election meddling Archives - The Automatic Earth

Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary Warns of Kamala Harris’ Imminent Rebranding Towards the Middle

“I GUARANTEE you that’s coming after August 7.”

Kamala, the chameleon, was once considered the most liberal senator, according to a 2019 ranking by GovTrack.

But O’Leary has been told,… pic.twitter.com/sf93UjjOTa

— The Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) August 6, 2024

Byron Donalds

George Stephanopoulos was one of heads of Bill Clinton's 92 presidential campaign and Clinton's White House communications director.

He freaked out on Byron Donalds this morning because Dems have lost control of the narrative on Kamala's race hustling. pic.twitter.com/5bDoZ0RrDG

— Tim Young (@TimRunsHisMouth) August 4, 2024

Orban Soros

The Damn Is Breaking. People in the UK are protesting. People in Britain are storming police guarding an immigration hotel

Remember we have UNDENIABLE PROOF George Soros paid off these elected officials to flood America & Europe with illegals

The Prime Minister of Hungary… pic.twitter.com/5TTFgfWHrh

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) August 4, 2024

Bukele

The President of El Salvador EXPOSES America’s Tax System

They might end him for this pic.twitter.com/NiBg4Re8um

— Ryan Rozbiani (@RyanRozbiani) August 4, 2024

JD
https://twitter.com/i/status/1820281495879118921

Tucker Maine

How does a Cybertruck function in rural Maine? We found out. pic.twitter.com/M4DUTrTUic

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) August 5, 2024

“..the epic revaluation of everything humans make and own — with much of it losing value and quite a bit losing all value because it never really had any..”

• And Suddenly Things Change (Kunstler)

That two-by-four upside our country’s head you’ve been waiting to get whomped with? Looks like it’s landing now. We got a banger in 2008, but it didn’t make a much of an impression. Maybe you don’t even remember these people, but then Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed Chair Ben Bernanke came in like a code blue squad and hooked up the banks to an IV-drip speedball of cocaine and heroin, i.e., “money” that didn’t actually exist (a.k.a. “liquidity,” hallucinated capital), and that crew kept it coming for years. And then Janet Yellen and her posse kept it coming with never-ending zero interest rate policy (ZIRP) until the national debt canceled America’s future. And that left Jerome Powell pretending there was a way out of this doom-loop. Then came the repo market spasm in September 2019 that freaked out the blob so badly they shut down the whole world with Covid and locked-down economies.

And everything since then has been a waiting game. The financial world was in hospice. The wait is over. Everything that can break is breaking: stock markets, bond markets, the galaxy of derivatives — bets on this and that, which will never be honored. Banks are next. Gold and silver are hanging in there for dear life just now, because they’re actually worth something. (And because they are worth something, they‘ll eventually sell off some too, to cover margin calls on other stuff hemorrhaging value. But they will not go to zero like a lot of other stuff, and they’ll come back stronger.)

You understand this can’t play out like it did in 2008-9. The authorities are out of tricks and out of fake money. They can try the emergency interest rate cut, but it won’t change what is actually happening: the epic revaluation of everything humans make and own — with much of it losing value and quite a bit losing all value because it never really had any. The spooky catch is that there will be an attempt in this wild and terrifying process, for certain devious, unprincipled parties to take possession of many things shaking loose — what remains of collateral. . . real things. . . commodities. . . facilities. . . properties. . . chattels. . . artworks. . . and, of course, whatever securities still have a relationship to realities of production.

This brings a sharp end to the current political sitcom, especially the situation of the Democratic Party. They will get blamed for the economic carnage left behind by the shattered money system. They lied about everything for years, every number, every index, every supposed “policy”. Kamala Harris won’t be cackling her way out of this. It’s hard to see how she might remain the party’s nominee. She can’t even speak to the massive catalog of prior failures to govern our country coherently and effectively. And it’s equally hard to figure how “Joe Biden,” still presiding emptily over this fiasco, can get Twenty-fifthed out of the way for his feckless veep. More likely, the coming convention will be a desperate, bloody mass cage fight and somebody else will stagger out of it to go through the motions of campaigning in a hopeless cause. Hillary might even decline the roll in this horror show.

Little later.

• Apocalypse Now or Later? (Johnston)

It’s carnage out there in the markets, and things have been moving with the force of a tsunami. Japan’s Nikkei 225 plunged more than 12% on Monday in what was the biggest single-day drop since ‘Black Monday’ in 1987. As of this writing, the Dow has dropped some 1,000 points, while the Nasdaq has cratered nearly 4% in what has turned out to be a global market rout. The triggers for the selloff are clear enough and have been well covered in the financial media. Friday’s disappointing US jobs report ignited fears of a US recession. The once-hot but overly leveraged and overhyped AI trade has gone sour, which has led to a bloodbath for tech stocks.

