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Debt Rattle November 1 2024

Nov 012024
 
 November 1, 2024  Posted by at 9:30 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  50 Responses »


Paul Klee Carnival in the snow 1923

 

• White House Overrode Stenographers, Altered “Garbage” Transcript (ZH)
• Is the Left Preparing for War If Trump Wins? (Lee Smith)
• Kamala Harris’ Bizarre Marketing Campaign Appeals To The Worst In Humanity (ZH)
• FBI Ran ‘Honeypot’ Operation On 2016 Trump Campaign – Whistleblower (RT)
• Facebook Files Reveal the Coordinated Effort to Bury the Laptop Story (Turley)
• RFK Jr. Explains Plan for Reforming the CIA (HUSA)
• Lawsuit Over $1 Million Giveaways on Hold After Elon Musk’s Legal Maneuver (ET)
• Why the Cancel Campaign Targeting Jeff Bezos Could Backfire (Turley)
• County Clerk Confirms Voting Booth ‘Glitch’ Shifted Trump Votes To Kamala (ZH)
• Voter Confidence Rattled As Voting Machines Malfunction Across Illinois (JTN)
• Biden Goes On Baby-Mouthing Spree At White House Halloween Party (ZH)
• BRICS post-Kazan: A Laboratory of the Future (Pepe Escobar)
• BRICS Grows, Adding 13 New ‘Partner Countries’ (Norton)
• In Georgia and Moldova, it’s Oxi for NATO and the EU (Karganovic)
• Genocidal Scorecard (Chris Hedges)
• Israel’s Attacks On Iran Were An Apocalyptic Error By Netanyahu (Jay)
• Tightening Russian Oil Sanctions Threatens Global Economy – Le Monde (RT)

 

 

 

 

This IS genuinely funny
https://twitter.com/i/status/1851781793524879778

RFK

J6

Rogan
https://twitter.com/i/status/1851849883986137583

Elon

Kamala

Discord

O’Reilly

Go Vote
https://twitter.com/i/status/1851835337783357821

A warning from Mike Maloney

 

 

 

 

 

 

“..any edits to the official transcript would have to be approved by their supervisor, the head of the stenographer’s office – who was unavailable.”

• White House Overrode Stenographers, Altered “Garbage” Transcript (ZH)

In a mad scramble to cover for President Biden calling half of the country “garbage,” White House press officials altered the official transcript, overriding official stenographers who objected to the alterations, the Associated Press reports. According to the pre-altered transcript, Biden said “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters — his — his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.” However White House press office added an apostrophe, reading “supporter’s” rather than “supporters,” in order to peddle the falsehood that Biden was criticizing comic Tony Hinchcliffe, who referred to the US island territory of Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.” The change was made after the press office “conferred with the president,” according to an internal email from the head of the stenographers’ office that was obtained by The AP.

The authenticity of the email was confirmed by two government officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters. The supervisor, in the email, called the press office’s handling of the matter “a breach of protocol and spoliation of transcript integrity between the Stenography and Press Offices.” -AP According to the email, the press office demanded that stenographers quickly produce a transcript of Biden’s call with Latino activists to discuss Hinchicliffe’s comments, while Biden’s social media team posted on X that he was not calling all Trump supporters garbage – and that he was specifically referring to the “hateful rhetoric about Puerto Rico spewed by Trump’s supporter at his Madison Square Garden rally.” The two-person stenography team on duty that evening, a “typer” and a “proofer” said that any edits to the official transcript would have to be approved by their supervisor, the head of the stenographer’s office – who was unavailable.

Because of this, the White House press office went ahead and published an altered transcript on the White House website and distributed it to the press and social media in a mad scramble. The supervisor did not like that… “If there is a difference in interpretation, the Press Office may choose to withhold the transcript but cannot edit it independently,” wrote the supervisor, adding “Our Stenography Office transcript — released to our distro, which includes the National Archives — is now different than the version edited and released to the public by Press Office staff.” The supervisor, a career White House employee, raised concerns about the alteration in an email to White House communications director Ben LaBolt, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, and other officials. “Regardless of urgency, it is essential to our transcripts’ authenticity and legitimacy that we adhere to consistent protocol for requesting edits, approval, and release,” he wrote.

The alteration was done as the White House scrambled to respond to a cascade of press inquiries over Biden’s comments – which completely upstaged Kamala Harris’ closing argument speech outside the White House. As journalist Michael Shellenberger points out, it was likely illegal. Biden’s comment was a gift to the Trump campaign, which immediately capitalized on it – fundraising off the quote, while Trump himself held a photo op inside a garbage truck on Wednesday.

Harris also moved to quickly distance herself from Biden’s comments, telling reporters “I strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they vote for.” Meanwhile, House Republicans have been discussing launching an investigation into the fabrication – with House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik, R-(NY), and House Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer, R-(KY), on Wednesday accusing the White House of “releasing a false transcript” of Biden’s remarks, and called on White House counsel Ed Siskel to retain documents and internal communications related to Biden’s remarks and the transcript. “White House staff cannot rewrite the words of the President of the United States to be more politically on message,” the lawmakers wrote, noting that it may have been a violation of the Presidential Records Act of 1978.

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“Thus, it is best understood in the context of recent accounts promising, or urging, violence after the November vote.”

• Is the Left Preparing for War If Trump Wins? (Lee Smith)

The propaganda campaign labeling Donald Trump as an aspiring dictator determined to use the military and national security apparatus against his political opponents is designed not to affect the upcoming election but rather to shape the post-election environment. It is the central piece of a narrative that, by characterizing Trump as a tyrant (indeed likening him to Hitler), establishes the conditions for violence — not just another attempt on Trump’s life, but political violence on a massive scale intended to destabilize the country. As I write in my forthcoming book Disappearing the President, Democratic Party research and media reports show that many senior party officials and operatives are preparing for the possibility of a Trump victory. Accordingly, planning is focused on undermining the incoming president with enough violence to rock his administration.

Prominent post-election scenarios forecast such widespread rioting that the newly elected president would be compelled to invoke the Insurrection Act. With some senior military officials refusing to follow Trump’s orders, according to the scenarios, the U.S. Armed Forces would split, leaving America on the edge of the abyss. By vilifying Trump as a despotic madman who must be stopped before he can commence his reign of terror, the regime’s propaganda apparatus not only slanders Trump but also pre-emptively threatens the reputation, as well as the livelihood and perhaps the liberty, of current military personnel. The point is to push the military against Trump: When the time comes to act, will you stand for democracy or side with a tyrant who sees the military only as an instrument to advance his personal interests?

For instance, last week the Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, quoted former Trump administration officials claiming that the Republican candidate is contemptuous of America’s armed forces and, according to Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelly, wishes he could command the same respect that Hitler commanded from his general officers. This is not the first time that Trump has been compared to Hitler or that Kelly, a retired Marine general, turned on his former commander-in-chief. Kelly was the key source for a story published before the 2020 election, also in the Atlantic and also by Jeffrey Goldberg, that alleged Trump had called American WWII soldiers buried in French cemeteries “suckers and losers.” The veracity of Kelly’s latest revelation that Trump admires Hitler must of course be judged against the fact that he waited five years to disclose it, even if it is unlikely to have much effect on the current election cycle.

The military, and veterans of the Global War on Terror in particular, overwhelmingly support the candidate opposed to waging endless and strategically pointless foreign wars. Moreover, Trump has weathered far more damaging fabrications — like the false allegations that he had been compromised by Russian intelligence — that only galvanized support for him. The purpose of the Hitler narrative is not to alter the electoral preferences of left-wing media audiences already solidly in the anti-Trump column, but rather to justify taking extreme measures against the Republican candidate and the America First movement and ensure that the bulk of the military sides with the anti-Trump plot. Thus, it is best understood in the context of recent accounts promising, or urging, violence after the November vote.

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“If a woman or a minority votes conservative, Democrats assert that it’s because they’ve been brainwashed into it.”

• Kamala Harris’ Bizarre Marketing Campaign Appeals To The Worst In Humanity (ZH)

You can tell a lot about a political candidate and their party by their marketing campaigns. Most importantly, do they explain the views of their candidate and their policies? Or, do they simply seek to manipulate voters into believing something that’s not true? The Kamala Harris campaign has actually gone one step further in the past month with a bizarre series of ads that, when examined altogether, showcase an ideological degeneracy that appeals to the worst in humanity. While Donald Trump and conservatives are often accused of being “mean” or blunt in their rhetoric, at least it’s sincere and speaks to actual issues rather than subconscious desires. On the other hand, if you’re looking for any kind of class in a candidate, there’s none to be found among the Democrats.

Taking a page from the Edward Bernays school of advertising that taps into the grimy recesses and narcissism of the dregs of society, the marketing for Harris has been odd – It encourages dishonesty among families, relies on shaming techniques instead of critical thinking and it’s often sexually charged in the ugliest way. Some of these ads are not directly created by Harris operatives, but generally speaking most ads are approved by the candidate or political party officials before they’re released. In her most recent campaign, Harris ads attempt to sow discord among married couples, suggesting that women should hide their political views from their husbands and vote for Harris without them knowing. Or, the goal is to suggest that American men are somehow controlling their wives and coercing them into voting for Trump. In the Democrat fantasy world the only reason a woman would vote for Trump is because her husband is forcing her to. It’s a rather insulting portrayal of women, but it also taps into the leftist assumption that all minorities and women are their political property.

If a woman or a minority votes conservative, Democrats assert that it’s because they’ve been brainwashed into it. Beyond that, any man who has been married for even a short period of time is well aware of his wife’s political ideals and will not be surprised how she votes. It’s strange that the Harris camp is trying to portray voting as if it should be treated like an extra-marital affair. Of course, this is the kind of behavior that progressives commonly encourage women to engage in, it’s just weird to see it so blatantly promoted in a campaign ad. Then there’s the efforts to shame men into voting for Harris which have clearly not gone over so well. Her support among men is dismal, even among Gen Z, and this can be attributed directly to the decade long propaganda war on masculinity perpetrated by leftists. Men remember, and they’re certainly not going to vote for the same people that have called them “incels” or “rapists” or “toxic” for years.

Shaming is a traditionally feminine psychological tactic. This ad gives us an example of the reality that Democrats operate from a highly estrogenated world view and they don’t understand men in the slightest. By extension, Democrats may have made an epic blunder with this grotesque ad featuring a man masturbating in bed while watching porn, only to be disrupted by a cliche Republican invading his privacy and telling him he’s not allowed to punish his porpoise anymore. The ad itself is far creepier than the Republican it tried to lampoon, insinuating that masturbation is on the ballot and that this is something the average male voter should be focused on. For progressives, everything is about sex.

A root obsession of narcissists, sexual gratification is a core value for them and sexual identity a proxy making up for a lack of any legitimate personality. Furthermore, the conservative efforts against pornography are specifically aimed at enforcing age limits online so that children don’t have access (a pervasive problem in the digital era). It’s a reasonable position, but Democrats desperately want kids to have access to sexual content for some reason. Sticking with the theme of sexual gratification, let’s not forget this little gem of an ad which features a black man trying to match with women on a fake dating show, only to be denied by all of them because he says he’s not voting. The message? Vote for Harris or you won’t get laid.

The marketing is also aimed at women, much like the voting in secret ad, teaching them to treat men like the enemy unless those men vote Democrat. There are dozens of other ads like this beyond those listed here, with a host of Dem candidates following Kamala’s lead. This is truly the dark side of political content, reducing voters down to their most base animal instincts and avoiding any mention of actual policy. To be sure, Democrats understand the mentality of their core supporters well, but these ads would not appeal to anyone outside of the most rabid leftist activists. For posterity, the Harris marketing campaign should be studied as a window into the progressive mind; future generations should be dissecting this material for decades to come as an example of one of the most unsettling chapters in American political history.

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“Trump had just announced his first presidential campaign and neither he nor anyone on his campaign team was suspected of any crimes. Nevertheless, Comey ordered two “honeypot” agents to infiltrate Trump’s team..”

• FBI Ran ‘Honeypot’ Operation On 2016 Trump Campaign – Whistleblower (RT)

Former FBI Director James Comey personally ordered “honeypot” spies to infiltrate Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, according to an agency whistleblower. The off-the-books operation was described by the agency insider as a “fishing expedition” to find wrongdoing among Trump’s team. The operation was “personally directed” by Comey and launched in June 2015 without any case file being created in the FBI’s database, according to a whistleblower report handed to the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday and seen by the Washington Times. At the time, Trump had just announced his first presidential campaign and neither he nor anyone on his campaign team was suspected of any crimes. Nevertheless, Comey ordered two “honeypot” agents to infiltrate Trump’s team on the campaign trail with the aim of extracting damning information from adviser George Papadopoulos, the report claimed.

A “honeypot” agent refers to an attractive woman who uses a sexual or romantic relationship to gather intelligence from a target. Comey’s operation took place a year before the FBI’s ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ investigation into the Trump campaign’s alleged contacts with Russia, which later morphed into Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s two-year ‘Russiagate’ probe. According to the whistleblower, the honeypot operation was kept “off the books” to conceal it from the US Justice Department’s inspector general, who later determined that Comey knowingly lied when submitting evidence to obtain a warrant to surveil Trump’s campaign. Papadopoulos was eventually questioned by the FBI and in 2017 pled guilty to making false statements to agents regarding his alleged contacts with Russia the year before.

He served 12 days in federal prison in 2018, and has claimed ever since that he was entrapped by FBI agents posing as Russians with damaging information on Trump’s 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton. He complained about sloppy FBI agents “dropping information in my lap that I did not want regarding Hillary Clinton’s emails in the hands of the Russians” during the Crossfire Hurricane probe, and claimed to have been targeted by at least one “honeypot” beforehand. However, Papadopoulos thought that the woman was working for the CIA and “affiliated with Turkish intelligence,” he said in 2019. The operation was canceled when a newspaper obtained a photograph of one of the agents and was about to publish it, the whistleblower claimed.

The FBI allegedly contacted the newspaper claiming that the woman in question was an informant, and not an agent, and would be killed if the photo was released, successfully preventing its publication. One of the agents was then allegedly transferred to the CIA so she would not be available as a potential witness. “The FBI employee personally observed one or more employees in the FBI being directed to never discuss the operation with anyone ever again, which included talking with other people involved in the operation,” the report states. The Judiciary Committee told the Washington Times that it “plans to look into” the report. Trump fired Comey in 2017, describing him as a “liar” and a “slimeball.”

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“When we get hauled up to [Capitol] [H]ill to testify on why we influenced the 2020 elections, we can say we have been meeting for YEARS with USG [the U.S. government] to plan for it.”

• Facebook Files Reveal the Coordinated Effort to Bury the Laptop Story (Turley)

In a new report released by the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Weaponization of Government, Facebook executives are shown following the lead of the FBI, which gave them prior warnings to prepare to spike such stories before the election. The FBI knew that the laptop was authentic. They had possession of the laptop, and American intelligence concluded that it was not Russian disinformation. One Microsoft employee wrote, “FBI tipped us all off last week that this Burisma story was likely to emerge,” However, these communications also show a knowing effort to appease Biden and Harris and effectively assist them in their election efforts. Facebook’s then-Vice President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg reportedly wrote to Vice President of Global Public Policy Joel Kaplan, “[o]bviously, our calls on this could colour the way an incoming Biden administration views us more than almost anything else.”

One of the most interesting communications came from a Facebook employee who recognized that they would be accused of seeking to influence the election: “When we get hauled up to [Capitol] [H]ill to testify on why we influenced the 2020 elections, we can say we have been meeting for YEARS with USG [the U.S. government] to plan for it.” The Facebook files go beyond influencing the election. At one point, Nick Clegg, the company’s president of global affairs, asked, “Can someone quickly remind me why we were removing—rather than demoting/labeling—claims that Covid is man made.” The Vice President in charge of content policy responded, “We were under pressure from the administration and others to do more. We shouldn’t have done it.”

Notably, Democrats opposed every effort to seek this information, and Facebook only recently relented in turning over its files years after Elon Musk ordered the release of the “Twitter files.” I raised this issue during the NCC event to counter the glowing self-appraisal of Meta over its record. Despite its claims of transparency, it refused calls from many of us for years to release these files. When finally forced by the House to do so, CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a perfunctory apology and moved on. As shown at the NCC event, it is now spinning its record as a defense of free speech.

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“RFK called Pompeo a “neocon” and said he disagreed with him on many policies, but also said he admired him, calling the former agency director brilliant.”

• RFK Jr. Explains Plan for Reforming the CIA (HUSA)

Former President John F. Kennedy threatened to “splinter [the CIA] into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds” before he was assassinated in 1963. JFK’s nephew, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., wants something perhaps less dramatic. In a Trump campaign event with Tulsi Gabbard on Saturday, RFK explained his idea for reforming the CIA. According to him, reforming the CIA is as simple as splintering the “espionage” and “plans” divisions, which handle matters of intelligence and paramilitary operations, respectively. Those divisions are referred to today as the Directorate of Intelligence and Directorate of Operations. RFK said the two divisions need to be reorganized so the intelligence/espionage area has oversight of the paramilitary operations. He said his father had a similar plan when he was Attorney General.

“My father had a reform plan … Break up espionage division from the plans division, which is paramilitary division that fixes elections, buys newspapers, assassinates foreign leaders and so on,” he said. “I would break up those divisions and … put espionage division oversight of plans division.” Such a plan may seem tepid for a man who’s accused the CIA of being involved in the murder of his uncle. But RFK’s been surprisingly cordial with the agency. His daughter-in-law and campaign manager, Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, was a CIA officer for 10 years. RFK also revealed at Saturday’s campaign event in North Carolina that he had dinner with former Trump-era CIA Director Mike Pompeo. RFK called Pompeo a “neocon” and said he disagreed with him on many policies, but also said he admired him, calling the former agency director brilliant.

RFK said Pompeo told him that “The worst mistake of my public lie was not fixing CIA. I could have but I didn’t do it.” “The entire upper echelon of that agency is made of individuals who don’t believe in the institutions of the United States of America,” RFK said.

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“..has been placed on hold after lawyers for the billionaire removed the case to federal court..”

• Lawsuit Over $1 Million Giveaways on Hold After Elon Musk’s Legal Maneuver (ET)

A lawsuit brought against Elon Musk over his $1 million giveaways to randomly selected registered voters who sign a petition supporting the First and Second amendments of the Constitution has been placed on hold after lawyers for the billionaire removed the case to federal court. Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas Judge Angelo Foglietta said on Oct. 31 that he was placing the case on hold after Musk’s lawyers late on Oct. 30 removed it to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Foglietta said during a hearing at Philadelphia’s City Hall that he was divested of jurisdiction because of the move. Musk celebrated the result with a post on social media platform X, which he owns, that read “American Justice FTW [for the win].” Removing cases filed in state courts to federal court is not uncommon and is done at the prerogative of defendants under federal law. One of the requirements is that removal of a case must happen within 30 days of the filing of a complaint.

Federal judges who are assigned to the removed cases can decide whether to keep them in federal court or remand them back to state courts. Foglietta said that he would be available later in the day if the case were remanded back to him. Musk’s lawyers said in their removal notice that the case brought by Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner involves significant federal issues and should thus be adjudicated by a federal judge. “While the Complaint purports to raise only state-law claims relating to public nuisance and consumer protection, D.A. Krasner’s claims, as evident on the face of the Complaint, turn principally on the allegation that Defendants are somehow unlawfully interfering with a federal election,” the lawyers said. Krasner sued Musk and his America PAC, or political action committee, recently over their daily $1 million giveaways to registered voters in Pennsylvania and other swing states. The scheme, Krasner claimed, constitutes an illegal lottery.

Krasner asked a state court to stop Musk and the America PAC from continuing the giveaways. Musk’s lawyers said in the new filing: “Plaintiff is seeking emergency relief which, in and of itself, would require judicial intervention into the progress of an ongoing federal election. This, however, a state court cannot do, as the issue of whether a federal political action committee like America PAC—which is focused on making independent expenditures to influence campaigns for federal office, not state or local offices—is exclusively governed by federal law and the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.” Krasner was present in court, but another attorney, John Summers, argued for the district attorney’s office. Summers said that the case was one about state law and should proceed in the claims court and that Musk’s attempt to remove the case was cowardly and irresponsible.

Musk, Summers alleged, was attempting to use procedural maneuvers to run out the clock and avoid accountability because the law and facts weren’t on his side. Summers also cast doubt on the idea that Musk’s giveaway was random, noting that at least four recipients have come from Pennsylvania. If the giveaway were random, Summers said, it was definitely a lottery. The PAC, he alleged, was luring people in to give it their personal information. The type of personal information it sought, he said, was often bought and sold among tech companies. A lawyer for Musk argued that his client wasn’t a proper defendant in the case and that the prosecution should focus on America PAC instead of one of its donors. Summers responded in part by highlighting Musk’s role in announcing and promoting the contest. “The 800-pound gorilla here is actually Elon Musk,” Summers told Foglietta.

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“Bezos could do for the media what Musk did for free speech..”

• Why the Cancel Campaign Targeting Jeff Bezos Could Backfire (Turley)

It is not every day that you go from being Obi-Wan Kenobi to Sheev Palpatine in twenty-four hours. However, Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos now has the distinction of having Luke (Mark Hamill) lead a boycott of his “democracy dies in darkness” newspaper as the daily of the darkside. Figures like former Rep. Liz Cheney announced she was canceling her subscription as a boycott movement led a reported 200,000 to give up their subscriptions. Some like George Conway even seemed to target Bezos’ Amazon. It is a familiar pattern for many of us (on a smaller scale) who used to be associated with the left and faced cancel campaigns for questioning the orthodoxy in the media or academia. Then something fascinating happened. Bezos stood his ground. The left has made an art form of flash-mob politics, crushing opposition with the threat of economic or professional ruin. Most cave to the pressure, including business leaders like Meta’s Mark Zuckerburg.

That record came to a screeching halt when the unstoppable force of the left met the immovable object of Elon Musk. The left continues to oppose his government contracts and pressure his advertisers over his refusal to restore the prior censorship system at X, formerly Twitter. Now, the left may be creating another defiant billionaire. This week, Bezos penned an op-ed that doubled down on his decision not to endorse a presidential candidate now or in the future. Some of us have argued for newpapers to stop all political endorsements for decades. The encouraging aspect of Bezos’s column was that he not only recognized the corrosive effect of endorsements on maintaining neutrality as a media organization, but he also recognized that the Post is facing plummeting revenues and readership due to its perceived bias and activism.

I used to write regularly for the Post, and I wrote in my new book about the decline of the newspaper as part of the “advocacy journalism” movement: “Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working.” Bezos previously brought in a publisher to save the Post from itself. Washington Post publisher and CEO William Lewis promptly delivered a truth bomb in the middle of the newsroom by telling the staff, “Let’s not sugarcoat it…We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. Right? I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.” The response was that the entire staff seemed to go into vapors, and many called for Lewis to be canned. Bezos stood with Lewis. Now, resignations and recriminations are coming from reporters and columnists alike. In a public statement, Post columnists blasted the decision and said that while maybe endorsements should be ended, not now because everyone has to oppose Trump to save democracy and journalism.

The statement produced some chuckles, given the signatories, including Phillip Bump and Jen Rubin, who have been repeatedly accused of pushing false stories and reckless rhetoric. (Rubin later denounced Bezos for his “Bulls**t explanation” and said that he was merely “bending a knee” to Trump.). Bezos could do for the media what Musk did for free speech. He could create a bulwark against advocacy journalism in one of the premier newspapers in the world. Students in “J Schools” today are being told to abandon neutrality and objectivity since, as former New York Times writer (and now Howard University journalism professor) Nikole Hannah-Jones has explained, “all journalism is activism.” After a series of interviews with over 75 media leaders, Leonard Downie Jr., former Washington Post executive editor, and Andrew Heyward, former CBS News president, reaffirmed this shift. As Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, editor-in-chief at the San Francisco Chronicle, stated: “Objectivity has got to go.”

Few can stand up to this movement other than a Bezos or a Musk. However, the left has long created their own monsters by demanding absolute fealty or unleashing absolute cancel campaigns. Simply because Bezos wants his newspaper to restore neutrality, the left is calling for a boycott of not just the Post but all of his companies. That is precisely what they did with Musk.

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“…isn’t it ‘funny’ how these ‘glitches’ are never in Trump’s favor?”

• County Clerk Confirms Voting Booth ‘Glitch’ Shifted Trump Votes To Kamala (ZH)

Earlier in the day, a video went viral of voters in Kentucky having ‘issues’ with an electronic voting machine that selected “Kamala Harris” when the voter had pressed on “Donald Trump”… Admittedly, we have seen a few of these style of clips over the past few weeks and viewed it with the same level of skepticism we usually do. However, this time is different because the local County Clerk just issued a statement on Facebook confirming the issue “did occur”… but not before he had denied it occurred. According to the Laurel County Clerk Tony Brown, the machine was taken out of service while waiting for a rep from the AG’s Office. So, the initial reaction was: “There is no vote rigging here. It’s just a vast right wing conspiracy.” Then, 3 hours later… “Ok, the voting machine was busted, but it really was just a “ballot marking device” and as long as you triple checked everything, you must have caught the error..”

Here’s the full statement: “The Attorney General’s office has been to the vote center to check the device that has been shown across social media today. In full disclosure, after several minutes of attempting to recreate the scenario, it did occur. This was accomplished by hitting some area in between the boxes. After that we tried for several minutes to do it again and could not. Since this is going out across the USA and the world, I want to explain to everyone that this is a ballot marking device. You insert your blank ballot into it to vote your specific ballot for your precinct. It shows you who you have chosen for each race and notifies you if you didn’t make a selection in a race before it allows the voter to continue to the next page. When you come to the end of the ballot it shows you how you voted in every race and issue.

It confirms with each voter that they are satisfied with their selections twice before printing the ballot. Once you receive your ballot back from the ballot marking device you can review your choices again before placing it into the scanner. If you made a mistake, you may spoil that ballot and receive another one, Kentucky Law allows two spoiled ballots only. Once you are satisfied with your ballot you may place it into the scanner, and it verifies that it has been counted.

These ballot marking devices are set for a voter to touch Inside the whole box with the name of the candidates. In the video posted you can see us going back and forth through the names with no issues. This is the same machine used by the voter in the video. It remained at its location in the vote center and was set face down until the representative from the Attorney General’s Office arrived to investigate. There were no claims of any issues with the device prior, and none since it went back into service. The voter who posted the video did cast her ballot which she said was correct. I hate that this has occurred here in Laurel County. We strive to have accurate, secure and safe elections that we are proud to provide to our citizens. I hope all can get to the polls and make your voice heard November 5th. If you read through this entire post, thank you very much for your time.”

…isn’t it ‘funny’ how these ‘glitches’ are never in Trump’s favor?

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’don’t worry, we’ll just put it in the box, and we’ll make sure we scan them all tonight,’ uh, when everybody leaves..”

• Voter Confidence Rattled As Voting Machines Malfunction Across Illinois (JTN)

Voter confidence has been shaken with voting machines malfunctioning in several Illinois jurisdictions. In McLean County, 34 ballots were placed in what the County Clerk Kathy Michael called “an emergency bin,” which is located underneath the voting machine used to tabulate ballots. At the Eastland Mall, an early voting location, the machine “glitched” for 30 minutes. Affected voter Wayne Henrichs called the clerk’s office after putting his ballot in the bin and was connected with an assistant county clerk. “She indicated that they [the ballots in the emergency bin] are considered mail in ballots and they will be counted on election day rather than being counted early,” said Henrichs. Mclean County Elections Director Mark Senger said any ballots placed in the “emergency” bin will be tabulated after the early voting sites close. Senger said the ballots were tabulated after they closed on Tuesday, Oct. 22.

“The thing that concerned me was one: Is that really secure? Two: we are voting early for a reason and that’s to bank those votes,” said Henrichs. Such ballots are to be tabulated and witnessed by Democratic and Republican election judges, according to state law. In viral social media posts, voters say they walked out of a Schaumburg early voting site after the ballot scanner stopped working. One Schaumburg voter posted a video saying he didn’t cast his ballot after election judges told him to put his ballot in a box to be scanned later. “Well, so much for early voting. Their scanner’s broken, and they said, ’don’t worry, we’ll just put it in the box, and we’ll make sure we scan them all tonight,’ uh, when everybody leaves,” the voter said.

In another video posted on social media, election judges can be seen addressing a group of about 50 voters. A man wearing what appears to be an election judge badge made an announcement. “We have one scanner and the one scanner is broken,” the man said. “No one is going to open that [the emergency bin] up until tonight, and that’s us who take care of it. You know us, you have our badges,” said another election judge. McLean County GOP Chair Dennis Grundler was at the Eastland Mall trying to vote early on Tuesday. He said he was told to put his ballot in the emergency bin and he asked the judges for their names. The election judges didn’t give him their names. The McLean County Clerk’s Office said the law states for security purposes judges now use a letter designation instead of their name. According to the law, judges must initial ballots and they use their name/initials.

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Is there any way this is not embarrassing? For any grown up man? Let alone for the man who’s got the nuclear codes?

• Biden Goes On Baby-Mouthing Spree At White House Halloween Party (ZH)

One night after punching a new hole in the sinking ship that is the Kamala Harris campaign — and with no political future of his own to tamp down his impulse to put his mouth on children — President Joe Biden went on a baby-biting binge at a White House Halloween party on Wednesday night, leaving the internet collectively mortified. For anyone who’s somehow unaware, Biden has a long, rich history of mouthing, sniffing and grabbing children and women. This video gives just a small sampling of Biden’s uninvited touching that has fully earned him the nickname “Creepy Joe”: After multiple women came forward to say Biden had made them uncomfortable with his touching, Biden issued a video apology in 2019, saying, “Social norms are changing. I understand that, and I’ve heard what these women are saying. Politics to me has always been about making connections, but I will be more mindful of personal space in the future.”

However, with no second term on the line Wednesday night, Biden gleefully abandoned his personal-space pledge. Given his record, it would have grabbed major attention if Biden only mouthed a single baby. However, like an alcoholic falling off the wagon with great abandon, he indulged himself over and over. No doubt realizing this would be one of the last such opportunities he will ever have, the 81-year-old lame duck proceeded to mouth baby after baby that parents served up to him in a receiving line. Those parents appeared to politely tolerate their offspring being christened with presidential saliva, but we can imagine his handlers facepalming as Biden gave way to his compulsion to bestow oral affections.

[..] The baby-mouthing blitz capped quite a 24-hour stretch for Biden. On Tuesday evening, just as Kamala Harris was delivering her highly-promoted “closing argument” speech on the Capitol Ellipse, Biden undercut his replacement on the Democratic ticket by telling an audience that “the only garbage I see floating out there is [Trump’s] supporters.” The White House scrambled to claim that Biden was stuttering, and that there should be a possessive apostrophe (supporter’s) — supposedly indicating he was singling out an insult comedian at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally who likened Puerto Rico to a pile of garbage — many people aren’t buying it, and the Trump campaign is using the gaffe to enormous advantage. Meanwhile, social media lit up over Biden’s creepy Halloween display, including a positively ghastly yet somehow fully appropriate horror-movie treatment:

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“The collective west’s incomprehension of what transpired in three historic days in Kazan only highlighted their astonishing arrogance, stupidity, and brutality..”

• BRICS post-Kazan: A Laboratory of the Future (Pepe Escobar)

Apart from establishing the 13 new partners – constituting a large, transcontinental, de facto BRICS zone – Kazan advanced two key platforms: BRICS Clear and the BRICS (Re)Insurance Company. BRICS Clear is a multilateral settlement/clearing system for both BRICS trade and trade between BRICS and their partners (as it stands, applying to 22 nations). The key aim, once again, is to bypass SWIFT. BRICS Clear will use national currencies for international trade. Everything will be transacted via a stablecoin – a unit of account – managed by the NDB, the Shanghai-based BRICS bank. As top French economist Jacques Sapir has pointed out, “trade requires insurance services (for both the contract itself and transportation); these insurance services involve reinsurance activities. With the BRICS (Re)Insurance Company, BRICS is building its independence from western insurance companies.”

BRICS Clear and BRICS (Re)Insurance, in the short to middle term, will have enormous consequences for global trade and the use of US dollars and euros. Trade flows, intra-BRICS and between BRICS partners – already at least 40 percent of the global total – may rise exponentially. In parallel, western-controlled insurance and reinsurance companies will lose business. That’s de-dollarization in practice – arguably the BRICS Holy Grail. Of course, India and Brazil never refer to de-dollarization in the manner of Russia, China, and Iran, but they do support BRICS Clear. Sapir predicts that up to 2030, the BRICS Clear effect may result in the dollar share in Central Bank’s reserves falling “from 58 percent to around 35-40 percent.” Significantly, that would imply “massive sales of Treasury bonds, causing a collapse of the public bond market and significant difficulties for the US Treasury in refinancing United States debt.” The Hegemon will not take that lightly, to say the least.

These BRICS geoeconomic breakthroughs – call it lab experiments – mirror diplomatic coups such as India and China, mediated by Russia, announcing on the eve of Kazan their drive to settle bilateral troubles in the Himalayas to advance the unifying, pan-cooperation BRICS agenda. Solving geopolitical issues among member-nations is a key BRICS priority. The China–India example should translate to Iran–Saudi Arabia when it comes to their involvement in Yemen and Egypt–Ethiopia when it comes to the controversial building of a major dam in the Nile. BRICS sherpas openly admit that BRICS needs an internal institutional mechanism to solve serious problems among member-states – and, eventually, partners.

And that brings us to the ultimate incandescent tragedy: Israel’s military offensives in Gaza, Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, and Iran. BRICS sherpas revealed that two scenarios were being actively discussed in the closed sessions, as well as the bilateral meetings. The first foresees an Iran–Israel Hot War, with Lebanon turned into a major battleground, leading to a “chain reaction” involving several Arab actors. The second scenario foresees a pan-West Asia crisis, involving not only neighboring nations but what would coalesce into coalitions – one pro-Arab, the other pro-Israeli. One wonders where dodgy actors such as Egypt and Jordan would fit in. It’s unclear how BRICS, as a multilateral organization, would react to both scenarios.

Dreadful realpolitik did not stop in its tracks to watch the BRICS high-speed train leave the Kazan station. Israel staged its puny strike on Iran immediately afterward, and the collective west pronounced the elections in Georgia null and void because they did not like the result – even though the OSCE issued a rational report about it. The collective west’s incomprehension of what transpired in three historic days in Kazan only highlighted their astonishing arrogance, stupidity, and brutality. That’s precisely the reason why the BRICS matrix is working so hard to come up with the lineaments of a new, fair international order, and despite an array of challenges, will continue to flourish.

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Thought a list might be useful.

• BRICS Grows, Adding 13 New ‘Partner Countries’ (Norton)

The Global South-led organization BRICS is growing. More and more countries support the group’s mission: to build a multipolar world, with alternative economic institutions that are more representative and democratic, not dominated by the Western powers. BRICS held a summit in Kazan, Russia in October 2024, where 13 new “partner nations” were accepted. At this historic meeting, China’s President Xi Jinping referred to BRICS as “a vanguard for advancing global governance reform” and “reform of the international financial architecture”. Bolivia’s left-wing President Luis Arce argued that “the shield of BRICS and multipolarity” can protect formerly colonized nations, helping them resist “Western unipolarity and the tyranny of the dollar”. The organization was first formed as BRIC in 2009, by Brazil, Russia, India, and China. South Africa subsequently joined in 2010, turning the group into BRICS.At the 2023 BRICS summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, several more members were invited to join.

As of October 2024, BRICS has nine members and 13 partner countries:

5 original members:
Brazil
Russia
India
China
South Africa

4 new members (invited in August 2023; officially admitted in January 2024):
Egypt
Ethiopia
Iran
United Arab Emirates

13 partner countries (accepted in October 2024):
Algeria
Belarus
Bolivia
Cuba
Indonesia
Kazakhstan
Malaysia
Nigeria
Thailand
Türkiye
Uganda
Uzbekistan
Vietnam

The expansion of BRICS has made the group into even more of a geopolitical and economic powerhouse. Together, the nine BRICS members comprise more than one-third of world GDP (measured at purchasing power parity). They have well over 40% of the planet’s population, and make up roughly 30% of global oil production. By contrast, the G7 nations comprise less than 10% of the world population and under 30% of GDP (PPP), and their share of the global economy is shrinking over time, whereas that of BRICS is increasing.

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Not at all what EU and US wanted. Or even expected.

• In Georgia and Moldova, it’s Oxi for NATO and the EU (Karganovic)

In Greek, “Oxi” means “no.” October 28 is celebrated in Greece and Cyprus as “Oxi Day.” On that date in 1940 Mussolini’s plenipotentiaries presented an ultimatum to the Greek Government to allow Axis troops to occupy its territory. The Greek Prime Minister at the time, Metaxas, replied to the brazen demand with a single word, “Oxi.” The rest is, as they say, history. Now it is the people of Georgia and Moldova, in elections and a referendum held last week, who have sent an essentially identical message to the arrogant hegemons of our day. Both Georgia and Moldova were earmarked to serve as sacrificial lambs in the collective West’s relentless war against Russia. For Georgia, a particularly self-destructive role had been envisioned. Its government was expected by the collective West to commit an act of national suicide arguably even more catastrophic than that of Germany and the associated vassal states of the European Union.

Facing an obvious military debacle in Ukraine, Western strategic thinkers came up with the brilliant idea of mending the situation by using Georgia to open a second front against Russia. The Georgian army, which in 2008 was trounced by Russian armed forces when the last attempt was made to use it in a similar hare-brained scheme, was to be thrust into battle once again as cannon fodder for the benefit of foreign interests. The strategic thinkers had overlooked an important detail that cast a long shadow over the feasibility of their scheme. In 2008 it was their stooge Saakashvili who was running Georgia. Today, the situation is fundamentally different. Whilst their puppet, French-born EU citizen Salome Zourabichvili, is President, Georgia is governed by sovereignist patriots whose litmus test for judging policies is what is best for their country. Such a policy standard, of course, is utterly abhorrent to the globalist mindset. The elections in Georgia have gone terribly wrong from their point of view. The ruling sovereignist party, Georgia Dream, won with 54% of the vote. The result was duly certified by the electoral commission.

The seriousness with which the current Georgian government views non-interference in its sovereign affairs was demonstrated not long ago. Anticipating last weekend’s elections, Prime Minister Garibashvili proposed, and by a comfortable margin Parliament approved, a law mandating transparency in the financing of foreign sponsored “NGOs,” of which about 20,000 are said to be active in Georgia. Forthwith, the foreign sponsored cabal whose machinations the transparency law was designed to make public lost their nerve. President Zourabichvili, a foreign citizen herself and former French Foreign Ministry functionary whose spoken Georgian is no better than Zelensky’s Ukrainian, is herself a prime candidate for the law’s rigorous application. Foolishly, she gave the game away by refusing to exercise the presidential duty of signing the duly passed foreign agent transparency legislation so that it could go into effect. That unladylike attempt at obstruction, however, came to naught. The law was signed in her stead by the president of the Georgian Parliament.

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“..accompanied by calls from Israeli officials to “renew settlements in Gaza” and encourage the “voluntary transfer of all Gazan citizens” to other countries.”

• Genocidal Scorecard (Chris Hedges)


Bibi on Board – by Mr. Fish

United Nations report, published on Monday, lays out in chilling detail the advances made by Israel in Gaza as it seeks to eradicate “the very existence of the Palestinian people in Palestine.” This genocidal project, the report ominously warns, “is now metastasizing to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.” The Nakba or “catastrophe,” which in 1948 saw Zionist militias drive 750,000 Palestinians from their homes, carry out more than 70 massacres and seize 78 percent of historic Palestine, has returned on steroids. It is the next and, perhaps, final chapter in “a long-term intentional, systematic, State-organized forced displacement and replacement of the Palestinians.” Francesca Albanese, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, who issued the report, titled “Genocide as colonial erasure,” makes an urgent appeal to the international community to impose a full arms embargo and sanctions on Israel until the genocide of Palestinians is halted.

She calls on Israel to accept a permanent ceasefire. She demands that Israel, as required by international law and U.N. resolutions, withdraw its military and colonists from Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. At the very least, Israel, unchecked, should be formally recognized as an apartheid state and persistent violator of international law, Albanese states. The U.N. should reactivate the Special Committee Against Apartheid to address the situation in Palestine, and Israel’s membership in the U.N. should be suspended. Short of these interventions, Israel’s goal, Albanese warns, will likely come into fruition. “This ongoing genocide is doubtlessly the consequence of the exceptional status and protracted impunity that has been afforded to Israel.” she writes. “Israel has systematically and flagrantly violated international law, including Security Council resolutions and [International Criminal Court] ICJ orders. This has emboldened the hubris of Israel and its defiance of international law.

As the ICC Prosecutor has warned, ‘if we do not demonstrate our willingness to apply the law equally, if it is seen as applied selectively, we will be creating the conditions of its complete collapse. This is the true risk we face at this perilous moment.’” The U.N. report comes amid an Israeli blockade of northern Gaza where over 400,000 Palestinians are enduring a starvation siege and constant airstrikes in an attempt to depopulate the north. Israeli forces have killed 1,250 Palestinians in the assault, launched on October 5, a medical source told Al Jazeera. Reports from northern Gaza are difficult to obtain as internet and phone services have been cut and the few journalists on the ground continue to be killed. Israel’s ground and aerial assaults are centered on Jabaliya, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun. Civil defense units say they have been barred by Israeli forces from reaching the sites of recent strikes and their crews have been attacked.

Israel has ordered Palestinians to flee to designated “safe zones,” but once in these “safe zones” they have been attacked and ordered to move to new “safe zones.” “Displaced people have been systematically chased down and targeted in shelters, including in United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) schools, 70 percent of which Israel has repeatedly attacked.” In May, Israel’s Rafah invasion caused the displacement of nearly one million Palestinians, driven into southern Gaza because of Israeli evacuation orders, into “uninhabitable wastelands of rubble, sewage and decomposing bodies,” Albanese notes. By August, 90 percent of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million Palestinians were displaced “under dire conditions,” according to the U.N.

The months of “relentless shunting of weakened humans from one unsafe area to another — fleeing bombs and bullets, with minimal chances of escape, amid loss, fear and grief, and with little access to shelter, clean water, food and healthcare — have inflicted incalculable harm, especially on children,” the report reads. “The movement of displaced Palestinians resembles the death marches of past genocides, and the Nakba. Forced displacement severs connection with the land, undermining food sovereignty and cultural belonging, and triggering further displacement. Communal bonds are broken, the social fabric shredded and reserves of resilience depleted. Systematic forced displacement contributes to ‘the destruction of the spirit, of the will to live, and of life itself.’” The constant displacement — many Palestinians have been displaced nine or 10 times — from one part of Gaza to another is accompanied by calls from Israeli officials to “renew settlements in Gaza” and encourage the “voluntary transfer of all Gazan citizens” to other countries.

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“..the IDF can’t provide one single shred of video evidence to back up such ludicrous claims..”

• Israel’s Attacks On Iran Were An Apocalyptic Error By Netanyahu (Jay)

Netanyahu is desperate to keep wars on all fronts alive simply so he can remain relevant. But what is hardly talked about is the state of Israel itself, with an economy in pieces. Just how far will the next U.S. president go in supporting Israel’s new war with Iran, both in terms of military spending and breathing new life into the economy which has seen 40,000 businesses go under since October 7th 2023 and almost a million Israelis leave the country. Netanyahu now is like a poker player who has used up all his IOUs at the table and is holding two pairs. How can he even believe he can take on Iran when even in Gaza and in Lebanon he is losing soldiers at a rate which should worry him and his generals. Yes, he has struck Hezbollah and reduced its capabilities but by no stretch of the imagination has he taken out the Iranian proxy which is still sending missiles and drones into Israel making the Israelis run to their air raid shelters even to this day.

The decision to strike Iran was surely out of an act of a gross political dilemma. However, the act itself has backfired on a level that neither he nor his entourage could imagine. Most of the targets were not even significantly damaged with a very low percentage of Israel’s missiles getting through Iran’s air defence which is so efficient that even Israel’s air force were too afraid actually fly into Iran’s airspace. Many in the west will be taken in by the spin from Israel’s lobby and impressive PR machine that it was a great victory and many sites were taken out, regardless of the fact that the IDF can’t provide one single shred of video evidence to back up such ludicrous claims, as it did previously in Gaza and Lebanon.

But the real defeat for Israel under Netanyahu is yet to come. Iran now has all the hard evidence it needs to strategize and hit Israel even harder than before. The erroneous strike on Iran by Netanyahu is not so much measured by the minor harm it did to a couple of weapons sites. It is by how now the myth of Israel’s military strength has been debunked once and for all. For decades Israel claimed superiority to everyone else, including Iran, and this was taken for granted by partisan western journalists who kept the dream alive. Remarkably, the strike on Israel by Iran on October 1st showed even Israelis that their air defence systems were hopelessly inadequate against Iran’s hypersonic missiles. That should have been enough to cool down the hot heads which straddle Netanyahu. At this point, the message he delivered at the UN, that there is “no place in Iran which Israel’s missiles cannot reach” should have been taken at face value and interpreted literally. Reaching Iranians sites is one thing. Actually taking them out is another.

Now, as the dust settles and Israel now waits for Iran’s response, the second myth that Israel’s strike capability was highly effective against Iran’s air defences is also blown. It seems like now Netanyahu’s folded as he has no more bluffs to play at the poker table. Unless of course he is deliberately coaxing his own country into a suicide strategy where Iran will completely desecrate Israel’s military leaving the U.S. little choice but to install itself on a grand scale. This so-called suicide strategy can’t be ruled out but seems hard to believe. The truth is that until Israel struck Iran, it didn’t know whether its own missiles and aircraft had the capability to penetrate Iran’s air defence system, supported heavily by Russia which sent it S-400 systems in August.

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“Income from oil exports jumped by 63% in January-July this year compared to the same period in 2023..”

• Tightening Russian Oil Sanctions Threatens Global Economy – Le Monde (RT)

Attempts to further tighten Western sanctions on Russian oil could undermine the global economy, French newspaper Le Monde wrote on Wednesday. The report indicated that tightening sanctions on one of the major oil-producing countries could send fertilizer prices soaring and would ultimately lead to higher global food prices. “The rise in oil prices would disproportionately affect the poorest countries, potentially pushing them into a humanitarian crisis,” US economist Catherine Wolfram was quoted as saying. Such a scenario could discredit the West in the eyes of the Global South and encourage them to strengthen ties with Russia, she suggested. Meanwhile, the CEO of US-based ClearView Energy Partners, Kevin Book, told Le Monde that sanctions could have worked at a time when most companies specializing in oil transport insurance were located in the West. “This is not the case today,” he emphasized.

Western governments have hit Russia with a barrage of sanctions over the Ukraine conflict. Among other measures, they have introduced a price cap along with an embargo on Russian seaborne oil in an attempt to hurt the country’s economy, while at the same time keeping Russian crude flowing to global markets so as not to trigger price hikes. The measures were imposed in December 2022, and were followed in February 2023 by similar restrictions on exports of Russian petroleum products. They ban Western companies from providing insurance and other services for shipments of Russian crude, unless the cargo is purchased at or below $60 per barrel, a level below the current market price. In response, Moscow banned Russian enterprises from complying with the cap and rerouted most of its energy exports to Asia, particularly India and China.

