveniently built for Texan summer heat even though the filter won’t work. I can dig a hole in the garden if I want to give the kids some survival training, or I can use the pool water for toilet flushing. Our hens and ducks give us more than enough fresh eggs daily.

But I should have kept a few solar phone chargers and probably some solar panels for our well pump (solely activated by electricity). My husband should have had a better stock of gas to run our generator through the fridge and the two freezers. At least, I can still grill and the kids can help gather dry branches to make a fire and cook camping meals. After all, it is easier to survive without energy in a hot place than in a cold place.

My situation isn’t probably the worst, and I will be able to help some people around me with food and water. I will entertain the kids with games I used to play under the moonlight and the starry sky. However, with little or no gas (petrol) in town, and likely long lines at available stations, I will have to calculate our car trips well.

I told my 7-year-old what happened. He said he would fry eggs on the car and roast marshmallows on sticks. Young children are such marvelous beings. With only their imagination and innocence, they bring wonders to our world. Who knows, we might be lucky enough to catch some fireflies in a jar – I replied, nurturing his excitement. As his mother, I have the duty to minimize his suffering. Nevertheless, I would like to seize this opportunity to give him and his younger sister some duress training on life without fossil fuels – coal, gas, and oil to power modern devices – a bit like how I grew up.

Have the international, national, and non-governmental Net Zero crusaders ever lived a day without using any technology powered or facilitated by fossil fuels and their byproducts?

I would like to invite them to live here with us. I will show them that had I had solar panels on my roof, I would likely be cleaning up all of their dangerous debris around the house. Right now, a Tesla would be of less use than an ox cart in my Texan town.

But life at my homestead after Hurricane Beryl seems rather poetic. Well-prepared, a week or two without electricity might equal an ecological or soul-searching retreat with meditation time, good books on a hammock, bird-watching, simple yet exotic farm-to-table meals, and constellation identification.

For a real experience of a life without fossil fuels, climate leaders and activists should consider signing up for the sustainability internship program offered by Mr Jusper Machogu, a Kenyan farmer who was recently attacked by the BBC for his campaign on X requesting “Fossils Fuels for Africa.” Participants will learn how to grow foods without technologies powered by fossil fuels and live with a minimal impact on nature in rural Kisii.

Ploughing the land with bare hands before planting isn’t fun at all. Watering the crops regularly might well bring people closer to God with spontaneous prayers. Weeding or harvesting by squatting under the sun is tough. Even without factoring in any risk of pests, diseases. and unfavorable weather, what are the chances they would have to get out of poverty and food insecurity without cheap, reliable, abundant, and scalable energy?

Billions of subsistence families are still going through this. Worse, they continue to put their health at risk by cooking with agricultural wastes, wood sticks, and cow dung, while the Western world and their investment funds shamelessly demand poor countries and their populations to adopt intermittent, expensive, and unreliable green energies, instead of supporting fossil fuels (as well as hydropower and nuclear) production and infrastructure.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who repeatedly called to “close the door on fossil fuel era” (on International Clean Energy Day – 26 January 2024), would you live entirely and produce your own foods without fossil fuels?

United Nations Environment Program’s (UNEP) Chief Inger Andersen, who, at the closing of the 28th Climate COP (Dubai, UAE), claimed that “we know the solutions, we know what needs to be done,” would you be able to build a town for your staff without using oil, gas, and their byproducts?

How may we, as voters and taxpayers, demand that decision-makers lead by example, truly adhering to their green agenda first, before they insist that others implement it?

[…]

Via https://brownstone.org/articles/imagine-life-without-fossil-fuels/

Together: Brigitte Macron, Baron David de Rothschild, Emmanuel Macron 

Peter Koenig

It looks and feels like this past Sunday, 7 July 2024, second round French election is one of the biggest election frauds in French history, maybe even in European history.