Largely responsible for the latter development is the breaking of the massive dollar-yen carry trade – where investors were borrowing cheaply in yen and investing in higher-yielding US assets. This can be thought of roughly as a big interest-rate arbitrage: Borrow at low rates and lend (invest) at higher rates. But when the Bank of Japan raised rates on July 31 and, perhaps even more importantly, signaled more hikes to come, a massive capitulation in these carry-trade positions ensued. This has reverberated through markets and led to a lot of margin calls. And since investors often have to sell other assets to meet margin calls, it creates even more selling pressure.

Predicting where markets may be headed in the coming days and weeks is a hazardous endeavor that I won’t venture. Many investors are of course trying to catch the proverbial ‘falling knife’ – meaning buying in during or immediately after a sharp selloff. A number of analysts are already saying that the panic is overblown and things will soon stabilize. If I had high conviction about how things will shape up over the short term, I would simply trade the market, not write about it.

HODL.

• Bitcoin Falls Below $50,000 (RT)

Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, has shed more than 10% of its value in one day, amid a global stock market crash that has affected the cryptocurrency market, according to trading data. The price of Bitcoin has fallen below $50,000 for the first time since February, hitting a low of $48,126 at 08:41 GMT on Monday. It has recovered slightly since then. In late July, Bitcoin traded at above $62,000, and in March, it briefly touched an all-time high of $70,136. Since Friday, the cryptocurrency market has recorded its most significant sell-off in three days in almost a year, Cointelegraph said. The panic selling in Bitcoin and the overall crypto market was sparked by a wider crash in the financial markets, amid fears that the US could be heading for a recession. Stock markets went into a meltdown on Monday morning. Apart from the global stock market rout, the uncertainty regarding the fiscal policy of the US Federal Reserve, Bitcoin’s low liquidity, and soaring tensions in the Middle East have contributed to the slide, industry experts say.

“For Harris and Obama’s Democrat party, there’s no escaping that disastrous border issue.”

• Biden-Harris Released 99 Illegal Aliens On FBI Terror Watchlist Into US (ZH)

A new interim staff report from the House Judiciary Committee and Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement, published on Monday, highlights how the Biden administration, with ‘Border Czar’ VP Kamala Harris, facilitated the greatest illegal alien invasion ever on the United States. The report titled “Terror At Our Door: How The Biden-Harris Administration’s Open-Borders Policies Undermine National Security And Endanger Americans” revealed that the failed southern border policies of President Joe Biden and VP Kamala Harris have flooded the nation with more than 5.4 million illegal aliens. Additionally, at least 1.9 million known “gotaways” also entered, bringing the total to 7.3 million illegal entries. Fox News’ Bill Melugin, who also reviewed the report, said the border data that dates back between 2021-23 shows “at least 99 illegal aliens on the FBI terror watchlist were released into the US after being arrested by Border Patrol at the southern border, and another 34 watchlisted aliens are still in DHS custody.” And this.

More significant findings from the report: pic.twitter.com/K9OkRlJaQc

— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) August 5, 2024

“With the border in chaos under the Biden-Harris Administration, the terrorist threat to the homeland has skyrocketed. This border insecurity has been the Administration’s choice, and it is a mistake,” the report stated. The report noted that 375 illegal aliens on the US Gov’ts terrorist watchlist have been apprehended by Border Patrol agents under Biden’s first term with VP Harris as Border Czar. The report continued, “That is a more than 3,000 percent increase of watchlisted alien encounters compared to all four years of the Trump Administration.” At the end of last month, leftist MSM spent days in an all-out propaganda media blitz to convince voters that VP Harris was never border Czar – that’s because the nation killing open southern borders pushed by Biden & Harris is such a disastrous topic during the election cycle.

Meanwhile, national security ‘experts’ have warned countless times that the Biden-Harris Administration’s open-border policies can only suggest it’s only a matter of time before a terror event unfolds in the US. [..] A majority of Americans care about two things ahead of the elections: 1) inflation and 2) the border. For Harris and Obama’s Democrat party, there’s no escaping that disastrous border issue.

“He assured reporters that the IOC was working to protect the athletes who failed gender tests from bullying..”

No no no, the IOC should protect women, not failed gender tests. Best way to do that: everyone who has a Y chromosome is not a woman. Perhaps that leaves out a few people, but at least not half the population.

