Jun 232024
 


Vincent van Gogh Weeping woman 1883

 

Biden May Decline Nomination If He Does Poorly in June 27 Debate – Hersh (Sp.)
A New Multipolar Security System Based On ‘Pax Rossiya’ (SCF)
Is Washington Trying To Dump The Ukraine War Into The EU’s Lap? (Jay)
The Only Way to End Confrontation Between Russia and the West (Lukyanov)
The Ukrainian Border War Folly (David Stockman)
Tens of Thousands of Ukrainians Hiding From Draft Officers – NYT (TASS)
Belgium Warns Against Seizing Russian Money (RT)
White Christians Being Replaced In Europe – Orban (RT)
Sunak Accuses Farage Of Appeasing Putin (BBC)
Wikipedia’s Political Bias Spreading To AI (RT)
The Supreme Court Swatted Down Hunter Biden’s Hail Mary Pass (Turley)
Common Sense And Memes Are Viruses To The New World Order (Lynn)
Bibi Is Needy (DeMartino)
UK Invents Phantom Skripals To Refuse To Testify In Novichok Inquiry (Helmer)

 

 

 

 

Cuomo Maher
https://twitter.com/i/status/1804499826546983385

 

 

Comer
https://twitter.com/i/status/1804207426297561197

 

 

Tucker J6

Jan 6
https://twitter.com/i/status/1804376332077535479

 

 

Judge Judy

 

 

Tesla

 

 

 

 

 

 

“..Biden is going to need to match the intensity he demonstrated at his State of the Union address in March if he wants to stay in the race, Hersh said..”

Biden May Decline Nomination If He Does Poorly in June 27 Debate – Hersh (Sp.)

Democrats are discussing plans to have President Joe Biden decline the Democratic presidential nomination if he has a bad showing at the upcoming presidential debate on June 27, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported on Friday, citing a longtime friend of the US president. Hersh reported that there is a serious concern among the Democratic Party leadership and major Democratic donors about Biden’s ability to defeat former President Donald Trump in the November election. “One extreme possibility in the case of a very bad showing Thursday night, I have been told, is to obtain agreement from Biden and his family advisers for the president to come to the Democratic convention in Chicago in August and accept the accolades of a first-round delegate victory; then he would decline the nomination and throw the nominating process open to all,” Hersh said.

California Governor Gavin Newsom and Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker could be favorites to replace Biden, Hersh said. Next week, Biden is going to need to match the intensity he demonstrated at his State of the Union address in March if he wants to stay in the race, Hersh said. An aggregation of national polls by RealClearPolitics shows that Trump holds a half-a-point lead over Biden and leads him in all seven swing US states.

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“The U.S. and its Western partners – a global minority – have come to be seen by most people of the world as rogue states that have trashed international law..”

A New Multipolar Security System Based On ‘Pax Rossiya’ (SCF)

For several years now, Russia, China and other members of the expanding BRICS alliance have been formulating progressive trade and financial relations of the emerging multipolar world order. That order is based on mutual respect and partnership grounded in international law and the UN Charter. The BRICS concept is rightly the zeitgeist of our time. It is rallying more nations to its fold especially those of the so-called Global South which for decades have been subjected to the unilateralism of Western hegemony. The trouble is that for a new world order based on equality and fairness to succeed in practice, it needs to be secure from arbitrary military aggression and imperialist tyranny. In other words, a new security architecture is required to underpin the development of a multipolar world. Russian President Vladimir Putin has been advocating for a new indivisible international security system. This week saw the plan for a new security arrangement put into action.

The Russian leader embarked on state visits to North Korea and Vietnam during which he signed new strategic partnership and defense accords. Ahead of his trip to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Putin outlined the integrated vision thus: “We are also ready for close cooperation to make international relations more democratic and stable… To do this, we will develop alternative mechanisms of trade and mutual settlements that are not controlled by the West, and jointly resist illegitimate unilateral restrictions. And at the same time – to build an architecture of equal and indivisible security in Eurasia.” The concept of indivisible security is by no means limited to Eurasia. Russia has signaled the same principles apply to Latin America, Africa and indeed every other corner of the world. During Putin’s meetings with Chairman Kim Jong Un of the DPRK and President Lo Tam of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, the strategic partnerships agreed were not merely about military defense and security.

