With an expected per-person spending of $875, no other holiday rooted in long-standing tradition comes close to the winter holiday season, which starts on November 1 and ends on December 31. 

You will find more infographics at Statista

As Statista’s Florian Zandt reports, data from the National Retail Federation (NRF) shows that spending for the runner-up, Mother’s Day, only amounts to one third of Thanksgiving and Christmas consumer spending, with no other seasonal event coming close.

While Mother’s Day spending stood at $274 per person in 2023, Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day and Easter ranged between $192 and $196 in the past year. 

Halloween, where money is mostly spent on costumes and decorations according to additional data from the NRF, comes in sixth with an expected per-person spend of $108. While most of the holidays featured on the list have roots in history reaching back hundreds to thousands of years, the Super Bowl is a relatively new phenomenon. This fact notwithstanding, U.S. Americans on average still spend $85 per person on arguably the most important U.S. sports event of the year.

When taking into account not just festivities connected to specific celebrations, two other occasions take the first and second spots in the ranking: Back-to-college and back-to-school. However, these two events are not comparable to the rest of the list, since the average expected spending of $1,367 and $890, respectively, is calculated by household and not per person. Having more than one individual per household in need of school supplies, clothing or electronics for the new school year can skew the results. Therefore, it’s likely that even while the per-household figures for back-to-college and back-to-school are higher, the winter holiday season still ranks first in individual spending.

Authored by Debra Heine via American Greatness,

Democrats are reportedly having serious discussions about mounting a pressure campaign to force ailing Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor to resign so Joe Biden can nominate a replacement before President-Elect Donald Trump is sworn in.

After losing their Senate majority to the GOP, Democrats are concerned that Republicans will be “revving up the old conveyor belt of conservative judicial nominees” as soon President-Elect Trump takes office, Politico reported.

For Democrats, this is a hair-on-fire moment. And though the discourse in the media is presently dominated by recriminations about how this all happened, another arguably more urgent conversation is blowing up largely outside of public view: whether to push for 70-year-old Supreme Court Justice SONIA SOTOMAYOR to step down while Dems still have the power to approve her replacement.

This isn’t simply some flight of fancy happening among progressive activists online. It’s a conversation members of the Senate are actively engaged in.

A Democrat senator told Politico that the topic of pushing Sotomayor off the Supreme Court “has come up repeatedly this week in talks with their colleagues.”

These “Beltway speculative conversations,” according to Politico, have inevitably hit roadblocks for two reasons:

(1) It’d be a risky play with the party already trying to figure out how to handle a crowded lame-duck session

(2) no senator seems to be offering to be the person to put his or her neck on their line publicly (or even privately) by pushing for Sotomayor to step aside.

When Democrats first floated the idea of jettisoning Sotomayor last year, they were accused of ableism and racism.

The names of possible replacements have been discussed, including the allegedly “moderate” D.C. Circuit Judge J. Michelle Childs, who was reportedly on Joe Biden’s SCOTUS short list, and has already been vetted.

Another name floated on Friday was none other than Kamala Harris.

On CNN this morning, attorney Bakari Sellers,  a Democrat former member of the South Carolina House of Representatives, suggested that Biden could nominate Harris, giving her a new purpose in life after being vanquished by Trump.

Just as Democrat elders forced Biden to quit his campaign after his disastrous debate with Trump, the party could pressure Sotomayor to step down. Harris, of course, quickly replaced Biden as the presidential candidate and could potentially replace Sotomayor on the Supreme Court if Democrats succeed in their pressure campaign.

Sellers suggested the operation could be pushed through before Trump takes the presidency.

“I think that’s actually a very good plan. I think it’s something that should happen,” he said. “You know, Justice Sotomayor has been a more than able justice. I know that she may be having some personal issues that she contends with while serving on the bench. But, you know, I don’t want Justice Sotomayor to be another Ruth Bader Ginsburg in terms of staying too long.”

The plan is not without certain risks for Democrats.

If Sotomayor agreed to resign, “she can sort of resign conditionally on someone being appointed to replace her,” the Democrat senator told Playbook. “But she can’t resign conditioned on a specific person. What happens if she resigns and the nominee to replace her isn’t confirmed and the next president fills the vacancy?”

Then there’s the abbreviated timeline. Democrats would have to convince her to retire immediately, Biden would have to nominate a successor, they would have to figure out how to bring enough senators on board, dodge whatever obstructions Republicans throw in their way and get a whole floor vote before the new Congress is sworn in. There would be no room for error or delay.

“We would have to have assurances from any shaky senator that they would back a nominee in the lame duck, because what do you do if she announces she’s going to step down and then independent West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin doesn’t support her and then [Republican Sens.] Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski back off and say they’re not going to support a new nominee?” a senior Democrat told Politico. “Do you just rescind that letter?”

The senator told Politico that the logistics of the operation may well be “insurmountable,” and it might “be better to focus on confirming lower-court judges, filling vacancies Trump can’t later fill himself.”

Sen. Josh Hawley commented on the record Friday: “This is not happening. No way, no how,” he posted on X . “The Senate will not confirm any last-minute Dem Supreme Court nominee between now and January. The next SCOTUS justice will be nominated by Donald J. Trump.”