The vote engineers have been at it in the same way they have been at it in the 2020 US elections, when by all appearance, President Trump, the Republican, but much more important, the anti-Globalist, won with a landslide. However, the Democrat, Joe Biden, an easily bought Globalist, suddenly emerged as the winner.

Similarly in France, Madame Le Pen’s Party, the National Rally (NR), is called unfairly by all mainstream as the Populist far-right, when in reality, Madame Le Pen is primarily an anti-Globalist wanting a new sovereign France, not one submissive to the European Union and by proxy to the United States, as are most members of the EU.

These two-tier elections, with a second round when no first-round absolute majority winner emerges, are tailor-made for fraud. Because between the two elections, the vote-manipulators and election engineers go to work with well-refined techniques and tools, having observed people’s election behavior during the first round.

These parallels can and MUST be noted throughout the Western world.

There is, of course as usual, no proof of manipulation. Not yet. The sophistication in this trade has achieved extraordinary technological IT and Artificial Intelligence (AI) skills.

Yet, the election results after Sunday, 7 July, just smell very bad. All odds were broken. The “National Rally”, excelled with 34% of the votes in the first round, just ONE week earlier on June 30.  

All predictions gave the NR a large advantage for the second round – even an absolute majority was projected.

That did not happen. Madame Le Pen’s party came in third after the second vote. Behind the New Popular Front (NPF) Coalition Party and Macron’s Centrists, Ensemble.

What did Russia do to France? Or to Germany? Or to the UK? Or to the European Union? No harm at all. Just seeking friendship and alliances.

Indeed, Russia is only seeking peace and friendly relations – seeking a normalization of the Eurasian continent, a move also strongly supported by China’s President Xi Jinping. Presidents Putin and Xi are very much interested in peace with Ukraine. But the NATO-West does not allow it, it is not interested. They want more war, and eventually conquer Russia. This is a ludicrous dream or quest of the West, over 200 years old. They have not achieved it, and will never achieve it.

In the meantime, the war industry becomes richer and richer – as people die, families are destroyed, the future of societies are devastated. Of no importance. The hegemon and its war industry must continue making money, and the world must continue being destabilized, and the world must continue being depopulated – and wars are just one instrument to do so.

European politics and European politicians are sick beyond rescue.

The left wing New Popular Front (NPF) won apparently 188 seats, but no absolute majority (289 seats). In fact, none of the alliances won an absolute majority.

The NPF consists of a loose coalition of several left-wing parties, ranging from the Socialists to the Greens, the Communists and the radical left France Unbowed, and other, minor parties. How reliable is this alliance? Not very, or not at all.

It is a make-shift and make-believe alliance to keep the Globalist and warmonger in place; the WEF-obedient, EU and Washington vassal submissive to the hegemon: Mr. Macron, also called “Little Napoleon”.

Ensemble, the centrist Party of Emmanuel Macron, won 161 seats. Yet, Macron is slated to remain President with no majority — a fake and powerless President.

What is wrong with this picture?

On 30 June, the National Rally winning 34% of the votes was way ahead. Macron’s party, the Centrist Ensemble, came in second with only 22% of the votes. Not unexpectedly because French citizens were and remain upset and tired about Macron’s globalist policies, favoring immigrants over French citizens, spending billions and billions of taxpayers moneys to support Ukraine, a lost cause – that any schoolboy could have told you from the very beginning.

Spending French money abroad, instead of at home, where social services and physical infrastructure crumble and would badly need it, is of course not very popular. Not in the US, not in any Western country, if you ask the people, not the corrupted politicians, but the PEOPLE.

By the way, that is how the Roman Empire eventually collapsed, and others – spending domestic money abroad for foreign conquests while the homeland rots to pieces and into the ground.

Shortly after the June 30 first round elections, the Greens and Socialist affirmed in no uncertain terms that they would never go into an alliance with the Communists. And what do they do? Just to avoid that a National Rally coalition could take an absolute majority, they must have been ordered, or bought to collaborate with the Communists. But as mentioned before, it is not a stable alliance.

