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Debt Rattle August 14 2024

Aug 142024
 
 August 14, 2024  Posted by at 9:00 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  71 Responses »


Hasui Kawase Moon at Megome (woodblock print) 1930

 

• X Conversation Between Musk And Trump Generates Over A Billion Views (ZH)
• Musk Offers Interview To Kamala Harris (RT)
• Kamala Harris Running Ads With Fake News Headlines (RT)
• EU Backtracks On Threats To Musk – Media (RT)
• An Intricate Fabric of Bad Actors Working Hand-in-Hand (Alastair Crooke)
• US Lining Up Candidate To Replace Zelensky – Russian Intel (RT)
• NATO and its Kiev Proxy In Last Roll Of The Dice (SCF)
• Kursk Was Low Hanging Fruit. What Now For Zelensky And His Allusions? (Jay)
• Ex-US Ambassador ‘Pessimistic’ About Ukraine’s Future (RT)
• NATO Allies Skeptical About Ukraine’s Advance Into Russia – Bloomberg (RT)
• ‘The CIA Writes Her Paycheck’ (Sp.)
• ‘Israel Itself is a War Crime’ (Sp.)
• Every 70 KG Bag of Human Remains Is Considered a Martyr (Hajjaj)

 

 

 

 

O’Leary
https://twitter.com/i/status/1823534804903821403

 

 

CNN

 

 

Fantasy Kamala

 

 

US assets

 

 

Radical

 

 

CNN nuke

 

 

Colbert

 

 

Dave Smith

 

 

 

 

Imagine when these conversations get really good. Add video, improve audio..

• X Conversation Between Musk And Trump Generates Over A Billion Views (ZH)

A conversation between Donald Trump and X owner Elon Musk has generated over a billion views, as Trump officially returned to the platform Monday. Elon made the observation following the 2 hour conversation between the two. Here’s the whole thing:

Trump also returned to posting on X, with this ad now at 42 million views at time of writing: The conversation was streamed live on X spaces, but had to overcome huge technical issues dues to a sustained DDOS attack on the platform shortly before the stream began. The attack followed sustained moaning by the dinosaur media, complaining that Trump would be allowed to say “whatever he wants to” by Musk.

Oh my God, the horror of letting a presidential candidate say what he wants and people being able to hear him without being able to cut away and shut it off. Why do you think Trump is on there in the first instance?! Earlier, a Washington Post ‘journalist’ called for the White House to step in and stop the conversation from happening.

They operate in a tiny bubble and fundamentally cannot fathom that they are not the purveyors of all information on the planet. The Harris campaign got their best 20 something year old PR intern to type up an anxiety laced post that didn’t address any of the content of the conversation between Musk and Trump, and instead focused on the technical issues as some kind of criticism.

Of course, they’re not used to an organic and substantial longform conversation between people happening, they only understand heavily staged, scripted and produced soundbites that belong in bad reality TV shows that no one watches. Musk made it clear that Harris is welcome to join him for a conversation. She likely won’t accept the invitation on to the biggest platform on Earth though because she cannot manage to go more than two minutes off script without looking like a complete clown. The media also ran with the ‘they couldn’t even run a livestream’ talking point.

Lets see CNN or MSNBC trying to run a livestream with millions of listeners while fending off a cyber attack. Outside of the US, Elon received more threats from the European Union in the form of a letter from Thierry Breton, the current Commissioner for Internal Market of the EU, Referring directly to the conversation with Trump, Breton stated in no uncertain terms that X has to crack down on “content that promotes hatred, disorder, incitement to violence, or certain instances of disinformation.” Musk responded with a meme telling Breton to “Fuck your own face.” Amazing.

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Spurning a billion viewers/listeners right before an election. Who can afford it?

• Musk Offers Interview To Kamala Harris (RT)

Elon Musk has proposed to interview US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris on his X Spaces platform. The invitation comes after the billionaire spoke at length with former US President Donald Trump on Monday. The interview with Trump, which was hailed by his campaign as the “interview of the century,” lasted around two hours and, according to Musk, has since garnered 1 billion views. The conversation included discussions on a number of issues, including the upcoming election in November, the recent assassination attempt on Trump, the Ukraine conflict, and US relations with Russia and China. After the interview, Musk wrote in a post on X that he would be “happy to host Kamala on an X Spaces too.”

