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Debt Rattle September 19 2024

Sep 192024
 
 September 19, 2024  Posted by at 8:36 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  49 Responses »


M. C. Escher Drawing hands1948

 

• Deep State Knows It Cannot Cheat Kamela In – Martin Armstrong (USAW)
• “A Better Deterrence”: Hillary Clinton (Turley)
• The Digital Revolution Is the Prime Enabler of Tyranny (Paul Craig Roberts)
• The Real Reason US Wants To Silence RT (Lukyanov)
• India’s Modi ‘Coming To Meet Me’ – Trump (RT)
• Chris Cuomo Tells Trump He’s Ashamed Of The Media (MN)
• ABC’s David Muir Sees Rating Plunge Amid Debate Moderation Backlash (AmG)
• Ex-WSJ Journo Uncovers Migrant Trafficking Network In Springfield, Ohio (ZH)
• Pavel Durov’s ‘Ex-Partner’ Wants A Cut (RT)
• Brazil’s Lula FIres Back After Zelensky Criticism (RT)
• Zelensky Cancels Meeting With Latin American Leaders (RT)
• ‘Superbugs’ To Kill Tens Of Millions By 2050 – Study (RT)
• Top Oncologist Raises Alarm: Every New Cancer Patient Is Under 45 (GR)
• Why Are Britons Forced to Eat Bugs? (Sp.)

 

 

 

 

Eric Trump

 

 

Doocy

 

 

Elon

 

 

Kwanzaa

 

 

Trump NY

 

 

We always have to start with energy

 

 

IVF

 

 

Elon Question

 

 

ABC Oz

 

 

 

 

Me, I just think the poll numbers make no sense. He has a computer program to prove it.

• Deep State Knows It Cannot Cheat Kamela In – Martin Armstrong (USAW)

Legendary financial and geopolitical cycle analyst Martin Armstrong predicted less than a month ago that there would be another assassination attempt on Donald Trump’s life, and the Deep State was going to do everything possible to start a war with Russia. He was right on both counts. All the chaos, debate fraud and push for World War III comes down to the Deep State knows it cannot cheat enough to put Kamala Harris into the White House in November. Forget the phony polls where they all say Kamala is running neck and neck with Trump. Armstrong says his “Socratees” computer program shows Kamala’s real approval rating is around 10%, and all his computer models say Kamala is going to lose big in November no matter how much they cheat. Armstrong says, “Just about everybody in politics looks at Socratees now because its track record on politics has been phenomenal for 30 years. They know what is going on.”

So, is the Biden Administration panicking with this second clumsy attempt to assassinate Trump while playing golf? Is our own government trying to kill Trump because they know they cannot win? Armstrong says, “I believe so. . . . Look, these people have been warmongers. . . . This is their power. They have gotten so close to destroying Russia, which is their end goal here. Handing long-range missiles to Ukraine, this is like hiring somebody to kill your spouse and then saying, well, he shot, I didn’t. . . . Trump and RFK Jr. are against war. . . . My concern here is they need to create war before January, if not even before the election. I think this is what all this stuff is about with the long-range missiles to shoot into Russia. If Trump does get in, they have to trap him into war. The whole nonsense about Russia Gate and all the rest was because Trump is against war. . . . The neocons called Trump Putin’s puppet because Trump will not engage in war against Russia. This is what this is all about.”

Will the demonic Deep State try yet another assassination of Trump? Armstrong says, “I would not put it past them. Maybe next time they use Monkey Pox or Bird Flu. Look, Trump represents a real threat to their power. If Trump gets in, the neocons are out. Who wrote that recent article for the Washington Post that said Trump would be a “dictator”? It was Victoria Nuland’s husband. Why? Because Victoria Nuland was thrown out of Trump’s Administration. She has been in every administration except Trump’s. . . . This is the neocons against the American people. The computer has been showing that this may be the very last election we have. Just look at the chaos that has been going on at this stage.”

Armstrong is afraid that Putin may be overthrown in Russia because his response has been too timid against NATO. Armstrong says, “Putin knows the neocons want war, and he won’t take the bait.” Armstrong is also afraid that if Putin does get booted out of office, then the people who replace him will be far worse, and brutal war would follow. Armstrong says the evil people in Washington will hide in bunkers when the atomic weapons drop on the rest of America. He thinks a big problem coming will be shortages in everything –including food. If there is bigger war, the economy will plunge, and interest rates will skyrocket. Greatest Depression here we come. In closing, Armstrong says, “The Deep State is scared to death of Trump winning in November because he now knows how to play the game. . . . and Secretary of State Tony Blinken is running the country” because we know Joe Biden is not.

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She’s calling for her own arrest.

• “A Better Deterrence”: Hillary Clinton (Turley)

Clinton’s efforts were so obvious by July 2016 that former CIA Director John Brennan briefed former President Obama on Hillary Clinton’s alleged “plan” to tie then-candidate Donald Trump to Russia as “a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.” The Russian investigation was launched days after this briefing. Her general counsel, Marc Elias, his former partner Michael Sussmann, and the campaign were later found involved in not just spreading the false claims from the Steele dossier but other false stories like the Alfa Bank conspiracy claim. It was Elias who managed the legal budget for the campaign. We now know that the campaign hid the funding of the Steele dossier as a legal expense. New York Times reporter Ken Vogel said that Elias denied involvement in the anti-Trump dossier. When Vogel tried to report the story, he said, Elias “pushed back vigorously, saying ‘You (or your sources) are wrong.’”

Times reporter Maggie Haberman declared, “Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year.” Elias was also seated next to John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, when he was asked about the role of the campaign, he denied categorically any contractual agreement with Fusion GPS. Even assuming that Podesta was kept in the dark, the Durham Report clearly shows that Elias knew and played an active role in pushing this effort. The Clinton campaign lied to the media, spread false claims of Russian disinformation, and was accused of being a conduit for Russian intelligence. So would the “better deterrence” have been for Clinton herself to be arrest? Sussmann ultimately did stand trial but was acquitted. Notably, John Durham noted that “no one at Fusion GPS … would agree to voluntarily speak with the Office” while both the DNC and Clinton campaign invoked privileges to refuse to answer certain questions.

For a person who is on her fourth memoir, Clinton is remarkably hostile to free speech. Notably, in all of these memoirs, she does not address her prominent role in calling for the censorship and now arrest of those with opposing views. She also does not discuss how her campaign lied to the media and funded the Steele dossier. Perhaps that is coming in the fifth memoir. What is clear is that Clinton herself has no fear that such prosecution would ever await her. She is one of those who may silence others but not be silenced. The public is to be protected from views that she deemed disinformation, misinformation, or malinformation. To that end, as one of the guardians of truth, Clinton chastised the media for not being more consistently anti-Trump, a daunting prospect since the media has been accused of running almost 90 percent negative stories on Trump. Nevertheless, shortly after the second assassination attack on Trump, Clinton called Trump a danger to the world and added that “I don’t understand why it’s so difficult for the press to have a consistent narrative about how dangerous Trump is.”

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“..the digital revolution is the third worst thing that dumbshit humanity has brought upon itself other than nuclear weapons and American biowarfare laboratories..”

• The Digital Revolution Is the Prime Enabler of Tyranny (Paul Craig Roberts)

Sweden and France now ban cell phones in school. Digitalization of youth has had serious adverse effects on physical and cognitive development. Having raised a generation of youth unable to function because they are digitalized-addicted, Sweden, France, and other European countries are eliminating cell phones from the school day. As I have often said, the digital revolution is the third worst thing that dumbshit humanity has brought upon itself other than nuclear weapons and American biowarfare laboratories. Mothers harassed with trying to keep up in a men’s world substituted digitalization for motherhood. The consequences are dire.

Grandparents report that their grandchildren instead of acquiring skills wasted their period of cognitive development playing video games and scrolling cell phones. Consequently, they are incapable of working or comprehending the requirements for their survival. Their world is a world of entertainment. The child-unsafe Tower-of-Babel-Sodom-and-Gomorrah-society that the liberal-left have created for Americans has left parents at the mercy of the Child Protective Services Gestapo. Consequently, mothers have added over-protection to the plague of digitalization, and the consequence is the inability of youth to develop into confident and capable people. It leaves the youth of our time susceptible to tyranny.

In my day, we grew up in fights on the school play yard during recess, with each boy proving by his willingness to fight that he couldn’t be bullied. The teachers who were playground monitors never interfered with the right of passage unless things got out of hand. But by that time another boy had intervened by taking up the fight of the defeated kid. Bullies were short-lived on the playgrounds of my youth. Most of us grew up believing in ourselves. It is this constraint on inappropriate and unacceptable behavior that is missing today. Today Americans lack the confidence to confront the tyranny that is encompassing them. They take refuge in the fake news of their oppressors while their liberty dwindles.

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Monopoly no more.

• The Real Reason US Wants To Silence RT (Lukyanov)

In late 1986 Yegor Ligachev, the secretary of the Soviet Communist Party’s Central Committee, and Viktor Chebrikov, then-head of the KGB, proposed that the country end the practice of jamming foreign radio stations. ‘Enemy voices’ was the popular term used at the time to describe these broadcasts from abroad. Of course, the two prominent officials were not imbued with bourgeois ideas when seeking to end radio jamming. They were actually taking a businesslike approach. The pair explained to the Central Committee that blocking was expensive but not very effective, given the size of the country. So, it was suggested that signal-jamming be abandoned and that funds be diverted to counter-propaganda measures. This meant more active work with foreign audiences to communicate the Soviet Union’s own views on world events.