At least Macron’s Premier, Gabriel Attal  was honest to himself. He resigned. Rather than working in an unhealthy, artificial, and unsustainable alliance, he decided to step down. Bravo!

What’s next?

Rumors have it that this new multiple-coalition France will be ungovernable – and Macron may have to call early elections. Of course, the powers-that-be will do whatever they can to avoid in Europe as in the US an anti-Globalist being elected. One who wants to make his country, the People’s country, Great Again, a sovereign partner for other sovereign partners, is not desirable, not acceptable.

Even though, in an honest and truly democratic election, this is what over 90% of the people want, if you really and truthfully let them choose. They want their own country, not a subordination to Brussels cum Washington.

[…]

Via https://www.globalresearch.ca/french-fraudulent-disaster-elections/5862026

By Michael Snyder

Okay, so we are supposed to believe that a 20-year-old kid “who was turned away from his high school rifle club for being a ‘comically bad’ shot” and that had no military training whatsoever was able to pull this off all by himself?  We are being told that it was “a mistake” that the ideal location for a sniper to be located was left unguarded, and somehow Thomas Matthew Crooks was able to identify this oversight and position himself accordingly.  Just 150 yards away from where Donald Trump would be speaking, Crooks was able to climb on to a roof with a rifle and stay there for nearly half an hour before he finally started shooting at Trump.  Either this was a cataclysmic security failure, or Crooks had some help somewhere along the way.

According to a former Secret Service agent who was in charge of Vice President Al Gore’s security detail during the Clinton administration, there should have been Secret Service personnel on that roof and “someone dropped the ball”…

Before a high-profile person like Trump attends an event and needs Secret Service protection, the agency conducts a security survey that also takes nearby buildings into account.

William Pickle, a former special agent in charge of the Secret Service’s vice presidential protection division who oversaw Vice President Al Gore’s detail, told USA Today that something was clearly missed. “We know who’s there, why they’re there, we have control over those buildings,” Pickle said. “It seems like somewhere in this security survey, someone dropped the ball on those particular buildings.”

Was this just a mistake, or was it done on purpose?

Former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino is claiming that an “unimpeachable source” has told him that someone was supposed to be on that roof but never showed up…

NEW: Dan Bongino says an “unimpeachable source” tells him that someone was supposed to be on the roof where Thomas Crooks shot from but “didn’t show up.”

Bongino also claimed that the Biden admin is telling the USSS director to keep her mouth shut if she wants to keep her job.

“According to my source, that roof was supposed to be a police post… [there] was so supposed to be someone there.”

“They’re now making up excuses saying the pitch of the roof. My source says to me that no one knows why the post didn’t show up.”

“I was also told that the USSS director has been given instructions from the administration and the DHS secretary: ‘If you wanna keep your job, you’ll keep your mouth shut about this.’”

We need to identify who was supposed to be posted on that roof, and we need to determine exactly why that individual did not show up.

And why is the director of the agency being told to shut up about this?

Something does not smell right.

Just before Trump was shot, members of the crowd could see a man with a gun on that roof, and they tried to warn the police…

According to several media outlets who did their own analysis of eyewitness videos, crowd members had spotted the suspect on the roof about two minutes before the shooting happened and frantically tried to warn police.

“The police are down there running around on the ground. We’re like, ‘Hey man, there’s a guy on the roof with a rifle,’” a witness, who called himself Greg, told BBC News. “And the police were like, ‘Huh, what?’ Like they didn’t know what was going on.”

One eyewitness was absolutely amazed that Trump was not pulled off the stage after a potential threat had been identified…

‘I’m thinking to myself ‘Why is Trump still speaking, why have they not pulled him off the stage,” he said. ‘The next thing you know, five shots ring out.’