“While some measures have long-term effects, such as the ban on the export of spare parts that hinders the maintenance of military equipment, the opposite is true for oil,” Le Monde wrote, suggesting that Moscow has been successful in sidestepping the restrictions while the price of the country’s flagship Urals crude had mostly remained above the Western price cap. Reuters calculations based on traders’ data showed that prices of October Urals crude oil were trading above $65 a barrel at Russian Baltic and Black Sea ports. In July, Russian crude traded at around $80 a barrel. According to a recent report by the independent economic think tank Institute for Energy and Finance Foundation (FIEF), Russia’s energy revenues may reach record levels this year, buoyed by high export oil prices. Income from oil exports jumped by 63% in January-July this year compared to the same period in 2023, totaling 6.4 trillion rubles ($66 billion), the paper said.

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Atlas

 

 

Vaccines
https://twitter.com/i/status/1851960889986937244

 

 

Cancer
https://twitter.com/i/status/1851811296297259397

 

 

Pro-Trumper
https://twitter.com/i/status/1851764519825019081

 

 

Grok

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in wartime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle August 24 2024

Aug 242024
 
 August 24, 2024  Posted by at 8:50 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  50 Responses »


Salvador Dali Galatea of the Spheres 1952

 

• I Throw My Support Behind Donald Trump – RFK Jr (ZH)
• The 2024 DNC In 2 Words – ‘Not Trump’ (ZH)
• RFK Jr Addresses The Nation (ZH)
• Why Kamala Harris Won’t Sit For An Interview (Bridge)
• End of Hoaxes (Jim Kunstler)
• CIA Endorses Harris as Democrats Promise More War, Foreign Intervention (Sp.)
• US Running Out Of Ammo – Trump (RT)
• US Preparing To Lift Ban On Strikes Deep Inside Russia – Moscow (RT)
• India Is Not Neutral But Stands For Peace, Modi Tells Zelensky (RT)
• Crackdown on Ukraine’s Largest Church Is ‘Full-fledged Satanism’ – Medvedev (RT)
• Ukraine Sells Its Orthodox Heritage Out to West. But Wait, It’s Russian (Sp.)
• Confusion And Chaos At Factory That Built Two Doomed 737 MAX Planes (ZH)
• Tale of Two Pipelines… Europe Loses, China Gains (SCF)
• US House Oversight Asks TSA Why Tulsi Gabbard Is on Terror Watchlist (Sp.)
• JK Rowling Reportedly Sued by Olympic Boxer Over Gender Criticism (Turley)

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1826765855008719103

 

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1826835677759013348
https://twitter.com/i/status/1826812669640462518

 

 

Vivek will be a force

 

 

RFK jr

 

 

 

 

 

 

Who needs a policy if you hate Donald Trump?

• I Throw My Support Behind Donald Trump – RFK Jr (ZH)

“Democrats have become the party of war, censorship, corruption, big pharma, big tech, big ag, and big money wanting to abandon democracy by canceling the primary to conceal the cognitive decline of the sitting president. I left the party to run as an independent… The DNC and its media organs engineered a surge of popularity for VP Harris based upon nothing. No policies, no interviews, no debates. Only smoke and mirrors.””A Chicago circus that is based on NOTHING. Who needs a policy if you hate Donald Trump?” “How did the Democratic Party choose a candidate that has never done an interview or debate during the entire election cycle?” Kennedy asked. “We know the answer: They did it by weaponizing the government agencies. They did it by abandoning democracy. They did it by suing the opposition and by disenfranchising American voters.

What most alarms me isn’t how the Democratic Party conducts its internal affairs or runs its candidates. What alarms me is the resort to censorship and media control and the weaponization of the federal agencies.” Kennedy refuses to be a spoiler… “Many months ago, I promised the American people that I would withdraw from the race if I became a spoiler… In my heart, I no longer believe that I have a realistic path to electoral victory in the face of this relentless, systematic censorship and media control.” “I am simply suspending it and not ending it. My name will remain on the ballot in most states. I encourage you to vote for me. In an honest system, I believe that I would have won the election. After all, the polls consistently showed me beating each of the other candidates. In about 10 battleground states where my presence would be a spoiler, I’m going to remove my name.”

[..] I throw my support behind Donald Trump.” Kennedy said that in a series of meetings with Trump and his team, he realized he shared more in common with the former president than he thought. He compared their potential partnership to President Lincoln’s famous “Team of Rivals,” which saw him stock his Cabinet with former foes. “In a series of long, intense discussions, I was surprised to discover that we are aligned on many key issues. In those meetings, he suggested that we join forces as a unity party. We talked about Abraham Lincoln’s team of rivals. That arrangement would allow us to disagree publicly and privately and fiercely if need be on issues over which we differ while working together on the existential issues upon which we are in concordance.” “I was a ferocious critic of many of the policies during his first administration, and there are still issues and approaches upon which we continue to have very serious differences.”

“But we are aligned with each other on other key issues like ending the forever wars, ending the childhood disease epidemics, securing the border, protecting freedom of speech, unraveling the corporate capture of our regulatory agencies, getting the US intelligence agencies out of the business of propagandizing and censoring and surveilling Americans and interfering with our elections.” “Suspending my candidacy is a heartrending decision for me. But I’m convinced that it’s the best hope or ending the Ukraine War and ending the chronic disease epidemic that is eroding our nation’s vitality from the inside and for finally protecting free speech.” “I feel a moral obligation to use this opportunity to save millions of American children above all things.” Most notably, RFK Jr. admitted in front of the nation that he attempted to contact VP Harris first and that she neither wanted to talk or meet with him is a strong message to Independent voters:

“Following my first discussion with President Trump, I tried unsuccessfully to open similar discussions with Vice President Harris. Vice President Harris declined to meet or even to speak with me.” “Democrats want nothing to do with you, Republicans will at least give you a seat at the table.” RFK addressed details on the Russia-Ukraine war (via Kyle Becker): “We have pushed Russia closer to China and Iran. We are closer to the brink of nuclear exchange than at any time since 1962. And the Neocons in the White House don’t seem to care at all.” “Our moral authority and our economy are in shambles. And the war gave rise to the emergence of BRICS, which now threatens to replace the dollar as the global reserve currency.” “This is a first class calamity for our country.” “Judging by her bellicose, belligerent speech last night in Chicago, we can assume that President Harris will be an enthusiastic for this and other Neocon military adventures.”

“President Trump says he will reopen negotiations with President Putin and end the war overnight as soon as he becomes president.” “This alone would justify my support for his campaign.” “Last summer, it looked like no candidate was willing to negotiate a quick end to the Ukraine War, to tackle the chronic disease epidemic, to protect free speech, our Constitutional freedoms, to clean corporate influence out of our government or to defy the Neocons on their agenda of endless military adventurism.” “But now, one of the two candidates has adopted these issues as his own to the point where he has asked to enlist me in his administration.” “I am speaking, of course, of Donald Trump.”

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‘Kamala Harris, for the people.’

• The 2024 DNC In 2 Words – ‘Not Trump’ (ZH)

Objectively, if prediction sites can be trusted in any way (perhaps more so than biased polls), the last four days of speeches, musical performances, and delegate celebrations were a ‘failure’ of sorts for the Democratic Party as during the DNC, Kamala Harris odds of success in November dropped while Trump’s improved (though we note the incumbent VP remains a favorite)… Perhaps, ‘we the people’ realized that the goal of the whole week was for party lawmakers, community leaders, past presidents, and cultural figures to convince Americans that Kamala Harris is not Joe Biden… and has not been in The White House for the last almost-four-years… is the not the lowest-approval-rated VP in history… and is not in any way responsible, or tied to any of the policies that left the vast majority of Americans questioning the direction of the country just a week or two before the mainstream media anointed her ‘Mamala’

Most directed pointed attacks at former President Donald Trump, tying his candidacy and campaign to the controversial Project 2025, which Trump has disavowed, while illustrating differences between a potential second Trump term and a Harris White House. While light on specific domestic and foreign policy discussions, the convention highlighted the Democratic Party’s commitment to ensuring abortion access after the 2022 Dobbs decision overthrew Roe v. Wade. For four straight days, protesters rallied in the streets against the Biden/Harris administration’s support for Israel during the Israel–Hamas war, pushing for a Palestinian speaker at the Chicago convention. As Jacob Burg and Nathan Worcester detail below via The Epoch Times, here are the key takeaways from the 2024 Democratic National Convention.

After securing enough delegate support to become the party’s presidential nominee earlier this month, the convention served as a coronation ceremony for Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. With a little more than 70 days remaining in the election, Harris is moving fast to define herself, her platform, and her vision for America. Speaking about her family and their impact on her life, she said it was those who loved and believed in her the most that “told us we could be anything and do anything.” In her acceptance speech, Harris described her parents meeting at a civil rights gathering and attorneys like Thurgood Marshall and Constance Baker Motley, who inspired her to become a lawyer. When Harris’ best friend revealed sexual abuse by a parent, Harris set out to be a prosecutor.

“And every day in the courtroom, I stood proudly before a judge, and I said five words, ‘Kamala Harris, for the people.’” She added, “And to be clear, my entire career. I’ve only had one client, the people.” “On behalf of the people, on behalf of every American, regardless of party, race, gender or the language your grandmother speaks … I accept your nomination to be president of the United States of America,” Harris said. In a coalition-building effort as her campaign inches closer to election day, Harris vowed to unite a divided country. “Our nation, with this election, has a precious, fleeting opportunity to move past the bitterness, cynicism, and divisive battles of the past, a chance to chart a new way forward. Not as members of any one party or faction, but as Americans.”

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Articles were updated on the fly last night as things happened. This is one of the older parts of the opening article.

• RFK Jr Addresses The Nation (ZH)

While Richard Truesdell and Keith Lehmann point out that RFK Jr. was never a serious candidate, he had a famous name (to those of us old enough to remember), a tinge of legitimacy, and a wealthy billionaire running mate to keep the train going. It wasn’t enough to reach office but it got his foot in the door after RFK Jr. was shunned by Democrat Party insiders in their initial effort to prop up husk of a president, Joe Biden. Now they are stuck with Biden’s insurance policy, Kamala Harris. It terrified the Dems to have RFK Jr. in the running, so they rigged the rules, banned him from state ballots, and vilified him as extreme. And to dampen his impact on the Harris-Walz ticket, after trying to deny him ballot access and remove RFK Jr. from the state ballots he made his way to, Democrats will now attempt to keep him on ballots to hurt Trump. Such hypocrites.

He’s an environmental attorney, about as Lefty Democrat as you can get! He was expected to capitulate, kiss the crown, and get in line with everyone else. Instead, he went rogue. He showed them by unexpectedly running as an Independent. In exchange for his potential endorsement, what can Trump promise? A cabinet post? Being named director of the FBI to clean up that mess? Or ironically, heading up the CIA? Maybe after six decades, we’ll find out exactly what was the role of the agency in assassinating his uncle and if it had any role in his own father’s assassination. He’s now rumored to be ready to endorse Trump and is expected to announce his campaign suspension in Phoenix, where Trump is scheduled to hold a rally nearby. Coincidence? Unlikely. If this happens, it will take much of the post-DNC momentum away from Harris-Walz and focus attention on the PR value of RFK Jr.’s endorsement.

Imagine the son of RFK and the nephew of JFK, endorsing a Republican candidate for the presidency, Donald Trump no less. It will be a net positive gain for Trump, although not much and only for so long. But it could make all the difference in a race that’s expected to be tight in the all-important swing states—especially Pennsylvania. After spending millions to keep him off the ballot, the Democratic National Committee released a memo Friday dismissing the potential impact Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s endorsement of Donald Trump will have on the presidential race. The DNC claimed, without evidence, that the only reason Kennedy was in the race was to be a spoiler candidate to help former President Trump, but derided him as “a near-negligible factor” with “no meaningful base of support.” The DNC memo purported, again without evidence, that Trump was “at a low point and acting out of desperation.”

“Embracing RFK Jr. now —when he has nothing to offer but months of disqualifying revelations—is not a decision a campaign makes when they’re acting from a position of strength.” The memo went on to accuse RFK Jr. as having an “unsavory and reckless past, ties to MAGA donors, and MAGA-lite positions on abortion bans and January 6th pardons,” and assert that “his support has dwindled to make him a near-negligible factor.” “The little support that remains is soft, split across ideologies, and disproportionately among lower propensity voters. With no meaningful base of support and sky-high negatives among Democrats, RFK Jr.’s threat to VP Harris was neutralized,” the DNC memo stated. The DNC memo argued Kennedy could actually hurt Trump because of his allegedly “controversial” positions on the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, the Sept. 11 attacks and vaccines. Right now, in their post-DNC euphoria, Democrats believe that they have positioned Harris to win.

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It would end her campaign.

• Why Kamala Harris Won’t Sit For An Interview (Bridge)

The US media has once and for all proven that it is in the pocket of the Democratic Party. It continues to fawn over the greatly flawed Kamala Harris while the presidential candidate has steadfastly refused to do interviews or press conferences for weeks. Taking the lead in this media-backed coup d’état is Time magazine, whose latest issue features a powerful portrait of Kamala Harris on the cover bearing the glowing caption “Her Moment.” Unfortunately, it wasn’t ‘her moment’ for a little chat with the media, although it was certainly the perfect opportunity. In one of the only lines of criticism against Harris in the 3,000-word puff piece, Time writer Charlotte Alter admitted that “Harris has yet to do a single substantive interview or to explain her policy shifts.” Shockingly, Harris even refused a single comment to Time, despite offering gratuitous promotion of the vice president.

That speaks volumes about Harris, who refuses to speak to a publication that is absolutely committed to providing kid-glove treatment to the Democrats. Alter’s description of Harris provided little substance on the vice president’s track record and oceans of ink spewing vacuous allusions to the carnivalesque atmosphere that now accompanies Harris’ political rallies. Many have suggested that this is the only way she is able to fill stadiums and inject a feeling of enthusiasm. “The soundtrack suggested a Beyoncé concert,” Alter opened in the very first paragraph of her article titled ‘The Reintroduction of Kamala Harris’. “The light-up bracelets evoked the Eras Tour. And the exuberant crowd – more than 14,000 strong, lining up in the rain – resembled the early days of Barack Obama.” The name Taylor Swift, certainly no political scientist, popped up several paragraphs later: “More than 38,000 people registered on Vote.org in the 48 hours after she became the presumptive nominee, eclipsing the voter-registration surge encouraged by Taylor Swift last year.”

And if that wasn’t enough, Alter came up with this ridiculous allusion to Hollywood starlets in an effort to explain Harris’ inexplicable rise: “Mass enthusiasm for a woman is nothing new: Harris’s run comes just a year after the blockbuster summer of Barbie, Beyoncé, and Swift.” Finally, Time provided an absurd quote from Senator Cory Booker, who invoked Star Wars imagery to argue that Harris has “mastered the art of ‘arm twisting’ required to pass major legislation” for Democrats. “She has gone,” he said, “from being a Padawan to a Jedi master.” Too bad the force was not with Harris when it came to securing the southern border, or helping working class Americans survive some of the worst inflation the US has experienced in decades. Compare all of that mindless puffery to Donald Trump, who Time interviewed for a cover story in April that was an 83-minute read, while the nitpicking factchecking following the piece took over 20 minutes to digest.

Eric Cortellessa, the journalist who conducted the interview, asked Trump a dozen questions about the Trump prosecutions, five questions about the January 6 ‘insurrection’, four on battling the ‘deep state’, three on his “dictator for a day” joke, two about the possibility of right-wing violence if Trump loses the election, and four on whether he’d seek to overturn the 22nd Amendment to serve a third term in office. It seems that the only reason Trump agrees to sit through these tortuous liberal inquisitions is to have the ability to say he is doing what Kamala Harris conspicuously refuses to do – talk to the media. Whether this strategy will work in his favor is highly debatable given the overwhelming support Harris receives regardless of what she does or doesn’t do. Yet even the Democrats must understand that the media are the gatekeepers to our aspiring politicians. Without the ability of journalists to sit down and grill officials on policy matters, the American people will remain in the dark.

Moreover, sitting in the media hot seat allows the audience to determine if a person has the mettle required for leadership. Many believe that Harris, who has demonstrated an inability to convey complex ideas – ‘word salads’, as they’ve been called – without the assistance of a teleprompter, is perfectly aware of her personal shortcomings, and that is why she is content to remain in the shadows while the media pumps her up into a political tour de force. This could also explain why the Democrats waited until the 11th hour to replace feebleminded Joe Biden with Harris on the presidential ticket – the less time the American people have to listen to Harris’ convoluted arguments (and grating cackle), the better. The rise of Harris from basement-level popularity ratings just four years ago to some sort of political genius proves the undeniable power of the corporate media complex to turn the greatest mediocrity into anyone they like.

“The way the US corporate media transformed Kamala Harris from a national embarrassment to a transformative pioneer overnight – without even pretending to care about anything that she thinks or believes – is a powerful testament to how potent the science of propaganda is,” journalist Glenn Greenwald posted on X (formerly Twitter). [..] Trump and Harris are set to debate on ABC on September 10, an event that the former president, barring some unforeseen disaster, has essentially already won. The final result, however, will depend on whether the audience will side with the snake-oil media and ‘believe their lying ears’, or will they be able to think past their media mind controllers and make an honest judgement of Harris’ performance. The future of the United States hinges on that question.

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“..this year’s Democratic Convention, their Cluster-B personality disorder freak show..”

• End of Hoaxes (Jim Kunstler)

Get this: there is one thing, one lurking terror, behind every fake and desperate move the Democratic Party has made this dire election cycle: the fear that hundreds of high officials might have to pay for their crimes of recent years if they lose on November 5. That’s why they lie about everything, and work so hard to construct false narratives, and struggle to obliterate the memory of Joe Biden’s ruinous term in power. Of course, they can’t talk about it. It’s like the darkest secret in a wrecked human soul that has lost itself in mental illness, some abscess of shame and guilt sealed off in the mind’s attempt to protect itself — like the memory of an incest or an unsolved family murder — which explains the rich show of various derangements actually highlighted at this year’s Democratic Convention, their Cluster-B personality disorder freak show. It is an anguished, guilt-ridden collective mind leaking clues to its own disordered debasement.

So, the deed is done now. The odious “Joe Biden,” fake president, is dumped in the ditch of history, and a mighty operation is mounted to put over Veep Kamala Harris, who ignored “JB’s” incapacity to head the US government for four years, carrying out no duties meanwhile, hiding from the public, answering nothing, going nowhere, abetted by a treasonous news media bent on hiding her as she drank away the months in the old Naval Observatory. The conventions are over and the contest is on. Have you heard enough of their fake war-cry: “defending our democracy?” From a party that has tortured the law to jail and silence its critics and scrape its challengers off every ballot. The pretense is perfect. Their “democracy” is actually a colossal “spoils” system — to the victor goes the spoils! — a grotesque political machine funneling trillions of federal dollars to their client voter groups, and especially to the non-profit orgs and NGOs that form a sinister secondary bureaucracy accountable to nobody.

And all done with direct connivance of the federal intel blob at war with everyone outside this matrix of turpitude. And, by the way, the money is gone. Trillions. And nothing to show for it. This is what Mr. Trump opposes, and has been fighting against since 2016. No wonder it wants to stuff him in prison or kill him. It is a mighty enemy because it holds the levers of official power, especially the federal prosecutors and the state and county prosecutors put in place by the Democrats’ chief “influencer,” the George and Alex Soros NGO empire. And the big picture includes the monumental crime against our country — against all the countries of Western Civ, really — which was the Covid-19 operation that left millions disabled or dead from a phony, poisonous “vaccine.”

And now we hear — as I write early this Friday morning, hours before any official announcement — that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is about to suspend his campaign, kneecapped by the Democratic Party so busy “defending our democracy,” and perhaps throw his support to Donald Trump in order to defeat this mafia of the mentally ill. I hope he does that. And I hope he denounces the party of his ancestors in the most vividly opprobrious terms so that no one can misunderstand the gravity of what has been going on. I’d also look forward to Mr. Kennedy playing an important role in the second Trump government. Mr. Kennedy knows probably better than anyone in America exactly how the gigantic racketeering operation was constructed that grafted pharma onto the US public health agencies, the FDA, CDC, NIAID, and others.

This monster that has left so many Americans dead and injured, and wrecked the health of the nation’s young people especially, must be slayed. It must be disassembled and its pieces reconstructed into institutions that actually serve the public. This includes the hospital holding companies, the private equity pirates out to asset-strip medicine, the insurance-driven, overgrown doctors’ practices, and the mendacious medical boards, professional orgs, and journals that unjustly punished dissident doctors and nurses who tried to oppose the extralegal Covid-19 vaxx mandates. If it happens that Mr. Kennedy joins forces with Mr. Trump, it could be a momentous turn in an election so far marred by Democratic Party hoaxes, coups, and lawfare ops. Naturally, The New York Times played the story this morning in a tiny headline below-the-fold, saying nothing about the rumored stunning alliance between the Kennedy and Trump campaigns.

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Leon Panetta. Sweet Jesus.

Trump wants peace. Kamala wants whatever the Deep State wants.

• CIA Endorses Harris as Democrats Promise More War, Foreign Intervention (Sp.)

A former chief of the controversial intelligence agency voiced his support for the vice president at the Democratic National Convention Thursday. US Vice President Kamala Harris signaled she would continue her predecessor’s hawkish foreign policy in Gaza and Ukraine Thursday as an ex-CIA director publicly endorsed the Democratic presidential candidate. “As president I will stand strong with Ukraine and our NATO allies,” Harris declared during her acceptance speech, voicing strong support for Kiev’s US-backed proxy war against Russia. Former intelligence chief Leon Panetta also delivered a speech praising Harris during which the controversial figure claimed he was “proud” to have served in the US Army and CIA director. US military aggression throughout the Middle East during the so-called “War on Terror” is estimated to have caused the deaths of at least 4.5 million people while the CIA has been implicated in numerous human rights violations.

“The Democrats really showed that this is a hawkish party and really neoconservatives are in charge of the party,” noted CovertAction Magazine managing editor Jeremy Kuzmarov on Sputnik’s The Final Countdown program. “I mean, they brought out Leon Panetta earlier tonight. He’s a former CIA director who was a key mastermind of the drone war and a key figure behind Russiagate and a key supporter of Hillary Clinton and chief of staff in the Bill Clinton White House.” “In her speech [Harris] was talking about how [former US President Donald] Trump supposedly coddled [foreign leaders] like Putin, and that’s totally false,” he continued. “Trump had a pretty hardline policy toward Russia. He pulled out of the INF Treaty. He ramped up weapons supplies to Ukraine. So that’s just like an extreme right-wing position that they’re adopting.”

“They’re celebrating this war in Ukraine [that] siphoned off billions of hard-earned taxpayer dollars into a sinkhole just like Afghanistan, and a lot of those weapons have been stolen. And this party is cheerleading for that. So that’s where they are.” Corruption has long been recognized as endemic in Ukraine, which experts have noted is “the most corrupt nation in Europe.” Earlier this year, a massive corruption scandal was uncovered that saw almost $40 million in US aid stolen by officials in the country’s defense ministry. In June, it was revealed that Western military-grade weapons supplied to Ukraine have been sold on the black market, ending up in the hands of terrorists and European drug cartels. Various neoconservative figures such as Iraq War architect Bill Kristol have shifted allegiances to the Democratic Party in recent years as Republicans have become increasingly critical of foreign intervention under the banner of Trump’s “America First” ethos. Recent polling shows increasing numbers of Americans believe the US has spent too much money funding Ukraine’s quixotic proxy war on Russia.

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“You know why. We gave it all up to Ukraine and various other places. We gave them everything.”

• US Running Out Of Ammo – Trump (RT)

The US military is running out of ammunition as President Joe Biden’s administration has bled stockpiles dry to arm Ukraine and other nations, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has claimed. The GOP firebrand pledged to turn the tide and make a “historic investment in rebuilding” the American military, if elected. Speaking by phone to Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky last month, Trump reiterated his long-standing promise to swiftly end the conflict between Kiev and Moscow if elected in November. Back in June, the former US president also made it clear that he would stop donating tens of billions of dollars’ worth of handouts to Ukraine. Addressing his supporters, along with his vice presidential pick, Senator J.D. Vance, in Asheboro, North Carolina on Wednesday, Trump lamented: “They released a report talking about all of the vulnerable areas… we’re weak here, we’re weak there.”

“That’s like saying: ‘We have no ammunition,’” he said. “You know why. We gave it all up to Ukraine and various other places. We gave them everything.” According to the former president, billions of dollars’ worth of weaponry and ammunition has been donated free of charge. While it is not clear what report exactly Trump was referring to, experts on the congressional Commission on the National Defense Strategy released a 312-page assessment in late July, warning that the US military “lacks both the capabilities and the capacity required to be confident it can deter and prevail in combat.” According to the report, in a hypothetical future conflict with China, the latter would likely be aided, at least economically and possibly also militarily, by the likes of Russia, Iran, or North Korea. This would make the odds of a US victory increasingly slim, military experts predicted.

“Unclassified public wargames suggest that, in a conflict with China, the United States would largely exhaust its munitions inventories in as few as three to four weeks, with some important munitions (e.g. anti-ship missiles) lasting only a few days,” the document concluded. Experts on the commission attributed the current state of affairs to serious inadequacies in America’s defense industry that they said would require significant investment to rectify.

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“..Russia must therefore “act decisively, increasing our military-industrial potential, because only our army and navy will protect our country..”

• US Preparing To Lift Ban On Strikes Deep Inside Russia – Moscow (RT)

Claims by Washington that it has banned Ukraine from using US-supplied long-range weapons for strikes deep inside Russian territory cannot be trusted, Moscow’s ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, has said. Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has resumed his calls for the country’s Western backers to allow long-range strikes on Russian territory during Kiev’s ongoing incursion into Kursk Region. The Pentagon stated last week that its stance remains unchanged, and that Ukraine is still banned from using US-supplied ATACMS missiles, which have a range of up to 300km (186 miles), for attacks deep inside Russia. Speaking to journalists on Friday, Antonov claimed that the US authorities “seem to be constantly teasing us by saying that today it is allegedly not allowed to use long-range systems to strike at Russian territory.” “But in reality, they are essentially preparing the ground to simply remove all existing restrictions, at a certain point,” the Russian envoy added.

Judging by Washington’s previous assistance to Kiev, including its training of pilots to fly F-16 jets, it is almost certain that Ukraine will “fight with US-made [long-range] weapons against us,” the ambassador said, as cited by TASS. “Where exactly will it happen? We cannot say or foretell,” he stressed. According to Antonov, the administration of US President Joe Biden is becoming increasingly unpredictable. “There is no guarantee that the whole world will not change tomorrow when you and I wake up. How the Americans will behave in this situation is very hard to tell,” he said. Russia must therefore “act decisively, increasing our military-industrial potential, because only our army and navy will protect our country,” the ambassador insisted.

Antonov also made a live appearance on Russia’s Channel One on Thursday, where he rejected claims by the US authorities that they had been unaware of the Ukrainian plans to attack Kursk Region.“I am firmly convinced that in Kiev they do nothing without the go-ahead from their masters… They wouldn’t have dared to move a finger… in our direction without consent from Washington,” he said. Commenting on the fate of Ukrainian troops who have entered Russian territory, the ambassador insisted that “no one has any doubts that they will be destroyed, not pushed back, but destroyed.” Russia’s Defense Ministry estimated on Thursday that Ukraine has lost more than 4,700 troops and several hundred units of military equipment, including 68 tanks and 53 armored personnel carriers, since the start of the incursion in Kursk Region on August 6.

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“New Delhi stopped short of signing the joint communiqué emerging from the Swiss-hosted event, as the event didn’t include Russia..”

• India Is Not Neutral But Stands For Peace, Modi Tells Zelensky (RT)

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Kiev on Friday, marking the first visit by an Indian premier to the country. During a meeting with Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, Modi stated that India has not been “neutral or an indifferent bystander” as the Russia-Ukraine conflict persists, and has always been “on the side of peace.” The joint communique issued by the two sides after the leaders’ meeting noted that Modi reiterated its “principled position and focus on peaceful resolution through dialogue and diplomacy.” According to Indian foreign minister S. Jaishankar, who briefed the media in Kiev, Modi and Zelensky had a detailed and open discussion and New Delhi promised it was ready to make proactive contributions towards efforts for peace. The joint statement noted that India had attended the ‘peace summit’ hosted by Switzerland in June this year as part of this commitment.

However, New Delhi stopped short of signing the joint communiqué emerging from the Swiss-hosted event, as the event didn’t include Russia. On Friday, Jaishankar noted that Modi called for “practical engagement” between all stakeholders” to work out “innovative solutions” that could lead to peace. “President Zelensky knows we mean well by Ukraine, we want this conflict to come to an end. If there is anything we can do in any way in sort of upfront, behind or supporting anybody, we are willing to do whatever we can. This conflict must end, we believe,” Jaishankar said. Modi’s visit was the first-ever visit by an Indian premier to Ukraine since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Upon his arrival in Kiev, he was greeted by members of the Indian diaspora there. Later, he and Zelensky honored the memory of children who died in the conflict in a visit to the Martyrologist Exposition tribute, and paid tribute to Mahatma Gandhi in the ‘Oasis of Peace’ park in the capital.

Modi’s Ukraine visit comes nearly six weeks after he traveled to Russia for a bilateral summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Since the beginning of the conflict, India has abstained from condemning Moscow over the conflict or from downgrading trade and diplomatic ties with it, despite pressure from the West. New Delhi has maintained robust ties with Russia despite the West’s scrutiny of the relationship. Bilateral trade crossed $60 billion last year, largely bolstered by Indian imports of discounted Russian coal and oil. The premier’s visit to Moscow in July came under intense scrutiny from Washington and other global capitals. Biden administration officials were uncomfortable with the optics of the visit, which coincided with a crucial NATO summit that featured Zelensky. Ukraine’s leader himself termed Modi’s meeting with Putin a “huge disappointment” and a “blow” to peace efforts, prompting New Delhi to summon the Ukrainian envoy over the remark.

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A 10 year old regime vs a 1000 year old religion.

• Crackdown on Ukraine’s Largest Church Is ‘Full-fledged Satanism’ – Medvedev (RT)

Kiev’s Western backers are supporting its “satanic” crackdown on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev claimed on Friday. On Tuesday, the Ukrainian parliament passed a law that prohibits “Russia-linked” religious organizations. The self-governed UOC, which has historical and spiritual ties with the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), is understood to be the primary target of the legislation. Medvedev, who serves as deputy chair of the Russian Security Council, said he holds Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky accountable for the crackdown. Pyotr Poroshenko, Zelensky’s predecessor, caused a major religious schism in Ukraine when he orchestrated the creation of the so-called Orthodox Church of Ukraine in late 2018 as part of his failed reelection campaign, Medvedev pointed out.

Under Zelensky, however, “the destruction of the Orthodox faith in Ukraine and the persecution of Christians for their faith started,” culminating in the new law, the former Russian leader argued. Zelensky “has no religious identity” and the crackdown is “full-fledged satanism” supported by people in his government, Medvedev alleged. “The civilized West” backed both Poroshenko’s ploy and the ongoing persecution “to inflict maximum damage to Russia and its citizens,” he added. Ukraine “will be destroyed, like Sodom and Gomorrah were, and the demons will inevitably fall,” Medvedev said, referring to the Old Testament story of two cities obliterated by divine intervention for their wickedness. He added a biblical quote describing the Jewish conquest of Canaan and the punishment that Joshua exacted on the leaders of conquered tribes.

Viktor Elensky, the head of the Ukrainian service for ethnic policy and freedom of conscience, claimed on Thursday that the new law “has the legitimate goal of stopping the subversive activities of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine.” Kiev has no intention of forcing clerics and the faithful to join any other denomination, but if the UOC wishes to exist, it has to abide by the new rules and disavow any ties with Moscow, the official added. Clement, the UOC bishop who serves as the spokesman for the church, wondered if schismatic leaders would have to overcome bureaucratic barriers to prove their loyalty. Among other things, the law demands public affirmation by Ukrainian clerics that they have cut all ties with the Russian church. The UOC will “keep living as a true church recognized by the majority of practicing Ukrainian believers and the world’s independent Orthodox churches,” he told the media. Any attempt to ban it will merely tarnish the reputation of the people pushing for it, Clement argued.

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The church is rich. Ukraine is corrupt.

• Ukraine Sells Its Orthodox Heritage Out to West. But Wait, It’s Russian (Sp.)

The Kiev regime tends to view its common religious heritage with Russia as exclusively Ukrainian and sells to the West invaluable Christian artifacts, religion expert Roman Lunkin told Sputnik. Historical and cultural artifacts, including Orthodox icons, are taken out of Ukraine and transferred to Western countries where some of them are sold, according to Roman Lunkin, head of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society of the Institute of Europe at the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS). “It is not rational and not at all ethical to treat the heritage this way,” Lunkin told Sputnik. Last year, the rarest 6th and 7th-century Byzantine icons were secretly transferred from the territory of Ukraine to France under the pretext of safety issues, and then displayed at the Louvre Museum in Paris. All in all,16 invaluable artifacts were brought to France through Poland and Germany.

Still, the crux of the matter is that these Christian Orthodox icons were gifted to the head of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem by the Sinai Monastery of St. Catherine in the mid-19th century, according to Bishop Porfiry, a Russian theologian and byzantinologist. In 1940, the Soviet government transferred the icons to the Kiev Museum of Western and Oriental Art (now known as the Khanenko Museum of Art), where they were kept after the Great Patriotic War. It is unclear whether and when the icons will be returned. On June 26, 2023, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) reported on Kiev’s plans to remove Christian valuables and relics from the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, and send them to Europe under the pretext of “saving them from Russian missile attacks”, despite the fact Russian forces are not targeting civilian facilities, let alone Orthodox holy places.

Still, there is more to the Kiev regime’s readiness to squander its heritage, and the West’s eagerness to keep Ukraine’s Christian valuables under the auspices of the International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage in Conflict Areas (ALIPH), chaired and overseen by US billionaires. Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova last year linked the alleged plot, described by the SVR, as well as the secret removal of Byzantine icons from the Kiev museum, to the old Western colonial trend: “Western countries have stolen national valuables throughout the world, and their museums can be described as the ‘safekeepers’ of valuables stolen from their colonies, as you can see in the Ancient Egypt exhibit in the Louvre or the British Museum… The West has always plundered its colonies. Ukraine is no exception. There is no doubt that no one was going to return the valuables they had taken away from other countries,” Zakharova stressed.

The problem is that the Kiev regime considers this historical and cultural heritage “exclusively Ukrainian”, regardless of its true origin, Lunkin underscored. “Icons that are kept in the [Kiev-Pechersk] Lavra and other museums, including cultural monuments in Ukraine, are the common property of Russian culture and the culture of Kievan Rus, which was created from the moment of the Baptism of Russia more than 1000 years ago. Accordingly, this is the common and inseparable heritage of our countries because it was created at a time when Rus existed, before Ukrainians and Ukraine did. Therefore, it is wrong to call these icons exclusively Ukrainian,” the pundit said. The Kiev-Pechersk Lavra was founded in 1051, during the rule of the Russian Duke Yaroslav the Wise, who reigned in Rostov, Novgorod, and later in Kiev. The Lavra has always been considered part of the common historical and religious heritage of Russians and Ukrainians.

However, in the aftermath of the 2014 coup in Ukraine, which illegitimately brought to power Western-backed nationalist authorities, the Kiev regime doubled down on creating a separate “Ukrainian history” to “appropriate” the Kievan Rus history. In May 2017, then President Petro Poroshenko claimed that Duke Yaroslav and his daughter, Anna, who became Queen of France in 1051 upon marrying King Henry I, were “Ukrainians”, regardless of the fact that this East Slavic ethnic group had not been formed at that time. Volodymyr Zelensky has gone even further, according to Lunkin. In addition to creating a myth about a separate Ukrainian history and a separate Ukrainian Orthodoxy, “the Ukrainian authorities and the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), which they created [in 2018], are trying to separate the saints, who were born on the territory of modern Russia,” the pundit pointed out.

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When Boeing merged with McDonnell Douglas, the entire new company became focused on cost saving. Accountants for engineers.

• Confusion And Chaos At Factory That Built Two Doomed 737 MAX Planes (ZH)

New documents released Thursday reveal that ‘confusion and chaos’ reigned in the company’s Renton factory that built two 737 MAX planes that later crashed, killing 346 people in 2018 and 2019, the Seattle Times reports. According to a prominent whistleblower Ed Pierson, production issues from back then still affect MAX planes flying today. The new documents reveal multiple electrical issues that were discovered as Boeing assembled the Ethiopian Airlines jet that crashed in 2019. The Times notes that in 2018, the FAA found that employees in another Boeing facility in Everett, WA – where electrical components for integration – had been pushed to move to fast, and produced defective pieces. Communications between Boeing and Ethiopian Airlines show the plane that later crashed experienced an in-flight safety incident months before the fatal accident. Boeing told the airline that the December 2018 incident was likely the result of an electrical error, the records show.

The whistleblower, Pierson, said the records and the earlier safety incident bolster his view that the deadly crash of the Ethiopian jet may have been initiated by an electrical problem. That problem traces back to production issues with electrical wire bundles that Pierson has highlighted. Pierson, who worked at Boeing for more than a decade and served as a senior manager coordinating fixes for assembly problems on the 737 program, released the new documents through an advocacy group he formed after the crashes, the Foundation for Aviation Safety – and said that Boeing withheld the documents from regulatory investigators looking into the two deadly crashes. Following the deadly incidents, he repeatedly alleged that manufacturing defects played a role. The FAA, NTSB, and international regulators are in disagreement over the cause.

In both crashes, an error with then-new software — the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System or MCAS — caused the plane to nosedive. Boeing recently pleaded guilty to misleading safety regulators about MCAS and how much training pilots would need to fly safely. In the case of the Ethiopian crash, the NTSB and its French counterpart concluded that it wasn’t an electrical error but a bird strike damaging a sensor that likely triggered the MCAS software. The U.S. agency disputed a report from Ethiopian authorities that said the sensor was triggered by “production quality defects.” Pierson sent the newly disclosed records to the NTSB, the FAA and the Department of Justice in July, he said. Meanwhile, the FAA and NTSB are playing hot potato over the new documents, and have suggested that questions should be directed to Ethiopian authorities.

Boeing, in a statement, said that it “fully cooperated and provided relevant information to the investigation” regarding the Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 crash, adding “We defer to the investigative agencies for further information.” The new documents also reveal that from communications between Boeing and Ethiopian Airlines, in December 2018, the airline’s 737 MAX experienced an “uncommanded roll”—a situation where the plane rolls unexpectedly, potentially disorienting the pilot and risking loss of control. This incident occurred just weeks after Ethiopian Airlines took delivery of the aircraft, and only a few months before it tragically crashed, killing all onboard.

Boeing’s communication with the airline at the time indicated that the uncommanded roll was likely caused by an electrical fault. The company advised Ethiopian Airlines to inspect the plane’s wiring for issues, raising questions about the broader electrical integrity of the 737 MAX fleet. Further complicating matters, the Foundation for Aviation Safety released a copy of Boeing’s Shipside Action Tracker from the 2018 production of the ill-fated Ethiopian Airlines plane. This internal database, used by Boeing to document and resolve issues during aircraft assembly, revealed a series of misinstalled and mislabeled electrical components. The records also pointed to significant miscommunication among Boeing employees regarding the work performed on the aircraft.

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Power of Siberia.

• Tale of Two Pipelines… Europe Loses, China Gains (SCF)

The Power of Siberia pipelines transporting natural gas from Russia to China were back in the news this week, as was the ill-fated Nord Stream pipeline, the Russian-European counterpart. First, it was announced the Power of Siberia 2 was on track for completion this year. When operational, the new pipeline will augment existing trans-Siberian delivery to China, bringing the total gas supply from Russia to 100 billion cubic meters per year. That awesome gas supply figure is significant. For not too long it was projected that the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines would have a combined capacity to deliver 100 bcm to Europe. Alas, that energy project was sabotaged in September 2022 when the gas pipes were blown up on the Baltic seabed.

Veteran investigative reporter Seymour Hersh and other writers have provided the most compelling account of the sabotage. It was carried out by American military and CIA operatives with the approval of President Joe Biden. See our weekly editorial published on September 30, 2022, days after the incident in which we outlined strong evidence inculpating Washington. It was an audacious act of international state terrorism carried out by the Americans to destroy the decades-old energy trade between Russia and Europe. In particular, Germany’s postwar economic prowess was powered by relatively cheap and abundant Russian hydrocarbons. Now, the United States has stepped in as a supplier of much more expensive Liquefied Natural Gas to Europe. Incredibly, no serious investigation has been carried out by European states to find the culprit.

Russia, which was the main owner of the multi-billion euro project, has offered to cooperate with European states to investigate the blast, but all of Moscow’s offers have been rebuffed. You could hardly make this criminal farce up. For years, the Americans enviously griped about Russia being the strategic energy supplier to Europe. With the escalation of the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine in February 2022, the Americans and their European NATO lackeys had a convenient pretext for blowing up the Nord Stream pipes. The net result is that Germany’s economy – once the powerhouse of the European Union – has been dragged to its knees from the loss of its vital energy input from Russia. Germany is teetering on recession and its famed export-led industries are no longer competitive.

Yet despite this blatant crime, the political establishments in Germany and other countries directly affected by the Nord Stream vandalism – Sweden and Denmark – remain pathetically beholden to Washington. Two years after a huge transgression against Europe and Russia by the obvious culprit, the European authorities have dissembled and procrastinated. Last week, Germany issued an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian diver whom it claims was involved in the undersea attack. This is a variant of previous claims in the American media that the Nord Stream sabotage was carried out by Ukrainian operatives. This narrative is absurd and an obvious distraction from the real story. There is no way that such a difficult operation could have been achieved by a bunch of amateurs. The Nord Stream sabotage required state-level expertise. The Americans also had an imperative motive – to force their way into the lucrative European energy market.

All of this is a tragicomedy. Russia’s fair and advantageous services have been perversely spurned by Europeans under the malign spell of American overseers. The European governments and media can’t even muster the courage or independence to conduct a proper investigation into the wanton destruction of their economies. However, Russia has not been deterred or undermined. Far from it, unlike Germany and other recession-hit European states, Russia is growing at a robust rate. A large part of the benefit stems from the Russian energy trade now being directed to Asia. China is gaining where Europe lost. The expanding Power of Siberia projects represent the loss of Nord Stream.

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We know why this is happening. Insulting Kamala is not tolerated.

• US House Oversight Asks TSA Why Tulsi Gabbard Is on Terror Watchlist (Sp.)

US House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer sent a letter on Friday to Transportation Security Administration (TSA) chief David Pekoske regarding whistleblower allegations that the agency placed former US Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard on a terror watchlist. A whistleblower from the Federal Air Marshals Service (FAMS) disclosed to Congress that the TSA allegedly targeted Gabbard under its Quiet Skies program, which is designed to mitigate threats posed by higher risk passengers, the letter said. The TSA added Gabbard to the Quiet Skies program on July 23, 2024 – one day after she criticized the Biden administration in an interview, the letter said. A whistleblower also disclosed that his wife was targeted with “special mission coverage” because she attended former US President Donald Trump’s January 6, 2021 speech in Washington, but was “nowhere near” the US Capitol that day, the letter said.

Moreover, the whistleblower claims that the TSA classified the protected disclosures as a leak and initiated a retaliatory investigation. “It is alarming that TSA is wasting its resources to surveil an air marshal’s wife and Ms. Gabbard – a high-profile, American public figure – when the threat of terrorist attacks on the United States is high,” the letter said. The letter requests information from TSA on actions taken with respect to employees linked to the disclosures regarding Gabbard and the air marshal’s wife, as well as all information related to Gabbard and the Quiet Skies program. The letter also requests a briefing for committee staff no later than August 30.

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“..My objection, and that of many others, is to male violence against women becoming an Olympic sport.”

• JK Rowling Reportedly Sued by Olympic Boxer Over Gender Criticism (Turley)

We have previously discussed the cancel campaigns targeting JK Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series. Rowling was not only the greatest selling author of all time but a wildly popular writer until she publicly opposed certain transgender policies as inimical to the advances in feminism. Now, she is the target of a lawsuit by Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, the gold-medal winning athlete who had previously failed a gender test to confirm that she is a female fighter. We previously discussed that global debate, but Khelif is now accusing Rowling out of many thousands of critics of being a cyberbully. X owner Elon Musk has also been named in the lawsuit. Rowling has been the target of a global campaign due to her rejection of transgender laws and policies. Many on the left have unleashed book bans and burnings. I have been critical of that campaign.

Even third parties who have supported Rowling’s right to free speech have been targeted in cancel campaigns. She held her ground after Scotland passed a draconian law, the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021. The new crime under the law covers “stirring up hatred” relating to age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity or being intersex. That crime covers insulting comments and anything “that a reasonable person would consider to be threatening or abusive.” Rowling previously posted various responses to the controversy on her X account on August 7, including: “For the record, bombarding me with pictures of athletic women to ‘teach’ me that women don’t all look like Barbie is like spamming me with pics of differently-shaped potatoes to prove rocks are edible. I can still see the difference and you look frankly bonkers.”

She later also posted: “Commentators pretending critics of the IOC’s reliance on documents rather than sex testing think Khelif is trans are straw-manning. I don’t claim Khelif is trans. My objection, and that of many others, is to male violence against women becoming an Olympic sport.” She further wrote on X how she was concerned over both boxers challenged over their gender at the Olympics: “What will it take to end this insanity? A female boxer left with life-altering injuries? A female boxer killed?” France has eviscerated free speech protections over the last few decades with speech criminalization laws. There is some question whether the French laws would apply to tweets made outside of the country. These laws criminalize speech under vague standards referring to “inciting” or “intimidating” others based on race or religion. For example, fashion designer John Galliano has been found guilty in a French court on charges of making anti-Semitic comments against at least three people in a Paris bar.

At his sentencing, Judge Anne Marie Sauteraud read out a list of the bad words used by Galliano to Geraldine Bloch and Philippe Virgitti, including using ‘dirty whore” in criticism. In another case, the father of French conservative presidential candidate Marine Le Pen was fined because he had called people from the Roma minority “smelly.” A French teenager was charged for criticizing Islam as a “religion of hate.” The question of the extraterritorial application of such laws is the question. Conversely, the United Kingdom and the European Union are asserting the right to regulate speech in any country, including political speech in American presidential elections. Rowling has every right to be heard on the Olympic boxing controversy. This debate raises core issues that touch on a wide array of political speech. Khelif has the ability to refute these claims through the exercise of her own free speech. As in the past battles fought by Rowley, her effort to advocate for women’s rights is also a major test over free speech in Europe.

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Legend

 

 

 

 

Tantrum

 

 

Rottweiler

 

 

Caprice No. 24 Paganini

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in wartime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle July 31 2024

Jul 312024
 
 July 31, 2024  Posted by at 9:00 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  55 Responses »


Gustave Caillebotte Young man by his window 1875

 

• No Primaries, No Alternatives, No Scrutiny: Anti-Democracy Reigns In US (Sp.)
• Trump’s VP Pick Is a Climate Sceptic, and the Knives Are Out (RCE)
• Biden Abandons the Court . . . and His Last Inviolate Principle (Turley)
• Kamala Harris Suddenly Rejects All Of Her Radical Positions (ZH)
• Trump Shooter Was ‘Step Ahead Of Secret Service’ – NYT (RT)
• The Man Who Could Get to the Bottom of the Trump Shooting (Julie Kelly)
• Trump Will Talk To FBI, Debate Harris (Sp.)
• Media Shills Have Received Their New Script: “Conservatives Are Weird” (ZH)
• The Paris Olympics Are The Most French Thing Ever (Marsden)
• Maduro Declares Musk ‘Archenemy’ (RT)
• Hamas Politburo Chief Killed in Tehran (Sp.)
• Haniyeh Murder ‘May Have Been Crossing a Red Line’ – Larry Johnson (Sp.)
• Leaked Emails Reveal ‘Civil War’ At CIA Regime Change Cut-out (RT)

 

 

 

 

Melania

 

 

Wow

 

 

Vote

 

 

Kamala

 

 

Trump ad

 

 

10 million new voters.