Harris has yet to officially respond to the invitation; however, during the Trump interview, her campaign sent out a fundraising email asking supporters to “chip in $25” in order to help “respond to their lies.” In the letter, the vice president accused Musk of using his “purchased platform” to “spread Trump’s unhinged and hateful agenda to millions of users,” and said “the richest person in the world is a lackey for Team MAGA.” “Musk is using his vast fortune and broad reach to try to control our democracy,” the email read.

After the interview ended, the Harris-Walz team released a statement describing the discussion as “unhinged” and claiming that Trump’s entire campaign is about “self-obsessed rich guys who will sell out the middle class and who cannot run a livestream in the year 2024.” The live broadcast of the interview was delayed by about half an hour due to what Musk described as a “massive” cyberattack ahead of the event. At the end of the interview, Musk reiterated his endorsement of Donald Trump, and described him as “the path to prosperity.” Previously, it was reported in the US media that the billionaire plans to donate $45 million to form a pro-Trump political action committee, but he has neither confirmed nor denied this.

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They’re all fully in her camp and it’s still not enough.

• Kamala Harris Running Ads With Fake News Headlines (RT)

US Vice President Kamala Harris has been using Google search advertisements that link to real news articles from legitimate sources, but with the headlines and descriptions altered to paint the Democratic presidential candidate in a more favorable way, according to an Axios report. The Harris campaign has been running such ads linking to stories by “nearly a dozen” news outlets, including CNN, AP, CBS, NPR, The Guardian, USA Today and others since at least August 3, Axios reported on Tuesday. The ads apparently mimic real news results “closely enough” that they can potentially mislead users. Axios wrote that such ads are a “common practice,” but acknowledged that according to Google’s ad transparency center, Harris’ rival Donald Trump is not running these types of misleading ads.

Some of the outlets claimed they were blindsided and “unaware” that their brands were being featured this way, according to Axios. A spokesperson for The Guardian said the company will be “reaching out to Google for more information about this practice.” Meanwhile, Google has insisted that the practice does not violate its rules, claiming that since the ads are labeled as “sponsored,” they are “easily distinguishable” from legitimate search results. However, the tech giant admitted that due to an alleged “technical glitch” in Google’s Ad Library, some of the ads “appeared” to lack the necessary disclosures, Axios wrote. A Google spokesperson promised to investigate the glitch, insisting that the company has for years “provided additional levels of transparency for election ads specifically.”

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“Breton has not sought approval from President Ursula..”

• EU Backtracks On Threats To Musk – Media (RT)

The European Commission has said that Thierry Breton did not consult them before sending a threatening letter to Elon Musk, ahead of his two-hour conversation with US presidential candidate Donald Trump. Breton is the Internal Market commissioner, in charge of enforcing the bloc’s Digital Services Act (DSA). His letter insinuated that Musk had an obligation to censor potentially “harmful content” on X, the platform he owns that was formerly known as Twitter. “The timing and the wording of the letter were neither co-ordinated or agreed with the president nor with the [commissioners],” an European Commission spokesman said on Tuesday. Breton has not sought approval from President Ursula von der Leyen, another official told Financial Times on condition of anonymity. “Thierry has his own mind and way of working and thinking,” the official said.

Sources close to Breton told the outlet that the letter had been in the works for some time, but the Trump event seemed like an appropriate “trigger point” for publishing it. The move backfired, however. Musk responded to Breton’s letter with a meme from the 2008 comedy ‘Tropic Thunder’, in which Tom Cruise’s character shouts, “Take a big step back and literally f**k your own face!” Meanwhile, Trump’s campaign accused the EU of “trying to meddle in the US presidential election” and advised the bloc to mind its own business. Four EU officials, speaking to Politico on condition of anonymity, said the bloc really wanted to avoid the appearance of election meddling. “The EU is not in the business of electoral interference,” said one of them. “DSA implementation is too important to be misused by an attention-seeking politician in search of his next big job.”

Last month, Breton announced that the European Commission considered X in violation of the DSA and intended to levy massive fines against Musk’s company unless it agreed to its restrictions on “hate speech” and “misinformation.” “The European Commission offered X an illegal secret deal: if we quietly censored speech without telling anyone, they would not fine us,” Musk wrote in response. “The other platforms accepted that deal. X did not.” Breton vocally denied the existence of such an offer, but Musk replied he was looking forward to “a very public battle in court, so that the people of Europe can know the truth.” Musk bought Twitter in October 2022, after voicing displeasure over widespread censorship on the US-based social media platform.

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“It’s almost as if these are goals in themselves – and the cascade of emergencies mere excuses for them. Hate is always the way..”

