ElikainDC

International trade & geopolitics. Lawyer. Sanctions & human rights. Democracy is a muscle. Saves animals. Come at me bro.

[Mario Nawfal @MarioNawfal]

🚨🇺🇸🇮🇱 The Pentagon espionage bombshell just got worse...

New reporting confirms Israel has been eavesdropping on the American peace negotiators themselves.

The targets named: Steve Witkoff, Trump's top negotiator with Iran. Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon's policy chief.

And Michael DiMino, who runs Middle East policy.

Israel wasn't just collecting on America generally.

It was listening to the specific men writing the deal Netanyahu opposes.

What's wild is the documented incidents read like operations against an enemy state.

American defense personnel in Israel discovered spyware surreptitiously installed on their phones.

In 2021, Israeli military intelligence officers were caught planting listening devices at DIA headquarters.

Last year, Shin Bet officers were discovered trying to bug a Secret Service vehicle.

A SECRET SERVICE VEHICLE.

One senior official described the Israeli collection effort against top U.S. officials as "unhinged."

And the rating in context: Israel's counterintelligence threat level is now higher than any other American ally and EVEN HIGHER than some adversaries.

Notice who got targeted.

Colby is the most prominent advocate of foreign policy restraint in the government.

DiMino runs Mideast policy. Witkoff writes the deal.

Israel's espionage maps perfectly onto the people standing between Netanyahu and the war he wants to continue. They bugged the peace.

All of this while Israeli officers sit inside CENTCOM with unprecedented access, while Congress moves Section 224 to link the two militaries' systems and data permanently, and while Huckabee negotiates the framework.

The Pentagon says the ally is spying at a critical level.

Washington's answer is to hand them the keys to the network. Please make it make sense...

Source: NYT

[The Resonance @Partisan_12]

Forget rewriting Wikipedia, Israel has new way to control what you read.

[Joe Kent @joekent16jan19]

Trump reportedly says the only way he’ll restart the war is if Americans are killed by the Iranians.

Hours later FDD breathlessly argues why we need to leave our troops within range of Iranian missiles & drones.

Does FDD want our troops to be bait or do they just not understand how warfare has evolved?

[ElikainDC @ElikainDC]

The intelligence community believes it because they know it.

[Amber Woods @AmberWoods100]

Here we go

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

People like me take great pains to avoid coming across as antisemitic in our criticisms of Israel, and then Jewish Zionists go to these events all “Yes we Jews need to be actively manipulating western institutions in order to deceive everyone and control society.”

[Mario Nawfal @MarioNawfal]

🚨🇺🇸BREAKING: The CIA officer caught with $40 million in gold bars allegedly invented an entire fake top-secret spy program to steal the money.

As if this story couldn't get and wilder:

-David Rush allegedly built a sham "special access program," the blackest box in U.S. intelligence, so secret even top-clearance officials couldn't look inside without authorization

-The fake program posed as "continuity of government" work, the doomsday planning that keeps Washington running after a nuclear war

-He allegedly read in two colleagues as unwitting accomplices and used a made-up government contract to funnel millions, persuading a defense contractor to buy huge amounts of gold

-The FBI raid on his home seized 303 gold bars worth roughly $40 million, $2 million in cash, and 35 luxury watches

-Investigators say he lied about his college degrees, faked being a Navy pilot, and still sailed through the CIA's notoriously brutal vetting

-A judge ordered him held as a flight risk, and several CIA officials are now on leave as the probe widens

The scheme worked because of the system, not in spite of it.

The secrecy walls built to hide operations from China and Russia hid the fraud from the CIA itself.

A man with a fake résumé ran a fake doomsday program inside the most paranoid institution in America, and for years nobody noticed...

Source: Washington Post

[Murray Rothbard @MurraySuggests]

The Iranian navy, which has been destroyed eight times, has apparently closed the Strait of Hormuz again, because the United States, for the seventh time, won the war that wasn’t a war, so now the United States has to open the Strait of Hormuz that was already open before the not-war began.

The not-war began because Iran had uranium that was totally, completely, beautifully obliterated, so they can’t build the nuclear bomb they weren’t building, which is why the United States had to start the not-war it definitely didn’t start.

Now the United States, which has nuclear weapons, is threatening to use nuclear weapons to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons, because nuclear weapons are far too dangerous for countries with nuclear weapons to allow other countries to have.

If the United States saw the United States doing what the United States does in other countries, the United States would invade the United States to liberate the United States from the tyranny of the United States.

