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The Harris campaign and allied groups spent more than $2.185 billion trying to prevent former President Donald Trump from completing the greatest comeback in American political history, Bloomberg reported on Open Secrets data.

The $2.1 billion investment underscores the challenge Trump faces to win reelection, notwithstanding two assassination attempts and Democrats’ lawfare.

The vast sum does not include millions of funds invested in smaller amounts by Democrat-allied organizations. The top organizations that spent $2.185 billion include:

Harris for President: $875 million Future Forward: $621 million DNC: $368 million Harris Victory Fund: $321 million

“11,000 Political Groups Spent $14.7 Billion to Influence the 2024 Election,” Bloomberg wrote, reporting the particulars:

[I]t’s Vice President Kamala Harris who has the huge money advantage. She’s raised large sums from wealthy supporters and grassroots donors alike, which allowed her campaign to spend more handily compared to Trump’s, pouring $875 million into the race compared to $355 million for the Republican nominee.

Billions have passed through the coffers of the parties’ fundraising political action committees, including Democrats’ ActBlue and Republicans’ WinRed, which have processed more than 113 million donations and distributed $4.5 billion to other committees. The two PACs account for more than 31 cents of every dollar spent in the US, and have the most financial activity of any of the committees that spent money in the 2024 election cycle.

The US political system runs on money – and lots of it. With no legal limits on how much money can go into electing candidates to the White House and Congress, voters are deluged with ads, text messages and mailers as Republicans and Democrats battle to influence a deeply divided electorate.

Trump, however, posted an ad on Monday about overcoming adversity:

Nothing worth doing ever came easy. Treat the word impossible as nothing more than motivation. Never ever quit. Never quit. Adversity makes you stronger. Don’t give in. Don’t back down and never stop doing what you know is right. They want to take away my freedom, because I will never let them take away your freedoms. They’re not coming after me. They’re coming after you and I just happen to be standing in their way.

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https://www.breitbart.com/2024-election/2024/11/04/democrats-spend-2-1-billion-trying-stop-donald-trump/

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Quincy Jones, the multi-talented music titan whose vast legacy ranged from producing Michael Jackson’s historic “Thriller” album to writing prize-winning film and television scores and collaborating with Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles and hundreds of other recording artists, has died at 91.

Jones’ publicist, Arnold Robinson, says he died Sunday night at his home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles, surrounded by his family.

“Tonight, with full but broken hearts, we must share the news of our father and brother Quincy Jones’ passing,” the family said in a statement.

“And although this is an incredible loss for our family, we celebrate the great life that he lived and know there will never be another like him.”

Jones rose from running with gangs on the South Side of Chicago to the very heights of show business, becoming one of the first Black executives to thrive in Hollywood and amassing an extraordinary musical catalog that includes some of the richest moments of American rhythm and song.

For years, it was unlikely to find a music lover who did not own at least one record with his name on it, or a leader in the entertainment industry and beyond who did not have some connection to him.

Jones rose from running with gangs on the South Side of Chicago to the very heights of show business, becoming one of the first Black executives to thrive in Hollywood and amassing an extraordinary musical catalog that includes some of the richest moments of American rhythm and song.

For years, it was unlikely to find a music lover who did not own at least one record with his name on it, or a leader in the entertainment industry and beyond who did not have some connection to him.

Music saved him. As a boy, he learned that a Chicago neighbor owned a piano and he soon played it constantly himself. His father moved to Washington state when Quincy was 10 and his world changed at a neighborhood recreation center. Jones and some friends had broken into the kitchen and helped themselves to lemon meringue pie when Jones noticed a small room nearby with a stage. On the stage was a piano.

“I went up there, paused, stared, and then tinkled on it for a moment,” he wrote in his autobiography. “That’s where I began to find peace. I was 11. I knew this was it for me. Forever.”

Within a few years he was playing trumpet and befriending a young blind musician named Ray Charles, who became a lifelong friend. He was gifted enough to win a scholarship at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, but dropped out when Hampton invited him to tour with his band. Jones went on to work as a freelance composer, conductor, arranger and producer. As a teen, he backed Billie Holiday. By his mid-20s, he was touring with his own band.

“We had the best jazz band on the planet, and yet we were literally starving,” Jones later told Musician magazine. “That’s when I discovered that there was music, and there was the music business. If I were to survive, I would have to learn the difference between the two.”

As a music executive, he overcame racial barriers by becoming a vice president at Mercury Records in the early ’60s. In 1971, he became the first Black musical director for the Academy Awards ceremony. The first movie he produced, “The Color Purple,” received 11 Oscar nominations in 1986. (But, to his great disappointment, no wins). In a partnership with Time Warner, he created Quincy Jones Entertainment, which included the pop-culture magazine Vibe and Qwest Broadcasting. The company was sold for $270 million in 1999.

“My philosophy as a businessman has always come from the same roots as my personal credo: take talented people on their own terms and treat them fairly and with respect, no matter who they are or where they come from,” Jones wrote in his autobiography.

He was at ease with virtually every form of American music, whether setting Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon” to a punchy, swinging rhythm and wistful flute or opening his production of Charles’ soulful “In the Heat of the Night” with a lusty tenor sax solo. He worked with jazz giants (Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, Duke Ellington), rappers (Snoop Dogg, LL Cool J), crooners (Sinatra, Tony Bennett), pop singers (Lesley Gore) and rhythm and blues stars (Chaka Khan, rapper and singer Queen Latifah).

On “We are the World” alone, performers included Michael Jackson, Bob Dylan, Billy Joel, Stevie Wonder and Bruce Springsteen. He co-wrote hits for Jackson – “P.Y.T (Pretty Young Thing” – and Donna Summer – “Love Is in Control (Finger on the Trigger) – and had songs sampled by Tupac Shakur, Kanye West and other rappers. He even composed the theme song for the sitcom “Sanford and Son.”

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https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2024/11/04/quincy-jones-music-titan-who-worked-with-everyone-from-frank-sinatra-to-michael-jackson-dies-at-91/

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Nicole Shanahan, the former vice-presidential running mate of independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., shared an ad on Sunday highlighting how it is “the people who are making America great again.”

In a post on X, Shanahan shared a video of clips of former President Donald Trump, former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (R-HI), Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), the vice-presidential running mate of Trump, Vivek Ramaswamy, a 2024 Republican presidential candidate, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, and Kennedy talking about how the election is about “we, the people choosing our government,” and how Americans should be focusing on rising “above the hatred” and the fear.

The video highlights how people such as Trump, Gabbard, Vance, Ramaswamy, Musk, Kennedy, and Shanahan have united together to make America great.

“It’s the people that Make America Great,” Shanahan wrote in her post. “Unity 2024.”

The advertisement shared by Shanahan starts out with clips of Trump as he can be heard saying, “What will we do with this moment? How will we be remembered? Look at the opportunities before us.”

“This election really isn’t about the left versus the right,” Gabbard can be heard saying in the video. “It’s about we, the people choosing our government and the choice between freedom versus tyranny.”

“Nobody has a chronic disease burden like we have,” Kennedy can be heard saying in the video. “Why are we allowing this to happen to our children? Ultimately, the only thing that will save our country is if we choose to love our kids more than we hate each other.”

Shanahan can be heard saying in the video how what is happening is “deeper than politics,” adding that people “are being called to rise above the hatred and the fear and the evil.”

“We need to remember, above and beyond, that we must love our neighbors, that we must treat other people as we hope to be treated,” Vance says in the video.

In August, Kennedy announced that he was suspending his presidential campaign and endorsed Trump for president. Despite having political differences, Kennedy and Trump revealed that they would be working together to “investigate the corruption of regulatory agencies,” and work to “make America healthy again.”

Gabbard, who recently announced that she was joining the Republican Party, endorsed Trump in August. In her endorsement of Trump, Gabbard highlighted how Trump had not started “any new wars.”

“You want to be a rebel? You want to be a hippie? You want to stick it to the man? Show up on your college campus and trying calling yourself a conservative,” Ramaswamy says in the video.

“America’s going to reach heights that it has never seen before,” Musk says in the video. “The future is gonna be amazing!”

The video continues to show iconic clips from the Trump campaign, such as when Vance went on Theo Von’s podcast, and Trump rode in a garbage truck after President Joe Biden referred to Americans who support Trump as “garbage.”

“Don’t you want healthy children? Don’t you want a president that’s going to make America healthy again?” a clip of Kennedy plays, as another clip shows Shanahan filling out a ballot on stage for Trump as she reveals she is a former Democrat and a “first time Trump voter.”

The video continues to show clips such as Trump appearing on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Gabbard throwing out red “Make America Great Again” hats at the University of Arizona, and Trump serving customers at a Philadelphia McDonald’s.

“The people dreamed this country, and it’s the people who are making America great again,” Trump says in the video.

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https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/11/03/watch-stirring-unity-ad-showcases-trumps-expanded-maga-coalition-rfk-gabbard-musk-more/

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San Jose State University (SJSU) has suspended an assistant volleyball coach indefinitely for speaking out against the inclusion of transgender player Blaire Fleming on the team’s roster, according to OutKick.