They involved comprehensive partnerships for the development of trade, transport, technology, education, science and medicine. Nevertheless, it was clear that the commitment to strategic partnership was underpinned by new mutual defense accords. This was most explicit in the treaty signed with the DPRK which furnished “mutual assistance in the event of aggression against one of the parties”. This is a game-changer. It totally upends the geopolitical calculations of the United States and its NATO partners who have been unilaterally expanding military force and provocations in Eurasia and elsewhere. U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration has ramped up aggression in the Asia-Pacific against China and North Korea with impunity. Under his watch, the US has increasingly moved nuclear forces into the region to intimidate not only Beijing and Pyongyang but also Moscow. The Biden administration has been assiduous in forming hostile military formations in the region with its NATO partners, including Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea.

Year after year, the United States has built up weapon systems in Taiwan to provoke China and on the Korean Peninsula to threaten North Korea. This unilateral aggression and “might is right” arrogance underpin the notion of Pax Americana that prevailed for decades after the Second World War. That notion was always a cruel euphemism for American imperialist violence to impose its economic and political interests. The Korean and Vietnam Wars in which millions of civilians were annihilated were the real-world grim translations of Pax Americana and its fraudulent “rules-based order”. Geopolitical perceptions have dramatically changed in a few short years. The U.S. and its Western partners – a global minority – have come to be seen by most people of the world as rogue states that have trashed international law through illegal wars and unilateral bullying with economic sanctions. The U.S. dollar and Washington’s relentless debt spending are seen as instruments of imperialist looting.

The BRICS multipolar world order is a welcome alternative to the mayhem of the Western-dominated system. The principles of fairness and cooperation are laudable and necessary to implement. But such principles must be reinforced with military defense and security for all. This is far from the one-sided “defense and security” of the United States and its NATO partners, which in reality is an Orwellian cover for aggression. The defense commitments given by Russia to the DPRK this week can be seen as long overdue. One may wonder how the U.S. and its allies got away with threatening the people of North Korea for so long and denying Pyongyang the sovereign right to self-defense. Admittedly, Russia did previously support UN sanctions on North Korea over its missile program. That’s over.

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“America wants to hand over the responsibility of Ukraine to the Europeans and shed responsibility for the mess that it has created..”

Is Washington Trying To Dump The Ukraine War Into The EU’s Lap? (Jay)

With just a mere matter of weeks now before the U.S. presidential election some experts are wondering if Joe Biden is preparing, at the last minute, to wriggle free of the Ukrainian curse and tell voters that in the next term, if he were to be President, Ukraine funding will be reduced dramatically. This would, after all, be a cunning move to outfox Trump who has told reporters on numerous occasions that he would end the war once in office simply through cutting U.S. financial support.Either scenario places EU countries – and the EU itself in Brussels – in a quandary as their worst nightmare is coming true: America wants to hand over the responsibility of Ukraine to the Europeans and shed responsibility for the mess that it has created. One could even argue that relations now between the U.S. and EU countries are on a collision course given one recent offer Washington made to the EU in the form of a loan which the EU would guarantee but U.S. companies would benefit from.

As Hungary prepares to take the helm of the EU’s six month rotating presidency on July 1st, western elites are fretting over whether this time Budapest will veto outright the sanctions which are in place, which need to be signed off every six months. America in particular wants a quick fix solution but is indicating that it wants to hand over all the risk to Europe. It argues that those who hold Russian assets should be the ones to offer the guarantees against default – through interest on Russian cash held by them – and that U.S. Congress anyway is unlikely to sign off another batch of military aid, even in the form of a loan, at such short notice. Following a massive body blow from European elections, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will tell President Joe Biden they reject the American proposal for Europe to act as sole guarantors for the loan, according to conversations with six senior diplomats and officials.

The offer was structured in such a way that EU countries would pay the interest, accept the risk and allow most of what was a 50bn dollar loan to benefit U.S. companies. Remarkable sting for the EU governments when it shows that the relationship between them and the Biden administration just sinks lower and lower each week. Of course, there is a great deal of anger from the EU side as many EU leaders feel as though the U.S. has cleaned up quite nicely from the whole business of war which has profited the U.S. on so many levels but has drained EU economies, explaining why Poland recently held a pole which claimed that a majority of those asked wanted funding for the Ukraine war to end. Europe has really been left holding the baby over the Ukraine war and the palpable resentment against the U.S. is certainly growing. The deal the U.S. pushed of course was never going to be a runner but more likely a new European Commission in September will borrow a new 50bn euro tranche from its seven year 1.2 trillion euro budget for Ukraine.

Even in this scenario, the EU is scraping the barrel and reaching new lows in throwing cash into the fire just as an ephemeral last-ditch effort to stay warm. But both the U.S. and EU realise that time is running out for whoever wants to pour more money into the black hole of Ukraine. Time is running out because while Ukraine desperately needs the money, there’s no certainty that a Donald Trump presidency would back any loan initiatives. A final agreement will now be delayed until at least in autumn with just a matter of few weeks before November 5 election. Relations between the U.S. and EU have never been so tipped in Washington’s favour. And that’s before Trump even gets into the White House.