A few weeks later, at a meeting with US President Ronald Reagan in Iceland, USSR leader Mikhail Gorbachev raised the issue. He said “your radio station Voice of America broadcasts around the clock in many languages from stations you have in different countries in Europe and Asia, and we can’t present our point of view to the American people. So, for the sake of equality, we have to jam the Voice of America broadcasts.” Gorbachev offered to stop blocking ‘VOA’ if his counterpart agreed to let Moscow have a frequency to do the same in the US. Reagan evasively promised to consult when he returned home. In the end, the Soviets stopped jamming foreign radio stations unilaterally, without any deal.

The events of the last few days have echoes of this old story. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken devoted an entire speech to RT, which is subject to ‘full-blocking’ (that’s a new formula!) sanctions for its supposedly destructive and subversive work around the world. According to Blinken and the American intelligence agencies he references, the threat posed by the Russian company is of the highest order and requires the most decisive measures from all of Washington’s allies. Without irony or exaggeration, it can be said that RT could only dream of the global recognition that Blinken’s appeal has facilitated. The effectiveness of the media group was not so much confirmed as it was certified, and by prominent representatives of its rivals.

We could deplore infringements on freedom of expression and restrictions on pluralism of opinion, but there is little point in doing so. Such notions should only be promoted in relation to the internal information space of individual countries; at a national level, they are an indispensable prerequisite for normal development. As for foreign sources of information, people generally perceive them as instruments of influence. And it hardly depends on the type of socio-political system that exists in a given state. The more comprehensive the information and communication environment, the greater its impact on people’s behavior, and the more acute the desire of governments to tighten control over the flow of ideas and analysis. The international media sphere is deliberately ideological, electrified and conflictual. Hence Blinken’s, shall we say, uncharacteristic remarks that RT should be treated “like an intelligence agency.”

How effective are the tactics of restricting alternative views and jamming radio waves? Comrades Ligachev and Chebrikov rightly pointed out that the costly efforts to jam hostile broadcasters were, to put it mildly, not particularly effective. Worse, as the author well remembers, the very fact that the authorities were fighting foreign radio voices had the opposite effect to that desired – if they were silencing voices, it meant that they were afraid of the truth. And, by the end of the Soviet era this opinion was not only widespread among the frontline intelligentsia, many ‘ordinary people’ also didn’t give a damn about the official channels.

At their meeting in Iceland, Reagan countered Gorbachev’s appeal by saying that, unlike the Soviets, “we recognize freedom of the press and the right of people to listen to any point of view.” The US president had no doubts about the superiority of the American system in all respects. Accordingly, the demands for information pluralism, then and later, reflected the confidence of Washington that it would emerge victorious from any competition. And so, a few years later, the US achieved a de-facto monopoly on the interpretation of everything.

Washington’s current extreme reaction is due to the feeling that it’s losing this monopoly. Alternative interpretations of events now arouse public interest. In fact, the total resources of the Western, mainly English-language media are incomparably greater than what all the carriers of alternative points of view can offer, at this moment. But internal insecurity is growing all by itself, fueling the desire to fence off the information space. From the same playbook comes the US’ attempts to explain its internal strife and accumulated contradictions by pointing to a pernicious external influence. This was also the Soviet experience. However, the USSR didn’t solve its own issues by blaming them on external causes. In fact, as its problems grew, those same outside factors actually began to exacerbate them.

Targeted punitive actions can create obstacles for any organization, there is no doubt about that. Especially when they come from what is still the most powerful country on the planet. But American history teaches us that monopolies do not last forever. Sooner or later, a cartel becomes a brake on development, then it becomes the subject of measures to break it up.

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“And Modi, he’s fantastic. I mean, fantastic man. A lot of these leaders are fantastic..”

• India’s Modi ‘Coming To Meet Me’ – Trump (RT)

Former President and Republican nominee Donald Trump on Monday suggested he will be meeting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The foreign head of state will be arriving in the US later this week to participate in the United Nations General Assembly in New York as well as a summit of the leaders of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, hosted by US President Joe Biden in Delaware. Speaking at a town hall meeting in Flint, Michigan, Trump described Modi as a “fantastic” leader, but also referred to India as a “very big abuser” of trade ties, suggesting that New Delhi imposes heavy tariffs on imports. “He (Modi) happens to be coming to meet me next week,” Trump stated. “And Modi, he’s fantastic. I mean, fantastic man. A lot of these leaders are fantastic,” he said, referring to leaders of other developing nations such as Brazil and China. Trump said that if elected, he will initiate “reciprocal trade” with the countries that “abuse” tariffs.

“These people are the sharpest people… You know the expression, they’re at the top of their game, and they use it against us. But India is very tough. Brazil is very tough… China is the toughest of all, but we were taking care of China with the tariffs,” the Republican nominee stated. Trump and Modi last met during the former president’s visit to India in February 2020. A year earlier, he had hosted Modi at the highly publicized ‘Howdy Modi’ event in Texas, which was attended by 50,000 people. In July, Modi condemned the assassination attempt against Trump, saying he was “deeply concerned” over the incident. “Violence has no place in politics and democracies,” he wrote on X (formerly Twitter). Notably, the meeting between Modi and Trump hadn’t been announced before the GOP candidate mentioned it, and New Delhi has yet to comment on the matter.

The Indian Foreign Ministry in a statement on Tuesday said Modi will be in the US from September 21-23 to attend the fourth Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) meeting. The informal group includes Australia, India, Japan, and the US. The summit, which was initially supposed to be hosted by India, was shifted to the US at Washington’s behest. The meeting will be hosted by Biden in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware on September 21. India has agreed to host the next summit in 2025, according to the Hindustan Times. Modi will address the ‘Summit of the Future’ at the United Nations General Assembly in New York as well as the Indian diaspora at a community event.

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“I just don’t see how we get anywhere better than where we are right now.”

• Chris Cuomo Tells Trump He’s Ashamed Of The Media (MN)

Former CNN anchor Chris Cuomo has spoken out about how ashamed he feels at the media for pushing the narrative that Donald Trump only has himself to blame for deranged lunatics trying to assassinate him. Cuomo, now with News Nation, stated that he called Trump personally after the second assassination attempt to say he’s “really sorry that this is going on and it’s being dealt with this way.” “I called him today because I am ashamed of how we are responding and not responding to the threats on him,” Cuomo said. He continued, “And I feel for his family, and I know you can roll your eyes and say, ‘Oh yeah, he asked for it.’ Listen, that’s your choice, and I think it’s a wrong choice. Okay? We got to get out of the judgment business, unless it’s judging ourselves, and you’ve got to start rewarding things that are better.”

“And I got to tell you, I don’t know how he stays in the race,” Cuomo further noted, adding “I don’t know how he got up after being shot in the head. And you people who try to mitigate that, you need to check yourself. He gets up, pumping his fist, stays in the race, barely even talks about it.” While qualifying that he is not a Trump supporter, Cuomo urged “I am worried about us. I am ashamed of what’s happening around us right now, and the relative lack of concern about it. I just don’t see how we get anywhere better than where we are right now.” Trump “doesn’t deserve this. A guy pointing an AK-47 at him while he’s playing golf?” Cuomo asserted, adding “And we take solace in the fact that the guy didn’t get any rounds off? That does not work for me.”

He continued, “If I had been through what that guy’s been through in the last two months, you would not know where I am. You would never see me on TV again. No way I would do that. I don’t know how he does it.” “He’s got kids, they’re adults, but he’s got grandkids. He’s got a wife. People giving crap to Melania Trump, worrying about whether or not there was a plot around her husband. How could she not?” Cuomo further proclaimed in a clear reference to his former colleague at CNN Don Lemon, who created and later deleted a ‘reaction video’ in which he rolled his eyes and acted exasperated at Melania Trump for sharing concerns about her husband being targeted.

“I don’t think she’s right, but I totally get why she feels that way,” Cuomo stated, adding “People mock her? And then her husband has a guy pointed with an AK-47 where are those people apologizing?” “That’s what it’s time for. ‘I should not have come at you, Melania Trump, for suggesting that maybe there was something more afoot I get your, paranoia, I get your feelings, you have a right to that,’” Cuomo added. “There’s nothing wrong with saying that,” Cuomo further proclaimed, “with being a basic, decent human being, it has gotten too out of control, too far from where we need to be and how we need to be, and I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t know.” He’s got a way to go to make up for the establishment hackery he engaged in for years at CNN, particularly as regards Trump, but this is a start at least. Lets see if he sticks to it.

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He’ll never “moderate” a debate again.

• ABC’s David Muir Sees Rating Plunge Amid Debate Moderation Backlash (AmG)

ABC’s “World News Tonight” has been experiencing a massive decline in ratings following widespread condemnation of host David Muir’s performance as a moderator during the presidential debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris (D-Calif.). According to the New York Post, “World News Tonight” averaged about 7.6 million viewers per night throughout most of 2024, prior to the debate on September 10th. In the first three episodes after the debate, the show averaged about 6.7 million viewers, amounting to a roughly 12% drop. Following the debate, President Trump has criticized Muir at campaign rallies, as he and co-moderator Linsey Davis refused to fact-check anything that Harris said but repeatedly pushed back on statements from President Trump. “Every one of them should have been questioned by David Muir, who I’ve lost a lot of respect for. Everyone’s lost respect for him,” said the former president last week. “It was so one-sided. It was one against three.”

Davis attempted to justify her performance, where she incorrectly told President Trump that no states in the country allow for post-birth abortions. She cited the lack of fact-checking in the CNN debate on June 27th between President Trump and Joe Biden, which went so horribly for Biden that he was ultimately forced to withdraw from the race on July 21st. “People were concerned that statements were allowed to just hang and not [be] disputed by the candidate Biden, at the time, or the moderators,” Davis claimed in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. Only after the debate did ABC fact-check anything said by Harris, when Martha Raddatz confirmed that the vice president had lied when she declared that there is “not one member of the United States military who is in active duty in a combat zone in any war zone around the world.” “Our fact-checkers found that to be false,” Raddatz confirmed.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1836110677053989066

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Busy town. Lots going on there.