“The associate head coach of the San Jose State University women’s volleyball team is not with the team at this time, and we will not provide further information on this matter,” the school said in a statement to OutKick.

The suspension follows a tumultuous week in which assistant coach Melissa Batie-Smoose took public and legal action against the school by filing a Title IX complaint and giving an interview in which she lamented the toxic culture created by the school’s aggressively enforced trans-inclusion policy.

At the heart of the Title IX complaint, in a report obtained by Quilette, is an allegation from Batie-Smoose that Fleming, the transgender player, and another teammate engaged in a conspiracy to help San Jose State lose a match and injure SJSU player Brooke Slusser.

Slusser is a member of women’s sports advocate Riley Gaines’ Title IX suit against the NCAA that accuses SJSU of deliberately covering up the fact that Fleming was a male.

Specifically, Batie-Smoose alleges Fleming and another teammate violated team rules by leaving their hotel on October 3 to meet with Colorado State player Malaya Jones. During this meeting, Fleming and the unnamed SJSU player gave Jones scouting reports on their team, and Fleming agreed that he would not block any shots from Colorado State directed at Slusser.

Quilette reports that Batie-Smoose became aware of the plot after the unnamed SJSU player confessed it to her.

The early October matchup between SJSU and Colorado State was the first game after Slusser’s first critical public statement against Fleming on September 30.

The timing of Slusser’s statement and the date of the conspiratorial meeting involving Fleming and the Colorado State player led Batie-Smoose to conclude the plot was a direct retaliation for speaking out against the transgender player.

The Mountain West Conference says it is aware of the allegations, “reviewing the document, and has initiated an investigation to gather all the facts.”

The allegations against Fleming are as explosive as they are serious. If proven, it’s unimaginable that he would be allowed to continue to play for SJSU.

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https://www.breitbart.com/sports/2024/11/03/report-sjsu-suspends-coach-after-revealing-shocking-allegations-trans-player-conspired-injure-teammate/

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King Charles III and his son Prince William have contracts with UK taxpayer-funded public services, charities, government departments and even a prison, which help them earn millions every year, the Sunday Times has claimed. That’s in addition to the so-called sovereign grant the royals get from the government.

In 2023 alone, Charles and William’s “private fiefdoms,” the Duchy of Lancaster and the Duchy of Cornwall - raised £27.4 million (over $35 million) and £23.6 million ($30 million) respectively for the British royal family, the newspaper found as part of a joint investigation with Channel 4’s Dispatches program.

The paper said Saturday that they used the royal addresses to uncover their business contracts and discovered how the duchies are making money “via a series of commercial rents and feudal levies on land largely seized by medieval monarchs.”

Dubbed “Duchy Files,” the investigation claims to have found that King Charles and Prince William “charge for the right to cross rivers, offload cargo onto the shore, run cables under their beaches, operate schools and charities, and even dig graves.”

“They earn revenue from toll bridges, ferries, sewage pipes, churches, village halls, pubs, distilleries, gas pipelines, boat moorings, opencast and underground mines, car parks, rental homes and wind turbines,” The Times claims.

Some 5,410 landholdings and properties are held by the royal duchies, the investigation claims.

For instance, a deal with an NHS foundation trust will reportedly pay the King’s Duchy of Lancaster £11 million ($14 million) over 15 years to rent a warehouse for ambulances.

Prince William’s Duchy of Cornwall receives £1.5 million ($1.9 million) a year from the Ministry of Justice for using Dartmoor prison, The Times claims. The duchy of the King’s eldest son, the Colonel-in-Chief of the Army Air Corps, also charges the military “for the right to train” on its 67,500 acres of land in Dartmoor. The sum it gets has not been revealed.

The estates also rent out over 900 residential homes and farms to tenants, according to the report.

The duchies, both established in the 14th century, are operating as commercial landlords, but are exempt from paying tax on their corporate profits, the paper notes. The King and Prince pay income tax voluntarily at the highest rate, 45%. In 2022, the last time King Charles published his tax filings, he paid 25% of the £23 million ($30 million) in duchy profit “because he deducted expenses he considered related to his official duties,” The Times pointed out.

The “Duchy Files” investigation marks the first time that the complete list of property holdings for the two royal estates has been made public, the paper says, adding that even the British parliament was denied access to it.

“The ancient property empires that fund the King and the Prince of Wales have remained a closely guarded secret within the royal family and its small circle of advisers for centuries,” it claimed.

The two duchies are separate from the Crown Estate, a vast property business owned by the British monarch but run independently. Because of its soaring profits, the taxpayer-funded sovereign grant that pays for official royal duties will rise from £86.3 million ($111 million) in 2024-25 to £132 million ($170 million) in 2025-26.

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https://www.rt.com/news/606954-king-charles-millions-property/

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North Korea will support Russia in the Ukraine conflict for as long as it takes, Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui has said, adding that Pyongyang has no doubts that Moscow will emerge victorious.

Speaking at a meeting with her Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in Moscow on Friday, Choe noted that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un “gave us an order to firmly and powerfully support and assist the Russian army and the Russian people in their holy war.”

According to the minister, North Korea has no doubt that under the leadership of President Vladimir Putin “the Russian army and people will achieve a great victory in its struggle to protect its sovereign rights and security interests.” “We reaffirm that we will always adamantly stand by our Russian comrades until the victory day.”

She also remarked that Russia and North Korea are developing relations in all spheres, including defense, based on the landmark Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership that Moscow and Pyongyang signed in June. The two countries are now embarking on the mission of “further coordinating our foreign policy position… and advance our interactions even further in all areas, as well as jointly and effectively responding to all international issues on all international platforms,” she said.

Meanwhile, Lavrov also touted the bilateral relations, saying they had reached “an unprecedentedly high level.” He thanked Pyongyang for a “principled stance on the events in Ukraine,” which he said were the result of NATO expansion and a campaign to encourage Kiev to “wipe out everything Russian” in the country.

The North Korea-Russia treaty, which was ratified by Russian MPs last week, stipulates that if one side is invaded, the other “shall provide military and other assistance with all means in its possession without delay.”

Ukraine and Western countries have accused North Korea of sending troops to Russia and are concerned that they may eventually join the conflict. North Korea has denied the allegations, saying they are an attempt to tarnish Pyongyang’s image. Russian President Vladimir Putin has neither confirmed nor denied the claims, adding that the details of the cooperation between the two countries are nobody’s business.

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https://www.rt.com/news/606867-north-korea-ukraine-support-russia-victory/

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A man fled a police stop on the Berlin mass transit rail, dropping a bag as he fled containing over 17 ounces of a terrorist-favoured home made explosive.

Berlin police are seeking an unidentified man who they tried to subject to a stop and search on the platform at Neukölln S-Bahn (mass rapid transit railway) on Wednesday afternoon, but who resisted and managed to escape.

The man fled by jumping across the tracks, it is reported, but officers managed to grab onto his pack, which he released to get away. On inspection, it was discovered he had been carrying explosives in the bag.

Bomb squad officers discovered a drinks bottle wrapped in wire containing 500g (17½ ounces) of TATP explosives, along with a further quantity of cables and a believed stolen-in-2022 Polish citizen identity card.

TATP is highly unstable and prone to exploding if handled roughly, suggesting the suspect in this case fleeing on foot and dropping a bag containing the explosive without it setting off was a lucky escape for pursuing officers and the wider public. What was said to be an attempted terror attack by a Ukrainian extremist in France earlier this year was averted, apparently at the last moment, after the would-be alleged perpetrator accidentally blew himself up in an airport hotel room, it was reported at the time.

As stated then of TATP:

…the explosive was of the ‘TATP’ (Triacetone-Triperoxide) type made with acetone, favoured by terrorists in Europe because the ingredients are widely and legally available. The downside is TATP is extremely unstable and consequently dangerous to handle, and even a small disturbance can cause it to explode, leading to terror groups like the Islamic State naming it “Mother of Satan”.

The explosive has been used in terrorist attacks and in planned terror attacks again and again, but it is also known to be in use with robbery gangs blowing up cash machines.

Normally when police discover eexplosives, they are taken outside of the city to be destroyed. In this case because TATP is so unstable, the device was taken toa nearby city park, buried, and then detonated on Wednesday night. The blast could reportedly be heard through Berlin.

Police said in their statement that ” It is still unclear why the man was carrying explosives. The ongoing investigations – in particular the search measures to identify and arrest the escaped man with the evaluation of video recordings – are ongoing”.

Berlin’s Neukölln district has developed something of a reputation for crime. As previously reported of the neighbourhood:

well known for being both heavily migrant-settled and as being a centre of strength for German left-wing extremists, who call themselves Antifa. In some cases… violence in Neukölln manifests itself on strictly religious lines, and in others as cultural difference.

The area has become infamous to a certain degree recently, however, as migrant riots took place on New Year’s Eve into 2023, with widespread damage across the area. The way Germany responded to these events became a scandal itself, as broadcasters were accused of trying to cover up the violence, with the immigration background to the riots subject played down in reports.