• An Intricate Fabric of Bad Actors Working Hand-in-Hand (Alastair Crooke)

Walter Kirn, an American novelist and cultural critic, in his 2009 memoir, Lost in the Meritocracy, described how, after a sojourn at Oxford, he came to be a member of ‘the class that runs things’ – the one that “writes the headlines, and the stories under them”. It was the account of a middle-class kid from Minnesota trying desperately to fit into the élite world, and then to his surprise, realising that he didn’t want to fit in at all. Now 61, Kirn has a newsletter on Substack and co-hosts a lively podcast devoted in large part to critiquing ‘establishment liberalism’. His contrarian drift has made him more vocal about his distrust of élite institutions – as he wrote in 2022: “For years now, the answer, in every situation—‘Russiagate,’ COVID, Ukraine—has been more censorship, more silencing, more division, more scapegoating. It’s almost as if these are goals in themselves – and the cascade of emergencies mere excuses for them. Hate is always the way,”

Kirn’s politics, a friend of his suggested, was “old-school liberal,” underscoring that it was the other ‘so-called liberals’ who had changed: “I’ve been told repeatedly in the last year that free speech is a right-wing issue; I wouldn’t call [Kirn] Conservative. I would just say he’s a free-thinker, nonconformist, iconoclastic”, the friend said. To understand Kirn’s contrarian turn – and to make sense of today’s form of American politics – it is necessary to understand one key term. It is not found in standard textbooks, but is central to the new playbook of power: the “whole of society”. “The term was popularised roughly a decade ago by the Obama administration, which liked that its bland, technocratic appearance could be used as cover to erect a mechanism for a governance ‘whole-of-society’ approach” – one that asserts that as actors – media, NGOs,corporations and philanthropist institutions – interact with public officials to play a critical role not just in setting the public agenda, but in enforcing public decisions.

Jacob Siegel has explained the historical development of the ‘whole of society’ approach during the Obama administration’s attempt to pivot in the ‘war on terror’ to what it called ‘CVE’ – countering violent extremism. The idea was to surveil the American people’s online behaviour in order to identify those who may, at some unspecified time in the future, ‘commit a crime’. Inherent to the concept of the potential ‘violent extremist’ who has, as yet, committed no crime, is a weaponised vagueness: “A cloud of suspicion that hangs over anyone who challenges the prevailing ideological narratives”. “What the various iterations of this whole-of-society approach have in common is their disregard for democratic process and the right to free association – their embrace of social media surveillance, and their repeated failure to deliver results …”. Aaron Kheriaty writes:

“More recently, the whole of society political machinery facilitated the overnight flip from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris, with news media and party supporters turning on a dime when instructed to do so—democratic primary voters ‘be damned’. This happened not because of the personalities of the candidates involved, but on the orders of party leadership. The actual nominees are fungible, and entirely replaceable, functionaries, serving the interests of the ruling party … The party was delivered to her because she was selected by its leaders to act as its figurehead. That real achievement belongs not to Harris, but to the party-state”. What has this to do with Geo-politics – and whether there will be war between Iran and Israel? Well, quite a lot. It is not just western domestic politics that has been shaped by the Obama CVE totalising mechanics.

The “party-state” machinery (Kheriaty’s term) for geo-politics has also been co-opted: “To avoid the appearance of totalitarian overreach in such efforts”, Kheriaty argues,“the party requires an endless supply of causes … that party officers use as pretexts to demand ideological alignment across public and private sector institutions. These causes come in roughly two forms: the urgent existential crisis (examples include COVID and the much-hyped threat of Russian disinformation) – and victim groups supposedly in need of the party’s protection”. “It’s almost as if these are goals in themselves – and the cascade of emergencies mere excuses for them. Hate is always the way”, Kirn underlines. Just to be clear, the implication is that all geo-strategic critics of the party-state’s ideological alignment must be jointly and collectively treated as potentially dangerous extremists.

Russia, China, Iran and North Korea therefore are bound together as presenting a single obnoxious extremism that stands in opposition to ‘Our Democracy’; versus ‘Our Free Speech’ and versus ‘Our Expert Consensus’. So, if the move to war against one extremist (i.e. versus Iran) is ‘acclaimed’ by 58 standing ovations in the joint session of Congress last month, then further debate is unnecessary – any more than Kamala Harris’ nomination as Presidential candidate needs to be endorsed through primary voting: Candidate Harris told hecklers on Wednesday, chanting about genocide in Gaza, ‘to pipe down’ – unless they “want Trump to win”. Tribal norms must not be challenged (even for genocide).

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“..Avakov spearheaded a crackdown on forces protesting the Western-backed coup in Kiev..”