 

 

Trump Congress

 

 

My people
https://twitter.com/i/status/1818269133298950253

 

 

 

 

“This is just a very slick PR process that, again, has been engineered by the same elements that got rid of Joe Biden.”

• No Primaries, No Alternatives, No Scrutiny: Anti-Democracy Reigns In US (Sp.)

On July 21, US President Joe Biden announced he would not seek reelection. The announcement came after Democratic primary voting had completed, leaving Democratic voters with no say in the party’s nominee. Meanwhile, third-party candidates are being stonewalled at every turn and the media pretends this is all normal. The American electoral process has degraded into a shambling shell of its former self, propped up with vapid, slick and committee-tested PR campaigns rather than debate. Over the past week, with the tickets of the two major parties all but finalized, the media can not bring themselves to ask a substantive question of either person likely to sit in the White House in less than six months.

“My question is,” YouTube personality and WWE United States Champion Logan Paul asked former US President and Republican nominee Donald Trump, “for other young people in this country who are looking to get ahead, cause for a lot of them, times are tough right now. What would you say to them, kids who want to pursue their own version of the American dream and try to achieve their wildest dreams?” Trump answered that young people should vote for him. Meanwhile, Harris sat down for a non-televised interview with People, which asked her about her relationship with her husband, how much sleep she gets and her favorite nickname (“Momala” as it turns out) but not any policy positions on the economy, immigration, Ukraine or Gaza. Even Paul and his “Impaulsive” co-host Mike Majlak had the good sense to ask Trump about those topics, even if they didn’t challenge him on them.

This is what passes for scrutiny in American politics. Worse, the incumbent president’s party all but refused to hold a primary. Then Biden suddenly resigned from the campaign after weeks of refusing to and his vice president was anointed the new nominee without receiving a single vote. On Saturday, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh reported that Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Barack Obama threatened to invoke the 25th amendment and force Biden out of office if he did not drop his reelection campaign. “The lords of capital decided that he had to go and, in fact, they made it quite clear he had to go because they said that not only would they stop contributing to his campaign, but they told the DNC get rid of Joe Biden or don’t expect any financial support for any Democrat candidate down ballot,” argued political activist and the 2016 Green Party Vice Presidential nominee Ajamu Sibeko Baraka on Sputnik’s Political Misfits. “This is clear elite extortion.”

“So, this was, in fact, a coup. A coup by the donors and we need to deal with that in that way because it exposes the true nature of this anti-democratic process we have in this country. So, people [who] are committed to democracy, [who] would like to see something that approximates democracy. You can’t continue to support these two anti-democratic parties. That’s a very important point,” he added. To shore up the perception of support, the Harris campaign hosted a series of Zoom calls, bizarrely segregated by race and gender. Black Men for Harris came first, then Black Women for Harris. Then White Women for Harris and finally, White Dudes for Harris. “It is sort of a silly Zoom call,” said Baraka. “But it does reflect the kind of identity reductionist policies we have in this country.” “I mean, why are people supporting Harris? Based on what? What policies? There’s no serious political conversation taking place. This is just a very slick PR process that, again, has been engineered by the same elements that got rid of Joe Biden.”

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If you don’t “believe” that fossil fuels will kill us all -tomorrow morning, preferably- then they must get rid of you. For the planet’s sake…

• Trump’s VP Pick Is a Climate Sceptic, and the Knives Are Out (RCE)

Within a day of ex-President Trump’s announcement of “climate denier” Mr. J. D. Vance as the Republican Vice Presidential nominee, the climate industrial complex and supportive mainstream media had the knives out. A few headlines of the past 24 hours are an indication. The New York Times: “JD Vance Is an Oil Booster and Doubter of Human-Caused Climate Change”. The Independent: JD Vance: “Climate activists alarmed by Trump’s ‘dangerous’ pick for vice president”. The Guardian: “Climate advocates fear picking JD Vance for VP is ‘a dangerous step backward’”. The umbrage taken by media commentators is familiar. CNBC laments that “the former venture capitalist though is a known critic of climate change and renewable energy [italics added].” UK’s The Independent newspaper reports that “[c]ampaigners are responding with alarm to the selection of climate denier and Ohio senator JD Vance as Donald Trump’s vice presidential nominee, with activists warning he represents a “dangerous” voice for the US.”

Mr. Vance’s “eagerness to please Donald Trump” adds to the image of the vice-presidential nominee as an unprincipled politician seeking office. Climate advocacy group Fossil Free Media spokesperson Cassidy DiPaola asserted that “This [VP] choice signals that a potential Trump-Vance administration would likely double down on fossil fuel expansion at a time when we desperately need to transition to clean energy.” Communications director Stevie O’Hanlon of Sunrise Movement, a climate activist organization, said that “Like Donald Trump, JD Vance has proven that he will make it a top priority to roll back climate protections while answering to the demands of oil and gas CEOs.” Does Mr. Vance have a principled stand and is his stance on climate and energy policy worthy of consideration? As the highly polarized debate over climate change over the past few decades has amply demonstrated, the discourse often descends into ad hominem attacks and name calling.

“Climate denier” is a charge that is often used by proponents of climate alarm to shut down critical debate and to deplatform climate sceptics. Lena Moffitt, executive director of the environmental advocacy group Evergreen Action, said this of Mr. Vance: “Donald Trump has chosen an avowed climate denier as his running mate who has used his time in Congress to vote against the environment and shill for fossil fuel corporations at every opportunity.” The “denier” accusation is among the more pernicious if popular epithets used to denigrate sceptics of the so-called “consensus science.” It invokes a comparison to those who engage in Holocaust denial. To be sure, most observers would consider it ludicrous to suggest that questioning the accuracy and predictive power of scientific models is like questioning the historical fact of the genocide of Jews in Europe.

Putting aside epithets and journalistic hit-pieces, it seems a fair question to ask just what do politicians skeptical of the climate alarmist narrative believe? And what are their policy positions regarding the Paris Agreement’s “net zero by 2050” target. This policy target is an imperative, at least nominally, for most current governments in North America and Western Europe? Mr. Vance – lawyer, businessman, former Marine and writer of the bestselling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy”, arisen from the humblest working class background – places himself firmly in the populist right movement. It now looks very likely that Mr. Trump will be the next US president. The assassination attempt on Saturday, his miraculous split-second turn of the head which saved him and the iconic picture of his raised fist with the US flag in the background seconds after being injured make him almost irresistible. Thus Mr. Vance will likely join the Donald Trump next year as his VP in an administration that will seek to rapidly unwind the myriad policy and regulatory constraints that the Biden administration has imposed to shackle the US oil and gas industry at every turn.

Vance has also criticized the “green energy fantasy” of the Biden administration, pointing out that “solar panels can’t power a modern manufacturing economy” and “that’s why the Chinese are building coal power plants.” He has similarly called out wind power turbines. At the Turning Point Action conference last year, he said “they’re hideously ugly. They kill all the birds. And they’re mostly made in China.” The Biden administration’s all-out support for EVs comes in for the same critique. In a July 2022 radio interview, he said: “The whole EV thing is a scam. If you plug it into your wall, do these people think there are Keebler elves back there making electricity in the wall? It comes, of course, from fossil fuels.”

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“..That will only increase pressure to convert the Court into an alternative avenue for social and political reform..”

• Biden Abandons the Court . . . and His Last Inviolate Principle (Turley)

President (and Supreme Court Chief Justice) William Howard Taft once said “presidents come and go, but the Supreme Court goes on forever.” But not if Joe Biden has his way. Indeed, both the president and Court as we know it could be gone. In a failed attempt to save his nomination, Biden offered to “reform” the Court by imposing an 18-year term limit that would jettison the three most senior conservative justices. With only six months left in his presidency, Biden’s efforts are likely to fail, but, unfortunately, could set the stage for activists under a Harris Administration in seeking to change the Court forever. For more than 50 years, Biden staunchly refused to play politics with the Supreme Court and support calls for “reforms” from the left of his party. For a politician who has long been criticized for changing positions with the polls on issues from abortion to criminal justice to gun rights, the Court was one of the few areas of true principle for Biden.

Even though he refused to answer questions on packing the Court in the 2020 election, he ultimately rejected the call as president. Yet Biden’s final principle fell this month when facing the premature and involuntary end of his candidacy. Faced with being a one-term president, the Supreme Court would have to be sacrificed. Biden opted for the least of the evils in pushing for term limits rather than court packing. It was the more popular option for Biden to yield on. Voters have always loved term limits. The AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found 67% of Americans, including 82% of Democrats and 57% of Republicans, support a proposal to set finite terms for justices. But there were few law professors and even fewer Democratic members clamoring for term limits until conservatives secured a stable majority on the Court. Then, suddenly, the Court had to be “reformed” without delay. It is no accident that the first three justices who would term limited off the Court are conservatives: Clarence Thomas (after 33 years on the Court), Chief Justice John Roberts (after 19 years), and Justice Samuel Alito (after 18 years).

Think, however, about the iconic decisions we would have lost with term limits in place. Liberal Justice Williams Douglas’s 36 years on the Court would have literally been cut in half. He would have been kicked off in 1957. His famous opinions like Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), striking down bans on contraceptives, would not have been written — an ironic result for those seeking limits after the Court’s ruling in Dobbs. Likewise, liberal icon Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s tenure would have ended in 2011 before she wrote her famous dissent Shelby County v. Holder (2013), defending voting rights. Anthony Kennedy’s term would have ended in 2011 rather than 2018, before he wrote opinions such as United States v. Windsor, striking down the Defense of Marriage Act. Obviously, other justices could have written opinions in these cases, but the point is that many justices wrote their best opinions after 18 years on the Court. Moreover, the Framers clearly wanted these positions as lifetime appointments as an added protection against political pressure or influence.

For more than two centuries, presidents have struggled with the Supreme Court, but none (until now) have attempted to end life tenure on the Court. Presidents have served as the firewall for the anger and radicalism that has periodically engulfed the Court. Now President Biden is leading the mob for changing this institution for the first time since its founding. It is a testament to what I call “an age of rage” in my new book. After years of supporting the Court when it was setting aside conservative precedent, liberals now want the Court changed to dump or dilute the majority. It is unlikely to end there. After sending Thomas, Roberts, and Alito packing, many want to go further and pack the Court itself.

Democratic leaders such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) have called for outright court packing — a proposal that Vice President Kamala Harris has suggested that she might support. Where Biden is a political opportunist in belatedly joining this movement, Harris is a true believer from the far left. If she is elected, the Congress is still likely to be closely divided. That will only increase pressure to convert the Court into an alternative avenue for social and political reform.

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“..when Harris says “I’m open to that conversation,” it means she has no idea what she’s talking about. And she says that a lot.”

• Kamala Harris Suddenly Rejects All Of Her Radical Positions (ZH)

In 2019, Kamala Harris was rated the ‘most liberal’ Senator in a now-scrubbed rating from GovTrack. She’s on record wanting to abolish ICE (which she compared to the KKK), letting criminals like the Boston Marathon bomber and rapists vote, banning fracking and offshore drilling, defunding the police, providing US taxpayer subsidized healthcare to illegals, and banning private health insurance. According to the NY Times, “video clips of her old statements and interviews are being weaponized as Republicans aim to define her as a left-wing radical who is out of step with swing voters.” “The archive is deep,” said Brad Todd, a Republican strategist and ad maker who is working with David McCormick, the G.O.P. Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, among other campaigns. “We will run out of time before we run out of video clips of Kamala Harris saying wacky California liberal things. I’m just not sure that the rest of this campaign includes much besides that.” To that end, McCormick’s campaign has produced one of the first TV ads to attack Harris on her longstanding positions.

Yet, according to the Times, nevermind all that- Harris is now a reformed moderate – and has suddenly reversed course on virtually all of her most radical views. On Friday, the Harris campaign announced that she no longer wants to ban fracking – a ‘significant shift’ from where she stood four years ago. She’s also reversed course on funding for border enforcement, no longer supports a single-payer health insurance program, and has walked back liberal fever dreams of a mandatory gun buyback. “She is no longer pushing for a single-payer health care system, and on Friday her campaign said she would maintain Mr. Biden’s pledge not to raise income taxes on people making less than $400,000 per year.” -NYT. Packing the Court? Nah…

“On Monday, as Mr. Biden prepared a speech in Texas calling for term limits and ethics guidelines for Supreme Court justices, the Trump campaign resurfaced statements Ms. Harris made in 2019 saying she was “open to this conversation” about expanding the Supreme Court. Ms. Harris, in a statement released by her campaign, endorsed Mr. Biden’s proposal, which does not call for adding additional justices to the court.” According to Matt Bennett, a co-founder of Third Way, a moderate Democratic think tank, Harris has ‘evolved’ into a Biden style centrist (if centrism is defined as letting 20+ million illegals into the country and cooking Americans with inflation). “There’s a tremendous difference in changing one’s policy ideas and changing one’s principles,” said Bennett. “She has not changed her principles. She still thinks climate change is an existential threat — she just doesn’t think the Green New Deal is the way to address it.” Sure Matt.

The Times also hints that Harris is essentially an idiot who didn’t really understand her own positions while running for president in 2020. “…during that race, Ms. Harris also often appeared as if she were not sure what she believed. In a CNN town-hall event the day after what was widely viewed as a successful campaign rollout in Oakland, Calif., she appeared tentative while discussing health care policy, eventually saying she would eliminate private health insurance and institute a single-payer health care program. She would go on to propose an array of policies popular with progressives. She sought to increase pay for public-school teachers by an average of $13,500 through a bump in the estate tax. She also called for an assault weapons ban and said she would sign an executive order mandating background checks for customers of any dealer who sold more than five guns in a year. And she sought to close the gender pay gap by requiring large companies to certify that men and women were paid equally.” As an obvious aside, when Harris says “I’m open to that conversation,” it means she has no idea what she’s talking about. And she says that a lot.

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Building the narrative…

• Trump Shooter Was ‘Step Ahead Of Secret Service’ – NYT (RT)

The man who tried to assassinate Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at a Butler, Pennsylvania rally had prepared better than the protection detail and was able to slip through the cracks in security, the New York Times has reported. The shooter opened fire at 6:11pm that Saturday, nicking Trump’s ear as the former US president turned away. He was later identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, from a nearby town. Text messages and after-action reports provided to the Times by Senator Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, revealed that local police had noticed Crooks almost more than 90 minutes before he fired, but kept losing sight of him. Crooks had visited the fairgrounds in Butler on July 7. The Secret Service did not show up until a day later, which is when they decided not to include the AGR warehouse complex in the security perimeter, according to the Times.

On July 13, the day of the rally, the Secret Service did not attend the 9am security briefing for local law enforcement. By 10am, Crooks had bought a ladder and driven to the rally site. He stayed around for over an hour, observing the local police. He then drove back to his hometown, bought 50 rounds of ammunition, and drove back, arriving around 3:35pm, “according to geolocation information from one of his cellphones,” the outlet noted. The Secret Service had not bothered to survey the area with drones, but Crooks did. Around 3:50pm that Saturday, he flew a drone over the site for about 11 minutes, before putting it back into his car and returning to the nearby picnic tables. It was at this point that a local counter-sniper first spotted him, as he finished his shift. The officer warned his colleagues at 4:26pm that someone had “snuck in” and “knows you guys are up there.”

Nothing happened until 5:14pm, Crooks was spotted using a range finder. One of the county counter-snipers took a photo of Crooks. It was shared in the group chat of the local police department at 5:38pm, and then relayed to the Secret Service. One of the two remaining counter-snipers ran out of the AGR building to keep an eye on Crooks until backup arrived, according to Butler County district attorney Richard Goldinger. Crooks had already run off, however, and the sniper returned to post. Four Butler Township officers were pulled from directing traffic to help locate him. One officer texted at 6pm, suggesting that Crooks had moved “away from the event.” In reality, the Times noted, he had climbed onto the roof about 120 meters away from the stage. “There is still confusion about which agency was supposed to oversee the roof,” the Times reported. The Secret Service had left it empty. Beaver County “struggled to find enough volunteers to cover the 12-hour shift,” according to text messages.

Trump took the stage at 6:03pm. Six minutes later, the audience at the rally began pointing to someone on the roof of the warehouse. “Either through luck or preparation,” Crooks had found a spot that let him have a clear shot at Trump, but kept him “somewhat hidden” from the Secret Service, according to the Times. At 6:11pm, Crooks fired at Trump. The Secret Service snipers reacted and fatally shot him. At least eight spent cartridges were found next to his lifeless body. Police who eventually showed up on the roof could not figure out how Crooks had got there. Kimberly Cheatle resigned as the Secret Service director ten days later, after insisting she would not. No one at the agency was reprimanded, fired or otherwise held accountable for the near-fatal incident.

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They’ll silence him.

• The Man Who Could Get to the Bottom of the Trump Shooting (Julie Kelly)

After the evasive House testimony of now-former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle and FBI Director Christopher Wray’s shortlived suggestion that Donald Trump may not have been hit by a bullet, one man alone may help allay Republican fears that the Biden administration will not conduct a forthright investigation into the attempted assassination of Trump last month: Joseph Cuffari. The Trump-appointed inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security has already opened two investigations into the U.S. Secret Service, which is under the purview of the DHS, related to the agency’s handling of the July 13 shooting. But some Republicans are concerned because, they say, Cuffari has been stonewalled by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on other internal examinations – including one that might have revealed Secret Service lapses that might have prevented the attempt on Trump’s life.

Specifically, congressional sources tell RCI that Cuffari’s report, “USSS Preparation for and Response to the Events of January 6, 2021,” has been on Mayorkas’ desk since at least April. The report, according to Politico, will “cast light on a series of embarrassing security lapses for the agency.” And given some comparisons between Jan. 6 and July 13, the report might shed light on systemic issues that impacted both events. For example, unanswered questions remain as to why the Secret Service allowed Trump to take the stage at The Ellipse outside the White House around noon on Jan. 6 amid reports of individuals with weapons in the vicinity – a question many Americans have about the July 13 assassination attempt. Law enforcement and spectators noted the presence of a suspicious individual, later identified as the gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, at least a half hour before Trump took the stage in Butler, Pennsylvania.

In addition, no one has explained how the Secret Service failed to notice an alleged pipe bomb found outside the Democrat National Committee DC office on Jan. 6 – while then Vice President-elect Harris was inside the building. Previous reporting by RCI shows multiple law enforcement officers, including one with a bomb-sniffing dog, walking past the bench where the device was found. Rep. Barry Loudermilk, chairman of a House subcommittee tasked with a separate investigation into Jan. 6 as well as the now-defunct J6 committee, recently accused Mayorkas of intentionally holding the release of the report. The Georgia Republican told Mayorkas in a letter that “the failure to provide an in-depth review of the department’s security planning and operational failures related to January 6 not only raises concerns about the department’s botched planning for former president Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania on July 13, 2024, but it is quite possible that such reports could have prevented the security breakdown that resulted in the near assassination of a former president and presidential candidate.”

Top Democrats have long sought to remove Cuffari – a former investigator for the Air Force and Department of Justice whom Trump appointed in 2019 in 2019 – from office. The coordinated effort began when the IG notified Congress that a trove of Secret Service texts from January 5 and 6, 2021 had been deleted in late January 2021 under the Biden administration. The purge occurred weeks after every federal agency received a directive from Congress to preserve all evidence related to January 6. Cuffari said messages belonging to at least 24 Secret Service officials including then director James Murray and Cheatle, who was an assistant director of the agency on January 6, were gone. So, too, were the texts of then acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf and acting deputy secretary Ken Cuccinelli, both Trump appointees. His office subsequently opened a criminal investigation into the matter.

“The USSS erased those text messages after OIG [Office of Inspector General] requested records of electronic communications from the USSS, as part of our evaluation of events at the Capitol on January 6,” the inspector general wrote in a July 2022 letter to chairmen of both the Senate and House Homeland Security committees, including Rep. Bennie Thompson, who also chaired the Jan. 6 committee at the same time. Cuffari further flagged the DHS’s lack of cooperation with his inquiry, something he had already pointed out in an earlier report to the committees. “DHS personnel have repeatedly told OIG inspectors that they were not permitted to provide records directly to OIG and that such records had to first undergo review by DHS attorneys,” Cuffari continued in the letter.

Not true, responded Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi. He claimed the texts had been deleted when cell phones were reset to factory settings as part of a device replacement program. “The insinuation that the Secret Service maliciously deleted text messages following a request is false.” (Guglielmi’s truthfulness was brought into question recently when he claimed it was “absolutely false” that the Secret Service rejected the Trump campaign’s multiple requests for additional security prior to the Pennsylvania rally. The Washington Post later confirmed that top Secret Service officials “repeatedly denied” requests for more manpower and equipment to protect the former president at large events.)

Read more …

“The answer is yes. I’ll probably end up debating. The answer is yes, but I can also make a case for not doing it,”

• Trump Will Talk To FBI, Debate Harris (Sp.)

Former US President Donald Trump said in an interview that he would talk to the FBI on Thursday about the attempt on his life at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, earlier this month. “[The FBI are] coming in on Thursday to see me,” Trump told Fox News on Monday. Trump further said that he believed there should have been security officers on the roof of the building where the gunman had been positioned during the shooting. Moreover, the Republican presidential nominee said that the US Secret Service should have been communicating with the local police, which it wasn’t. On July 13, Trump suffered a gunshot wound to his right ear and was briefly hospitalized following an assassination attempt at his rally in Butler. Thomas Crooks, 20, killed a member of the audience and injured two others in the crowd before the Secret Service neutralized him. The FBI continues to investigate the assassination attempt.

The incident prompted US Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle to resign following criticism of the agency for not preventing the assassination attempt. Trump also commented on the possibility of him debating the presumptive Democratic nominee for President, Vice President Kamala Harris. “The answer is yes. I’ll probably end up debating. The answer is yes, but I can also make a case for not doing it,” Trump said in the interview. Trump and Harris are currently set to participate in a ABC-hosted debate on September 10. Trump explained that he could decide to cancel a debate because he did not want to reward “fake news,” adding that ABC could end up making tens of millions of dollars off the debate. He also described the ABC network as a “terrible outfit.”

Read more …

It all sounds weird.

• Media Shills Have Received Their New Script: “Conservatives Are Weird” (ZH)

As August approaches and the campaign season enters the final stretch, there have been some not-so-surprising developments in the behavior of Big Tech search engines, social media and the narratives being spread by establishment news organizations. Search terms for Donald Trump have been suspiciously absent on Google. Trump’s speeches are being consistently edited out of context. And, media platforms are blatantly parroting the same scripted talking points in a way that would make Joseph Goebbels blush. As he once stated: “Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.” This mantra has never been more obvious than it is today. The new narrative that every progressive shill is reciting on nearly every major news platform? Donald Trump and JD Vance are ‘just plain weird’, and conservatives are all weird by extension…

It’s hard to say who this talking point is meant to appeal to, but Democrats are clearly very proud of it. No doubt they paid an obscure think-tank a lot of money to develop it. However, the slogan slinging tactics of the elections of yesteryear are not very impressive to most of the voting public today. In the midst of stagflationary crisis, cultural sabotage, national instability and a Democratic Party seemingly intent on starting WWIII, Americans are not interested in slogans, Americans want solutions. If you repeat a lie loud enough and often enough, it just annoys the public even more. Perhaps the shift of Gen Z men towards more conservatives ideals has got the progressives scrambling to come up with relatable slogans. They are already referring to Kamala Harris as the “Gen Z meme queen.” Of course, as everyone knows, the political left does not know how to meme. It feels like desperation because this is their candidate going into November…

One could guess that labeling conservatives as “weird” is meant to marginalize the undeniable momentum away from woke demagoguery. Notice that Pride Month was barely a blip on the radar in 2024, Biden just got booted from his own campaign, the Trump assassin missed and the Olympics is losing sponsorships after going woke in their opening ceremonies. Leftists are not having a good year. The pedulum is swinging back and they know it. While we wait for Kamala Harris to say or do anything to deserve the avalanche of praise she has been receiving from the media since replacing Biden as the Democratic candidate, the “memes” are certain to flow with each new narrative being more cringe inducing than the last. None of it will be useful in papering over the fact that Kamala Harris is one of the weirdest and most unsettling presidential hopefuls of all time.

Read more …

“If their surveillance-industrial complex pals were going to stuff their pockets under the pretext of Games security, then couldn’t they just spy on us in peace without all the added bureaucratic nonsense?”

• The Paris Olympics Are The Most French Thing Ever (Marsden)

French culture isn’t just about masked balls at Versailles anymore. As the Paris Olympic Games have proven, it’s now also debating whether drag queens’ balls were adequately masked. Looks like Thomas Jolly, the Games’ Opening Ceremony director, is just now coming to the realization that the entire world doesn’t function like Paris Left Bank intellectuals. He bit off more than he could chew by transmitting a French art house vibe to every country around the globe, some of which – from Morocco and Algeria to China and the US – straight up censored parts of the show that perhaps should have come with a disclaimer in the same way that risqué French films do. Because it turns out that kids – and even some adults – weren’t quite ready to witness a giant Smurf rolling around in a fruit bowl in front of a bunch of drag queens re-enacting what appeared to be the Last Supper.

And the fact that French blasphemy laws were abolished two years after the French Revolution, enshrining a right that became a cornerstone of French free speech, didn’t matter to those who felt offended, which included everyone from religious figures to left-wing France Unbowed leader Jean-Luc Melenchon. France has defended religious satire as free expression, even when cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed led to a terrorist massacre in January 2015 at the Parisian headquarters of the magazine Charlie Hebdo, which published them. So this is just France being France, which wasn’t very well received, including by some of the most progressive-minded French officials. One US-based advertiser – the wireless company C Spire – has already said it was yanking their Olympic advertising. Guess there’s a dice roll with the risk that your product might end up somewhere in the vicinity if a clip or screencap of a bunch of drag queens, or a saucy Papa Smurf, and that wasn’t quite the vibe that you were going for when you signed up for high-level sports sponsorship.

There was also an onslaught of reports of X (former Twitter) social media users being hit with copyright takedown notices for posting some of the controversial scenes from the opening show for debate and discussion. Not surprising that the International Olympic Committee, guardian of the Olympic brand, might not want the images etched into history of these Games, to be dominated by things like closeups of drag queens’ crotches for the purpose of debating whether the world actually witnessed some fruit tumbling out of a pair of plum smugglers in a wardrobe malfunction – or whether it was just an everyday pantyhose rip. You know, the kind of thing that could happen to any dude in an average day at the office. The Games have really showcased that world-famous French rigor.

[..] The trains stopped running last week around France due to sabotaged lines. Israel has already blamed that on Iran. The average French person’s mind just went straight to everyday, garden variety French incompetence – the kind that would also would explain all the heavy-handed “security theatre” during the Games. The government required everyone to apply online for QR Codes if they wanted to even cross the downtown core, which was turned into a maze of 44,000 barricades days before the opening ceremony. And the excuse had to be a good one – like you lived there or had an appointment. And the Interior Ministry had already used the Games as a pretext for loading up on new high-tech surveillance systems, from surveillance drones and anti-drone systems to crowd scanners coupled with Minority Report style artificial intelligence algorithms. If all of it actually worked, then why give people the run-around? If their surveillance-industrial complex pals were going to stuff their pockets under the pretext of Games security, then couldn’t they just spy on us in peace without all the added bureaucratic nonsense?

Speaking of national security, a bunch of hackers leaked the military background of Israeli athletes, a country with mandatory service and currently involved in an active conflict criticized by the UN’s International Court of Justice and accused of apartheid – an offense that the IOC explicitly cites as justification for Games exclusion. Meanwhile Russian athletes who have never even been in the army can’t even compete in their country’s name. So what happens if a Russian wins a gold medal? The IOC created a special flag just for them, which looks like someone’s kid whipped it up in about five minutes on an app. They also made a new anthem with no lyrics for Russian athletes that sounds like the opening soundtrack for a make-believe fantasy movie. Which is really what all this is: one big Hollywood-grade fantasy that one of the top Olympic nations since forever doesn’t even exist now at the Olympics.

Read more …

A conversation neither should be involved in. Remember Juan Guiado and the CIA?

• Maduro Declares Musk ‘Archenemy’ (RT)

Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro has accused SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk of trying to disrupt peace and stability in the South American country. The National Electoral Council (CNE) of Venezuela on Sunday declared Maduro the winner of the country’s presidential election, announcing that with 80% of ballots counted, he had secured more than 51% of the vote, compared to 44% for his main rival, Edmundo Gonzales. Supporters of Western-backed Gonzalez have taken to the streets following the release of the official results, claiming that the vote was rigged. Musk, who owns social media platform X (formerly Twitter), took to it on Monday to accuse Maduro of “major election fraud.” The Venezuelan president responded to the claims by challenging the billionaire to a fight, during an address he made on national television.

“Social media creates a virtual reality, and who controls the virtual reality? Our new archenemy, the famous Elon Musk,” Maduro stated, pointing to a cellphone. He then accused Musk of seeking to come “with his rockets and an army to invade Venezuela” but did not elaborate on the claim. “At least you showed your face, because we knew that you were behind everything,” Maduro claimed. “With your money, with your satellites. It is the representation of fascist ideology in the world.” The Venezuelan president went on, challenging Musk “Do you want to fight? Let’s do it … I’m ready. I’m not afraid of you, Elon Musk. Let’s fight, wherever you want.”

Musk, in response, shared the video of Maduro’s speech on X, with a caption in Spanish that translates as “The donkey knows more than Maduro.” It’s not the first case of Musk’s confrontation with senior foreign officials. In April, the businessman clashed with a Supreme Court justice in Brazil over free speech, as well as far-right accounts and misinformation on X. Maduro will be serving a third consecutive six-year term, having first taken office in 2013 following the death of President Hugo Chavez. In his victory speech, Maduro mocked the opposition, which, he said, “cries fraud” at every election. The Venezuelan president said his reelection would bring peace and stability.

Sachs

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Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov: “This is all very wrong. This is an absolutely unacceptable political assassination, and it will lead to further escalation of tensions..”

• Hamas Politburo Chief Killed in Tehran (Sp.)

Hamas politburo chief Ismail Haniyeh was killed in the Iranian capital of Tehran, the Palestinian militant group said in a statement on Wednesday. The agency said Haniyeh and one of his bodyguards were “martyred” after their residence in Tehran was targeted. “With condolences to the heroic nation of Palestine, the Islamic nation, the combatants of the Resistance Front, and the noble nation of Iran. This morning (Wednesday), the residence of Mr. Dr. Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the political office of the Islamic Resistance of Hamas, was hit in Tehran; and following this incident, he and one of his bodyguards were martyred,” a statement from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) read. Iran is investigating the causes of the killing of Hamas politburo chief, Ismail Haniyeh, and his bodyguard in Tehran, with the results to be announced soon, the Tasnim news agency reported on Wednesday, citing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Earlier on Wednesday, the Palestinian movement, Hamas, said that Haniyeh was killed in an Israeli attack on his residence in Tehran after he took part in the inauguration of Iran’s newly elected president. The Palestinian movement, Hamas, said on Wednesday that the movement’s politburo chief, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed in an Israeli attack on his residence in the Iranian capital of Tehran. “The Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas expresses condolences to the sons of our great Palestinian people … Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the movement … was killed as a result of a treacherous Zionist attack on his residence in Tehran after he participated in the inauguration ceremony of the new president of Iran,” the movement said on Telegram. Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, was sworn in on Tuesday. Israeli army declines to comment on the situation, saying that they “do not respond to reports in the foreign media”, CNN says.

A representative of the US government has confirmed to the media that Washington is aware of the situation. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas strongly condemned the killing of Hamas politburo chief, Ismail Haniyeh, the WAFA news agency reported on Wednesday. Abbas also called the killing a cowardly act and a dangerous escalation, the report read. At the same time, Abbas called on Palestinians to be united and patient in the face of the Israeli occupation. The Iranian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the incident will strengthen the ties between Tehran and Palestine. The Turkish Foreign Ministry stressed that Israel is not seeking peace, and should be stopped before conflict escalates. The killing of Hamas politburo chief Ismail Haniyeh is a cowardly act that will not go unanswered, Hamas political office deputy head Musa Abu Marzouk said on Wednesday.

Moscow considers the death of Hamas politburo chief Ismail Haniyeh to be an example of absolutely unacceptable political assassination, which threatens further escalation in the region, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov told Sputnik on Wednesday. “This is all very wrong. This is an absolutely unacceptable political assassination, and it will lead to further escalation of tensions,” Bogdanov said.

Read more …

“This attack [on Haniyeh] was so blatant that I don’t think there will be any restraint on the part of Iran or Hezbollah..”

• Haniyeh Murder ‘May Have Been Crossing a Red Line’ – Larry Johnson (Sp.)

Hamas has already pledged to take revenge after the Palestinian militant group’s political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran. The assassination of Ismail Haniyeh “clearly had the support and foreknowledge of the United States and the United Kingdom,” retired CIA intelligence officer and State Department official Larry Johnson insisted in an interview with Sputnik. “I say that because we also have news reports now coming in that the US and UK warships are headed into the Mediterranean. On one of the US ships is probably a Marine Expeditionary Unit,” Johnson said. So the situation “has now escalated tensions in the region beyond what they were, even after the attack on the Iranian consul in April in Beirut,” according to him.

Responding to that attack, Iran “sent a very clear message to Israel that in the future, any further provocations like this would be met with force, and now both Hezbollah and Iran have been incited to respond and Israel is calculating that it can withstand the blows,” the former CIA intelligence officer added. “This is extremely dangerous. […] This attack [on Haniyeh] was so blatant that I don’t think there will be any restraint on the part of Iran or Hezbollah. I think that this may in fact have been crossing a red line. It is extremely worrisome because this has the hallmarks of being able to spin out of control. And it is, we’re now in a situation of wait and see,” Johnson stressed.

Read more …

$200 million a year: “..Bednarz had berated him for not using pronouns on his business cards and email signature..”

• Leaked Emails Reveal ‘Civil War’ At CIA Regime Change Cut-out (RT)

The biggest public relations fiasco in the history of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has resulted in two senior officials ending up fired and a “civil war” of sorts between the old neoconservative cadres and the new “woke” management, according to documents obtained by The Grayzone. The fiasco in question was the phone call between the NED vice-president for communications Leslie Aun and the Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal and Alex Rubinstein, which the independent outlet published in May 2023. Aun initiated the call to address Rubinstein’s description of the Endowment as a “CIA cutout,” but ended up saying “I don’t know” a lot instead. On Tuesday, the Grayzone published several emails between Michael Allen – who used to be the editor of the NED’s ‘Democracy Digest’ blog – and the Endowment’s founding president Carl Gershman, revealing that the fallout from the call’s publication may have cost Aun and Allen their jobs.

“Amateur hour – hugely embarrassing!” Allen emailed Gershman and NED VP for government relations, David Lowe, a day after the recording was posted on YouTube. “I specifically counseled against her talking to these people.” Lowe described Aun’s performance as “breathtakingly ignorant” and “too painful to listen to.” Both he and Gershman, who retired in 2021, appeared to disparage the new NED president Damon Wilson for hiring her. Gershman described the call as a “disastrous screwup” and described Aun as “obviously clueless,” a “moron,” and a “clueless wonder” whose hiring was an “egregious error” reflecting Wilson’s focus on media and image. In messages to Gershman and Lowe, Allen blamed NED communications director, Christine Bednarz, who reportedly encouraged Aun to talk to the Grayzone. Allen also blamed Bednarz for instituting mandatory “diversity, equity and inclusion” training and berating him about his “white male privilege.”

In one email, Allen complained about the DEI training agenda including “microaggressions” and the “ideological, not historical” 1619 Project, noting that Bednarz had berated him for not using pronouns on his business cards and email signature. In a June 5, 2023 email to Gershman, Allen complained about the communications team focusing on the “more urgent matter of NED’s LGBTQIA+ agenda” rather than the Grayzone fallout. Another point of conflict arose after the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, with Allen complaining that several NED staffers “promoted and attended the pro-Palestinian march organized by ANSWER” and that the NED president still backed Black Lives Matter on Facebook even after they “enthusiastically celebrated the Hamas massacres.”At one point, Gershman asked if Bednarz harbored some kind of personal resentment for her Israeli ex-husband, or if she was “just a woke flake,” to which Allen replied: “The latter, combined with a certain megalomania and defensive resentment over the Grayzone fiasco.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Ehrlich

 

 

Dogs&food
https://twitter.com/i/status/1818204396041154600

 

 

Legend

 

 

Anaconda

 

 

Whale shark

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in wartime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle May 25 2024

May 252024
 
 May 25, 2024  Posted by at 8:45 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  37 Responses »


Thomas Cole Prometheus Bound 1847

 

• Zelensky’s Legitimacy Has Expired – Putin (RT)
• Betting on Armageddon: What is Zelensky’s Plan Now That His Term is Over? (Amar)
• NATO Forming Network of Cyber Labs Along Russia’s Borders (Sp.)
• NATO ‘Preparing For War’ With Russia – Orban (RT)
• Ukraine Enforces Desperate Conscription Laws, Russia Closes In On Kharkiv (ZH)
• Speaker Johnson: Ukraine Should Use US Weapons on Russian Territory (Antiwar)
• Let Ukraine Freely Strike Russia With Western Arms – NATO Chief (RT)
• US Should Quit Sending Money to Ukraine, Try to Negotiate Peace – Massie (Sp.)
• Will the Trump Jury Exercise Blind Justice or Willful Blindness? (Turley)
• Trump Says Bronx Residents Being Left Behind By Biden Policies (ZH)
• Biden Admin Is Hiring A ‘Meme Manager’; Hilarity Ensues (MN)
• Boeing Sued Over Deaths Of US Marines (RT)
• The CIA’s Secret Effort To Seize Control Of Social Media (ZH)
• Kevin Morris Reportedly Protected by CIA in Hunter Biden Investigation (Turley)

 

 

 

 

Schumer

 

 

Prince
https://twitter.com/i/status/1794124029646844108

 

 

 

 

Comey

 

 

FBI at my door

 

 

 

 

Who can Russia have talks with for peace? Not Zelensky…

“..Russia must be absolutely sure it’s dealing with the legitimate Ukrainian authorities before it can engage in meaningful and legally binding talks..”

“..one of the goals of this conference for the Western community, the sponsors of today’s Kiev regime is to confirm the legitimacy of the current – albeit no longer valid – head of state,” he suggested, adding that “such PR moves are meaningless for legal documents.”

“The Biden administration has yet to comment on the issue of Zelensky’s status publicly. However, the European Commission and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock assured on Tuesday that he is legitimate..”

He is not legitimate just because he says so, or Brussels or Berlin do…

Any deal with Zelensky is meaningless.

• Zelensky’s Legitimacy Has Expired – Putin (RT)

Russia must be absolutely sure it’s dealing with the legitimate Ukrainian authorities before it can engage in meaningful and legally binding talks to conclude the conflict between the two nations, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday. He noted that Vladimir Zelensky’s term in office has expired. The president made the remarks in Minsk on Friday during a joint press conference with his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko. Putin was asked for comment on Zelensky’s presidential term running out earlier this month and the impact of this development on potential talks. Putin reiterated Russia’s readiness to engage in talks with Ukraine to end the hostilities, stating that negotiations must be based on “common sense” and acknowledge “realties on the ground,” while using the preliminary agreement reached in the early days of the conflict as the foundation.

“But with whom to negotiate? That’s a peculiar question, I agree. We realize that the legitimacy of the incumbent head of the [Ukrainian] state has expired,” the Russian leader stated. The upcoming “peace summit,” scheduled to take place in Switzerland next month and actively promoted by Kiev is designed, among other things, to prop up Zelensky in his role, Putin said. “I think one of the goals of this conference for the Western community, the sponsors of today’s Kiev regime is to confirm the legitimacy of the current – albeit no longer valid – head of state,” he suggested, adding that “such PR moves are meaningless for legal documents.”

It’s up to Ukraine’s legal system, its “parliament, constitutional court and some other governing bodies” to determine whether Zelensky is now a legitimate leader or not, according to Putin. As for Russia, in order to engage in any meaningful talks with Kiev, it must be absolutely sure it’s dealing with the country’s legitimate authorities, the president stressed. Zelensky’s term expired on Monday, while no elections were held under the pretext of the martial law introduced by Kiev early in the conflict with Russia. The Ukrainian Constitution explicitly prohibits holding parliamentary elections under such circumstances, yet does not mention presidential elections. However, while setting the length of the presidential term, it also specifies that power is transferred the moment a new president is sworn in.

Read more …

“Legitimate or not, the Ukrainian leader is a national catastrophe hell-bent on going global..”

• Betting on Armageddon: What is Zelensky’s Plan Now That His Term is Over? (Amar)

On 20 May, something important changed for Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky. On that day, the five-year presidential term for which he had been elected in 2019 came to an end. He remains in office, however, without having to face fresh elections. Zelensky’s critics, including within Ukraine, argue that he is now illegitimate in a strict, constitutional sense – in effect, a usurper. His followers and defenders, including in the West, insist that Zelensky legally remains president under martial law. What is clear is that, according to the Ukrainian constitution, presidential elections can be held during wartime (unlike parliamentary ones, which are ruled out), even if a lack of clarity would require amendments, as Ukrainian experts have explained in national media. Even the New York Times acknowledged as much as recently as last October. At that point, however, Zelensky himself had not yet ruled out elections and American super hawk Senator Lindsey Graham was demanding them in his usual imperious tone.

Wartime elections in Ukraine would have posed practical challenges, although these could have been overcome. For instance, back in October, Zelensky himself stated that online voting was a possibility. Western media, including the BBC, which now claim Zelensky had no legal or practical option of standing for reelection, are misinforming their audiences by simply reproducing his regime’s current talking points. Not, obviously, for the first time. No doubt, the legal legitimacy of a president is a critical issue, especially one as high-handed and authoritarian as Zelensky has been for years and since well before the escalation of the war in February 2022. Yet what is more important are the political meaning and effects of Zelensky’s transition to past-due-date status.

In this respect, the first point to note is that is Zelensky is evading the basic accountability of an election that would inevitably increase public scrutiny of his record. Even more disturbing, however, is to see one of his closest associates turning unquestioning compliance with this move into a de facto loyalty test, complete with ominous threats. The speaker of the Ukrainian parliament, Ruslan Stefanchuk, a key magnate in Zelensky’s “Servant of the People” party, has reportedly even called all those who doubt the president’s continuing legitimacy “enemies of the people” and “political lice.” Of course, this rhetoric – ironically reminiscent of Stalinism – comes with the usual tired smears: Anyone who dares doubt the Zelensky regime is routinely accused of doing so at the behest of Russian agitators. Perish the thought – in Zelensky’s post-“Revolution of Dignity” and “free world” showcase Ukraine – that citizens could genuinely disagree with their superiors!

Verbal brutality of the Stefanchuk kind is especially intriguing because a reasonably reliable and recent (February) poll shows that almost 70% of Ukrainians agree that Zelensky should remain president until “the end of the state of war.” For better or worse, Zelensky’s decision to avoid elections – whatever his reasons – is not unpopular. But a closer look at the same poll reveals why the Zelenskyites are so touchy and aggressive: Widespread consent with postponing presidential elections does not translate into the same amount of popularity for Zelensky personally, or, for that matter, for his regime. For instance, in December 2023, 34% of respondents believed that he should not stand for another election (whenever the latter were to take place). By February of this year, only three months later, that share had risen to 43%. Clearly, Ukrainians who believe that this is not the right time for presidential elections and, at the same time, that Zelensky should never be a candidate again, don’t consider elections unnecessary because they are happy with his rule.

Read more …

“..carry out acts of electronic sabotage under the close tutelage of NATO supervisors..”

• NATO Forming Network of Cyber Labs Along Russia’s Borders (Sp.)

NATO is forming a network of cyber laboratories along the perimeter of Russia’s borders in Estonia, Latvia, Finland and Romania, Artur Lyukmanov, the special presidential representative for international cooperation in information security of the Russian Foreign Ministry, said in an interview with Sputnik. “Washington has long been practicing methods of hybrid warfare against Russia in the information sphere. Ukraine is used as the main training ground, whose hackers, including from the much-touted ‘IT army,’ carry out acts of electronic sabotage under the close tutelage of NATO supervisors,” he said. Lyukmanov said entire units of Western security services and armed forces have been sent to Kiev.

“It’s no secret that the alliance is forming an entire network of cyber laboratories along the perimeter of the Russian borders in Estonia, Latvia, Finland, Romania, and in the future – in Georgia and Moldova. Under the auspices of the Pentagon, cyber exercises are being carried out on a systematic basis (the Cyber Flag exercises recently ended in the US), during which scenarios of confrontation with us in the digital sphere are tested,” the diplomat said. Western countries, led by the United States, are building up offensive potentials in the field of information technology to conduct computer operations against Russia and China, Artur Lyukmanov said. “Indeed, Western countries, led by Washington, continue to build up offensive ICT potentials to conduct computer operations against their geopolitical opponents, that is, Russia, China and other independent states,” he said

Read more …

“Orban noted that the bloc was created with the purpose of defending member states against aggressors, not waging wars outside its territory..”

• NATO ‘Preparing For War’ With Russia – Orban (RT)

Hungary is reevaluating its role in NATO, as it has no intention to take part in actions that could involve member states in the Ukraine conflict and lead to a direct clash with Russia, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Friday. Speaking on local Kossuth Radio, Orban stated that his country has already been relegated to the role of a non-participant within the US-led military bloc due to its stance on Ukraine, and Budapest is now working on legal ways to retain its membership but reserve the right to abstain from joining NATO operations it disagrees with. “Hungary’s position must be redefined, our lawyers and officials are working on ways to allow Hungary to continue to exist as a NATO member without participating in NATO activities outside the bloc’s territory. We need to create a new approach, a new definition for our position as a pro-peace force within NATO,” Orban said.

According to the prime minister, there are “alarming similarities” between the emotionally charged media publications and statements by Western politicians regarding the Ukraine conflict and the atmosphere preceding the First and Second World Wars. “What is happening today in Brussels and Washington… looks like warming up for a possible direct military conflict. We can safely call it the preparation of Europe’s entry into the war,” Orban said, adding that there are working groups within NATO that are assessing the best ways for the bloc to further boost its participation in the conflict. He warned that the end result of these actions could be a direct conflict between the EU, NATO, and Russia – a “grim prospect,” as the conflict would involve nuclear powers.

Someone tell me why instead of isolating this conflict – because it is a war between two Slavic peoples, despite all the arguments on the side of Ukraine – we choose to jump into this war? Orban noted that the bloc was created with the purpose of defending member states against aggressors, not waging wars outside its territory. Commenting on Western claims that Russia could attack Europe if it defeats Ukraine, Orban said the chances of this happening are extremely slim, and these warnings only serve as an excuse to become directly involved in the Ukraine conflict. Hungary has opposed NATO funding and arming of Ukraine from the outset of the conflict in February 2022. The country has not sent any weapons to Kiev, and has not allowed its territory to be used for their delivery, despite pressure from both Brussels and Washington. Budapest has called for a ceasefire and a diplomatic solution to the conflict.

