By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: February 3, 2025 ~

Elon Musk is the billionaire CEO of the publicly-traded EV company, Tesla. As such, under corporate law, he owes a Duty of Loyalty to Tesla. Notwithstanding this well-established law, Musk is engaged in an array of other corporate endeavors outside of Tesla, including being the CEO of SpaceX, a private rocket company.

SpaceX is a major federal contractor to NASA and the Department of Defense. See our report: The U.S. Government Is Plowing Billions into SpaceX, Overlooking Drug Use, Sex Parties, and Elon Musk’s Coziness with Putin.

Now, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, and a host of other media outlets are reporting that Musk has used his 2-week old position as the head of a Donald Trump faux agency – the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) – which Trump created out of thin air last month by Executive Order, to have his DOGE operatives gain access to the U.S. Treasury’s $6 trillion payment system and snoop on its payments. This means that Musk’s DOGE hires could potentially access confidential information on government contract payments made to Musk’s competitors as well as highly confidential payments related to national security.

There are media reports this morning that Musk has begun to cancel payments to some federal contractors.

One of the individuals engaged in this snooping on behalf of Musk, according to reporting at the New York Times, is Tom Krause, the CEO of Cloud Software Group, which describes itself as “Developer of enterprise infrastructure software” whose platform encompasses, among other things, “business intelligence.”

Krause is still listed at the website of Cloud Software Group as its current CEO, as well as using that same title on his personal LinkedIn page. So how, exactly, did he gain security clearance to snoop on this vast U.S. government payment system. Why is the Board of Directors of Cloud Software Group allowing him to engage in this legally dubious undertaking?

Cloud Software Group’s major owners include Vista Equity Partners and Elliott Investment Management, according to an interview with Krause at SpencerStuart.

The founder, Chairman and CEO of Vista Equity Partners is billionaire Robert F. Smith, whose net worth is pegged at $10.8 billion according to Forbes. In 2020, during the first Trump administration, Smith was charged by the U.S. Department of Justice with engaging in a massive 15-year international tax fraud scheme. Smith was given a non-prosecution agreement and settled the matter for $139 million after cooperating with prosecutors.

The other major co-owner of Krause’s firm, Elliott Investment Management, is the giant hedge fund founded by billionaire Paul Singer, who remains at Elliott as President, Co-Chief Executive Officer, and Co-Chief Investment Officer. Singer gave the Trump-supporting Make America Great Again Inc. PAC $5 million in one check in August of last year.

In addition, and notably, Singer is also Chairman of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, a right-wing think tank. William Barr, one of Donald Trump’s Attorneys General during his first term as President, is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Manhattan Institute. Megadonors to Trump and Republicans, including hedge fund titan John Paulson and former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos in Trump’s first term, also serve on the Manhattan Institute’s Board of Trustees.

Senator Ron Wyden, the Ranking Member of the Senate Finance Committee has sent a letter to Trump’s recently confirmed U.S. Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, raising national security concerns about the snooping by DOGE inside the Treasury’s payment system and demanding answers in short order.

[…]

Via https://wallstreetonparade.com/2025/02/as-elon-musk-begins-shutting-down-payments-to-federal-contractors-a-strange-money-trail-emerges-to-his-operatives-inside-the-u-s-treasurys-payment-system/

[ED NOTE: NOT SATIRE]

By Jim Hoft

President Donald Trump held a press conference Tuesday night with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from Israel.

During the press conference President Trump announced an unexpected and absolutely shocking development.

The US will take over the Gaza Strip and redevelop it.

Trump’s Gaza Strip, according to Grok pic.twitter.com/wq8sAdcINv

— Brent Scher (@BrentScher) February 5, 2025

[…]

Via https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/02/breaking-trump-announces-us-will-take-gaza-strip/

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. © Getty Images / Mert Gokhan Koc/ dia

RT

The US president earlier said he understands Russia’s position that Ukraine should not be part of the military bloc

Russia welcomes the statements made by US President Donald Trump regarding Ukraine’s NATO membership ambitions, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said. Trump is the first Western leader to admit that it was wrong to support Kiev’s plans to join the military bloc, the diplomat said on Wednesday.