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https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2024/10/31/man-flees-berlin-police-stop-leaves-behind-bag-of-terrorist-explosive/

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Sean “Diddy” Combs reportedly “kept meticulous records” of his infamous parties, and “has enough dirt to hang half of Hollywood,” according to a source, who added that well-known celebrities are panicking while they “pray he keeps his mouth shut.”

The disgraced music mogul’s ex-girlfriends — including singer Jennifer Lopez and actress Cameron Diaz — are in a major panic that he will drag them down by revealing unsavory secrets about them if he ends up going away to prison, a source told In Touch Weekly.

“It’s not like they’ve been going around trashing him, but everyone’s been giving him a seriously wide berth,” the source told the magazine. “He’s radioactive at this point, even if he hasn’t been found guilty, his name is mud, and it would social suicide to have anything to do with him.”

The source added that Combs — who has been in jail since September 16 while he awaits trial for sex trafficking, among a litany of other alleged crimes — expects his former friends to come to his defense, but nobody is, as they don’t want to risk their reputations.

“He’s still in total denial and actually expected all his high-profile friends, and even his exes like J. Lo and Cameron, to stand up for him,” the source said. “He can’t wrap his head around the fact that everyone’s just dropped him and wants no part of his sordid scandal.”

“There’s a legitimate fear among a huge swath of people in Hollywood — J. Lo and Cameron included — that he could seriously embarrass them if he decides to talk about what they shared with him back in the day, which was pretty intimate,” the source added.

The insider went on to say that “their hands are tied,” adding, “it’s not like they can reach out to him — and showing any kind of support for him is out of the question.”

“So, all they can do is hope and pray he keeps his mouth shut,” the source said.

But the “Can’t Nobody Hold Me Down” singer’s celebrity friends are in a panic over rumors that he “kept meticulous records” of his parties, the source revealed.

“All the rumors that he’s kept meticulous records, and even video recordings, of all the crazy stuff that went on at his big parties over the years is only adding to everyone’s panic,” the insider said.

“The word is he’s got enough dirt to hang half of Hollywood,” the source added.

As Breitbart News reported, a federal indictment accuses Combs of more than a decade of abusing, threatening, and coercing women and others, racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, forced labor, kidnapping, arson, bribery, and obstruction of justice, among other crimes.

Combs, who has refuted the allegations, was denied bail three times after a New York judge ruled that the “I’ll Be Missing You” singer must remain behind bars at the Metropolitan Detention Center while he awaits his upcoming sex trafficking trial, set for May 5.

Meanwhile, the music mogul is also facing at least 120 separate lawsuits brought by Buzbee Law Firm and AVA Law Group on behalf alleged victims who are accusing Combs of a laundry list of crimes.

Buzbee’s lead counsel Tony Buzbee announced earlier this month that the firms would be filing civil cases against Combs, his associates, and other entities, accusing the defendants of crimes spanning from 1991 to 2024.

“The names we’re going to name, assuming our investigators confirm and corroborate what we’ve been told, are names that will shock you,” Buzbee said.

About a dozen of these lawsuits have already been filed, one of which accuses Combs of raping a 13-year-old girl at an MTV VMAs after party in 2000 while unnamed “male and female” celebrities were present.

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https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2024/10/29/mag-diddy-has-enough-dirt-to-hang-half-of-hollywood-panicky-celebrities-are-praying-he-keeps-his-mouth-shut/

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Report: Harris Campaign Manipulates Reddit with Sophisticated Astroturfing Plan.

The Harris-Walz campaign is reportedly manipulating the social media platform Reddit and breaking the rules in order to control the narrative on the site and make Vice President Kamala Harris appear more popular than she actually is, according to a new investigation by the Federalist.

While Reddit is a notoriously leftist platform infamous for its censorship of a large community of Trump supporters, Harris’s campaign is deploying its staffers to manipulate the site’s algorithm even further via a massive “astroturfing” operation, which is in direct violation of platform’s Terms of Service, according to a report by the Federalist.

The term “astroturfing” refers to a fake grassroots campaign, which involves campaign staffers or volunteers posing as ordinary people to create the illusion that there is more support being expressed in favor of a particular candidate or issue than there actually is.

“It’s no different than a shady company paying a team to write a bunch of fake Amazon reviews about their product to make it appear to be a better and more popular product than it is,” the Federalist noted.

When this strategy is used on Amazon, it can manipulate people to buy certain products, thinking they are more popular than they are. When the same strategy is deployed for elections, it can reward a falsely advertised candidate with more votes.

The Harris-Walz campaign reportedly keeps a spreadsheet to track of its astroturfing efforts, which involves staffers spamming the “Politics” subreddit (reddit forums on a particular topic) — and other subreddits — with pro-Harris propaganda, and then having volunteers who pretend to be random users who just so happened to stumble upon the content post favorable comments.

The Federalist accessed the campaign’s Discord server and found that every weekday morning paid Democrat staffer Gabrielle Lynn communicates a “Daily Messaging Guidance” for Reddit, which usually consists of articles and data that the Harris-Walz campaign wants to boost, and “key messaging” that campaign volunteers need to stick to.

This information is assembled by official Harris-Walz staffers and is added to a Google Spreadsheet titled “Reddit Organizing.” From there, volunteers called “Lead Posters” — who are Reddit savvy — choose what they think will best resonate with users on the platform.

After posting to Reddit, the campaign’s Lead Posters then go back to the spreadsheet and update it with links to their posts, so that campaign volunteers can then spam the posts with likes and comments, making them appear more active, which then triggers the site’s algorithm to make the content more visible to users.

Harris-Walz campaign volunteers are reportedly working with a database of more than 100 subreddits that they target with campaign propaganda.

“Kamala’s posters, however, don’t simply spam links haphazardly. They use a calculated, sequential post timing metric to avoid Reddit’s built-in spam filters,” the Federalist reported.

Given that this activity violates Reddit’s Terms of Service, Harris-Walz campaign volunteers often discuss how to avoid getting banned while they spam the platform and carry out their astroturfing agenda, according to internal Discord chats obtained by the Federalist.

With regards to how effective this shady strategy has been, the Federalist noted that the Harris-Walz campaign’s own data reveals that over the course of 15 days, its volunteers were able to make 2,551 posts to Reddit, which have so far garnered more than 5.7 million upvotes and 418,000 comments.

Staffers and volunteers posing as regular individuals and spamming Reddit with propaganda and false favorability is clearly an effort by the Harris-Walz campaign to manipulate votes in the 2024 presidential election.

Read the full report at the Federalist here.

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https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2024/10/29/report-harris-campaign-manipulates-reddit-with-sophisticated-astroturfing/

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Taiwan and the US have agreed in principle that the island can buy a large quantity of US-made attack drones, Bloomberg has reported citing informed sources.

Taiwan could reportedly get up to 1,000 UAVs from US firms AeroVironment Inc. and Anduril Industries Inc. in accordance with deals that are expected to be signed “soon.”

The attack drones in question should help Taiwan with “blunting a potential Chinese assault on the island democracy,” the agency said in an article on Tuesday.

Washington and Taipei signed a “letter of offer and acceptance” in late September, the report read. The document is the final step before the agreeing of actual contracts, in which the quantities of drones, their prices and delivery deadlines will be outlined, it explained.

Bloomberg stressed that drones have “burgeoned into a major component of modern warfare” as they are being actively used by both sides in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

Retired Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery, a senior director with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who traveled to Taiwan to assess its defense needs, told the outlet that the agreement shows “that both Taiwan and the US are learning important lessons from the combat in Ukraine, and turning that knowledge into future procurement.”

US greenlights more arms sales to TaiwanRead more US greenlights more arms sales to Taiwan A US State Department spokesperson, Taiwan’s office in Washington, and the US-Taiwan Business Council declined to comment when asked about the drone deal by Bloomberg.

In June, the State Department notified Congress that it had approved the sale of Anduril ALTIUS 600M-V drones and AeroVironment Switchblade 300 “B” model UAVs to Taiwan for $360 million.

Officially, the US is committed to the One China policy, stating that Taiwan, which has been self-governed since 1949 but never officially declared independence from Beijing, is an integral part of Chinese territory.

However, Washington has maintained contacts with the authorities in Taipei, sold weapons and military equipment to the island and promised to defend Taiwan militarily in the event of an attack from the mainland.

China has vigorously opposed cooperation between the US and Taiwan, which it views as an infringement of its sovereignty and meddling in its internal affairs.

The stated goal of the Chinese government is “peaceful reunification,” but it has said it would use force should Taipei formally declare independence. In that event, Beijing says the Chinese military will act against outside interference and what it terms a small minority of secessionists.

The report comes amid the intensification of Chinese military exercises around Taiwan following the inauguration of the island’s new president, Lai Ching-te, whom Beijing has described as a “dangerous separatist.”