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“If only the media was as energetic about promoting peace negotiations as it has been about promoting war. ”

• Ukraine Enforces Desperate Conscription Laws, Russia Closes In On Kharkiv (ZH)

Ukraine is now enforcing a new mobilization law which is being called ‘divisive’ among many Ukrainian citizens and some political leaders. The law requires men ages 18-60 to carry their military paperwork at all times to be presented to authorities on demand. It lowers the minimum draft age from 27 to 25 (Ukraine has a demographic shortage of men ages 18-25). And, all military age Ukrainian men abroad must come back to Ukraine to renew their passports, including refugees driven from their homes in the early days of the war. Conscripts must update their address, contact information, and military records within 60 days through government institutions or a mobile application. This is in preparation for a national draft database containing information on every fighting age male in the country. The conscription measures are expected to greatly reduce Ukraine’s labor pool, forcing many businesses to shut down. Essential workers are not exempt from the draft.

Vladimir Zelensky signed two other bills into effect, one allowing prisoners to be deployed to the front lines (the western media criticized Russia last year for implementing a similar measure), the other bill quintuples fines for people caught trying to evade the draft. Early versions of the law allowed for concessions on pay and better rotation for soldiers, including a policy which would relieve soldiers serving for 36 months or more. All demobilization concessions were removed from the final version; Ukraine’s military leadership argued that they needed the most experienced soldiers to remain at the front. Kyiv has offered cash bonuses to troops towards purchases of housing and cars as an incentive to join the war effort, however, critics argue that the Ukrainian treasury does not actually have the funds to fulfill the promises Zelinsky is making. To counter charges of undermining soldier morale, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry says it is working on a separate demobilization bill, but massive manpower shortages make any demobilization action highly unlikely.

Front line soldiers have repeatedly complained about the lack of rotation, with some rarely getting a chance to leave the trenches in the past two years. These desperate conscription laws arrive just as Russian forces close in on Kharkiv, the second largest city in the nation. Bombardment of the city’s defenses and infrastructure is already underway in preparation for a possible offensive. Some analysts argue that Russia does not have enough troops to take Kharkiv and that this is a distraction. Russia may open a new front near Sumy which is 100 miles away, or they may plan to full envelope Kharkiv because they know Ukraine’s troop strength is at a minimum. The western media has been an avid mouthpiece for the Ukrainian government over the past couple years with many pundits shaming Ukrainian citizens who have tried to leave to avoid being involuntarily mobilized. Seeing the complete lack of organization and the habitual embezzlement of funds among Ukraine’s leadership it’s not surprising that many citizens do not want to fight for them. If only the media was as energetic about promoting peace negotiations as it has been about promoting war.

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“Moscow recently warned the UK that if Ukraine used British weapons on Russian territory, Russian forces would target UK military sites in Ukraine “and beyond.”

• Speaker Johnson: Ukraine Should Use US Weapons on Russian Territory (Antiwar)

On Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) expressed support for Ukraine using US-provided weapons on Russian territory, a step that would risk a major response from Russia. Ukraine has been lobbying the US to allow the use of US-provided missile systems on Russian territory in the wake of Russia’s Kharkiv offensive, and the idea is gaining support in Congress. A group of bipartisan members of the House sent a letter to President Biden on Monday urging him to lift any restrictions on Ukraine’s use of US weapons. “It is essential the Biden administration allows Ukraine’s military leaders to conduct a full spectrum of operations necessary to respond to Russia’s unprovoked attack on their sovereign land,” the lawmakers said. Johnson was asked if he supported the idea of Ukraine hitting Russian territory with US weapons and replied that the US needs “to allow Ukraine to prosecute the war in the way they see fit.”

“They [Ukraine] need[s] to be able to fight back. And I think us trying to micromanage the effort there is not a good policy for us,” he told Voice of America. Moscow recently warned the UK that if Ukraine used British weapons on Russian territory, Russian forces would target UK military sites in Ukraine “and beyond.” The warning came after British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said Ukraine had the “right” to use British arms in attacks on Russia. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is asking NATO to take another step that could lead to a catastrophic escalation. In an interview with The New York Times on Tuesday, he pleaded for the Western alliance to shoot down Russian missiles over Ukraine, which would mean direct NATO involvement in the conflict, raising the risk of nuclear war.

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You’re located in Brussels, right?

• Let Ukraine Freely Strike Russia With Western Arms – NATO Chief (RT)

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has argued that members of the Western military bloc should let Ukraine freely use their weapons to launch strikes deeper into Russian territory. “The time has come for allies to consider whether they should lift some of the restrictions they have put on the use of weapons they have donated to Ukraine,” Stoltenberg said on Friday in an interview with The Economist. “Especially now when a lot of the fighting is going on in Kharkov, close to the border, to deny Ukraine the possibility of using these weapons against legitimate military targets on Russian territory makes it very hard for them to defend themselves.” Stoltenberg noted that some NATO members have already lifted restrictions on using their weapons to attack targets in Russian territory.

Asked whether he was referring to the US as the one major holdout, he said, “I think what we see now demonstrates the need to reconsider those restrictions, not least because we have fighting going on along the border between Russia and Ukraine.” However, according to Moscow, the rhetoric about restrictions on the use of US munitions are false and designed to maintain the illusion that the West is not part of the conflict. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that US weapons, such as ATACMS missiles armed with cluster warheads, have already been used on attacks inside Russia, including strikes against civilian targets. “We proceed from the fact that American and other Western weaponry strikes targets on the territory of Russia, primarily civilian infrastructure and residential areas,” he told reporters on Friday.

The NATO chief’s comments come at a time when Western leaders are making increasingly bold statements about attacks on Russian territory. US President Joe Biden held back on sending long-range weapons to Ukraine in the early days of the conflict with Russia, citing concern over the possibility of triggering a wider conflict. When more advanced weaponry was later approved, it came with strings attached, including a prohibition on hitting Russian territory. However, as the New York Times reported on Thursday, views on those restrictions have shifted as Russian forces make battlefield gains. After making a “sobering” visit to Kiev earlier this month, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken reportedly began urging the administration to let the former Soviet republic use American weapons as it sees fit. A group of US lawmakers sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin earlier this week, pressing him to give the Ukrainians the permissions they have requested.

Stoltenberg said he believes NATO members can thread the geopolitical needle by supporting Ukraine’s defense without becoming direct parties to the conflict. “We provide training, we provide weapons, ammunition to Ukraine, but we will not be directly involved from NATO territory in combat operations over or in Ukraine,” he said. “So, that’s a different thing.”

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A lonely voice..

• US Should Quit Sending Money to Ukraine, Try to Negotiate Peace – Massie (Sp.)

The United States should stop sending money to Ukraine and attempt to negotiate peace as soon as possible, US Congressman Thomas Massie told Sputnik on Friday. “I think we should quit sending money there. I think we should try to negotiate peace as soon as possible,” Massie said on the sidelines of the 2024 Libertarian National Convention. US lawmakers are showing dwindling support for sending military aid to Ukraine each time the matter comes to a vote, Massie highlighted. “The support for sending weapons to Ukraine is weakening in the US Congress, as you can see with each subsequent vote,” the congressman emphasized. There should be some effort made to bring both Ukraine and Russia to the upcoming conference in Switzerland as it is hard to imagine negotiations without Russia, Massie stressed “This sounds kind of hard to negotiate a peace if they don’t have Russia at the table. So I think there should be some effort to have Ukraine and Russia there,” the congressman said.

Talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Joe Biden could help solve the conflict in Ukraine, and even lower-level discussions between top diplomats could help achieve progress, Massie highlighted. “I think it could help,” Massie said when asked whether talks between Biden and Putin could help solve the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. “Although, even lower-level negotiations would help as well, I think.” When asked at what level such discussion should be held, the congressman said, “Maybe at the secretary of state level, for instance.” Massie expressed his view that it is “wrong” that communications between the US and Russia are limited. “I think there should be talks,” he said. The US government freezing of foreign assets, including those of Russia, is a very short-sighted policy and sends a message to the international community that the United States may stop honoring transactions, the congressman emphasized.

“I think it’s very short sighted of our government to freeze for instance, Treasury assets, that are held by other countries, such as Russia, because it sends a message to the world that if you buy our debt, then we may not honor the transaction at some point,” Massie explained. The representative added that US moves to freeze foreign assets are “extremely dangerous” because they will increase the price that Washington has to pay to finance its debt. “I’m sure that our closest allies will still trust that we’ll be good on our word, but other sovereign funds will have a diminished appetite for financing our debt,” Massie said. “So, I think it’s very short-sighted of us to do that.” Moscow has maintained that any attempt to confiscate its frozen assets would violate international law, with the Russian Foreign Ministry labeling such an action as theft. Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov has also said that Moscow is willing to issue a “symmetrical” response to this form of Western financial aggression.

The congressman argued that he opposes the US government sending more money to Ukraine unless such assistance achieves peace. “I told our own speaker – if you want to send $60 billion and the goal is to achieve some kind of peace, I might be compelled to vote for it. But I’m not voting for $60 billion that will then only necessitate another $60 billion,” the representative clarified. Massie also said that both sides to the conflict in Ukraine will eventually run out of people if fighting continues. “I think it’s immoral to grind up people in this war on both sides,” Massie added. Earlier on Friday, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken announced that the United States was providing a new weapons package for Ukraine worth $275 million. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Monday the United States has already delivered many of Ukraine’s “top-priority requirements” and much more assistance is on the way.
Austin added that he expects a steady flow of US assistance for Ukraine on a weekly basis.

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“Bragg is expected to finally state with clarity what he is alleging … at the closing arguments of the case.”

• Will the Trump Jury Exercise Blind Justice or Willful Blindness? (Turley)

With closing arguments scheduled for Tuesday, May 28, the prosecution of former President Donald Trump will finally head to a jury. Judge Juan Merchan has refused every opportunity to bring an end to this politically manufactured prosecution. Now it will be up to 12 New Yorkers to do what neither the court nor the prosecutors were willing to do: adhere to the rule of law regardless of the identity of the defendant. Merchan has allowed the government to bring back into life a dead misdemeanor and convert it into 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. To accomplish this legal regeneration, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has vaguely referenced a variety of crimes that Trump allegedly was trying to conceal through the business record violations. The problem is that he has left the secondary crime mired in uncertainty to the point that experts on various networks are still debating what the underlying theory is in the case.

Indeed, Bragg is expected to finally state with clarity what he is alleging … at the closing arguments of the case. In the meantime, the prosecution is pushing to make it easier for the jury to convict. First, they have vaguely referenced a variety of possible offenses from tax to election violations. Bragg initially laid out four possible predicate crimes. It is down to three – a tax crime and violations of state or federal election law. Merchan has ruled that the jury does not have to agree on what crimes were being covered up so the jury could literally have three different views of what happened in the case and still convict Trump. Prosecutors are also seeking to effectively shorten the playing field by allowing the jurors to convict on a lower standard of proof for the key term in using “unlawful means.” The defense wants the jury instructed that it must find that such use of “unlawful means” was done with willful intent.

The prosecutors do not want to use that higher standard. For the defense, it is effectively reducing the field to the end zone to make it easier for the prosecution to score. In the last few days, the Bragg strategy has come into sharper focus in one respect. Bragg is not counting on the evidence or the law. He is counting on the jury. Call it the Lawrence O’Donnell factor. After Michael Cohen imploded on the stand in the trial, even experts and hosts on MSNBC and CNN stated that his admissions and contradictions were devastating. Cohen is not only accused of committing perjury in his testimony, but he matter-of-factly detailed how he stole tens of thousands of dollars from the Trump organization. After being disbarred and convicted as a serial perjurer, Cohen waited for the statute of limitations to run on larceny to admit that he stole as much as $50,000 by pocketing money intended for a contractor.

Liberal commentators acknowledged the fact that Cohen had committed a far more serious offense than the converted misdemeanor against Trump (but was never charged). Yet, one figure stepped forward to assure the public that all was well. MSNBC host O’Donnell said that he watched the testimony and that Cohen did wonderfully. Keep in mind that Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche asked Cohen point blank: “So you stole from the Trump organization, right?” Cohen answered unequivocably: “Yes, sir.”O’Donnell, however, rushed outside to declare that Cohen was merely acquiring a bonus that he thought that he deserved as a type of “self-help”: “Cohen [was trying] to rebalance the bonus he thought he deserved. And it still came out as less than the bonus he thought he deserved and the bonus he had gotten the year before.”

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25,000 is not a “large-scale campaign” either. Not for Trump. Not even in NY.

• Trump Says Bronx Residents Being Left Behind By Biden Policies (ZH)

Former President Donald Trump took aim at President Joe Biden over a range of issues while vowing to turn New York City around “very quickly” at a rally in the South Bronx on Thursday. President Trump made the comments in front of a crowd estimated at 25,000 supporters in one of the most Democratic counties in the nation. His appearance at Crotona Park, which comes as he is on trial in New York, marked his first large-scale campaign in the state since 2016, when he held two events at the Times Union Center in Albany and another in Buffalo. As Axios (of all people) reported, the Thursday night drew a crowd that looked very different than the typical MAGA flock. The unusual sight of Trump speaking to several thousand people in a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood in deep blue New York is a sign of the realignment happening between the two parties.

Trump’s GOP is becoming more working class and a little more multiracial. Democrats are gaining with more well-educated voters in the suburbs. The thousands of people gathered to see the former president were a diverse group of people, including what Fox News Digital noted were Black, Hispanic, White, Asian and Muslim supporters. Ahead of Trump’s rally yesterday, both the Biden and Trump campaigns rushed to paint their opponents as racist and a worse choice for Black voters. The Biden campaign put out a digital and television ad that begins: “Trump disrespecting Black folk is nothing new.” The campaign posted on X: “Let’s remember that Trump is a lifelong racist.” The Trump campaign responded with a reminder that Biden helped pass the 1994 Crime Bill that led to mass incarceration disproportionately impacting minorities.

As Katabella Roberts reports via The Epoch Times, President Trump used the rally to criticize his Democratic rival and his immigration policies amid the ongoing crisis at the southern border, telling the crowd of attendees that his rival was failing to “get the job done” for those living in the Bronx. He also described his rival as “grossly incompetent.” President Trump said that under President Biden’s watch, impoverished communities and minorities have been hit the hardest. He said President Biden’s policies have seen inflation, crime, and illegal immigration rise. “African Americans are getting slaughtered, Hispanic Americans are getting slaughtered,” President Trump said. “These millions and millions of people that are coming into our country—the biggest impact and the biggest negative impact is against our black population and our Hispanic population who are losing their jobs, losing their housing, losing everything they can lose.”

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It’s an entire language they fail to understand..

• Biden Admin Is Hiring A ‘Meme Manager’; Hilarity Ensues (MN)

The Biden campaign has posted a job listing seeking a ‘meme manager’ prompting many to submit examples of their finest Biden meme manager memes. The listing, seeking a ‘Partner Manager, Content and Meme Pages’, was posted on Daybook. It states, “In this role, you will initiate and manage day-to-day operations in engaging the internet’s top content and meme pages.” “The ideal candidate for this role is passionate about bringing political content to voters where they already are on the internet,” it adds.

Responsibilities in the post include a need to “cultivate and manage relationships with top digital media companies, podcasters, and meme pages across a number of social media platforms” as well as to “identify and land engagement opportunities.” The listing betrays the fact that Biden is haemorrhaging support among young voters, and the campaign, in its infinite ignorance, believes that a few well executed memes might turn that around. The problem is, the left can’t meme. Leftist memes routinely include walls of text explaining what they mean, rendering the meme itself pointless and absurd.

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Now the military arm of Boeing gets its turn.

• Boeing Sued Over Deaths Of US Marines (RT)

The families of US servicemen killed in a V-22 Osprey crash in California in 2022 have brought a lawsuit against Boeing, Bell Textron, and Rolls-Royce, accusing them of hiding and failing to correct known reliability issues in their aircraft. Filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of California, the suit alleges that the three corporations “intentionally, recklessly and/or negligently provided false information about the safety, airworthiness, and reliability of V-22 Osprey aircraft,” its engines, systems, and component parts, according to the court documents. “The aircraft, as fielded, has failed and continues to fail to meet the government’s safety and reliability specifications and requirements and the aircraft is not safe,” the lawsuit reads.

The incident at issue occurred in southern California on June 8, “on a training mission during the day with good weather,” when a V-22 suffered catastrophic mechanical failure and crashed, killing all five Marines aboard. The subsequent investigation by the US Marine Corps found that “there was no error on the part of the pilots and aircrew and nothing they could have done to anticipate or prevent this mishap,” nor any “maintenance error” from the ground crew. The V-22 Osprey, a relatively recent addition to the US aircraft fleet, is capable of vertical take off and landing using its tilting twin proprotors, acting as both airplane-style propellers and helicopter-style rotors, depending on which flight mode the craft is using.

There have been 58 accidents involving Ospreys since 1991, with at least 20 being lost beyond repair and leading to more than 60 fatalities, according to the Flight Safety Foundation statistics. The V-22 gained the nickname ‘widow maker’, having led to 30 deaths before it even entered service in 2007. The US military temporarily ceased all flights of the aircraft for an investigation in November last year, after a V-22 crashed near Yakushima, Japan, killing eight. Two months prior, Boeing was ordered to pay $8.1 million to settle allegations that it failed to adhere to critical manufacturing specifications in its V-22 parts production. The claims were brought against the aerospace giant by three whistleblowers who worked at its Ridley Park, Pennsylvania facility.

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New “Twitter Files”.

• The CIA’s Secret Effort To Seize Control Of Social Media (ZH)

While the CIA is strictly prohibited from spying on or running clandestine operations against American citizens on US soil, a bombshell new “Twitter Files” report reveals that a member of the Board of Trustees of InQtel – the CIA’s mission-driving venture capital firm, along with “former” intelligence community (IC) and CIA analysts, were involved in a massive effort in 2021-2022 to take over Twitter’s content management system, as Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi and Alex Gutentag report over at Shellenberger’s Public. According to “thousands of pages of Twitter Files and documents,” these efforts were part of a broader strategy to manage how information is disseminated and consumed on social media under the guise of combating ‘misinformation’ and foreign propaganda efforts – as this complex of government-linked individuals and organizations has gone to great lengths to suggest that narrative control is a national security issue.

According to the report, the effort also involved; • a long-time IC contractor and senior Department of Defense R&D official who spent years developing technologies to detect whistleblowers (“insider threats”) like Edward Snowden and Wikileaks’ leakers; • the proposed head of the DHS’ aborted Disinformation Governance Board, Nina Jankowicz, who aided US military and NATO “hybrid war” operations in Europe; • Jim Baker, who, as FBI General Counsel, helped start the Russiagate hoax, and, as Twitter’s Deputy General Counsel, urged Twitter executives to censor The New York Post story about Hunter Biden. Jankowicz (aka ‘Scary Poppins’), previously tipped to lead the DHS’s now-aborted Disinformation Governance Board, has been a vocal advocate for more stringent regulation of online speech to counteract ‘rampant disinformation.’ Jim Baker, in his capacity as FBI General Counsel and later as Twitter’s Deputy General Counsel, advocated for and implemented policies that would restrict certain types of speech on the platform, including decisions that affected the visibility of politically sensitive content.

Furthermore, companies like PayPal, Amazon Web Services, and GoDaddy were mentioned as part of a concerted effort to de-platform and financially de-incentivize individuals and organizations deemed threats by the IC. This approach represents a significant escalation in the use of corporate cooperation to achieve what might essentially be considered censorship under the guise of national security. Nina Jankowicz And The Alethea Group: Remember Nina? A huge fan of Christopher Steele – architect of the infamous Clinton-funded Dossier which underpinned the Trump-Russia hoax, and who joined the chorus of disinformation agents that downplayed the Hunter Biden laptop bombshell, Jankowicz previously served as a disinformation fellow at the Wilson Center, and advised the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry as part of the Fulbright-Clinton Public Policy Fellowship. She also oversaw the Russia and Belarus programs at the National Democratic Institute.

Jankowicz compares the lack of regulation of speech on social media to the lack of government regulation of automobiles in the 1960s. She calls for a “cross-platform” and public-private approach, so whatever actions are taken are taken by Google, Facebook, and Twitter, simultaneously. Jankowicz points to Europe as the model for regulating speech. “Germany’s NetzDG law requires social media companies and other content hosts to remove ‘obviously illegal’ speech within twenty-four hours,” she says, “or face a fine of up to $50 million.” By contrast, in the US, she laments, “Congress has yet to pass a bill imposing even the most basic of regulations related to social media and election advertising.” -Public.

In a 2020 book, How to Lose the Information War: Russia, Fake News, and the Future of Conflict, Jankowicz praises a NATO cyber security expert for having created a “Center of Excellence,” a concept promoted by Renée Diresta of the Stanford Internet Observatory, in which she made the case for the (now failed) Disinformation Governance Board that Jankowicz would briefly head up. One year later, Jankowicz began working with ‘anti-disinformation’ consulting firm, Althea Group, staffed by “former” IC analysts. Althea notably came after ZeroHedge at one point, shopping a ‘dossier’ around which suggested we were allegedly contributing to “increased online panic” amid the monumental collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. The outlets they peddled said dossier to included Bloomberg – which elected to exclude ZeroHedge from their report following a brief email exchange. Eventually, one of their operatives dropped the dossier on Twitter, only to be mocked as a propagandist.

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“..they were summoned to the CIA in Langley concerning Mr. Morris, and that because of the information provided there, he could not be a witness for the investigation. AUSA Wolf proudly referenced a CIA mug and stated that she purchased some CIA “swag” at the gift shop..”

• Kevin Morris Reportedly Protected by CIA in Hunter Biden Investigation (Turley)

Recently, it became public that Kevin Morris, the entertainment lawyer who has subsidized the expenses and bought the art of Hunter Biden, had stopped his funding of Biden. Morris has paid off Hunter’s IRS debts and reportedly lent him a total of $4.9 million for housing, car payments, legal fees, and other possible costs. The so-called “sugar bro” is “tapped out” according to media reports. (For full disclosure, Morris previously threatened me with a defamation lawsuit over my writing about his representation of Hunter). Now the House has confirmed prior stories that whistleblower records indicate that the CIA prevented the Justice Department from questioning Kevin Morris as a witness in its probe of Hunter Biden. Morris has maintained that he lent Hunter millions for “no ulterior motive” and continued to support him out of friendship. Yet, when investigators started to look into the payments and the relationship, they were told that Morris had some relationship with the CIA in August 2021. According to previously unreleased information, IRS special agent and current whistleblower Gary Shapley documented the bizarre intervention of the spy agency.

In a sworn affidavit in May, Shapley declared: “During a recurring prosecution team conference call in or around late August 2021, Assistant United States Attorney (AUSA) Lesley Wolf told the team that she and DOJ Tax Attorney Jack Morgan had recently returned from the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia, where they had been summoned to discuss Kevin Morris. AUSA Wolf stated that they were provided a classified briefing in relation to Mr. Morris and as a result we could no longer pursue him as a witness. Investigators probed AUSA Wolf, but since her briefing was classified and she was apparently sanitizing it to an unclassified form to share over an open phone line, she did not elaborate with more information. She reiterated more than once that they were summoned to the CIA in Langley concerning Mr. Morris, and that because of the information provided there, he could not be a witness for the investigation. AUSA Wolf proudly referenced a CIA mug and stated that she purchased some CIA “swag” at the gift shop while she was there. It is unclear how the CIA became aware that Mr. Morris was a potential witness in the Hunter Biden investigation and why agents were not told about the meeting in advance or invited to participate. It is a deviation of normal investigative processes for prosecutors to exclude investigators from substantive meetings such as this.”

It is a testament to the level of bias in the mainstream media that this story is not the sole focus of every media outlet in America. Imagine if the CIA intervened to stop an investigation into a donor maintaining one of the Trump children and supporting his effort to blunt any investigation into corruption. MSNBC would make it ongoing special programming with its own time slot. This is an agency that is supposed to avoid domestic interventions into politics as well as other areas. It is accused of pulling in a prosecutor to tell her to close part of a criminal investigation involving the financial supporter of the president’s son. Even if Morris was an asset, the question is why shut down the inquiry into his payments to Hunter Biden. The work of Morris with the CIA could be protected or redacted. Instead, the line of inquiry was shut off and Wolf reportedly left Langley with CIA swag and an empty bag of evidence.

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Vivek
https://twitter.com/i/status/1794218814319567337

 

 

Tigress

 

 

Lioness

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle May 1 2024

May 012024
 
 May 1, 2024  Posted by at 8:54 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  48 Responses »


Edvard Munch Separation 1894

 

• Trump Held in Contempt With Fine, Jail Threat For Violating Gag Order (ZH)
• There Is No Crime”: Dershowitz Says Bragg’s Case Against Trump Will Fail (ET)
• Trump Fined For Breaching Gag Order (RT)
• Does the CIA Run America? (Jeffrey Tucker)
• MAY DAY! MAY DAY! Celebration For Russia, Not A Stress Test (Helmer)
• “Have You No Sense of Decency?” (Michael Hudson)
• The Kiev Regime Must Not Get Away With It (Karganovic)
• “All of the Conspiracy Theorists are Republicans.” (Turley)
• Russia Defends Traditional Values The West Is Abandoning – Dugin to Carlson (RT)
• Pfizergate: Ursula von der Leyen’s Shady Covid Vaccine Deals (Marsden)
• US Politicians ‘Living In Wonderland’ – Moscow (RT)
• This Isn’t Fascism (Patrick Lawrence)
• Cars Used to Make Us Happy (Paul Craig Roberts)

 

 

 

 

Goofball
https://twitter.com/i/status/1785006072844964021

 

 

Nap Jan 6

 

 

Mike Davis
https://twitter.com/i/status/1785467744114073939

 

 

Eva
https://twitter.com/i/status/1785434550346346708

 

 

Elon Letterman 2009

Cramer Musk China

 

 

 

 

“That said, Merchan is allowing Trump to attend his son Barron’s high school graduation on May 17..”

• Trump Held in Contempt With Fine, Jail Threat For Violating Gag Order (ZH)

Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan has held Donald Trump in contempt of court for ‘repeatedly violating’ a gag order in his so-called hush money trial in New York. According to Merchan, Trump violated the gag order nine times in online posts which targeted jurors or likely witnesses in the trial. The former president was fined the maximum of $1,000 per violation, or $9,000 – and was ordered to remove all of the offending posts by 2:15 p.m. ET on Tuesday. What’s more, Merchan threatened to toss Trump in jail if he willfully violates court orders again. “Defendant is hereby warned that the Court will not tolerate continued willful violations of its lawful orders and that if necessary and appropriate under the circumstances, it will impose an incarceratory punishment,” wrote Merchan in his ruling, CNBC reports. Merchan read the order aloud before the trial resumed with more testimony from a banker who worked with the former president’s lawyer on a $130,000 hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.

That payment is at the heart of Manhattan prosecutors’ case accusing Trump of falsifying business records as part of a scheme to influence the 2016 presidential election. Gary Farro, a former senior managing director at First Republic bank, took the stand Friday and continued testifying Tuesday. On his way into the courtroom, Trump repeated his call for Merchan to both recuse himself from the case and dismiss it entirely. -CNBC. “The judge should terminate the case because they have no case,” said Trump in response, adding that he’s been unable to campaign for president because he’s stuck in court. That said, Merchan is allowing Trump to attend his son Barron’s high school graduation on May 17. The historic trial began last week, which has included testimony from former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, as well as Trump’s longtime personal secretary, Rhona Graff.

Pecker testified to his efforts to “catch and kill” stories that could be damaging to Trump – including one instance in which his company American Media paying $30,000 for the rights to a former Trump Tower doorman’s story about Trump having a secret love child – though Pecker believes the story is untrue. The company also inked a $150,000 deal with former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who claimed to have had an extramarital affair with Trump, according to Pecker. Pecker said he did not pay to silence Daniels, who claims she had sex with Trump. As the Epoch Times notes further, Court was resuming Tuesday with Gary Farro, a banker who helped President Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen open accounts, including one that Mr. Cohen used to send a payment to adult film performer Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford. She alleged a 2006 affair with President Trump, which he denies.

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“In Bragg’s case, what they’re trying to do is add one and one and come up with 11..”

• There Is No Crime”: Dershowitz Says Bragg’s Case Against Trump Will Fail (ET)

Retired Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz said on April 28 that he believes that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against former President Donald Trump could fail because prosecutors have charged the former president with fake crimes. “There is no crime,” Mr. Dershowitz said during an interview on Fox News on April 28, referring to the case in which Mr. Bragg’s office has charged the former president with 34 counts of falsifying business records to hide so-called hush money payments that prosecutors allege amounted to a criminal conspiracy to influence the 2016 presidential election. Mr. Dershowitz argued that making nondisclosure payments is not a crime and that neither is paying for the non-publication of potentially embarrassing stories (the so-called catch-and-kill dimension of the case), both of which prosecutors have alleged were part of a conspiracy to sway voters.

The retired law professor argued that Mr. Bragg’s office is in danger of having the case thrown out on grounds similar to those on which the conviction of Harvey Weinstein was recently overturned, namely that prosecutors prejudiced the case by a number of “egregious” improper rulings, including allowing testimony that was unrelated to what Mr. Weinstein was charged with. “They ought to be very careful about this because the Supreme Court of the Appellate Court in Albany just reversed Harvey Weinstein’s conviction on the ground that they put in too much information that wasn’t really relevant to the case,” Mr. Dershowitz said, adding that this is “what’s happening” in the trial against President Trump. “There is no crime in Manhattan. You cannot figure out what the crime is. That’s why they’re putting on all this evidence of non-crimes,” Mr. Dershowitz said.

“Trying to persuade the jury that ‘catch-and-kill’ is a crime—it’s not. Paying hush money is a crime—it’s not. Putting a corporate statement is a misdemeanor barred by the statute of limitations. You can’t suddenly resurrect that and turn that into a crime by invoking a federal statute which the federal government refused to invoke—the Federal Election Commission refused to invoke.” The former Harvard law professor has repeatedly criticized Mr. Bragg for elevating the charges against President Trump from misdemeanors to felonies on what Mr. Dershowitz has argued was an invalid legal premise because the Manhattan district attorney invoked federal statutes over which New York has no jurisdiction. Republicans have accused Mr. Bragg of bringing the case against the former president for political reasons.

[..] Under New York state law, falsifying business records is a misdemeanor. However, if the records fraud was used to cover up or commit another crime, the charge could be elevated to a felony, though a number of legal experts—including Mr. Dershowitz—have challenged the way that has been done in this case. “In order to turn the state statute into a felony, you have to borrow a federal statute,” Mr. Dershowitz told The Epoch Times in March 2023. He said that this combining of laws “seems to raise real serious legal questions.” “In Bragg’s case, what they’re trying to do is add one and one and come up with 11,” Mr. Dershowitz said. “No rational person would look at these two statutes and say that Trump violated them.”

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“The Gag Order imposed on me, a political candidate running for the highest office in the land, is totally UNCONSTITUTIONAL! Nothing like this has ever happened before..”

• Trump Fined For Breaching Gag Order (RT)

Former US President Donald Trump has been ordered to pay $9,000 for repeatedly violating a gag order imposed by the judge overseeing his ‘hush money’ trial in New York. Trump was threatened with jail if he continues to breach the order. At a hearing in Manhattan on Tuesday, Judge Juan Merchan fined Trump $1,000 for nine separate instances in which he violated the gag order. Merchan explained in his ruling that while a $1,000 fine ultimately matters little to a man of Trump’s wealth, he could not legally issue a larger fine. However, the judge added that he would consider whether “jail may be a necessary punishment” if Trump continues to break the order in future. Trump is currently on trial for allegedly misreporting ‘hush-money’ payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels.

Since last month, Merchan has forbidden him from making public statements about Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg or the jurors working on the case, and from uttering anything that could interfere with the work of the court. Nevertheless, Trump has spoken to the media outside the courthouse every day since the trial began earlier this month. In these appearances and in posts on his Truth Social platform, the former president has denounced the “sham case” against him, often quoting conservative pundits and journalists in an apparent bid to skirt the gag order. “The Gag Order imposed on me, a political candidate running for the highest office in the land, is totally UNCONSTITUTIONAL! Nothing like this has ever happened before,” Trump wrote last week. “The Conflicted Judge’s friends and party members can say whatever they want about me, but I am not allowed to respond.”

Trump’s lawyers have argued that Merchan’s connections to the Democratic Party – his daughter owns a consulting firm that creates fundraising campaigns for Democratic politicians, including President Joe Biden – make him unsuitable to judge the case. However, Merchan has refused multiple requests to recuse himself, saying that Trump has “failed to provide” evidence of a conflict of interest. In addition to the ‘hush money’ trial, Trump is also facing two federal criminal cases concerning his alleged incitement of the January 6, 2021 riot on Capitol Hill and his alleged mishandling of classified documents, as well as a state-level racketeering case in Georgia concerning his alleged efforts to overturn Biden’s 2020 victory in the state. Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee to challenge Biden in November’s presidential election. Despite the ongoing trial effectively halting his campaign in its tracks, a CNN poll published on Sunday showed him leading Biden by a 49%-43% margin, with six in ten respondents disapproving of Biden’s performance as president.

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“..we live in a country today where most people readily admit that the CIA probably killed the president. Amazing.”

• Does the CIA Run America? (Jeffrey Tucker)

[..] let’s not dismiss the theory completely. Based on a New York Times (NYT) piece that appeared last week, it contains more than a grain of truth. The article is titled: “Campaign Puts Trump and the Spy Agencies on a Collision Course.” Quote: “Even as president, Donald J. Trump flaunted his animosity for intelligence officials, portraying them as part of a politicized ‘deep state’ out to get him. And since he left office, that distrust has grown into outright hostility, with potentially serious implications for national security should he be elected again.” Ok, let’s be clear. If the intelligence community led by the CIA is not the “deep state,” what is? Further, it is proven many times over that the Deep State is in fact out to get him. This is not even controversial. Indeed, there is no reason for these journalists to write the above as if Donald Trump is somehow consumed by some kind of baseless paranoia.

Let’s keep going here: “Trump is now on a possible collision course with the intelligence community …. The result is a complicated and possibly destabilizing situation the United States has never seen before: deep-seated suspicion and disdain on the part of a former and perhaps future president toward the very people he would be relying on for the most sensitive information he would need to perform his role if elected again.” Wait just a moment. You are telling us that all previous presidents have had a happy relationship with the CIA? That’s rather interesting to know. And deeply troubling too, since the CIA has been managing regime change the world over for a very long time, and is now directly involved in U.S. politics at the most intimate level. Any president worth his salt should absolutely have a hostile relationship with such an agency, if only to establish clear civilian control over the government, without which it’s not possible to say that we live in a Constitutional republic.

And now, according to the NYT, we have one seeking the Presidency who does not defer to the agency and that this is destabilizing and deeply problematic. Who does that suggest really rules this country? Is the NYT itself guilty of the most extreme conspiracy theory imaginable, or is it just stating facts as we know them? I’m going to guess that it is the latter. In this case, every single American should be deeply alarmed.Crazy huh? As for the phrase “never seen before,” we have to push back. What about George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, James Polk, and Calvin Coolidge? They were all previous presidents, according to the history books that people once read. There was no CIA back then. If you doubt this, I’m pretty sure that your favorite AI engine will confirm it. One must suppose that when the NYT says “never seen before,” it means in the post-war period. And that very well might be true. John F. Kennedy defied them. We know that for certain.

The mysteries surrounding his murder won’t be solved fully until we get the documents. But the consensus is growing that this murder was really a coup by the CIA, a message sent as a lesson to every successor in that office. Think of that: we live in a country today where most people readily admit that the CIA probably killed the president. Amazing. [..] Have you considered that maybe the crackpots are exactly right? If so, shouldn’t we, at bare minimum, seek to support a Presidential candidate with a hostile relationship to the intelligence community? Indeed, that ought to be a bare minimum standard of qualification. There is simply no way we can restore civilian control of government and constitutional government until this agency can be thoroughly reigned in or abolished completely.

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“.. the party has announced two dozen slogans for May Day..”

“The vote for the Communist Party candidate for president, Nikolai Kharitonin, in the March election was just 4.37% — the lowest level ever reached. ”

• MAY DAY! MAY DAY! Celebration For Russia, Not A Stress Test (Helmer)

Every spring, when it’s certain no more snow will fall on Moscow, it helps to remember what the celebration stands for, and look forward with hope. Hope doesn’t come cheaply. In English and many other languages including Latin, May Day meant the return of fecundity, flowers, food harvests, and so hopefulness after winter, with entertainment from the randiest, cleverest, and silliest of the field creatures, the hare and the goat. Mayday! Mayday! That started in 1927 as an internationally recognized distress call put out on radio, which had nothing to do with the month of May. It started in French – m’aidez! “Help me!” That replaced the Morse code for SOS (“Save our Ship”) which was first adopted internationally in 1905. Mayday!, the radio call for help, was needed when radio replaced the telegraph and a speaking voice was required instead of taps and pips.

These days it’s the traditional left wing, based on workers’ movements, which need help. In France they have been superseded by spontaneous mobilizations, like the gilets jaunes, but they are failing against the Macron presidency; Keir Starmer’s British Labour Party is already a failure of the left before it defeats the Tories. There are leftwing movements in Germany and the US, but it is unlikely that such splinters can achieve more than splinters can – that’s pinpricks. Altogether, this left contributes next to nothing to the defeat of their governments, arms, and armies on the Ukrainian and Middle Eastern battlefields compared to the Russian Army and the Axis of Resistance. In Russia, the party of Marx and Engels has one leader embalmed and horizontal in Red Square; and a stone’s throw away in the State Duma, the current leader, Gennady Zyuganov, embalmed and vertical. The vote for the Communist Party candidate for president, Nikolai Kharitonin, in the March election was just 4.37% — the lowest level ever reached.

For this year’s May Day, the Communist Party has published no analysis of the current situation in Russia or party programme. Instead, it has called for a rally at the Karl Marx statue in front of the Bolshoi Theatre. In addition, the party has announced two dozen slogans for May Day. These include: “Long live the red May Day!”, “Proletarians of all countries, unite!”, “A job! Salary! Confidence in the future!”, “No increase in prices and tariffs!”, “Affordable housing for a young family!”, and “Scholarships at the minimum wage level!” The alternative leftwing Russian leaders, Sergei Glazyev and Mikhail Delyagin, have published nothing for May Day. Without mentioning May Day, Vzglyad, the semi-official platform for national security and economic analysis, has issued a report on a new government planning document setting out three scenarios for Russia’s economic future. The author is Vzglyad’s economics reporter, Olga Samofalova.

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“..to criticize Israel is anti-Semitic. That is the “enabling slur” of today’s assault on academic freedom.”

• “Have You No Sense of Decency?” (Michael Hudson)

The recent Congressional hearings leading to a bloodbath of university presidents brings back memories from my teen-age years in the 1950s when everyone’s eyes were glued to the TV broadcast of the McCarthy hearings. And the student revolts incited by vicious college presidents trying to stifle academic freedom when it opposes foreign unjust wars awakens memories of the 1960s protests against the Vietnam War and the campus clampdowns confronting police violence. I was the junior member of the “Columbia three” alongside Seymour Melman and my mentor Terence McCarthy (both of whom taught at Columbia’s Seeley Mudd School of Industrial Engineering; my job was mainly to handle publicity and publication). At the end of that decade, students occupied my office and all others at the New School’s graduate faculty in New York City – very peacefully, without disturbing any of my books and papers.

Only the epithets have changed. The invective “Communist” has been replaced by “anti-Semite,” and the renewal of police violence on campus has not yet led to a Kent State-style rifle barrage against protesters. But the common denominators are all here once again. A concerted effort has been organized to condemn and even to punish today’s nationwide student uprisings against the genocide occurring in Gaza and the West Bank. Just as the House Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC) aimed to end the careers of progressive actors, directors, professors and State Department officials unsympathetic to Chiang Kai-Shek or sympathetic to the Soviet Union from 1947 to 1975, today’s version aims at ending what remains of academic freedom in the United States.

The epithet of “communism” from 75 years ago has been updated to “anti-Semitism.” Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin has been replaced by Elise Stefanik, House Republican from upstate New York, and Senator “Scoop” Jackson upgraded to President Joe Biden. Harvard University President Claudine Gay (now forced to resign), former University of Pennsylvania President Elizabeth Magill (also given the boot), and Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth were called upon to abase themselves by promising to accuse peace advocates critical of U.S. foreign policy of anti-Semitism.

The most recent victim was Columbia’s president Nemat “Minouche” Shafik, a cosmopolitan opportunist with trilateral citizenship who enforced neoliberal economic policy as a high-ranking official at the IMF (where she was no stranger to the violence of “IMF riots) and the World Bank, and who brought her lawyers along to help her acquiesce in the Congressional Committee’s demands. She did that and more, all on her own. Despite being told not to by the faculty and student affairs committees, she called in the police to arrest peaceful demonstrators. This radical trespass of police violence against peaceful demonstrators (the police themselves attested to their peacefulness) triggered sympathetic revolts throughout the United States, met with even more violent police responses at Emory College in Atlanta and California State Polytechnic, where cell phone videos were quickly posted on various media platforms.

Just as intellectual freedom and free speech were attacked by HUAC 75 years ago, academic freedom is now under attack at these universities. The police have trespassed onto school grounds to accuse students themselves of trespassing, with violence reminiscent of the demonstrations that peaked in May 1970 when the Ohio National Guard shot Kent State students singing and speaking out against America’s war in Vietnam. Today’s demonstrations are in opposition to the Biden-Netanyahu genocide in Gaza and the West Bank. The more underlying crisis can be boiled down to the insistence by Benjamin Netanyahu that to criticize Israel is anti-Semitic. That is the “enabling slur” of today’s assault on academic freedom.

By “Israel,” Biden and Netanyahu mean specifically the right-wing Likud Party and its theocratic supporters aiming to create “a land without a [non-Jewish] people.” They assert that Jews owe their loyalty not to their current nationality (or humanity) but to Israel and its policy of driving the Gaza Strip’s millions of Palestinians into the sea by bombing them out of their homes, hospitals and refugee camps. The implication is that to support the International Court of Justice’s accusations that Israel is plausibly committing genocide is an anti-Semitic act. Supporting the UN resolutions vetoed by the United States is anti-Semitic. The claim is that Israel is defending itself and that protesting the genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank frightens Jewish students. But research by students at Columbia’s School of Journalism found that the complaints cited by the New York Times and other pro-Israeli media were made by non-students trying to spread the story that Israel’s violence was in self-defense.

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“..this hideous practice on the part of the Ukrainian authorities also unmistakably exhibits the legal elements of ethnic cleansing..”

• The Kiev Regime Must Not Get Away With It (Karganovic)

The neo-Nazi regime in Kiev engages in an unperceived, generously glossed over but extremely grave violation of humanitarian principles. It is one of many breaches in that regard, of course. But it must be held to account for this and ultimately for every single one. In the zone the regime still controls in Ukraine, as Russian troops advance the neo-Nazi junta compels the local population to abandon its habitations and to withdraw alongside the retreating Ukrainian armed forces. Since generally that occurs in predominantly ethnically Russian areas, the reluctance of the population to withdraw with what it regards as occupation troops is understandable. For that reason, this hideous practice on the part of the Ukrainian authorities also unmistakably exhibits the legal elements of ethnic cleansing. The political objective behind these compulsory population movements is to project the propaganda illusion that the civilian population in Ukraine are averse to the arrival of Russian forces and would prefer to live under Kiev regime rule.

Reports of forced deportation of local residents are plentiful (also see here, here, and here). A quick search of the internet will yield much additional evidence. Western governments and “human rights monitors” have remained utterly silent about this egregious conduct, which in the past they would have denounced vociferously whenever the perpetrators could be presented as actors hostile to the collective West’s political interests. In the present case, however, the perpetrators happen to be their Ukrainian proxies, recently rewarded with another tranche of multibillion dollar largesse. Hence the studious silence of the Western governments and media. The enablers are loath to publicise their vassals’ transgressions. What does international humanitarian law have to say about the forced displacement of civilians during armed conflict? Individual or mass deportations are prohibited, regardless of their motive, by the Fourth Geneva Convention (Art. 49).

Deportation refers to the forced transfer of civilians (or other persons protected by the Geneva Conventions) from the territory where they reside to the territory of the occupying power or to any other territory, whether occupied or not. Such acts are prosecutable according to the universal jurisdiction principle (Geneva Convention IV on Civilians, Art. 147). They can also be constitutive elements of crimes such as ethnic cleansing and genocide. There is a degree of ambiguity in the scope and application of the norm, which in Article 49 holds that “individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.” The presence of the related concept of “population transfer” further complicates the legal analysis because it seems to describe a forced movement of the population which takes place within the national territory and thus, perhaps, under the direction of the domestic authorities.

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“..It is not accurate to say everyone in the Republican Party is a conspiracy theorist but as with racists, all of the conspiracy theorists are Republicans.”

• “All of the Conspiracy Theorists are Republicans.” (Turley)

There has been a notable shift toward more and more extreme rhetoric in the media from predicting that democracy will end with this election to “disappearing” journalists and gays to ending all rights for everyone. On Monday, MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace added to this litany with a claim that “as with racists, all of the conspiracy theorists are Republicans.” After discussing how GOP candidates have stated that they believe that the last election was “stolen,” Wallace added “It is not accurate to say everyone in the Republican Party is a conspiracy theorist but as with racists, all of the conspiracy theorists are Republicans.” It was a crushingly ironic moment. Wallace has been repeatedly criticized for spreading false news. For example, the “Deadline: White House” host told viewers that they should not take the Hunter Biden laptop seriously: “We shouldn’t look at it as anything other than a Russian disinformation operation.”

Wallace heralded the Mueller investigation while pushing the now debunked Russian collusion claims. However, on the Durham investigation, she told viewers that they could ignore it despite the fact that the report stands uncontradicted: “Durham’s whole thing is predicated on it’s like a rabbit hole conspiracy that suggests that the Trump-Barr paranoia infected his ability to stand back and evaluate whether the probe yielded guilty convictions of people who would have had nothing to do with any of these questions he looked at.” Wallace and MSNBC also pushed false claims about Bill Barr clearing Lafayette Park for a Trump “photo op.” On August 5th, 2019, MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace falsely claimed that Trump had talked about “exterminating Latinos.”

Wallace and MSNBC pushed the false story of border agents whipping migrants in Texas. Wallace claimed that the lab theory of the Covid 19 was a “conspiracy theory.” It has been embraced by various federal agencies despite being called racist by many experts. Many on the left now routinely call opposing views as spreaders of disinformation or conspiracy theories. The Biden Administration has funded various groups to blacklist or bar those with opposing views as disinformation, malinformation, or misinformation. Indeed, new groups are being formed before the election to echo these claims, including one headed by the former “Disinformation Czar.”

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Interesting man.

• Russia Defends Traditional Values The West Is Abandoning – Dugin to Carlson (RT)

The ever-growing anti-Russia sentiment in the West stems from the fact that Russia adheres to traditional values that Western “progressives” are trying to destroy, philosopher and political commentator Aleksandr Dugin said in an interview with journalist Tucker Carlson that was posted on the latter’s YouTube channel on Monday. During the interview, Dugin laid out his view of the contemporary Western world and what he sees as the historical origins of its current ideology. He explained that the West has moved from “classical liberalism” – which professed individual freedom and democracy as understood as the rule of the majority – to a “new liberalism” defined by the rule of minorities and woke-ism. Rather than emphasizing freedom of the individual, the new incarnation of liberalism prescribes adherence to certain progressive values that are completely at odds with traditional values and in fact seeks to abolish them.