This has raised serious questions around whether the two teams had completely failed to spot the shooter until it was too late and how Crooks was able to fire at least eight shots before he was taken down.

Is the Secret Service really this incompetent?

It just seems so unlikely that they could really be this inept.  One of the best snipers in the entire world, Dallas Alexander, is entirely convinced “that the shooter had help”…

“I’m very familiar with the layout of these types of things and what the jobs should be. And yesterday, what happened, I have no doubt in my mind that the shooter had help from somewhere within an agency, an organization, or the government,” said Alexander.

“The second I saw that aerial photo of what they were saying happened, it immediately made no sense to me. You cannot, in broad daylight, get onto a rooftop within what looked like maybe a couple of hundred yards. You can’t get into that position with a gun when there’s a president speaking. It cannot be done. You don’t even need to be a sniper to know that it’s the most f—king obvious thing, the most obvious place in the whole world.”
“So something happened, and I’m not pointing fingers at anyone. It’s too obvious that this guy had help getting there. So whether someone turned a blind eye or it was strategically planned, I mean, it had to be planned to a certain level because events like that and security like that, it’s not a small thing. And that is the most obvious place to be.”

U.S. Representative Cory Mills also served as a sniper, and during a recent interview he shocked a CNN host by also suggesting that Crooks probably had help…

Former sniper and defense contractor Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL) triggered a CNN host on Tuesday after suggesting that “intentional” failures may have resulted in the assassination attempt on Donald Trump on Saturday.

“The amount of negligence, the amount of mistakes that was made here, I have a very difficult time not leaning myself towards this was intentional, as opposed to fecklessness,” Mills told anchor Kate Bolduan.

“If I have a building 160 yards perfectly adjacent to the stage, that’s an obvious threat,” he continued. “Especially with an elevated position that has overwatch? That’s a sniper’s paradise.“

Will we ever get the truth?

I don’t know.

But as Matt Walsh has aptly pointed out, the official story does not seem to be holding up…

Here’s the official story so far:

a random 20 year old acting completely alone walked within 150 yards of a presidential campaign rally with a rifle, climbed onto a rooftop in full view of Secret Service snipers, set up his shot and fired without anyone intervening and with no help from anyone.

This 20 year old is also so politically radical as to attempt an assassination and yet not radical enough to have ever posted any political writings or commentary on any social media site ever in his life.

He also wrote no manifesto and left behind no indication about why he did it.

But when has the government ever been good at investigating itself?

And potential evidence is already been washed away.  In fact, an FBI agent was literally photographed power washing the crime scene…

Maybe this particular agent was ordered to wash the shooter’s blood off the roof.

But to me it doesn’t make sense to get rid of evidence while so much is still unknown.

In my career, I have learned that it always pays to follow the evidence wherever it leads.

Of course in this case we may be witnessing a major league cover up.

If Trump’s shooter did have help, those that were involved will want to cover their tracks as rapidly as they can.

[…]

Via https://www.activistpost.com/2024/07/did-trumps-shooter-have-help.html

So, on July 12th, a day before the assassination attempt, Austin Private Wealth reported a short position nominally equivalent to 12 million shares. It is huge: it represents approximately one-seventh of Trump’s ownership in the same company, or 16% of all available stock float not held by major insiders.

Is that a big deal? For my nonfinancial readers, here is a little introduction to puts. Austin Private Wealth’s position is in put options. Puts are financial instruments whose holder receives a payment if the underlying stock falls below the agreed price (the strike price) by a certain date. In such a case, the put option holder receives the difference. The more the stock falls, the more the put holder gains.

The standard American contract size is 100 shares, so Austin Private Wealth held approximately 120,000 put options, exposing it to potential gain linked to 12,000,000 shares of $DJT.

A sudden demise of Truth Social’s central figure, Donald Trump, would make the DJT 2.13%↑ stock worthless, making Austin Private Wealth a beneficiary of a gigantic payoff. Depending on the strike price, it could be a couple hundred million dollars.