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Talk.

The Only Way to End Confrontation Between Russia and the West (Lukyanov)

The concept adopted at the end of the Cold War stated that NATO ensured European security, and a bigger NATO meant a more secure continent. As a first step towards this, everyone (including Moscow) agreed that a reunited Germany would remain a member of the bloc instead of receiving neutral status, as some had suggested earlier. Further, it was implied that each country had the right to choose whether or not to join any alliances. Theoretically, that is what sovereignty implies. But in practice, the geopolitical balance of power had always imposed restrictions that forced alliances to consider the reaction of non-member countries. However, the triumphalism that reigned in the West following the Cold War significantly reduced the willingness to take such reactions into account. In other words, NATO felt like it could do anything and no reply would follow.

The situation could have changed dramatically if Russia had considered the possibility of joining NATO, and if the bloc itself had considered such a scenario. Then the principle of the indivisibility of security, proclaimed in the 1990 Charter of Paris for a New Europe, would have been respected within the framework of the bloc. However, it was impossible for Russia to join NATO, since, even at its weakest, Russia remained one of the world’s largest military powers and possessed the largest nuclear arsenal. The hypothetical accession of such a state to NATO would mean the emergence of a second force within the club that would be on a par with the US, and therefore, would not obey it on the same level as other allies. This would change the very essence of the organization, and alter its principles of Atlanticism (simply because of Russia’s geographical location). No one was prepared for this. The qualitative transformation of NATO was never on the agenda.

As a result, NATO’s expansion, which in a sense became automated, pushed Russia further and further to the east. Moscow’s attempts to regulate this process – first through participation in joint institutions (such as the NATO-Russia Council of 2002, which was an expansion of the NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997) and then through growing opposition (starting with Putin’s Munich Speech in 2007) – did not bring the desired results. In addition to the inertia of the West’s initial approach (which implied that the bloc’s very existence is security in itself), the West believed that Moscow didn’t have the right to set conditions and must only follow the rules set by the stronger and more successful Western community. This is how the EU eventually got involved in the current Ukraine war. Could relations between NATO and Russia have developed in a different way? The West believes that the persistence of Russia, which continued to consider NATO a threat to its security, led to the current military crisis. And, in fact, this became a self-fulfilling prophecy. But even assuming that this was true, the speed and ease with which NATO returned to a strong confrontation with Russia shows that it had been prepared for this.

Russia’s memorandum of December 2021 and the 2022 military operation in Ukraine were designed to put an end to the idea of NATO’s uncontested expansion as the only means of ensuring European security. Two-and-a-half years later, we see that the scale of the conflict has exceeded all initial expectations. Judging by Moscow’s statements, the confrontation may only come to an end when the principles on which European security is based are fundamentally reconsidered. This is not a territorial conflict, but a conflict which may only end when NATO abandons its main goal and function. So far, there is no compromise on the horizon. The Western side is not willing to agree that the results of the Cold War must be reconsidered, and the Russian side is not ready to retreat without this assurance. Thirty years after the signing of the Partnership for Peace program, there’s still no partnership or peace between Russia and NATO. And neither is there a clear understanding of why the two sides were unable to achieve it.

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Not one country. Never was.

The Ukrainian Border War Folly (David Stockman)

once the iron-hand of totalitarian rule ended in 1991, the deep and historically rooted conflict between Ukrainian nationalism, language and politics of the central and western regions of the country and the Russian language and historical religious and political affinities of the Donbas and south came rushing to the surface. So-called democracy barely survived these contests until February 2014 when one of Washington’s “color revolutions” finally “succeeded”. That is to say, the Washington fomented and financed nationalist-led coupe d état ended the fragile post-communist equilibrium.

That’s the true meaning of the Maidan coup. It ended the tenuous cohesion that kept the artificial state of Ukraine intact for barely two decades after the Soviet demise. So save for Washington’s destructive intervention, the partition of a communist-confected state that had never been built to last would have eventually materialized. The evidence that the Maidan coup was the coup ‘d grace for the makeshift Ukrainian state is apparent in the maps below. These maps below tell you all you need to know about why this is a civil war, not an invasion of one neighbor by another. The first map is from the 2004 presidential election, which was won by the Ukrainian nationalist candidate, Yushchenko. The latter predominated in the orange areas of the map, over the pro-Russian Yanukovych, who swept the blue regions in the east and south.