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

On the political Richter scale, that was a killer – literally. What was supposed to be a Liberal Totalitarian Show was brutally, unceremoniously, swept out of the park – any park. Even before Election Day, critical thinking was aware of the stakes. With fraud, Kamala wins.

With no fraud, Trump wins.

There were, at best, (failed) attempts at fraud.

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

My inbox is infested with loads of weepy reports from U.S. Think Tankland wondering, in disbelief, why Kamala could possibly lose.

It’s quite straightforward – apart from her sheer incompetence cum utter mediocrity literally cackling out loud – the legacy of the administration she was part of is ghastly – all the way from Crash Test Dummy to Little Butcher Blinkie.

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

They invested everything to support a genocide in Gaza conducted with a huge arsenal of American weapons: a lebensraum-coded ethnic cleansing cum extermination op directed by a bunch of Talmudic psychos – and marketed under the “rules-based international order” spewed out by Butcher Blinkie in every bilateral or multilateral gathering.

It’s no wonder that West Asia and the wider Global South soon got the message of what may happen to anyone daring to go against the Hegemon’s “interests”. Thus the counterpunch: the strengthening of BRICS and BRICS+, celebrated for all the world to see two weeks ago in Kazan.

At least this administration had a merit, strengthening the bonds between all major “existential threats” to the Hegemon: three BRICS (Russia, China, Iran), plus the indomitable DPRK. All that in contrast with a meager tactical victory – which may not last long: the absolute vassalization of Europe.

Hanging Ukraine on Europe’s neck

Of course, foreign policy does not win U.S. elections. Americans themselves will have to solve their dilemmas, or plunge into civil war. As for the bulk of the Global Majority, it harbors no illusions. Trumpquake’s coded message is that the Zionist lobby wins – again. Perhaps not so unanimously when we consider all strands of neo-cons and Zio-cons. Wall Street wins again (BlackRock’s Larry Fink said so even before Election Day). And prominent silos across the Deep State also win again.

That begs a modified question; what if Trump feels emboldened enough after January 25 to launch a Stalinist purge of the Deep State?

Election Day proceeded nearly simultaneously with the Valdai Club annual meeting in Sochi, where the superstar, not surprisingly, was eminent geopolitician Sergey Karaganov. Of course he directly referred to the Empire’s Forever Wars: “We are living in biblical times.”

And even before Trumpquake, Karaganov stressed, calmly, “We will defeat the West in Ukraine – without resorting to ultimate means.” And that “will provide for a peaceful withdrawal of the U.S. – which will become a normal superpower.” Europe, meanwhile, “will move to the sidelines of History.”

All of that spot on. But then Karaganov introduced a startling concept: “The war in Ukraine is a replacement of WWIII. Afterwards, we can agree on some kind of order in Eurasia.”

That would be the “indivisibility of security” proposed by Putin to Washington – and rejected – on December 2021, part of the “Greater Eurasia Partnership” that was conceptualized by Karaganov himself.

The problem though is his conclusion: “Let’s make the Ukrainian war the last major war in the 21st century.”

Ay, there’s the rub: the real major war is actually Eretz Israel v. the Axis of Resistance in West Asia.

Let’s have a quick pit stop in Europe before getting to the meat of this matter. Trumpquake is all set to hang Ukraine on Europe’s neck like a larger-than-life albatross. The shorthand: Exit American money financing the born-to-lose Project Ukraine. Enter German money filling the coffers of the weapons lobby inside the Ray McGovern-coined MICIMATT (military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media-academia-think tank complex).

The U.S. Treasury has issued an internal memorandum valid until April 30, 2025 – when Trump will be already three months in power – allowing transactions with Russian banks on anything related to oil, natural gas, timber and any form of uranium.

As for the gullible, Brussels-run EU, they will pay the heavy load on weaponizing rump Ukraine while accepting wave after wave of new refugees and saying goodbye to any of their funds already invested in that humongous black hole.

Beware of that Tony Soprano wannabe

Trumpquake – if taken at face value – is bound to further weaponize the U.S. dollar; Trump has threatened, on the record, to blacklist any nation that uses other currencies for international trade. BRICS and BRICS+ partners have registered it; and that will accelerate the testing of all models in the BRICS lab leading towards a multi-layered alternative trade settlement system.

BRICS and the Global Majority also know that Trump in fact signed off on Nordstream sanctions – when he referred recently to “killing” Nord Steam. And they also know he did less than zero during Trump 1.0 to find a solution for the proxy war in Ukraine.

Now we come to the clincher.

Trump personally destroyed the JCPOA – the Iran nuclear deal – brokered by the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany). Moscow – and Beijing – know perfectly well how this led to further destabilization of the whole of West Asia, in conjunction to the Trump-ordered assassination of Gen Soleimani, which started what I termed the Raging Twenties.

Last but not least, Trump brokered the bombastically-named “Deal of the Century”: the Abraham Accords, which if implemented will forever bury any possibility of an Israel/Palestine two-state solution.