• Scientific Consensus Needed in Sports Gender Debate – IOC

International Olympic Committee (IOC) communications director Mark Adams admitted on Friday that there was no scientific or political consensus on the gender test issue in sports after a controversial Olympic boxing match revived the debate. “On the wider issue, there is, there still is, the need of scientific or political consensus on this issue. It is not a black-and-white issue. And we would, the IOC, be very interested to hear of such a solution, such a consensus on this,” Adams told a news conference. He spoke a day after Italian female boxer Angela Carini surrendered after 46 seconds in the 1/8 finals with Algerian boxer Imane Khelif. The IOC approved Khelif’s participation in the Olympic women’s tournament despite that the boxer was disqualified from the 2023 World Cup for failing an unspecified gender eligibility test. The International Boxing Association (IBA) found the presence of XY-chromosomes and increased testosterone levels in her body.

Changing the rules during a competition is forbidden, Adams said. The IOC relied on the norms that were in effect during the last Olympic Games. He assured reporters that the IOC was working to protect the athletes who failed gender tests from bullying. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said after the match that athletes with male genetic characteristics should be barred from women’s competitions. The IOC previously suspended the International Boxing Association from holding a boxing tournament in Paris.

“.. it is much safer for a country to produce every year a bumper crop of broccoli than to be cursed with a commodity coveted by the high and mighty of this world..”

• From The Glass House, A Hail Of Stones Rains Down On Venezuela (Karganovic)

Since the 1920s, Venezuela has been a very unlucky country. That was when vast oil deposits were discovered on its territory. Its misfortune began when global predators grasped that it was fabulously rich. It has the largest petroleum reserves in the world, exceeding those of Saudi Arabia, as well as huge amounts of gold and other valuable ores and minerals. Being a wealthy country, far from a cause for jubilation, when it is unable to effectively defend itself is a huge vulnerability. As Gerald Celente observed at the time when Libya was in the global predators’ cross-hairs in the way that Venezuela is being targeted today,. The torments Venezuela has experienced over the last two decades corroborate Celente’s point.

In 1998, the people of Venezuela elected Hugo Chavez over the assortment of stooges and grifters that previously had always been put forward by their imperial overlords for “democratic” approval by the inert populace. It turned out that on that occasion they had voted the wrong way, and that is when their troubles began. Since then, they have been subjected to punishing and increasingly devastating sanctions. The brutality of those sanctions was such that the program of redistribution of the nationalised national wealth to benefit the poor and the hitherto disenfranchised had to be abruptly curtailed. The vindictive assault on the Venezuelan people and their means of sustenance conducted over the last twenty years with cumulative ferocity can only be interpreted as the collective economic and political equivalent of the tortures inflicted individually in Abu Ghra it is much safer for a country to produce every year a bumper crop of broccoli than to be cursed with a commodity coveted by the high and mighty of this worldib.

On Sunday, 28 July, in Venezuela Presidential elections were held. The incumbent Nicolas Maduro of the United Socialist Party was declared by the electoral commission to be the winner, having received 51% of the votes, whilst the challenger, collective West’s favourite Edmundo Gonzales gained 44%, with the balance split by two minor candidates. The polls had barely closed and vote counting, in the presence of 910 international observers, was still in progress when a concerted campaign was launched abroad to dispute Maduro’s victory as fraudulent and to put forward the assertion that it was the opposition candidate who had actually won. Where had we seen such a sequence of events before?

The relatively close tally was a perfect ambush, the ideal scenario to activate Gene Sharp’s colour revolution playbook. Within hours of the results being announced, factually unsupported claims were issued, according to unverified exit polls, that Gonzales had received twice as many votes as officially conceded. Ancillary mechanisms were promptly put in motion. Exactly as it did following the 2020 elections in Bolivia, which were won by Evo Morales, a figure loathed by the imperialists as much as Chavez and Nicolas Maduro, the Organisation of American States duly issued a statement denouncing the Venezuelan vote as “unreliable.” The governments of several other dependencies, Argentina, Chile, and Peru, followed suit in even stronger terms and announced that they would not recognise Maduro’s election to a new six-year term. Ironically, the current Peruvian government is itself the product of a constitutionally irregular palace coup in 2022, in which the democratically elected President of that country, Pedro Castillo, was deposed. Yet the Peruvian coup regime sees nothing awkward in lecturing Venezuela on the fine points of democratic procedure.

The tragedy that has struck Venezuela is a clear illustration of the inherent vulnerability of relatively weak countries endowed with immense natural resources. They are fair game for plunder and from the moment they refuse to remain prostrate and decide to resist, as Venezuela did under Chavez and Bolivia under Morales, they become objects of subversion by the foulest of means, with the sole objective of reinstating the ancien régime and the system of neo-colonialist pillage that characterised it.