• Ex-WSJ Journo Uncovers Migrant Trafficking Network In Springfield, Ohio (ZH)

Wall Street Journal reporter Asra Nomani has published a shocking report that could soon change the national discussion from Haitians and other migrants eating cats or dogs in Springfield, Ohio, to one that is more sinister: The hub of a complex “hidden human trafficking network” in the tiny rust belt town. “The story in this town is not about cats or dogs. It’s about mules. It’s a twin tragedy of migrant workers from Haiti exploited and locals from Springfield marginalized,” Nomani wrote in the Jewish Journal. She said, “Just about every week since 2019, First Diversity Staffing Group Inc. has shuttled vulnerable Haitian migrants in unmarked white Ford and Chevy vans from Florida to Ohio, where they are allegedly exploited for cheap labor by companies like Dole Food Company Inc.,” adding, “It is a secretive and sinister operation that has gone unchecked for more than five years.”

Nomani revealed FBI anti-trafficking agents and Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost are now investigating allegations of human trafficking in Springfield. What began as my efforts to track down a rumor about animal cruelty has turned into an investigation that reveals a malignant system of labor exploitation involving a local businessman, George Ten, whom Haitians and local residents call “King George,” the chief executive at First Diversity Staffing Group Inc., a Springfield company that has been the tip of the spear in the alleged trafficking operation of Haitians to the town. *** This is a story of unchecked greed and cruelty, committed not by the immigrants, but to the immigrants, with local residents of Springfield also a casualty. Nomani provided an image of one of those vans owned by staffing companies that shuttles the migrants to factories. The ex-WSJ journo said ‘George Ten’, the alleged mastermind behind this scheme, lives in a mansion in rural Ohio.

She continued, “His nickname is “King George” because of his opulent lifestyle of luxury cars, cash handouts, and fast talk. For years, he has operated his reign of alleged exploitation.” This is stunning, as Nomani noted: One Haitian man I interviewed asked to be anonymous for fear of retaliation and recalled how he was picked up by a driver for one of Ten’s vans on a street corner near a Winn-Dixie grocery store in Immokalee, Florida. After the long journey to Springfield, he was dropped off at a rundown home on Rice Street, infested with cockroaches. He soon found work through First Diversity at Jefferson Industries Corporation, earning $12.50 an hour; he didn’t know how much George skimmed off his wages. The home he lived in had no working heat, and he bought an electric heater to survive the cold Ohio winter, the heater barely heating his room. What essentially began as an unverified claim by Trump about migrants eating pets has led to the disturbing truth of alleged labor trafficking and modern-day slavery in Springfield. The Haitians, here legally, are being exploited by mega corporations…

What will also blow your mind is that this alleged labor trafficking network has possibly also surfaced in Charleroi, Pennsylvania. We cited a resident of the town, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. In a video, the resident revealed the complex network of staffing vans in a town that is 50% Haitian. The vans shuttle migrants back and forth to several food packaging plants. What the Trump team is discovering – the story from Springfield and possibly even Charleroi, is not about cats and dogs. It’s about the federal government, and maybe even a shadowy network of NGOs, that dumped the migrants into small towns nationwide. This cheap and exploited labor benefits mega corporations but crushes native blue-collar workers.

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Q: under which country’s law should this be decided? France, Russia, UAE, Switzerland?

• Pavel Durov’s ‘Ex-Partner’ Wants A Cut (RT)

A woman who claims to be the mother of three of Pavel Durov’s children has insisted that she is entitled to own part of Telegram despite never being married to the messaging platform’s billionaire CEO. Irina Bolgar initially announced that the Russian-born entrepreneur is the father of her children in June and provided documents confirming his paternity to Forbes in August. The woman claims to have met Durov in 2012 and had three children with him between 2013 and 2017. She says she lived with her children in St Petersburg and moved to Dubai to be with Durov in 2018. However, since being denied a residence permit in the UAE in 2020, she has been living with her children in Switzerland. Durov himself has not commented on the woman’s claims but has admitted that he became a sperm donor several years ago and has more than 100 biological children.

In a new post on Instagram on Wednesday, Bolgar claimed that although she and Durov were never officially married, Telegram should be considered their jointly-owned property. The woman stated that while all “significant family assets” were registered in Durov’s name, she had access to them “through agreements and powers of attorney, which, while allowing their use, did not fully protect my rights and interests and, as it turned out, could be violated at any time.” Bolgar claims she was “consistently given assurances and promises” that she and her children would always have access to these resources and could use them to purchase “expensive real estate” that could serve as a “suitable” home for the children, but that these promises were never kept.

“All of our verbal and written agreements were violated by him, and his promises went unfulfilled,” the woman wrote. She went on to state that although all of their jointly acquired property, including Telegram, was registered in Durov’s name, in some countries “it is possible to recognize a de facto marriage as official” while in others “you can claim a share of the jointly acquired property under civil law,” Bolgar pointed out. Previously, Bolgar had filed several lawsuits against Durov, accusing the billionaire of failing to pay child support and of “serious acts of violence” against their son. In August, the woman claimed that a Swiss court had stripped Durov of his parental rights.

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“You either support the war, or you don’t support the war. If you don’t support it, then help us stop Russia..”

• Brazil’s Lula FIres Back After Zelensky Criticism (RT)

Ukraine should heed Brazil’s advice about seeking peace in the conflict with Russia, the president of the South American nation, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has said. Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky previously dismissed a Brazilian-Chinese peace roadmap as “destructive” and “just a political statement.” Speaking at a graduation ceremony at a diplomatic academy in Brasilia on Monday, Lula highlighted Brazil’s peaceful foreign policy and neutrality on the Ukraine conflict. “It is important for Brazil to say that we want peace, that we don’t want war,” the president said. “Those who want to talk to us now could have talked to us before the war had started.” Brazil “excels” at being part of a continent “that likes peace,” Lula stated, adding that “war only brings harm… it only destroys.”

Beijing and Brasilia unveiled their six-point plan in May, suggesting a ceasefire along the current front line and urging Moscow and Kiev not to seek “expansion of the battlefield.” The plan also calls for the resumption of direct dialogue between the parties. “You either support the war, or you don’t support the war. If you don’t support it, then help us stop Russia,” Zelensky told Brazilian online newspaper Metropoles last week. Kiev insists that any settlement must be based on its terms, most importantly the recognition of Ukraine’s 1991 borders by Russia. Moscow has called this demand detached from reality and completely unacceptable.

President Vladimir Putin said last month that negotiations were even more unlikely, after Ukraine launched an incursion into Russia’s Kursk Region, reportedly targeting civilians in the process. Kiev’s forces overran several villages and the border town of Sudzha. The offensive, however, has failed to slow the advance of Russian troops in Donbass. Russia and Ukraine have not held peace talks since the spring of 2022. At the time, the parties pre-agreed a deal under which Ukraine would renounce its aspirations to join NATO in favor of neutrality and restrict the size of its army. However, according to Putin, Kiev’s negotiators abruptly left the talks under orders from the West.

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“..Very few leaders had confirmed that they would attend the event..”

• Zelensky Cancels Meeting With Latin American Leaders (RT)

The Ukrainian government has canceled a planned meeting between Vladimir Zelensky and Latin American leaders out of fear it would become a PR disaster, Brazilian newspaper Folha de S.Paulo reported on Tuesday. Very few leaders had confirmed that they would attend the event, the paper wrote. Kiev initially planned to hold the talks on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly scheduled to convene on September 24. According to Folha, the idea behind the meeting was to demonstrate symbolic support for Kiev’s cause in its conflict with Moscow. Ukrainian officials reportedly said it would be “an appropriate platform” for Zelensky to present what they called “relevant and reliable information” about the conflict.

Kiev also wanted to rally support for the so-called Zelensky ‘peace formula’ – a set of demands put forward by Ukraine as pre-conditions for peace talks. Moscow has rejected the demands, calling them unacceptable. Kiev had to scrap the plans after it received only a “few confirmations of attendance,” Folha reported, adding that the government decided it was “necessary to avoid a situation that could possibly be interpreted as a lack of support.” The paper did not provide the number of confirmations or name the leaders who said they would attend, except for Guatemalan President Bernardo Arevalo. Ukraine has received steady support from the West since the conflict with Russia broke out in February 2022, but has failed to gain much backing in other parts of the world. Many Asian, African, and South American countries, including China, India, and Brazil, have remained neutral and called for a diplomatic resolution.

Most recently, Mexico’s president-elect, Claudia Sheinbaum, told journalists she would pursue a policy of non-intervention on the world stage and has no plans to make a state visit to Ukraine. “Searching for the peaceful resolution of conflicts is the cornerstone of our foreign policy. This is our policy, and it won’t change,” she said on Wednesday. Kiev has dismissed any proposals that did not fall in line with the ‘Zelensky formula’ as playing into Moscow’s hands. Last week, Zelensky rejected a six-point roadmap proposed by China and Brazil. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva responded by saying he would not allow his country to be dragged into the conflict.

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Antimicrobial resistance (AMR)

• ‘Superbugs’ To Kill Tens Of Millions By 2050 – Study (RT)

Antibiotic-resistant infections could claim the lives of more than 39 million people worldwide over the next 25 years, with another 169 million expected to die of related causes, according to a study published in The Lancet medical journal this week. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) occurs when bacteria, viruses and other types of germs become stronger than the medications used to treat them – creating so-called “superbugs.” As a result, the infections become difficult or impossible to treat, and spread to others. The study forecasts a nearly 70% surge in deaths due to AMR by 2050, compared to the 2022 level, with older people driving the rise in fatalities. By the middle of the century, the annual death toll due to antimicrobial resistance is expected to reach 1.91 million people compared to 1.14 million recorded in 2021. AMR is expected to be a contributing cause of 8.2 million deaths annually, up from 4.71 million, the study noted.

