Waiting for a government - any government - to release their "secret" files is a waste of your time, and reading anything they eventually publish is doubly so.

If you didn't learn that from the nothing-burger that was the 28 pages on 9/11, or the pathetic exercise in revisionism that made up the Afghanistan Papers...you should definitely have learned it today.

Yes, Joe Biden's administration has just released their promised "secret" JFK papers.

Turns out that Oswald acted alone.

I know, I was shocked too.

Further, the release dials back on the (very slight) anti-Russia messaging of last year's release.

In December 2021, the previous batch of "secret" files revealed Oswald met with a KGB agent in the days running up to the assassination.

The latest batch reassures us that Oswald never worked for the KGB, and that the Russians thought he was "too crazy" to recruit.

One gets the impression that has as much to do with managing propaganda positioning over the war in Ukraine as anything else. Either way, its a ridiculously transparent attempt to reinforce the "lone wolf" lie.

"He was too crazy and unstable even for the Russians!"

Laughable.

Further, one particular "secret" memo claims...

the Central Intelligence Agency has no indication that Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald ever knew each other, were associated, or might have been connected in any manner".

Yes, before Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald they were apparently "not connected in any manner". He had never met Oswald before the assassination, and barely had any idea who he was when he shot him on November 24th.

Benjamin Netanyahu's proposed coalition government of Jewish extremists, fanatic Zionists and religious bigots represents a seismic change in Israel, one that will exacerbate Israel's pariah status, erode external support for Israel, fuel a third Palestinian uprising, or intifada, and create irreconcilable political divides within the Jewish state.

Alon Pinkas, writing in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, calls the coalition government, scheduled to take power in one or two weeks:

"a kakistocracy extraordinaire: government by the worst and least suitable collection of ultranationalists, Jewish supremacists, anti-democrats, racists, bigots, homophobes, misogynists, corrupt and allegedly corrupt politicians. A ruling coalition of 64 lawmakers, of whom 32 are either ultra-Orthodox or religious Zionist. Certainly not a coalition Zeev Jabotinsky, the father of Revisionist Zionism, or Menachem Begin, the founder of Likud, could have ever imagined."

Itamar Ben-Gvir, from the ultra-nationalist Otzma Yehudit, "Jewish Power," party, will be the new minister for internal security. Otzma Yehudit is populated with members of Rabbi Meir Kahane's Kach party, which was banned from running for the Knesset in 1988 for espousing a "Nazi-like ideology" that included advocating the ethnic cleansing of all Palestinian citizens of Israel as well as all Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation.

Do you ever get the feeling that we're playing checkers while our enemies are playing chess? That things are not as they seem? That's the way it feels in the story of Spygate, the Trump-Russia collusion lie, FBI corruption, and the latest chapter of that entire sad and duplicitous saga that was lived out in a D.C. courtroom this week. Hillary Clinton and Democratic National Committee attorney Michael Sussmann was acquitted by a jury whose forewoman said she felt the special counsel team led by John Durham should have better things to do than investigate a lawyer supposedly lying to the FBI about the president being a Russian spy.

No biggie, you understand.

As I reported for PJ Media, the evidence in the Sussmann case pointed to an extraordinarily cozy relationship between the FBI and Perkins Coie. Sussmann had credentials to get inside the FBI and was considered to be a trusted Confidential Human Source (CHS).

But the latest news about this relationship gives rise to more and more troubling questions.

Despite my support for Elon Musk's continuing efforts to reduce censorship and restore free speech protections on Twitter, I have been critical of some of his moves from his use of polls on restoring certain posters to the suspensions of media figures this week. However, this morning, I was struck by the European Union (EU) rushing into the controversy to threaten, again, sanctions against Musk. The EU is apparently aghast that Twitter could suspend media even temporarily after ignoring the bans on conservative media for years under the old management.

I understand Musk's view of such tracking as a form of doxxing (particularly after a man reportedly used the information to attack the car with one of his children inside). Doxxing has long been subject to suspension. Indeed, figures connected with mainstream media from CNN to the Washington Post have been previously accused of doxxing. Liberal groups were accused of doxxing conservative justices and others, including dangerously posting information on the children of Justice Amy Coney Barrett. It does not seem to matter when the targets are conservative, Republican, or libertarian.

Figures who have long advocated the banning of others with opposing views are some of the loudest objecting in the wake of the doxxing controversy. Washington Post Taylor Lorenz expressed fear that she could be next. It may not be a groundless fear since Lorenz has been previously accused of doxxing others and described the reintroduction of free speech protections for others as the opening of "the gates of hell."

However, it was the appearance of the EU that was most jarring.

A federal judge has prevented the Biden administration from ending the "Remain in Mexico" immigration policy introduced by the Trump administration, ruling on Thursday that it should stay in place while legal challenges play out.