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https://www.rt.com/news/606683-taiwan-us-china-drones/

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Donald Trump will leave the enforcement of any peace deal between Russia and Ukraine to European powers, one of the former US president’s advisers has told the Financial Times. The plan is one of several floated by Trump’s advisers and allies, all of which involve the US refusing to deal with the aftermath of the conflict.

Trump has promised to bring a rapid end to the ongoing conflict if he is elected president in November. However, he has offered few specifics as to how he would do this, save for pressing Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Zelensky into peace talks with US aid to Kiev as leverage.

In the absence of any concrete peace plan, a host of Trump’s current and former advisers have outlined how they think the former president could achieve this goal.

One unnamed “long-term Trump adviser” told the Financial Times on Monday that the Republican candidate could resolve the conflict with “a reimagining of the failed Minsk agreements of 2014 and 2015,” under which Kiev agreed to grant some autonomy to the majority Russian-speaking regions of Donetsk and Lugansk.

This time around, the adviser said, the deal would be enforced by EU peacekeepers. “There are two things America will insist on,” he said. “We will not have any men or women in the enforcement mechanism. We’re not paying for it. Europe is paying for it.”

Reviving the Minsk agreements would likely present several major challenges. After multiple European leaders admitted that they never intended to abide by the 2014 and 2015 agreements, Moscow does not believe that the EU can play the role of honest broker, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said earlier this month.

Furthermore, Donetsk and Lugansk – along with Kherson and Zaporozhye – have since joined the Russian Federation, and any peace deal must take into account this “territorial reality,” the Kremlin has said.

Fred Fleitz, a former CIA analyst who served in Trump’s White House, told the British newspaper that the US could “freeze the conflict” along the current front line, and negotiate a lasting settlement with Russia at a later date. Ukraine would not give up its territorial claims in the meantime, Fleitz said, explaining that this plan counts on delaying a final agreement until “Putin leaves the stage.”

However, Fleitz conceded that he does not speak for Trump and does not know the former president’s foreign policy plans.

The most detailed proposal has been put forward by Trump’s running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance. Speaking to former US Navy SEAL and podcast host Shawn Ryan last month, Vance said that the current frontline could be demilitarized and fortified, ensuring that “Russia doesn’t invade again.” In exchange, “Russia gets a guarantee of neutrality from Ukraine,” while Germany and other EU countries foot the bill for Ukraine’s reconstruction. The current American policy of “throw[ing] money at this problem, [and] hope[ing] the Ukrainians are able to achieve a military victory” is “stupid,” Vance told Ryan.

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https://www.rt.com/news/606626-trump-ukraine-peace-eu/

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Famed Harry Potter scribe J.K. Rowling was shocked by a recent report that shows that hundreds of female athletes have lost medals and championships to men identifying as women over the last few years and she vented her outrage on her X account.

On Thursday the British children’s book author commented on a story by the Daily Mail which revealed a recent report by the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls said that hundreds of women’s medals have gone to men.

“Over 890 medals, across 29 sports, stolen from women by men,” the shocked British writer exclaimed in her post.

In a follow-up post to a fan who said he felt bad for all the women who have lost out on athletic opportunities, Rowling added, “We’re not supposed to feel empathy for those women and girls. The only people we should coddle are the mediocre men who decided they’d enjoy medals without the hassle of competing in the correct category.”

The report by Reem Alsalen, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls, suggests men should not be allowed in women’s sports.

He asserted that it was a matter of fairness and safety that women’s sports should be relegated only to women and that trans women should be excluded from women’s sports.

Many agreed with Rowling.

X owner and Space X boss Elon Musk, for one, jumped onto Rowling’s post and insisted the issue has gone far beyond that of mere medal counts.

“It’s not just about medals anymore-it’s about safety, careers, financial incentives , opportunities, dreams, and the future for young girls in sports. It’s devastating to watch. Magazine covers, women of the year awards… they’re taking up every single space that was meant to inspire and encourage girls to make the best of themselves,” Musk wrote.

Musk also insisted women are “losing everything” with society’s bow to the woke, radical, trans agenda.

“Women are losing everything, even the right to be called women. And now, in a ridiculous twist, we’re being blamed for being too successful—too educated, too wealthy—because apparently, it makes men more violent. What’s next? Will they have to start apologizing for striving for more? What an absurd world,” he wrote in another post.

Actor James Woods also took aim at the U.N. report and called the bow to transgenderism in sports a “violation” of Title IX.

“An appalling and culpable violation of Title IX by the dirty Democrats who are supporting mentally ill men before the rights of girls and women in sports,” he wrote.

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https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2024/10/27/j-k-rowling-highlights-hundreds-of-medals-across-dozens-of-sports-stolen-by-men/

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The Surveillance State has Arrived… And It’s Being Implemented by Our Cities and Towns.

Guest post by Leo Hohmann

My old colleagues at World Net Daily have an interesting story up today about the city of Norfolk, Virginia. City officials have transformed Norfolk into a virtual lock-down surveillance society with more than 172 high-resolution, internet-connected cameras monitoring practically all human movement.

Of course Norfolk is not terribly unique in this regard and we have a full report below, including a Top 10 list of most surveilled American cities.

Multitudes of cities of all sizes across the U.S. are jumping on the technocracy bandwagon and setting up hidden surveillance cameras on every corner. They’re on light poles, bridges and overpasses, stoplights, buildings, you name it. Some are equipped with speakers so they can also listen in on what’s being said.

They claim it’s for our “safety.”

What makes Norfolk unique is a group of citizens is fighting back. They’ve filed a lawsuit against the city, which is something that needs to happen in every city that implements this technology.

A lawsuit has been filed that accuses elected officials in Norfolk, Virginia, of using a network of 170 cameras to impose a warrantless surveillance scheme on residents and visitors.

The Institute for Justice has filed the suit on behalf of several plaintiffs, charging that the actions violate Fourth Amendment rights protecting U.S. citizens against unwarranted searches and seizures.

The system allows police “to monitor the comings and goings of all drivers in the city,” the legal team said.

Lee Schmidt, one of the plaintiffs, said, “I don’t like the government following my every movement and treating me like a criminal suspect, when they have no reason to believe I’ve done anything wrong.”

Another plaintiff, Crystal Arrington, stated, “My work requires me to drive around Norfolk very often, and it’s incredibly disturbing to know the city can track my every move during that time.”

The Institute for Justice explained that in 2023, Norfolk police partnered with a private company called Flock Safety Inc. to install 172 automatic license-plate reading cameras all across town.

The locations were chosen to provide a so-called “curtain of technology,” which would allow police to watch anyone drive anywhere without knowing they’re being watched.

The Institute noted:

“Unlike traditional traffic cameras, which capture an image only when they sense speeding or someone running a red light, Flock’s cameras capture images of every car driving by, which it retains for at least 30 days. Artificial intelligence then uses those images to create a ‘Vehicle Fingerprint’ that enables any Flock subscriber to both track where that vehicle has gone and identify what other vehicles it has been seen nearby.”

Institute for Justice lawyer Michael Soyfer stated:

“Norfolk has created a dragnet that allows the government to monitor everyone’s day-to-day movements without a warrant or probable cause. This type of mass surveillance is a blatant violation of the Fourth Amendment.”

Making the violation worse, the Institute noted, is that since Flock “pools its data in a centralized database, police across the entire country can access over 1 billion monthly datapoints. That means not just tracking drivers within a particular jurisdiction, but potentially across the entire nation.”

“Following someone’s every move can tell you some incredibly intimate details about them, such as where they work, who they associate with, whether or not they’re religious, what hobbies they have, and any medical conditions they may have,” said IJ lawyer Robert Frommer. “This type of intrusive, ongoing monitoring of someone’s life is not just creepy, it’s unconstitutional.”

The scheme gives police the ability to spy on people without any judicial oversight.

Imagine walking into court to challenge a ticket when the only evidence is from a machine powered by artificial intelligence. We already know that AI allows for deep fake videos. Think of the potential for abuse here.

The really sick part of this story is that the Agenda 2030 surveillance state is being implemented at the local level. And many cities are able to pay for the digital enslavement of their residents with federal dollars as the incentive. Why aren’t more Republican political figures talking about this?

Some abuses have already been documented, the Institute said, noting just a couple of examples:

In Kansas, the Institute reports that officials were caught using Flock to stalk their exes, including one police chief who used Flock 228 times over four months to track his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend’s vehicles.

In California, several police departments violated California law by sharing data from their license-plate reader database with other departments across the country. And as is the case with other databases, these can be susceptible to hacking, which can reveal private data. Comparitech looked at a variety of camera types that have become ubiquitous in U.S. cities of all sizes.

Fixed CCTV cameras. Cameras accessed through real-time crime centers. Private cameras within the police force’s network. Cameras on public transport facilities. Traffic cameras. Streetlight cameras. Not to mention, FedEx and Amazon are also spying on you each time they make a delivery to your home.

Tech writer Kim Komando reports in an October 22, 2022 article that the study even looked at police departments that access people’s private Ring doorbell data.