“..the opportunity for the West to fight Russia without committing one dead western soldier..”

• America’s Election Meddling Will Finally Be Its Own Sword To Fall On (Jay)

“Interventionism” could simply be called “western-backed coup”. Since the end of the WWII, the U.S., it is reported, has meddled with the elections of 81 countries and so it should come as little surprise that it tried its best to topple Nicolás Maduro, as it had previously in 2019 under Trump. U.S. election meddling though has changed considerably since the end of the Cold War. Previous to 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell, the U.S. was quite brazen about toppling left-wing dictators it hated or supporting right-wing candidates with their campaigns. Most notably its dirty tricks were seen as early as 1948 when it did all it could in Italy to oust a communist government. Later on, in the 80s, while the Cold War was still running and Soviet troops were in Afghanistan, the U.S. gave the contras in Nicaragua 18m USD in profits from the illegal arms sales to Iran, which ultimately led to Daniel Ortega being overthrown in a 1990 election. In the same year, Vaclav Havel was backed to the hilt in Czechoslovakia to be enthroned as a western leader in the first democratic elections to be held there.

The U.S. also backs campaigns to reinstate their puppets, when they lose one in a fair, democratic election. In 1986, for example, in Haiti, the U.S. lost Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” who was the incumbent president and a great ally of the West. Later on, his successor was finally overthrown when another friend was installed after years of a nefarious campaign. Sometimes they threw money at their own favoured incumbents who would be useful idiots to them. In 1996, the Clinton government lent 10m USD to Boris Yeltsin for his own campaign, a staggering amount of money at that time. Other times, they would pump money into campaigns run by opposition groups to oust the incumbent who was considered an enemy of the U.S., disregarding any pretentions of democratic collective conscience.

In 2000, five years after the Serbs had been bombed into submission in the Yugoslav War by an illegal air strike campaign – which came about when Bosnian Muslims staged a false flag attack on their own people in a Sarajevo marketplace – the U.S. went all out to fund campaigns for all opposition groups in Serbia which finally led to those groups using the same dictator type tactics when the polls were counted by giving Milosevic to leave quietly with his life, or face the same consequences as Romania’s Ceausescu. The Serbian leader later was to mysteriously die in 2006 while held in prison at a specially convened war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Netherlands.

Arguably, the best example of U.S. election meddling, especially for one which has so spectacularly backfired on the U.S., has got to be Ukraine. Both in 2004 and 2014, the U.S. created a revolutionary movement and pumped an estimated 4bn USD into it, just to unseat the Russian-leaning incumbent Viktor Yanukovych. With Ukraine, there were not energy reserves to act as a catalyst but a bigger prize for those red in tooth and claw determined to have their glory fighting Russia: the opportunity for the West to fight Russia without committing one dead western soldier. It proved irresistible and to this day, the West’s economies continue to plunder as this foolish decision takes a grip on those economies pulling them down, while Russia’s gains.

While we don’t know all of the facts which drew the U.S. to the Ukraine, its fatal attraction may well be part of Joe Biden’s corruption escapades there, clearly the Ukraine stands out as the West’s greatest defeat with election engineering which started off as a “colour revolution” but ended up as full-on support of military intervention, shrouded by dirty aid and military deals. The U.S. usually can’t see election interference for what it is as its people have gleaned a certain self-righteous coping mechanism to messing up other people’s lives just for the charred profits from other people’s losses, often deaths. As a general rule, if we overlook Ukraine, in recent years these “colour revolutions” are, compared to the gruesome coup d’états in Central and South America during the cold war years, benign. But it’s where the thinking leads.

“.. this concept rests on Jewish supremacy: Mein Kampf in reverse”.

• The 1948 Irgun re-born? (Alastair Crooke)

Again, overlooked but not in the news: The situation at Sde Teiman was widely-known and said to be “more horrific than anything we’ve heard about Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo”. A UN report has detailed how Palestinians arbitrarily detained faced torture and mistreatment. The vigilantes from the settlements nevertheless described those committing the anal rape as “heroes” – and cast the IDF investigators as fifth columnists. Reports suggest that the perpetrators at Sde Teiman enjoy high level protection. This account of systematic torture followed earlier revelations that the Israeli army had marked tens of thousands of Gazans as suspects for assassination, using an AI targeting system, called Lavender, with little human oversight and a permissive policy for casualties.