2004 Ukraine Election Results—National Divorce In The Making

The second map is from the 2010 election, showing the same stark regional split, but this time the pro-Russian candidate, Yanukovych, won. In the map below, the dark blue parts to the far east (Donbas) indicate an 80% or better vote for Viktor Yanukovych in the 2010 election. By contrast, the dark red areas in the west voted 80% or more for the Ukrainian nationalist, Yulie Tymoshenko. That is to say, the skew in the Ukrainian electorate was so extreme as to make America’s current red state/blue state divide seem hardly noteworthy by comparison. As it happened, the sum of the pro-Yanukovych skews from the east and south (Donbas and Crimea) added up to 12.48 million votes and 48.95% of the total, while the sum of the extreme red skews in the center and west (the lands of old eastern Galicia and Poland) amounted to 11.59 million votes and 45.47% of the total.

Stated differently, it is hard to imagine an electorate more sharply divided on a regional/ethnic/language basis. Yet it was one which still produced a sufficient victory margin (3.6 percentage points) for Yanukovych – so as to be reluctantly accepted by all parties. That became especially clear when Tymoshenko, who was the incumbent prime minister, withdrew her election challenge a few weeks after the run-off in February 2010. At that point, of course, Russia had no beef with the Kiev government at all because essentially Yanukovych’s “Regions Party” was based on the pro-Russian parts (blue areas) of the Ukrainian electorate. But when Washington essentially put the anti-Russian regions in charge of Ukraine’s government by orchestrating, funding and immediately recognizing the Maidan coup, everything changed on a dime. That was especially the case when the new, illegal government enshrined in its constitution a requirement to join NATO at the earliest possible opportunity.

In effect, Washington’s 2014 Maidan coup was the equivalent of Khrushchev’s emplacement of missiles in Cuba during 1962. Even had Putin been as erudite and civilized as JFK, rather than the ruffian he actually is, he would have had little choice except to insist that NATO missiles 30 minutes from Moscow cannot stand. In a word, there has been no unprovoked “invasion” by Moscow of the transitory artifact known as the Ukrainian state. The latter effectively began and ended with the Soviet Union.Moreover, with respect to the actual underlying reason for intervention in Ukraine—NATO’s proxy war against Russia– a simple question recurs: Besides restocking the NATO arsenals depleted by the demolition derby in what remains of Ukraine, what’s the reason for NATO’s war? Alas, the question answers itself. The War Capital of the World on the Potomac insists upon it, and its vassals in Europe like Ursula von der Leyen nod, jawohl!

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“..hundreds of thousands more Ukrainians to be called up into the army..”

Tens of Thousands of Ukrainians Hiding From Draft Officers – NYT (TASS)

Tens of thousands of Ukrainian men have gone into hiding as they avoid conscription for fear of dying in the conflict involving “bloody trench warfare,” The New York Times reported on Friday. While it is not clear how many men are hiding from authorities, in big cities like Kiev and Lvov, social media groups alerting members to mobilization include tens of thousands of people, the newspaper wrote. Ukrainian men expressed fear of dying in the conflict, the NYT continued. According to the newspaper, Kiev has been sending troops without “sufficient training” to the front to replace combat losses.

Military analysts agree that a lack of adequate training makes it difficult for Kiev to hold its lines, the newspaper concluded. Ukraine announced a general mobilization in February 2022, which it has extended periodically ever since, with the country’s authorities doing their utmost to prevent men of conscription age from dodging the draft, including a ban on male residents of Ukraine from leaving the country. On May 18, a law tightening mobilization rules came into force in Ukraine, allowing hundreds of thousands more Ukrainians to be called up into the army.

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In a video I posted June 18, Jim Rickards says: “..Russia will retaliate by putting a lien on $40 trillion at the Euroclear custodian..” That’s not Russian money, but the total of what Euroclear processes. A recipe for absolute chaos.

Belgium Warns Against Seizing Russian Money (RT)

Belgium does not support the seizure of Russian assets that have been frozen by the EU as part of Ukraine-related sanctions, the country’s Finance Minister Vincent Van Peteghem said on Friday, highlighting the mounting risks related to the move. The West froze nearly $300 billion in assets belonging to the Central Bank of Russia following the launch of Moscow’s military campaign against Ukraine in February 2022, a move denounced by Moscow as “theft.” Around $280 billion of this sum is held in the EU, primarily in the Belgium-based depositary and clearing house Euroclear. “First of all, for our country there are two elements that are important: we did not touch the assets themselves, as the ownership title change would yield consequences both on the legal side and financial side that are unknown,” Van Peteghem said during a press conference after the bloc’s ECOFIN meeting in Luxembourg.