Trump stated last month that he understands the Russian stance that Ukraine should not be part of NATO. Speaking to reporters in Florida, the US president said Moscow’s position had long been “written in stone,” but that his predecessor, Joe Biden, had ignored it, which contributed to the current conflict.

“Somewhere along the line, Biden said, ‘[Ukraine], they should be able to join NATO.’ Well, then Russia has somebody right on their doorstep, and I can understand their feelings about that,” Trump added.

Speaking at an ambassadors’ roundtable on Ukraine, Lavrov said Trump’s comments suggest Washington may finally be ready to address issues linked to Ukraine’s NATO bid and the bloc’s eastward expansion.

“President Trump bluntly said that one of the main mistakes was drawing Ukraine into NATO, and that if he had been in power the past four years, the conflict would not have happened,” Lavrov noted.

“For the first time, a Western leader… the leader of the entire Western world, uttered these words, which we welcome because for the first time the problem of NATO was identified as something that the US is ready to discuss seriously,” he added. Lavrov reiterated Moscow’s stance that Ukraine’s NATO aspirations were a root cause of the current conflict, saying that warnings not to encourage these aspirations either fell on deaf ears or were met with “duplicity” and “hypocrisy” by Western politicians.

“The root cause is the conscious, long-term desire and… practical steps of the West to create direct military threats to Russia on our borders, on the territory of Ukraine, and drawing it into NATO. We have raised this issue repeatedly, demanding NATO honor its pledge not to expand eastward, but all was in vain,” Lavrov said. He suggested Trump’s remarks could signal a shift in US policy, which he called crucial as “Washington is the one who will ultimately make the decisions” regarding Ukraine’s NATO membership.

Moscow has long opposed Ukraine’s NATO aspirations, insisting any settlement of the ongoing conflict must include Kiev’s neutrality and demilitarization. Ukraine, however, considers its membership a strategic foreign and security policy objective, and has recently claimed that it sees its admission to the US-led military bloc as a security guarantee to agree to a ceasefire with Moscow. While NATO last year declared that Ukraine was on an “irreversible” path to joining the bloc, its members warned that Kiev would have to meet certain conditions first, such as resolving the conflict with Moscow.

[…]

Via https://www.rt.com/russia/612216-lavrov-trump-nato-ukraine/

Photo credit: depositphotos.com

By Jim Hoft

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has reportedly extended a buyout offer to its entire workforce.

This follows President Trump’s proposal to encourage millions of federal workers to resign by February 6 in exchange for pay and benefits lasting until September 30.

Trump is offering the buyouts to make sure all federal workers are “on board with the new administration’s plan to have federal employees in office,” CNBC reported.

Only 6% of all federal workers actually work full-time in the office!

Trump’s offer does not include postal workers, military, immigration officials or people in national security roles.

A senior administration official disclosed that over 20,000 federal workers have accepted Trump’s buyout, a figure representing about one percent of the federal workforce and falling short of the White House’s target of five to ten percent.

“We expect more to come,” the administration official explained. “If you see what’s happening at USAID, it’s just one piece of the puzzle.”

According to a report first released by the Wall Street Journal, the new CIA Director, John Ratcliffe, has spearheaded these changes, which include a generous eight-months pay and benefits package for any employee opting for resignation.

[…]

Via https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/02/mass-exodus-horizon-cia-offers-buyouts-entire-workforce/

by Eric Margolis

[…]

Gaza is a ‘mess’ said President Trump and must be ‘cleaned up.’ 2.1 million human refuse are befouling this potentially prime beachside property. `We just clean out that whole thing’ quoth the Great Developer.

Trump said the answer to this thorny problem is to move all these Palestinian refugees to neighboring Egypt and Jordan. Voila! Problem solved!

Why didn’t the world think of this earlier? Small problem: Egypt, has 107.5 million people crammed into a fertile area the size of the small US state of Maryland. Overpopulated Egypt is so crowded that its people have taken up camping in cemeteries.