What do we know about this odd financial bet? One thing to note is that it was made sometime before it was reported on the 13F filing: form 13F must be filed after the end of the quarter, and in this case, refers to the position as of the end of the second quarter, or 6/30/2024.

Austin Private Wealth is a money management firm catering to well-off individuals. Therefore, it is possible that the idea of initiating an unusually large put position belonged to one of its clients or just one money manager. Here’s the picture of their top managers, so you can play a guessing game of which of them possibly came up with this idea:

It is also plausible that this extremely unusual position is a coincidence. There are many reasons why TruthSocial does not have a bright long-term future. However, the timing of this unusually large put option purchase raises some questions. Had the assassination succeeded, Austin Private Wealth would have reaped a windfall! The only reason Trump is alive is that he turned his head away in the last split second.

I am not new to options trading and made some money from Moderna puts that I purchased in 2021. People buy and sell options for all kinds of reasons. However, Austin Private Wealth held a position far beyond the size of typical speculative put positions.

What do you think? Is a giant put position, which would benefit from a sudden drop in DJT stock, initiated so close to the assassination attempt, just another unrelated coincidence?

[…]

Via https://www.igor-chudov.com/p/a-huge-financial-bet-against-donald?r=83qir

Via https://twitter.com/DrLoupis/status/1813570985225822431

Screenshots / Social Media, Cropped by Resist the Mainstream

Shocking new information has come to light regarding the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old gunman responsible for the attack, was reportedly on law enforcement’s radar hours before he opened fire.

The gunman’s father reportedly told CNN he believed his son had gone to practice at a local shooting range, expecting him to return by 1 pm.

Crooks had also informed his boss that he needed the day off on Saturday, telling colleagues he would see them on Sunday.

Fox News reported that Crooks’ parents had contacted local law enforcement in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, expressing concern about their son’s whereabouts on the day of the rally.

Crooks was spotted at the rally’s security screening area approximately three hours before the shooting, Daily Mail reported.

[…]

Via https://resistthemainstream.com/why-thomas-crooks-parents-called-cops-on-day-of-trump-shooting-revealed/

The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonial Conquest and Resistance

By Rashid Khalidi

Profile Books Ltd (2024)

Book Review

Authored by the son of a negotiator in the 1990s Madrid and Oslo negotiations, Khaidi organizes his book as as a series of six wars against Palestinian Arabs, the first dating 1917-1939.* Although he’s is highly critical of British and (and later US) foreign policy for systematically denying Palestinians any right of self-determination, he’s also highly critical of other Arab states (who have a long history of denying self-government to their own subjects) and Yasser Arafat and other PLO leaders for denying Palestinian residents of input into the Madrid and Oslo peace negotiations.*

The book also contains an Afterword about Israel’s current war on Gaza, with has mobilized support for Palestine, throughout the Western and Arab world, as well as the global South. At present, Khalidi estimates that approximately 5 million Palestinians live in Israel and its occupied Palestinian territories and 5 million live in exile.

The most interesting parts sections the book concern the Israeli invasion of Lebanon In 1982 (Khalidi and his young family lived in Beirut at the time) and the peace negotiations (in which his father served as an advisor to Palestinian negotiators) leading to the 1993 Oslo Accord.

1909: Khalidi starts his chronology in 1909, when Palestine was stil a colony of the Ottoman Empire. At the time the first Jewish immigrants (fleeing brutal repression in Eastern Europe) arrive (40,000 in 1909-1914), Jews represent 6% of the population and Jews, Arabs and Christians lived comfortably side by side.

1917:  The Balfour Declaration, signaling British intent to establish a Jewish state in British- controlled Palestine, issued on November 2, 1917.

1936-38: Palestine remains a British colony until 1947, subject to brutal military repression when they protest eviction by Jewish immigrants from the farmland they work. Because European Jews fleeing Nazi persecution are denied entry to the to the UK and and US, many flee to Palestine, where the Jewish population increases to 18%. An armed rebellion in 1936 lasted two years it could only be quashed by massive military force.

