Trump Authorizes CIA Covert Operations in Venezuela
In the irony of the day, please note Trump Authorizes CIA Covert Operations in Venezuela
President Trump has authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to conduct covert action in Venezuela, while also floating the idea of land strikes, in a broadening campaign against alleged drug trafficking.
“I authorized for two reasons,” Trump said Wednesday at the White House, alleging Venezuelan leaders have “emptied their prisons into the United States of America” and “we have a lot of drugs coming in from Venezuela.”
What’s Being Deployed
- Guided-missile destroyers
- F-35B jet fighters
- MQ-9 Reaper drones
- Special operations ship
- Eight Navy warships
- An attack submarine
- P-8 Poseidon spy planes
- Army’s secretive 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, the “Night Stalkers”
- B-52 bombers
- 10,000 troops
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"We shall have no real hope to survive the enemies arranged against us until we hang the traitors lurking among us." -- Thomas Paine
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What comes out of Budapest remains to be seen. But already, Russian sovereign wealth fund head Kirill Dmitriev is posting on X about Elon Musk's Boring Company potentially building a 70-mile undersea rail tunnel linking Russia and Alaska through the Bering Strait - a proposed $65 billion megaproject.
Dmitriev called the potential megaproject the "Putin-Trump Tunnel," pitching it as a symbol of renewed unity after the Trump-Putin phone call this week.
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The U.S. Department of Energy has released its Fusion Science and Technology Roadmap, a national strategy to fast-track the development and commercialization of fusion energy on what it calls “the most rapid, responsible timeline in history.” The plan outlines the department’s Build–Innovate–Grow strategy, aligning federal investment with private-sector innovation to deliver commercial fusion power to the grid by the mid-2030s, according to a DOE press release.
According to the DOE, the roadmap represents the first unified national effort to coordinate research, infrastructure, and industry activity across the U.S. fusion enterprise. It aims to strengthen America’s energy security, rebuild supply chains, and reinforce the nation’s leadership in clean, reliable energy production.
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Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times
Popular protein powders and shakes contain high levels of lead, Consumer Reports (CR) said on Oct. 14.
Twenty-two of 23 products tested by CR had detectable amounts of lead, and more than two-thirds had unsafe levels of lead, according to the organization.
“About 70 percent of products we tested contained over 120 percent of CR’s level of concern for lead, which is 0.5 micrograms per day,” CR said.
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by Tyler Durden
Film and TV production in the Los Angeles area has hit an all-time low, sinking to levels worse than the SAG union strike of 2023. The city has introduces new tax incentives to generate enthusiasm but many in Tinseltown are questioning if the industry will ever recover.
FilmLA, the city and county’s film permitting office, said Tuesday that on-location production in the greater Los Angeles area declined 13.2% from July through September 2025 compared to the same period last year. Once again, this continues a multi-year trend in declining local production.
LA motion picture employment dropped from 142,000 in 2022 to 100,000 by end-2024 - a 30% cut (42,000 jobs gone). Below-the-line crew were hit hardest; 63% earned less in 2024, and 41% are considering an exit. High taxes in LA and California have forced some productions to leave the area, but total US film and TV productions are still in decline no matter where you go in the country. There has been a 28% drop in theatrical releases since 2019 and a 25% drop in scripted TV projects.
The vast majority of film and TV media are shot in the greater Los Angeles area due to proximity to studios, editing facilities, effects houses and actor pools. A drop in Hollywood and LA production indicates are decline in the film industry as a whole. The plunge in activity coincides with the overall drop in box office receipts since 2019.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/get-woke-go-broke-hollywood-productions-plummet-all-time-lows
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As we highlighted in our regional bank meltdown summary post, there was a common theme between the two banks that got hammered yesterday, ZION and WAL: a single bankrupt counterparty that led to bad debt impairments at both banks. Now, thanks to Bloomberg, we can identify who that counterparty was.
According to BBG, the bad loans reported by Zions Bancorp and Western Alliance Bancorp can be traced back to the bankruptcy of one commercial real estate investment firm in Southern California earlier this year. In the lawsuit filed on Wednesday - which also spooked investors and sent the stock plunging - Zions listed 16 addresses of properties pledged as collateral to more than $60 million loaned to an investor group. And when the Newport Beach, California-based real estate firm MOM CA Investco LLC filed for bankruptcy in February, six of those properties were listed as investments.
So what happened with the loans?
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/bizarre-bankruptcy-heart-latest-regional-bank-meltdown
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By Tyler Durden
The Democratic Party's dark-money NGO network, bankrolled by left-wing billionaires, is reportedly preparing to activate a coordinated, color-revolution-style mobilization across the U.S. this weekend - a replay of failed agitation attempts seen earlier this year targeting President Trump and Elon Musk. The operation, marketed under the "No Kings" banner and portrayed publicly as a grassroots movement, in reality functions as a professionalized protest-industrial complex. Its composition includes a blend of paid activists, white boomers suffering from Stage 4 Trump Derangement Syndrome, and a smaller contingent of organic, unhinged leftists who recite MSNBC talking points by heart.
Little do these white boomers know, the "No Kings" movement, supposedly against "kings and billionaires", is, in reality, funded by leftist billionaire kings themselves. In truth, No Kings is bankrolled by far-left foundations backed by the same billionaire class that has been waging a political war against President Trump since his first term. Essentially, one faction of billionaires hates another, so their woke non-profit soldiers create a front group, brand it "No Kings," and bankroll an army of paid protesters and unhinged left-wing activists. This is America in 2025: the permanent protest-industrial complex of hate and chaos, financed by the left.
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