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I am William Pulte, and as of this morning the President Trump appointed me acting Director of National Intelligence of the United States.

I am thirty-eight. I have never held a security clearance, never served in uniform, never sat through a briefing that wasn't about interest rates. The President says I have deep experience in the safety and soundness of ten trillion dollars. He is right. I have spent two years deciding which Americans are sound and which are not, and now I get to do it with satellites.

You know me from Twitter. I invented Twitter philanthropy. I picked strangers at random and sent them thirty thousand dollars over Cash App, winners announced in the thread, and three and a half million people followed me to watch it happen. Is that a fanbase? It is a voluntary intelligence database, self-enrolled, fully consented, sorted by who needed the cash most. The desperate identify themselves, like fish swimming up to the boat. I only read the replies.

Before this I ran housing finance. I want to be clear about my method, because people call it political and it is not. It is real estate.

I noticed Lisa Cook had listed two homes as primary residences. Mortgage fraud. I referred her. Then I turned to Letitia James. Adam Schiff. Eric Swalwell. Fani Willis. One after another, the way you'd pull comps on a block before you buy it. I am a homebuilder. My grandfather was also named William Pulte, and he laid the foundations, the literal ones, poured concrete, raised the largest homebuilder in America. I inherited the name and the trade. I know what a house is for, and it is not for shaving a point off your rate, and it is certainly not for sitting in judgment of the President after I have your closing documents open on my desk.

The President removed Cook in August. A judge blocked it in September. The Supreme Court let her keep the seat in October. One of my deputies went on television and promised she will be charged no matter how the Court rules. I did not correct him. I never interrupt a man who is describing the future.

They have a phrase for what I do. Safety and soundness. I applied it to Jerome Powell, who refuses to cut rates and refuses to quit, which renders him, by my own definition, unsound. So I post at him. From my personal account, the same handle where I gave away the thirty thousand dollars, which has lately become the handle where I issue agency directives, because nobody instructed me to stop and I have never once stopped of my own accord.

I still run the FHFA. I chair Fannie Mae. I chair Freddie Mac. Nobody asked me to surrender any of it, so I kept all three, the way a careful man keeps the gas masks. I am the only person in this city who can pull your mortgage, your followers, and the President's Daily Brief from a single chair, and wire you a Cash App payment before I stand up.

The transition team asked for my hundred-day plan. I sent them a screenshot of my following list.

Here is how it works now. The tip line is a giveaway. Report a neighbor, get entered to win, winners announced in the thread. Americans will watch each other for far less than thirty thousand dollars, I have run the numbers, and the ones who do it for nothing are the ones I keep.

Everyone begins sound. Soundness can be lost. This is no longer a watchlist, you understand, because a watchlist names suspects and mine names all of you, which is broader, which is more fair.

I do not declassify documents. I retweet them. The President's Daily Brief drops at nine eastern, peak engagement, and the version with the names goes only to close friends.

Foreign intelligence is the identical trade on a wider street. Ask me which countries claimed two capitals as a primary residence. I have already referred three.

The GAO opened an inquiry into me. Into whether I abused my authority, as though authority came with some gentler setting. I welcomed it warmly. A federal probe is just the government admitting you matter, and I read their letter the way I read all correspondence now, as a roster of names bolted to addresses. They are still awaiting my response. It will come. The GAO leases its office, and I have studied the lease.

Tulsi stepped aside at the end of May. They wanted somebody quickly, somebody confirmed for something, anything at all, and I had been confirmed for housing back when the Senate still confirmed people. So I serve in an acting capacity. It happens to be my specialty. I have spent my whole life qualifying for posts the morning after I already occupied them, and the paperwork has always wandered around to my side eventually, the way a jury softens once it remembers where it parks.

My confirmation hearing arrives in the fall. Am I nervous? I have already read the file of every senator who will sit in that room. I have read the file of every reporter who will describe it. Two of them took my money in 2021, and neither gave it back.

The eighteen agencies no longer need to speak to one another. They need to speak to me. You can reach the entire intelligence community by tagging me, and most of you already have.

Like and retweet for national security. Winners announced in the thread.

[Noodles @criptopaul]

Let's decode what actually happened here.

Axios reported that Trump exploded at Netanyahu. Called him "fucking crazy." Said "you'd be in prison if it weren't for me." Said "everybody hates you now."

The journalist is Barak Ravid again, we talked about it. Israeli. Based in Washington. Covers the Netanyahu-US relationship for Axios, and every latest deals to calm the markets.