“And second, of course, risk sharing, that I think is important in the rollout of the instruments and is a crucial element of all discussion,” the minister added. Earlier this month, the G7 nations announced that they had reached an agreement on using interest from frozen Russian assets to finance a $50 billion loan to help Kiev buy weapons and rebuild damaged infrastructure. At the time, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said that the confiscation of the assets was not on the table. In April, Van Peteghem stated that the bloc was close to reaching a political agreement on seizing the profits generated by Russia’s central bank reserves, stressing that the first tax collection could take place as early as July 1.

The idea of seizing the frozen Russian assets has been debated by EU lawmakers and the bloc’s allies for about two years. While the US and UK have called for the outright confiscation of the funds, multiple reports suggest that EU member states remain cautious regarding the move, citing the lack of a legal basis for such a measure as well as fears that Russia will take retaliatory steps. Some top officials have reportedly warned that the drastic move could undermine investors’ confidence in the EU’s financial system. The Kremlin has denounced the push to use its immobilized funds to provide support for Ukraine. Earlier this week, Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that Moscow has a “wide arsenal” of political and economic countermeasures it can use to respond to the potential confiscation of its sovereign assets.

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Sounds familiar.

White Christians Being Replaced In Europe – Orban (RT)

A “militant” faction of pro-migration politicians is overseeing the “replacement” of white European Christians with Muslim immigrants, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has declared. “In Europe there is an exchange of populations, the number of white, Christian, traditional – let’s say European – people is decreasing, the number of migrants being imported and the number of people belonging to the Muslim community born here is radically increasing,” Orban told Kossuth Radio on Friday. German politician Manfred Weber, who leads the centrist European People’s Party (EPP) in the European Parliament, is the “beelzebub” responsible for this alleged scheme, Orban continued, adding that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is Weber’s “little servant girl” responsible for its implementation.

The EPP remained the largest faction in the European Parliament after last month’s elections. However, the decline of the Greens and a surge in support for right-wing parties has left the EPP with fewer allies with whom to pass legislation. Hours after he spoke to Kossuth Radio, Orban flew to Berlin to meet with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz ahead of Hungary assuming the EU Council’s rotating presidency next month. The Hungarian PM claimed that Germany has suffered greatly as a result of immigration, and “no longer looks like it did ten years ago.” “This Germany is no longer the Germany that our parents and grandparents held up to us as an example,” he said, adding that the country is now a “colorful, changed multicultural world” in which migrants are “no longer guests.”

Hungary’s stance on immigration has placed the country at odds with Brussels in recent years. Earlier this month, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ordered Budapest to pay €200 million ($216 million) for failing to comply with EU asylum law, and imposed a fine of €1 million per day until Hungary fully implements the legislation. According to the court, Budapest has limited migrants’ access to asylum procedures since 2020, making the process of filing applications “virtually impossible.” “It seems that illegal migrants are more important to the Brussels bureaucrats than their own European citizens,” Orban responded, vowing to “figure out a way, so [the ruling] hurts Brussels more than it hurts us.”

Orban was criticized in the German media for his comments on Friday, with Munich’s Merkur newspaper accusing him of spreading “conspiracy myths” about immigration. The idea of a so-called ‘Great Replacement’ is often written off by liberals as a racist conspiracy theory. However, the population share of white Europeans has been decreasing across the continent since the mid-20th century, and European leaders sometimes admit that they intend to use non-European immigration to replace the aging native workforce. Speaking in Athens earlier this year, European Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson stated that “legal migration should grow by more or less 1 million per year” to achieve this goal.

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“..the ever-eastward expansion of Nato and the European Union was giving this man a reason to his Russian people to say, ‘They’re coming for us again’ and to go to war”.

Sunak Accuses Farage Of Appeasing Putin (BBC)

Nigel Farage’s claim the West provoked Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was “completely wrong and only plays into Putin’s hands,” Rishi Sunak has said. The prime minister accused the Reform UK leader of “appeasement” that was “dangerous for Britain’s security”. In a BBC Panorama interview, Mr Farage said that “of course” the war was President Vladimir Putin’s fault. But he added that the expansion of the EU and Nato gave Mr Putin a “reason” to tell the Russian people “they’re coming for us again”. His remarks have prompted criticism from across the political spectrum. Labour’s shadow defence secretary John Healey said they made the Reform UK leader “unfit for any political office in our country, let alone leading a serious party in Parliament.” Former Conservative defence secretary Ben Wallace described Mr Farage as “pub bore”, who did not understand the “real world” of politics.