In the same vein, Right wing Cabinet ministers celebrated the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on social media Wednesday morning, as: “This is the right way to purge the world of this filth”, Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu, a member of National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s far-right Otzma Yehudit party, tweeted: “No more imaginary ‘peace’/surrender agreements, no more mercy for these dead men walking. The iron fist that will strike them is the one that will bring quiet and a modicum of comfort, and strengthen our ability to live in peace with those who seek peace. Haniyeh’s death makes the world a slightly better place”. What then is this ‘truth’ that the West ignores and silences reality, whilst amplifying its narrative frauds? It is that the Israel which they presume to understand is now something very different. And that it has an epistemology at odds with mechanistic rationalism.

An eschatological Right-wing cult now holds the majority in cabinet – and wields a vigilante militia ready to attack the military establishment, and the Israeli state. No one was arrested for the attack and take-over of the two bases. They do not dare. Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon, former Chief of Staff of the IDF, who also served as Israel’s Defence Minister, had this to say in a video interview on the forces taking over in Israel: “When you talk about Smotrich and Ben Gvir: They have a Rabbi. His name is Dov Lior. He is the Rabbi of the Jewish Underground, who intended to blow up the Dome of the Rock – and before that the buses in Jerusalem. Why? In order to hurry up the ‘Last War’. Do you [not] hear them talking in terms of the Last War; or of Smotrich’s concept of ‘subjugation’? Read the article he published in Shiloh in 2017. First of all, this concept rests on Jewish supremacy: Mein Kampf in reverse”.

“My hair stands on end when I say that – as he said it. I learned and grew up in the house of Holocaust survivors and ‘never again’. It is Mein Kampf in reverse: Jewish supremacy: and therefore [Smotrich] says: “My wife won’t go into a room with an Arab”. It is anchored in ideology. And then actually what he aspires to – as soon as possible – is to go to a big war. A war of Gog and Magog. How do you start the flames? A massacre like the [1994] Cave of the Patriarchs? Baruch Goldstein is a student of this Rabbi. Ben Gvir has hung up Goldstein’s picture [in his house]”.

“This is what goes into the decision-making process in the Israeli government”. Rabbi Dov Lior has been described by Netanyahu as the “élite unit that leads Israel”, because of his influence and control over the settler forces. The 1948 Irgun, drawing heavily on the Mizrahim, is being reborn? Isn’t it time that the western ruling structures raised their eyes from their reverie, and read the runes that manifest all around them? Some serious players don’t think as you westerners do; they seek Gog and Magog (the prophecy that “the children of Israel” will be victorious in the battle of Armageddon). That is what you risk.

He gets uneasy.

• West Too Fearful Of Escalation With Russia – Zelensky (RT)

Ukraine is pushing NATO nations to create a coalition that would attempt to intercept Russian missiles, Vladimir Zelensky has said. The US-led military bloc has previously declined to do so. Kiev has long been pressuring its Western backers to become more involved in the conflict with Moscow and start shooting down Russian drones and missiles over Ukrainian territory. However, its efforts have been rebuffed by foreign powers reluctant to engage in a direct military confrontation with Russia. “[Western nations] are always concerned about possible escalation. We are fighting against that. We will work on it,” Zelensky told journalists on Sunday. The government in Kiev is considering “technical possibilities for neighboring nations to use military aircraft against missiles that strike Ukraine” after flying in the general direction of NATO countries, he added.

Zelensky has been calling for the establishment of a no-fly zone over Ukraine since the outbreak of hostilities with Russia in February 2022. Military experts pointed out that any realistic enforcement of Kiev’s wish would require NATO members to attack Russian planes in the air and at airfields inside Russia. The idea of a less ambitious shield over Western Ukraine was floated last month, as Kiev signed a bilateral security deal with Warsaw and ramped up its lobbying efforts ahead of a NATO leaders’ summit in the US. The Polish government indicated it was willing to answer the Ukrainian call, provided that NATO approved, although other nations, including the US, objected. Washington said it believed that supplying more air defense systems to Ukraine to operate on its own was the best way to counter Russian barrages.

Zelensky spoke to the press after confirming that sponsors had delivered US-designed F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine. Media reports have suggested that the new Ukrainian capability is too small-scale to become a gamechanger on the front line. It would likely be used to intercept cruise missiles delivering long-range strikes instead, defense experts have suggested. Moscow has been targeting Ukrainian military assets as well as some key infrastructure sites, such as power stations, which it considers crucial for Kiev’s war effort. According to Russian officials, the conflict is a US-led proxy war in which Ukrainian troops serve as “cannon fodder” for Western geostrategic interests. On Saturday, Zelensky said Kiev wants to attack targets deep inside Russia, a type of operation for which Ukraine is not allowed to use donated Western weapons and relies on domestically produced kamikaze drones instead.