She writes: “Did you know that police can access your Ring footage without your permission? Tap or click here to stop law enforcement from asking you for any videos. While at it, you’ll want to disable Amazon’s shared wireless network, known as Sidewalk. Here’s how to opt out of Sidewalk on your Amazon devices.”

Using Census.gov data, this is what the Comparitech study showed:

44.2 million people are being monitored by 270,000 cameras.

Atlanta was the most surveilled city, with a ratio of 48.93 cameras per 1,000 people.

Chicago had the highest number of cameras at 32,000.

28 of the police departments have access to Ring doorbell technology and have submitted a total of 728 requests for access to footage in the third quarter of 2020.

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The top 10 most surveilled cities in the US as of October 2022

Based on the number of cameras per 1,000 people, these are the 10 most surveilled cities in the U.S.:

Atlanta, Georgia – 24,800 cameras for 506,811 people = 48.93 cameras per 1,000 people.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – 28,064 cameras for 1,584,064 people = 17.72 cameras per 1,000 people.

Denver, Colorado – 12,273 cameras for 727,211 people = 16.88 cameras per 1,000 people.

Washington, District of Columbia – 11,441 cameras for 705,749 people = 16.21 cameras per 1,000 people.

San Francisco, California – 14,266 cameras for 881,549 people = 16.18 cameras per 1,000 people.

Las Vegas, Nevada – 10,208 cameras for 651,319 people = 15.67 cameras per 1,000 people.

Detroit, Michigan – 8,836 cameras for 670,031 people = 13.19 cameras per 1,000 people.

Chicago, Illinois – 32,000 cameras for 2,693,976 people = 11.88 cameras per 1,000 people.

Portland, Oregon – 6,411 cameras for 654,741 people = 9.79 cameras per 1,000 people.

Fresno, California – 4,706 cameras for 531,576 people = 8.85 cameras per 1,000 people.

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https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/10/surveillance-state-has-arrived-its-being-implemented-our/

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"Killers of the Flower Moon" stars Robert De Niro and Leonardo Di Caprio reunited with several celebrity elites in an attempt to boost Kamala Harris in the crucial battleground state of Pennsylvania when they took the stage in Philadelphia on Saturday.

The Kamala Harris campaign enlisted Robert De Niro, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kerry Washington, Tessa Thompson, and Brian Tyree Henry for the Philadelphia get out the vote event. Kamala Harris didn’t appear at the “Philadelphians for Harris” event, but local politicians were present, including Philadelphia mayor Cherelle Parker.

“It makes me so fucking angry that we’re here talking about a piece of shit like Donald Trump,” De Niro said to the applauding crowd.

The De Niro-Di Caprio reunion comes as Democrats are panicking as polling shows former President Donald Trump taking a slim lead in Pennsylvania. As Breitbart News reported, Trump leads Harris 51 percent to 49 percent in the most recent Emerson College/RealClearPennsylvania (RCPA) poll.

Di Caprio just endorsed Kamala Harris on Friday, citing her commitment to climate change activism — a cause that is central to the actor’s public persona despite his well-documented use of private jets and yachts.

While Robert De Niro has remained relatively quiet in recent weeks, he has long been a vocal Trump hater, repeatedly assailing the former president in speeches and interviews.

Most recently, De Niro embarked on a bizarre anti-Trump tangent while participating in a Megalopolis panel discussion alongside director Francis Ford Coppola.

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https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2024/10/27/video-hollywood-elites-leonardo-dicaprio-robert-de-niro-reunite-in-attempt-to-rescue-pennsylvania-for-kamala/

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By Aaryaman Nijhawan, international relations researcher and analyst. He is a postgraduate of the University of Delhi and the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO University), Russian Federation. He is currently pursuing PhD; his area of expertise is the Russian-Ukrainian Conflict and the Multipolar World Order.

The BRICS summit in Kazan was nothing short of a geopolitical firestorm. The assembling of the world’s prominent emerging economies in a country declared as a ‘pariah’ and under comprehensive sanctions is at best a denunciation and, at worst a harsh rebuke to Western policymakers who, according to Foreign Policy, tend to dismiss the grouping as an “incoherent grab bag.” This is undoubtedly Russia’s finest moment.

The Kazan summit is effectively turning out to be the death knell of the Western-led international order. Rejecting “unilateral trade-restrictive measures” or sanctions as being detrimental to the sustainable development goals, such measures were clearly labelled as “undermining the UN Charter,” being “inconsistent with WTO rules” and “contrary to international law.”

Although differences still persist regarding whether BRICS should develop towards a neutral ‘non-Western’ or a radical ‘anti-Western’ stance, there is nonetheless agreement amongst the member states that given the democratizing geostrategic landscape, Western institutions and projects needn’t be the only game in town. For instance, regarding the Ukraine conflict, while the BRICS Declaration called for all states to act “consistently with the Purposes and Principles of the UN Charter,” Moscow achieved a diplomatic victory with the grouping’s acknowledgement of the need to combat the “glorification of Nazism, [and] neo-Nazism…”

In rather crisp and certain terms, the Declaration took a hard line that it strictly “denounced” Israeli attacks against humanitarian operations, facilities and personnel and expressed “grave concern” over the “unprecedented escalation of violence.”

Such well-articulated messaging points to a rising non-Western platform which is confident enough to come out of the shadows with a unified voice of its own. It went further by invoking the ICJ’s legal proceedings against Israel and denounced in uncompromising terms the “premeditated terrorist attack” involving communication devices in Beirut as a “grave violation of international law.”

As heads of state congregated for one of the “largest-scale foreign policy events ever” in Kazan, Russia, this is the first summit of the expanded BRICS membership where seven new states were invited to join the flagship non-Western platform.

Here’s why Russia’s BRICS presidency is at a critical crossroadsRead more Here’s why Russia’s BRICS presidency is at a critical crossroads At first glance, it may seem that there cannot exist a common thread of agreement between member states placed along the entire spectrum, with their diverse foreign policy stances and national political systems. New members include both states under the American security umbrella and those under American sanctions. While some countries, like India for instance, may be accustomed to such intimidating diversity, most aren’t.

Yet the consistent resolve towards establishing a grouping that isn’t dominated by the industrialized North highlights the pent-up frustration with historical Western double standards (one case in point being the demise of the concept of Responsibility to Protect due to shortsighted Western chauvinism).

The lack of say in a dollar-dominated world economy where the US holds special privileged veto power in the Bretton Woods system and institutions that hardly represent the contemporary multipolar realities will invariably push unrepresented yet globally significant powers to mold a separate architecture. The “call for reform of the Bretton Woods institutions” with greater representation of Economically More Developed Countries (EMDCs) in leadership positions combined with increased geographical representation was in the Kazan summit is a case in point.

However, with diversity comes challenges. Although there is unanimous agreement that we’re in a post-Unipolar order, there are still competing viewpoints on the evolving world order. While the Kremlin and New Delhi view the change as more towards multipolarity, Chinese academics believe the coming age will be largely bipolar. Nevertheless, reflecting the shifting currents, the Kazan Declaration squarely mentions the “G20 as the premier global forum” for deliberation on contentious global issues – “a platform for dialogue of both developed and emerging economies on an equal and mutually beneficial footing.”

However, the truth is that while the West is in decline, it isn’t by definition not significant or influential by any means. The US dollar is still the global reserve currency, major trade and transactions are done in USD, Washington’s military budget is still unrivalled, and the global sea lanes are de facto controlled and patrolled by the US Navy.

In such times, it is natural that states hedge their bets and insure themselves against future geostrategic turbulence by currying favor with the emerging as well as the established powers. The membership queue of states to join the BRICS grouping can partly be viewed in this light, and partly due to the exclusivity of Western-led institutions, which fail to accommodate the majority of global interests.

A more 'democratic' era? Democratic societies proudly lay claim to the smooth and peaceful transition of power following elections as one of the signature elements of democracy. Yet the US, one of the oldest modern democracies, has shown a surprising lack of flexibility when it comes to promoting the greater representation of emerging market economies in the IMF and the World Bank.

A new world order in the making: Here’s why this BRICS summit will be specialRead more A new world order in the making: Here’s why this BRICS summit will be special A separate, more dangerous outcome is the inevitable emergence of what American political scientist Graham T. Allison calls the Thucydides Trap, wherein the propensity of war increases when a rising power threatens to displace an established power from its hegemonic position. According to Allison’s calculations, historically 12 out of 16 such cases in the past 500 years have ended in conflict.

Thus, instead of dismissing the BRICS grouping as a disparate bunch of hotshot rebels, the US (and the West by extension) would benefit immensely more by proactively engaging with the grouping and charting a blueprint for closer cooperation between the G7 and BRICS, and between the Bretton Woods system and the New Development Bank (NDB) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Pursuing commonalities rather than highlighting differences by prematurely proclaiming Cold War 2.0 should be the drift of states proclaiming to be flagbearers of democracy and human rights.