Speaking on an election campaign visit in London, Mr Sunak said: “What he (Mr Farage) said was completely wrong and only plays into Putin’s hands.”He added: “This is a man (Mr Putin) who deployed nerve agent on the streets of Britain, who is doing deals with countries like North Korea, and this kind of appeasement is dangerous for Britain’s security, the security of our allies that rely on us, and only emboldens Putin further.” In his Panorama interview, the former UKIP and Brexit Party leader was asked by Nick Robinson about his past comments on Mr Putin. “I said I disliked him as a person, but I admired him as a political operator because he’s managed to take control of running Russia,” he replied. He said it had been “obvious” to him for many years “that the ever-eastward expansion of Nato and the European Union was giving this man a reason to his Russian people to say, ‘They’re coming for us again’ and to go to war”.

Pressed further, he added: “We provoked this war. It’s, you know, of course it’s his fault – he’s used what we’ve done as an excuse.” After the interview aired on Friday, Mr Farage, a former member of the European Parliament, said on X that he was “one of the few figures that have been consistent and honest about the war with Russia”.Alongside the new statement, he reposted a speech in the European Parliament from 2014 in which he called for the West to “stop playing war games with Putin. “The Ukrainian presidency has told the BBC it will not be putting out an official statement on Mr Farage’s comments. But a source in the presidential office warned about the “virus of Putinism and the rise of war propaganda”, adding: “The task of civilized humanity is to fight this virus in the bud.”

Reform UK has been gaining ground on the Conservatives in the opinion polls since Mr Farage announced he was returning to front-line politics as the party’s leader shortly after the general election campaign got under way.
He has said his aim is for Reform to replace the Conservatives as the official opposition to Labour, which he says is certain to gain power on 4 July, although polling suggests the party may win only handful of seats at this election.

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“..its co-founder, Larry Sanger, saying last year that the website had become an instrument of “control” used by the US intelligence agencies to wage information warfare..”

Wikipedia’s Political Bias Spreading To AI (RT)

Wikipedia’s tendency to negatively portray right-wing political figures is feeding into AI large language models (LLMs) that harvest data from the online encyclopedia, a US-based conservative think-tank has claimed. A report released on Thursday by the Manhattan Institute looked at evidence of political bias in English-language articles on Wikipedia, by correlating the names of Western leaders and prominent politicians with emotion-laden words. The study found “prevailing associations of negative emotions (e.g., anger and disgust) with right-leaning public figures; and positive emotions (e.g., joy) with left-leaning public figures,” suggesting “evidence of political bias embedded in Wikipedia articles.” “We find some of the aforementioned political associations embedded in Wikipedia articles popping up in OpenAI’s language models,” the report concluded.

The researchers noted that Wikipedia articles are likely a prominent part of OpenAI’s “secret corpus of data” used to train ChatGPT. The report acknowledges, however, that this pattern is not universal, and is more common in articles about US political figures, while there was no evidence of Wikipedia bias in entries on British politicians or US-based think tanks. For example, in references to recent US presidents, Donald Trump – now the Republican presidential frontrunner – was portrayed with the most negative sentiment, while Barack Obama was listed as having the most positive references. The report concluded that Wikipedia “is not living up to its stated neutral-point-of-view policy.”

The policy referred to, which Wikipedia describes as one of the pillars of the encyclopedia, stipulates that articles must exclude personal opinions and interpretations of the editor, be based on reliable sources, and explore multiple points of view when dealing with a controversial topic. Wikipedia has been repeatedly criticized for its supposedly biased takes on hot-button political issues, with its co-founder, Larry Sanger, saying last year that the website had become an instrument of “control” used by the US intelligence agencies to wage information warfare.

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“What is now left for Hunter are sentencing guidelines that strongly support jail time and a judge who has imposed such jail time in past cases..”

The Supreme Court Swatted Down Hunter Biden’s Hail Mary Pass (Turley)

While the result in Washington was not as bad as the unanimous decision in Delaware, it may well have sealed his fate on appeal. U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika did not leave him much for appeal in overseeing a fair and textbook trial. The Biden legal team had been counting on Hail Mary passes since a Special Counsel was appointed. It almost worked. Special Counsel David Weiss seemed to work hard to avoid any felony charges against the president’s son. The Justice Department not only allowed the statute of limitations to run on major crimes, but sought to finalize an obscene plea agreement with no jail time for Hunter. In the hearing to accept the plea, Judge Noreika decided to ask a couple of cursory questions of the prosecutor, particularly about a sweeping immunity provision covering any and all crimes committed by Hunter.

The prosecutor admitted that he had never seen an agreement this generous for a defendant. The plea fell apart and the Biden team seemed unwilling to accept anything but a single throw victory. They told the prosecutor in court “just rip it up.” The Biden legal team then blundered in taking the case to trial with a jury nullification strategy. Some of us wrote that Hunter needed to plead guilty to avoid jail time. Instead, they hoped that a Delaware jury in Bidentown could never convict a Biden. They were wrong. That left the last pass to the Supreme Court, which just seemed to land in the stadium seats. In reality, it was never a strong throw. After all, Hunter was convicted for lying on gun forms, something that the Court was never likely to excuse.