Of course he did.

• Jailed US Reporter Knew He Was Handling Classified Russian Data (RT)

RT has obtained an exclusive video showing the moment Russian law enforcement detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, as he attempted to hide what appeared to be a flash drive with illegally obtained classified data. The journalist was among those exchanged in last week’s historic prisoner swap between Russia and the West. The previously unpublished clip released on Monday shows Gershkovich’s arrest in March 2023 in the Russian city of Ekaterinburg. The journalist is seen sitting in a restaurant with his ‘source,’ as the pair discuss in Russian how to hand over secret data on the country’s defense industry in a way that won’t allow the authorities to track the leak.

As Russian operatives swoop in, Gershkovich tries to hide what appears to be a flash drive containing the data under the table before being arrested. Commenting on the incident at the time, the Kremlin said the reporter had been “caught red-handed,” while Russia’s Investigative Committee claimed he had engaged in espionage on behalf of the CIA. Gershkovich has denied any wrongdoing and insisted he was merely doing his job as a reporter. While the administration of US President Joe Biden declared Gershkovich – the first American reporter arrested on espionage allegations since the Cold War – as “wrongfully detained,” a Russian court sentenced him to 16 years in prison last month.

The journalist, however, was among 16 Western prisoners included in the landmark swap deal last week. In exchange, Russia secured the release of ten of its nationals. Intelligence operative Vadim Krasikov, who was sentenced by a German court for allegedly killing Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a Chechen separatist with Georgian citizenship, in a Berlin park in 2019, was one of the most prominent Russian figures on the list. Some of the evidence against Krasikov was provided by German magazine Der Spiegel, US government-funded website Bellingcat, and Russian opposition outlet The Insider.

Good. Now break ’em up.

• In ‘Biggest Antitrust Case Of The 21st Century’, Google Ruled A Monopoly (CD)

A federal judge left no room for ambiguity Monday in a landmark ruling in a case brought by the Justice Department and states against tech giant Google, in which the government argued the company had illegally monopolized the search engine and advertising market. “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” said Judge Amit Mehta, who sits of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. In U.S. et al. v. Google, Mehta found that Google has “violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act by maintaining its monopoly in two product markets in the United States—general services and general text advertising—through its exclusive distribution agreements.” The American Economic Liberties Project (ALEP) called the ruling a “tremendous win for consumers, innovation, and the entire tech industry.”

During a 10-week trial last year, the DOJ argued Google had used exclusionary contracts to block its competitors from reaching potential users. The company’s deals with web firms such as Mozilla and cell phone companies like Apple and Samsung have made Google the default search engine on millions of people’s phones and computers, as has its contracts with other major tech firms and service providers. The trial revealed that Google shares 36% of its search ad revenues from Safari with Apple and paid the company $20 billion in 2022 to ensure Google’s search engine would have default status for Apple customers. While paying billions of dollars per year to maintain its default status, Google has been using its dominance over ad space to collect more data about users and improve its search engine, while its rivals have been cut off from that ad space.

“If that’s what it takes for somebody to dislodge Google as the default search engine, wouldn’t the folks that wrote the Sherman Act be concerned about it?” asked Mehta. The Justice Department proved to the court that Google had ensured its search engine would conduct nearly 90% of all web searches. Vanderbilt University law professor Rebecca Haw Allensworth toldThe New York Times the ruling represents “a very prominent test of the Biden administration’s new antitrust enforcement agenda.” The DOJ and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have also sued Apple, Meta, and Amazon for monopolizing the smartphone, social media, and online selling markets.William Kovacic, former chairman of the FTC, told the Times in June that a victory against Google would create “momentum that supports [the government’s] other cases.” U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) was among those who applauded the ruling, saying the unfair practices Mehta outlined “are the exact behaviors that hurt consumers, competition, and small businesses.”

Lee Hepner, senior legal counsel at ALEP, said the ruling “strikes at the core of how hundreds of millions of Americans experience the internet.” “It illustrates how Google has become one of the most powerful companies in the world while undermining innovation and degrading the quality of its core product,” said Hepner. “The remedy must match the court’s striking verdict in this case. At a minimum that means an end to Google’s exclusive default agreements and breaking up business lines that have allowed Google to extend its monopoly into every corner of the internet.” Google is expected to appeal Mehta’s decision, but as it faces another antitrust case brought by the DOJ over its advertising technology business—set to go to trial September 9—ALEP interim executive director Nidhi Hegde expressed hope that Monday’s ruling “sends a resounding signal that the antimonopoly movement is here to stay.” “The promise of antitrust enforcement is that it will fully restore competition where it has been lost,” said Hepner, “and we’ll be advocating that the court use all of its power to do so.”