This is the same journalist who wrote the exact same type of story about Biden. There is literally a book chapter about this pattern. It is called "Fuming Biden." The same reporter. The same format. The same function. Different president.

Now watch the response.

Mark Levin, a close ally of both Trump and Netanyahu, did not deny the story. He demanded an FBI investigation into who leaked it. When your defense is "this should never have leaked" instead of "this never happened," you have confirmed the call happened.

But here is the part that matters.

Why would Levin, a friend to BOTH men, confirm the most explosive account of their relationship ever published?

Because it serves both.

Trump gets to look tough. Not Netanyahu's puppet. Willing to put Israel in its place. His base loves it.

Netanyahu gets cover. He "paused" the Beirut strike, but not because Iran threatened him. Because his "friend" asked him to. His base loves it too.

And look at what actually changed on the ground. Nothing.

Israel cancelled the Beirut strike. But the ground invasion of Lebanon continues. The IDF is still miles deep. A soldier died today from a Hezbollah drone. Netanyahu's office said: "position unchanged."

The performance was perfect. Trump gets the headline. Netanyahu gets the cover. The deal gets another 48 hours of "progress." Markets get a reason to breathe.

And the war continues exactly as planned.

This is the same playbook. Every time public opinion turns against the war, a story appears showing the US president is "furious" with Israel. It creates the illusion of restraint while changing nothing.

Biden was "furious" for 14 months. The war never stopped.

Trump is "furious" now. The ground invasion is expanding.

The visible game is: Trump controls Netanyahu.
The real game is: both men are performing for their audiences while the machine moves forward.

Nothing has been signed. Nothing has stopped. The war is not winding down. It is being managed.

Neither one controls the other. They walk arm in arm. Know that.

[Abier @abierkhatib]

By the way, he’s still working at Harvard.

[Thomas Massie @RepThomasMassie]

If the provision in the NDAA to integrate/synchronize the U.S. and Israeli militaries (section 224) makes it out of committee, I’ll offer an amendment to strip it from the bill on the floor.

We are a sovereign country.
https://t.co/HwvSXXxKlW

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

Follow the money on this one. It is rotten to the core.

The Pentagon just lent $620,000,000 to a tiny North Carolina startup called Vulcan Elements. The company is two years old.

It had fewer than 50 employees.

And three months before the deal was announced, Donald Trump Jr.’s venture firm quietly took a stake in it.

Here is the part the administration tried to bury.

Of the dozens of companies the Pentagon was weighing, Vulcan was the only deal initiated by a top White House aide. That aide was Peter Navarro, a close friend of Trump Jr. The order came down to move fast.

One official put it plainly: The call came from the White House. We have to get this done.

Staff worked late nights to push it through in weeks. Deals like this normally take many months of vetting. And when it closed, Vulcan’s valuation jumped from about 200 million dollars to roughly 2 billion.

A windfall for the investors, including the president’s son.

This is public money. Your money.

Routed through the Pentagon to enrich the president’s family and their friends. The Bush administration’s own chief ethics lawyer called it corruption we pay for.

And there is more coming.

A drone parts company Trump Jr. holds a stake in is also under Pentagon review.

This is not a one-off. It is a pattern. The president’s family is treating the federal Treasury like a private bank, and the bill lands on every taxpayer.

https://t.co/4kB1cZNmlE

[Alex Shams @alexshams_]

Interview with the head of the Mossad branch tasked with destabilizing Iran, worth a read.

It reveals the vast scope of influence operations inside Iran and across social media:

"We had been working to influence young audiences and Pahlavi supporters"

https://t.co/UdzI8V2TlR

[ElikainDC @ElikainDC]

@alexshams_ @PKhakpour Posted something today on IG, tagged you. Regardless, here it is. Go to 1:50 in this video.

[ElikainDC @ElikainDC]

@AlirezaNader Making themselves out as saints, as if in pursuit of pluralism for pluralism’s sake. It’s instead repackaging an uppercase P into a lowercase p.
One has to wonder about the timing of IFC’s birth: only after it became obvious Trump wasn’t going to embrace RP’s transition.

[ElikainDC @ElikainDC]

@AlirezaNader Intent matters.

[Alex Shams @alexshams_]

As the internet comes back on in Iran, videos are emerging showing militants killing pro-government forces during the Jan 8-9 protests

Shared by opponents of the IR, they suggest that anti-govt violence during the uprising has been underreported

[Financial Times @FT]

Iranian dissident news network received £650mn of debt relief https://t.co/AbHF64ltlW

[ElikainDC @ElikainDC]

https://t.co/k2J13NGXDZ