Some post-election thoughts are due.

Firstly, I'd like to announce the most recent paywalled article has now been opened up to the public on this occasion:

As We Stare Down the Precipice, Final Ruminations

A major shift is happening. Read full story

I encourage you to read it particularly because the prediction set out in the opening of it has proven accurate thus far, insofar as Trump winning and causing a tangible realignment and soul-searching on the Left, so the remaining prognoses may have a special resonance.

But I'd like to point you to a couple of the biggest takeaways from the election result. Here is my biggest of all:

The election proved one thing: the 'Deep State' and hidden hostile powers known as the 'Globalists' that scheme behind the scenes and secretly run the country are not all-powerful. They can clearly be defeated when the people are fed-up enough.

Vladimir Putin has congratulated 'courageous' Donald Trump on his election victory, as the US President-elect says: 'I think we'll speak.'

Putin said today he was 'ready' to hold discussions with Trump with the despot having been impressed with how he handled himself 'like a man' during an assassination attempt at a rally earlier this year.

'I take this opportunity to congratulate him,' Putin said in remarks to the Valdai forum in the southern city of Sochi.

Trump said he had probably spoken to 70 leaders since his astonishing election win, but Putin was not one of them.

But he told NBC: 'I think we'll speak.'

It's a new political era, and the pharmaceutical industry is beside itself with worry.

Via Science.org (emphasis added):

"Concerns about what a second Donald Trump (R) presidency could mean for public health and biomedical research ratcheted up this week after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told supporters Trump has promised to give him "control" over agencies at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH)...

Public health researchers are alarmed, especially given Kennedy's opposition to vaccines. "I can't imagine anyone who would be more damaging to vaccines and the use of vaccines than RFK," University of Minnesota epidemiologist Michael Osterholm told CNN...

Kennedy appears to be poised to wield substantial influence should Trump win. Trump has embraced Kennedy's "Make America Healthy Again" agenda, which calls for removing allegedly harmful chemicals in foods and water and cracking down on ultraprocessed food, among other steps...

Numerous critics of Kennedy have weighed in with concerns. Children's Hospital of Philadelphia vaccine expert Paul Offit told CNN Kennedy is a "science denialist." Even Jerome Adams, who was surgeon general during Trump's presidency, said at a meeting this week that if Kennedy discourages people from getting vaccines, "I am worried about the impact that could have on our nation's health," economy, and security."

Kamala Harris didn't lose because she's a woman or because she's black.

She lost because, if your political and media system - rigged by donors - limits the choice to two hardline neoliberal candidates, with anything else denounced as "communism", the most hardline, neoliberal candidate has an edge.

Over time, the system keeps moving further to the hardline, neoliberal right. You can't stop that relentless shift by voting for one of the two symptoms of your diseased political system. You have to rise up against the diseased system itself.
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Notice a pattern of behaviour by the establishment media that week after week told us Kamala Harris was poised for a narrow win, that her "politics of joy" would ultimately swing the day.

For more than two years, that same establishment media told us Ukraine would win if only we sent a few more bombs / tanks / planes. None of those weapons helped. They just incentivised each side to invest more deeply in war.

What happened instead was entirely predictable: lots of Ukrainians and Russians have died fighting a protracted war Ukraine could never win and that could have been snuffed out early on with a peace agreement - an agreement that was actively blocked by the US and Britain.

Last night, the country decided to take drastic measures to steer back toward the center of the aisle and common sense. At the same time, the populace delivered a fatal blow to the unholy alliance between the Democratic Party and the mainstream media, both of whom will now be forced to consider massive overhauls to the strategies they have employed over the last decade if they want a chance of being relevant over the next decade.

Everyone knows the election was a decisive victory for Donald Trump, so there is no need to rehash the ins and outs of the numbers. Trump very clearly has a mandate, and with Republicans picking up Senate seats they were widely expected to secure back in 2022 but didn't, American citizens have now made one of the boldest statements in the country's history.

My regular readers know that I wrote days ago about how a Trump win would spell the death of the mainstream media. But this victory goes far beyond that.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said Thursday that he would not step down from his position if President-elect Donald Trump asked for his resignation.

When asked by reporters if he would resign per Trump's request, Powell simply said: "No."