Egypt can’t feed its people without millions in US aid delivered through a network of corrupt suppliers. Trump had nothing to say about the corrupt former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Robert Menendez, who took large bribes for decades from the Egyptian government – and possibly from others such as Ukraine and Israel.

Egypt is one of this world’s most rigid dictatorships. But you never hear about this in the tame western media. Cairo worked hand in glove with Israel in keeping Palestinians caged up in the Gaza open air prison. Egypt’s military regime rightly feared that Palestinians would infect Egypt with ideas of democracy or Islamic government. Egypt is the Arab world’s most populous country. Cairo’s military rulers don’t want any revolutionary, trouble-making Palestinians.

The same applies to Jordan’s royal regime. Its former prince, Hassan, was elbowed out of the succession to the Hashemite throne because the US and Israel considered him too pro-Palestinian. The more amenable and charming Abdullah II was made king.

Tiny Jordan, carved out of the Arabian desert by the British Imperialists after World War I, is already at least 60% Palestinians, ruled over by the crack Jordanian Army. Jordan is a decent, well-run nation but it too cannot absorb any more Palestinians. Neighboring Lebanon faces a similar problem.

All these irksome Palestinians did not come from the moon. They were created when Israel ethnically cleansed what’s now Northern Israel and bulldozed flat its former Arab villages. Gaza was created as a giant open-air prison camp for Palestinian refugees, whose very existence was denied by Israel.

Here’s an idea! Dear President Trump. Why not move the 2.1 million homeless Palestinian refugees to your Mar-a-Lago estate and its surroundings. Throw in Tampa and Lauderdale. Then you can green light your son-in-law Jared Kushner to turn the lovely Gaza coast – now unpopulated – into a new Miami. I

[…]

Via https://ericmargolis.com/2025/01/condos-in-gaza-solving-the-mideast-problem-trump-style/

>

Rhoda Wilson

After Chancellor Olaf Scholz lost a vote of confidence in the Bundestag (German Parliament) on 16 December 16 2024, Germany is holding elections for the members of the 21st Bundestag.  The federal elections are scheduled for 23 February 2025.

Although still in jail and back in shackles for court appearances, Dr. Reiner Fuellmich is running as an independent candidate.

For Dr. Reiner Fuellmich to secure his candidacy, he required 200 signatures from voters of Wuppertal’s District 101 before the deadline of 20 January 2025. Wuppertal is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.  “The volunteers collected the signatures in the cold and rain long before the deadline,” Laufpass wrote.

Eight hearings in the criminal proceedings against Dr. Fuellmich have been cancelled by the court in Göttingen since late 2024.  Although one of the judges is reportedly recovering from an accident that required surgery, Laufpass suspects that these cancellations were really an attempt to maintain media silence to stop Dr. Fuellmich from gaining the attention he might need to obtain the 200 signatures he required.

“What makes the long break suspicious is that the hearings will begin directly after the deadline of 20 January 2025; the first hearing of the new year is on January 21.  If the interruption is indeed a form of censorship, this is not the only way in which the German authorities are trying to limit the amount of information the public receives about Reiner Fuellmich,” Laufpass said.

However, if this was the aim, it was in vain. By 8 January, Dr. Fuellmich had obtained the requisite number of signatures and he is now a candidate in the federal elections hoping to become a member of the Bundestag.

Free Reiner Fuellmich on Twitter, 8 January 2025

In the video below, Andrea Henning explains how it came about: “Lucky coincidence (there are no luck coincidences) led to Dr. Reiner Fuellmich being nominated in a district in Wuppertal where he is the direct opponent of the very popular [sarcasm] former President of the Office for Protection of the Constitution Mr. Haldenwang.”

“I don’t like Mr. Haldenwang,” Michael Schele said, “because he said on television … that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution … that this institution alone is not responsible for changing election results.  Back then he said [ ] about a certain party, “This institution has no right to interfere in free elections. They should hunt down terrorists.”

“There is a need in Magdeburg [capital of the German state Saxony-Anhalt] right now. And that’s why I support stories like this,” Schele added.