Carlson asked Dugin why many Westerners, even those who previously supported the Soviet Union, turned against Russia when President Vladimir Putin came to power in the early 2000s and started professing Russophobic ideas. The philosopher said that “Putin is a traditional leader” who defends traditional values, which run counter to those currently in vogue in the West. “When [Putin] came to power, from the very beginning, he started to extract Russia from global influence. He started to contradict the global progressive agenda… tried with success to restore traditional values – sovereignty of the state, Christianity, traditional family,” he said, explaining that Western progressives saw these developments as being in opposition to their values. This hatred is not something casual… it’s metaphysical. If your main task and main goal is to destroy traditional values – traditional family, traditional state, traditional relations, traditional beliefs – and someone with a nuclear weapon… stands strong defending traditional values you are going to abolish – they have some basis for this Russophobia and hatred for Putin.

In 2022, Dugin’s daughter Darya was killed in a car bombing in Moscow, which the Russian authorities claim was orchestrated by Ukrainian agents, a version also expressed by the US government. Darya, a journalist and political activist in her own right, was a vocal supporter of Russia’s military operation against Kiev. Russophobic sentiment has been growing exponentially in light of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the outbreak of which in 2022 the West has blamed squarely on Russia. NATO has branded Russia the “most significant and direct threat” to its members’ peace and security, and many Western leaders have claimed that Moscow would attack Europe if it secures victory in Ukraine. Russia has repeatedly said it has no such plans, with Putin last month dismissing such claims as “nonsense.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov last week called such ideas “horror stories” made up to divert attention from domestic problems in the West.

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“We’re talking about 11 contracts, 4.6 billion vaccines, and €71 billion of public money transferred to Big Pharma.”

• Pfizergate: Ursula von der Leyen’s Shady Covid Vaccine Deals (Marsden)

Forget this whole “election” charade and just glue the crown onto her head, already.Ursula von der Leyen, the unelected European Commission President, is up for job renewal in June. She’d have to be re-nominated by the majority of EU member state leaders and then re-confirmed by members of the newly-elected European Parliament. They’d have to be crazy to dethrone this ultimate incarnation of true EU values, like transparency and foresight (or rather, lack thereof). One particular tale about Queen Ursula comes to mind that perfectly illustrates the point.

During Covid, the European Union rolled out a bloc-wide QR code system as proof of vaccination for travel, leisure, and in some cases a condition of employment – even as reports started raising doubts about how reliable the shot really was when it came to stopping infection, transmission, and death. It’s like there was this interest in Brussels to move fast in getting shots into arms as quickly as possible, and setting up this digital identity system linked to jab status before the scary music stopped or people just tuned it out. Skeptical members of the European Parliament have been demanding to know what kind of deal the bloc’s leadership actually signed with the manufacturers of these injections. We’re talking about 11 contracts, 4.6 billion vaccines, and €71 billion of public money transferred to Big Pharma.

So far, neither the citizens who paid for all of it, nor their elected representatives have been able to get full transparency on those deals. According to research published last year by the French NGO Global Health Advocates, and the UK based health nonprofit, StopAids, the European Commission “agreed to extensive confidentiality requirements with pharmaceutical corporations that may not be fully consistent with EU legislation,” and that of the contracts analyzed with AstraZeneca, Pfizer, and Moderna, “the Pfizer contract was the most significantly redacted.” Specifically, they noted that the European Commission “redacted the most information about product safety and indemnification in the Pfizer and Moderna contract,” concluding that “it looks like most of the risk was borne by the EU in a desperate attempt to get access to these vaccines.”

The reports also draw attention to the lack of interest on the part of certain Big Pharma CEOs when it comes to accountability towards their customers – their end-clients who received and ultimately paid for the jabs: average EU citizens. “We provided Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and Moderna the opportunity to react to the claims… but we did not receive a response,” the NGOs said. It turns out that Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla is also the same person who was exchanging private text messages with von der Leyen the month before the Pfizer contract was negotiated. How do we know that? Because she said so herself in April of 2021 in a New York Times interview. While she was busy doing that, questions arose over how German defense contracts were being awarded. Politico reported on it in 2019, citing the increased use of consultants during her time in office, and she ultimately copped to “mistakes” having been made. Nor would they be the last of their kind, apparently.

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“Everything has gone haywire in the White House,” Zakharova said.”

• US Politicians ‘Living In Wonderland’ – Moscow (RT)

US calls for Russia to hold talks on ending the Ukraine conflict seem detached from reality and ignore Moscow’s previous attempts to reach a settlement, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken insisted on Monday that Moscow’s alleged plans “to erase Ukraine from the map… failed.” He added that he hopes Russian President Vladimir Putin has taken note of Western support for Ukraine, “gets the message, and demonstrates a willingness to genuinely negotiate consistent with the basic principles… of the international community and the UN Charter: sovereignty, territorial integrity, independence.” Responding to Blinken’s remarks later that day, Zakharova said American politicians seem to live in a “wonderland.”

She recalled that in 2014 and 2015, Russia “showed respect for international law” by promoting the now-defunct Minsk agreements, which sought to end the bloodshed in the region by giving the two Donbass republics special status within the Ukrainian state. Moscow has claimed that Kiev and Western countries never intended to implement the deal in the first place. Former Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko, ex-German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and ex-French President Francois Hollande have admitted that the primary purpose of the agreements was to help Kiev buy time to build a stronger military force. Zakharova also noted that Moscow was ready to engage in peace talks in 2022. At the time, negotiations in Istanbul, Türkiye initially made headway, but later collapsed after what Russia claims was interference by then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who allegedly advised Kiev to keep fighting. Johnson has denied the accusation.

The spokeswoman stated that Blinken himself had proposed settling the conflict “based not on international law,” but on the ‘peace formula’ proposed by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, which demands that Russia withdraw all troops from the territory Kiev claims as its own and includes several other clauses that Moscow has rejected as unacceptable. “Everything has gone haywire in the White House,” Zakharova said. Moscow maintains that it is open to talks with Ukraine. However, Zelensky signed a decree in autumn 2022 barring negotiations with the current leadership in Moscow. The move came after four former Ukrainian regions voted overwhelmingly to join Russia.

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“There is a straight line between this relentless, politically motivated fear-mongering and the thought that Fascism in some American incarnation is hard upon us..”

• This Isn’t Fascism (Patrick Lawrence)

On April 19, just as a court in Lower Manhattan finished selecting a jury to hear the farcical “hush money” case against Donald Trump, a 37-year-old Floridian named Max Azzarello set himself ablaze across the street from the courthouse. Azzarello, by subsequent accounts, was a peaceable man, an agreeable neighbor, and was much taken up with questions of social justice. He was also no slouch on the academic side: Azzarello had a degree in anthropology from the University of North Carolina and a master’s in urban planning from Rutgers. To go by the mainstream press reports, Azzarello seems to have lost it somewhat after his mother died two years ago this month. But it is not anyone’s place, other than those close to him, to go any more deeply, or even this far, into the man’s psychiatric profile. Max Azzarello did have something to say to the rest of us as he stood in the park across from the Center Street Courthouse, however.

Just before setting himself ablaze, he held up a placard that read, in all caps, “TRUMP IS WITH BIDEN AND THEY’RE ABOUT TO FASCIST COUP US.” We ought to pay attention to this. An apparently capable man, by all accounts a compassionate man, died dreading an imminent Fascist takeover in America. This makes me very angry. To go straight to my point: A human life is wasted in consequence of a ridiculous, paranoiac idea that has for some time circulated among us either out of foolishness or for the most cynical of political motives. I was very sad to learn of Aaron Bushnell’s self-immolation before the Israeli Embassy in Washington on February 25. I was sad to read of Max Azzarello’s final act, too, but in a different way. Bushnell died for “what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers,” as he put it in his final moments. An Air Force enlistee, Bushnell declared he could “no longer be complicit in genocide.” His last words were “Free Palestine!” One would rather Bushnell were still with us, but his was an honorable death.

Azzarello died in a state of confusion and delusion, and I draw this conclusion from the message on his placard. His death honored no one. I will go so far as to say there are many among us who dishonorably bear responsibility for it. Readers of this column may have noted over the months that I am a stickler for nomenclature. To name things properly is essential to our understanding. It enables us to act, if we are so inclined, because we are clear in our minds as to what is to be done. To name things improperly causes all kinds of problems. It leaves us confused and deluded, as in the case of Max Azzarello. It can paralyze us. Or if we choose to act, we are likely to act wrongly. As in the case of Max Azzarello. There are so many misnomers abroad among us, amid the panic on our sinking ship, one sometimes grows weary of language altogether. Russia is an aggressor, China is an imperialist power, Israel is a democracy, and so on through the Orwellian lexicon: War is peace, etc.

On the domestic side, the Jan. 6, 2021, protests at the Capitol were an attempted coup. Or an insurrection. We have Donald Trump is a tyrant. We have Donald Trump is a dictator — “King Trump,” I am now reading in The New York Times. And we have it that America, as per the late Max Azzarello and countless other like him, is on the eve of a Fascist takeover. Much of this, let’s call it the pollution of public discourse, comes from the liberal authoritarians. Rachel Maddow, to take one of the more pitiful cases, wants us to think Trump the dictator will end elections, destroy the courts, and render the Congress powerless. The MSNBC commentator has actually said these things on air. One-man rule is the theme, if you listen to the Rachel Maddows. The evident intent is to cast Donald Trump in the most fearsome light possible, as it becomes clear Trump could well defeat President Biden at the polls come Nov. 5. We can mark this stuff down to crude politicking in an election year, surely. There is nothing new in it. But this is not the point.

There is a straight line between this relentless, politically motivated fear-mongering and the thought that Fascism in some American incarnation is hard upon us — a straight line, this is to say, from our Rachel Maddows to the self-immolation of Max Azzarello. This is the point.

Read more …

Muscle cars.

• Cars Used to Make Us Happy (Paul Craig Roberts)

I attended a classic car show recently and realized why my generation was so happy compared to the current ones. Cars in those days were beautiful and the muscle car element had glorious sounds. Beginning in 1954 but especially with the advent of the 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air coup and Ford Fairlane coup you were looking at beauty enhanced by two-tone paint jobs. Some were a combination of pastels. Others were combinations of strong colors–red and black, yellow and black, red and white, and some were a combination of a strong color and a pastel–navy blue and French blue, pink and black. In 1955 Chevrolet brought back the V-8 for its cars, and it was a performer. A stock ’55 Chevy V-8 was a match for our souped up 1950 Ford flatheads. What you could do to that 55 Chevy V-8 was something else. So many of the cars, not only Chevrolets and Fords, but also Pontiac, Oldsmobile, and Dodges had beautiful two-tone paint jobs and delightful styling. The cars also offered wonderful visibility. You could see where you were going, backing up, and what was on either side.

For us what constituted safety was visibility, good brakes, and maneuverability. The mid to late 60s into 1972-73 was the muscle car era. The cars had appealing design as they were designed by designers and not by safety bureaucrats. Some of the colors were outrageous–plum crazy purple, bright lime green, triple black, orange. Such outstanding colors usually indicated potent performance. How fast were the muscle cars of a half century ago? Very. Plymouth Barracudas, Superbirds, Dusters, Roadrunners, Dodge Daytonas, Chargers, Ford Torinos, Oldsmobile Cutlasses, 442s, Pontaic GTOs, Firebirds, Chevrolet Chevelles, Cameros could compete in quarter mile times with the supercar of the era, a Lamborghini Miura S (1970). The muscle cars would leave in the dust James Bond’s Aston Martin DB5, Ferrari’s 250 GT Lusso, and even beat fast cars from 20 and 30 years later such as the Lotus Esprit Turbo (1988) and Subaru’s 2001 WRX.

Moreover, a muscle car could be souped up to high heaven. Some of them run 9 and 10 second quarter mile times, which beats the entire range of today’s supercars, such as Ferrari, Porsche, Lamborghini, Corvettes, and Shelby Mustangs. Not many of the souped up muscle cars from a half century ago can beat the present day Dodge Demon, but they can run with it. The thing about muscle cars is that they were so fast that you didn’t need to soup them up like you did a 1950s Ford flathead or a 55 Chevy. Muscle cars date from the days of 30 cents per gallon gasoline, and in those days it was 100 octane. The combination of low purchase cost (a Plymouth Barracuda with a Hemi engine cost $4,000), operating cost, style, and performance made them a deal that no longer exists. Today’s cars are loaded down with electronics and “safety” that you don’t need and that is difficult to live with and costly. If the tire pressure in my safe car drops from 32 to 31 on come warning lights and notices on my screen.

You have to go through a pointless exercise and then spend half an hour figuring out how to turn off the warning indicators. Moreover, the accepted safety style comes from federal safety bureaucrats. Consequently, unless you can see the Mercedes star, you can’t tell one from a Toyota. Today all cars look alike. And you have 4 color choices–white, black, gray, and a dark red. Mopar performance cars, Corvettes, and performance Mustangs are bringing back striking colors and their performance products have a striking appearance. They certainly get your attention, but they are not beautiful. At a large car show cars from the past and present will be on display. The older cars are beautiful. The new ones are aggressive and heavy in appearance. They don’t inspire. They drive well but they don’t make you happy. They look brutish, like American foreign policy. In my teenage years driving down a road was like driving along a rainbow. Colors everywhere. Distinctive styles with no possibility of confusing one make with another, glorious sounds if a muscle car passed you, and wonderful visibility.

All of this ended when the fools up high decided to make us safe. One of the consequences has been that we can’t see out of our cars. My safety designer car has great forward vision unless I turn left down hill. Then the massive pillar that makes me safe blocks all vision. There could be a dog, a child, a huge pothole in the road and I am unable to see it. Rear vision depends on cameras, but they are useless when you are backing out of a parking slot in a shopping center. You can see behind you but not on your side as the enormous pillar blocks all vision. When the massive trucks of today are parked along side of you, it is a game of Russian Roulette to back out. The emphasis on safety has homogenized car design. There is no distinction, and there are no shapes that work with two-tone paint. The modern car world is drab, and drabness produces depression. Thus, the cost of our bureaucratic imposed safety is depression. We are mired in sameness and brutal shapes. When did you last see a happy American?

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Change of guard

 

 

Bukele bribery

 

 

Dog trust
https://twitter.com/i/status/1785120887844266358

 

 

Cowswim

 

 

 

 

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Ukraine’s GUR, Not ISIS-K, Is The Prime Suspect

Mar 252024
 
 March 25, 2024  Posted by at 11:55 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , ,  11 Responses »


Paul Gauguin The wave 1888

 

From what I’ve read so far, ISIS is about the least likely suspect for the Crocus massacre. If only because the CIA fingered them within minutes of the event. Russia will need to do a very thorough investigation, and hard evidence, to keep its people calm. Andrew Korybko has more:

 

 

Andrew Korybko:

 

Speculation has swirled since Friday night’s terrorist attack at the Crocus City Hall venue in Moscow over whether ISIS-K was really responsible like the group claimed or if Ukraine’s military-intelligence service GUR orchestrated everything under the cover of its agents posing as members of that group. The Mainstream Media is running with the first scenario while doing their utmost to discredit the second, but recalling the GUR’s terrorist history and ties with radical Islamists shows that it’s not above suspicion.

They were responsible for assassinating Darya Dugina in summer 2022, carrying out the Crimean Bridge truck bomb attack that fall, assassinating Vladlen Tatarsky in spring 2023, and the cross–border terrorist raids by the so-called “Russian Volunteer Corps” over the past year. They’re also tied to Crimean Tatar terrorists and ISIS-linked Chechen ones. The CIA is connected with these terrorist acts and groups too after the Washington Post reported last fall that they rebuilt the GUR from the ground-up after 2014.

The modern-day GUR is a product of the CIA, which certainly shared with its protégés everything that it learned while waging the ongoing Hybrid War on Syria, not to mention their terrorist contacts as well. It was through this meticulous cultivation that GUR chief Kirill Budanov obtained his bloodlust that was on full display last spring when he declared that “we’ve been killing Russians and we will keep killing Russians anywhere on the face of this world until the complete victory of Ukraine.”

For as lethal as the GUR has become over the past decade, it’s still a CIA knockoff, which is why it’s expected to make sloppy mistakes from time to time. This is relevant when it comes to the latest attack after ISIS-K claimed responsibility using an outdated news template, thus suggesting that someone else claimed credit in their name at first but then ISIS-K opportunistically ran with it for clout. Considering its terrorist history and ties with radical Islamists, that mysterious actor was arguably the GUR.  

What likely happened is that their agents posed as members of that terrorist group in order to retain plausible deniability in case the planned attack was foiled or the terrorists were caught afterwards. One of the Tajiks who was captured in the car that was racing towards the Ukrainian border claimed that they were recruited by the curators of a radical Telegram channel just a month ago to carry out the attack using already cached arms in exchange for a debit card payment of around $5000 each.

These nationals were probably chosen by the GUR since some of them are predisposed to religious radicalism due to the lingering legacy of Tajikistan’s Islamist-inspired civil war from the 1990s, their country abuts ISIS-K’s Afghan headquarters, and they have visa-free travel privileges to Russia. Accordingly, they were allegedly recruited via a radical Telegram channel, ISIS-K’s involvement doesn’t seem entirely implausible, and they were able to easily enter Russia with minimal scrutiny.

They weren’t radical enough to go out with guns blazing or in a suicide blast like ISIS-K is known for, however, but were still sufficiently sympathetic with that group’s ideology to carry out what they believed was its latest mission in exchange for money. This explains why they fled from the scene of the crime, which is contrary to what any affiliate of that group would ever do, after machine-gunning dozens of people and setting fire to the venue.

Had they reached Ukraine, where the FSB confirmed that they had contacts and President Putin said that “a window was prepared for them…to cross over”, then they’d likely have been killed by the GUR to cover everything up. It shouldn’t be forgotten that this group learned how to conduct terrorism from the CIA, which in turn perfected this practice in Syria over the past 13 years of the Hybrid War that it’s been waging there, but the GUR is still a knockoff and that’s why they made three sloppy mistakes.

In the order that they occurred, their first mistake was recruiting people who weren’t ready to fight to the death at the scene of their forthcoming terrorist attack. This led to the culprits being captured and spilling the beans about how they were recruited in exchange for money, which is one of the signs that ISIS-K wasn’t behind what happened since their members always expect to die as “martyrs”. Accordingly, the fact that this mistake was made suggests that the GUR was desperate to go through with their plans.

The second mistake was that they didn’t tell their proxies to flee to a safe house right after the attack to meet a contact that’ll then help them reach the border later on but who’d actually kill them once they meet in order to cover everything up. This led to them racing towards the Ukrainian border, thus showing everyone that they at the very least felt that they’d find sanctuary there, which made Russia’s claim of Ukrainian involvement much more believable for many skeptical Westerners.

And finally, the last mistake was that the GUR used an outdated news template to claim credit for the attack on behalf of ISIS-K, who they correctly predicted would opportunistically run with it for clout. By doing so, however, they signaled that the group itself didn’t play a role in organizing what happened otherwise their more modern template would have been used instead. Taken together, these three sloppy mistakes discredited the Mainstream Media’s narrative and drew attention to the GUR instead.

Coupled with its terrorist history and ties with radical Islamic groups, which respectively prove that it has the capabilities and intent to carry out the Crocus attack as well as the knowledge required to impersonate extremists online for recruiting purposes, all of this makes the GUR the prime suspect. It learned everything about terrorism from the CIA, but since it’s still a knockoff, it made a series of sloppy mistakes that resulted in incriminating Ukraine instead of lending false credence to the ISIS-K narrative.

 

 

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Debt Rattle March 23 2024

Mar 232024
 
 March 23, 2024  Posted by at 9:46 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  37 Responses »


Edvard Munch Spring in Johan Karl Street 1891

 

• Trump: “I Almost Have Five Hundred Million Dollars In Cash” (ZH)
• Trump’s Third Act Has Begun. It’s a Beauty. (Scott Adams)
• Wake-up Call (James Howard Kunstler)
• No Ukraine Talks Because US Threatens Zelensky – Seymour Hersh (Sp.)
• Let NATO Troops Enter Ukraine. The War Will End Much Faster Then – Orban (VV)
• Russia is at War – Kremlin (RT)
• Macron Believes Ukraine Could Fall Soon – Politico (RT)
• La Macronnerie of a Failed French President: Ukraine (Jay)
• France’s Megalomaniac Macron is Gambling With World Peace (SCF)
• EU Eyes ‘Groundbreaking’ Change On Ukraine Arms Funding (RT)
• Ukraine Makes Fresh Move To Draft More Soldiers (RT)
• Washington In Denial Over Putin’s Victory While Gaming Its Own Elections (Cox)
• World Sees Gaza as ‘US Genocide’ Not Just Israel’s (Sp.)
• CIA Told DOJ to Stay Away from Kevin Morris in Hunter Biden Probe (Turley)
• CIA Protecting Biden by Blocking IRS Interviews – Whistleblower (DeMartino)
• Global Population Set To Fall For First Time In 700 Years (MN)

 

 


BREAKING: Shareholders have just voted to let Trump’s company, Trump Media & Technology Group, which owns Truth Social, become a public company, which could earn Trump $4 billion. NOTE: However, if Trump wants to use this money to help with his legal issues in a fraud case by Letitia James, he has to get special permission to sell his shares early. NOTE: Trump’s company will start being traded on the stock market under the symbol “DJT” as soon as next week.

 

 

Letitia

 

 

Vivek

 

 

Lawfare
https://twitter.com/i/status/1770861500103557197

 

 

Cannon

 

 

There’s plenty of money for enhanced border security in the $1.2 Trillion funding package. Just not the US border.

 

 

Stephen Miller

 

 

Watters

 

 

Watters Fani

 

 

Immigration

 

 

Will The Supreme Court Recognize Voter Fraud And Ensure It Doesn’t Happen in 2024?

 

 

 

 

“Letitia James is about to hand Trump a huge victory…… when she seizes Trump Tower, the case is now federal bc Trumps Atty’s are ready to go into Federal Court, claiming his 8th Amendment rights have been violated. Thus putting an immediate freeze on her. Many are wondering why a federal judge hasn’t stepped in…. well the reason is…. she hasn’t acted on her threats yet…. so Trump’s Constitutional rights have yet to be violated.”

• Trump: “I Almost Have Five Hundred Million Dollars In Cash” (ZH)

Former President Trump on Friday said on Truth Social that “through hard work, talent, and luck, I currently have almost five hundred million dollars in cash.” The announcement comes as a Monday deadline fast approaches for him to come up with roughly $454 million to stay judgement in his civil fraud case while he appeals. According to Trump, he had intended to use a “substantial amount” of his money in his presidential campaign. “THE OFTEN OVERTURNED POLITICAL HACK JUDGE ON THE RIGGED AND CORRUPT A.G. CASE, WHERE I HAVE DONE NOTHING WRONG, KNEW THIS, WANTED TO TAKE IT AWAY FROM ME,” President Trump wrote. “THAT’S WHERE AND WHY HE CAME UP WITH THE SHOCKING NUMBER WHICH, COUPLED WITH HIS CRAZY INTEREST DEMAND, IS APPROXIMATELY $454,000,000,” he continued.

As the Epoch Times notes further: “The judgment total was $363 million, but breaks down with about $355 million of that specifically applying to President Trump, $4 million to be recovered from Eric Trump, $4 million to be recovered from Donald Trump Jr., and $1 million to be recovered from former Trump Organization finance chief Allen Weisselberg. With the applied 9 percent interest, court filings say the bond comes out to more than $464 million, with a little more than $10 million of that attributed to judgment on Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Mr. Weisselberg. Judgment was entered on Feb. 23, kicking off a 30-day clock to post the massive sum, set to expire on March 25. President Trump, in the post, decried the ruling as an example of “communism in America.” Meanwhile, even the AP found that in 70 years of similar cases involving civil fraud, Trump’s stood out as unique.

President Trump is billions of dollars richer after shareholders in Digital World Acquisition Corp (DWAC) on Friday approved a merger with Trump’s media startup, Truth Social. The long-delayed merger adds roughly $3.5 billion to Trump’s net worth – however the former president won’t be able to sell any shares for at least six months unless the board waives it (or they can back a loan), raising questions over whether he’ll be able to leverage it to secure a $464 million bond in his New York civil fraud case – which his lawyers say is “impossible” to secure due to a lack of cash on hand. If Trump can’t secure the giant sum by Monday, he risks the seizure of assets – which New York has already begun positioning itself to do. Earlier this week, DWAC sued to force its former CEO, Patrick Orlando, to vote his 14.77% shareholding in favor of the merger, despite an ongoing dispute over compensation, Axios and FT report. Orlando was on the shareholder vote call.

“The professional relationship between Mr Orlando and Digital World became strained and has continued to deteriorate such that there is no assurance that Mr Orlando as a current member of our board or as a controlling affiliate of the sponsor will be co-operative,” DWAC warned in a filing last month. Following the merger, DWAC will effectively cease to exist, and will be replaced by TMTG – which will be listed on the Nasdaq. Its board of directors will include Donald Trump Jr. as well as several former members of the Trump White House, the report continues. Former Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) will serve as TMTG’s CEO. Meanwhile, and perhaps in anticipation of Trump selling to satisfy the bond, DWAC shares have plummeted on the news to the tune of 8% in early trading.

Beyond Trump’s massive payout from the deal, three hedge funds also stand to make huge profits – Anson Funds, Mangrove Capital Partners and All Blue Capital, which participated in a $50mm convertible debt offering earlier this year after other funds had walked away. They’re sitting on over $400 million in gains as of Thursday’s closing price. “The return will be amazing,” said one person involved in the financing, per FT. “Trump’s advisers have been keeping him on the sidelines . . . they want to get this vote clear with no issues with the government. Then, on Tuesday when it starts trading, it is game on for Trump.”

https://twitter.com/i/status/1770991128948420912

Read more …

X thread. “Trump turned Leticia James into his best fundraiser..”

• Trump’s Third Act Has Begun. It’s a Beauty. (Scott Adams)

Next week, Trump could make over $4 billion when his media company goes public, removing all doubt about his billionaire status. And you can stop asking if he would have been better off putting his inheritance in a savings account in the 70s. I expect Trump to leave a 15% tip for Leticia James and the Democrats because they made his windfall possible by hunting him and censoring him for years. You can call it a bond, not a tip, if you prefer. When the Supreme Court tosses out the unconstitutional fine, Trump gets most of his “tip” back. The Democrats planned to cripple Trump financially so he couldn’t spend as much on the campaign. Trump turned Leticia James into his best fundraiser. Lots of interesting developments lately on the topic of the 2020 election. The Simulation wants at least one of those fresh allegations to be a Kraken.

Trump’s legal maneuvering is likely to keep him eligible for the election. You can fantasize about a heroic Democrat such as Newsom swooping in and replacing Biden, but it’s looking less likely every day. If it had always been the plan, it would have happened by now. Looks like Biden has to stay on the job to keep the Biden Crime Family out of jail. The predictable Democrat Summer Hoax will add some excitement, but it will be forgotten and debunked by November. Trump’s upcoming victory is looking like it will be, as Trump says, “too big to rig.” And by that I mean Democrats will try to rig it anyway and get caught. That will be fun.

The gears of the machine have become visible. We can all see the FBI is rotten and the DOJ is weaponized. We know the border is open intentionally. We know the cartels are working with our government. We know our elections are DESIGNED to not be auditable and there’s only one reason for it. We can see Biden is not in charge. We know the Ukraine war was always about its energy resources and who gets to own them. We know our rising debt is ruinous. We know our experts are liars. We know our pharma and food industries are poisoning us. We know our government is racist. We know the corporate media is essentially owned by Democrats who are controlled by intelligence entities and they are actively brainwashing the population. We know the 1st and 2nd amendments, and X, are under sustained government attack because they are the public’s last defense against the government. But we are not quitters. And the odds do not apply to us.

Trump Ad

Read more …

“But fiends got to fiend, and if you try to deprive them of being fiends then you are guilty of “hate.“

• Wake-up Call (James Howard Kunstler)

Can you feel it? The tension rising to the red-line? It runs clear through all of Western Civ. We are ruled by governments of fiends. But now, the sun rides higher in the sky. The sap is rising in the northern forests. The earth heaves. The buds swell and blush. Something is in the air. The animals are waking from their long winter sleep. The natives are restless. The two traditional political divisions, liberal and conservative died with Covid. Now there are simply the sane versus the insane. The sane have had enough of being pushed around by the insane. The insane don’t register much of what reality tries to tell them. They have a body of insane ideas to comfort and protect them from the reality’s rigors. To call that body of ideas an “ideology” is way too polite. That the insane call themselves “progressive,” is a signature of their insanity. Progress toward what better state of things? Toward a supremacy of fiends, sadists, degenerates, and morons seizing riches and power by every dishonest means possible outside the rule of law and common decency?

It’s not even suitable to call them “communists.” They lack the necessary idealism for that. They don’t expect to put their shoulders to the wheel with their fellow man. They just want to grab your stuff and then kill you so they don’t have to hear any complaints. The insane do not believe any of the theoretical bullshit they want to force you to swallow. They don’t care about climate change. It’s just a cudgel they use to beat everyone over the head so they can steal your stuff. They don’t care about “democracy.” It’s just a line of bullshit to cover up their election-stealing. Do you suppose that sane people would keep using electronic vote-tabulating machines that were demonstrably connected to the Internet, and thus hackable, if they cared about election integrity? Of course not. They would arrange p.d.q. to junk them and use paper ballots, and only in person at polling places, with “absentee” exceptions only for people out of the country.

The insane do not care about public health. Everything that is known about the Covid-19 vaccinations tells you that they are unsafe and don’t prevent infection or transmission of a flu-like illness that might not even be what it was officially labeled as. Our public health officials in the FDA, the CDC, and in other corners of the Department of health and Human Services, lie about everything they’re responsible for. This week, the CDC (under Director Mandy Cohen) released a 148-page study on myocarditis reactions to mRNA shots. Every word on every page of the document was redacted. The CDC printed countless copies of the report with 148 utterly blank pages, and then proffered them to the news media. How is that not insane? The insane do not care about the rule of law. The conduct of “Lawfare” is the subversion of the law by dishonest means. It is a species of racketeering. And that is why Lawfare rogues such Marc Elias, Norm Eisen, Andrew Weissmann, Mary McCord, Lisa Monaco, Matthew Graves, and Merrick Garland, should be charged under the federal RICO statutes for conspiring to deprive sane citizens of their rights and property in the many cases related to the 1/6/21 riot at the US Capitol.

It is, so far, an abiding mystery of contemporary history as to how New York Attorney General Letitia James managed to get away with prosecuting a real estate case against Donald Trump that was no more than victimless business-as-usual between a borrower and his lenders. Ms. James ran for that elected office promising to “get” Mr. Trump on something, anything. That is not how the rule of law works. Under the rule of law, first you determine that there is a crime and then look for who did the crime. Letitia James must be insane and/or pretty stupid. The short-term gain of stealing Mr. Trump’s property under a false color-of-law and creating impediments to his election campaign, will, sooner or later, blow back at her as a matter of malicious prosecution and, plausibly, racketeering as well. (With whom did she conspire to bring this case? We shall find out.) She will eventually be disgraced publicly as her teammate Fani Willis has already been disgraced in Fulton County, Georgia.

I’ll tell you something that all sane people now know but won’t talk about for fear of being crushed by the levers of Lawfare: this looks like a concerted effort by people-of-color to railroad people of non-color. If you think that is a good thing for race relations in our country, then you are insane. Here are a bunch of other things that are insane: Re-litigating the first amendment is insane. It means what it says, and states it plainly. The open border is insane. No credible sovereign polity would allow it. It would be opposed with force, if necessary. Turning children into transsexuals on a wholesale basis is insane, and fiendishly so. Everybody knows that it is not good for the children or for our society as a whole. But fiends got to fiend, and if you try to deprive them of being fiends then you are guilty of “hate.”

Read more …

‘No negotiations or settlement or we won’t support your government with the $45 billion in non-military funds [that Ukraine is now receiving annually..'”

• No Ukraine Talks Because US Threatens Zelensky – Seymour Hersh (Sp.)

Negotiations on resolving the conflict in Ukraine could have started months ago, but US authorities threatened Vladimir Zelensky with withdrawal of non-military funding, US journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh said in an article on Substack. “We were on the verge of a reasonable negotiation several months ago before Putin’s re-election and Zelensky’s military degradation. The US leaders got wind of the possibility and gave Zelensky the ultimatum-‘No negotiations or settlement or we won’t support your government with the $45 billion in non-military funds [that Ukraine is now receiving annually,'” the source told the journalist. According to Hersh’s information, US intelligence community recognises that “Ukraine has little chance of winning…”

Hersh’s interlocutor also added that US President Joe Biden has staked on confronting the “Russian threat to NATO” and will not change his course under any circumstances, while the end is inevitable. “There is no road to victory for Ukraine, and it will end with Putin as an historical icon in Russia…,” the source concluded. In autumn 2022, Zelensky signed a decree according to which his country will not negotiate with Russia as long as it is led by Vladimir Putin. Russia, for its part, has repeatedly noted its readiness to discuss the settlement of the conflict through diplomatic means. As Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov emphasised, the Russia does not see any prerequisites for a peaceful transition of the situation, and sovereignty over the new Russian regions and Crimea is not up for discussion.

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X thread. “And the West will get a lesson for memory that it is bad to fight with Russia..”

• Let NATO Troops Enter Ukraine. The War Will End Much Faster Then – Orban (VV)

Viktor Orban: “It’s a strange feeling when you come from Hungary to Brussels. Hungary looks like a completely normal country. We have a calm and rational mindset, and if you come to Brussels and talk to politicians, you will be surprised. There is a military mood, military language, military logic. The leaders talk as if they are waging their own war against Russia. And now they are saying that soldiers should be stationed in Ukraine. It is not clear exactly what they mean, where they should be stationed, with what weapons and for what purposes. But they have already begun to prepare for the fact that in this situation it will be quite natural if Western European countries deploy military posts on the territory of Ukraine, which shocks Hungarians.

Therefore, I felt as if I had entered another galaxy, and we must be careful not to fall into the psychosis of these twenty or so state leaders. [How far are Western leaders willing to go in terms of supporting Ukraine? The most disturbing thing about this whole story is that two or three months ago it was unthinkable, now, two or three months later, it becomes an ordinary event.” That’s what I said – the worse, the better. Ukraine attacked the Belgorod region. Where is Ukraine’s energy sector now? Russia has always needed a good kick in the ass for it to act. So, let NATO troops enter Ukraine. The war will end much faster then. And the West will get a lesson for memory that it is bad to fight with Russia.

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“..Peskov explained that despite the conflict “de facto turning into a war,” legally it remains classified in Russia as a special military operation..”

• Russia is at War – Kremlin (RT)

Russia’s military operation in Ukraine has turned into full-fledged war after the West became a participant in the conflict, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview with national media published on Friday. Moscow will continue to pursue its goal of ensuring that the Ukrainian military cannot pose a threat to Russian citizens or territory, the spokesman told the Argumenti i Fakty newspaper, noting that the country now has four new federal subjects which must be protected and fully liberated from Kiev’s forces. Peskov stressed that Russia cannot allow the existence on its borders of a state that publicly claims it will seize the Crimean Peninsula as well as Russia’s new territories, referring to the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics and Zaporozhye and Kherson regions.

“We are at war,” Peskov stated, explaining that while the conflict began as a special military operation, as soon as “the collective West became a participant in this on the side of Ukraine, for us it became a war.” In a phone conversation with journalists later in the day, Peskov explained that despite the conflict “de facto turning into a war,” legally it remains classified in Russia as a special military operation and that nothing has changed in that regard. The Russian Defense Ministry recently reported that since the start of the military operation in Ukraine in February 2022, over 13,000 foreign nationals have taken part in the fighting on the side of Kiev’s forces.

Of these fighters, which Moscow describes as mercenaries, some 5,962 have been “eliminated,” according to the ministry. Most of them came from Poland, Georgia, the US, Canada, the UK, Romania, Germany, and France, it reported. The head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), Sergey Naryshkin, claimed earlier this week that France is preparing its forces for deployment to Ukraine and is allegedly looking to send as many as 2,000 troops to fight for Kiev. French President Emmanuel Macron has hinted in recent weeks at the possible deployment of NATO forces to Ukraine, stating he could not “exclude” this possibility while branding Russia an “adversary.” Moscow has warned that such a step would likely lead to a direct clash between Russian and NATO forces, which, according to President Vladimir Putin, would be “one step shy of a full-scale World War III.”

Katyusha

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“..Marine Le Pen [..] accused the president last week of “hijacking” the Ukraine issue for the sake of domestic electoral politics..”

• Macron Believes Ukraine Could Fall Soon – Politico (RT)

French President Emmanuel Macron believes Ukraine might be defeated on the battlefield in short order, the French edition of Politico reported on Wednesday. The outlet’s Playbook section spoke with several members of the president’s party who had attended a working dinner at the Elysee Palace the evening before. While most of the discussion centered on the upcoming European Parliament elections, the Ukraine conflict also came up. “Ukraine could fall very quickly,” one of the outlet’s sources quoted Macron as saying. Macron ramped up his rhetoric about Ukraine a few weeks after a number of French nationals fighting on behalf of Kiev were killed in a Russian missile strike. At a meeting of EU leaders in Paris in late February, he refused to rule out the possibility of a NATO intervention in Ukraine.

Though the idea was quickly rejected by almost all members of the US-led bloc and its secretary-general, Macron doubled down, declaring there would be “no limits” to French support for Kiev and calling Russia an “adversary.” Meanwhile, the French Army’s Chief of Staff Pierre Schill announced that the country’s military was “ready,” presumably for a war. Moscow has strongly condemned Macron’s remarks and cautioned NATO against taking further hostile moves. According to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, the deployment of Western soldiers to Ukraine would make direct conflict with Russia “inevitable.” Marine Le Pen, a prominent member of the opposition National Rally party and Macron’s rival in the 2022 election, accused the president last week of “hijacking” the Ukraine issue for the sake of domestic electoral politics. Polls have shown that the French support helping Kiev with weapons and money, but draw the line at getting involved directly with boots on the ground.

Concerns that Kiev might be losing the war appear to be based on several French military assessments leaked earlier this month to the outlet Marianne. One report, following Kiev’s summer offensive, concluded that Ukraine could not win the conflict by military means. Another described the Battle of Avdeevka as a Ukrainian rout and had the French military “in cold sweat,” according to Marianne. A few days later, the daily Le Monde claimed that Macron’s talk of possibly sending troops dated all the way back to June 2023, when the Ukrainian counteroffensive was just starting. General Schill also told the outlet that Macron’s public statements have been “foremost a political and strategic message” to Russia about France’s “will and commitment,” rather than an actual escalation.

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“Western elites have the technology and well-trained soldiers. What they lack is the stamina and political courage to face the baptism of outrage once body bags start arriving back on home soil..”

• La Macronnerie of a Failed French President: Ukraine (Jay)

Just what is Emmanuel Macron thinking with his recent media trysts which have gained the attention of the world? Initially, we thought his statements about sending French troops to Ukraine to fight Russian forces was merely chaf to throw up in the air to distract journalists and a gullible French public. It’s true, it has rattled Germany which promptly replied to Macron, reminding him that EU countries are not “at war with Russia” – a curious statement given that just a week earlier, a leaked audio conversation with German air force chiefs revealed that they wanted to send Taurus missiles to Ukraine so as to hit the Crimean bridge. Of course, now that we all know what the intentions of the Germans were, Scholz has been forced to backpedal and downplay the scandal, sticking to its position of neutrality. But if you think that’s funny, wait until you see what Macron has in store for Old Europe.

Could it be really true that he believes French troops could end up in Ukraine? A quick glance at the actual quote from Le Parisienne interview would suggest the opposite and that he’s hedging his bets, or, as some suspect trying to bait the Americans into wanting to get there first. Is this what the British expression “jumping the gun” really means? “Maybe at some point – I don’t want it, I won’t take the initiative – we will have to have operations on the ground, whatever they may be, to counter the Russian forces,” he is quoted as saying. In reality, it seems as though he has been misquoted as there is no story here. Even he is saying on the record that he won’t authorise it. So is he hinting at other western countries taking the lead, perhaps the Poles, Lithuanians and Latvians? Possibly. But in reality, the most likely scenario would be the U.S. biting the bullet and financing a private army made up of various nationalities.

Yet even this initiative would need to be prepared for media and even Russia itself so that the underlying point is clear: this is not a NATO war. Of course, this thinking is fatally flawed as it is based on a premise that Putin wouldn’t dare retaliate against those units of troops who he knows are located in a particular spot, as this could invoke Article V of the NATO treaty itself. Yet any two-bit geopolitical hack who knows Putin, knows this would not stop him as killing western troops – or even better capturing a small number – would mean the end of the West’s intervention. Western elites have the technology and well-trained soldiers. What they lack is the stamina and political courage to face the baptism of outrage once body bags start arriving back on home soil. It may well mean, for Macron, if he were ever to entertain the idea of French troops, that it would or could be African troops from former French colonies enrolled under private contracts as mercenaries.

But as I saw in Somalia in 1993, Western leaders like Clinton had no stomach whatsoever for even a small number of their own being killed or captured. Osama bin Laden watched how Clinton soiled his own pants when just 18 soldiers died in the spectacular U.S. Rangers failure in Mogadishu with an operation which was supposed to take an hour. Black Hawk Down and its implications inspired Bin Laden to bomb both the Dar Es Salam and Nairobi U.S. embassies after seeing how vulnerable the West is fighting terrorism, or merely sticking its nose into other countries problems. All it actually took was Newsweek to run a cover of a U.S. soldier’s body being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu to make Clinton not only pull out of Somalia altogether, but convince the UN itself to leave later in 1995. It also meant that the West would not help hundreds of thousands of victims of the civil war in Rwanda which led to the genocide in 1994. One U.S. soldier. One Newsweek cover.

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“..the French military contingency does not make sense from a military point of view, unless that is, the ulterior objective is to incite escalation..”

• France’s Megalomaniac Macron is Gambling With World Peace (SCF)

It is unequivocally clear that if France or any other NATO member deploys combat troops to Ukraine, those troops will be targeted and killed by Russian firepower. In that case, the proxy war in Ukraine becomes an all-out war between the U.S.-led NATO alliance and Russia. That is, World War Three will have started, which in all probability leads inexorably to a nuclear conflagration. Anyone pushing that trajectory is contemptible and criminal. Step up, Monsieur Macron. This narcissistic wannabe Napoleon figure has been pushing the envelope for several weeks now since he hosted a conference on Ukraine in Paris on February 26 when he began publicly toying with the notion of sending NATO troops to Ukraine to combat Russia. This week, Russian foreign intelligence chief Sergei Naryshkin claimed that a contingent of 2,000 French military personnel were preparing to enter the Ukraine conflict. France’s military commanders vehemently dismissed the Russian intelligence claim, decrying it as an “irresponsible provocation”.

Just who is being provocative here? The alleged French deployment is consistent with the unhinged and belligerent rhetoric of French President Emmanuel Macron over the past three weeks during which he has been hinting at sending troops and of having “no red lines” to make sure that Russia does not win the war in Ukraine. Macron – like a puerile character – has also taken to goading other European leaders, notably his German counterpart, about not being “cowards” when it comes to supporting Ukraine. Let’s be clear. NATO soldiers and weapons have been in Ukraine since the CIA-backed coup in Kiev in 2014 that installed a Russian-hating NeoNazi regime. The NATO proxy war has been targeting Russia for over a decade and killed more than 10,000 ethnic Russian civilians during a low-intensity war of aggression in formerly Eastern Ukraine. That aggression was finally countered when Russian forces intervened in Ukraine on February 24, 2022. However, the deployment of NATO combat battalions on the ground takes the conflict to the threshold of all-out war.

And Monsieur Macron appears to be willing to go there (while directing from his plush leather armchair in Elysée Palace and swirling a tumbler of vintage whiskey, bien sûr.) Russian President Vladimir Putin has said on several occasions – and most recently as of last week – that if Russia is threatened existentially, even with conventional weapons, then it reserves the right to use nuclear weapons for its defense. Putin warned that nuclear weapons exist to be used. The Russian doctrine for possible nuclear war is well-defined and long-established. Putin is not saber-rattling as the Western media stupidly make out. He is merely reminding potential enemies of the ultimate reality. Given the appalling stakes involved, it may seem bewildering that France’s Macron keeps talking about the possibility of deploying French and other NATO troops to fight in Ukraine. What is driving the French head of state to make such crass allusions?

First of all, it should be noted that such military contingents are crass from an objective military point of view. The deployment of 2,000 French troops would change nothing on the battlefield. They would be destroyed in two days, as American military analyst Scott Ritter points out. The risk is that the casualties inflicted on France would trigger other NATO members to intervene with greater numbers and firepower. That would lead to a spiraling escalation towards all-out nuclear war. As well as France, the Poles and Baltic states appear to be gung-ho about sending combat units. So, the French military contingency does not make sense from a military point of view, unless that is, the ulterior objective is to incite escalation. In other words, the French battle group is deliberately put forward as a sacrificial lamb to act as a tripwire for full NATO mobilization to war.

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“..by circumventing a clause in the bloc’s founding treaty..”

• EU Eyes ‘Groundbreaking’ Change On Ukraine Arms Funding (RT)

EU officials are seeking legal advice on how to unlock more military spending for Ukraine by circumventing a clause in the bloc’s founding treaty, the Financial Times reported on Thursday. The move would involve bypassing a section of the Treaty on European Union which forbids charging expenditure that has “military or defense implications” to the bloc’s joint budget. Such funding can be directly provided by member states, but individual governments can opt out of paying, even if they don’t vote against the spending itself. The European Commission, the EU’s executive body, has proposed a legal task force to evaluate whether the section in question, Article 41(2), can be circumvented so that it doesn’t prevent Brussels from buying weapons for Ukraine to support it in the conflict with Russia, four people familiar with the matter told the British newspaper. Kiev’s military effort against Russia is currently being funded through the European Peace Facility (EPF), which exists outside of the bloc’s joint budget.

The legal theory is that Article 41(2) should apply only to the EU’s own military programs and not foreign states, the FT reported. If the interpretation is applied, “it would be absolutely groundbreaking,” one source said. Talks, however, are at an early stage and may not end in Kiev’s favor, the newspaper reported. Even if changes are made, member states may challenge them in court. While many EU countries support military assistance for Ukraine, Hungary and Slovakia are in opposition. They argue that continued weapons deliveries merely result in more bloodshed, as opposed to a Russian defeat, and stand in the way of possible peace talks. There are also neutral members, such as Austria, which favor non-lethal assistance only. Last year the EU vowed to supply 1 million artillery shells to Ukraine by March 2024, but has failed to deliver on the pledge. Ukrainian officials have complained that assistance from Western donors has been lackluster in both amount and capability.

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“..medical commissions would no longer classify Ukrainian recruits as ‘fit for limited military service’. She argued that “this will make life easier for tens of thousands of people.”

• Ukraine Makes Fresh Move To Draft More Soldiers (RT)

Ukrainian recruits deemed ‘fit for limited military service’ could soon be thrown into the thick of the fighting after the nation’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, moved to abolish the term altogether. A bill to that effect was supported by the Rada on Thursday. According to the text, those who have been classified as fit for military service with restrictions would have to undergo a medical examination within the next nine months to determine their new health status, and whether they could be deployed to the front line. Those deemed fit for limited service could only be called up during time of war, and are not supposed to fill frontline positions, being allowed to serve only in support and rear units. The push to change conscription legislation comes amid calls from numerous officials in Kiev that every Ukrainian citizen should serve his country during the conflict with Russia. Commenting on the bill on national TV, Deputy Defense Minister Natalya Kalmykova said that medical commissions would no longer classify Ukrainian recruits as ‘fit for limited military service’. She argued that “this will make life easier for tens of thousands of people.”