• US Lining Up Candidate To Replace Zelensky – Russian Intel (RT)

The US is planning to unleash a campaign to discredit Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky to pave the way for replacing him with a more pliable figure, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has claimed. The agency believes former Interior Minister Arsen Avakov is being considered to take the helm of Ukraine. In a statement on Tuesday, the SVR claimed that “the American elite” is growing increasingly frustrated with Zelensky as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle start to “doubt the targeted spending of billions of dollars in military aid to Kiev.” “Zelensky is taking crazy steps that threaten to trigger escalation far beyond Ukraine,” officials said, adding that Kiev “has moved to feverish action” as the Ukrainian leader struggles to maintain his grip on power after his presidential term officially ended in May.

The US is therefore looking at options for replacing him with a more manageable and less corrupt figure that will be amenable to most of the West, the agency said. According to the SVR, Avakov, who took over as interior minister after the Western-backed coup in Kiev in 2014 and held the post until 2021, is one of the most “suitable” candidates being considered. The SVR claimed that the US believes that Avakov has several advantages over other candidates, including his close ties with Ukrainian far-right groups and his relationship with EU leaders. The agency added that the White House believes that such a change in leadership “will allow the West to better prepare for the possible start of negotiations with Russia to resolve the conflict.”

Officials also noted that the question of Avakov taking the reins is being discussed with Ukrainian opposition figures, including former President Pyotr Poroshenko, ex-Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko, as well as influential MPs from Zelensky’s own party. After taking over as interior minister, Avakov spearheaded a crackdown on forces protesting the Western-backed coup in Kiev. He also held this post during the 2014 fire at the Trade Union House in Odessa, where 42 people died after being chased inside by a far-right mob. No comprehensive trial has been held in the ten years since the tragedy. Kiev’s inaction in this regard has been criticized by the UN. The former interior minister has also been a vocal supporter of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion. Allegations have emerged that Avakov provided political support to the unit and helped secure the release from prison of its leader, Andrey Biletsky, who is widely regarded as a white supremacist.

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“The Kiev regime has said candidly that the objective is to “instill fear” among civilians. That’s a brazen admission of terrorism..”

• NATO and its Kiev Proxy In Last Roll Of The Dice (SCF)

The NATO NeoNazi regime in Kiev is going for broke, as its Third Reich forbears did during World War Two. This time around, though, the fascists have a nuclear terrorist card to play. As in the endgame of World War Two, the Nazi Wehrmacht tried to break out in Kursk as a way to divert from battlefield losses elsewhere on the crumbling Eastern Front. The gamble proved futile then and looks like repeating disastrously today. Vladimir Zelensky, the illegitimate puppet president of Ukraine, is out of troops and money. His insufferable begging routine for more weapons and money has become played out. His country is set to default on eye-watering debts to international creditors. Russia’s military advances in the Donbass – formerly eastern Ukraine now part of the Russian Federation – have succeeded in pushing the Kiev regime to the brink of collapse despite the latter receiving hundreds of billions of dollars worth of NATO weaponry.

Zelensky, who is still clinging on to power nearly six months after he cancelled elections, senses the end is nigh for his corrupt regime and its war racket. With over 600,000 dead soldiers and remaining civilians hiding or fleeing in fear of conscription, the ex-comedian throws the dice with a few brigades despatched on a suicide cross-border raid on Russia’s Kursk region. “The Kursk maneuver could herald the end of Ukraine militarily,” remarked Gustav Gressel, a former Austrian defense ministry official, in an interview with Der Spiegel. Gressel suggested that the Ukrainian brigades represent the final reserves for the NATO-backed Kiev regime. Once they are wiped out by the superior Russian forces then there will be nothing left for the Kiev side. The BBC reported – with an air of glee – that convoys of troops are heading from Ukraine’s Sumy region across the border into Russia’s Kursk. The offensive has been going on for a week now, which Moscow says involves indiscriminate attacks on civilians and residential homes.

The Kiev regime has said candidly that the objective is to “instill fear” among civilians. That’s a brazen admission of terrorism. If Kiev’s other objective is to divert Russian forces from Donbass, that doesn’t seem to be working. Russian forces continue to make gains in the direction 0f Donbass – the main battlefield of this conflict. So, what is the Zelensky junta playing at? It’s a terror tantrum to try to show his NATO sponsors that their proxy regime is still worth backing. The wasting of Ukrainian military lives is a desperate “working off loans for his masters”, as Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova put it. Sending his people to die is Zelensky’s attempt to show his regime is still “liquid”. But it’s a final act of desperation. When this futile foray into Kursk is spent then it’s over. As part of the final desperate act, the nuclear terrorism card is also being played – again. While the incursion in Kursk is going on, the Ukrainian side has tried to attack the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant and the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant.