The findings from the Global Research on Antimicrobial Resistance (GRAM) Project presents a comprehensive analysis of mortality data and hospital records from 204 countries and territories, to produce mortality estimates over a 30-year period. The study revealed a “remarkable” decline in AMR fatalities among children under 5 – from 488,000 to 193,000 – between 1990 and 2022, which are set to halve again by the middle of the century. Meanwhile, death tolls in all other age groups are rising, with AMR loss of life among adults above the age of 70 expected to rise 146% by 2050 – from 512,353 to 1.3 million. The report noted that AMR fatalities in 2021 were lower than in 2019, but suggested that the temporary reduction was due to Covid-related restrictions. The researchers noted that South Asian countries such as India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, as well as sub-Saharan Africa will have the highest AMR mortality rates by 2050.

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“..cancer cases spiked dramatically in 2021, shortly after the Covid shots were released for public use. The cases have continued to surge at alarming rates since then.”

• Top Oncologist Raises Alarm: Every New Cancer Patient Is Under 45 (GR)

North Carolina‘s Duke University oncologist Dr. Nicholas DeVito is warning that “every new patient” who now comes to his clinic is under 45 years old. Dr. DeVito says he and his colleagues have experienced a complete demographic switch in recent years. Based on what he’s seeing every day, talking to patients on the ground and analyzing the data, DeVito is now issuing a red alert to warn the public about the phenomenon. However, the doctor is raising concerns that U.S. government officials are refusing to address or even acknowledge the dramatic surge in cancer cases. The physician wrote for STAT News: “The desire to protect Americans from substances that cause cancer and other diseases should transcend party affiliation and political motivation to overcome industrial lobbying efforts.”

In recent years, multiple studies and oncology experts have warned that cancer cases have been skyrocketing in younger people. The U.S. has the sixth highest rate of early-onset cancers – disease in people under 50 – with 87 cases per 100,000 people younger than 50 years old. And studies project diagnoses of early-onset cancers will rise by 31 percent and deaths will rise by 21 percent by 2030. Cancers increasing the fastest include throat and prostate cancers. Early-onset cancers with the highest mortality include breast, tracheal (windpipe), lung, stomach and colon. DeVito wrote: “I hope to have a long career in oncology and eventually practice in an era where the U.S. has turned the tide against early-onset gastrointestinal cancers and few, if any, of my patients are under age 50.”

As Slay News reported earlier, a growing number of experts are demanding answers as aggressive turbo cancers continue to surge to unprecedented levels in young people. Two shocking new reports from the American Cancer Society have revealed that various forms of the deadly disease surging among younger citizens. In response to the reports, the corporate media is promoting several narratives to explain away the rapidly developing and spreading cancers. However, several doctors have spoken out to warn that Covid mRNA shots are causing the recent emergence of aggressive cancers. The disease has been found to form and spread so rapidly among vaccinated people that doctors have dubbed the phenomenon “turbo cancer.” Doctors have revealed that some “turbo cancers” spread so quickly that seemingly healthy patients can die within a week of being diagnosed.

Oncologists are also warning that these aggressive cancers don’t respond to conventional treatments. A study published in the August edition of The Lancet Public Health revealed that the incidence rates for 17 of 34 cancer types were increasing in progressively younger people in the U.S. More recent data from the ACS’s “Cancer Statistics 2024” report shows the trend of cancer rates and related mortality continuing to rise. The data shows cancer cases spiked dramatically in 2021, shortly after the Covid shots were released for public use. The cases have continued to surge at alarming rates since then.

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Insert joke about British food quality.

• Why Are Britons Forced to Eat Bugs? (Sp.)

The UK’s National Alternative Protein Innovation Center (NAPIC) has received £15 million ($19.5 million) in British taxpayer money to bolster the alternative proteins sector in the country. According to the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) website, cultured meat and insect-based proteins could soon be “a sustainable and nutritious part” of Britons’ diets. Over the past few years, the British press has peddled the idea of embracing edible insects as an alternative to meat. They are rich in protein, healthy fats, vitamins, and minerals, and have a lower environmental footprint, the media asserts to Britons.”British firms strive to create a buzz around insect farming,” “Edible insects and lab-grown meat are on the menu,” “Would you eat insects if they were tastier?” and “Why it’s time to embrace edible insects?” UK headlines read, stressing that the global insect protein market is projected to reach $8 billion by 2030.

Entomophagy, or eating insects, has been actively promoted at the World Economic Forum (WEF), which insists that the consumption of insects “can offset climate change in many ways” and prevent the “impending food crisis,” as the world’s population is set to reach 9.7 billion people by 2050, with just 4% of arable land remaining available. In 2013, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations (UN) issued a report stating that around two billion people worldwide eat insects as part of their traditional diets. In 2014, the Belgian food safety agency AFSCA approved 10 worm and cricket species for sale on the Belgian market, exploiting a loose interpretation of a 1997 EU law on “novel food.” The Netherlands, UK, Denmark, and Finland also authorized insects for consumption. In 2017, the EU and UK permitted seven species of insect to be used as feeds in fish farms. In January 2018, a European Parliament regulation concerning “novel foods,” including insects, came into force.

In May 2021, the EU officially approved the first insect, the yellow mealworm, as food for humans. By 2023, four insects had been approved by the EU Commission: the yellow mealworm; the migratory locust); the house cricket; and the lesser mealworm. The EU food safety agency signaled at the time that another eight insects could be authorized soon. The EC claims that “the environmental benefits of rearing insects for food are founded on the high feed conversion efficiency of insects, less greenhouse gas emissions, less use of water and arable lands, and the use of insect-based bioconversion as a marketable solution for reducing food waste.” EnviroFlight (US), Innovafeed (France), HEXAFLY (Ireland), Protix (Netherlands), Global Bugs (Thailand), Entomo Farms (Canada), and Ynsect (France) are named as key players in the market. Europeans are believed to be the first who delved in the insect protein business, with French firm Ynsect, founded in 2011, and the Dutch producer of insect ingredients Protix, established in 2009.

Insect protein firms are attracting hefty investments from global foundations and food giants. In 2017, Protix raised $50.5 million in equity and debt funding, marking the largest investment in the industry at the time. The US rushed to catch on, with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation granting $100,000 to All Things Bugs in 2012 to explore insect food production. Two American food corporations, ADM and Cargill, invested a whopping $250 million in the French insect protein firm Innovafeed in September 2022. In 2023, the US food giant Tyson poured around $58 million into Protix. According to some estimates, the edible insect market reached $3.8 billion in 2024, and is projected to amount to $9.04 billion by 2029. The European market is seen as the largest, while South Asia is the fastest growing. Still, it pales in comparison with the fresh meat market, which amounted to $1.11 trillion as of 2024 and is set to expand further.

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Routh

 

 

Kamala bus

 

 

DeSantis
https://twitter.com/i/status/1836051770188931495

 

 

MAHA

 

 

Cats&Dogs

 

 

Hello!
https://twitter.com/i/status/1836282802716708981

 

 

Same size

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle April 15 2024

Apr 152024
 
 April 15, 2024  Posted by at 8:30 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  69 Responses »


Charles Sprague Pearce Lamentations over the Death of the First-Born of Egypt 1877

 

• Trump Set For Monday ‘Fake Biden Trial’ With ‘Highly Conflicted’ Judge (ZH)
• 19 Retired Generals, Admirals File SCOTUS Brief Against Trump Immunity Bid (ET)
• Judge Upholds Georgia’s Voter Citizenship Verification Requirements (ET)
• Low IQ (Michael Tracey)
• Will the American Oligarchy Accept Limits or Choose World War Three? (NC)
• America Has a Problem With Love and Fear (Suchkov)
• A Tempering of American-Israeli Aggression? (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Scott Ritter: Iran’s Retaliatory Attack ‘Reestablished Deterrence’ (Sp.)
• Netanyahu Called Off Retaliation Strikes After Speaking To Biden – NYT (RT)
• Russia Slams UNSC for Ignoring Attack on Iranian Consulate (Sp.)
• Zelensky Takes Advantage of Iran-Israel Crisis to Plead for More Money (Miles)
• Ukrainian FM Publicly Blackmails West Over Oil Prices (RT)
• Germany Escalates Donbass Conflict, Kiev Says Frontline is Deteriorating (Sp.)
• Germany Joins Israel In Dock For Genocide (SCF)
• Royal Marines To Lead ‘Dunkirk-style’ Evacuation Of Britons In Middle East (DM)

 

 

 

 

Scholz
https://twitter.com/i/status/1779509472391495791

 

 

Coastguy

 

 

 

 

Constanza
https://twitter.com/i/status/1779280505852060066

 

 

 

 

 

 

I thought we established that Michael Cohen had an affair with Stormy Daniels, paid for with Trump’s money. Anyhoo, it should be a spectacle.