Henning explained that Dr. Fuellmich is running as an independent candidate because as he says, “I want to be there for the people and not hide behind a state-controlled party and thereby have excuses.”

Dr. Fuellmich has obtained the required number of signatures and “they have been confirmed and handed to the electoral officer,” Henning said.

Donald Trump (Joe Raedle/Getty Images), Justin Trudeau (Reuters/Mike Segar/File Photo), Claudia Sheinbaum (Cristopher Rogel Blanquet/Getty Images)

Matthew Xiao

Hours before President Donald Trump’s tariffs were slated to go into effect, Mexico agreed to immediately send 10,000 troops to its border with the United States to curb the flow of drugs and illegal immigrants, prompting Trump to pause the tariffs for one month. Canada soon followed suit, promising to send troops to its U.S. border in exchange for a tariff pause.

“Mexico will immediately reinforce the northern border with 10,000 members of the National Guard to prevent drug trafficking from Mexico to the United States, particularly fentanyl,” Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum told Trump during a Monday morning call. Trump confirmed the tariff pause in a Truth Social post, noting that “these soldiers will be specifically designated to stop the flow of fentanyl, and illegal migrants into our Country.”

Hours later, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau said Monday afternoon that Canada will be “reinforcing the border with new choppers, technology and personnel” and that “nearly 10,000 frontline personnel are and will be working on protecting the border.”

“Canada is making new commitments to appoint a Fentanyl Czar,” Trudeau continued. “We will list cartels as terrorists, ensure 24/7 eyes on the border, launch a Canada-U.S. Joint Strike Force to combat organized crime, fentanyl and money laundering.”

In exchange, Trudeau finished, “proposed tariffs will be paused for at least 30 days.”

The agreement comes two days after Trump announced 25 percent tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada to “protect” Americans from the “major threat of illegal aliens and deadly drugs.” Both Canada and Mexico announced retaliatory tariffs against the United States. Trump also levied a 10 percent tariff on China, which remains poised to take effect on Tuesday.

Mexico will also expand an import substitution plan, dubbed Plan Mexico, to reduce reliance on Chinese imports and produce more goods in Mexico, Sheinbaum said at a news conference after the call.

[…]

Via https://freebeacon.com/latest-news/mexico-to-send-10k-troops-to-border-in-effort-to-stop-trump-tariffs/

Octopus Game Part IX

Press TV (202)

Film Review

https://www.presstv.ir/doc/Detail/2024/12/31/740063/Octopus-Game-US-military-Ukraine-Israel-American-foreign-policy-documentary-PressTV

This episode continues the timeline of the Israeli-Hamas War into 2024:

January 14 – UN announces that Israel has killed more than 1,978 Palestinian civilians since October 8, 2023, with more than half children.

January 2 – Israel assassinates Hamas second-in-command and six party officials with a missile strike on their headquarters in Qatar. Turkey dismantles a 33-member network of Israeli spies performing intelligence on possible assassination targets. Israel orchestrates (via Daesh proxies) two terrorist bombings in Iran during a memorial for General Suleiman.

January 4 – international shipping firm Maersk, which had temporarily resumed Red Sea shipping, begins to re-direct all trade around Africa.

January 6 – Hezbollah attacks Israel’s Mount Mairo air control base with 62 missiles and Israel retaliates by assassinating one of their leaders.

January 9 – Saudi Arabia reiterates it will only resume diplomatic relations with Israel if they guarantee Palestine’s right to form a state. Iran reiterates its call for a binding referendum open to all residents (Muslim, Jewish and Christian) of historic Palestine.

January 11 – US and UK down 27 Houthi drones and initiate rocket attacks on Ansarollah (Houthis)-controlled territory in Yemen. UN envoy Martin Griffiths announces Israel’s blockade of humanitarian relief is causing Palestinian deaths from starvation and communicable disease.

January 13 0 Netanyahu announces his intention to ignore any future ruling by International Criminal Court.