“..the independent judiciary … means that when you’re unpopular, you can get a fair hearing under the law and under the Constitution.”

• Neil Gorsuch Issues Dire Warning Over Biden’s Reforms (HUSA)

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch issued a stern warning about President Joe Biden’s proposals to reform the court system, which many have described as a desperate effort to thwart the conservative majority. Justice Gorsuch, appointed by President Donald Trump in 2017, declined to comment on specific proposals like age limits but cautioned against hindering the judiciary’s independence during a Sunday interview with Fox News Sunday with anchor Shannon Bream. “You are not in a bubble here at the courts. There are real world events happening. … How does the court feel about potential changes, term limits, ethics codes that are enforced by someone in ways that it isn’t now?” Bream asked. In response, Gorsuch said, “Shannon, you’re not going to be surprised that I’m not going to get into what is now a political issue during a presidential election year. I don’t think that would be helpful.”

He added, “I have one thought to add, it is that the independent judiciary … means that when you’re unpopular, you can get a fair hearing under the law and under the Constitution.” Gorsuch emphasized that the judiciary’s role is to protect Americans’ rights against government persecution. “Don’t you want a ferociously independent judge and a jury of your peers to make those decisions? Isn’t that your right as an American? And so, I just say be careful,” Gorsuch concluded. Gorsuch appeared on Fox News to promote his new book, Over Ruled: The Human Toll of Too Much Law, where he scolds the unprecedented growth of laws and regulations in the U.S.

His remarks came less than a week after Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris announced a “bold plan” to reform the Supreme Court and “ensure no president is above the law.” The proposed changes include abolishing presidential immunity, imposing term limits on justices and radically reforming ethics codes. These changes are seen as a direct challenge to President Donald Trump and the six conservative justices currently on the bench. Last month, the court ruled that Trump enjoyed presidential immunity from prosecution, reaffirming long-standing legal theories and angering the Democratic Party. The proposed ethics code appears to target Justice Clarence Thomas, who faced criticism from ProPublica for allegedly failing to disclose gifts from friends. ProPublica is a leftist organization claiming to be a news organization.

“Given the judge’s overt biases, some believe the punishment will be disproportionate to the offense and likely to disrupt the ongoing presidential campaign.”

• House Judiciary Launches Probe into Loren Merchan’s Work for Kamala (HUSA)

The House Judiciary Committee launched a probe into New York Judge Juan Merchan’s daughter over her work for Vice President Kamala Harris—work that could present a conflict of interest for the judge given his role overseeing one of the cases against former President Donald Trump. House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, sent a letter last week to Loren Merchan asking for all documents and communications related to her work for Authentic Campaigns, a Democratic marketing firm that has been contracted by several of Trump’s top political rivals, including Harris. Jordan specifically requested all contracts or invoices the firm has sent to President Joe Biden’s campaign, which is now Harris’s campaign as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

So far this election cycle, Authentic Campaigns has provided the Biden–Harris campaign with “digital paid media, design and development, social media, mobile messaging, [and] artificial intelligence,” Jordan noted. “Experts have raised substantial concerns with Judge [Juan] Merchan, your father, refusing to recuse himself from President Trump’s case despite your work on behalf of President Trump’s political adversaries and the financial benefit that your firm, Authentic Campaigns Inc., could receive from the prosecution and conviction,” Jordan wrote. Judge Juan Merchan is presiding over New York v. Trump, in which Trump was found guilty on multiple felony counts for falsifying records in the first degree. Trump’s legal team has appealed the jury’s conviction, asking Merchan to overturn it.

However, he is also due to make a determination in early September on Trump’s sentencing. Given the judge’s overt biases, some believe the punishment will be disproportionate to the offense and likely to disrupt the ongoing presidential campaign. Trump’s lawyers have also called on Judge Merchan to recuse himself from the case given his daughter’s political work, noting that Authentic Campaigns was ranked as one of the top vendors in the country “in connection with the 2024 election.” Thus, Loren Merchan not only has a political interest in the outcome of her father’s case, but also a “direct financial interest in these proceedings by virtue of her ownership stake and leadership role at Authentic Campaigns, Inc.,” Trump’s team said.

“Shouldn’t you be concerned about attacks on *all* communities?” Musk replied..”