• Trump Set For Monday ‘Fake Biden Trial’ With ‘Highly Conflicted’ Judge (ZH)

Former President Trump will take his 2024 campaign to New York on Monday, where he’ll be sitting in a Manhattan courtroom for what he decried as a “Fake Biden Trial” to face 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection with the Stormy Daniels ‘hush money’ embroglio. The trial comes after an unsuccessful bid to adjourn the case due to overwhelming pretrial publicity, which Judge Juan Merchan denied, calling adjournment “not tenable.” Trump has taken to Truth Social in recent days, suggesting on Sunday that Merchan is “perhaps the most highly conflicted Judge in New York State history,” who gave Trump’s legal team insufficient time to analyze “hundreds of thousands of pages of documents that D.A. Alvin Bragg illegally hid, disguised, and held back from us.” As the WSJ notes, “The 34 felony counts in the indictment are all tied to records that prosecutors said Trump falsified as he reimbursed Cohen for the Daniels deal. They include 11 invoices, 12 general ledger entries and 11 checks.”

As Mike Shedlock of Mishtalk notes, expect a media circus. “A Recording Crime. District Attorney Alvin Bragg took each receipt, invoice, and ledger receipt and made a separate felony charge out of each of them. Then Bragg twisted those charges into an intent to commit other crimes. Yet Trump is not charged with other crimes, only falsifying records. And it’s plausible that Trump had no direct knowledge of the mess. This story goes back to Michael Cohen, a former attorney of Donald Trump, who landed in prison for by paying adult-film star Stormy Daniels $130,000 in 2016 to keep quiet about an alleged sexual encounter she had with Trump a decade earlier. The Journal notes that Falsifying business records is a misdemeanor under New York state law, but it can be elevated to a felony if records were falsified to conceal or commit another crime. What other crime? Trump is charged with none.”

Meanwhile as Politico reports, in addition to taking a “wrecking ball to Michael Cohen,” with nearly half of the respondents in a recent Politico/Ipsos poll saying that Cohen is not honest… Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s “Star Witness, Trump could try “asking the judge to give the jury the option of convicting him on lesser, misdemeanor offenses instead of the felony counts that have actually been brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and his team of prosecutors.” Journalist Laura Loomer, a Trump supporter, has posted several receipts over the past several weeks showing Merchan’s various conflicts – including the fact that his daughter professionally brags about “doing ground-breaking, historical work for clients” including “Kamala Harris, Adam Schiff, and others.” Loomer also noted that Andrew Laufer, the lawyer for Michael Cohen (DA Alan Bragg’s “Star witness”), is tight with NY Attorney General Letitia James – who Merchan’s wife worked for in what Loomer describes as a “major conflict of interest.”

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“The threat of future prosecution and imprisonment would become a political cudgel to influence the most sensitive and controversial presidential decisions..”

• 19 Retired Generals, Admirals File SCOTUS Brief Against Trump Immunity Bid (ET)

More than a dozen former Defense Department officials, generals, and admirals filed a brief with the Supreme Court arguing against former President Donald Trump’s presidential immunity arguments. It comes as the U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on the former president’s assertions that he should enjoy immunity from prosecution for activity that he carried out while he was president. The former president invoked that argument after he was accused by federal prosecutors of attempting to illegally overturn the 2020 election results. The amicus brief’s signatories include former CIA Director Michael Hayden, retired Admiral Thad Allen, retired Gen. George Casey, retired Gen. Charles Krulak, and more. They claimed that granting President Trump immunity against criminal claims could lead to activity that put U.S. national security at risk.

“The notion of such immunity, both as a general matter, and also specifically in the context of the potential negation of election results, threatens to jeopardize our nation’s security and international leadership,” their brief stated. “Particularly in times like the present, when anti-democratic, authoritarian regimes are on the rise worldwide, such a threat is intolerable and dangerous.” The arguments submitted by President Trump will “risk jeopardizing America’s standing as a guardian of democracy in the world and further feeding the spread of authoritarianism, thereby threatening the national security of the United States and democracies around the world,” the group added. The former secretary of Defense under President Trump, Mark Esper, was critical of their submission to the Supreme Court, arguing during a CNN interview that he “would prefer to see retired admirals and generals not get involved.”

But President Trump’s lawyers have contended that the president’s office cannot function without immunity from the threat of prosecution because it could “incapacitate every future president with de facto blackmail and extortion while in office and condemn him to years of post-office trauma at the hands of political opponents,” arguing that such a phenomenon is playing out right now after the former president was indicted multiple times last year. The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had earlier issued a ruling against President Trump’s arguments that he should be declared immune from prosecution. The appeals process, meanwhile, has put on hold the former president’s trial in Washington. “A denial of criminal immunity would incapacitate every future president with de facto blackmail and extortion while in office, and condemn him to years of post-office trauma at the hands of political opponents. The threat of future prosecution and imprisonment would become a political cudgel to influence the most sensitive and controversial presidential decisions, taking away the strength, authority and decisiveness of the presidency,” according to President Trump’s filing issued last month.

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They want every Democrat to be able to cast 1,000 votes.

• Judge Upholds Georgia’s Voter Citizenship Verification Requirements (ET)

A federal judge has dismissed a legal challenge to Georgia’s voter citizenship verification requirements, keeping in place the state’s process of cross-checking citizenship status to determine voter eligibility and handing a win to election integrity advocates. Judge Eleanor Ross of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia issued a ruling on April 11 that dismisses a lawsuit brought by a coalition of advocacy groups nearly six years ago that claimed Georgia’s voter citizenship verification requirements unfairly discriminated against naturalized citizens, who are more likely to be people of color. Following a three-day trial, the judge ruled that all four of the plaintiffs’ claims—including that the protocols violated multiple federal laws, the U.S. Constitution, and unfairly burdened the right to vote—are dismissed.

In so doing, the judge sided with a motion for summary judgment made in 2021 by the defendant, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who argued that the state’s protocols for matching naturalized citizens’ voter registrations with the state’s citizenship records were “entirely reasonable” and placed a “minimum burden” on applicants. Mr. Raffensperger argued that, in almost every case, the requirement was fulfilled by matching driver’s licence or state identification numbers submitted for voter registration with corresponding records at the Georgia Department of Driver Services (DDS) to confirm citizenship status. When a naturalized citizen registers to vote in Georgia, their county registrar verifies proof of citizenship using DDS data. If that voter’s citizenship cannot be verified through that database, the onus is on the voter to submit proof of citizenship within 26 months or their voter registration application will be canceled.

The plaintiffs have alleged that DDS data is often outdated, leading many naturalized citizens’ voter registrations to be flagged and canceled unfairly. Mr. Raffensperger disputed the claim that this issue affected many people, arguing in his motion that “any arguable burden on this small group of people to demonstrate they are now citizens is minimal and does not go beyond the ‘usual burdens of voting’ because it can be resolved as simply as showing the same photo identification that every Georgia voter is required to show in order to vote in person in Georgia.” He also argued that the citizenship process serves a “compelling interest” in ensuring that only eligible voters are allowed to cast a vote, an argument raised by election integrity advocates across the country amid various disputes over voting rules.

The plaintiffs sued Mr. Raffensperger in 2018, arguing that the state’s protocols for matching naturalized citizens’ voter registrations with the state’s citizenship records violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) and the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. They also claimed that these protocols put an unfair burden on the right to vote, in violation of 1st and 14th Amendment protections, while also claiming that the requirements ran counter to the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) by delaying or denying qualified voters from registering to cast ballots.

The coalition of groups asked the court to rule that the citizenship matching protocols were illegal, and to permanently block their enforcement. The case eventually went to trial on April 8, 2024, leading to a favorable ruling for Mr. Raffensperger and delivering a win to election integrity advocates more generally. “Ensuring that only U.S. citizens vote in our elections is critically important to secure and accurate elections,” Mr. Raffensperger said in a statement praising the ruling. “Georgia’s citizenship verification process is common sense and it works. With this ruling, we are able to continue ensuring that only U.S. citizens are voting in our elections,” he added.

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X thread.

• Low IQ (Michael Tracey)

The self-serving Low IQ history of how Trump’s assassination of Iranian general Soleimani supposedly unleashed an era of peace and tranquility across the Middle East is so painfully idiotic. In one of the most brutishly stupid acts of Trump’s entire presidency, he and his rabidly interventionist Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, manufactured a fake pretext to launch the brazen, region-destabilizing attack. Trump fabricated what his administration claimed was a “self-defense” rationale for the assassination — arguably the most severe instance of direct state-on-state warfare between the US and Iran since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Trump and the hardcore interventionists and regime change fanatics with which he filled his administration actually tried to invoke the 2002 AUMF in Iraq — yes, the Iraq War resolution that Joe Biden infamously voted for — as justification for the Soleimani strike.

They lied and claimed there was an “imminent threat” to the US, parroting the Bush Administration’s language used to sell the Iraq invasion. They even absurdly claimed that part of the rationale for the assassination was that Iran had provided material support to the 9/11 hijackers. No argument was too preposterous. The drone-bombing of one of the most prominent figures in Iranian society effectively destroyed any prospect of future diplomatic engagement between the US and Iran. Millions flooded the streets in protest, including in Iraq, where the drone strike took place. US embassies and other installations were hit with rockets and ransacked.

The Iraqi parliament demanded the immediate expulsion of all US troops from the country, but rather than take this opportunity to finally extricate US forces, Trump refused and kept them there. Reprisal attacks were launched against US troops and continued for months, with 62 soldiers receiving Purple Hearts for the traumatic brain injuries they endured from Iran’s retaliatory missile strikes. Trump loaded up his administration with anti-Iran regime change obsessives like Pompeo, Mike Pence, John Bolton, Nikki Haley, among others, deferred to the fanatically “pro-Israel” prerogatives of his chief financial patron Sheldon Adelson, and was heralded by Bibi Netanyahu for carrying out the most hardcore pro-Israel and “anti-Iran” policy agenda of any President in US history.