“Both the service members and their relatives asked the Defense Ministry and other authorities to resolve this issue. We are very glad that the Verkhovna Rada has supported these changes,” she added. Meanwhile, since late December, Ukrainian lawmakers have been mulling a controversial bill that would lower the minimum conscription age from 27 to 25 to compensate for battlefield losses, with reported plans to call up around 500,000 troops. In early February, the legislation was passed in its first reading after numerous amendments. Later in the month, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu estimated Ukraine’s losses at more than 444,000 troops since the start of the conflict in February 2022. On Wednesday, the minister claimed that Kiev’s casualties had reached 71,000 troops this year alone, a figure he said was three times the losses during the same period last year. However, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky claimed in February that Kiev had sustained only 31,000 soldiers killed since the start of the conflict. He did not disclose how many were injured or missing in action.

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“Unlike most Western leaders, Putin is on the side of his own citizens..”

• Washington In Denial Over Putin’s Victory While Gaming Its Own Elections (Cox)

America’s legacy media and political ruling class have thrown a predictably massive hissy fit over last weekend’s Russian election, insisting that President Vladimir Putin’s landslide victory was “preordained” and “stage-managed.” Every protest and anti-Putin statement before, during, and after the election was amplified. Every allegation of misconduct was reported with zero scrutiny or skepticism. Washington and its allies decried the results, arguing that the vote wasn’t free or fair. UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron went so far as to call it “illegal.” The pearl-clutching over Russia’s vote was the most intense I’ve ever seen over a foreign election. It was so inordinate, in fact, that it reminded me of the nonstop media coverage last month after Russian political activist Alexey Navalny died in a Siberian penal colony.

The same media that showed no concern over the death of US journalist Gonzalo Lira in a Ukrainian jail – after he had been tortured, at American taxpayer expense, for daring to criticize the Kiev regime – huffed and puffed for weeks about the death of a Russian citizen in a Russian prison. Lost in all the hysteria over Putin’s victory is the fact that most of the Russian people like their president. The incumbent won over 87% of the votes, and as even CNN begrudgingly acknowledged before the election, a poll last month showed that Putin had an 86% approval rating. That compares with a 9% approval rating for Navalny, the great Western hope for destabilizing Russia, in a January 2023 poll. And by the way, it also compares with US President Joe Biden’s approval rating of around 38%. As US policy analyst Jeffrey Sachs explained in an interview this week with Russia-hating podcaster Piers Morgan, Putin’s popularity and reelection reflect the will of the Russian people. “It’s part of Russian culture,” said Sachs, who advised the Moscow and Kiev governments after the breakup of the Soviet Union.

“He’s a strong leader. The Russian people expect a strong leader, and we have to deal with a strong leader in Russia.” Therein lies the problem. Team America is unwilling to accept strong leadership of Russia with broad public support. Having failed to cripple Russia or its leadership through the proxy war in Ukraine, the US and its allies are in no mood to accept the political reality in Moscow. The political pouting was so bad in Berlin that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government refused to refer to Putin as Russia’s president. This is the same government that is mulling plans to ban one of Germany’s most popular opposition parties. However, for all the Western criticism of Putin and his policies, it’s not easy to argue that he doesn’t try to represent the interests of the Russian people. Unlike most Western leaders, Putin is on the side of his own citizens. He hit the nail on the head when he said Western attacks were directed not at him, but at “the forces that stand behind me, which seek to strengthen Russia – to improve its sovereignty, defense, and economic independence.”

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“..he does not think China will ever invest in Israel again. “They see on their own social media networks what you and I are seeing..”

• World Sees Gaza as ‘US Genocide’ Not Just Israel’s (Sp.)

On Tuesday, four critical care doctors who recently returned from Gaza spoke to the UN. “I saw the most appalling atrocities, and I saw things I never would have expected to have seen in any healthcare setting,” Dr. Nick Maynard said, adding that he saw “mass indiscriminate bombing” and targeting of healthcare workers. Americans do not understand how badly the United States’ reputation has been damaged across the world, which sees Gaza as “a US genocide” and “not just an Israeli genocide,” Mohammad Marandi, a professor of English literature and Orientalism at the University of Tehran told Sputnik’s The Critical Hour on Thursday. “It’s revealing the reality of [the US] empire in a way that not even [author of ‘A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn] could do because it’s being done in front of our eyes, it’s being done in front of a global audience. We’ve never seen such a thing before,” Marandi said, adding that he suspects that is why the US is attempting to ban TikTok.

“The United States has lost credibility across the world. I don’t think many Americans understand how bad this has become for the United States. People across the world see this as a US genocide, it’s not just an Israeli genocide.” Co-host Wilmer Leon asked about a recent freeze on Canadian arms shipments to Israel, which Marandi said showed that “public opinion is shifting” but that ultimately “stopping Canadian exports of weapons is nothing.” Marandi said Canada needs to take a much tougher approach. “They sanctioned Syria… they’ve imposed sanctions on Cuba, on Venezuela, on Iran, on Yemen. Why don’t they impose sanctions on Israel? They’re carrying out a holocaust. Why don’t they hit the economy?” Marandi asked, noting that Israel will, unlike Russia, be allowed to participate in the Olympics. “No one takes this seriously. And, of course, the bulk of the weapons come from the United States anyway.”

“In any case, there is no reason to believe that the Canadian government cares about Palestinians, that they oppose the genocide because they’ve done absolutely nothing to stop it,” Marandi added. Ultimately, Marandi believes that Israel has laid the path for its destruction through its actions in Gaza. “I believe that the Israelis have made a fatal mistake and that what they’ve done in Gaza will be the beginning of the end of the Zionist project,” he asserted. “The real catastrophe for the Israeli regime is the fact that it’s been carrying out the genocide for almost six months in front of the world and it has demolished the facade that the regime had created for itself… about it being a democracy… All that is gone now and across the board the regime is despised and the image of the United States has been destroyed.” Marandi noted that he has been to China twice and public opinion there has shifted as well. He noted that he does not think China will ever invest in Israel again. “They see on their own social media networks what you and I are seeing,” he noted.

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“He’s Hunter’s confidant, art patron, business partner, and his lawyer. Now there is a suggestion that we might have to add CIA asset or protected person..”

• CIA Told DOJ to Stay Away from Kevin Morris in Hunter Biden Probe (Turley)

The New York Post has created a stir in Washington with its report that a whistleblower claims that the CIA reportedly blocked federal investigators from interviewing Kevin Morris, the entertainment lawyer who has subsidized the expenses and bought the art of Hunter Biden. (For full disclosure, Morris previously threatened me with a defamation lawsuit over my writing about his representation of Hunter. Fortunately, I have not received any summons from either the courts or the CIA). We will have to wait for more details on the allegations, but the response of the CIA struck me as rather curious. As discussed earlier, the Hollywood lawyer, producer and Democratic donor has emerged as a major figure in the corruption scandal surrounding Hunter Biden. For years, some of us have complained that we are not sure what Morris was at any given moment.

What became clear in the deposition is that Morris does not appear certain himself. He’s Hunter’s confidant, art patron, business partner, and his lawyer. Now there is a suggestion that we might have to add CIA asset or protected person. The unnamed whistleblower told the House Oversight and Judiciary that the “intelligence agency stopped IRS and Justice Department investigators from interviewing Morris in August 2021.” That has led Oversight chairman James Comer (R-KY) and Judiciary chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) to demand answers from the CIA on whether two DOJ officials were summoned to CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. to discourage their interviewing Morris.

Given the allegations of special treatment by the Justice Department (including blocking efforts to interview Hunter or search Biden properties), the allegation is obviously quite serious. One would expect that the CIA would simply say that no such meeting related to the Hunter Biden investigation occurred. Instead, the agency responded that it “does not obstruct investigations.” The spokesman added “CIA does not comment on specific investigations. We can say that CIA cooperates with law enforcement partners and does not obstruct investigations. CIA also fully and routinely cooperates with our oversight committees and will continue to do so.”

Hunter met Morris when he attended a political fundraiser as a major donor. Soon thereafter, he warned Biden associates that Hunter’s unpaid taxes raised political problems during Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential run. He later proceeded to pay off Hunter’s taxes and to subsidize his lavish lifestyle. He also took an apparent lead in planning public campaigns against the critics of the Bidens, reportedly pushing a scorched-earth approach to attack potential witnesses and accusers. Then Morris seemed to take on the role of Hunter’s bank and art patron. He reportedly gave millions to Hunter while insisting that they are loans, not gifts. Most recently, it was revealed that, despite accounts of buyers flocking to buy Hunter’s overpriced art, it was Morris all along who bought most of the pieces. How the CIA would fit into any of this is anyone’s guess.

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“..why would you have 12 people armed with shotguns and machine guns, raid a doctor’s home in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and four years later never indict him?”

• CIA Protecting Biden by Blocking IRS Interviews – Whistleblower (DeMartino)

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jordan and Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman Comer revealed that a whistleblower told them the CIA intervened to prevent the IRS from interviewing Kevin Morris, an associate of Hunter Biden who loaned him millions of dollars, as part of the IRS investigation into the first son’s alleged tax crimes. The CIA said it would not comment on specific cases but added that while it cooperates with other law agencies, it does not interfere with investigations and claims to be fully cooperative with its oversight committees. Jordan and Comer have sent a letter to the CIA requesting more information, but have not yet received a response. They set a deadline for April 4, 2024. If the whistleblower’s testimony is true, it would represent an unprecedented move by the CIA that is tasked with countering foreign threats.

Brad Birkenfeld, a whistleblower who exposed tax fraud and money laundering schemes in the Swiss banking system, told Sputnik’s Political Misfits that the problem is that “so many people are trying to help the Bidens get out of the illegal conduct that they’re doing,” noting that he has himself attempted to provide investigators with information on the Hunter Biden case, but was met hostile response. “I was introduced to Dr. Keith Ablow, [who] was Hunter Biden’s psychiatrist,” Birkenfeld began. “He wanted me to help him with his whistleblowing case.” Birkenfeld says that Ablow told him things about Hunter Biden but that Ablow didn’t show for meetings that Birkenfeld set up for him in Washington. “Then I went to Senator [Charles] Grassley’s (R-IA) office and Senator [Ron] Johnson’s (R-WI) office, and I felt obligated as an American citizen to tell them about the information that [Ablow] had relayed to us,” including Hunter Biden’s involvement with Monkey Island, a Liquified Natural Gas company in Louisiana.

“Two days later, lo and behold, the Drug Enforcement Agency in Boston raided Dr. Keith Ablow’s home,” Birkenfeld continued. “[The DEA] took everything. Now, why would you have 12 people armed with shotguns and machine guns, raid a doctor’s home in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and four years later never indict him?” “Whatever the CIA does,” Birkenfeld added while discussing the CIA’s past, including their support of dictators Augusto Pinochet, Saddam Hussein and Ferdinand Marcos, as well as their alleged efforts to undermine Donald Trump while he served as President. “Whatever the CIA does, this is like Cartoon Network over there in Langley. Yes, they do a job and some people work well. But there’s a lot of idiots over there that should be fired and prosecuted. And that’s the facts.”

Birkenfeld added earlier that Joe Biden -while serving as Vice President- was briefed in defense meetings “about his son interfering in US policies.” That, as of yet, has not been alleged by the committees investigating Hunter Biden but Birkenfeld insisted that it is “not conjecture.” “A lot of people don’t know this yet, but this is exactly what’s going to be coming out,” he asserted. While Democrats have consistently declared that the committees have yet to find any concrete evidence that President Biden committed any crimes, Birkenfeld argues that is because the power centers in Washington continue to obfuscate the case by blocking investigative efforts. “Give us the bank records, give us the credit cards offshore, and we can piece it together. But, once again, the Biden White House is obstructing, the DOJ is obstructing, the FBI is obstructing, the CIA [is] obstructing. So nobody can get the facts.”

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“..the potential causes of fertility decline, such as plastics and chemical shrinking penises and sperm counts, are relatively ignored..”

“In countries like South Korea and Japan, there are twice as many people dying as there are being born..”

• Global Population Set To Fall For First Time In 700 Years (MN)

A major study published in scientific journal The Lancet has found that the global population will start to fall within decades due to vastly reduced fertility rates and may never recover. The study, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, found that by the year 2050, 155 of 204 countries are on course to have birth rates lower than required to sustain the population level. It notes that as of 2021, the “total fertility rate” worldwide was 2.23, hovering only just above the 2.1 children per woman needed to maintain population growth. That figure has fallen from 4.84 in 1950, with researchers predicting it will decrease to 1.83 in 2050 and go as low as 1.59 by 2100. The study notes that by that time only 26 countries will have birth rates that outpace the number of people dying, with “most of the world transitioning into natural population decline”. A fall in population would mark the first time in seven centuries such an occurrence has taken place. The last time it happened was after the Black Death bubonic plague pandemic killed as many as 50 million people in the mid-1300s, reducing the global population from 400 million to 350 million.


Dramatic declines in global fertility rates set to transform global population patterns by 2100

Commenting on the study, it’s co-author Dr Natalia Bhattacharjee said declining fertility rates “will completely reconfigure the global economy and the international balance of power and will necessitate reorganising societies”. Bhattacharjee, lead research scientist at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, also noted that a major consequence will be increased immigration from countries where there is still a “baby boom,” such as sub-Saharan Africa, in order to make up workforce shortages in nations with aging populations. Professor Stein Emil Vollset, senior author from IHME, also noted that the world is “facing staggering social change through the 21st century” due to population decline. The findings are exactly what the likes of Elon Musk have been warning of for years, describing population decline as a ‘civilisational threat’ and urging that humanity is literally going to disappear if something is not done to reverse the trend.

While Eco loons rage about ‘moral issues’ with having children, the potential causes of fertility decline, such as plastics and chemical shrinking penises and sperm counts, are relatively ignored. The stark reality is that birth rates globally are collapsing and almost every country is on course to have shrinking populations by the end of the century. In countries like South Korea and Japan, there are twice as many people dying as there are being born. You don’t have to be a mathematic genius to do the calculations on what’s going to happen very soon. These countries are already considering embracing mass migration, with South Korea’s Justice Minister recently declaring the country faces a “demographic catastrophe” and potential extinction otherwise. Despite this horrifying reality, it is now commonplace in modern culture for young people to genuinely believe they need to abandon their human instincts to reproduce, all for the greater good.

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McCullough: Spike proteins from Saliva
https://twitter.com/i/status/1770987637257413092

 

 

FDA loses its war on ivermectin and agrees to remove all social media posts and consumer directives regarding ivermectin and COVID, including its most popular tweet in FDA history.

 

 

Shark
https://twitter.com/i/status/1770998255851036861

 

 

Fish

 

 

Elephant
https://twitter.com/i/status/1771065184980742232
https://twitter.com/i/status/1771160969823027645

 

 

How?

 

 


Find “A”

 

 

Queen of the night

 

 

 

 

Deep-Sea Ghost Shark

 

 

Lion up close

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in wartime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle March 3 2024

Mar 032024
 
 March 3, 2024  Posted by at 9:35 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  16 Responses »


Edward Hopper Cape Cod evening 1939

 

• Ukraine is Major Defeat for West Who Has Been Dominating Planet Earth (Sp.)
• NATO Teetering on Edge of Direct Conflict With Russia (Sp.)
• Ukraine Will Be ‘The Largest Operation In CIA History’ (HE)
• NATO’s Presence in Ukraine is ‘Hardly Surprising for Anyone’ (Sp.)
• Germans Plotting Attack on Russian Infrastructure: A Bridge Too Far (Jay)
• ‘Sheer Incompetence and Ignorance’ Led to Plan to Attack Crimean Bridge (Sp.)
• German and French Leaders ‘Don’t Get Along’ – Bloomberg (RT)
• Erik Prince Calls For ‘Ugly Peace’ In Ukraine (RT)
• German Healthcare System Should Prepare For War – Minister (RT)
• The West Can’t Be Trusted To Observe Its Own ‘Red Lines’ In Ukraine (Amar)
• Settlement In Ukraine Impossible Without Moscow – China (TASS)
• Heavy Losses Inflict ‘Dramatic Manpower Crisis’ On Israel (Cradle)
• Trump Trounces Haley In Idaho, Missouri, And Michigan (ZH)
• The Pipe Bombs Before Jan. 6: Capital Mystery That Doesn’t Add Up (Julie Kelly)
• Federal Health Agencies and the COVID Cartel: What Are They Hiding? (AMD)

 

 

 

 

View

 

 

 

 

Hatch Act

 

 

 

 

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Dangerous moment.

“..now are going to have to get accustomed to a bitter new reality..”

• Ukraine is Major Defeat for West Who Has Been Dominating Planet Earth (Sp.)

The conflict in Ukraine represents a major defeat for powers who have gotten used to “dominating planet Earth for hundreds of years” and are going to have to “get accustomed to a bitter new reality,” Dr. Gerald Horne, a professor of History at the University of Houston told Sputnik’s The Critical Hour on Friday. The topic of discussion was French PM Emmanuel Macron’s comments that he would not rule out sending NATO troops into Ukraine to fight Russia, which led to several of Macron’s allies, including UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz ruling out the possibility. Russian President Vladimir Putin in turn warned against the escalations, saying that it could lead to nuclear war. “Everything that they are thinking up now, that they are scaring the world with, it all really poses the threat of a conflict involving nuclear weapons, and therefore, the destruction of civilization. Don’t they understand this?” Putin asked during his annual state-of-the-nation speech.

“[Western politicians] have already forgotten what war is,” Putin said, adding later that they apparently “Think that these are just some cartoons.” Horne explained that NATO’s position is “the worst of both worlds,” because “it is enmeshed in a war it cannot win, but it can’t afford to lose. And when you are in such a corner, inevitably, it leads to the kinds of intemperate remarks of Mr. Macron, it leads to Rishi Sunak of London dispatching the flower of British youth to an uncertain fate in Ukraine,” he said, referring to comments by Scholz that there are already UK personnel in Ukraine operating Storm Shadow missile launches. “I think taxpayers and US citizens should ask themselves how all these think thanks and bureaucrats at the State Department and Pentagon… manage this kind of potential quagmire that NATO and the United States are now enmeshed in?”

The international situation is not what the White House bargained for, Horne said, but “rather than make a sober assessment and trying to make the best out of this rather daunting situation, they’re floating ideas about nuclear conflict, they’re floating ideas about escalation in Ukraine, they’re floating rather harebrained ideas concerning Russia, supposedly putting weapons in outer space. “We see that this is a major defeat that has been inflicted upon the powers that have been dominating planet Earth for hundreds of years, and now are going to have to get accustomed to a bitter new reality,” Horne said.

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“They are spilling the beans in order to somehow stop this, so that the public of their countries support them, so as not to cross the Rubicon, so as not to get involved in a direct open war..”

• NATO Teetering on Edge of Direct Conflict With Russia (Sp.)

A recording of German military officers discussing a potential attack on the Crimean Bridge was released by Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of RT and Rossiya Segodnya, Sputnik’s parent media group, on March 1. Judging from the transcript, NATO soldiers from the UK, the US and France have been operating in the Ukraine combat zone for quite a while. “A significant part of the weapons used by the Ukrainian Armed Forces is supplied from the West,” Leonid Reshetnikov, a retired lieutenant general of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), told Sputnik. “In addition, there is a considerable presence of Western intelligence operatives from NATO countries in Ukraine. They have long settled there, in Ukraine, even before 2014 – the intelligence services of the US, the UK, and also other countries.”

Likewise, when transferring sophisticated and high-precision weapons to Ukraine, NATO countries usually also dispatch maintenance personnel, repair staff and crews to operate this equipment to the combat zone, the retired intelligence officer continued. “They have no time for training the Ukraine military in the midst of the special military operation. Therefore the crews of these [NATO] countries have been operating or firing systems such as Patriot air defense systems and other systems supplied by the Americans, NATO members, the French, and the British for quite a while. Of course, they are not deployed at the very forefront, but they operate artillery, air defense systems, and partially tanks,” Reshetnikov said. Similarly, NATO Special Forces disguised as mercenaries have also been deployed in the zone of the special military operation, according to the intelligence veteran.

“Yes, there are indeed some mercenaries [in Ukraine] who had been engaged in this business well before the special military operation. But starting from the mid-2022 or the beginning of 2023, there has been a systematic recruitment of active [NATO] units,” he said. Reshetnikov explained that under this scenario, NATO Special Ops soldiers formally leave their unit and go to the zone of the special military operation as volunteers. However, they are not only paid for participating in hostilities on Ukraine’s side, but also retain the income they received while serving in the army of a NATO country. Thus, Special Forces from the US, the UK and France are fighting on the ground pretending to be mere mercenaries. Given all of the above, one can see that NATO is really involved in the Ukraine conflict and is actively fighting on the side of the Kiev regime, the intelligence veteran emphasized.

Prior to the Bundeswehr release, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz came under fierce criticism for disclosing information about the presence of the British and French military in the combat zone in Ukraine. According to Scholz, Western soldiers have been dispatched to operate long-range Storm Shadow and SCALP cruise missiles and help Ukrainian fire at Russian targets. Speaking to journalists in Berlin earlier this week, Scholz explained why Berlin hesitates to send Taurus missiles to Ukraine. “This is a very far-reaching weapon,” Scholz said about the Taurus. “What the British and French are doing in terms of target control and support for target control cannot be done in Germany.” Berlin’s French and British allies lambasted the German chancellor for what they called a “flagrant abuse of intelligence”.

[..] Reshetnikov outlined two opposite trends. According to him, there are Western politicians, who, like Emmanuel Macron, are willing to expand NATO’s involvement in the Ukraine conflict. However, there are also others, who fear that the alliance’s presence in the conflict zone may lead to direct confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia. The latter are openly speaking about NATO’s involvement to trigger a public debate and resentment about getting bogged down in Ukraine, according to the intelligence veteran. “They are spilling the beans in order to somehow stop this, so that the public of their countries support them, so as not to cross the Rubicon, so as not to get involved in a direct open war,” he stressed.

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“We were riding high and riding dirty. And that’s what this was, we thought we were unstoppable and we could just coup anyone we wanted, there’d never be any repercussions..”

• Ukraine Will Be ‘The Largest Operation In CIA History’ (HE)

Jack Posobiec hosted guest Mike Benz on Human Events Daily Thursday to hear his take on the New York Times article that detailed the CIA’s involvement in Ukraine prior to the Russia invasion, which Benz said will reveal itself to be “the largest operation in CIA history.” The pair unpacked the reasoning behind the New York Times releasing their story which essentially agreed with what conservative commentators such as Posobiec have been saying since the war began. “This is actually such a shocking moment in American journalist history,” Benz stated. “These are highly highly, highly classified operations.” He said that “It’s my contention that when the dust settles on this, the Ukraine skirmish in the aftermath of the 2014 Maidan coup is going to ultimately be the largest operation in CIA history.” Compared to the CIA’s Syrian operation under Barack Obama, which was revealed to be the most expensive operation up to this point, Ukraine will blow it out of the water once all said and done, Benz said.

Posobiec clarified that Benz was implying the NYT article was a “limited hangout” when “an operation becomes so compromised, or public knowledge or public interest becomes so obvious around something,” that the CIA begins to unveil pieces of the big picture, like an “onion.” When the US involved itself in Ukraine in the Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Brennan era, “We were riding high and riding dirty. And that’s what this was, we thought we were unstoppable and we could just coup anyone we wanted, there’d never be any repercussions, and no one would ever stand up for themselves, and Russia would never actually backstop it,” Benz said. This, however, was a “serious miscalculation.” “And when it turned out that their own population didn’t support these dirty tricks, either in the form of the rise of a populace presidential candidate like Donald Trump who was running on putting America first in domestic priorities over foreign policy,” he explained, “then all hell broke loose.”

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“We are being made a target for Russian weapons and this matter must be discussed. The citizens must be informed about how carelessly and irresponsibly politics [in Germany] are being conducted..”

• NATO’s Presence in Ukraine is ‘Hardly Surprising for Anyone’ (Sp.)

The German military made headlines this week after a recording of officials discussing the possible shipments of Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine and the use of these weapons against targets in Russia was disclosed by Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of RT and Rossiya Segodnya, Sputnik’s parent media group. In the recording, the German officers can be heard mulling various issues related to the transfer of Taurus missiles to the Kiev regime, as well as how to avoid implicating Germany’s involvement in the conflict while doing so. According to Eugen Schmidt, a member of the German parliament from the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, the officers in question were likely not pursuing objectives of their own but were merely preparing for the possibility of Berlin approving the transfer of the missiles to Kiev.

“They act on political directives coming from above. That is, they follow orders, just like any military does. They do not act on their own initiative. So if a political decision on shipping the missiles is made, they would have to follow through,” Schmidt said. The lawmaker compared the current situation with the Taurus missiles to the Leopard tanks, which Germany was initially reluctant to supply to Ukraine but ultimately did after caving in to pressure from both the German political opposition and the “so-called allies from across the ocean.” “I do not know what really goes on in the defense ministry, but I suspect that the military were expecting certain political factions to force through the decision on missile shipments,” he said. “Besides, the French and the British are already sending similar missiles [to Ukraine], so the military likely assumed that Germany would have to do the same. And so they started calculating what would they have to do to make it happen.”

Commenting on the remarks made by the German officers during the conversation about a British and US military presence in Ukraine, Schmidt noted that NATO does wage a war against Russia, just not directly but by using Ukraine as a proxy. “So the presence of [foreign] military personnel there is hardly surprising to anybody, especially when it comes to planning operations, maintaining NATO military hardware and so on,” he said. At the same time, Schmidt pointed out, the powers that be in Western countries keep telling their citizens that there is no NATO military personnel in Ukraine. “They are painting a whole different picture for the common people, even though everyone realizes that there is NATO personnel there, a lot of them, not on the frontline but, shall we say, in the second or third echelon,” he added.

Schmidt also lamented that only the AfD, the German political party he represents, openly declares that a conflict with a nuclear power and the actions of the German government are detrimental to Germany’s security whereas other parties in the country prefer to keep quiet on such matters. “We are being made a target for Russian weapons and this matter must be discussed. The citizens must be informed about how carelessly and irresponsibly politics [in Germany] are being conducted at the expense of our safety,’ he said.

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“..the Germans have decades ahead of them in how be an effective fighting force on the international stage when they are so plagued by rank amateurism..”

• Germans Plotting Attack on Russian Infrastructure: A Bridge Too Far (Jay)

When, at the beginning of the Ukraine war Scholz had his “moment” in the German parliament where he announced a new level or military spending many Germans paused and became nervous about the possibility of history repeating itself. But they were not alone. Many Europeans wondered about how wise the move was as it propelled a weak and ineffective coalition government down a dangerous and treacherous path towards exactly the same circumstances which led to the collapse of democracy in the 1930s and the rapid emergence of Hitler and his so-called “socialist” party: nationalism. Also, comical are the number of times these officials talk about the British who they call “the English” and how they consider them to be such important partners in the war against Russia, not only from a strategic standpoint but also a financial one. Roger and Fritz are closer than they’ve ever been.

But the obsession with the Crimean bridge is interesting as the transcripts reveal that it is on the Ukrainian side where the idea to hit it comes. The German airforce senior officials are sceptical about hitting the bridge with sufficient impact to actually destroy it and even less convinced that the Ukrainians can do this on their own. The idea of a French made Rafael jet is suggested for the job, but they believe that it would require 20 Taurus missiles to destroy it to any significant level. What exactly the Russians do while a French fighter jet repeats sortie after sortie dropping its bombs is unclear. There is also the problem of how to deflect attention or finger pointing when the job is done. It’s here where we see that the German air force commanders are woefully ignorant and misinformed about the realities on Russian intelligence.

The Germans actually believe they can protect themselves with a ring of disinformation and amateur distractions – like having their own people, while in Kiev talk with strong American accents while doing the training and logistics right through to insisting that the Ukrainians make a documented approach to the Germans for the equipment and training. As though this would temper the Russians even if they believed it once the bridge is destroyed! We are really in the land of amateur spooking here which leads the reader to believe that the Germans have decades ahead of them in how be an effective fighting force on the international stage when they are so plagued by rank amateurism – the same dismal lack of planning which made them lose the battle of Barbarossa in the second world war.

Planning is a word which comes up in the conversation transcripts a lot as it is an obsession of German public servants, whether they be in the military or work for Deutsche Welle news department – the latter a public funded German propaganda station which is so bad that even Germans gave up watching it years ago, forcing its executives to scrap the German language service. And yet it is the lack of planning, but merely the talk of it, which is the real heart of the problem of German thinking. A Bridge Too Far, in fact.

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Ray McGovern: “If I were Putin, I would have my focus on full alert because one of these acolytes [might] say ‘hey, Mr. Biden… we did the cluster ammo, we did the depleted uranium, who’s going to complain if we do just a mini-nuke?’”

• ‘Sheer Incompetence and Ignorance’ Led to Plan to Attack Crimean Bridge (Sp.)

On Friday, RT and the Rossiya Segodnya media group (Sputnik’s parent company) Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan published leaked audio of a conversation involving four German senior military officers, including the head of the German Air Force, General Ingo Gerhartz. The audio included operational and targeting details of Taurus missiles even though in public, sending Taurus missiles to Ukraine remains a matter of debate. Significantly, the four officers discussed hitting the Crimean bridge and how to maintain plausible deniability for their involvement in such operations. Ray McGovern, a peace activist and former CIA analyst with over 27 years of experience, told Sputnik’s The Critical Hour that only “sheer incompetence and ignorance” would lead NATO to consider such plans.

McGovern said that the leaked German conversation, which has since been reportedly confirmed as authentic by German officials, reflected comments that former CIA Director and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates made during an interview with Western media. “If you want to give the Russians pause, if you want to interrupt that sense of momentum that they have, why not be able to do things like drop the Kerch Strait Bridge? That would have a big impact on the Russians, I think, psychologically as well as militarily,” Gates said during the interview. “Here’s this wise man, Bobby Gates, saying ‘Oh let’s get into World War Three,’” McGovern said. “I mean, if he is speaking for an influential element not only in the White House but also the German Army, my God.”

“It’s just sheer incompetence and ignorance,” McGovern continued later. “He reads the intelligence. Previous presidents and previous CIA directors are given special treatment, they can read the latest and most sensitive intelligence. … The intelligence has been so bad that Bobby Gates could be led to believe this would teach the Russians a lesson.” After noting that Gates wrote in his autobiography that “it has never been on top of [Gates’] job jar to please the Russians,” McGovern warned that “it may not be on top of the jar of people to make Putin or the Russians happy, but my God, they have to recognize that they don’t want to alienate the Russians or make the Russians think that [the West is] so unpredictable that the Russians may have to use this advantage that they have now in strategic weaponry.” Co-host Wilmer Leon asked about comments from US Senator and vice chair of the Intelligence Committee Marco Rubio (R-FL) that Ukraine needs to end in a negotiated settlement. McGovern said he doubted Rubio’s intentions but said the comments were still significant.

“He’s the same guy that voted vociferously to give [$60 billion] more to Ukraine, and of course $14 billion to Israel, X billion to Taiwan and whoever else. So I don’t know. A lot of this is rhetoric now, but it is significant that the rhetoric itself is changing,” McGovern explained. “If they don’t get a negotiated settlement or something they [can] depict as the same, it’s going to be just a disastrous loss.” But anytime a world nuclear power is cornered, it can be extremely dangerous, McGovern warned. “As John Kennedy said in that wonderful American University speech ‘Never give another nuclear power a choice between a humiliating retreat and using nuclear weapons’… Joe Biden is faced with humiliating retreat, he’s got lots at stake here,” McGovern warned. “If I were Putin, I would have my focus on full alert because one of these acolytes [might] say ‘hey, Mr. Biden… we did the cluster ammo, we did the depleted uranium, who’s going to complain if we do just a mini-nuke?’ So that’s the danger here.’”

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Good cop bad cop?

• German and French Leaders ‘Don’t Get Along’ – Bloomberg (RT)

The relationship between German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron has long been strained, but Macron’s recent refusal to rule out sending troops to Ukraine has driven tensions to boiling point, Bloomberg reported on Friday. The rift between Paris and Berlin was exposed earlier this week when Macron declared that while “there’s no consensus today to send… troops on the ground” to Ukraine, “we cannot exclude anything.” Responding a day later, Scholz told reporters that there will be “no ground troops, no soldiers on Ukrainian soil, who are sent there by European or NATO countries,” and that the alliance’s leaders were “unanimous as far as this question is concerned.”

Macron’s statement was “deliberately ambiguous,” and intended to “create uncertainty in the mind of Russian military planners,” Bloomberg reported, paraphrasing anonymous officials. However, it was made “against the express wishes of Scholz’ office,” the same officials said. In a further dig at the German chancellor, Macron followed up his comment by calling out NATO members who had offered Ukraine nothing but “helmets and sleeping bags” when the conflict with Russia began in February 2022. According to Bloomberg, this was perceived as an insult by the chancellery, considering that Scholz rapidly overcame his initial reluctance to send lethal weapons to Ukraine, with Germany now Kiev’s second-largest provider of military aid. Despite Macron’s apparent willingness to escalate, Germany has sent Ukraine 27 times more bilateral military aid than France (€17.7 billion to €0.64 billion), according to figures from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.

“In Berlin,” Bloomberg noted, “Macron is seen as a monarchical figure who is better at issuing grand visions than delivering.” Close aides to Scholz acknowledged to Bloomberg that “the two don’t get along.” On the other hand, “Macron sees Scholz as a leader without courage and ambition who cannot think beyond the short term,” a French official told the American news site. Further evidence of this rift emerged on Monday when Macron announced that he was leading a coalition of states to provide Ukraine with “medium and long-range missiles and bombs” to strike deep into Russian territory. On Thursday, Scholz said that he was reluctant to send long-range Taurus cruise missiles to Kiev, as they could potentially be used to strike Moscow.

Scholz also angered British and French officials earlier in the week when he said that British Storm Shadow and French SCALP-EG cruise missiles – which are already being used by Ukraine and are roughly equivalent to the Taurus – required British and French crews to operate, a statement implying that both countries already had military personnel on the ground in Ukraine.. In his annual state-of-the-nation address on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that Western leaders toying with the idea of intervening in Ukraine “have already forgotten what war is.” Russia, he said, has a massive nuclear arsenal, and therefore “the consequences for potential invaders would be far more tragic” than in bygone eras.

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“The Western defense base is pathetic and you’re not going to out-conventional war the Russian bear..”

• Erik Prince Calls For ‘Ugly Peace’ In Ukraine (RT)

The West should pull the plug on the Ukraine conflict as soon as possible because it will not be able to outperform Russia’s defense industry, Erik Prince, founder of the American private military company Blackwater has said. Speaking to the podcast PBD on Friday, Prince, who served as the CEO of the mercenary group until 2009 and now heads Frontier Resource Group, a private equity fund, expressed doubts about whether Kiev and its Western backers could prevail in the conflict with Russia, which has just entered its third year. “We need to bring this war to a close because all Ukraine is doing right now is destroying itself demographically,” he said, adding that hostilities are “chewing up the next generation of Ukrainian manpower,” which will be almost impossible to replace. “The Western defense base is pathetic and you’re not going to out-conventional war the Russian bear,” Prince argued.

According to the former US Navy SEAL, in this light, the “ugly peace” and a freeze in hostilities would be a better option both for Kiev and its Western supporters than “whatever their idea of an ideal war is,” adding “let them [Russia] keep Crimea, Donetsk, Lugansk. Whatever.” The majority Russian-speaking Autonomous Republic of Crimea and city of Sevastopol voted overwhelmingly to become part of Russia in a 2014 referendum after a Western-backed coup in Kiev. Donetsk and Lugansk, regions which had declared independence from Ukraine, followed suit in September, 2022 after the start of the current conflict. However, Prince did not mention Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, which also held successful referendums to join Russia in the fall of 2022. “It’s not the American taxpayer’s obligation to spend another hundred billion in Ukraine when there’s been significant corruption and really nothing to show for it,” he added.

Meanwhile, Tesla and Space X CEO Elon Musk appeared to agree with Prince. Commenting on the Blackwater CEO’s quotes, which were cited by American investor David Sacks, he wrote on X (formerly Twitter): “Unfortunately, that is true.” Russia maintains it is open to talks on Ukraine; however, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky signed a decree banning talks with the current leadership in Moscow after the referendums in Kiev’s four former regions, which it immediately condemned as illegitimate. At the same time, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said last year that Moscow is opposed to a freeze in the Ukraine conflict, saying that it will not stop until its goals are accomplished and national interests protected by military or other means. Russia has repeatedly said that its main goals are to “denazify” and “demilitarize” Ukraine.

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Next up: food rationing?!

• German Healthcare System Should Prepare For War – Minister (RT)

Germany must improve its healthcare system to be able to swiftly respond to crisis situations, such as a new pandemic or a military conflict, Health Minister Karl Lauterbach has said. Legislation for reforms expected to be presented this summer will be “a turning point for the healthcare system,” the Social Democratic Party (SPD) politician told the newspaper Neue Osnabrucker Zeitung in an interview published on Saturday. Though the ruling ‘traffic light coalition’ has already pushed for reforms following the Covid-19 pandemic, the health minister said that with the Ukraine conflict, the challenges have become even more important. “In the event of a crisis, every doctor, every hospital, every health authority must know what to do. We need clear responsibilities – for example, for the distribution of a high number of injured people among the clinics in Germany,” Lauterbach explained.

The minister said hospitals must also conduct drills to practice their response to disasters, dismissing accusations of scaremongering by arguing that “doing nothing is not an option.” “It would be silly to say we are not preparing for a military conflict and then it won’t come. According to this logic, there would be no need for a Bundeswehr,” he said. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius stated last November that the country must become “war-capable,” and insisted again in January that Berlin and all of NATO should arm itself more actively to be able to “wage a war that is forced upon us.”

Last month, Bundeswehr General Carsten Breuer called for a “change in mentality” in German society, insisting that the nation needs to build credible “deterrence” to prepare for a potential war with Russia within five years. Commenting on claims that Russia could be planning an attack on Germany or any other NATO state, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said in January that EU officials were “inventing an external enemy” to divert attention away from domestic problems. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated that “no one wants a big war,” especially Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin has dismissed the claims as “complete nonsense,” insisting that Moscow has “no geopolitical, economic… or military interest” in starting a conflict with NATO.

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“..Germans might rally round the flag, or they might openly rebel against an already deeply unpopular government..”

• The West Can’t Be Trusted To Observe Its Own ‘Red Lines’ In Ukraine (Amar)

French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz have disagreed publicly over how to support Ukraine – which has been ruthlessly deployed by the West as a geopolitical proxy – in its conflict with Russia. Macron used a special EU meeting he had convened, rumor has it directly inspired by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, to state, in effect, that sending Western combat troops into Ukraine was an option. Of course, the West already has troops on the ground, including those flimsily camouflaged as volunteers and mercenaries, or otherwise participating in the conflict (for instance by planning and targeting), as a recent leak of US documents has confirmed. But an open intervention by ground forces would be a severe escalation, directly pitting Russia and NATO against each other, as Moscow has quickly pointed out, and making nuclear escalation a real possibility.

Russia has deliberately tolerated a certain degree of Western intervention, for its own pragmatic reasons: In essence, it seeks to win the war in Ukraine, while avoiding an open conflict with NATO. It is willing to pay the price of having to deal with some de facto Western military meddling, as long as it is confident it can defeat it on the Ukrainian battlefield. Indeed, the strategy has the added advantage that the West is bleeding its own resources, while the Russian military is receiving excellent hands-on training in how to neutralize Western hardware, including much-touted “miracle weapons.” You do not have to believe Moscow’s words, but simply consult elementary logic to understand that there is an equally hard-headed limit to this kind of calculated tolerance. If the Russian leadership were to conclude that Western military forces in Ukraine were endangering its objectives (instead of merely making achieving them harder), it would raise the price for certain Western countries. (Selective treatment would be adopted to put under stress – quite possibly to breaking point – Western cohesion.)

Consider Germany, for instance: Berlin is by far Ukraine’s biggest bilateral financial supporter among EU states (at least in terms of commitments). Yet militarily, for now, Russia has been content with, in essence, shredding German Leopard tanks as they arrive on the battlefield. And, in a sense, punishing Germany’s meddling can safely be left to its own government: the country has already taken massive hits to its economy and international standing. But if Berlin were to go even further, Moscow’s calculations would change. In that case, as little as German mass media allow German citizens to think about it, a “sobering” (to use a term from Russian doctrine) strike – initially probably non-nuclear – on German forces and territory is possible. The domestic consequences of such an attack are unpredictable. Germans might rally round the flag, or they might openly rebel against an already deeply unpopular government that has been sacrificing the national interest with unprecedented bluntness to Washington’s geopolitics.

If you think the above sounds a little far-fetched, I know of someone who clearly does not share your complacency: the German chancellor. Stung by Macron’s provocation, Scholz countered with telling alacrity. Within 24 hours after the surprise French move, he publicly ruled out the sending of “ground troops” by “European nations or NATO nations,” underlining that that this red line has always been agreed on. In addition, the chancellor also chose exactly this moment to reaffirm that Germany will not deliver its Taurus cruise missiles to Kiev, as escalation that proponents have long demanded, including inside Germany. With, according to Scholz, the capability of striking Moscow, Berlin’s missiles in Ukrainian hands and Macron’s hypothetical ground forces have one thing in common: they come with a serious risk of spreading direct fighting beyond Ukraine, in particular to Western Europe and Germany.

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“..in addition to Russia, he will visit the EU headquarters, Poland, Ukraine, Germany and France..”

• Settlement In Ukraine Impossible Without Moscow – China (TASS)

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin and Special Representative of the Chinese Government on Eurasian Affairs Li Hui during a meeting in Moscow stated that any discussion of the settlement in Ukraine is impossible without Russia’s participation and taking into account its security interests, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “An engaged and detailed exchange of opinions on the Ukrainian crisis took place. It was stated that any discussion of the political and diplomatic settlement is impossible without Russia’s participation and consideration of its interests in the security sphere,” the foreign policy agency said.

“That said, it was noted that ultimatums to Russia promoted by Kiev and the West and related dialogue formats only harm the prospects of any settlement and cannot serve as its basis,” the ministry stressed. The meeting was held in a traditionally friendly and trusting atmosphere, typical of Russian-Chinese relations, the agency added. On March 2, Li launched his second tour aiming to seek ways to settle the Ukrainian conflict. It is expected that, in addition to Russia, he will visit the EU headquarters, Poland, Ukraine, Germany and France. The previous tour took place in May 2023.

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Tolerance for body bags is not high in Israel.

• Heavy Losses Inflict ‘Dramatic Manpower Crisis’ On Israel (Cradle)

The Israeli military is demanding an addition of at least 7,000 soldiers to its forces due to a serious manpower crisis. The 7,000 are needed on top of the soldiers already enlisting, the Israeli army said on 1 March. “The army requires standards for another 7,500 officers and noncommissioned officers, while the Treasury currently approves only 2,500. These are unprecedented numbers, which indicate the shock that befell the IDF following almost 150 days of fighting, which began with heavy losses on 7 October,” Hebrew news site Ynet reported, citing the army’s General Staff. “The army is compiling the data that will explain how dramatic the manpower problem is,” it added. Just one day ago, Israel’s Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, called to end draft exemptions for members of the ultra-Orthodox community. Gallant said he would only support legislation allowing for continued exemptions if all members of the ruling coalition backed it.

The minister asserted that “all parts of society” must “bear the burden” of service. Gallant’s position could result in tension with ultra-Orthodox parties in the coalition, viewed as integral to the current government’s survival, according to Hebrew media. However, the army’s demand for a boost in manpower “has nothing to do with politics or the demand for equal burden: The situation is simply not good and does not match the threat map,” Ynet wrote. Israel is taking severe losses in its genocidal war in Gaza and its attempt to eradicate the Palestinian resistance. While Israel claims that Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah is the final Hamas stronghold, the group’s military wing, along with several other factions, continue to fiercely confront Israeli troops across the strip.

A source from within the resistance told Al-Mayadeen on Thursday that the Israeli army has been forced out of Gaza City’s Al-Zaytoun neighborhood, where it had been operating over the past eleven days in an attempt to clear out Hamas fighters. The source added that the neighborhood is a “graveyard” for Merkava tanks, and the “bloodied and torn” uniforms of Israeli soldiers are spread out across the battlefield. Clashes between the resistance and the army continued to rage on 1 March in several areas of Gaza, including the southern city of Khan Yunis and the Jabalia area in the northern strip.

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“..a Republican event on Sunday in the District of Columbia (they have Republicans?)..”

• Trump Trounces Haley In Idaho, Missouri, And Michigan (ZH)

Donald Trump dominated in Saturday’s primary races, inning caucuses in Idaho and Missouri – while sweeping the delegate haul at a Michigan party convention. The former president earned every delegate at stake on Saturday, bringing his overall count to 244 vs. Nikki Haley’s 24. To secure the Republican nomination, Trump will need 1,215 delegates in total. In Michigan, Trump won all 39 delegates at the Republican convention in Grand Rapids, after winning the state’s primary on Tuesday with 68% of the vote vs. Haley’s 27%. In Missouri, Trump won 51 delegates. Things went particularly not well for Haley at one point: “The steep odds facing Haley were on display in Columbia, Missouri, where Republicans gathered at a church to caucus. Seth Christensen stood on stage and called on them to vote for Haley. He wasn’t well received. Another caucusgoer shouted out from the audience: “Are you a Republican?” An organizer quieted the crowd and Christensen finished his speech. Haley went on to win just 37 of the 263 Republicans in attendance in Boone County.” -AP.

Earlier in the day, Missouri Trump supporters inside a church in Columbia linked up to appeal for the former president. “Every 100 days, we’re spending $1 trillion, with money going all over the world. Illegals are running across the border,” said Tom Mendenall, an elector for Trump in 2016 and 2020. “You know where Donald Trump stands on a lot of these issues.” And in Iowa, Trump won 32 delegates, once again smoking Haley. Next on deck is a Republican event on Sunday in the District of Columbia (they have Republicans?), followed by Super Tuesday two days later, when 16 states will hold primaries – and the date Haley suggested she’d be dropping out if things don’t start going her way. This is going to be fun, no? From tonight’s speech in Virginia:

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Once the main Jan. 6 story.

• The Pipe Bombs Before Jan. 6: Capital Mystery That Doesn’t Add Up (Julie Kelly)

The now defunct Select Committee to Investigate the Attack on the U.S. Capitol barely mentioned the pipe bomb threat in its final report; the committee did not include video of the incident or the suspect during any televised hearings. This strikes some observers as odd for two reasons: The pipe bombs seemed to offer the strongest evidence for the Committee’s case that Jan. 6 was an act of domestic terrorism, and the direct threat to the life of the vice president, who was at the DNC for nearly two hours as the device sat undetected outside the building. The major news organizations that initially devoted significant space to promote the idea that a supporter of Donald Trump tried to blow up buildings near the Capitol on Jan. 6 have also lost interest in the case. But a handful of outlets led by Revolver News stayed on the story. And the same media once fixated on the pipe bomber now considers poking holes in the government’s official story little more than right-wing conspiracy-mongering.

The government’s seeming ineffectiveness, however, and lack of forthrightness regarding an allegedly deadly plot filled with unanswered questions has also created a wellspring of distrust. The presence of bombs in the nation’s capital as the joint session of Congress convened to debate the outcome of the Electoral College vote animated the notion that Jan. 6 represented an act of domestic terrorism perpetrated by Trump supporters. Reports that two explosives were found just blocks from the U.S. Capitol initiated the first wave of panic that accelerated throughout the afternoon. It began when a 37-year-old woman from Madison, Wisc., named Karlin Younger, who said she was walking to do her laundry near the RNC, discovered a device in an alley around 12:40 p.m. Although it is not clear whether the Jan. 6 committee interviewed Younger – her name does not appear in its final report – she gave numerous media interviews in the weeks and months following Jan. 6.