The ZNPP has come under constant shelling from the Armed Forces of Ukraine enabled with U.S.-made HIMARS missiles and other NATO weapons since Russia took over the civilian power plant – the largest in Europe – soon after the conflict erupted in February 2022. Russia took control at an earlier stage precisely because it anticipated that if it didn’t, the Kiev regime would use it as a false flag provocation regardless of the radiological contamination of Europe.In the latest strike, one of the cooling towers at the ZNPP was set on fire. Russia says the tower was hit by a drone. Moscow denounced what it called “nuclear terrorism” and it called on the international community to sanction Ukraine. Moscow is wasting its breath. Numerous calls for condemnation over previous air strikes on the ZNPP by the Ukrainian side have been ignored or willfully covered up by the West.

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He’s trapped.

• Kursk Was Low Hanging Fruit. What Now For Zelensky And His Allusions? (Jay)

The recent move by Ukraine to take Kursk was bold. It’s hardly surprising that media in the west have blown it up to be bigger than it really is though, given that they have been starved of positive chaff to spin for months for their NATO clients and so it comes as little surprise that it will run for days. But of course, the real test of the move comes in the days ahead. Taking a small enclave of Kursk with little or no resistance from Russian forces there – who are not battled hardened top notch – was hardly the Hollywood epic that the West is presenting it as. Taking it is one thing. Keeping it is a whole new matter.

Zelensky may well have taken the Kursk option to try and draw Russian troops out of the Donbas or from a small enclave on the Ukrainian side nearby that was taken recently. Militarily of course this makes sense and most analysts present this as the main point of the exercise. Whatever Putin does, it will be a draw from other resources in other places and so he strikes the Russian leader hard with one blow. Politically also, Zelensky knows that the pressure will be on Putin to do something to settle the Kursk issue. Russians did not think, when they were given the picture of Ukraine and Moscow’s objectives, that it would involve a spill over war into their own country. And so that merely piles on the pressure for Putin to deal with the Kursk “provocation”.

But there are other factors which Zelensky has on his mind, behind the Kursk ruse. The Ukrainian president, for the first time, has reached out to Putin and his officials recently when he invited Russia to a peace conference in November. This is a first of its kind, in that the initiative is actually Ukraine’s and that Putin is invited. Clearly, Zelensky believes that he needs to make a move before the U.S. elections are over, given that a Trump victory might push him to give up much more than his political expediency will allow. Having Kursk in his war chest will be very useful, not because of the tiny amount of land that Ukraine army actually has, but for the symbolism, as a card to play when negotiations actually start.

And yet this move comes with a high price which indicates also the level of desperation that Zelensky is in and we can, arguably, attest that Russia didn’t see it coming. If Zelensky loses the Kursk patch, then the humiliation and the loss of support from the military and its families will be unprecedented. If Kursk backfires, it might well cost him everything. The risks of course are not only with Zelensky alone but weigh heavily on the West also. For Western elites to goad him on and then congratulate him is both foolish and reckless. For Putin to refuse to be baited into a full-out war with NATO one can only comment that his patience is not unlimited – especially when now his political élan has taken a knock. There have been many moments in the past couple of years when this has happened before and he always survives the rough and tumble of Russian politics. But this time Zelensky will have to be seen to be paying the price for poking the Russian bear in the cage once too hard.

There is also another important development which is running concurrent to these events which is the role that Belarus could play in the coming months. Ukraine has repeatedly operated drones in the country’s airspace and been warned of the consequences. Recently tanks from Belarus were sent to the border, cranking up tensions even more if Ukraine angers Minsk once more. Zelensky certainly likes to skate on thin ice but presumably the two F16s which he has taken delivery of will amuse him no end. His own propaganda team are filming the two jets flying in tandem all over the country, presumably with two retired U.S. pilots in the cockpit, and dumping it all on social media to give the impression there is an air force made up of these American fighters. Hilarious. Expect more smoke and mirrors as we get closer to November.

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“..all of that depends on a counterpart in the Kremlin that was willing to negotiate,” and “Putin is not going to.”