Under the policy, which was enacted in 2019 and is formally known as the Migrant Protection Protocols, asylum-seekers — including those not from Mexico — have been sent to Mexico to await proceedings in their cases. President Biden moved to end the policy, under which more than 70,000 asylum-seekers were sent to Mexico from the United States, upon taking office.

Texas and Missouri took legal action to prevent Biden from ending the policy, delaying its repeal. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in June that Biden could end the policy and did not violate federal immigration law in trying to rescind it.

But the Supreme Court also returned the case to lower courts for additional proceedings, tasking U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk with determining whether the administration's action was "arbitrary and capricious" in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs how federal agencies develop and issue regulations.

Kacsmaryk ruled that the plaintiff in this case, Texas, met all requirements for a preliminary injunction to be issued: a likelihood to succeed on the merits of its argument, a likelihood of irreparable harm, the balance of equities tipping in its favor and the public interest being in favor.

"I would advise the more-sciencey-than-thou to not pivot from Covid directly into climate change bullying just yet. 2023 is going to be replete with excess death, and you are gonna have a lot of 'splainin' to do. Lots of apologetic to push, in support of the Narrative."
— The Ethical Skeptic on Substack

Even if NBC, CBS, CNN, The New York Times, The WashPo, and the rest of the Big News Media mafia ignore the Twitter Files story, the revolution at Twitter is going to shake their windows and rattle their walls. There will be free debate in 2023 on this social media platform. News and ideas will be set loose across the landscape, and, for the first time in years, reality will have a chance to compete with the bad faith narratives of a regime at war against its own people.

We'll have to see how long this window remains open before the Intel Community tries to shut Twitter down, ramp up a campaign to defame it, or blow it up as a viable business. Or make a move to, shall we say, neutralize the person behind the revolution there. The more that free speech is actually permitted on Twitter, the more every other platform will look like a lame organ of propaganda, especially when it comes to issues that really matter such as the deadly consequences of the mRNA "vaccines," the shady doings around recent US elections, the actual condition of the US economy, the perilous folly of "Joe Biden's" war in Ukraine (and the family grifting operation that prompted it), and the evil machinations of the Intel Community itself.

Next winter will be the hardest in history because of the conflict in Ukraine. This opinion was expressed by Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić on the air of Radio and Television of Serbia.

"We expect this war to last longer than next year and that next winter will be the hardest in the history of the world," he said.

Vučić also noted that Russia's positions on the line of contact "have stabilized", but both sides "do not have enough ammunition."

Not long after Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald on camera in the basement of Dallas police headquarters, a lot of Americans started to have some questions about the Kennedy assassination. It was, you'd have to admit, a pretty extraordinary sequence of events. A lone gunman murders the president of the United States. And then, less than 48 hours later, that lone gunman is himself murdered by another lone gunman.

President Joe Biden suggested Tuesday that anyone who criticizes child sex change surgeries is responsible for "racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia [and] transphobia" -- all of which are "connected."

Biden insisted we have to "protect" transgender children by giving them the "care they need" (i.e. sex changes) "so they know they are loved."

"Folks, racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, transphobia -- they are all connected."

Xi Jinping has made an offer difficult for the Arabian Peninsula to ignore: China will be guaranteed buyers of your oil and gas, just pay us in yuan.
It would be so tempting to qualify Chinese President Xi Jinping landing in Riyadh a week ago, welcomed with royal pomp and circumstance, as Xi of Arabia proclaiming the dawn of the petroyuan era.

But it's more complicated than that. As much as the seismic shift implied by the petroyuan move applies, Chinese diplomacy is way too sophisticated to engage in direct confrontation, especially with a wounded, ferocious Empire. So there's way more going here than meets the (Eurasian) eye.

Xi of Arabia's announcement was a prodigy of finesse: it was packaged as the internationalization of the yuan. From now on, Xi said, China will use the yuan for oil trade, through the Shanghai Petroleum and National Gas Exchange, and invited the Persian Gulf monarchies to get on board. Nearly 80 percent of trade in the global oil market continues to be priced in US dollars.

Ostensibly, Xi of Arabia, and his large Chinese delegation of officials and business leaders, met with the leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to promote increased trade. Beijing promised to "import crude oil in a consistent manner and in large quantities from the GCC." And the same goes for natural gas.

China has been the largest importer of crude on the planet for five years now - half of it from the Arabian peninsula, and more than a quarter from Saudi Arabia. So it's no wonder that the prelude for Xi of Arabia's lavish welcome in Riyadh was a special op-ed expanding the trading scope, and praising increased strategic/commercial partnerships across the GCC, complete with "5G communications, new energy, space and digital economy."

Foreign Minister Wang Yi doubled down on the "strategic choice" of China and wider Arabia. Over $30 billion in trade deals were duly signed - quite a few significantly connected to China's ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects.

And that brings us to the two key connections established by Xi of Arabia: the BRI and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).