This was all part of the so-called “maximum pressure” strategy against Iran favored by Netanyahu and the fanatically pro-Israel “GOP establishment” to whom Trump essentially handed over control of his administration. As with many issues, there’s been more continuity between the Trump and Biden administrations than either like to let on, with the cratering of US-Iran relations continuing to this day. Trump still brags about how much pointless suffering his “crippling sanctions” (a term borrowed from Obama) inflicted on ordinary Iranian citizens. On the one hand, MAGA will brag about how un-warlike Trump allegedly was, but on the other, they’ll brag about how awesome it was that he drone-assassinated Iran’s top military official and hurtled the region into chaos — the consequences of which still reverberate today. This pro-Trump argument is idiotically schizophrenic, but that’s nothing new for Low IQ partisans.

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“The entire post-WWII elite American mindset is built on the foundation of worldwide profit expansion via silicon and fire..”

• Will the American Oligarchy Accept Limits or Choose World War Three? (NC)

The US is a market state that is dominated by and run for transnational capital. Its foreign policy and the military are a tool of the American oligarchy. Therefore, any serious policy discussion needs to deal with the fact that national interests as they’re expressed today are not in any real sense national but representative of the interests of a small cohort of the super wealthy. When US officials go on about spreading “freedom,” they’re not lying. It’s just their idea of freedom is a state devoted to high profits – free from the political whims of local populations that could degrade an investment’s expected return. Let’s remember there likely wouldn’t be any problem with Russia had Putin not put an end to the 1990s shock therapy administered by the Western finance capitalists who were making a killing by pillaging Russian resources. Like Bert Hoover, they’re haunted by that opportunity snatched away from them, and they’ve been trying to get it back for a quarter century now.

The question is will American capital ever voluntarily give up? Will it ever say “okay, we’re satisfied with what we’ve got here, you do your thing in your sphere of influence”? It’s not like Moscow and Beijing haven’t tried. Russia for example floated the idea of joining NATO or working out some other security arrangement. For decades after the end of the USSR, Russia tried to be accepted into the West’s club to no avail. China, too, constantly repeats the refrain that the world is big enough for both Beijing and Washington. It invited the US to join it in its Belt and Road Initiative. The US could have helped steer projects that would have benefited both countries. While such cooperation between the two big powers wouldn’t be a panacea for all the world’s problems, it would likely mean a lot better spot than current one. Instead the US wanted the whole pie and instead we got the TPP, sanctions, export bans, a new Cold War, a spy balloon scandal, the disastrous effort to weaken Russia before taking on China, the successful effort to sever Europe from Eurasia to disastrous effect for Europe, and the desire to see a Ukraine sequel in Taiwan and/or the South China Sea.

There is a lot of confusion over why the West keeps escalating in a losing effort. Why, for example, are Western governments going around begging for shells to send Ukraine rather than accepting the L? The desperation seems to stem from the creeping realization that their system is coming undone. The entire post-WWII elite American mindset is built on the foundation of worldwide profit expansion via silicon and fire, and if they throw everything at Russia and lose, well a whole new domino theory could come into play – one where parasitic Western finance capital is driven back. (Granted it might in most cases be replaced by a more local form, but it’s nonetheless frightening for the Western honchos.) Just look at what’s happening to France in Françafrique! And the US in the Middle East!

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Machiavelli: “..a prince should make himself feared in such a way that if he does not gain love, he at any rate avoids hatred.”

• America Has a Problem With Love and Fear (Suchkov)

In the early 1990s, when Washington was celebrating victory over the USSR, proclaiming “the end of history” and believing that the whole world would now rise up under the banner of liberal democracy and the market economy, Gates became head of the CIA. The main task at the time was to make the most of the “unipolar moment” – to widen the gap between the US and its competitors, to turn yesterday’s enemies into friends, friends into allies, and them make them all vassals. Another fashionable concept of the time – which still occupies the minds of many internationalists – was “soft power”. This justified America’s global dominance by virtue of the appeal of its culture (music, cinema, education). No one wanted to argue with this, especially when videotapes of action films like Rambo and Terminator, and later the queues at the first Moscow McDonald’s, clearly proved the validity of such an ideology. American pop culture made the world extremely permeable to American ideas and interests. The task of various structures, including the one headed by Gates, was to make as many ordinary people (and politicians, of course) around the world fall in love with America, believe in the myth of the “American Dream” and adopt it as their way of life.

As the “unipolar moment” faded and the international environment became more difficult for the US, it became more and more difficult to get others to feel the love. Especially after the bombing of Yugoslavia. A brief period of global sympathy for the Americans after the attacks of 11 September 2001 was replaced by outrage over the invasion of Iraq. Even some of the closest NATO allies did not approve of the illegal intervention. In the post-Soviet space, attempts at “colour revolutions” – to replace rulers who did not love America fervently enough – were somewhat effective in the short-term, but exacerbated disagreements with Moscow. Vladimir Putin’s manifesto speech at the Munich Conference in 2007 signalled the end of the romance with the US, not only for Russia but for many other countries as well. Most states were still open to American cultural and educational products, but Washington’s policies were increasingly perceived critically. In acute situations, dissatisfaction with America as a power was projected onto cultural images associated with it – images of windows broken at McDonald’s, Stars and Stripes set on fire, etc.

Gradually, American soft power collided with its use of hard power. Washington used NGOs to invest billions in public diplomacy and educational exchange programmes, in the manipulation of “civil society” and the media. However, Washington’s coercive actions undermined efforts to win the sympathy of the world’s peoples. Meanwhile, Gates returned to Washington as head of the Pentagon to rescue the Bush Jr. administration from the fiasco in Afghanistan and Iraq. Led by Vice President Dick Cheney, the team was less concerned with winning the love of the rest of the world than with Theodore Roosevelt’s principle: ‘If you’ve got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.” The term “neoconservatives” is associated more with Republicans. In fact, it is a large and influential bipartisan, ideologically charged, group in the establishment for whom the primacy of “make them afraid of us” over “encourage them to love us” is unquestioned.

Barack Obama’s 2008 election victory swung the ideological pendulum in the opposite direction, favouring love over fear. Administrators from the Clinton presidency returned to the White House, and Obama himself spoke of ‘inclusion’, a new globalisation and hopes for a democratic revival. Gates was the only secretary of state to retain his post under the new Democratic president. Even during the election campaign, Obama had promised to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thus, a pragmatic, cross-party Secretary of Defence seemed the best solution. The aforementioned Roosevelt had an apt saying for this case: “Speak softly, but carry a big stick”. Obama was responsible for the former, Gates for the latter. “However, the “big stick” did not help much: by the end of the 2010s, pro-Iranian forces were ruling a fragmented Iraq, and in Afghanistan, attempts to put an end to the Taliban (an organisation banned in the Russian Federation) by increasing the US contingent and allocating astronomical sums of money to the authorities in Kabul did not yield results.

[..] Interestingly, the US has stopped loving itself and is actively reaching for nostalgia in own identity and the recent past – especially in culture and politics. The resulting yearning for a time when America was “great” calls for efforts to regain that greatness by any means necessary. Whether leadership should be based on fear or love is one of the key questions in the theory and practice of leadership. In his sixteenth-century treatise The Prince, the Florentine thinker and politician Niccolo Machiavelli argued: “The answer is that one would like to be both the one and the other; but because it is difficult to combine them, it is far safer to be feared than loved if you cannot be both.” This maxim has been adopted by many rulers in different historical periods. But problems began for those who forgot that Machiavelli went on to warn:“a prince should make himself feared in such a way that if he does not gain love, he at any rate avoids hatred.”

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“It is the absence of countervailing power in the Middle East that has made the region a tinderbox..”

• A Tempering of American-Israeli Aggression? (Paul Craig Roberts)

It has taken a long time for Zionist Israel to discredit itself. It did so with Israel’s declared policy of genocide of the Palestinians. As it was our bombs, missiles, and money that Israel used, America was also discredited. The self-inflicted diminution of American prestige and its isolation as the supporter of Israel’s attempted genocide of Palestine has altered the balance of power and influence in the world. With the impoverished Houthis standing up to mighty America and Israel, and with Iran finally standing up to Israel, it is possible that the American-Israeli aggression leading to nuclear war has been tempered. The recent firing of Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland is another possible indication.

Haaretz, the only objective Israeli newspaper, says Netanyahu should accept that the Iranian response was a limited attack provoked by Israel’s attack that murdered Iranian officials in Damascus and refrain from further military action. US bases throughout the Middle East and Israel’s Dimona nuclear arsenal are easy targets for a heavy Iranian attack. If Israel pushes further, a major war will erupt. Perhaps it will dawn on Putin and Xi to stabilize the Middle East with announcement of a Russian-Chinese-Iranian mutual defense treaty. It is the absence of countervailing power in the Middle East that has made the region a tinderbox.

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Scott Ritter @RealScottRitter: “I spent one decade protecting Israel from Iraqi missiles. I spent another decade trying to protect Israel from Iranian missiles. All Israel had to do was try to live in peace and harmony with its neighbors. Israel proved not to be up to the task. Israel deserves everything it has coming to it.”

• Scott Ritter: Iran’s Retaliatory Attack ‘Reestablished Deterrence’ (Sp.)

Iran’s mission to the United Nations stated earlier that Tehran’s retaliatory drone and missile attack against Israel had “concluded.” The “military action” was a response to Israel’s “aggression against our diplomatic premises in Damascus,” it said, adding that the strike “hit designated targets.” By launching its retaliatory drone and missile attack on Israel, Iran “reestablished deterrence,” former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter told Sputnik. “Israel believed that it could launch a strike against Iran and suffer no consequence. That is no longer the case,” Ritter noted. As Israeli military officials survey the damage done to their bases, “they understand the following: that Iran deliberately chose not to inflict extremely lethal action against Israel,” the analyst remarked. bIran launched a massive drone and missile attack against Israel overnight, assisted by Hezbollah and the Yemeni Houthis.