• Ex-US Ambassador ‘Pessimistic’ About Ukraine’s Future (RT)

Relations between the West and Russia are unlikely to improve in the foreseeable future and Washington has no effective means to “bend” the country to its will, in particular on the Ukraine issue, Washington’s former ambassador to Moscow, John Sullivan, has claimed. In an interview with Foreign Policy magazine, published on Tuesday, Sullivan claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government is an “extremely difficult government to deal with” due to its negotiating style, which he claimed was based on “maximalist” demands. “If there were something we could do to pressure Russia to bend to our will, we would’ve already done that on Ukraine. What are we going to threaten them with now? We’ve hit [Putin] with a lot of sticks over Ukraine. If I could come up with better sticks, we’d already be using them on Ukraine now,” Sullivan stated, apparently referring to sanctions the US and its allies have heaped on Russia since the outbreak of hostilities between Moscow and Kiev.

He said he expects that “Putin will not compromise over Ukraine” no matter what NATO countries do in their attempts to persuade him, because “it’s not of his nature to compromise on issues that are so fundamental to him as a person and his conception of Russia.” The former diplomat offered several potential scenarios for conflict resolution, such as “a cease-fire without conceding or recognizing any territory as Russia” or a “massive support program for Ukraine through a new lend-lease type program.” He noted, however, that “all of that depends on a counterpart in the Kremlin that was willing to negotiate,” and “Putin is not going to.” “I am pessimistic about the future in Ukraine because neither party at this point is looking to negotiate. The Ukrainians so far can’t push the Russians out of the Ukrainian territory they control. But on the flip side, the Russians haven’t been able to mount any major offensive to take more parts of Ukraine. So a stalemate is the best we can hope for in the foreseeable future,” he concluded.

Sullivan served as ambassador to Russia from 2019 until his departure from Moscow in September 2022. Prior to his return to the US, which came a mere six months into the Ukraine conflict, Sullivan admitted that relations between Moscow and Washington had hit an all-time low. Moscow has repeatedly said that one of the major goals of its military operation against Kiev was to ensure Russia’s security in light of the threat posed by NATO’s expansion toward its borders. Another, it said, was to protect the Russian population living in the former Ukrainian territories from persecution by Kiev’s forces, which began following the Maidan coup in Kiev in 2014. Moscow has also stressed that it is open to a diplomatic solution to the conflict, albeit on its terms. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in late July that despite the West’s stance on the Ukraine conflict and sanctions it heaped on Moscow over the past two years, Russia remains open to dialogue and cooperation with Western countries, including on issues of security.

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Another 2,000 troops lost. For a show.

• NATO Allies Skeptical About Ukraine’s Advance Into Russia – Bloomberg (RT)

NATO allies consider it unlikely that Ukrainian forces will be able to hold Russian territory, even if it takes weeks for Moscow to force them out of Kursk Region, a Western official familiar with Kiev’s planning of last week’s incursion has told Bloomberg. Elements of six Ukrainian brigades invaded Kursk Region in the morning of August 6, taking over several border villages. Moscow has introduced a state of emergency and launched a counter-terrorist operation in the region, which borders Ukraine’s Sumy. The Russian Defense Ministry later said that the Ukrainian advance had been halted, estimating enemy losses at up to 2,000 service members and more than 200 armored vehicles. According to the unnamed NATO official, cited by Bloomberg on Tuesday, the incursion was “at least crucial to show that Kiev can challenge the Kremlin.”

With Ukraine’s military on the defensive, a cross-border attack had been “weighed for some time” before the incursion, the Western official said. Ukraine had reportedly been weighing several possibilities for an attack aimed at putting Russia on the backfoot. “While President Joe Biden’s administration and the European Union have given their blessing as the first military presence on Russian soil since World War II unfolds, NATO allies have so far withheld judgment,” Bloomberg wrote. Kiev officials did not share specific information on the cross-border attack until it was well underway, according to an unnamed Western intelligence official.

Meanwhile, Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh described the attack as “consistent” with Washington’s policy on Ukraine’s use of American-supplied weapons to defend itself. The EU has also called the operation legitimate defense. Ukrainian troops interviewed by Western outlets have admitted that the goal of the incursion was to capture some territory that could be traded with Russia in possible peace talks and to relieve pressure on the Donbass front. Moscow has since ruled out any negotiations with Kiev, while Russian troops have accelerated their advance. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned on Tuesday the Ukrainian government will face “ramifications” for attacking the country.

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“She’s been operating as a foreign agent on behalf of the United States. The CIA literally writes her a paycheck..”

• ‘The CIA Writes Her Paycheck’ (Sp.)

