USA - Lately, there’s been a growing chorus calling for the ban of lobbying, branding it as a subtle form of bribery. Whether it’s Big Oil, the NRA, Big Pharma, or even anti-gun groups, the sentiment is strong – lobbying appears to wield significant influence over our representatives. The big question looming is whether a blanket ban on all lobbying is the solution, breaking free from what some perceive as puppetry in our political system. You can’t have a representative democracy and lobbying (bribery). They can’t exist together...

USA - Governor Greg Abbott (Republican for Texas) vowed to continue to fight for his state’s right to secure the southern border after the Supreme Court sided with the Biden administration on Monday, ruling that federal officials may cut through razor wire that Texas installed to repel illegal immigrants.

NORTH KOREA - With nothing to lose and limited time to achieve certain geopolitical goals, Kim Jong-un might opt for conflict as his only option. A few days ago an analysis piece appeared on the North Korea research website 38North with the headline asking the question: “Is Kim Jong-un preparing for war?”

USA - Contrary to conventional wisdom, higher interest rates mean more inflation in the environment today. That’s because the federal interest expense increases as interest rates rise. As the federal interest expense rises, so does the budget deficit. As the budget deficit increases, so does the currency debasement needed to finance it. Skyrocketing interest expense will have an enormous impact on the US budget. Even according to the US government’s rosy projections, the interest expense on the federal debt will exceed $1 trillion for the first time in 2024… and it shows no sign of slowing down. On the contrary, it’s growing exponentially.

USA - The state of Texas will not give up on its efforts to secure its borders after the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government had the right to intervene. In a ruling on Tuesday, the Supreme Court decided by a 5-4 majority that federal officials had the right to remove physical barriers erected by the Texas National Guard. Two supposedly conservative judges, Justices John Roberts and Amy Coney Barett, sided with the Biden administration, while Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neil Gorsuch dissented. The decision vacated a previous injunction from the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals that prevented federal agents from cutting the wire. However, the Texas Tribune reports that both Governor Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton will refuse to back down over the issue and will carry on fighting to secure the southern border from the waves of illegal immigration.

UK - Aircraft carrier fiasco as the UK REFUSES to deploy either of its £3.5 billion warships to help tackle Yemen's Houthis: RAF jets are forced to fly 3,000-mile sorties while vessels are anchored in Portsmouth. Former defence ministers and Royal Navy chiefs tonight expressed dismay over the UK's refusal to deploy either of its £3.5 billion aircraft carriers to the Red Sea. They suggested it was absurd for Britain to continue to rely on RAF jets flying 3,000 miles from their base in Cyprus to launch air strikes against Houthi in Yemen. The Navy's website describes HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales as 'investments in British security, prosperity and place in the world'. Despite the rhetoric, neither carrier has ventured anywhere near a conflict zone since they entered service.

USA - Should any of us be surprised that the news industry is being hit by a massive wave of layoffs? Survey after survey has shown that the American people have lost faith in the mainstream media, and millions of us have decided to turn to other sources for news and information. Mainstream news outlets have been bleeding viewers and readers for years, and now many of the biggest names in the news industry are losing staggering amounts of money. It was only a matter of time before we witnessed large scale layoffs, and now they are here.

USA - One in nine Americans have been in a polyamorous relationship, and one in six would like to try one, a study has revealed. Polyamory is a type of relationship where people have multiple romantic and sexual partners. It differs from cheating because each person is aware of and consents to the arrangement. It is also different to swinging and open relationships, which often involve limited amounts of emotional intimacy and romantic love with others, according to the authors of the study published recently in Frontiers in Psychology. Researchers found one in six (16.8 percent) respondents wanted to be polyamorous, one in nine (10.7 percent) have been polyamorous at some point in their lives, and approximately one in 15 (6.5 percent) said they knew someone who was or is polyamorous. That means around the same number of Americans want to be polygamous as want to move to another country, and as many have been polyamorous as people hold a graduate degree in the US, the authors said, citing past research.