After all, the areas of convergence amongst the BRICS member states as well as the states of the global south aren’t different from the European notions establishing the Peace of Westphalia. In fact, Southern states are proving to be more Westphalian than their European counterparts by enshrining the notion of sovereignty and territoriality in, for instance, the Kazan Declaration.

Support for Palestine’s full membership in the UN along with the “unwavering commitment” towards a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders was clearly mentioned. Notably, the Declaration boldly “condemn[ed]” the “illegal foreign military presence” within Syrian territory, referring to the unlawful US military base at Al-Tanf and American control of Syrian oil fields, and called for preservation of the “sovereignty and territorial integrity” of Lebanon.

In an increasingly fractured world with multiple, divergent power centers, the recently concluded border de-escalation by India and China should serve as an inspiration for influential states to pursue an agenda of mutual respect and cooperation.

The BRICS grouping took an important, pioneering step in endorsing PAROS or prevention of an arms race in outer space. As Indian Prime Minister Modi has repeatedly proclaimed, today’s era is not an era of war. At a time when technology and AI are challenging the boundaries of human consciousness and imagination, it rests upon the world’s leaders, old and new, to prove better than to succumb to past mistakes and instead forge a precedence rooted in peace for future generations to follow.

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https://www.rt.com/india/606579-trap-for-west-why-brics/

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By Andrey Kortunov, Ph.D. in History, Director General of the Russian International Affairs Council, RIAC member.

This week’s Kazan Declaration suggests that the BRICS – in its expanded composition– is ready to open a new chapter in its history. Never before have such voluminous documents been adopted as a result of the group’s summits. Moreover, the Kazan Declaration will be the subject of great interest in the world’s political and academic circles, as well as the object of criticism by opponents of BRICS.

For the first time, the group’s unified vision of the current state of the international system is set out in detail.

The Declaration is a voluminous document containing 134 paragraphs, some of which are quite long. The statement adopted at the previous summit in Johannesburg in August 2023, contained only 94 paragraphs, and a document, adopted in Beijing in July 2022 had 75. Thus, year by year the outcome has become increasingly detailed and, as it is now customary to say, substantive, reflecting the gradual increase in the intensity of the group’s engagement and the broadening of the substantive scope of its multilateral cooperation.

The Kazan Declaration consists of a preamble and four sections dealing with: (1) strengthening multilateralism, (2) global and regional security, (3) financial and economic cooperation, and (4) humanitarian exchanges. This division seems reasonable and in line with the priorities of the Russian chairmanship announced a year ago.

For the first time in BRICS’ history, the Declaration sets out in detail the group’s shared vision of the current state of the international system, the common or overlapping approaches to the fundamental global problems of our time and to acute regional crises, and the contours of a desirable and achievable world order as the members of the group currently see it. While the document does not provide specific timetables for individual tasks or roadmaps for specific areas of work, it does cover a number of key objectives that the group should or could pursue over the next few years. It is clear that the document is the product not only of the Summit itself, but also of a great deal of hard work by an army of experts, officials and diplomats at various levels in multilateral formats over the past few months.

The multilateral negotiation of the final text of a document of such length and importance is in itself a non-trivial task, especially as the text had to be negotiated not in the old format of the five BRICS members, but with the involvement of new members who had no previous experience of such work. One can only guess at the amount of work that went into the 43 pages of the final document.

Reading through the text of the declaration, it is easy to see that there is a clear balance between the security and development agendas. This balance suggests that the group has deliberately chosen to maintain its very broad mandate and will not focus its future activities on one thing – for example, promoting trade among the group’s members, as some experts have suggested.

Rather than adopting a narrow, thematic approach, BRICS intends to position itself as a multitasking laboratory of global governance, where new algorithms of multilateral cooperation and innovative models for solving the world’s major economic and political problems can be tested, including trade, finance and strategic stability. The group’s political ‘investment portfolio’ is thus more than diversified, and this diversification increases the chances of success for at least some of its many initiatives. This ‘issue-based’ approach to cooperation should help to overcome departmental divisions and to avoid the excessive bureaucracy inherent in many international organizations.

On development issues, the BRICS predictably faces a difficult choice between trying to achieve reforms of the existing, largely Western-oriented international economic and monetary institutions and trying to create effective alternatives to these institutions under their own common umbrella.

Judging from the text of the declaration, the intention is to maximize both opportunities: it calls for fundamental institutional changes in ‘old’ multilateral structures such as the IMF or the IBRD, while at the same time stating the BRICS’ intention to further promote non-Western institutional alternatives to these predominantly Western structures, such as the New Development Bank (NDB) and the BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA). On the one hand, the document strongly supports the World Trade Organization (WTO) as a universal mechanism for the development of international economic relations, but does not limit its support to the WTO alone, and also calls for further trade liberalization within the BRICS grouping itself.

The Declaration does not explicitly criticize the trade or financial practices of any particular country or group of countries, but expresses concern about “unlawful unilateral coercive measures,” such as sanctions, which are seen as damaging to the global economy and worldwide sustainable development goals. The paper concludes that such measures inevitably undermine the UN Charter and multilateral trading systems. This emphasis is not surprising - most of the BRICS member countries are either already subject to some form of unilateral sanctions by the West, or could be at any moment. Therefore, the idea of reducing dependence on the ‘old’ international institutions runs through the entire text of the document.

Security issues remain very sensitive for most of the BRICS member countries, and the declaration devotes most of its attention to them. It is not hard to guess that, at least in some conflict situations, members of the group could easily find themselves on different sides of the barricades. Judging by the carefully calibrated text of the Declaration, those who worked to bring together the many versions of the document spent a great deal of time and effort finding appropriate language to describe many of the current crises and conflicts. The paragraph on Ukraine, for example, is very short and refers to the positions already expressed by the Group in the votes on Ukraine in the Security Council and General Assembly of the UN. It also argues that a peaceful solution should be consistent with UN principles and norms in their entirety, pays tribute to mediation efforts and calls for conflict resolution through dialogue and diplomacy.

We can assume that it was not easy to find a common denominator on the situation in Gaza, given the very different positions of, for example, Iran and the UAE on Israel. The statement on the need to respect the territorial integrity of Syria could be interpreted as an implicit criticism of the Turkish military presence in that country, which Damascus has not explicitly authorized. It was probably easier to agree on less contentious issues, such as the ongoing nation-building crisis in Haiti, which is why the paragraph on this was relatively long and detailed. The same applies to the issue of international terrorism, which appears to be quite detailed; approaches to international terrorism seem to have been shared, if not fully agreed, among the group members from the outset.

The group decided that some of the more sensitive or technically challenging issues should be further considered and explored in more detail. Such issues include, for example, the Russian proposal for BRICS Clear, a system for trading securities without the associated conversion into dollars. One can imagine that many of the proposed changes to the global financial system using blockchain technology and digital tokens backed by national currencies, which are designed to make dollar transactions far less necessary in global trade, will not be easy to promote and therefore need further study at expert level.

The same goes for proposals to modernize transport and logistics infrastructure within the BRICS grouping – given the expansion, this task looks different today than it did a year ago. On the other hand, something like a BRICS-based grain exchange may be easier to implement because the BRICS group already includes some of the world’s largest grain exporters and importers. It would be natural for the BRICS to become more actively involved in managing global energy markets – and here the group includes most of the world’s leading producers and consumers of hydrocarbons.

Overall, the declaration suggests that the enlarged BRICS group is ready to open a new chapter in its history. It is clear that BRICS is not an anti-Western alliance, and the group is not seeking to deliberately undermine or destroy Western institutions. The authors of the Declaration chose their wording very carefully, avoiding any turns of phrase that might lead the reader to believe that a sharp confrontation between the collective West and the rest of the world is inevitable.

BRICS does not even aim to ‘balance’ the West in any way. The BRICS will never be able to become a kind of G7, given the diversity of its members and the absence of a clear hegemonic leader in the group. Nevertheless, the group is capable of claiming, and is already openly doing so, a new, more prominent role in global governance and in defining the parameters of the new world order. Moreover, it intends to become one of the most influential actors in the entire global South, which has been severely underrepresented in most multilateral international institutions.

There is reason to believe that the Kazan Declaration will receive a great deal of attention in both political and academic circles around the world, and that it will receive its fair share of criticism from skeptics and opponents of BRICS. Some will say that the declaration was too general, too ambiguous and not focused enough on specific issues. Some will be tempted to dismiss the document as just another wish-list. However, the Kazan Declaration shows not only that the enlarged BRICS can agree on a very wide range of issues, but also that the group is breaking new ground in its development. The 17th BRICS Summit will be held in Brazil next year, and the long journey from Kazan to the Latin American continent promises to be a truly exciting one.

This article was first published by the online newspaper Business-Online and was translated and edited by the RT team

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https://www.rt.com/news/606587-brics-kazan-declaration-manifesto/

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A truck driver rammed his vehicle into a crowd of people at a bus stop in central Israel early Sunday, killing one person and injuring at least 36 people – six seriously – before he was “shot and neutralised” by bystanders, police said.