The United States has taken a keen interest in the results of another foreign election, with observers noting Venezuela possesses the world’s largest proven crude oil reserves. Venezuela’s Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ), the highest court in the country, is examining the results of the country’s most recent presidential election as opposition leaders and their foreign backers allege fraud. The country’s National Electoral Council (CNE), the government body responsible for managing elections in Venezuela, has submitted records to the court in an attempt to resolve the ongoing dispute. The TSJ has noted its legal authority on the matter, noting that its decision will be final and binding. But the opposition has refused to take part in the process, drawing criticism over its failure to present requested evidence to the court.

“No Venezuelan party that alleges to have 40 percent more votes than President Maduro (as the opposition claims) would hesitate to present the evidence to the National Electoral Council (CNE),” said Venezuelan constitutional expert Dr. Olga Alvarez in response to the development. “Whoever cries election fraud must irrefutably prove it, the onus is on them not on the CNE to prove there wasn’t.” Political activist and independent journalist Niko House joined Sputnik’s The Critical Hour program Monday to discuss the issue with host Wilmer Leon. “She’s been operating as a foreign agent on behalf of the United States. The CIA literally writes her a paycheck,” alleged House, speaking of Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado. “You would never see Joe Biden put in a request to audit and verify the results of the election,” he noted. “I think that speaks to the accountability and the integrity of Nicolas Maduro, which I feel like is a very important component here.”

House also noted Venezuela’s robust electoral system, which includes multiple “checks and balances” and allows the opposition to monitor the counting of votes at electoral precincts. “The most simplistic explanation is the oil, right?” House said of the United States’ interest in the election. The US and several of its allies have expressed concern over Maduro’s victory, echoing opposition claims of a fraudulent election. The opposition has produced records it claims point to a victory for opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez, although the records have not been independently verified as accurate or authentic. Western media outlets have uncritically repeated the opposition’s claims, with outlets like The New York Times playing their typical role in attempting to legitimate official US foreign policy.

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“..all but a small minority of Israelis approve of the savagery that has killed many tens of thousands of Palestinians, including children.”

• ‘Israel Itself is a War Crime’ (Sp.)

On Sunday, Hamas released a statement calling for the hostage exchange and ceasefire deal with Israel that was initially announced by US President Joe Biden in late May and backed by the UN Security Council in a resolution that passed on June 10. While Hamas had agreed to the ceasefire deal, Israel complicated negotiations by creating new demands as a way to sabotage the deal. However, talks between the two groups have been suspended since the assassination of Hamas’s political chief, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran. “It’s clear that [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu doesn’t want to negotiate, and we can have Yair Lapid and the war council out here saying, ‘we’re looking for some deal and we’re willing to hop on Biden’s deal from May’. But if Netanyahu refuses to do that, obviously it’s clear where the holdup is,” Carey explained, suggesting that Hamas has already won the “PR war”.

“It’s clear that Netanyahu has no plans to negotiate in good faith with Hamas as far as releasing hostages goes. And that’s been apparent for months now, but now that [we’re] talking about preemptive strikes against Iran for aggression done by Israel already, it’s very apparent that Israel, or at least Likud led by Netanyahu, is in no position where they want to negotiate. They could negotiate, but they refuse to.”“This is a genocide, whether it’s a slow one or an active one, as it’s been over the last few years, or since it’s been more active since October 7th. It’s obviously a genocide. And I think it’s ridiculous for people, especially liberals in the US or in the West to try and pretend that Israel has this sort of liberal, or even a streak that wants to negotiate with the Palestinians, or acknowledge the Palestinians’ existence.”

“It’s clearly out the window at this point, and obviously this is where Israel had to go as a colonial power. There’s nowhere to go. I mean, the Nakba started in 1948. That’s how Israel has always been. It’s where Israel always had to go to the point of an active genocide.” Israel was built on the displacement of Palestinians, claims a recent article published by a US-based news service. In 1948, Israelis took part in the ethnic cleansing of “some 750,000 Palestinians from their homes” in what Palestinians now refer to as their Nakba (Catastrophe). The journalist of the article, Jonathan Cook, claims that “every Israeli knows exactly what is going on in Gaza.”“…their children-soldiers keep posting videos online showing the latest crimes they have committed, from blowing up mosques and hospitals to shooting randomly into homes,” writes Cook. “Polls show all but a small minority of Israelis approve of the savagery that has killed many tens of thousands of Palestinians, including children.”