In November 2021, Younger told Business Insider, “When I cast my eyes down, I just saw something kind of metallic, and it was just a very passing glimpse, and all I thought is someone must have missed the recycling bin. And I was going to recycle it, because I’m about that life. I just looked, and it was so completely unbelievable. You’re not on high alert. You don’t think you’re under attack. I’m not in Iraq. This is Capitol Hill.” She beckoned an RNC security guard whose name has not been made public to confirm her suspicions. “Holy shit, it’s a bomb!” Younger said he exclaimed. The FBI interviewed Younger a few days later after she contacted the bureau’s Jan. 6 tip line. But it doesn’t appear she was interviewed again by the FBI.

The FBI official leading the investigation, Washington FBI Field Office assistant director in charge Steven D’Antuono, told House Republicans he did not “recall” who discovered the device. Had the FBI come knocking again, Younger certainly would have consented to another interview. At the time, Younger worked for a public-private partnership called FirstNet, which provides interoperable broadband for first responders across the country. The month before Jan. 6, the FBI awarded a $92 million grant to FirstNet. Authorities quickly dispatched officers to the DNC located a few blocks away. A similar device reportedly was found on the ground between two benches outside one of the building’s entrances at 1:07 pm.

In response, police immediately evacuated a few congressional buildings including the nearby Cannon House Office building. “I just had to evacuate my office because of a pipe bomb reported outside,” Virginia Democratic Rep. Elaine Luria tweeted at 1:46 p.m. “Supporters of the President are trying to force their way into the Capitol and I can hear what sounds like multiple gunshots. I don’t recognize our country today and the members of Congress who have supported this anarchy do not deserve to represent their fellow Americans.” The Capitol Police stated on Jan. 7 that both devices, which it said were “hazardous and could cause great harm to public safety,” were “disabled and turned over to the FBI for further investigation and analysis.”

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Please don’t miss. Ron Johnson was slow out of the blocks, but he’s become a solid Covid voice. The only one in DC.

“..in 2022, he decided to postpone his retirement to go through a grueling re-election campaign so there would be someone in the government who could advocate for everyone whose lives had been ruined by the COVID vaccines.”

• Federal Health Agencies and the COVID Cartel: What Are They Hiding? (AMD)

Ron Johnson has gradually become one of my favorite senators in American history. In 2020, he repeatedly advocated for early COVID-19 treatments to be made available to Americans (which had they been made available would have ended the pandemic). Throughout 2021, he spoke out against the vaccine mandates and in November hosted a panel at the Senate which scrutinized the federal vaccine mandates and exposed how poorly those who experienced severe COVID-19 vaccine injuries were being treated. In January 2022, he hosted a panel which scrutinized the entire COVID-19 response, and in December of 2022, he hosted a panel focusing on everything we now know about the vaccines. Being one of the most outspoken critics of the vaccination program in American history got him a lot of pushback, and in 2022, he decided to postpone his retirement to go through a grueling re-election campaign so there would be someone in the government who could advocate for everyone whose lives had been ruined by the COVID vaccines.[..]

Since the entire panel was 4 hours long, I recognize that many of you will not be able to watch all of it. For that reason, I tried to highlight what I felt were it’s most important parts. First, in Johnson’s opening statement, he discusses just how hard it has been over the last three years to get any of the information his office is legally entitled to from the government. For example with (Fauci’s) NIH: “We are down to the last 50 pages [of the 4000 he originally requested]. They will not release these. It’s been now going close to 2 years. This is what has been provided to us. Do you think there might be some incriminating information in this?” Likewise, these agencies have completely brushed off all evidence something is wrong. For example, with the NIH: Just like former NIH director Francis Collins Collins told me when I asked about all the deaths being reported on VAERS, [he said], “Senator, people die.” The fact that both of these statements are as true as they are callous highlights the challenge we face in exposing the truth.

While with the FDA: “I’ve written 4 [letters on hot-lots] starting in December of 2021. The first letter compared 25,000 lots of COVID vaccine to 22,000 lots of flu vaccine. One COVID lot had 5,297 adverse reactions associated with it. The worst flu lot had a 137. So 5,300 versus 137. 365 COVID lots had more than 100 adverse events. Only 10 flu lots had more than 100. And 80% of the serious adverse events, those with emergency room visits, hospitalization, or death were associated with only 5% of the lots. So, again, to me, I’m from manufacturing. That shows to me a manufacturing process out of control. [It] took us a year to get some kind of response and, basically, response from the agencies was, “we don’t see any variation in lots.” Johnson then illustrates how the current political climate has undermined everything science once stood for:

“Vaccine injuries are rare.” “The benefits outweigh the risk and that the science is clear and overwhelming.” “And anyone challenging this narrative is an is an anti science conspiracy theorist.” In other words, second opinions are not allowed. To me, this attitude is the antithesis of science. I am amazed at the knowledge mankind has obtained over the millennia. But I would argue that what we don’t know vastly exceeds what we do know. So as we pursue truth, we must pursue it with the humility that that reality demands.” Johnson’s opening statement was then followed by Robert Malone: “I’ll be succinct. The SARS CoV 2 modified mRNA based vaccine products were deployed via emergency use authorization without adequate nonclinical and clinical testing and without full disclosure of known patient risk and efficacy data. This violated well established legislatively mandated patient informed consent requirements. The FDA and HHS justified these actions as necessary due to reliance on deeply flawed modeling data indicating that SARS CoV 2 was associated with an infection fatality rate of 3.4%.”

Note: the IFR was subsequently shown to average between 0.018%-0.03% for everyone under 60 and was approximately 0.506% for those between 60-69 years of age. Subsequent clinical research experience has revealed a number of problems with the genetic vaccine technology based SARS COV 2 products, which have been marketed as vaccines. In most cases, there has been an effort to obscure or deny facts in public communication by government and pharmaceutical industry representatives. Malone then listed the key issues with the vaccines, to which Johnson replied: Doctor Malone, I think one of the things that always bothers me is [that] so much of what we’re learning in terms of harms of these vaccine was clearly known before they were rolled out.

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Could it be this simple?

 

 

Harder/Smarter

 

 

 

 

Choke a horse
https://twitter.com/i/status/1763844457420509217

 

 

Good child

 

 

Yanis

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in wartime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle March 1 2024

Mar 012024
 
 March 1, 2024  Posted by at 9:38 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  39 Responses »


Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) German artist, philosopher, composer, mystic Cosmic Tree

 

• West Flirting With Nuclear War – Putin (RT)
• What Comes Next As The Ukrainian Army Collapses (Helmer)
• How Realistic Is Putin? (Paul Craig Roberts)
• West Destroying Its Own Financial System – Putin (RT)
• The CIA in Ukraine – The NY Times Gets a Guided Tour (Patrick Lawrence)
• CIA in Ukraine (John Kiriakou)
• The Internationalization of the Neo-Liberal Shock (Dionísio)
• Maddow and Others Denounce SCOTUS for Review of Presidential Immunity (Turley)
• Yellen Voices Support For Permanent Inflation (Denninger)
• ‘State-minus’: Biden’s Palestine Solution (Cradle)
• Federal Judge Blocks New Texas Law to Arrest Illegal Immigrants (ET)
• Obama’s CIA Asked Foreign Intel Agencies To Spy on Trump Campaign (Chernin)
• Hunter Finally Admits Joe Biden Is “The Big Guy” (ZH)
• Julian Assange and Gaza Civilians (Amar)
• Biden Arrives At Border To Address His Voters (BBee)

 

 

 

 

Not sure what Biden does, but I don’t think it’s called ‘walking’. Closest thing is Elon Musk’s new humanoid robot.

 

 

 

 

WH doc

 

 

 

 


“The judge who just threw Trump off the ballot in Illinois typically “presides over minor traffic violations”

 

 

Loan
https://twitter.com/i/status/1763341500627480884

 

 

 

 

 

 

“..now the consequences for potential invaders would be far more tragic.”

• West Flirting With Nuclear War – Putin (RT)

Western officials indulging in escalatory rhetoric should realize that they are effectively invoking the specter of an all-out nuclear war, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned in a speech to legislators in Moscow on Thursday. He also once again accused the West of instigating the Ukraine conflict. Putin addressed the topic in the opening minutes of his annual state-of-the-nation speech, a key event in which the president declares his plans and priorities in a televised address to both houses of the Federal Assembly of Russia, the national legislature. President Putin insisted that recent claims by Western officials that Moscow is planning to attack NATO are “nonsense.” At the same time, those same nations are “selecting targets to conduct strikes on our territory,” the Russian head of state claimed, adding that there is now talk of “deploying NATO military contingents to Ukraine.”

Putin reminded would-be aggressors that all previous attempts to conquer Russia have ended in failure, warning that “now the consequences for potential invaders would be far more tragic.” He pointed out that Russia has a massive nuclear arsenal, which is in a state of “complete readiness for guaranteed deployment.” “Everything that they are thinking up now, that they are scaring the world with, it all really poses the threat of a conflict involving nuclear weapons, and therefore, the destruction of civilization. Don’t they understand this?” The Russian president suggested that Western politicians making those escalatory remarks “have already forgotten what war is.” Unlike Russians, who have faced “difficult trials” in recent decades, Westerners apparently “think that these are just some cartoons,” President Putin opined.

The Russian president’s remarks came after his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, toyed with the idea of a potential ground deployment of Western militaries to Ukraine while talking to reporters on Monday, saying “in terms of dynamics, we cannot exclude anything.” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg hastened to emphasize that “there are no plans for NATO combat troops on the ground in Ukraine.” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, in turn, declared that there will be “no ground troops, no soldiers on Ukrainian soil, who are sent there by European or NATO countries” in the future. The leaders of Poland, the Czech Republic, Sweden and Finland also chimed in with similar assurances. Commenting on Macron’s remark, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned that such a development would mean that “we have to talk not about the probability, but rather the inevitability” of an all-out military confrontation between NATO and Russia.

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“I would like to remind you that just a month ago, the French Foreign Minister denied Paris’s involvement in recruiting mercenaries for the Kiev regime, and called direct evidence ‘crude Russian propaganda.’”

• What Comes Next As The Ukrainian Army Collapses (Helmer)

The collapse of the Ukrainian army following the battle of Avdeyevka, and its disorganized retreat, have accelerated Russian military thinking of how far westward the NATO allies will decide that the Ukrainian statelet can be defended against the expected Russian advance – and how fast new NATO defences can be created without the protection of ground-to-air missile batteries like Patriot, long-range artillery like the M777, and mobile armour like the Abrams, Bradley, and Caesar: all of them have already been defeated in the east. In short, there is no longer a NATO-command line of fortification east of the Polish border which deters the Russian General Staff. Also, no bunker for the Zelensky government and its NATO advisors to feel secure. Cutting and pasting from the Russian military bloggers and the Moscow analytical media, as a handful of US podcasters and substackers are doing as often as their subscribers require, is the Comfy-Armchair method for getting at the truth.

Reading the Russian sources directly, with the understanding that they are reporting what their military and intelligence sources are saying off the record, is still armchair generalship, but less comfy, more credible. Offence is now the order of the day up and down the contact line. The daily bulletin from the Ministry of Defense in Moscow calls this “improving the tactical situation” and “taking more advantageous positions”. In the past three days, Monday through Wednesday, the Defense Ministry also reported the daily casualty rate of the Ukrainian forces at 1,175, 1,065, and 695, respectively; three M777 howitzer hits; and the first Abrams tank to be destroyed. Because this source is blocked in several of the NATO states, the Russian military bloggers, which reproduce the bulletins along with videoclips and maps, may be more accessible; also more swiftly than the US-based podcasters and substackers can keep up.

Moscow sources confirm the obvious: the operational objective is to apply more and more pressure at more and more points along the line, in as many sectors or salients (“directions” is the Russian term) as possible simultaneously. At the same time, air attack, plus missiles and drones, are striking all rear Ukrainian and NATO airfield, road, and rail nodes, ammunition storages, vehicle parks, drone manufactories, fuel dumps, and other supply infrastructure, so as make reinforcement and redeployment more difficult and perilous. What cannot be seen are the Russian concentrations of forces aimed in the north, centre and south of the battlefield. Instead, there is what one source calls “an educated guess is that when the main blow comes, it will be North, Chernigov, Sumy, Kharkov, Poltava, or Centre, Dniepropetrovsk, Zaporozhye, or both simultaneously.” For timing, the source adds, “after the Russian election.”

That is now less than three weeks away, on March 17. President Vladimir Putin will then reform his new government within four to six weeks for announcement by early May. Ministerial appointments sensitive to the General Staff’s planning are the Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, who is expected to remain in place; and the Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who may retire. Following the call of French President Emmanuel Macron for the “possibility” of French ground force deployment to the Ukraine battlefield, and the subsequent clarification by French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu, the Russian assessment has been derisory. “As for Emmanuel Macron’s statements about the possibility of sending NATO troops to Ukraine,” replied Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova, “I would like to remind you that just a month ago, the French Foreign Minister denied Paris’s involvement in recruiting mercenaries for the Kiev regime, and called direct evidence ‘crude Russian propaganda.’

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“The West is unreasonable. Putin still thinks he can reason with the West. This is a mistake that is fatal for mankind.”

• How Realistic Is Putin? (Paul Craig Roberts)

As readers know, I am concerned that Putin’s tolerance of a too-long-continuing-Ukraine-conflict is encouraging the conflict to spin-out-of-control. I have written about this risk neglected by the Kremlin many times. On February 27 I was interviewed by Finian Cunningham about this risk. If the interview is posted online, I will link to it hopefully before it is taken down by the narrative controllers. There is no doubt that I have been proven correct that the provocations, accepted by the Kremlin with only words in opposition, have increased in severity over the past two years. First the West would send to the Ukrainians helmets and sleeping bags. Then small arms ammunition. Then artillery. Tanks were mentioned, but Washington and NATO said, “never tanks.” Then tanks were sent. Then, after first being denied, drones and intermediate-range missiles. Then targeting information. Then mercenaries.

Then after being denied, now long-range missiles and US F-16s capable of penetrating deep into Russia herself far from the battlefront are under consideration. And now the latest, the French President’s proposal to send NATO troops. “We will never send troops,” declares NATO’s Stoltenberg. But all the denials previously were breached and meant nothing. So the question before us is: Has Putin reduced the threat of the conflict spinning out of control by fighting it on a low key basis limited to Donbass and the Russian areas, or has his low-key behavior convinced Washington’s neoconservatives that Putin is a paper tiger who will accept any provocation and any insult. If the latter, the provocations will increase in severity until the conflict spins out of control. Clearly from helmets to NATO troops is an immense escalation. Putin understands that the West intends Russia’s destruction, so why does he prolong conflicts that provide opportunities for the West to expand conflict?

The Kremlin and the Western media whores see the fundamental issue as Ukraine becoming a member of NATO. The neoconservatives who control US foreign policy seem to think that Putin will stand aside from this just as he did from being called by the President of the United States “the new Hitler” and “a son-of-a-bitch.” No American official of any rank ever spoke in public of Soviet leaders in such terms. On his way to Reykjavik, Iceland, for his meeting with Gorbachev, Reagan told his entourage that one word of rudeness to the Soviet officials and you were fired on the spot. Reagan’s goal was to end the Cold War, and he did. It was the neoconservatives and the US military/security complex that restarted it. As the deceased Steven Cohen and I emphasized, the threat of nuclear war today is much higher than during the Cold War.

In those years, leaders on both sides worked to reduce tensions and to achieve mutual security that would reduce the danger of nuclear confrontation. I was part of the effort and perhaps I am one of a small handful of people still alive who know and lived the experience. Once the Soviet Union collapsed when the Politburo placed Russian President Gorbachev under house arrest, the neoconservatives saw their chance at world hegemony and began their assault on Russia. All of the security-enhancing agreements worked out over the years of the Cold War were cancelled by Washington. NATO’ Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is Washington’s puppet. But he is not sufficiently stupid to knowingly start a war with Russia. Who can possibly imagine Europe, which is incapable of protecting its own borders from being over-run by unarmed immigrant-invaders, possibly fighting Russia. The war, if Putin could bring himself to fight it, would be over in a few minutes.

[..] It is Putin’s refusal to impose restraint on a weak and collapsing West that is leading to nuclear Armageddon. I am not writing because I want a Russian victory. I am writing because I do not want nuclear Armageddon. The West is unreasonable. Putin still thinks he can reason with the West. This is a mistake that is fatal for mankind.

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“They’re sawing off a branch they’ve been sitting on for decades..”

• West Destroying Its Own Financial System – Putin (RT)

The West is discrediting its own currencies and banking system, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in his annual address to the Federal Assembly on Thursday, adding that the established monopolies and stereotypes in the global economy are crumbling. “The West itself is discrediting its own currencies and banking system. They’re sawing off a branch they’ve been sitting on for decades,” Putin said. Meanwhile, Russia together with so-called ‘friendly’ nations will focus on creating new financial infrastructure that will be free from politics as it seeks to unite efforts in the face of global challenges, he said. The president was referring to the global trend of moving toward using national currencies in trade rather than the US dollar that has gained significant momentum after Russia was cut off from the Western financial system and had its foreign reserves frozen in 2022.

A number of both Russian and foreign officials have repeatedly warned that the US currency has long been used as a weapon, noting that such actions have prompted countries around the world to reduce their dependence on the greenback. Putin emphasized that Moscow is working with its allies on the basis of equality and respect of mutual interests. Because of this, he said, more and more countries are seeking to join groups such as BRICS, the Eurasian Economic Union, and Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Together with its partners Russia will continue building “safe” transport corridors based on new technology and create a new global financial network “free from political interference” at a time when the world economy, trade and finance are undergoing rapid changes, the president noted.

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“..They cannot afford to lose a war they cannot win..”

• The CIA in Ukraine – The NY Times Gets a Guided Tour (Patrick Lawrence)

If you have paid attention to what various polls and officials in the U.S. and elsewhere in the West have been doing and saying about Ukraine lately, you know the look and sound of desperation. You would be desperate, too, if you were making a case for a war Ukrainians are on the brink of losing and will never, brink or back-from-the-brink, have any chance of winning. Atop this, you want people who know better, including 70 percent of Americans according to a recent poll, to keep investing extravagant sums in this ruinous folly. And here is what seems to me the true source of angst among these desperados: Having painted this war as a cosmic confrontation between the world’s democrats and the world’s authoritarians, the people who started it and want to prolong it have painted themselves into a corner. They cannot lose it. They cannot afford to lose a war they cannot win: This is what you see and hear from all those good-money-after-bad people still trying to persuade you that a bad war is a good war and that it is right that more lives and money should be pointlessly lost to it.

Everyone must act for the cause in these dire times. You have Chuck Schumer in Kyiv last week trying to show House Republicans that they should truly, really authorize the Biden regime to spend an additional $61 billion on its proxy war with Russia. “Everyone we saw, from Zelensky on down made this very point clear,” the Democratic senator from New York asserted in an interview with The New York Times. “If Ukraine gets the aid, they will win the war and beat Russia.” Even at this late hour people still have the nerve to say such things. You have European leaders gathering in Paris Monday to reassure one another of their unity behind the Kyiv regime—and where Emmanuel Macron refused to rule out sending NATO ground troops to the Ukrainian front. “Russia cannot and must not win this war,” the French president declared to his guests at the Elysée Palace. Except that it can and, barring an act of God, it will.

Then you have Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s war-mongering sec-gen, telling Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty last week that it will be fine if Kyiv uses F–16s to attack Russian cities once they are operational this summer. The U.S.–made fighter jets, the munitions, the money—all of it is essential “to ensure Russia doesn’t make further gains.” Stephen Bryen, formerly a deputy undersecretary at the Defense Department, offered an excellent response to this over the weekend in his Weapons and Strategy newsletter: “Fire Jens Stoltenberg before it is too late.” Good thought, but Stoltenberg, Washington’s longtime water-carrier in Brussels, is merely doing his job as assigned: Keep up the illusions as to Kyiv’s potency and along with it the Russophobia, the more primitive the better. You do not get fired for irresponsible rhetoric that risks something that might look a lot like World War III.

What would a propaganda blitz of this breadth and stupidity be without an entry from The New York Times? Given the extent to which The Times has abandoned all professional principle in the service of the power it is supposed to report upon, you just knew it would have to get in on this one. The Times has published very numerous pieces in recent weeks on the necessity of keeping the war going and the urgency of a House vote authorizing that $61 billion Biden’s national security people want to send Ukraine. But never mind all those daily stories. Last Sunday it came out with its big banana. “The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin” sprawls—lengthy text, numerous photographs. The latter show the usual wreckage—cars, apartment buildings, farmhouses, a snowy dirt road lined with landmines.

But the story that goes with it is other than usual. Somewhere in Washington, someone appears to have decided it was time to let the Central Intelligence Agency’s presence and programs in Ukraine be known. And someone in Langley, the CIA’s headquarters, seems to have decided this will be O.K., a useful thing to do. When I say the agency’s presence and programs, I mean some: We get a very partial picture of the CIA’s doings in Ukraine, as the lies of omission—not to mention the lies of commission—are numerous in this piece. But what The Times published last weekend, all 5,500 words of it, tells us more than had been previously made public.

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“If Republicans in Congress end military funding to Kiev, the CIA may have to scale back.”

• CIA in Ukraine (John Kiriakou)

The New York Times on February 25 published an explosive story of what purports to be the history of the CIA in Ukraine from the Maidan coup of 2014 to the present. The story, “The Spy War: How the CIA Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin,” is one of initial bilateral distrust, but a mutual fear and hatred of Russia, that progresses to a relationship so intimate that Ukraine is now one of the CIA’s closest intelligence partners in the world. At the same time, the Times’ publication of the piece, which reporters claimed relied on more than 200 interviews in Ukraine, the US, and “several European countries,” raises multiple questions: Why did the CIA not object to the article’s publication, especially with it being in one of the Agency’s preferred outlets? When the CIA approaches a newspaper to complain about the classified information it contains, the piece is almost always killed or severely edited. Newspaper publishers are patriots, after all. Right?

Was the article published because the CIA wanted the news out there? Perhaps more important was the point of the article to influence the Congressional budget deliberations on aid to Ukraine? After all, was the article really just meant to brag about how great the CIA is? Or was it to warn Congressional appropriators, “Look how much we’ve accomplished to confront the Russian bear. You wouldn’t really let it all go to waste, would you?” The Times’ article has all the hallmarks of a deep, inside look at a sensitive—possibly classified—subject. It goes into depth on one of the intelligence community’s Holy of Holies, an intelligence liaison relationship, something that no intelligence officer is ever supposed to discuss. But in the end, it really isn’t so sensitive. It doesn’t tell us anything that every American hasn’t already assumed. Maybe we hadn’t had it spelled out in print before, but we all believed that the CIA was helping Ukraine fight the Russians. We had already seen reporting that the CIA had “boots on the ground” in Ukraine and that the U.S. government was training Ukrainian special forces and Ukrainian pilots, so there’s nothing new there.

The article goes a little further in detail, although, again, without providing anything that might endanger sources and methods. For example, it tells us that: • There is a CIA listening post in the forest along the Russian border, one of 12 “secret” bases the US maintains there. One or more of these posts helped to prove Russia’s involvement in the 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. That’s great. But the revelation exposes no secrets and tells us nothing new. • Ukrainian intelligence officials helped the Americans “go after” the Russian operatives “who meddled in the 2016 US presidential election.” I have a news flash for the New York Times: The Mueller report found that there was no meaningful Russian meddling in the 2016 election. And what does “go after” mean? • Beginning in 2016, the CIA trained an “elite Ukrainian commando force known as Unit 2245, which captured Russian drones and communications gear so that CIA technicians could reverse-engineer them and crack Moscow’s encryption systems.” This is exactly what the CIA is supposed to do. Honestly, if the CIA hadn’t been doing this, I would have suggested a class action lawsuit for the American people to get their tax money back. Besides, the CIA has been doing things like this for decades. The CIA was able to obtain important components of Soviet tactical weapons from ostensibly pro-Soviet Romania in the 1970s.

• Ukraine has turned into an intelligence-gathering hub that has intercepted more Russian communications than the CIA station in Kiev could initially handle. Again, I would expect nothing less. After all, that’s where the war is. So of course, communications will be intercepted there. As to the CIA station being overwhelmed, the Times never tells us if that is because the station was a one-man operation at the time or whether it had thousands of employees and was still overwhelmed. It’s all about scale. • And lest you think that the CIA and the U.S. government were on the offensive in Ukraine, the article makes clear that, “Mr. Putin and his advisers misread a critical dynamic. The CIA didn’t push its way into Ukraine. U.S. officials were often reluctant to fully engage, fearing that Ukrainian officials could not be trusted, and worrying about provoking the Kremlin.” It’s at this point in the article that the Times reveals what I believe to be the buried lead: “Now these intelligence networks are more important than ever, as Russia is on the offensive and Ukraine is more dependent on sabotage and long-range missile strikes that require spies far behind enemy lines. And they are increasingly at risk: “If Republicans in Congress end military funding to Kiev, the CIA may have to scale back.”

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Dionísio starts off talking about Astrid Klein, not Naomi. Normally such mistakes would make me switch off. But I like the topic of The Shock Doctrine on a wider scale.

• The Internationalization of the Neo-Liberal Shock (Dionísio)

Looking at the present day, under the light of the formulation revealed by Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine” is an enlightening challenge and absolutely reveals the historical importance of the analysis that is carried out, even if, in my opinion, it suffers from a certain “historical punctuality” considering the moments of application of a process that has come to be known as “neo-liberal economic shock theory”. Klein’s analysis, based on known historical facts, recounts secret CIA experiments in psychology and psychiatry, the application of the techniques in Pinochet’s Chile and many other countries (including post-Soviet Russia), and the neo-liberal doctrine of Milton Friedman’s “Chicago Boys”, tells us of a process whereby the population is put into a permanent state of shock in order to leave it unresponsive (as in lobotomy treatments), so that, under the cover of the generated amorphism, extremely unpopular measures are applied which, above all, are diametrically opposed to the interests of the majority.

The very process of discrediting politics and politicians also serves as a pretext for the same type of action. Take Trump, Bolsonaro, Milei, Meloni, Duda or Zelensky. The kind of demagogic shock (using corruption, mass migration, etc.) gives birth to a pretext that works under the same assumptions. However, and bearing in mind the unquestionable topicality of the approach, analyzing the world today according to this theory reveals a truth that, in my opinion, negates the idea of a certain “historical punctuality” of the neo-liberal economic shock. In my opinion, Naomi Klein’s approach, at that time, showed us a world in which the US was unleashing — and is unleashing — processes of transformation aimed at subverting the national and popular sovereignty, democracy and freedom of the peoples, in order to place their nations at the service of the process of neo-liberal and imperialist accumulation.

The successive clashes are taking place in circumscribed national spaces and in a chronology whose origins go back to Pinochet’s Chile, but which lacks a certain continuity, as if we were dealing with a gang that was jumping from country to country, without ever reaching the whole. Now, while Klein’s approach proposes a certain national circumscription, the historical events of the last 23 years point us towards a globalization or internationalization of the shock doctrine, towards its historical continuity and towards a totalizing dimension, encompassing all dimensions of our lives from the outset and not just on arrival. Given what we know today, I can’t help but think that the chronologically linked examples of the application of the shock doctrine are nothing more than experiments, constantly being perfected, aimed at an epilogue, an epilogue that we are experiencing today. The globalization and internationalization of the neo-liberal shock, along with its phenomenological diversification.

It no longer only affects the economic or social component, but also health, the state, security, defense, information and propaganda. This is the clear materialization of another doctrine, the doctrine of “full spectrum dominance”. With the turn of the 21st century, everything changed! On September 11, 2001, the world was shocked by a terrorist attack of spectacular proportions, which culminated in the collapse of three towers in New York. As if Hollywood had been asked to prepare a terrorist attack. The American — and Western — population was in a state of shock, stunned, and we soon began to see direct attacks on the way of life that so many considered to be eternal — remember Fukuyama — and historically perfected. In the US, we saw the publication of the Patriot Act and the start of the War on Terror. State surveillance became part of American life and, a little later, European life, particularly after renewed waves of terrorist shocks in Spain, England and France.

The proven link between the perpetrators of terrorist acts — Al-Qaeda — and their creators, very few took, or wanted to take, notice of. Today, we go into a supermarket, visit a museum, make a phone call or take a photograph and we have the guarantee that, somewhere in space, that information will be processed, aggregated, integrated, analyzed and stored. Terrorism has become part of our lives and, under that pretext, mass surveillance. Bin Laden became the devil himself, the demon who terrorized the dreams of our little children, who would be protected by the omnipresent Pentagon and other “deep state” agencies. It was this “deep state” that took the opportunity to generalize and normalize torture, concentration camps like Guantánamo and the secret, or not so secret, prisons where all those who oppose the imperial designs are still held today. It was time to internationalize the terror that the Middle East had felt almost since the founding of the Anglo-Saxon spearhead in the region, the Zionist state of Israel and its infamous Mossad.

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The Supreme Court will have to issue an opinion, whether it likes to or not.

• Maddow and Others Denounce SCOTUS for Review of Presidential Immunity (Turley)

Yesterday, the Supreme Court granted review of the presidential immunity question, but set an expedited schedule for the review of the question with oral argument scheduled for April. Former president Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social that “Legal Scholars are extremely thankful for the Supreme Court’s Decision today to take up Presidential Immunity.” As I mentioned last night in the coverage, legal scholars are hardly doing a conga line in celebration. Indeed, this morning had the usual voices attacking the Court as “craven” and partisan for granting review in the case. Despite the Court (including three Trump appointees) repeatedly ruling against Trump and conservative causes in past cases, the same voices declared that the Court was a cabal of politically compromised lickspittles.

MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow was outraged on the air and denounced “the cravenness of the court.” She noted that the Court took a whole two weeks to consider the question, ignoring the usual schedule of months of such deliberation. She added: “Obviously, pushing all of the cases that they can push to a point where Trump will be standing for election before any of us have heard the verdicts in any of those cases. Got it. It is the timing…This is BS, and you are doing this as a tactic to help for political friend, partisan patron. For you to say that this is something the court needs to decide because it is unclear in the law is fragrant bullpucky and they know it and don’t care that we know it. That is disturbing about the future legitimacy of the court.” Former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner dismissed the review as a political effort to do Trump “an enormous favor.” Kirschner also said that it was “clear” the court “sold American democracy down the river” to help Trump.

Mary Trump, the niece of the former president, declared that “the Supreme Court of the United States just reminded us with this corrupt decision that the insurrection did not fail–it never ended.” In other words, the Supreme Court itself is now part of the “insurrection.” It is that easy. Once you start to remove people from the ballot by declaring a riot an insurrection, even courts become insurrectionists by allowing for a review of lower court rulings. For years, liberal law professors and pundits have filled the media with dire predictions that the Supreme Court was about to carry out a long-planned “coup” and “power grab” — one even wrote that the court could be on the brink of establishing “one-party rule” in the United States. These commentators often ignore the countervailing cases where conservative justices voted against conservative causes and immediately return to these sensational claims whenever the Court is seen as a hinderance of their agenda, even in the simple act of granting review of a long-debated constitutional question.

[..] There are a variety of reasons why the Court could have put this on the calendar for further argument. While I still believe that Trump will not be able to secure a majority on his sweeping immunity theory, some justices may be concerned over D.C. Circuit opinion and the lack of clarity on when a president is protected for actions taken in office. It is possible to uphold the lower court in its outcome but change the rationale or analysis. The Court has not been particularly eager to reenter this area of constitutional law, but it may now be prepared to lay down new precedent and bring greater clarity for future presidents.

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“..The inflation of the last few years is directly traceable to the end of this practice, and it was our sanctions that caused it…”

• Yellen Voices Support For Permanent Inflation (Denninger)

No, seriously, that’s exactly what she’s now promoting (although I doubt she realizes it): WASHINGTON (AP) — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Tuesday offered her strongest public support yet for the idea of liquidating roughly $300 billion in frozen Russian Central Bank assets and using them for Ukraine’s long-term reconstruction. “It is necessary and urgent for our coalition to find a way to unlock the value of these immobilized assets to support Ukraine’s continued resistance and long-term reconstruction,” Yellen said in remarks in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where Group of 20 finance ministers and central bank governors are meeting this week.” In other words, steal the funds. Yellen goes on to say she believes there is a strong international law case for stealing the funds. Well perhaps there is and perhaps not; I will not pass judgment on whether one can find justification in international law for such an action.

I can and will, however, pass judgment on the immediate and permanent outcome of such an action, because that is both obvious and inevitable. It will force trade settlement into all bilateral currency forms immediately and permanently. Now this might not sound so bad and were our government not running a ~7% fiscal deficit right now it might not be. But we are running a 7% fiscal deficit, and kneecapping having trade settlement performed in dollars — or Euros — or Pounds — or whatever else by taking this action will permanently and immediately force all fiscal deficits (not just in the US) to reflect back into that nation’s economy in the form of inflation. We have, in the United States, benefited to an enormous degree from this temporary sequestration over the last 20 years. That was unwound to a large degree when the first round of sanctions was laid and now effectively all trade with either side of the Russian / Ukraine conflict is no longer using dollars as a funding currency.

Why does this matter? Because if that trade goes from $1 trillion a year to $2 trillion a year during the period of time when it increases there is $1 trillion in deficit spending that is effectively “impounded” while the goods are in transit. It is the increase in such trade that drives this, not the volume (since once the transaction settles those funds wind up back into the flow of commerce in the US.) But as international commerce has expanded and the dollar and, to a lesser extent the Euro, were used as the currencies while in-transit our nations have enjoyed a sizeable “sink” for deficit spending without having it immediately rebound back into consumer and producer prices. The inflation of the last few years is directly traceable to the end of this practice, and it was our sanctions that caused it. The Covid deficit spending was certainly a factor but much of that was absorbed and would have stayed absorbed as trade rebounded post pandemic but for our sanctions activity when the war in Ukraine broke out.

Now Yellen claims that the “frozen” assets were not just sequestered — she wants to take them. Most of these funds are in the EU, not the US — but the problem with the action is that producers and customers have no way to influence or prevent such an action by their government in the future and thus this is an external risk that can only be controlled by not exposing yourself to it; thus you demand payment in your local currency. Removing this leg of the stool leaves only one way to get inflation under control: Deficit spending must be cut to no more than the increase in productivity in the economy. When the “PIGS” problems showed up in Europe the EU’s response to this was to mandate no more than a 3% fiscal deficit — which reasonably aligns with productivity.

Meeting this today in the United States would require a cut in federal spending of more than $1 trillion dollars this fiscal year alone, and an escalating amount as existing treasury debt is rolled over at higher rates. Within the next two to three years the total cut required would be more than two trillion or approximately the entire Medicare and Medicaid spend this fiscal year. If that’s not done? We will get runaway — exponentially so — inflationary pressure and be forced to do it anyway at even greater levels of economic pain. If you are betting on lower rates at any time in the next decade, given this position of our government, you’re going to be sorely disappointed both in the outcome and in asset prices.

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“..the Biden administration refuses to clarify what it means by a ‘Palestinian state.’”

• ‘State-minus’: Biden’s Palestine Solution (Cradle)

Is it sadly ironic that the issue of Palestinian statehood – unresolved for over 75 years – has resurfaced only after Israel’s wholesale carpet-bombing of the Gaza Strip, killing over 30,000 civilians, injuring tens of thousands more, and destroying significant swathes of the territory’s infrastructure. University of California (UCLA) historian James Gelvin states the case plainly: “There would have been no serious discussion of a two-state solution without [the events of] 7 October. As a matter of fact, putting the Palestine issue back on the front burner of international and West Asian politics was one of the reasons Hamas launched its operation.” As Gelvin explains it to The Cradle, Hamas has already scored several victories since its Al-Aqsa Flood operation: “The Palestine issue is back on the international agenda, it is negotiating the release of its captives as an equal partner to Israel,” and has demonstrated that it is “more effective in realizing Palestinian goals than its rival, Fatah.”

While the unprecedented, brutal Israeli military response has indeed illustrated the urgency for establishing a Palestinian safe haven, it is impossible to ignore that western state backers of the 1993 Oslo Accords – which laid out the essential framework for the establishment of a Palestinian state – have then so assiduously ignored and neglected that responsibility. Even greater hypocrisy emerges from the fact that these western powers, led by Washington, have now decided to force the discussion of Palestinian statehood in the midst of Gaza’s carnage, with an Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who is infamously opposed to it. So, why is this debate possible now? Why was it ignored before 7 October – or even prior to Netanyahu’s return to the prime ministership?

After enormous public and international pressure, US President Joe Biden has, at least rhetorically, reopened the issue of Palestinian statehood. According to the New York Times, the Biden White House’s new doctrine would “involve some form of US recognition of a demilitarized Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in return for strong Palestinian guarantees that their institutions could never threaten Israel.” In addition, the US president’s plan also envisages Saudi–Israeli normalization and a tough military stance against Iran and its regional allies. However, many analysts have already raised questions about the viability of a plan that does not reflect current ground realities.

While Netanyahu rejects the very notion of a Palestinian state, the ‘Biden doctrine’ and its offering of some limited-sovereignty version of a demilitarized Palestinian state is nothing less than humiliating for Palestinians. Dr Muhannad Ayyash, Professor of Sociology at Mount Royal University, observes that there is no fundamental change of approach by the US on this issue. In short, the Biden administration refuses to clarify what it means by a ‘Palestinian state.’ Its initiative appears mainly to advance a form of a two-state solution that would be palatable to Israel. Ayyash points out that the key issues related to Palestinian statehood are left unanswered, including the issue of sovereignty, Jewish settlements, the status of East Jerusalem, a necessary West Bank/East Jerusalem with the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian right to return, and so forth.

Aid

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“I haven’t seen, and the state of Texas can’t point me to any type of military invasion in Texas,” Judge Ezra said.”

• Federal Judge Blocks New Texas Law to Arrest Illegal Immigrants (ET)

A federal judge on Feb. 29 temporarily blocked a Texas law that would allow state police to arrest people who are suspected of illegally crossing the U.S.–Mexico border. Senate Bill 4, which was signed by Gov. Greg Abbott in December 2023, was slated to go into effect on March 5. However, U.S. District Judge David Ezra ruled that it violated the U.S. Constitution’s supremacy clause that grants the federal government sole authority over immigration matters. The judge also rejected Texas’s arguments that it was being invaded under the Constitution’s Article IV. In his order, Judge Ezra, a Reagan appointee, said the law would run afoul of federal immigration laws and claimed Texas would then be able to “permanently supersede federal directives,” which would “amount to nullification of federal law and authority.”

According to the judge, that’s a “notion that is antithetical to the Constitution and has been unequivocally rejected by federal courts since the Civil War.” As a result, he argued, the federal government would “suffer grave irreparable harm” because other states would be inspired to pass similar measures. “SB 4 threatens the fundamental notion that the United States must regulate immigration with one voice,” he wrote. At a Feb. 15 hearing, Judge Ezra expressed skepticism as the state pleaded its case for what is known as Senate Bill 4. He also said he was somewhat sympathetic to the concerns expressed by Mr. Abbott and other state officials about the unprecedented influx of illegal aliens. Judge Ezra then expressed his concern that the United States could become a confederation of states enforcing their own immigration laws. “That is the same thing the Civil War said you can’t do,” he told the attorneys.

A lawyer for the state of Texas argued in court that because of the deluge of illegal immigrants, enabled by drug cartels and smugglers, it’s tantamount to an invasion and that the state has the right to defend itself under the Constitution. However, the judge said that while he was “sympathetic” to the state’s concerns, he was skeptical of the lawyer’s argument. “I haven’t seen, and the state of Texas can’t point me to any type of military invasion in Texas,” Judge Ezra said. “I don’t see evidence that Texas is at war.” Hours later, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton confirmed that he filed an appeal against the judge’s ruling, describing it as an “incorrect decision.” “Texas has a clear right to defend itself from the drug smugglers, human traffickers, cartels, and legions of illegal aliens crossing into our State as a consequence of the Biden Administration’s deliberate policy choices,” he said.

“I will do everything possible to defend Texas’s right to defend herself against the catastrophic illegal invasion encouraged by the federal government.” Mr. Abbott, a Republican, has backed the law, saying that it would complement his efforts to provide better border security, noting that his state has dealt with a surge of illegal crossings in recent years. Other measures that Mr. Abbott has implemented are a barrier in the Rio Grande, razor wire barriers at certain border crossings, and prohibiting federal agents who have been tasked by the Biden administration with undoing the measures from accessing border areas in Texas. Other state Republicans who back the law have said it wouldn’t target immigrants already living in the United States because of a two-year statute of limitations on the illegal entry charge and would be enforced only along the state’s border with Mexico.

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“We must not allow the politicization of intelligence to go unchecked, nor can we tolerate the involvement of foreign powers in our democratic processes.”

• Obama’s CIA Asked Foreign Intel Agencies To Spy on Trump Campaign (Chernin)

The revelation that the U.S. intelligence community, under the Obama administration, sought the assistance of the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance to surveil Donald Trump’s associates before the 2016 election is a chilling reminder of the lengths to which the Deep State will go to protect its interests and challenge its adversaries. (The Five Eyes countries are the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.) This bombshell, reported by a team of independent journalists, exposes a dark chapter in American political history, where foreign intelligence services were reportedly mobilized against a presidential candidate. The alleged operation against Trump and his associates, which predates the official start of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation, is a stark example of political weaponization of intelligence.

The involvement of foreign allies in surveilling American citizens under the pretext of national security raises serious questions about the integrity of our democratic processes and the autonomy of our nation’s intelligence operations. The narrative that has been pushed for years, that the investigation into Trump’s campaign began with an Australian tip about a boastful Trump aide, now appears to be a cover for a more extensive and coordinated effort to undermine Trump. If reports are accurate, British intelligence began targeting Trump on behalf of American intelligence agencies as early as 2015, long before the official narrative claims.

The implications of this are profound. It suggests an unprecedented level of collusion between U.S. intelligence agencies and their foreign counterparts to influence the outcome of an American presidential election. The use of foreign intelligence to circumvent American laws and surveillance limitations represents a grave threat to our nation’s sovereignty and the principles of democracy. The fact that this operation was reportedly initiated at the behest of high-ranking officials within the Obama administration, including CIA Director John Brennan, only adds to the severity of the situation. Brennan’s alleged identification of Trump associates for surveillance by the Five Eyes alliance, and the directive to “bump” or make contact with them, illustrates a deliberate strategy to entangle the Trump campaign in a web of suspicion and intrigue.

Moreover, the reported involvement of foreign intelligence in crafting the Russia collusion narrative not only delegitimizes the subsequent investigation but also highlights the willingness of certain elements within the U.S. government to exploit international partnerships for domestic political gain. This revelation demands a thorough and transparent examination to ensure that such abuses of power are brought to light and severely punished to discourage them from being repeated. As more details emerge, it is imperative that the American public demand accountability from those who orchestrated and executed this operation. The sanctity of our electoral process and the trust in our intelligence agencies are at stake. We must not allow the politicization of intelligence to go unchecked, nor can we tolerate the involvement of foreign powers in our democratic processes.

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“Hunter’s stated purpose for joining Burisma’s board is a new claim that indicates bizarre reasoning never before revealed..”

• Hunter Finally Admits Joe Biden Is “The Big Guy” (ZH)

Hunter Biden on Wednesday testified to Congress that his father, Joe, was indeed “the big guy” referenced in an email pertaining to a business deal with a Chinese state-linked energy company that made the Biden family and friends millions of dollars. He denied, however, that Joe Biden ever received a 10% stake as was indicated in the text message. “At one point, we asked Hunter about the 10% for the ‘big guy,’” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) told Breitbart News following the first son’s six-hour, closed-door deposition. “We showed him the email … And he said, ‘Oh, that was after my father left office.’” she told the outlet. Hunter then tried to downplay the 10% idea: “What’s wrong with having a pie-in-the-sky idea? When he [Joe Biden] left office in 2017, it thought he was done. I had no idea was gonna run for president. What’s wrong with just some pie?’ … thinking that he [Joe Biden] could be in the business.” -Breitbart

Greene said that Hunter insisted that “there was no percentage for my father in the business,” and that the 20 speakerphone calls Joe Biden joined was considered normal. “He was saying it’s totally normal for your parents to call you,” said Greene. “He just totally kept on saying, ‘Oh, this is normal. This is normal.'” “Greene also confirmed Rep. Matt Gaetz’s (R-KY) statement that Hunter testified he joined the board of Burisma Holdings to counter Russian aggression. “He said he was picked to serve on Burisma ‘s board to defend democracy and Burisma was stopping Russian aggression,” Greene said. Hunter’s stated purpose for joining Burisma’s board is a new claim that indicates bizarre reasoning never before revealed. In 2015, Burisma was under suspicion of money laundering and public corruption. Prosecutor Victor Shokin investigated the case before his termination due to pressure from then-Vice President Joe Biden, who threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid from Ukraine if the Ukrainian government did not fire the prosecutor investigating Burisma. Joe Biden later bragged about the firing during a 2018 appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations.” -Breitbart

According to Greene, Republicans need to “get ready” for Democrats to fabricate another Russian disinformation hoax related to Hunter and the 2024 election – and that it would likely fit the media’s existing narrative against both Trump and protecting the Biden family. “I have a prediction that they’re gonna move it on to members of Congress like me and others, Jim Jordan, Jamie Comer, any of us that got hot and heavy on this Ukraine Burisma stuff, that they’re somehow going to say that Republicans are Russian sympathizers. They’re gonna call me that anyway, because I won’t fund the Ukraine war. They’re probably going to accuse us of being Russian sympathizers and falling for Russian disinformation and its election meddling. And then Democratic members of Congress here already saying they will not certify Trump’s election if he wins.” -MTG “It was there’s a really weird theme in there with the whole Russian thing,” said Greene.

In November, the House Oversight Committee revealed that President Biden received $40,000 in Chinese funds which were “laundered” through his brother, James Biden, in a “complicated financial transaction” marked as a ‘loan,’ which took place just weeks after Hunter Biden threatened the Chinese with his father’s wrath in a July 30, 2017 text message to a CEFC China Energy employee. “The alleged 2017 transfer from first brother James Biden to the future president involves the same business deal in which Joe Biden was called the “big guy” and penciled in for a 10% cut — and would be the first proven instance of the commander-in-chief getting a piece of his family’s foreign income…. The money ended up in Joe Biden’s bank account on Sept. 3, 2017, via a check labeled “loan repayment” from his younger brother, who partnered with Hunter in the venture”. -NY Post

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“..a plethora of political pathologies, including merciless cruelty, politicized “justice,” mass media disinformation, and, last but not least, that old specialty of the “garden” West, peak hypocrisy.”

• Julian Assange and Gaza Civilians (Amar)

Recently, two of the defining injustices of the contemporary West have been the object of legal proceedings. And while one involves mass murder and the other the torture but not murder of a single victim (at least not yet), there are good reasons to juxtapose the two systematically. The suffering involved is different, but the forces that cause it are intricately linked and, as we will see, reveal much about the nature of the West as a political order. In The Hague, the UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) – also known as the World Court – has held extensive hearings (involving 52 states and three international organizations) on Israel’s post-1967 occupation – or de facto annexation – of Palestinian territories. These hearings are connected to, but are not the same as, the genocide case against Israel also currently proceeding at the ICJ.