Over 300 projectiles were fired at Israeli territory from Iran, with Iran’s mission to the United Nations stating that its retaliatory attack on Israel had “concluded,” and that the strike “hit designated targets.” Israel’s military has claimed that 99% of the projectiles were intercepted.nbIran’s strike was designed to send a signal to Israel and the United States, “that it could do what it did in Nevatim, at Ramona, anywhere in Israel, anywhere in the Middle East, and there was nothing the United States or Israel could do in response.” “This is deterrence. This means that in the future, if either Israel or the United States plan on carrying out an action against Iran, they have to weigh in the consequences of their actions knowing that Iran has the capacity to reach out and touch any place, any spot, any target in the region in Israel or out of Israel, and there’s nothing anybody could do to stop that,” the retired US Marine Corps intelligence officer said.

US President Joe Biden issued a statement on Iran’s attack against Israel after he spoke on the phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The POTUS condemned the strike “in the strongest possible terms.” He also reaffirmed Washington’s “ironclad commitment” to help support Israel, and added that there were no attacks on US forces or facilities on Saturday, but that the US “will remain vigilant to all threats.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US does “not seek escalation,” but will “continue to support” Israel’s defense. “I will be consulting with allies and partners in the region and around the world in the hours and days ahead,” he added. Weighing in on the flurry of talks between US and Israeli leaders, Scott Ritter said: “This is why President Biden has been on the phone with Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, telling him, ‘Do not retaliate.’ The United States will not be a partner in any offensive action against Iran. Not because the United States is friendly to Iran, but the United States understands the consequences that will accrue, should such an attack take place. The United States has been deterred against further action against Iran.”

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It cost Israel $1 billion to defend against Iran’s $100 million worth of -mostly old- projectiles.

• Netanyahu Called Off Retaliation Strikes After Speaking To Biden – NYT (RT)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu canceled a plan to launch immediate retaliatory strikes against Iran after speaking to US President Joe Biden by phone on Saturday night, Israeli officials have told the New York Times. According to two anonymous officials, Netanyahu’s war cabinet presented him with a list of responses to a massive drone and missile attack by Iran on Saturday evening. While some members of the cabinet reportedly pushed for an immediate military response, Netanyahu ultimately chose not to follow their advice at Biden’s request, the sources said. The full details of Biden’s conversation with Netanyahu were not revealed by the White House. According to a report on Sunday by Axios, however, Biden told Netanyahu that Israel had essentially prevailed in this clash with Iran and advised him to “take the win.”

It was also made clear during the call that any retaliatory action by Israel would not be supported by Washington, the American outlet reported. Netanyahu’s war cabinet met on Sunday afternoon to discuss Israel’s response to the Iranian attack, while Iran’s top military commander declared that the “Zionist regime” had been adequately “punished,” and that Tehran would not pursue further military action unless Israel struck again. Iran launched multiple waves of missiles and kamikaze drones at Israel on Saturday, with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) stating that at least 300 projectiles were fired. While the IDF claimed to have shot down 99% of the incoming drones and missiles, video footage showed numerous impacts on Israeli soil.

Iranian officials insisted that they had “more success than expected” with the barrage, and claimed that two Israeli bases had been destroyed. The IDF acknowledged only minor damage to one military facility. The attack came two weeks after an alleged Israeli airstrike hit an Iranian consulate in the Syrian capital of Damascus. The strike killed seven officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force, including two high-ranking generals. Tehran telegraphed its response, with Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warning for over a week that Israel could expect a “slap in the face.”

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“Iran’s attack on Israel did not happen in a vacuum – it was a response to the shameful inaction of the UN Security Council..”

• Russia Slams UNSC for Ignoring Attack on Iranian Consulate (Sp.)

Russia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzia criticized the UN Security Council for failing to act on the Israeli attack on the Iranian consulate in Syria as he urged an end to bloodshed in the Middle East during an emergency UNSC meeting on Sunday. “It is regrettable that unlike the meeting today, you did not propose to bring it to brief the Council on the 2nd of April,” he said, adding that Russia called an emergency briefing to discuss the Israeli strike against the consular premises in Damascus. Nebenzia criticized Israel for not complying with the UN Security Council resolutions, which he said was “an obvious disrespect shown to the Council, to all of you who are here in the members seats, and a complete disregard to the decisions made by the Security Council.” “This high level confrontation and bloodshed must be stopped. We think it’s urgent for the entire international community to undertake all the efforts necessary to de-escalate the situation,” Nebenzia said.

Iran’s attack on Israel did not happen in a vacuum – it was a response to the shameful inaction of the UN Security Council, the Russian ambassador stressed. “What happened on the night of April 14 did not happen ‘in a vacuum.’ Iran’s steps were a response to the shameful inaction of the United Nations Security Council [and] a response to Israel’s blatant attack on Damascus… by no means the first. Syria is constantly being bombed by Israel,” Nebenzia said. On April 3, the US and UK refused to discuss Russia’s proposed draft UN Security Council statement on the Israeli strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus. London and Washington then cited the fact that there was no unity in the meeting’s assessment of what happened. On Sunday, an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council is taking place in connection with the retaliatory strike that Iran carried out on the territory of Israel.

Meanwhile, shortly before that, Iran’s mission to the UN said that if the Security Council had condemned the Israeli strike on the Iranian consulate and brought the perpetrators to justice, the need for Iran to punish the Israeli side “could have been eliminated.” Russia calls for restraint on all sides involved in the incident with Iran’s attack on Israel, Russia’s permanent representative to the UN highlighted. Russia calls on Israel to follow the example of Iran, which has said it does not want further escalation, Nebenzia said. “We note Tehran’s signal of unwillingness to further escalate hostilities with Israel. We urge West Jerusalem to follow its example and abandon the practice of provocative forceful actions in the Middle East, fraught with extremely dangerous risks and consequences on the scale of the entire region, already destabilized as a result of the escalation of the Palestinian-Israeli confrontation,” Nebenzia emphasized.

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“..suggesting Ukraine would drive up global oil prices with attacks on Russian refineries if US aid were not forthcoming..”

• Zelensky Takes Advantage of Iran-Israel Crisis to Plead for More Money (Miles)

President Volodymyr Zelensky took to the X (formerly Twitter) social media platform Sunday to remind Western lawmakers not to forget about Ukraine as the world responds to Iran’s retaliatory strike against Israel. “Ukraine condemns Iran’s attack on Israel using ‘Shahed’ drones and missiles,” the leader wrote, claiming Moscow and Tehran utilize the same kinds of armaments. “The world cannot wait for discussions to go on,” he added. “Words do not stop drones and do not intercept missiles. Only tangible assistance does. The assistance we are anticipating… It is critical that the United States Congress make the necessary decisions to strengthen America’s allies at this critical time.” Former Ukrainian minister Volodymyr Omelyan was even more forceful, slamming former US President Donald Trump whose “America First” brand of conservatism has questioned US military spending.

“I hope that Iran’s attack on Israel will send a powerful message to Republicans, namely to Mr. Trump – you cannot wait aside any more and think that those are small separate regional conflicts happening somewhere in Europe, Middle East, [or] Asia,” Omelyan said in an interview with a US-based tabloid media outlet. “China, Russia, Iran and North Korea persistently attack the West,” he said, without clarifying when they have done so. China, Iran and North Korea have historically been subject to deadly US-backed economic sanctions. The United States invaded Russia in 1918 in an attempt to thwart the country’s unfolding revolution, and invaded China to help put down the Boxer Rebellion. Zelensky has occasionally compared Ukraine’s plight to that of Israel. In 2022 the Ukrainian leader claimed he saw the country as a model for Ukraine’s future, saying Ukraine should become a “big Israel.”

The president said he was referring to Israel’s model of hardened internal security, but critics may instead draw comparisons between the two countries’ strident nationalism and treatment of minorities. The Kiev regime has launched attacks on its Russian-speaking eastern regions for more than a decade, often killing civilians. A 2014 massacre of trade unionists in Odessa drew particular condemnation. Paramilitary groups attacked a peaceful rally in the coastal city, forcing people to take refuge in the Odessa Trade Union House. The neo-Nazi gangs then set fire to the building, killing some 50 people and bludgeoning to death those who attempted to escape. Anti-Russian Ukrainian nationalists have continued to constitute an important faction of the country’s armed forces, with Kiev officially integrating the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion into its military later that year.

Israel has also received criticism for its increasingly extremist trajectory in recent years. Neo-Nazi activist Richard Spencer publicly praised the country’s so-called “Jewish Nation State” law in 2018, viewing it as a model for his desired white ethnostate. Israeli human rights group B’tselem has called Israel an “apartheid” and ethnic supremacist regime. Ukraine has become more coercive in recent months as US aid has been stalled amidst political infighting. “Give us the damn Patriots,” demanded the country’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba last month, referring to the US-developed surface-to-air missile system Ukraine sees as crucial to its fight against Russia. Kuleba appeared to economically blackmail Western countries in recent comments, suggesting Ukraine would drive up global oil prices with attacks on Russian refineries if US aid were not forthcoming.

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“Everyone survives as best they can..”

• Ukrainian FM Publicly Blackmails West Over Oil Prices (RT)

Kiev would be more receptive to appeals from the US and other Western allies to quit attacking Russian oil infrastructure if those benefactors would boost their military aid, Ukraine’s top diplomat has revealed. Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba offered his suggestion for how the West can earn Ukraine’s cooperation in a local broadcast interview on Sunday. His comments came after US defense chief Lloyd Austin expressed concern earlier this month that Ukrainian drone strikes against Russian refineries and oil storage facilities could trigger a jump in international energy prices. “You need to think in your own interests,” Kuleba told Rada TV. “If your partners are saying: ‘We are giving you seven Patriot batteries, but we have a request for you, please don’t do this and that’ – then there is something to talk about.”