What is now left for Hunter are sentencing guidelines that strongly support jail time and a judge who has imposed such jail time in past cases. The other group of people that may be even more upset with this ruling may be many in the media and Congress. Once again, the Court has shattered the false narrative that this is a hopelessly divided Court along ideological lines. This month the Court has continued to rule unanimously or nearly unanimously, including in cases like Rahimi in controversial constitutional claims. Instead, the Court rendered a reasonable, balanced accommodation for public safety under the Second Amendment. It is not clear who is more disappointed: Hunter or the Court critics.

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The New World Order can’t meme anymore than the left..

Common Sense And Memes Are Viruses To The New World Order (Lynn)

Relativism, undeniably, trends in modernity. And Orwell was right: “The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.” Orwell, George, ”1984”: part 2, chapter 9. So whether by Marxism or any other form of secular utopianism: The goals are always out with the “old” and in with the “new”. Order out of chaos. Dissolve and coagulate. Also like Orwell’s “1984”: The world’s global societal power structure is stratified into concentric rings of power. The Inner Party functions to continuously preserve and enrich itself; as the Outer Party (i.e. those following orders) and the Proles are utilized and cannibalized when necessary.

The circles of power have become increasingly interconnected in modernity; and technology allows the Inner Party to launch policies that are enforced by the Outer Party and unto the Proles. This process is also called “history”. The Outer Party depends upon the Inner Party for survival and it always remains a difficult challenge to convince the Proles of something they can’t, or won’t, see. As a result, history unwinds in inevitable, cyclical waves. Yet, the Inner Party has survived for generations – even before the establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913 and its unleashing of the modern Fractional Reserve Banking monster. Slavery is rooted in economics; and so the Inner Party uses debt to implement and expand its various wars. The rich get richer as the poor suffer, starve, and die. While driving the other day, I listened to an “expert” on AM radio discussing the vast increase of carbon in Earth’s atmosphere and the conclusion was this: “Climate Change is real!” The radio voice seemed very confident in its conclusions and, by implication, it was ready to do everything necessary to stop what it perceived as a genuine threat. Always the same dialectics, again and again.

Is America having seizures? Or postmortem convulsions? At this point in time, I am convinced it’s the latter. While in communication with a retired retarded professor, she expressed exasperation at those who still plan to vote for Trump. After all, he was convicted by a jury of his peers and is now a convicted felon. In response, and from memory, I typed out a meme I saw on the internet: “He lived over 70 years without a criminal record. But when he ran for president he was charged with over 90 crimes! How can you explain that?” Silence. But… oops! Did you notice what I did there? Did you see how the Inner Party’s phony dialectics had me defending the proud promoter of Operation Warp Speed®?

When it was revealed that U.S. Senate ratification was required for the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Pandemic “Treaty”, it was, instead, transitioned into an “agreement”. Except that strategy went down in flames, too, at the WHO’s 77th World Health Assembly. In response, Team Biden, China, and other unelected WHO totalitarians stealthily passed new International Health Regulations (IHR) behind closed doors. This was done on June 1, 2024 in Geneva, Switzerland. The Ethiopian Communist, and WHO Director, Tedros Ghebreyesus, violated the IHR’s Article 55.2 eligibility requirements and with less than the required quorum of member states voting. This power grab was completely illegal and unlawfully elevated the WHO “from a global advisory-only body to an international enforcer of its mandates.” So we all better get the word out, before it’s too late. Especially now that it’s another election year so flu season is almost here.

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“Turning on a practically endless faucet of cash for a friend and then being criticized because it wasn’t endless enough..”

Bibi Is Needy (DeMartino)

On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu released a video complaining about a short-lived pause of one weapon shipment from the United States. In the video, he directly criticized the administration of US President Joe Biden. “It is inconceivable that in the past few months, the administration has been withholding weapons and ammunitions to Israel,” The Israeli Prime Minister said, despite the United States being the largest provider of weapons to Israel and its most stalwart defender on the international stage. The White House canceled a meeting with high-ranking Israeli officials in response and attempted to assure the public that it had not stopped sending weapons to a country that has been accused of genocide by several nations. The decision to delay one shipment of weapons was in response to Israel’s decision to go forward with its Rafah invasion, despite pressure from the United States to hold off.