Preliminary police findings showed the rammer also hit a bus that had stopped at the same location near Glilot military base to drop off passengers, the police said in a statement as seen by AP.

Authorities confirmed the attack came near the base of Israel’s 8200 intelligence unit, which has previously been targeted by Hezbollah and Iranian forces.

The force however said civilians at the site of the incident “shot the truck driver and neutralised him” before ambulances began arriving to treat the wounded.

Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was a “natural response” to Israel’s actions in “Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem,” NBC News noted.

Earlier on Sunday the Magen David Adom emergency service said the incident occurred at Aharon Yariv Boulevard in Ramat HaSharon, north of the commercial hub Tel Aviv.

Of those injured, at least 16 people had been transported to nearby hospitals, MDA said in a statement, as reported by the Times of Israel.

Officers and ambulances rushed to the scene, where Israeli television channels showed police cordoning off the area as medics helped the injured and a helicopter hovered above.

The incident comes as Israel holds ceremonies to mark the Hebrew calendar anniversary of the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7 last year that sparked the ongoing wars in Gaza and Lebanon.

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https://www.breitbart.com/middle-east/2024/10/27/israel-police-say-36-wounded-six-seriously-as-truck-rams-bus-stop-in-suspected-terror-attack/

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President Volodymyr Zelensky says his military has briefed him that soldiers from North Korea will be deployed to the front lines against Ukraine as soon as Sunday or Monday.

The deployment of thousands of North Korean troops to fight alongside Russian soldiers against Ukraine has been a matter of speculation for weeks. Now, President Zelensky says their arrival on the front lines is imminent. The Ukrainian leader said he’d been told by his Commander-in-Chief, four-star general Oleksandr Syrsky, who, in addition to giving a broader picture of progress on the frontline of the Russian invasion, also gave an update on Moscow’s reinforcements.

He said of this conversation with Syrsky: “According to intelligence, the first North Korean soldiers are expected to be deployed by Russia to combat zones as early as October 27–28. This is a clear escalation by Russia, which is significant in contrast to all the misinformation widely circulated in Kazan these days.”

That Russia has sought out and is now deploying large numbers of allied troops in its war proved Moscow intends to continue pursuing the war, Zelensky said, calling for a “principled and strong response from global leaders” in response.

Zelensky said: “North Korea’s actual involvement in combat should not be met with indifference or uncertain commentary but with tangible pressure on both Moscow and Pyongyang to uphold the UN Charter and to hold them accountable for this escalation.”

Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate (HUR) buttressed Zelensky’s remarks, stating it had intercepted Russian military communications regarding the deployment of North Korean troops to the Kursk front.

According to these purported intercepts, Moscow plans to “attach one translator and three Russian servicemen to every 30 North Korean soldiers”.

However, Russia reportedly expressed doubts about whether they will have enough local commanders to head up their units, saying: “The number of North Korean soldiers transferred to Russia is now about 12,000, of which 500 are officers, including three generals from Pyongyang.”

As reported earlier, North Korean troops preparing to join Russian forces have allegedly been given Russian uniforms, equipment, and rations ahead of their arrival at the front line. The United States has responded to the claims by asserting North Korean troops in theatre can expect to be targeted.

U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said this week: “If they do deploy to fight against Ukraine, they’re fair game. They’re fair targets… And the Ukrainian military will defend themselves against North Korean soldiers the same way they’re defending themselves against Russian soldiers.”

NATO, for its part, has previously warned that North Korea sending troops to bolster Russia’s invasion would constitute a “serious escalation.” Russia has neither confirmed nor denied the claims, stating only: “North Korea is our close neighbour and partner, and we develop relations in all areas, and it’s our sovereign right. We will continue developing this cooperation further.”

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https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2024/10/27/north-korean-soldiers-will-join-battle-against-ukraine-on-sunday-claims-zelensky/

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A New Jersey high school teacher used her body as a shield to protect a student who was being jumped by five other teens, saving him from further injury.

Cathy Hurley, a 56-year-old special educator at William Shemin Midtown Community School in Bayonne, was caught on video throwing herself over the victim as he was unconscious and in the fetal position to stop the barrage of blows from the attackers.

One of the teens got in one more kick to the victim’s head before the pack made a run for it.

Hurley’s daughter, Frankie Sielski, told NBC New York she had watched the viral clip multiple times before she realized the woman acting as a human shield was her own mother.

“I was truly in shock because of how vicious the attack is,” the teacher’s daughter said. “I Facetimed her immediately. Her eyes were welled up with tears, I said ‘Are you OK?’ She said something very bad happened.”

An 18-year-old male and four juveniles allegedly involved in the brutal fight have all been charged with aggravated assault, the outlet reported.

Sielski told NJ.com that the victim was taken to the hospital with serious injuries, though the specificities of those injuries are unclear.

“Thank God she got on top of him because there was no end in sight. Her on her feet was doing nothing,” the daughter said of her mom’s heroic actions. “I know her thought process was just getting it to stop, and she kept saying ‘We called the cops, we called the cops,’ and the kids wouldn’t stop. She just needed to get them to stop so that’s what her body did. There was no thought behind it.”

Fortunately, Hurley remained uninjured.

“My mom said ‘I don’t know why they didn‘t kick me.’ She was like, ’Why did they stop?’ Her thought process was like ‘these kids don’t even know I am in here.’ So she just decided to lay on the kid,” Sielski added.

The special education teacher told her daughter, “I did what anybody would have done.”

Sielski responded, “There was a crowd of people. No one else did anything!”

In a letter sent to school staff Thursday, administration commended Hurley.

“She was the only adult to enter the situation, trying to pull the attacker off the victim and finally laying on top of the student, to use her body as a shield,” the letter, obtained by NJ.com, said.

“Her dedication to our students, her motherly instincts and her Hudson County fearlessness tie for a close second to her kind and compassionate heart,” officials added.

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https://www.breitbart.com/education/2024/10/27/watch-new-jersey-teacher-acts-as-human-shield-to-protect-student-from-attackers/

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A woman who worked at an asylum seeker accommodation centre in the United Kingdom who spent days on life support after being stabbed in the neck has now died, with one of the migrant residents now charged with murder.

27-year-old Rhiannon Skye Whyte was attacked with a screwdriver on the platform of Bescott Stadium Railway station on Sunday night. She had been waiting for a late train after finishing her shift at the Park Inn by Radisson Hotel, one of hundreds of UK hotels taken out of public use for the government to house asylum seekers, at 11pm and was trying to get back to her home in Walsall, in England’s West Midlands.

A report by The Sun newspaper states 18-year-old Deng Chol Majeck, a resident of that hotel, has been arrested and charged with murder. The alleged killer, who is reported to have struck with a screwdriver after an argument at the asylum accommodation over a packet of biscuits, is said by the publication to have “arrived in the UK in July after crossing the Channel in a small boat. He had no documents and applied for asylum”.

Victim Whyte was on life support for three days after the attack but ultimately succumbed to her injuries in hospital. Whyte’s family said of the slain woman in a statement: “The most selfless person you were brave, quirky, funny, and always there for anyone who needed it. There is not enough paper in the world to even begin to write a tribute for you, but no one deserves it more.”

Police say they want to tell the public they believe the attack was an isolated incident and they are not seeking anyone else in connection to the killing. The BBC states Majeck is due to appear at Wolverhampton Crown Court on November 19th.

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https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2024/10/26/british-asylum-accommodation-worker-allegedly-stabbed-to-death-by-screwdriver-weilding-resident/

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“Really bad people” within the Democratic party pose a greater threat to the US than foreign adversaries, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has claimed.

With the November 5 vote fast approaching, the GOP firebrand and his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, have of late been indulging in increasingly virulent personal attacks on one another.

A Wall Street Journal poll indicated on Wednesday that Trump was two percentage points ahead of Harris, however the Republican’s lead was within the survey’s margin of error. Recent polls by CNN and the New York Times have also shown the two contenders running neck and neck.

Appearing on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast on Friday, the former president recounted that “we had no problem with” North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. The Republican hopeful went on to claim that “we have a bigger problem, in my opinion, with the enemy from within.”

“We have people that are really bad people, that I really think want to make this country unsuccessful,” he went on to allege.

Trump has previously used the term with respect to his Democratic opponents.

During an interview on Fox News’ MediaBuzz show last Sunday, the former president characterized Democratic Representative Adam Schiff and former speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi as “an enemy from within.”

Speaking during a CNN town hall on Wednesday, Harris replied in the affirmative when asked whether she believed Trump was a fascist. She went on to warn that if elected, the Republican hopeful would become a “president who admires dictators and is a fascist.”

She cited a recent report by magazine The Atlantic, which is owned by Democrat mega-donor Laurene Powell Jobs, which quoted Trump’s second chief of staff, General John Kelly, as suggesting that his former boss had expressed admiration for the leader of Nazi Germany. Trump's team denies the comments were ever uttered.