"Not permitted under the law," Powell said during a press conference after the Fed cut interest rates by a quarter point two days after former president Donald Trump's victory over Vice President Kamala Harris.

Though Trump appointed Powell in 2017, he repeatedly slammed the chairman and the central bank during his administration for not easing monetary policies quick enough.

On the political Richter scale, that was a killer - literally. What was supposed to be a Liberal Totalitarian Show was brutally, unceremoniously, swept out of the park - any park. Even before Election Day, critical thinking was aware of the stakes. With fraud, Kamala wins. With no fraud, Trump wins. There were, at best, (failed) attempts at fraud.

The key question still remains: what does the U.S. Deep State really want?

My inbox is infested with loads of weepy reports from U.S. Think Tankland wondering, in disbelief, why Kamala could possibly lose. It's quite straightforward - apart from her sheer incompetence cum utter mediocrity literally cackling out loud. The legacy of the administration she was part of is ghastly - all the way from Crash Test Dummy to Little Butcher Blinkie.

Instead of bothering to care about the abysmal state of affairs, at every level, concerning that mythical entity, "the American people", they chose to invest everything on a neocon-manufactured proxy war to inflict a "strategic defeat" on Russia - stealing Russian assets, unleashing a tsunami of sanctions, shipping an array of wunderwaffen. The weaponization of Ukraine led to countless Ukrainian dead and the inevitable, fast-approaching cosmic humiliation of NATO in the black soil of Novorossiya.

The US president-elect's aversion to waste could benefit Russia, its former leader has suggested.

Donald Trump's victory in the US presidential election won't alter the country's antagonistic stance, but will make it harder for Kiev to tap into American taxpayers' money, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has said. The Republican nominee declared victory on election night after projections showed that he was highly likely to get over half of the electoral college votes.

Medvedev, who serves as deputy chair of the Russian Security Council, has argued that the outcome won't change the bipartisan anti-Russian consensus in the US, particularly on Capitol Hill.

Medvedev wrote in a Telegram post on Wednesday morning:

"Trump has one quality that's useful for us. As a dyed-in-the-wool businessman, he hates wasting money on all sorts of freeloaders and tagalongs: on wacko allies, misguided grandiose charity projects, and insatiable international organizations."

This applies to Kiev, he said, referring to the overwhelming dependence of the Ukrainian government on Western military and financial aid.

"The only question is, how much will Trump be forced to fork out on the war? He's stubborn, but the system is more powerful."

Spain has barred Israeli companies from participating in a defense and security exhibition due to the regime's relentless campaign of death and destruction in the besieged Gaza Strip and Lebanon.

In a statement released on Thursday, Spain's Secretary of State for Defence, Amparo Valcarce said that Israel and its companies are excluded from the International Defense and Security Exhibition (FEINDEF), which is scheduled to be held in Madrid next year. The decision to exclude Tel Aviv is reportedly due to Israel's atrocities in the occupied Palestinian territories and Lebanon,

Amparo in her remarks confirmed that the decision was taken in the light of Spain's commitment to peace in Palestine and Lebanon and adherence to international humanitarian law.

FEINDEF, one of the world's top 10 defense fairs, is expected to host over 400 companies and will take place in Madrid from May 12 to 14.

The developments also come following an incident where international delegates, including Spanish people, were attacked by Israeli soldiers in the occupied West Bank. The delegation included former Barcelona mayor Ada Colau and European Parliament member Jaume Asens, who were accompanying Palestinians harvesting olives when Israeli forces used tear gas on Monday.

The influential publication has reported that the US-led bloc acknowledges that Kiev's position is worsening

NATO is fully aware that Ukraine is slowly losing its conflict with Russia, with an especially difficult winter predicted to worsen the situation, Foreign Policy has reported.

Western officials are warning that a victory for Moscow,would solidify its influence in Europe and lead to a strengthened military presence near NATO's borders, the influential US publication has claimed, in an article published on Wednesday.

Foreign Policy's sources believe Russian President Vladimir Putin is taking advantage of uncertainty in Washington. Michael Bociurkiw - a lobbyist at NATO's Atlantic Council adjunct - speaking from Ukraine, stated that the Kremlin has noticed a leadership "vacuum" in Kiev is "testing for soft tissue" in the West.