SWITZERLAND - On the heels of Davos (World Economic Forum) week, the MSM hysterical propaganda push from the globalists regarding “Disease X” is in full swing. Almost every major news outlet in the world has run black propaganda pieces about Disease X. Why do I write black propaganda? – because the “experts” aren’t actually named, the peer-reviewed papers supporting the thesis of “a deadly pathogen causing 20 times more deaths than COVID-19” or “killing 20 times more people than COVID-19” or “killing 50 million people” are non-existent. Yet these narratives are all headline news in mainstream media.

SWITZERLAND - Perhaps the most alarming proposition from Davos is the idea of creating a new international crime: ecocide. Equating fertilizing lawns with war crimes and crimes against humanity is not only misguided but dangerous. Imagine for a moment if every real-life Bond villain decided not to hatch his evil plans in a secret lair, but instead broadcast them to the entire globe. That will give you a small idea of the messages that came out of the Word Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. The global elites want to upend life as you know it, and they are not even trying to hide it. Here is just a sample of the recent proposals pushed.

MIDDLE EAST - Israeli strikes in Lebanon, Houthi attacks on the Red Sea and Iranian missiles fired on Iraq: The risk of escalation in the Middle East is growing. If the Middle East were a blank piece of blotting paper and the wars and crises in the region were blots of ink, it would be easy to see that the dots are rapidly multiplying. The Gaza Strip, the border area between Lebanon and Israel, Erbil in northern Iraq, the mountains of western Yemen and the Red Sea. Some of the inkblots are growing. They remain separated from each other, but when the first ones begin merging, the risk grows that they will all join together. That the Middle East – from Israel to Iran, from Lebanon to Yemen – will sink into war.

MIDDLE EAST - The crisis In the Red Sea Threatens to disrupt global supply chains even more than the pandemic did. Do you remember the supply chain problems that we experienced during the darkest days of the COVID pandemic? Well, now we are being warned that the crisis in the Red Sea could actually disrupt global supply chains to an even greater degree. Needless to say, this comes at a really bad time because the US economy has really been struggling lately. The US and the UK are desperate to resolve this crisis, and so they have been bombing the living daylights out of the Houthis in Yemen. We haven’t seen anything quite like this from the US military since the early days of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

ISRAEL - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected the conditions set by Hamas to end the ongoing war and secure the release of hostages. The Palestinian militant organization demanded that Israel withdraw its forces from Gaza, end the war, release all prisoners, and leave Hamas intact, Netanyahu said. “In exchange for the release of our hostages, Hamas demands the end of the war, the withdrawal of our forces from Gaza, the release of all the murderers and rapists, and leaving Hamas intact,” Netanyahu also stated. He added that he rejects the terms of surrender of Hamas outright.

ISRAEL - The Israeli prime minister has openly contradicted the US president's insistence on Palestinian statehood. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he refuses to compromise with Washington on a potential two-state solution for post-war Gaza – despite US President Joe Biden’s insistence that the pair were in agreement, after speaking by telephone for the first time in a month. Biden claimed after the phone conversation on Friday that a two-state solution was not impossible under Israel's current government, insisting there were multiple types of solutions that could fit the bill. “In the future, the state of Israel has to control the entire area from the river to the sea. This is what happens when you have sovereignty,” the prime minister told reporters during a televised press conference, referring to the Jordan River and the Red Sea - boundaries that many Palestinians consider to be the borders of their own rightful state.

MIDDLE EAST - Senior Hamas official Khaled Mashaal has dismissed the possibility of a two-state solution and said that his terror group’s devastating October 7 assault on Israel proved that liberating Palestine “from the river to the sea” is a realistic idea. In an interview with Kuwaiti podcaster Ammar Taki last week, Mashaal, a former top leader of the terror group, said that there is “nearly a consensus” among Palestinians that they will not give up their rights to the land stretching “from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea” — that is, the West Bank, Gaza and all of Israel. Mashaal noted that the slogan is also regularly chanted at rallies by “American students and in European capitals,” and said that the October 7 onslaught has “revived that dream.” The Hamas bigwig categorically rejected the option of a political settlement with Israel and a two-state solution to the conflict, on the grounds that it would imply recognizing the legitimacy of the State of Israel, an “unacceptable” red line for the terror movement.