1947-48: Ongoing terrorist attacks by Jewish paramilitary groups (Stern Gang, Haganah, Irgun) force the British to withdraw from Israel in 1947, leaving the newly created United Nations in charge of Palestine and the formal process of independence. The original UN resolution grants 56% of historic Palestine to the self-governing state of Israel (despite Jews representing a minority of Israel’s population) and 44% Palestinian Arab state tsubject to military occupation by the king of Jordan.

Jewish paramilitary groups begin ethnically cleansing many Arab-assigned sectors of Palestine prior to 1947, a process that evicts 300,000 Arabs from Palestine’s major cities prior to the UN-designated date for Israeli independence (May 15, 1948) and 400,000 shortly afterwards. They flee to Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, the West Bank (then under Jordanian control) and Gaza (then controlled by Egypt).

Palestinian refugees with means, skills or relatives in Arab countries (a large majority) come to live outside refugee camps.**

1959: Fatah (the party which currently runs the Palestinian Authority) formed in Kuwait 1959 by group of Palestinian engineers, teachers and professionals headed by Arafat.

1964: Because the Arab states fear retaliation by Israel, they oppose Palestinian attacks on Israeli border regions, and the Arab League forms the PLO (in Egypt) in the hope of reigning in Fatah. Meanwhile the Egyptian and Jordanian military harass, arrest and torture Gaza militants who stage attacks on Israel.

1967: Following Israel’s 1967 Six Day War war on Egypt, Jordan and Syria, Egypt and Jordan are forced to withdraw from Gaza and the West Bank, which have been Israeli colonies every since.

1969:  the Cairo Agreement puts the PLO in charge of security in the Lebanese refugee camps and by the start of the Lebanese Civil War (1973-1990), the PLO (with 15,000 15,000 armed members) represents the largest military force in many parts of Lebanon.

1982:  Israel invades Lebanon and embarks on seven week siege of Beirut. They make withdrawal of all PLO troops a condition for ending the siege. They latter resettle in numerous Arab capitols, with the PLO leadership in Tunis.

1987:  indirectly empowered by the PLO’s political decline, a secret Unified National leadership launches the First Intifada, consisting of mainly peaceful strikes, boycotts, demonstrations, and subject to brutal Israeli military repression.

1993: first Oslo Accord signed, negotiated mainly by PLO leaders with no direct knowledge of actual conditions in the West Bank and Gaza. Creates the Palestinian Authority, which has limited political input into any aspects of governance other than security, and takes over from Israel the task persecuting, arresting and torturing Palestinian militants. Conditions become much worse for everyone but a few Palestinian authority leaders.

1994:  Arafat returns to Palestine

2000: Worsening repression leads to Second Intifada, resulting in Arafat’s imprisonment in his compound until his death (most likely by polonium poisoning) in 2004.

2005: Abbas elected to 4 year term as president.

2006:  After boycotting the 2005 election, Hamas win 74 seats to Fatah’s 45 seats in the Palestinian Authority legislature. Refusing to accept Hamas as part of the PA government, a US trained Fatah-controlled security force invades Gaza and makes an unsuccessful attempt to unseat Hamas.

*For most of his life, Arafat ran the PLO in exile from Lebanon or Tunis. He only resided in Palestine for 10 years (1994-2004).

**Breakdown by country:

• In Jordan, of 2.2 million originally registered with UNRWA, only 370,000 remain in camp today (The king of Jordan granted Jordanian citizenship to all Palestinian and they now represent the majority of Jordan’s population.)
• In the West Bank only 1/4 of the 830,000 registered with UNRWA remain in camps.
• In Syria, only 1/4 of the 550,000 refugees remain in camps
• In Lebanon, fewer than half the 470,000 refugees remain in camps.