• Downing Street In Row With Musk Over UK Riots (RT)

A heated back-and-forth has broken out between British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, with the bone of contention being the anti-immigration riots wracking the UK. More than a dozen cities and towns in the UK have been gripped by demonstrations, triggered by a deadly knife attack in Southport, England. Axel Muganwa Rudakubana, a 17-year-old British boy born to Rwandan parents has been charged with stabbing three little girls to death and injuring eight other children and two adults in an attack on a Southport dance class last week. A Liverpool judge ruled on Thursday that Rudakubana’s name, whose identity was initially concealed due to laws protecting minors, be released to the public as he turns 18 this week. Despite the rapid spread of rumours that the suspect was a Muslim immigrant, the police have stated he appears to have no known links to Islam.

Musk had claimed that “civil war was inevitable,” commenting a video on X (formerly Twitter) that showed the unrest. The video was posted by a user that suggested the root cause was mass migration to the UK and open-border policies. Downing Street has hit back against the statement. “There is no justification for comments like that,” Starmer’s spokesperson told reporters, calling the unrest “organized, illegal thuggery which has no place on our streets or online.” The UK Prime Minister slammed the unrest as “pure violence,” promising to field a “standing army of public duty officers,” in response. “The criminal law applies online as well as offline, and I’m assured that is the approach that is being taken,” Starmer said in a statement released on X. “Whatever the apparent motivation, this is not protest. It is pure violence, and we will not tolerate attacks on mosques or our Muslim communities,” he stressed. The riots have seen mosques and hotels housing asylum seekers attacked.

“Shouldn’t you be concerned about attacks on *all* communities?” Musk replied. The comment came as reports of counter-protester violence surfaced in the UK media. Police in Bolton clashed with 300 “mostly Asian” counter-demonstrators after two protests met and turned ugly, the Manchester Evening News reported on Monday. In a video circulating online, customers of a Birmingham pub could be seen violently assaulted. The Yardley pub, ‘The Clumsy Swan’ was attacked by “a group of Muslim youths, who broke away from the main demonstration and were wearing masks and carrying weapons,” the BBC wrote on Sunday. The UK’s top police official was pressed on double standards over the riots, which have allegedly been dealt with more harshly than other recent unrest and protests shaking the country. To a question about ending “two-tier policing,” Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley ripped the Sky News reporter’s microphone out of his hands and walked away. He took no questions from journalists.

I think they will.

• British Army Won’t Act Against Protesters – MOD (RT)

The British Army will not be involved in dealing with widespread rioting across the UK, Defense Secretary John Healey has said, insisting that police have the powers to protect the nation. Healey was speaking to Sky News on Monday in Rotherham, where protesters set fire to a hotel housing asylum seekers. Dozens of British towns and cities have been rocked by right-wing protests and riots against immigration and Islam since last Monday, when a British teenager of Rwandan descent stabbed three children to death and injured ten others in the town of Southport, near Liverpool. Asked whether the army might have to be brought in to deal with any future riots, Healey replied: “No… it’s the police’s responsibility to respond first and currently they’ve got the means to do it.” “They will make sure that people are safe,” Healey added.

The remarks come after Reform UK leader Nigel Farage condemned the violence against police officers in a statement posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Monday, saying he was “appalled” by the weekend’s unrest and that “deeper long-term problems remain.” He also urged the recall of parliament and said the government should consider deploying the army. At least 400 people have been arrested after riots rocked Liverpool, Bristol, Manchester, Hull, Belfast, Stoke, and other cities across UK over weekend, according to media reports. Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Monday announced that a “standing army” of specialist police officers would be set up to prevent any further disorder.

The prime minister’s official spokesman told The Guardian that no requests had been made for army assistance to quell the riots. “The police are very clear that they’ve got the powers and resources they need to protect communities and keep people safe,” the spokesperson said. “There’s been no requests made for any military assistance, that I’m aware of.”

Sit down

amazing pic.twitter.com/sJypkAw5sn

— Enez Özen (@Enezator) August 4, 2024

Unclog

Unblocking the entire neighborhood

pic.twitter.com/2O0O08IrFD

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) August 5, 2024

Cat elevator

Cat elevator.. 😅 https://t.co/KfkOhY8Rce

— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) August 5, 2024

Service dogs

These service dogs got to meet their Disney heroes, and it's the most wholesome thing on the planet. 14/10 for all pic.twitter.com/iyhhEdrxRr

— WeRateDogs (@dog_rates) August 5, 2024

Landing
https://twitter.com/i/status/1820557150952837204

Friend guest
https://twitter.com/i/status/1820432123087700064

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