All of this is happening against the backdrop of Israel’s relentless genocide of the Palestinians by bombing, shooting (reportedly including small children, in the head), blockade, and starvation. As of now, the constantly growing – and conservative – victim count stands at about 30,000 killed, 70,000 injured, 7,000 missing, and at least 2 million displaced, often more than once, always under horrific conditions. In London, the Royal Courts of Justice have been the stage for Julian Assange’s fight for an appeal against Washington’s demand to extradite him to the US. Assange, an activist and publisher of investigative journalism, has already been in confinement – of one kind or the other – for more than a decade. Since 2019, he has been held in the Belmarsh high security prison. In fact, what has already happened to him is the modern equivalent of being locked away in the Bastille by royal “lettre de cachet” in absolutist, pre-revolutionary, Ancien régime France.

Multiple observers, including a UN special rapporteur, have argued compellingly that Assange’s treatment has amounted to torture. The essence of his political persecution – in reality, there is no good-faith legal case – is simple: Through his WikiLeaks platform, Assange published leaked materials that exposed the brutality, criminality, and lies of the US’ and UK’s (and, more generally, the West’s) post-9/11 wars. While leaking state secrets is not legal – although it can be morally obligatory and even heroic, as in the case of Chelsea Manning, who was a major WikiLeaks source – publishing the results of such leaks is legal. Indeed, that principle is an acknowledged pillar of media freedom and independence. Without it, media cannot fulfil any kind of watchdog function. Yet Washington is obstinately and absurdly trying to treat Assange as a spy. If it succeeds, “global media freedom” (for what it’s worth…) is toast. This is what makes Assange objectively the single most important political prisoner in the world.

If extradited to the US, whose highest officials have at times plotted his assassination, the WikiLeaks founder will definitely not get a fair trial and will die in prison. In that case, his fate will irreversibly turn into what Washington and London have been working on for over a decade, namely making an example of him by delivering the most devastating blow imaginable against free speech and a truly open society. That Gaza and Assange have something in common has occurred to more than one observer. Both stand for a plethora of political pathologies, including merciless cruelty, politicized “justice,” mass media disinformation, and, last but not least, that old specialty of the “garden” West, peak hypocrisy. There also is the grotesquely arrogant American sense of global entitlement: The Palestinians’ rights or, indeed, humanity count for nothing if Israel, Washington’s closest and most lawless ally, wants their land and their lives. Assange, of course, is an Australian citizen.

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“He is going to destroy this country unless he’s stopped by people buying my new Trump sneakers. Look at these beautiful gold sneakers..”

• Biden Arrives At Border To Address His Voters (BBee)

Amid record-breaking illegal immigration at the southern border, President Biden arrived in Brownsville Texas to address his voters, who had crossed into the United States the previous night. “Welcome, voters, make yourselves at home!” said Biden to a group of military-aged male Chinese nationals and a crowd of convicted felons from a maximum security Venezuelan prison. “My nurse Jill always says you people are unique breakfast tacos and I couldn’t have said it better. We’re excited for you to live here. You have plenty of great states to choose from, like Ohio, Pennsylvania, or any other crucial battleground states. I was… I… I…” “… well, anyway.” The confused migrant crowd was then directed to a welcome station to receive their smartphones, visa gift cards, and mail-in ballots.

Trump, who also visited the border today, was quick to condemn Biden’s speech and his handling of the border. “Biden is possibly the worst president of any country in the history of the world, or maybe even the entire universe, and maybe all the other universes as well, possibly,” said Trump to reporters. “He is going to destroy this country unless he’s stopped by people buying my new Trump sneakers. Look at these beautiful gold sneakers. They’re the greatest sneakers ever made. So, so beautiful.” Following the Biden border visit, the White House confirmed that there is no crisis at the border. “Everything is fine and there are no illegal immigrants,” said gay black Press Secretary Karine Jean Pierre. “There is no crisis and Biden is doing a great job and he’s very smart and sharp and mentally with it and you are a racist.” At publishing time, illegal immigrant support for Biden increased another 33 points.

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Cat reaction

 

 

 

 

Porcupine
https://twitter.com/i/status/1763289492897628313

 

 

Salmon

 

 

Illusions

 

 

Coke ad

 

 

Set the table

 

 

Nemo

 

 

Elephant

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle February 17 2024

Feb 172024
 
 February 17, 2024  Posted by at 9:51 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  57 Responses »


Francisco Goya The Dog 1819-23

 

• Trump Slams Judge After $364 Million Verdict; Vows To Appeal (ZH)
• Trump Responds To Judge Engoron’s Decision (ZH)
• Speed. . . and. . . Action (Jim Kunstler)
• Musk Decries US Government Censorship (RT)
• ‘Want to Get ‘Radicalized’, See Russia’- Scott Ritter (Sp.)
• An Anti-Russian Europe Is a Europe That Destroys Itself (Dionisio)
• Russian Space Nukes and Navalny’s Death… U.S. Psyops Go Ballistic (SCF)
• Ohio Rep. Part of Shadowy Cabal Aiming to Destroy Russia – Scott Ritter (Sp.)
• Russian Media Thrilled By Biden’s LNG “Gift” To Putin (ZH)
• Axis of Resistance: from Donbass to Gaza (Pepe Escobar)
• Why Israel’s War on UNRWA is so Sinister (Cradle)
• Political, Economic Indicators Not Promising for Biden (Gallup)
• How the CIA Destabilizes the World (Jeffrey Sachs)
• Bombing Muslims for Peace (Bill Astore)

 

 

 

 

Tucker Mike Benz

 

 

Fani Maddow

 

 

 

 

FANI Grand Jury Foreman

 

 

 

 

 

 

The judge and AG are essentially saying they know more about banking than the “defrauded” bankers, who made a hefty profit. This will never pass in the Supreme Court.

But: “He is expected to launch an appeal, which would put the verdict on hold until a higher court reviews the case. But if he wants to avoid paying the fine or have personal assets seized while the appeal process plays out, he still has to deposit the full amount to be held by the court within 30 days.”

For people like Letitia James and Fani Willis, “get Trump” is a career move. As promised in their White House talks.

• Trump Slams Judge After $364 Million Verdict; Vows To Appeal (ZH)

New York Judge Arthur Engoron has ordered former President Donald Trump to pay $364 million for allegedly defrauding banks in order to acquire loans and other benefits – loans which the banks themselves testified they were satisfied with after doing their own due diligence. Trump is also barred “from serving as an officer or director of any New York corporation or other legal entity in New York for a period of three years,” while his sons have been barred from serving as New York executives for two years. New York Attorney General Letitia James had sought $370 million from Trump, his company, and its top executives for what she claimed was “repeated and persistent fraud” – which included allegations of falsifying records and financial statements to the tune of as much as $2.2 billion. Trump maintains that his financial statements to banks were conservative, and has called the case a “fraud on me.”

“This is a case that should have never been brought, and I think we should be entitled to damages,” Trump said on Jan. 11. Following Friday’s decision, Trump’s attorneys hit back – calling it “manifest injustice” in a statement. The months-long civil trial included testimony from Trump and his oldest children. The former president was combative in his day on the stand, blasting James as a “hack” and calling the judge “extremely hostile.” Trump repeatedly complained about Engoron before and throughout the trial, and the judge slapped him with a partial gag order after he started blasting the judge’s law clerk as well. Trump’s complaints led to a flood of death threats against the clerk, as well as Engoron, court officials said, and Trump was fined $15,000 for twice violating the order. -NBC News

During the trial, Deutsche Bank executive David Williams, who directly worked on at least one of several loans obtained by Trump over several decades, testified that it’s “atypical, but not entirely unusual” for a bank to internally slash a client’s stated asset values by 50% and approve a loan anyway, as they did with Trump, Bloomberg reported in November. “It just depends on the circumstances,” said Williams, a managing director at the bank. “Deutsche Bank, which loaned hundreds of millions of dollars to Trump for properties in Miami, Chicago and Washington, cut his stated net worth in 2011 and 2012 from about $4.2 billion to $2.3 billion, according to internal bank credit memos. The same documents indicated the bank approved the loans anyway because it expected them to generate a profit based on Trump’s history of successful developments and other criteria.

Trump, who denies wrongdoing and claims the case is politically motivated, is calling to the stand this week four current and former Deutsche Bank employees — including the family’s former private banker Rosemary Vrablic — as part of his defense case, seeking to flip the script on the state’s version of events”. -Bloomberg. The testimony undermined AG James’ premise, that Trump defrauded the German bank. But of course, none of that matters to Engoron – while Trump’s Martyr status just intensified. Expect this decision to be reflected in upcoming polls.

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“Trump has responded to Judge Engoron’s decision, calling him a “crooked” judge who’s just committed election interference (and much, much more)..”

• Trump Responds To Judge Engoron’s Decision (ZH)

“A Crooked New York State Judge, working with a totally Corrupt Attorney General who ran on the basis of “I will get Trump,” before knowing anything about me or my company, has just fined me $355 Million based on nothing other than having built a GREAT COMPANY. ELECTION INTERFERENCE. WITCH HUNT (more to follow!),” said Trump in a post to Truth Social. “The Justice System in New York State, and America as a whole, is under assault by partisan, deluded, biased Judges and Prosecutors. Racist, Corrupt A.G. Tish James has been obsessed with “Getting Trump” for years, and used Crooked New York State Judge Engoron to get an illegal, unAmerican judgment against me, my family, and my tremendous business. I helped New York City during its worst of times, and now, while it is overrun with Violent Biden Migrant Crime, the Radicals are doing all they can to kick me out….”

And according to the former president, Engoron conspired with New York Attorney General Letitia James. “This Election Interference and tyrannical Abuse of Power by a Crooked Judge and Crooked Attorney General cannot be tolerated. My case was already won in the Appellate Division, and more than 80% of the frivolous claims were wiped out. Yet, as I suspected, and in order to hurt me and the Republican Party politically, Crooked and Corrupt Judge Arthur Engoron ignored his loss at the Appellate Division, and came up with an outrageous $355 Million Dollar fine against me. Using a statute that has never been applied like this before, the Corrupt Judge conspired with the Crooked Attorney General, Letitia James, and punished a liquid and beautiful Corporate Empire that started in New York, and has been successful all around the world…..

“There were no victims, and not one person testified there was any fraud. The actual witnesses established my Net Worth exceeded that reported in my Financial Statements as those Statements never included my most valuable Asset – the TRUMP Brand. The Highly Respected Expert Witness said my Financial Statements were among the best he has ever seen. I paid over $300 Million Dollars in taxes to New York City and State, and they want me gone. They are Crazed Lunatics who are destroying everything in their way. It all starts with Biden’s attacks on his Political Opponent!” Trump also said he’d appeal Engoron’s decision.

“The actual bankers who were involved in the loan transactions testified I was a highly sought-after “whale” of a client with “one of the strongest personal balance sheets” they had ever seen, and I was overqualified for the loans. Those banks earned more than $100 Million Dollars in profits doing business with me and my companies. But to justify his crazed attack on me and my family, this biased, Trump Hating Judge, ignored all this, and even said Michael Cohen told the truth, although Cohen admitted to lying hundreds of times, and lied right in front of the Judge during the trial. This shocking and corrupt Interference in the Free Markets for political gain places every New York business transaction at risk. We must make sure Corrupt Politicians and Judges cannot continue to abuse the power of their office, and violate the public trust. We have already won, and will continue the fight on appeal!”

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“The reason the lovebirds could take so much time cavorting across the Caribbean and California — vineyard tours featuring “pairings of champagne, chocolate, and caviar,” Ms. Willis testified — is because their Fulton County case was entirely prepped for them out of DC by Mary McCord..”

• Speed. . . and. . . Action (Jim Kunstler)

Have you noticed yet that America has turned into a Coen Brothers movie? Everywhere you look, you see madcap characters disgracing themselves while doing their bit to burn the whole country down. It’s a panoramic extravaganza of everything gone wrong, with slapstick overtones, driving toward an apocalyptic climax — civil war, nuclear war, economic collapse, maybe all three. And all because the people on-screen just can’t stop lying. Yesterday was Fani Willis’s turn, her big scene. The Fulton County, Georgia, DA, wasn’t even scheduled to testify, but she barged into Judge Scott McAfee’s courtroom and seized possession of the witness stand, like it was home-base in a game of ringolevio. This was after the morning vivisection of her boyfriend, the feckless Nathan Wade, testifying to the couple’s fun-filled romantic travels during the months they were supposedly busy constructing a racketeering case against Donald Trump and eighteen others scooped into their dragnet.

The reason the lovebirds could take so much time cavorting across the Caribbean and California — vineyard tours featuring “pairings of champagne, chocolate, and caviar,” Ms. Willis testified — is because their Fulton County case was entirely prepped for them out of DC by Mary McCord, the veteran blob lawyer active in every Get-Trump hoax cooked up since 2016. (And I’d bet cash-money that she had plenty of assistance from Lawfare blobsters Norm Eisen and Andrew Weissmann.) The complex particulars of the case were all teed up, ready to go. All Ms. Willis and her lead prosecutor, Mr. Wade, had to do was get the trial date set, raise the curtain, and follow the script. Alas, the couple got carried away in the raptures of amour and, all of a sudden, we’re in something like The Real Housewives of Atlanta. And then they lied about the details under oath, especially around the money involved. If they are not disqualified from participating in the Trump “racketeering” case — in which their own behavior would be centerpiece evidence of an ineptly tainted and malicious prosecution — and/or if the case is not tossed summarily, then it will have to be removed to another county and most likely delayed until after the 2024 elections. Nice work, Party of Chaos!

That little opéra bouffe is but one sub-plot in the larger scenario. Also this week, the scandal of the century was re-kindled when alt-news reporters Taibbi, Shellenberger, and Gutentag filed the story of how Barack Obama and CIA Director John Brennan, with his chore girls, Avril Haines and Gina Haspel, cooked up the RussiaGate caper and fed it to the FBI, with a major assist from The New York Times, the WashPo, CNN, and other useful idiot news media vectors. All of this had actually been well-documented for years, but the reporters dredged up new corroboration from disgusted blob insiders further clarifying the origins of the hoax. The cast of characters in that part of the big movie has been consistent through eight full years of anti-Trump hysteria and the associated trips laid on our country. Ms. McCord, for instance, was U.S. Acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security during the birth of RussiaGate; later served as counsel to the House Committee that kicked-off Trump Impeachment No. 1 (coordinating the Eric Ciaramella “whistleblower” scam); then became counsel to Rep. Bennie Thompson’s J6 committee investigation, and now turns up as Fani Willis’ legal tutor, and probably also tutor to New York State Attorney General Letitia James and her preposterous Get Trump real estate valuation case under Judge Engoron.

(Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan DA on the Stormy Daniels case against Mr. Trump, was coached by then US Associate Attorney General Matthew Colangelo who was hired out of the DOJ directly into Mr. Bragg’s office for tutoring purposes.) All of this coaching post Jan 20, 2021, was coordinated by the “Joe Biden” White House. Speaking of whom, the evermore spectral “president” was not having a great week either after DOJ Special Counsel Robert Hur painted him into a corner in his final report as either too demented to face charges in the purloined documents case (and, by inference, not mentally capable to be president), or else a criminal trafficking in top secret documents he was not authorized to possess as Senator and Veep. Looks like that puts an end to “JB’s” game of pretending to run for reelection (that is, lying about it) and leaves the Democratic Party holding a flaming bag of dog doo-doo.

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Musk is paying good attention to what happens to Trump: “How far will they go to stop me?”

• Musk Decries US Government Censorship (RT)

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has claimed that his foray into social media – buying the former Twitter (since renamed X) and trying to make it a bastion of free speech – made him and all of his businesses targets for constant attacks by governments and their censorship allies. “The public still doesn’t understand even a tiny fraction of the power of the censorship-government-industrial complex,” Musk said on Friday in a post on X. “As predicted, my companies and I came under relentless attack the moment the censorship of this platform was lifted. How far will they go to stop me?” The US billionaire made the comments in response to a post by podcast host David Sacks, who warned that “regime Democrats” are working every day to undermine Americans’ free-speech rights and freedom from political persecution.

Musk also agreed with a suggestion that his political enemies are “just getting started” after winning a Delaware court ruling late last month voiding his $56 billion compensation package at Tesla. Musk, who heads several other companies, has previously claimed that he’s at “quite significant” risk of being killed. His father, Errol Musk, said in an interview last September that he feared his son could be assassinated by a “shadow government” because of the influence he wields. Ranking as America’s richest man with a fortune estimated by Forbes at over $200 billion, Elon Musk has been hit with a flurry of legal attacks and negative media coverage since buying Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022 and vowing to end censorship on the platform. Advertiser boycotts cut into X’s revenue, and President Joe Biden’s administration sued Musk’s SpaceX company for allegedly discriminating against refugees in its hiring practices.

Biden reacted to the Twitter takeover by suggesting that Musk should be investigated by the federal government. Asked whether Musk could jeopardize US national security, the president told reporters, “I think that Elon Musk’s cooperation and/or technical relationships with other countries is worthy of being looked at.” Under its previous ownership, Twitter was among the social media platforms that helped Biden win the 2020 US presidential election by censoring a bombshell report on alleged influence-peddling in Ukraine and China by his family. Republican lawmakers have accused the FBI of colluding with Twitter executives to squash the report. Musk also released internal Twitter documents exposing government involvement in the censoring of speech regarding the Covid-19 pandemic. “Thank God for Elon Musk for allowing to show us and the world that Twitter was basically a subsidiary of the FBI, censoring real medical voices with real expertise that put real American lives in danger because they didn’t have that information,” US Representative Nancy Mace said last year.

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“Russia is a nation, not a city. And the Russians love their country..”

• ‘Want to Get ‘Radicalized’, See Russia’- Scott Ritter (Sp.)

The knives are out for Tucker Carlson in the Washington establishment and the legacy media as he continues to debunk myths and stereotypes about Russia with a series of videos about life in the capital in the midst of the West’s sanctions ‘total war’. In the latest of a series of clips posted to his internet channel about his experiences from his eight-day stay in Russia, Carlson praised Moscow’s grocery prices. “I went from amused to legitimately angry,” Carlson said after purchasing a week’s worth of groceries for the equivalent of about $105 US. “Coming to a Russian grocery store, the ‘heart of evil’, and seeing what things cost and how people live, it will radicalize you against our leaders. That’s how I feel, anyway – radicalized,” Carlson said after dragging US leaders through the mud for “wrecking people’s lives” through “filth and crime and inflation.”

The independent conservative journalist’s comments sparked immediate outrage from detractors, with neocon Republican lawmaker Thom Tillis echoing Hillary Clinton, blasting Carlson as a “useful idiot” and mocking him for suggesting Russia “is so much better than the US with all those cheap groceries and lavish subway stations.” Another neocon group, ‘Republicans Against Trump’, blasted Carlson as a “Kremlin propagandist” and accused him of running a program called “Russia is awesome, the US is crap.” The hate was echoed by establishment media, with the USA Today publishing a column suggesting Tucker should do “everything he can to get his followers to move to Russia.” MSNBC host Chris Hayes immediately jumped in to suggest that the discrepancy in grocery prices is the result of America being a “rich country” and that “if you are an american [sic] and go to a country that is poorer, things will be cheaper there.”

Others suggested Tucker’s experiences were unique to Moscow, and that he would see something different if he went to “real Russia” outside the “Potemkin village” Russian capital. “It’s like a modern day equivalent of John Reed’s classic ‘10 Days That Shook the World’ – ‘8 Days That Radicalized Tucker Carlson’,” former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter told Sputnik of Carlson’s eye-opening experiences during his visit to Russia. “We all saw the interview with Vladimir Putin, over 1 billion of us, and we’ve seen Tucker Carlson’s video clips of his experience in Moscow, the Moscow Metro, shopping in a Moscow market, a visit to the Russian McDonald’s [equivalent]. Everything that Tucker Carlson said is true, 100%. The Metro is an amazing place, clean, it’s a work of art. There is no food shortage in Moscow. Yes, Russian fast food is not only as tasty as its American equivalent, but because of the GMO laws, yes, Tucker, you should have asked that question, healthier,” Ritter said.

Pointing to those dishing out of hate Carlson’s way and claiming his experiences were somehow “fake,” Ritter, who has traveled to Russia extensively over the past year, Ritter assured that he has “been to the rest of Russia,” and could confirm that what the former Fox News host saw in Moscow could be observed in other Russian cities as well. “In May, when I made my first visit to Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the first city I landed in wasn’t Moscow. It was Novosibirsk. Now is Novosibirsk is brilliantly lit up as Moscow? No, it’s not a city of 13 million. It’s not the capital of the Russian Federation. It’s not the center of commerce for Russia. But Novosibirsk is the third largest city in Russia and the largest developing economy. You know, when you go to a supermarket in Novosibirsk, it’s every bit as well stocked as those you will find in Moscow. Why? Because Russia is a modern state.

Russia is a state that has the ability to transport food products throughout the great expanse of the nation. Russia is not Moscow. Russia is a nation of over 150 million people who live with the same level of modernity as the rest of the world,” Ritter said. “In Novosibirsk, I saw a people who live their lives just like everybody else – [with] a public transportation system that’s clean, efficient, streets that are clean, efficient. Why? Because throughout Russia, the Russian people care about their cities as much as the residents of Moscow care about theirs. Russia is a nation, not a city. And the Russians love their country,” he added.

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“Russia did everything it could to free itself from US domination in the terrible 1990s, and Ukraine did everything it could to integrate itself under US control, mainly from 2004 onwards..”

• An Anti-Russian Europe Is a Europe That Destroys Itself (Dionisio)

According to Syrsky, the new commander-in-chief of Kiev’s troops, the lives of Ukrainian soldiers are the most important thing the army has. An assumption that was only made when it became obvious to everyone that there was no chance of victory in a direct fight against Russia. As long as it was possible to feed the idea that „Ukraine was beating Russia“, when it was Russia that had the initiative — and never lost it — the lives of Ukrainian soldiers were worth little. Men — and some women — in their hundreds of thousands were thrown into muddy trenches, poorly fed and with ammunition in short supply, against an opponent who never lacked anything.

The fact is that when the Kiev forces had combat capability — not to be confused with „the ability to win“ — the official communication was that „Ukraine was winning the war“; when it became clear that the cost of fighting the Russian forces was so high that it could not be sustained, the pro-Kiev media, financed by Uncle Sam’s NGOs and primary sources of Western official information, began to say „Ukraine cannot lose the war“; when it could no longer be hidden that the „counter-offensive“ had failed and with it, the hopes — fanciful — of a Kiev victory, we moved on to the „Ukraine and Russia are in a stalemate“ phase. The Ukrainian reality, under the Kiev regime, is characterized by always being in direct contradiction with the Russian reality and, coincidentally, with the concrete observable reality. This is why the relationship between the two realities is an invaluable dialectical example from a pedagogical point of view.

While living with Russia, Ukraine has become one of the world’s greatest powers. There is not, and never has been, a successful Ukraine without Russia on its side. Vladimir Putin did not lie about the fact that Russia has always helped Ukraine. For those who don’t know, it wasn’t out of any kind of adventurism that the Donbass was annexed to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. In 1917, Ukraine was an eminently rural and de-industrialized region of the Russian empire, so, in 1918, in order to guarantee conditions for the territory’s development and, in this way, a more harmonious development of the nascent Soviet state, the Donbass became part of the Ukrainian Socialist Republic, as a way of guaranteeing the progress of the newly formed homeland.

The truth is that, in 1991, Ukraine had more than 50 million inhabitants, one of the largest armies in Europe (perhaps the second largest), an enviable military-industrial complex, a highly qualified, talented and productive population, capable of revealing itself in all aspects of human life, from the arts to science, from agriculture to sport. After surviving many tensions imposed from outside and introduced by the usual suspects, in 2004-2005, the Orange Revolution accelerated the process of creating an anti-Russia. The idea was not new and had already crossed the minds of people linked to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and beyond. From then on, the balance of power between the Russian-speaking and Russian-sympathetic peoples and the peoples who had become „Russian-phobic“ began to reverse and, gradually, the anti-Russian forces began to infect the entire territory, gradually conquering new strongholds, from the outskirts of Galicia to the center of Kiev.

From then on, what would be the imported „solution“ to fill Ukraine’s lack of national identity began to take shape. As a country that had never existed until 1918, and only became fully independent in 1991, Ukraine had to create a national identity in order to guarantee its existence. Not an easy thing to do in a country built up by ruler and square in successive waves of annexation. The induced „choice“ was to turn Ukraine into an „anti-Russia“. Everything Russia would be, Ukraine would have to be the opposite.

It’s clear to see that this „choice“ would have to be induced, since in the case of a country with the same language, or languages with the same root (for those who separate „Ukrainian“ from „Russian“), with the same religion, culture and national past, the natural choice would never be antagonism, since one and the other thrived on a symbiotic relationship. And this relationship was mutually fruitful right up until the moment when Russia did everything it could to free itself from US domination in the terrible 1990s, and Ukraine did everything it could to integrate itself under US control, mainly from 2004 onwards. The chronological succession leaves no doubt: Russia freed itself from American tutelage during the late 90s and early 2000s, Ukraine embraced it from 2004 onwards.

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“..The U.S. media have claimed (preposterously) that if the military aid is not supplied then Ukraine’s defeat could result in American troops being deployed to prevent Russian rampaging across Europe.”

• Russian Space Nukes and Navalny’s Death… U.S. Psyops Go Ballistic (SCF)

The claims about Russian space-based nuclear weapons unraveled to become a joke. Fortunately, the death of Western-sponsored dissident Alexei Navalny then occurred to enable Western media to go into a frenzy of anti-Russia headlines. First up was the scaremongering story about Russia allegedly developing a space-based nuclear weapon. Initially, it was dramatically trailed as posing a serious national security threat to the United States. Despite the sensational reporting, the story quickly became a laughingstock. Even some U.S. lawmakers dismissed it as “bullshit” and a blatant attempt by the Biden White House and intelligence agencies to push Congress into passing a new mega military aid bill for Ukraine worth $61 billion.

We’ll get to the Navalny story in a moment. But let’s just first parse the orchestration of the alleged Russian space nukes. The drama began on Wednesday when Mike Turner, the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee (a dodgy source if ever there was one), made public appeals to President Joe Biden to declassify intelligence on “a serious threat to national security”. Turner is a Republican member of the House of Representatives but he is a close ally of the Democrat White House in terms of keenly supporting military aid to Ukraine. The latest bill passed the upper chamber of the U.S. Senate the day before, February 13, but it is unlikely to be approved by the House where many Republican lawmakers are staunchly opposed to it.

Accompanying the “concerns” of the intel committee chairman Turner, media outlets then vented anonymous US intelligence sources “revealing” that the national security threat was from Russian nuclear weapons allegedly under development for destroying American communication satellites in space. The White House then “confirmed” the intel the next day, February 15. It was a flagrant put-up job. But the Biden administration sought to tamp down any public panic by saying that the threat was not imminent and the alleged Russian satellite-killing weapon had not been deployed in orbit, nor would there be any danger to Earth. (So, what was all the fuss about?)

Ironically, derisive comments from incredulous U.S. lawmakers were also echoed by the Kremlin. The latter’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov made a similar assessment that the Biden administration was playing tricks to push through the military funding package for Ukraine. That bill has been delayed since the end of last year. The Biden administration has been cajoling Congress for months to vote it through. After the Senate finally passed the bill this week, President Biden put pressure on the House, saying that “history is watching you”. The bill has been exalted as having existential importance in defeating “Russian aggression” in Ukraine. The U.S. media have claimed (preposterously) that if the military aid is not supplied then Ukraine’s defeat could result in American troops being deployed to prevent Russian rampaging across Europe.

The American public, as with the European public, has become increasingly skeptical about the relentless funneling of taxpayer funds and weapons to Ukraine. Many citizens in the West – a majority, according to polls – have become critical of fueling a bloody war for the dubious cause of “defending democracy” in a regime dominated by NeoNazis. At a time of deep social and economic hardship in the U.S. and Europe, the Western public is rightly disdainful of hundreds of billions of dollars and euros being wasted on death and destruction and also being siphoned off by a corrupt cabal in Kiev. The $61 billion in military aid to Ukraine is just the latest tranche that Washington is seeking to throw at the black hole of its proxy war against Russia – a war that is really all about defeating Russia as a geopolitical obstacle to U.S. hegemony. Another driver is the massive profits that taxpayers are subsidizing the military-industrial complex at the rotten heart of Western capitalism.

Navalny

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“There’s no ammunition left. There’s nothing left. Ukraine has got nothing.” “And he [Turner] knows he’s looking at it, saying ‘it’s over, game set match – Russia, they win,’” he added.“

• Ohio Rep. Part of Shadowy Cabal Aiming to Destroy Russia – Scott Ritter (Sp.)

Ohio Representative Mike Turner (R-OH) made waves this week when he warned of an alleged “serious national security threat” to the United States. The supposed risk was soon revealed to be Russian in nature, with a media cycle quickly emerging over the danger of alleged “space nukes” the country could detonate to disable US satellite communications. The timing of the revelation raised eyebrows as Turner had visited Ukraine just days ago as part of a Congressional delegation in solidarity with the country’s embattled President Volodymyr Zelensky. Turner’s claims also come as the Biden administration struggles to continue funding the US-backed Ukrainian proxy war, with key Republicans blocking a compromise bill with aid for Kiev and Tel Aviv.

Former UN weapons inspector and whistleblower Scott Ritter joined Sputnik’s Fault Lines program on Thursday to discuss the latest Russophobic hysteria, speculating Turner is part of a secret group of lawmakers and intelligence officials hellbent on undermining Russia at any cost. “There’s a cabal,” claimed Ritter, who was shunned in Washington after defying intelligence claims of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction during the George W. Bush administration. “Turner is… part of the cabal of people that view this Ukrainian conflict [as] not about defense of democracy – knock off this nonsense – it’s about defeating Russia, the strategic objective of the United States by using Ukraine as a proxy in a conflict against Russia.”

“You’ve heard everybody say this, ‘we’re killing them without losing a single American, we’re weakening Russia, we’re creating the conditions to destroy Russia, to collapse Russian society, to bring down [Russian President] Vladimir Putin,’” noted Ritter. “He believes that this is a good thing. He believes that’s the direction the United States should be going. And he understands that Ukraine right now is in freefall. Their military is being slaughtered on the battlefield. The Americans have no clue what’s happening on the battlefield right now.”

Ukraine has faced declining fortunes in the Donbass conflict since the spectacular failure of the country’s vaunted “counteroffensive” last year. In recent days Russian forces have achieved an advantage in the city of Avdeyevka, where for months they’ve endured a stalemate with Ukrainian troops. Shortages in ammunition have undermined Ukrainian reinforcements in the past weeks, allowing Russia to break down Kiev’s foritifications. “The Russians aren’t losing anywhere,” said Ritter. “Maybe in the Black Sea they lost a ship, big deal, but on the ground, they’re routing Ukraine. There’s no ammunition left. There’s nothing left. Ukraine has got nothing.” “And he [Turner] knows he’s looking at it, saying ‘it’s over, game set match – Russia, they win,’” he added. “‘Therefore, we need to make people understand the consequences of a Russian victory.’”

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“Pravda argued that Germany will eventually have to return to buying Russian gas because it will have no other choice..”

• Russian Media Thrilled By Biden’s LNG “Gift” To Putin (ZH)

This week, President Vladimir Putin praised President Joe Biden as a more experienced and predictable president than Donald Trump, hoping the 81yo president “with a poor memory” wins a second term. Meanwhile, Trump made remarks during a campaign rally Wednesday night in South Carolina on Putin’s comments: “He’s just said that he would much rather have Joe Biden as president than Trump. Now that’s a compliment. A lot of people said, ‘Oh, gee, that’s too bad.’ No, no, that’s a good thing.” Democrats spent years framing Trump as ‘Putin’s puppet,’ but the actions by Biden, essentially handing over the global energy kingdom to Moscow by halting permits for new liquefied natural gas (LNG) export projects in Texas, is a stark reminder of why Putin prefers the elderly and weak president. Last month, the Wall Street Journal editorial board called Biden’s LNG export license halt “an election-year gift to Russia and Iran.” And the editorial board is out with another piece titled “Biden’s LNG ‘Gift’ to Vladimir Putin.”

This latest note by the editorial board points out how Russian media is “thrilled” by Biden’s LNG gas export ban: “Now it is not Russia, but the United States that wants to bring the Germans to their knees,” gloated the Russian newspaper Pravda after the Energy Department imposed a moratorium on permits for new LNG export projects last month. Pravda argued that Germany will eventually have to return to buying Russian gas because it will have no other choice, and it may be right. They cite another Russian media outlet: RedDigest, a Russian-based news source, also predicted Europe will need to buy more Russian gas and be forced to pay a higher price. “The EU may well turn to Moscow for additional supplies. Of course, there will be no talk of any discounts,” a Feb. 3 article sneered. Mr. Biden’s LNG embargo will leave Europe more vulnerable to Mr. Putin’s energy blackmail.

And another: Bloknot, a pro-war Russian media outlet, accused the U.S. of scheming to replace Russian gas and then pulling the rug from under Europeans. “A brilliant scam: how the States fooled Europe with gas,” read a Bloknot headline. RT (formerly Russia Today) gloated that Mr. Biden’s “very timely decision to ban LNG exports” was a “gift to Russian leader Vladimir Putin.” In a separate note, WSJ said Biden’s attempt to punish Texas over the border dispute is part of a campaign by wealthy donors – including the Rockefeller family – to pressure the government into shifting away from LNG. Why are America’s elites and an elderly president with a “poor memory” giving Putin the keys to the global energy kingdom under the guise of ‘climate change’?

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“Scratch the veneer of who’s in power in Kiev and Tel Aviv, and who pulls their strings, and you will find the same puppet masters controlling Ukraine, Israel, the US, the UK, and nearly all NATO members..”

• Axis of Resistance: from Donbass to Gaza (Pepe Escobar)

During my recent vertiginous journey in Donbass tracking Orthodox Christian battalions defending their land, Novorossiya, it became starkly evident that the resistance in these newly liberated Russian republics is fighting much the same battle as their counterparts in West Asia. Nearly 10 years after Maidan in Kiev, and two years after the start of Russia’s Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine, the resolve of the resistance has only deepened. It’s impossible to do full justice to the strength, resilience, and faith of the people of Donbass, who stand on the front line of a US proxy war against Russia. The battle they have been fighting since 2014 has now visibly shed its cover and revealed itself to be, at its core, a cosmic war of the collective West against Russian civilization.

As Russian President Vladimir Putin made very clear during his Tucker Carlson interview seen by one billion people worldwide, Ukraine is part of Russian civilization – even if it is not part of the Russian Federation. So shelling ethnic Russian civilians in Donbass – still ongoing – translates as attacks on Russia. He shares the same reasoning as Yemen’s Ansarallah resistance movement, which describes the Israeli genocide in Gaza as one launched against “our people”: people of the lands of Islam. Just as the rich black soil of Novorossiya is where the “rules-based international order” came to die; the Gaza Strip in West Asia – an ancestral land, Palestine – may ultimately be the site where Zionism will perish. Both the rules-based order and Zionism, after all, are essential constructs of the western unipolar world and key to advancing its global economic and military interests.

Today’s incandescent geopolitical fault lines are already configured: the collective west versus Islam, the collective west versus Russia, and soon a substantial part of the west, even reluctantly, versus China. Yet a serious counterpunch is at play. As much as the Axis of Resistance in West Asia will keep boosting their “swarm” strategy, those Orthodox Christian battalions in Donbass cannot but be regarded as the vanguard of the Slavic Axis of Resistance. When mentioning this Shia–Orthodox Christianity connection to two top commanders in Donetsk, only 2 kilometers away from the front line, they smiled, bemused, but definitely got the message. After all, more than anyone else in Europe, these soldiers are able to grasp this unifying theme: on the two top imperial fronts – Donbass and West Asia – the crisis of the western hegemon is deepening and fast accelerating collapse.

NATO’s cosmic humiliation-in-progress in the steppes of Novorossiya is mirrored by the Anglo–American–Zionist combo sleepwalking into a larger conflagration throughout West Asia – frantically insisting they don’t want war while bombing every Axis of Resistance vector except Iran (they can’t, because the Pentagon gamed all scenarios, and they all spell out doom). Scratch the veneer of who’s in power in Kiev and Tel Aviv, and who pulls their strings, and you will find the same puppet masters controlling Ukraine, Israel, the US, the UK, and nearly all NATO members.

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“I =srael’s allegations are not based on any evidence. They are instead part of a classified plan prepared in advance by Israel’s foreign ministry to destroy UNRWA..”

• Why Israel’s War on UNRWA is so Sinister (Cradle)

The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is facing the gravest existential crisis in its 74-year history, as funding cuts by several western countries come on top of ongoing atrocities perpetrated by Israel in Gaza. The UN agency is unique in being the only one dedicated to a specific group of refugees in specific areas, and the only relief organization that operates a full-fledged educational system. UNRWA is also the only organization mandated to work in Gaza and distribute aid to the two million people currently trapped and starved in the besieged enclave. To compound these challenges, the occupation wants to see it dismantled. In January, Israel alleged that Palestinian members of UNRWA’s staff participated in the resistance’s Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on 7 October, leading the US and 18 other nations to swiftly suspend funding for the organization.

The suspensions were met with shock, as UNRWA plays a key role in providing food and medicine to starving Gazans struggling to survive Israel’s siege and bombardment of the coastal enclave. However, Israel’s allegations are not based on any evidence. They are instead part of a classified plan prepared in advance by Israel’s foreign ministry to destroy UNRWA. It believes that UNRWA “works against Israel’s interests” by perpetuating the dream of the right of return of Palestinian refugees and the idea of armed struggle against occupation. The foreign ministry plan leaked to Israel’s Channel 12 on 28 December, set out a three-stage process to eliminate UNRWA in Gaza, using the Hamas-led resistance operation as a pretext:

First, prepare a case alleging UNRWA’s cooperation with Hamas; second, reduce UNRWA’s field of activity and find replacement service providers; and third, transfer UNRWA’s responsibilities to another entity. Channel 12 noted that Israel wants to move slowly, given that the US government sees UNRWA as crucial to humanitarian efforts in Gaza. The foreign ministry is seeking to gradually build the case for ousting the organization as part of the discussions on “the day after” the war – should Hamas be dismantled. According to a report by The New York Times, the “sequence of events” that led the US to suspend UNRWA funding began on 18 January when Amir Weissbrod, a deputy director general at the Israeli Foreign Ministry, met with Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA in Tel Aviv.

Weissbrod showed Lazzarini a dossier from Israeli intelligence claiming that 12 UNRWA employees had participated in the 7 October attacks. After the meeting in Israel, Lazzarini made no effort to confirm the validity of the claims. Instead, he flew to New York to meet with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and immediately began firing the employees, a UN official said. The Guardian reported that Lazzarini was later asked in a press conference if he had looked into whether there was any evidence for the allegations presented to him by Weissbrod. “No,” Lazzarini replied, “the investigation is going on now.” Lazzarini said he made the “exceptional, swift decision” due to “the explosive nature of the claims,” rather than any evidence. Lazzarini said he did not even read the dossier himself because it was in Hebrew. Instead, Weissbrod “was reading this and translating for me,” he said.

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Better grow the economy, Joe.

• Political, Economic Indicators Not Promising for Biden (Gallup)

Several key indicators of the 2024 election environment indicate that President Joe Biden faces an uphill climb to win a second term. His job approval rating, Americans’ satisfaction with how things are going in the country and their confidence in the economy are below the levels associated with successful reelection bids in recent elections. While Democrats hold a slight edge in national party identification and partisan leanings, that advantage is smaller than what it has been in past presidential elections won by Democratic incumbents. In less direct measures of the electoral environment, Americans are more inclined to say that they are worse off financially, that it is harder to buy things and that the U.S. is as respected throughout the world as it was before Biden took office.

Biden’s fate will ultimately be determined by whether Americans’ views on these metrics improve over the course of the year (as they did for Bill Clinton in 1996 and Barack Obama in 2012), stay the same or get worse (as they did for George H.W. Bush in 1992 and Donald Trump in 2020). Incumbent job approval is arguably the best predictor of reelection success. Presidents with approval ratings of 50% or higher close to Election Day have all been reelected. All but one president with a sub-50% approval rating lost, the exception being George W. Bush. He won reelection with a 48% approval rating in Gallup’s final 2004 preelection poll taken in late October. However, he registered multiple 50% readings earlier in the month and had a 51% approval rating among likely voters in that final survey.

Among the approval ratings that did not carry incumbents to victory, Trump’s 46% approval rating is the highest and Gerald Ford’s 45% is close behind. The inauspicious ratings descend from there, all the way down to 34% for George H.W. Bush. Biden’s 41% job approval rating, the lowest among incumbents in January of an election year, puts him in a precarious spot. It has not been unusual for incumbents to be below the 50% threshold this early on. But Biden’s reelection may depend on his ability to boost his numbers close to that threshold, something Clinton, Obama and Richard Nixon were able to do but Trump and Ford were not. Other presidents, including George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter, saw significant declines in approval during their fourth year in office.

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“..Given Burns’ stature and diplomatic accomplishments, perhaps he would support the urgently needed accountability..”

• How the CIA Destabilizes the World (Jeffrey Sachs)

Once in a while, a former U.S. official spills the beans, such as when Zbigniew Brzezinski revealed that he had induced Jimmy Carter to assign the CIA to train Islamic jihadists to destabilize the government of Afghanistan, with the aim of inducing the Soviet Union to invade that country. In the case of Syria, we learned from a few stories in the New York Times in 2016 and 2017 of the CIA’s subversive operations to destabilize Syria and overthrow Assad, as ordered by President Barack Obama. Here is the case of a dreadfully misguided CIA operation, blatantly in violation of international law, that has led to a decade of mayhem, an escalating regional war, hundreds of thousands of deaths, and millions of displaced people, and yet there has not been a single honest acknowledgment of this CIA-led disaster by the White House or Congress.

In the case of Ukraine, we know that the U.S. played a major covert role in the violent coup that brought down Yanukovych and that swept Ukraine into a decade of bloodshed but to this day, we don’t know the details. Russia offered the world a window into the coup by intercepting and then posting a call between Victoria Nuland, then U.S. Assistant Secretary of State (now Under-Secretary of State) and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt (now Assistant Secretary of State), in which they plot the post-coup government. Following the coup, the CIA covertly trained special operations forces of the post-coup regime the U.S. had helped bring to power. The U.S. government has been mum about the CIA’s covert operations in Ukraine. We have good reason to believe that CIA operatives carried out the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline, as per Seymour Hersh, who is now an independent reporter. Unlike in 1975, when Hersh was with the New York Times at a time when the paper still tried to hold the government to account, the Times does not even deign to look into Hersh’s account.

Holding the CIA to public account is of course a steep uphill struggle. Presidents and the Congress don’t even try. The mainstream media don’t investigate the CIA, preferring instead to quote “senior unnamed officials” and the official cover-up. Are the mainstream media outlets lazy, suborned, afraid of advertising revenues from the military-industrial complex, threatened, ignorant, or all of the above? Who knows. There is a tiny glimmer of hope. Back in 1975, the CIA was led by a reformer. Today, the CIA is led by William Burns, one of America’s long-standing leading diplomats. Burns knows the truth about Ukraine, since he served as Ambassador to Russia in 2008 and cabled Washington about the grave error of pushing NATO enlargement to Ukraine. Given Burns’ stature and diplomatic accomplishments, perhaps he would support the urgently needed accountability.

The extent of the continuing mayhem resulting from CIA operations gone awry is astounding. In Afghanistan, Haiti, Syria, Venezuela, Kosovo, Ukraine, and far beyond, the needless deaths, instability, and destruction unleashed by CIA subversion continues to this day. The mainstream media, academic institutions, and Congress should be investigating these operations to the best of their ability and demanding the release of documents to enable democratic accountability. Next year is the 50th anniversary of the Church Committee hearings. Fifty years on, with the precedent, inspiration, and guidance of the Church Committee itself, it’s urgently time to open the blinds, expose the truth about the U.S.-led mayhem, and begin a new era in which U.S. foreign policy becomes transparent, accountable, subject to the rule of law both domestic and international, and directed towards global peace rather than subversion of supposed enemies.

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“..Think of them as being possessed by a monomania for war akin to my urge to play with toy soldiers. The key difference? When I played at war, I was a wet-behind-the-ears 10 year old..”

• Bombing Muslims for Peace (Bill Astore)

Like many American boys of the baby-boomer generation, I played “war” with those old, olive-drab, plastic toy soldiers meant to evoke our great victory over the Nazis and “the Japs” during World War II. At age 10, I also kept a scrapbook of the 1973 Yom Kippur War between Israel and its various Arab enemies in the Middle East. It was, I suppose, an early sign that I would make both the military and the study of history into careers. I recall rooting for the Israelis, advertised then as crucial American allies, against Egypt, Syria, and other regional enemies at least ostensibly allied with the Soviet Union in that Cold War era. I bought the prevailing narrative of a David-versus-Goliath struggle. I even got a book on the Yom Kippur War that captivated me by displaying all the weaponry the U.S. military had rushed to Israel to turn the tide there, including F-4 Phantom jets and M-60 main battle tanks. (David’s high-tech slingshots, if you will.)

Little did I know that, in the next 50 years of my life, I would witness increasingly destructive U.S. military attacks in the Middle East, especially after the oil cartel OPEC (largely Middle Eastern then) hit back hard with an embargo in 1973 that sent our petroleum-based economy into a tailspin. As one jokester quipped: Who put America’s oil under the sands of all those ungrateful Muslim countries in the Middle East? With declarations like the Carter Doctrine in 1980, the U.S. was obviously ready to show the world just how eagerly it would defend its “vital interests” (meaning fossil fuels, of course) in that region. And even today, as we watch the latest round in this country’s painfully consistent record of attempting to pound various countries and entities there into submission, mainly via repetitive air strikes, we should never forget the importance of oil, and lots of it, to keep the engines of industry and war churning along in a devastating fashion.

Right now, of course, the world is witnessing yet another U.S. bombing campaign, the latest in a series that seems all too predictable (and futile), meant to teach the restless rebels of Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and possibly even Iran a lesson when it comes to messing with the United States of America. As the recently deceased country singer Toby Keith put it: Mess with this country and “We’ll put a boot (think: bomb) in your ass.” You kill three soldiers of ours and we’ll kill scores, if not hundreds, if not thousands of yours (and it doesn’t really matter if they’re soldiers or not), because… well, because we damn well can! America’s leaders, possessing a peerless Air Force, regularly exhibit a visceral willingness to use it to bomb and missile perceived enemies into submission or, if need be, nothingness. And don’t for a second think that they’re going to be stopped by international law, humanitarian concerns, well-meaning protesters, or indeed any force on this planet. America bombs because it can, because it believes in the efficacy of violence, and because it’s run by appeasers.

Yes, America’s presidents, its bombers-in-chief, are indeed appeasers. Of course, they think they’re being strong when they’re blowing distant people to bits, but their actions invariably showcase a distinctive kind of weakness. They eternally seek to appease the military-industrial-congressional complex, aka the national (in)security state, a complex state-within-a-state with an unappeasable hunger for power, profit, and ever more destruction. They fail and fail and fail again in the Middle East, yet they’re incapable of not ordering more bombing, more droning, more killing there. Think of them as being possessed by a monomania for war akin to my urge to play with toy soldiers. The key difference? When I played at war, I was a wet-behind-the-ears 10 year old.

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On purpose

 

 

Donuts

 

 

 

 

Jaguar
https://twitter.com/i/status/1758482520239214824

 

 

Pelican

 

 

Newborn dolphin
https://twitter.com/i/status/1758471327562809740

 

 

Goats Jump

 

 

 

 

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