Biden has been dealing with protests over the US supplying weapons to Israel, but the pause on one shipment seemingly did nothing to slow Israel’s campaign. More than 6% of the Gaza population has been killed, seriously injured or remains missing. Turning on a practically endless faucet of cash for a friend and then being criticized because it wasn’t endless enough must be a familiar experience for Biden. Ukraine’s illegitimate President Volodymyr Zelensky complained earlier this year that aid from the US, which he had already received well over $110 billion worth, was arriving too slowly. But, considering who his family is, he is probably used to it. Last year, texts between Biden and his son Hunter were revealed that showed the younger Biden– despite earning millions allegedly on the back of his father’s name– complaining about being broke and asking his uncle James Biden for money.

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“The British have presented no evidence of Novichok on the Skripal home door handle; in the blood, skin, and urine testing of the Skripals in hospital; or in subsequent inquest and court proceedings..”

UK Invents Phantom Skripals To Refuse To Testify In Novichok Inquiry (Helmer)

A new lawyer appeared in a London court on Friday claiming to represent Sergei and Yulia Skripal. Jack Holborn, a barrister specializing in what he calls human rights, told Lord Anthony Hughes, who is conducting a public inquiry into the alleged Novichok death of Dawn Sturgess in 2018, that the Skripals should not be called to give evidence or testify in the case. Holborn claimed the Skripals are fearful for their security. “No security measures are perfect”, he said. Holborn has not been in contact with the Skripals, however. He refuses to answer questions put to him on what visual contact or other communications he has had with either Sergei or Yulia Skripal. Instead, he was told what to say at the hearing by the law firm of Kingsley Napley which the British government is paying to show that the Skripals are participating in the Novichok case. The spokesman for Hughes and the inquiry was asked to explain Holborn’s presence in court for the first time on Friday. She was also asked what authority the Skripals had given Holborn to represent them.

The spokesman answered: “Kingsley Napley has been designated as the recognised legal representative of the Skripals under r[ule] 6 of the Inquiry Rules 2006. By rule 8, the recognised legal representative may appoint a team to assist them and Kingsley Napley have accordingly instructed counsel to appear on their clients’ behalf.”. In other words, there has been no contact between the lawyers who say they represent the Skripals, and the Skripals themselves. The judge and government are refusing to give evidence that Sergei Skripal is alive, and that Yulia Skripal is not in prison. The problem for the British Government is that if the Skripals are allowed to give live evidence at the Hughes inquiry, there is no telling what they may say to contradict or discredit the six-year official narrative of the Russian Novichok attack in England. The lawyer for the inquiry, Andrew O’Connor KC, told Hughes on Friday morning this was a “difficult question as to whether either or both of Sergei and Julia Skripal should give oral evidence.”

He also acknowledged there was the same problem in revealing what the Skripals have already said. “In the case of the Skripals, the transcripts of their police interviews have not yet been provided to CPs [Concerned Parties] but will be very shortly.” In fact, the Skripal transcripts will be so redacted, the officials and lawyers admitted in court, it is uncertain what the Skripals believe had happened to them, and why. Release of the redacted Skripal transcripts from March of 2018 risks being contradicted by fresh written statements to the Hughes inquiry from the Skripals, so that form of testimony is also being barred. Since March 4, 2018, when the Skripals slumped unconscious on a Salisbury town bench and were kept in hospital under police guard, three British prime ministers — Theresa May, Boris Johnson, and Rishi Sunak — have continued the story that three Russian military officers attacked the Skripals with a Novichok nerve agent they had brought by plane into England, and sprayed on to the door handle of Sergei Skripal’s home; that was several hours before he and his daughter showed symptoms and collapsed.

The British have presented no evidence of Novichok on the Skripal home door handle; in the blood, skin, and urine testing of the Skripals in hospital; or in subsequent inquest and court proceedings. The alleged Russian attack weapon – a perfume bottle atomiser – did not materialize for months until July 2018, when police claim to have found it on a kitchen bench in the home of another alleged victim, Dawn Sturgess, ten days – repeat ten days — after exhaustive police searches of the house had failed to find it. Sergei Skripal has not been seen in public since the day of the alleged Novichok attack, March 4, 2018. He has not been heard on the telephone by family members in Russia since June 26, 2019. Yulia Skripal was last seen in a government-directed interview at a US bomber base in England in May 2018; her last telephone call to Russia was heard on November 20, 2020. The Skripals have not been seen or heard from since.

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Off-switch
https://twitter.com/i/status/1804219814627471641

 

 

Aurus

 

 

Only men

 

 

Brahmaputra
https://twitter.com/i/status/1804372316085981370

 

 

Coral
https://twitter.com/i/status/1804467986520002771

 

 

 

 

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