The deal – which may be considered as nefarious as the 1917 Balfour declaration – may be in a coma. But MbS’s Whatsapp pal Jared Kushner is back, and will certainly renew the pressure. MbS still has not made up his mind when it comes to BRICS. Trump will go bonkers if MbS increasingly starts to navigate the petroyuan way.

All that brings us to a supremely nefarious character, Tony Soprano wannabe Mike Pompeo, who is a serious candidate to become head of the Pentagon. That would spell major trouble ahead. Pompeo was CIA director and Secretary of State under Trump 1.0. He is an uber-hawk on Russia, China and especially Iran.

Arguably the pressing question from now on is whether Trump – whose life was spared by God, in his own interpretation – does what is expected of him by his uber-wealthy donors, appoints Pompeo and similar gangsters for key posts, and invests on Israel’s war against Iran and the Axis of Resistance.

If that’s the case, he won’t have to worry about another failed sniper. But if he really tries to run his own independent game, there’s no question he will be a dead man walking.

So the whole Global Majority waits with bated breath. How will Trumpquake translate in the geopolitical MAGA sphere? Sure bets focus on extensive use of private military companies (PMCs) for foreign policy “missions” and selected, targeted military “interventions”. Targets could include any Global South player from Mexico (to “secure the border”) to Venezuela (the Monroe doctrine “securing the oil”), Yemen (to “secure the Red Sea”) and of course Iran (a massive bombing campaign to “secure Israel”).

In a nutshell: no new wars (as Trump promised), just a few targeted incursions. Plus Hybrid War on maximum overdrive. Brazil, watch out: Trumpquake will not tolerate a truly sovereign BRICS member increasing its Global South influence in the “Western Hemisphere”.

Fasten your seatbelts: whatever happens, Trumpquake is bound to be a bumpy ride.

Natural resources are the backbone of modern manufacturing, necessary to produce everything around us.

According to 2021 data from Statista, 10 countries dominate the global natural resource landscape, each holding vast reserves critical for various industries.

Russia’s $75 Trillion in Natural Resources

Russia leads the pack with natural resources valued at $75 trillion, largely consisting of coal, natural gas, oil, and rare earth metals. At the end of 2018, Russia’s Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment valued the country’s mineral reserves at approximately $1.44 trillion.

In terms of global share, Russia is unmatched in natural gas, holding the world’s largest proven reserves at 1.32 quadrillion cubic feet as of 2020—nearly 20% of the global total. Russia also ranks as a gold powerhouse.

Other Resource Giants

The United States ranks second, with an estimated $45 trillion in natural resources, including coal, timber, natural gas, and valuable metals like gold.

In Saudi Arabia and Canada, oil wealth drives natural resources, placing these countries third and fourth on the list. Saudi Arabia, with its vast oil fields, has been a leader in global energy markets. Canada, on the other hand, also benefits from substantial uranium deposits and is home to some of the world’s largest lumber companies.

Further down the list, China has vast coal reserves, positioning it as the top producer of the fuel.

Mineral-rich Brazil and Australia are leading producers of metals like iron ore, while Australia is also a top exporter of coal.

If you enjoyed this graphic, make sure to check out this graphic that shows how global coal consumption is still rising.

This week Hezbollah rockets targeted Israel’s Trump Heights settlement, a remote community in the central Golan Heights – which was taken from Syria after the Six Day War of 1967.

Iranian state media as well as a report in Lebanon’s Al-Mayadeen indicated that Hezbollah specifically targeted Trump Height the day after he won the Tuesday US presidential election.

“Sirens sounded in Trump Heights as Hezbollah rocket attack targeted the Golan Heights on Wednesday,” an Israeli regional sources also said. “The attack came shortly after the election results were announced, indicating that Trump was the victor.”

The tiny Jewish settlement was named after Trump in 2019, during his first term, in acknowledgement of his declaring that the US recognizes Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights.

It was an ultra-controversial move at the time, given most of the rest of the world considers it “Israeli-occupied territory” belonging to Syria.

At the time of the attack sirens blared not just in Trump Heights, but across other locations of northern and central Israel.

But the “Trump Heights” designation has always been more about a PR move for the existing community to improve and expand, as the Associated Press explains:

But a large-scale influx of new residents never materialized after that 2019 ceremony, and just a couple dozen families live in Trump Heights, or “Ramat Trump” in Hebrew. Job opportunities are limited, and Israel’s more than yearlong war against Hezbollah militants in nearby Lebanon has added to the sense of isolation.

Trump’s election has inspired hope in the community that it will attract more members and also more funding for security improvements.

Hezbollah is salty after Trumps win.

Hezbollah launched rockets targeting Ramat Trump, the town named after Trump in recognition of his acknowledgment of the Golan Heights as part of Israel. pic.twitter.com/ecp6ISgAmx

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) November 6, 2024

One resident observed that “President Trump’s return to the White House definitely puts the town in the headlines.”

It had also made big headlines when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went there for an unveiling ceremony in 2019. During that June 2019 ceremony, BBC noted that “Building work has yet to begin but a sign bearing Mr Trump’s name and US and Israeli flags was unveiled. However, it also noted that “Critics called the move a publicity stunt with no legal authority.”