Responding to Harris’ attack in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Thursday, the former head of state charged that “Comrade Kamala Harris sees that she is losing, and losing badly… so now she is increasingly raising her rhetoric, going so far as to call me Adolf Hitler, and anything else that comes to her warped mind.”

The GOP nominee called his rival a “Threat to Democracy, and not fit to be President of the United States.”

As for the claims published by The Atlantic, the Trump team has dismissed them as “fabricated.”

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https://www.rt.com/news/606522-trump-enemy-within-rogan-podcast/

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On Tuesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends First,” Goya Foods CEO Bob Unanue stated that the Hispanic community has been “exploited” over the last four years under the Biden-Harris administration due to their economic, foreign policy, and immigration stances “And that’s why you’re seeing this community head over heels toward Donald J. Trump.”

Unanue said, “[F]rom day one, the war on fossil fuel, they’re still limiting exportations of LNG from Texas, the war on fossil fuel, the Green New Deal, our weakness around the world, the war in Ukraine between Ukraine and Russia.

They raise the prices astronomically. It’s not that anyone is gouging, it’s that prices have gone out of site.

Let’s just stipulate that, from day one, they destroyed this economy. But the other thing they are destroying is human life.

As Latinos, … we are the number one exploited community in the world. The biggest industry that has flourished under this administration, under Kamala, has been drugs and human trafficking.

The Hispanic community, the Latin community is fed up with being exploited, they’re fed up with high prices. And that’s why you’re seeing this community head over heels toward Donald J. Trump.”

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https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2024/10/26/goya-ceo-hispanic-voters-head-over-heels-for-trump-because-biden-harris-exploited-them/

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Actor James Woods slammed Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D) as a “dangerous monster.”

In a post on social media Wednesday, Walz wrote, “I want to talk to all the guys for a second. Think about all the women in your life that you love — daughters, wives, moms, cousins, neighbors. This election is about their lives and protecting their freedoms.”

Woods responded to Walz’s remarks, writing, “That’s why we are protecting them from you, and your promotion of mentally ill men in their bathrooms.”

“You, the destroyer of their bodies, their dreams, and their futures with mutilation masquerading as ‘gender affirming care,'” the Casino star added. “You’re a monster, and a dangerous one at that.”

As Breitbart News reported, Walz previously signed legislation in Minnesota that called for tampons to be placed in boys’ school restrooms, deepening the gender dysphoria of children in schools and affirming the delusional assertion that boys can menstruate.

Republicans reacted to Harris choosing Walz as her running mate by pointing out the bizarre legislation and dubbing the Minnesota Governor “Tampon Tim” — a moniker that Democrats actually embraced.

“How nice of the Trump camp to help publicize Gov. Tim Walz’s compassionate and common-sense policy of providing free menstrual products to students in Minnesota public schools! Let’s do this everywhere,” former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton oddly stated.

Rep. Sandra Feist (D-MN), meanwhile, defended the legislation with the hashtag #TamponTim, writing, “This law exemplifies what we can accomplish when we listen to students to address their needs. Excited to see MN representation at the top of the ticket!”

Notably, Walz’s Wednesday X/Twitter post was seemingly another attempt to speak to male voters, as the Harris-Walz ticket is viewed as less “masculine,” according to a recent survey released by Fairleigh Dickinson University.

The poll found that Walz is trailing behind Trump’s running mate Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) with regards to perceptions of masculinity.

Moreover, male voters in Walz’s home state of Minnesota prefer the Trump-Vance ticket over the Harris-Walz ticket by a 53 percent to 37 percent margin, according to a survey by Minnesota Star Tribune.

In an effort to appeal to male voters, Walz has been asserting that he is pro-Second Amendment while on the campaign trail — despite the Harris-Walz ticket openly stating it wants to ban semi-automatic rifles.

As Breitbart News reported, Harris and Walz pushed for a ban on AR-15s and other guns Democrats label “assault weapons” during their first campaign event together in August.

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https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2024/10/26/james-woods-rips-tim-walz-as-dangerous-monster-for-trans-policies-harming-women/

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Critics ripped the establishment media for inaccurately promoting Beyoncé’s appearance on Friday at a Harris campaign event as a performance in which she would apparently sing for attendees.

The Harris event, held in Huston, did not feature Beyoncé singing or dancing.

Instead, Beyoncé only spoke to supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris, disappointing fans who expected the pop star “to perform at Kamala Harris Rally in Houston,” as the Huffington Post reported, along with many other outlets, such as NBC News, MSNBC, Vanity Fair, and USA Today.

Jason Miller, a senior adviser to former President Donald Trump, questioned why the media misled voters, while senior adviser Tim Murtaugh suggested the media did so to create a larger crowed than Harris could typically draw.

“But she didn’t sing, disappointing all the people who came to see her (and not to see Harris). Why did they lie? It couldn’t have been to build a crowd, could it?” he posted:

Tim Murtaugh @TimMurtaugh

Here’s @NBCNews 2 days ago:

“Beyoncé expected to perform at Harris rally in Houston”

But she didn’t sing, disappointing all the people who came to see her (and not to see Harris).

Why did they lie? It couldn’t have been to build a crowd, could it?

nbcnews.com

Beyoncé expected to perform at Harris rally in Houston. The pop star is from Houston and her appearance there comes amid a tightening Senate race between Republican Sen. Ted Cruz and Democratic Rep. Colin Allred.

Tim Murtaugh @TimMurtaugh

MSNBC treated it as breaking news when the Harris campaign announced that Beyoncé would appear AND PERFORM at a rally in Texas.

The pop star did appear but only spoke and did not sing.

THEY LIED TO BUILD A CROWD‼️

Jason Miller @JasonMillerinDC

Why did @KamalaHarris @IanSams @NBCNews @HuffPost @USATODAY @VanityFair and countless others tell us we were getting a performance last night in Houston? What went wrong?

Trump War Room @TrumpWarRoom

The Beyonce concert featuring Kamala is off to a great start 😂🤣

The Harris campaign held the event in Houston, Texas, the birthplace of Beyoncé, but a state that Harris has little chance of winning. In the final month of the campaign, Harris has focused on holding events with rich and famous supporters in solid blue states. She has not done as much campaigning on the ground in swing states.

Trump, in contrast, has conducted multiple events a day throughout crucial swing states. Earlier in the week, Trump campaigned in North Carolina, after serving McDonald’s customers in Pennsylvania and holding a rally on Sunday. He attended a town hall and held a rally on Wednesday in Georgia. He then rallied supporters on Thursday in Arizona. On Friday, Trump attended an immigration event in Austin, Texas, sat for an interview on top podcast “The Joe Rogan Experience,” and held a rally in Traverse, Michigan. The former president will hold a rally on Saturday in Novi, Michigan. He is also scheduled to hold a historic event at Madison Square Garden in New York City on Saturday.

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https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/10/26/she-didnt-sing-media-ripped-promoting-harris-event-as-beyonce-performance/

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The US Department of State has approved the possible sale of air-defense systems and radars to Taiwan. According to the Pentagon, the purchase of American weapons by Taipei would necessitate that several dozen US nationals travel there.

Beijing, which sees the self-governing island as part of the People’s Republic of China, views these relations as a violation of its sovereignty.

Several days ago, Washington delivered the first batch of hundreds of Harpoon Block II anti-ship missiles to Taipei under a deal approved in 2020.

In a press release on Friday, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency within the US Department of Defense announced that it had obtained approval for a “possible Foreign Military Sale to the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States of National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (NASAMS) and related equipment for an estimated cost of $1.16 billion.” According to the document, Taipei had requested three units of the Raytheon-manufactured system and 123 missiles for them.

The statement noted that the implementation of this proposed sale will require the assignment of approximately 26 US government and 34 contractor representatives “to travel to the recipient for an extended period” to provide technical support and training to local military personnel.

A separate press release that same day revealed that the Department of State had also given the go-ahead for a potential sale of “AN/TPS-77 and AN/TPS-78 Radar Turnkey Systems and related equipment for an estimated cost of $828 million” to Taiwan.

Late last month, US President Joe Biden authorized additional military support for Taiwan worth $567 million.

During a meeting with US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan in Beijing in late August, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi urged Washington to stop selling weapons to Taiwan.

Meanwhile, speaking during a press briefing last week, Chen Binhua, the spokesperson for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, said that Beijing will never commit itself to “renouncing the use of force” against Taipei. This scenario could materialize if the self-governing island declares independence, the official clarified.

The warning came shortly after China held large-scale military drills near the island.

Following their defeat in the Chinese Civil War in 1949, nationalist forces fled to the island, establishing their own administration there. However, only a handful of nations currently recognize Taiwan’s sovereignty, with most of the world complying with Beijing’s request that it be seen as part of the People’s Republic.

On January 1, 1979, the United States recognized the People’s Republic of China and established diplomatic relations with it as the sole legitimate government of both Taiwan and the mainland, according to the US State Department. However, Washington continues to maintain close relations with Taiwan and sells it arms.

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https://www.rt.com/news/606507-us-state-dept-approves-arms-sales-taiwan/

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