On the other hand, if “no batteries, no aid package” are being offered in connection with the entreaty – then there is nothing to talk about. “Everyone survives as best they can,” he added. Weapons shipments from Washington, the biggest sponsor of Kiev’s war effort against Russia, have slowed in recent months amid struggles by US President Joe Biden to secure congressional approval for more Ukraine aid. Republican lawmakers have balked at Biden’s request for more than $60 billion in additional spending after his administration burned through $113 billion in previously approved funding. Kiev’s donors had previously expressed worries that Ukrainian strikes deep into Russian territory with weapons that NATO members provided could trigger a wider conflict. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said earlier this month that Washington does not support Ukrainian attacks on Russian soil.

Austin later suggested that Kiev could focus on military targets because hitting petroleum infrastructure could roil international markets. Kuleba said he listened to Austin, but he sees no “cause-and-effect relationship in this matter.” When a refinery in Russia “explodes,” the resulting problems are confined to the Russian energy market, he claimed, and in any case, Ukraine has to prioritize its own interests. Ukrainian drone attacks have targeted several Russian refineries since early March. Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu suggested that Kiev has resorted to terrorism and long-range strikes against Russia’s civilian population in an attempt to “convince its Western sponsors of its ability to resist the Russian Army.” That’s despite the fact that Kiev has not had any actual success on the battlefield, the minister added.

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“The country faces a particular shortage of young men and women..”

• Germany Escalates Donbass Conflict, Kiev Says Frontline is Deteriorating (Sp.)

Germany offered to provide Kiev with another US Patriot air defense system Saturday as Ukraine’s military chief admitted the country’s position on its eastern front is rapidly deteriorating. “The situation on the eastern front has significantly worsened in recent days,” said Ukraine armed forces commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrsky, confirming recent media reports. Syrsky made the assessment in a post on Telegram after a visit to a part of territory of the Donetsk People’s Republic under Ukrainian control, which is now a Russian territory. “The enemy is actively attacking our positions in the Lyman [and] Bakhmut [Artemovsk] directions with assault groups and the support of armored vehicles,” he added. “In the Pokrovsk direction, it is trying to break through our defenses using dozens of tanks.”

Syrsky attributed Ukraine’s struggles to Russia’s greater supply of weapons and military technology. Russia’s defense industry has risen to the occasion during the conflict by churning out significant supplies of ammunition. Observers have praised the quality of Russian armaments, particularly its well-respected tank building tradition. Material support for the Kiev regime has meanwhile stalled as Europe’s defense industry fails to meet demand and US backing is stymied by domestic politics. Syrsky also acknowledged a lack of effective manpower. Ukraine’s population, less than a third of Russia’s, has declined by some 30% amidst a demographic crisis after the country’s independence. The country faces a particular shortage of young men and women; the age of the average Ukrainian soldier is estimated to be 43 years old.

“The second serious problem is to improve the quality of training of military personnel, primarily infantry units, so that they can make maximum use of all the capabilities of military equipment and western weapons,” said the military chief. Reports have emerged of Ukrainian troops being provided with only a few weeks of instruction after often being forcibly conscripted. Dry weather has granted Russian tanks easy passage over Ukraine’s terrain according to Syrsky. From the air, Moscow has made extensive use of retrofitted glide bombs and drone strikes. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has pleaded with Western partners to help augment the country’s air defense capacity.

Germany obliged Saturday, promising to provide Kiev with a third US Patriot surface-to-air missile system after previously having rejected the request. The pledge follows a familiar pattern of Western countries eventually conceding to Ukrainian requests for armaments after publicly agonizing over the threat of escalation. “We are supporting Ukraine as much as our own operational readiness will allow,” said German Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius Saturday. Observers have questioned the consequences of Western countries depleting their weapons stocks after more than two years of arming Kiev.

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“Western imperialism and fascism have come full circle in a staggeringly short span of history..”

• Germany Joins Israel In Dock For Genocide (SCF)

Eight decades ago, Nazi Germany deployed Ukrainian fascists to exterminate Jews and Slavs with a death toll of up to 30 million Soviet citizens. The contemporary Ukrainian regime glorifies these Nazi collaborators. The United States deployed the same Ukrainian fascists after the Second World War to wage covert war against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Thus, Germany and the United States along with other Western powers are continuing deep-seated historical crimes by way of their proxy war against Russia. The same imperialist rogue states are enabling Israeli aggression against Iran, Syria and Lebanon. Israel’s deadly bombing of the Iranian embassy in Damascus earlier this month was a particularly brazen violation of international law. The barbarity of the Israeli fascist regime is fully enabled and incentivized by its Western patrons.

The bitter irony is Washington and Berlin remonstrating with Iran to exercise “maximum restraint” while Israel openly attacks its sovereignty and assassinates its citizens. Meanwhile, the United States, Australia and Britain are cajoling Japan to join their military alliance to provoke China. Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was feted in Washington this week where he signed bellicose new military measures aimed at China and Russia. Kishida linked Ukraine with Asia, claiming that if Russia were to win the war in Ukraine, then China would take over East Asia. The Japanese minion gets its half right. The regions are indeed linked, not by alleged Russian and Chinese misconduct, but by the U.S.-led imperialism that Japan is cravenly serving.

Western imperialism and fascism have come full circle in a staggeringly short span of history. Nearly 80 years after Japan was defeated in the Pacific War in which it was responsible for up to 20 million deaths in China, Tokyo is at the forefront of new plans to wage a potential nuclear war on China. The perversion of Japan joining with the United States in this venture after the latter dropped two atomic bombs on its people in 1945 is yet another sickening twist in history. The monstrous crimes of Nazi Germany and fascist Japan are today rehabilitated because the same forces serve the imperialist geopolitical interests of today. The twists and contradictions of history are, however, crystallized in one historical force. All the crimes, barbarity, bloodshed and danger of catastrophic world war are the cause of imperialist powers – chief among them the United States and its insatiable quest for hegemonic domination.

Historic failure and systemic collapse of Western capitalism is the motive engine driving the world to war again, as it was in previous periods of the modern age. Colonialist genocide, World War One, World War Two, and now the abyss of World War Three. Germany in the dock for genocide with Israel is not as incongruous as it might seem. Because imperialism and fascism are on the rampage again across the world. Both Germany and Israel are gang members in the crime syndicate, each with their specific justifying myths and alibis. Russia and China are arguably the two nations that suffered the most in history from fascism. It is entirely consistent – if not lamentable – that Russia and China today are once again confronted by the same forces. Germany is once again on the wrong side of history. And so too are the United States and all its Western vassals. Eternal shame on them.

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“The evacuation plans, codenamed Operation Meteoric..”

• Royal Marines To Lead ‘Dunkirk-style’ Evacuation Of Britons In Middle East (DM)

Royal Marines are poised to lead a ‘Dunkirk-style’ evacuation of thousands of UK nationals from the Middle East after Iran launched a huge drone and missile attack against Israel last night. Commandos have already conducted reconnaissance along the Lebanese coastline ahead of a potential maritime rescue mission. The daring mission – reminiscent of the huge effort to evacuate 338,000 British troops stranded in France by the Germans during the opening salvo of the Second World War in 1940 – was exclusively revealed by the Mail on Friday. It came a day before Tehran launched a huge aerial bombardment on Saturday evening, which was in retaliation of a deadly consul blast an an Iranian embassy in Syria that killed 13 people Speaking exclusively to the Mail earlier this week, Defence Secretary Grant Shapps confirmed he ‘stands ready’ to assist any Britons trapped in the region. The Foreign Office has already advised all UK citizens to leave Lebanon.

US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said there remained a ‘serious threat’ of attack while it was reported that Iran had sent a message to Washington warning them against the involvement of US troops in the region. The evacuation plans, codenamed Operation Meteoric, will be spearheaded by the UK’s ‘Green Berets’ and supported by the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force. The Mail has been told a party of Marines from 30 Commando arrived in the region in recent days. Operation Meteoric has been likened to Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of allied soldiers from Dunkirk in 1940 when they were surrounded by German forces. Israel and its allies remain braced for a huge Iranian response to the attack on its Syrian consulate earlier this month, which left 13 dead, including a senior Iranian commander.

While Israel has not claimed responsibility for the blast it is widely considered to have been behind it. Iran’s response may also involve the heavily armed military group Hezbollah, which is based in Lebanon. Tonight, intelligence reports suggested the retaliation could include more than 100 drones, dozens of cruise missiles and ballistic missiles. Such a scenario would likely lead to civilian ‘air bridges’ shutting down – hence the need for a maritime solution. The Mail has been told how the preparatory work behind Operation Meteoric was conducted by the Royal Marines’ Surveillance and Reconnaissance Squadron (SRS). They studied stretches of the Lebanese coastline and selected potential locations for such a rescue mission.

Stranded civilians would be ferried from beaches in raiding craft to Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) ships in the eastern Mediterranean. While it is understood Iran is eager to avoid direct engagement with UK forces, RAF Typhoon jets based in Cyprus could provide ‘top cover’. Earlier this week, Mr Shapps told the Mail: ‘UK nationals in the region will be concerned by what Iran is threatening to do. So we stand ready to assist them. ‘There are plans, but they cannot be discussed for security reasons.’

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McCullough childhood vaccines

 

 

Elephant mom

 

 

Baby elephant

 

 

Elephant transport

 

 

Movement Act

 

 

Kittens

 

 

 

 

Shark
https://twitter.com/i/status/1779423124829667343

 

 

10,000 ducks

 

 

Horse friend

 

 

 

 

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