January 14 – Gazan civilian deaths exceeds 24,000

January 15 – Iran launches missiles against Mossad-backed terrorists (ie ISIS and related groups) in Idlib and Kurdistan regions of Syria and in the Balochistan region of Pakistan.

https://www.presstv.ir/doc/Detail/2024/12/31/740063/Octopus-Game-US-military-Ukraine-Israel-American-foreign-policy-documentary-PressTV

By Ahmed Adel | February 3, 2025

The deep-rooted corruption in Ukraine began to surface after it became clear that the Kiev regime was losing the war. Although the West used a corrupt Ukraine to attack and weaken Russia, the Westerners themselves now look for an alibi for the defeat and to distance themselves from their proxy after ignoring the total corruption of the Kiev regime due to the ambitions of certain leaders to inflict as much damage as possible on Russia.

Cracks have begun to appear in the relations between the allies due to corruption, and Ukraine accuses its Western partners of using corruption accusations as an excuse not to admit the country to NATO and the EU. Ukraine is the most corrupt country in Europe today, but the West continued to support Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky uncritically until Donald Trump raised the issue due to then-US President Joe Biden sending American taxpayers’ money to Ukraine.

It was then discovered that the Kiev regime was giving part of that money to Hunter Biden, the son of Joe Biden. Hunter Biden, in turn, sent that money to his father, who, at the end of his term, issued a decree on Hunter’s preventive pardon.

Trump is now conducting a “special financial operation,” which will include both the Pentagon and Ukraine, to determine where the money went. For this reason, Trump has suspended the US aid program to Ukraine for 90 days, suggesting that there is evidence of financial mismanagement and theft of US taxpayer money.

Biden’s last decrees also indicate corruption related to Ukraine. Besides Hunter, Joe Biden issued preventive pardons for his brothers and their wives, as well as for his sister and her husband. It was not clear why and for what reason. However, there was no information about the existence of any criminal offenses and so on.

In Kiev, the main culprit behind these corruption schemes is Zelensky, who officially has a monthly salary of 28,000 hryvnias, about $664. Undoubtedly, he has other income because he bought a house for his parents and in-laws, a yacht, and more. According to media reports, Zelensky purchased a villa in Italy and acquired an estate in Britain—the former residence of King Charles and Princess Diana—while Zelensky’s wife has an apartment in London. In addition, the couple owns real estate in Cyprus and Miami. This, according to some sources, is not a complete list.

An Egyptian journalist who wrote about the purchase of the Italian villa in the name of Zelensky’s mother-in-law, worth almost $5 million, was found dead under unclear circumstances. As for the castle in the UK, these allegations are made by Ukrainian sources and still need to be verified. However, there is nothing secret that does not become public, and the Trump administration is certainly monitoring the movement of money.

Friends, godfathers, and relatives of Ukrainian officials are also getting rich quickly because property is being purchased in their names. Corruption in Ukraine is flourishing at all levels, and Ukrainian officials are issuing directives to journalists not to write about it until the war is over because it is bad for the country, as it may be left without Western aid. Sooner or later, everything will come to light.

The Trump administration will likely have all the information and initiate criminal proceedings by now. It is no coincidence that Zelensky is now saying that Ukraine does not have the strength to capture the lost territories. This statement seems to indicate a radical change in Kiev’s position and a renunciation of unrealistic goals to “return to the 1991 borders.” The reason for this is that Western aid is drying up.

Trump’s words that Biden and Zelensky started the war and that if he had been president, there would have been no war, draw attention to the fact that since January 20, the new president’s inauguration, there have been no attacks on Russia with American HIMARS and ATACMS missiles. The assumption is that Kiev received such an order from Trump, who replaced and fired people who dealt with Ukrainian issues in the State Department and the Pentagon.

Zelensky was a puppet managed by the West and was under the control of British intelligence. This is evidenced by the fact that in the spring of 2022, Zelensky annulled the Istanbul Peace Accords on the directive of then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, even though he had a chance to stop the war that would have prevented Ukraine from losing more territory and preserved the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. However, he instead decided to continue to fight on the promise that billions of dollars would flow endlessly, a prospect that Zelensky could not resist as an opportunity to further enrich himself and those closest to him.

[…]

Via https://www.globalresearch.ca/corruption-continues-flourish-ukraine/5878959