“It’s a sort of historical whitewashing,” Carey said. “Obviously, you know, Israel doesn’t want to acknowledge its roles in this and then, people say, ‘oh, well, Israel didn’t take part in these war crimes’. But, Israel itself – that was point number two here – Israel itself is a war crime. It’s a colonial state.” “The Nakba, again, in 1948, saw hundreds of thousands of Palestinians evicted. We’ve seen thousands of Palestinians evicted from East Jerusalem. We’ve seen the settlements expand in the West Bank. We’ve seen Gaza be carpet-bombed from north to south, clean out. There’s no passive agreement to these things anymore.” “This is a very genocidal state and it was always going to be. I think it’s important to remember that this is what Israel was founded on and the Israeli project was always meant to be larger than it is now and it’s going to continue expanding and they want to do that regardless of the cost.”

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“..the doctors at the Baptist Hospital gave him a plastic bag containing 18 kilograms of human remains and told him, “This is your son; go and bury him.”

• Every 70 KG Bag of Human Remains Is Considered a Martyr (Hajjaj)

Zainab al-Jaabari, 79, sits a few dozen meters in front of the scene of the massacre. She is waiting for her family members to return from checking for her seven sons and grandchildren, who were in the prayer hall praying Fajr at the time it took place. Her family members arrived to see the reality of the massacre with their own eyes: more than a hundred people were killed, and their bodies were now scattered and mixed in the prayer hall in the Daraj neighborhood in Gaza City. It is possible their delay in returning now is due to their horror at what they found, or perhaps because they can’t imagine how to tell Zainab that her seven sons and grandchildren have been killed. At dawn on Saturday, August 10, the Israeli army bombed a mosque while dozens of displaced people were praying the Fajr prayer, the daily Islamic prayer offered in the early morning. The bombing killed more than a hundred people, most of whom were dismembered or destroyed beyond recognition.

For this reason the identification of the bodies has so far been incomplete. The majority of the martyrs in this latest massacre are first- or second-degree relatives because the prayer hall that the Israeli army bombed belongs to a school housing displaced families from Gaza City. The decimated prayer hall belongs to the Tabi’in School, and is only used by the displaced people sheltering in the school. At the time of the bombing the prayer hall was filled with men. Now, many women who may have become widows and many children who may have become orphans, are sitting in front of the classrooms that were not reached by the bombing waiting to be told the fate of their families. The Israeli army said that it bombed the prayer hall because there were armed elements from the Islamic Jihad movement and Hamas there, but the displaced people in the school confirmed that there were no armed men among them. Hamas also denied the Israeli allegations and issued a statement saying that there were no armed men in the school.

“We live in the school, more than a hundred families, there are no fighters among us, there are no armed men among us, they are all children,” Zainab al-Jaabari told Mondoweiss. “The Israeli army left us nothing; they burned the trees, destroyed the houses, killed the people, and destroyed the land; what can we do? There is nothing we can do; we are children and women here; we cannot fight. Have you ever seen a country do all these criminal acts? Have you ever seen people who have all these crimes happen to them?” she says. “All we have is prayers; we pray against America that helps Israel to slaughter us, and we pray against everyone who watches us being slaughtered and does nothing to help us.” “We no longer have anything, and there is nowhere to go; the only thing we have is the sea, and even there, we will find death.” Al-Jaabari’s daughters went to the Baptist Hospital near the bombed school so they could identify their siblings.

“I can’t move much. I sent my daughters to the hospital to check on the rest of my children, but none of them have returned yet; all my sons and grandchildren were praying at the time of the bombing.” Hours after the massacre, the names of the martyrs who were identified were announced, and among the names were seven martyrs from the Al-Jaabari family. They are Zainab’s sons and grandchildren. In the mosque, people stand in a row close to each other as they pray, and after the bombing, the worshipers remained intermingled as well, as remains and corpses. Large numbers of martyrs were not able to be identified, and entire families were wiped out. Survivors of this massacre are describing a new and horrifying experience they are being forced to endure in aftermath of Israeli bombing in the Gaza Strip: they cannot even identify the remains of their loved ones.

Because the rescue teams couldn’t identify many of the human remains collected due to the intensity of the bombing, the doctors at Baptist Hospital were not able to identify each martyr individually. Instead, the doctors have started collecting body parts in plastic bags and giving 70 kilos of remains to the family of a martyr who has gone missing. Hassan Ahmad told Mondoweiss that he searched extensively for the body of his 6-year-old son Ali, and after hours of searching, he did not find a trace of him. He then went to the Baptist Hospital to ask about his son, or to find any part of his body so I could identify him and bury him. After a long search that did not yield any results, the doctors at the Baptist Hospital gave him a plastic bag containing 18 kilograms of human remains and told him, “This is your son; go and bury him.”

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