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Debt Rattle June 14 2024

Jun 142024
 
 June 14, 2024  Posted by at 9:00 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  52 Responses »


René Magritte Mysteries of the horizon (a.k.a. The Masterpiece) 1955

 

 

 

 

 

• West Has Declared ‘War Without Rules’ On Russia – Medvedev (RT)
• Medvedev Urges To Turn Life In West Into ‘Permanent Nightmare’ (TASS)
• Use of F-16s On Russian Territory ‘Not Escalation’ – NATO Chief (RT)
• Biden, Zelensky To Sign 10-Year ‘Arm & Train’ Defense Deal at G7 (ZH)
• Biden Needs More Bloodshed In Europe To Stay In Power – Zakharova (TASS)
• Do The New US Sanctions Mark Russia’s Final Divorce From The Dollar? (Johston)
• Will Average Citizens Pay the Price for G7’s Theft of Russian Funds? (Miles)
• EU Now at a Crossroads: Reform or Self-Destruction (Jay)
• Macron’s Coalition Sees Him as Liability Ahead of Feared Snap Election (Sp.)
• Fine, Penalty For Hungary: 1 Million A Day For Detaining Asylum Seekers (RTL)
• Joe Biden Vows Not To Pardon Hunter (RT)
• WaPo Makes Last Plea to Keep Laptop “Conspiracy Theory” Alive (Turley)
• Musk Wants Ukrainian NGO Designated As Terrorist Group (RT)

 

 

 

 

Alex Tucker Elon
https://twitter.com/i/status/1801444130796515593

 

 

 

 

AOC SCOTUS

 

 

RFK Trump

 

 

Massie Bragg

 

 

Hoax

 

 

Macgregor

 

 

 

 

“Moscow should “obliterate their energy infrastructure, industry, transport, banking and social services. Instil fear over an imminent collapse of all critical infrastructure..”

• West Has Declared ‘War Without Rules’ On Russia – Medvedev (RT)

Moscow should use every opportunity to inflict “maximum damage” on Western nations that have declared a “war without rules” on Russia, former president Dmitry Medvedev has argued.Every weakness of the US and its allies should be exploited to undermine them and obstruct life for their citizens, the Russian official said on Thursday, reacting to the latest round of sanctions announced by Washington earlier this week. ”Are they afraid that we would transfer our arms to the enemies of the Western world? We should send every kind of weapon, except nuclear (for now)!” Medvedev wrote on social media. “Are they afraid of anarchy and crime waves in large cities? We should help disrupt their municipal authorities!”

Russia could trigger a war in space, wage a psychological warfare campaign against Western citizens so that they “tremble under blankets in their cozy homes” and unleash a tsunami of fake news “to turn their life into a never-ending nightmare, in which they cannot distinguish reality from the wildest fiction.” Moscow should “obliterate their energy infrastructure, industry, transport, banking and social services. Instil fear over an imminent collapse of all critical infrastructure,” according to Medvedev, who currently serves as deputy chair of the Russian Security Council.

The latest round of American restrictions against Russian entities targets energy, metals and mining as well as the financial sector. Among other things, it has forced the Moscow Stock Exchange to suspend all trade in the US dollar and the euro. The package is one of the biggest since the Ukraine conflict escalated into open hostilities in February 2022, impacting over $100 million in trade between Russia and its foreign partners, according to estimate from the US Department of the Treasury. Medvedev claimed that a campaign of “maximum damage” as outlined in his post was preferable to simply ignoring the Western pressure, and urged Russian citizens to act accordingly.

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“We should try every day to do as much damage as possible to those countries that have imposed these restrictions..“

• Medvedev Urges To Turn Life In West Into ‘Permanent Nightmare’ (TASS)

Russia should get biblical with its response to Western sanctions by turning life in the West into a “permanent nightmare” and inflicting maximum damage on unfriendly countries, Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said. “We should try every day to do as much damage as possible to those countries that have imposed these restrictions on our country and all our citizens. Hit them where it hurts,” the official wrote on his Telegram channel. “Do damage everywhere, paralyze the operation of their companies and government agencies. Find vulnerabilities in their critical technologies and attack them mercilessly. Literally destroy their energy, industry, transportation, banking and social services,” he said. “Let’s turn their lives into an ongoing permanent nightmare,” Medvedev concluded, referencing the Old Testament principle of “an eye for an eye.”

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Says who?

• Use of F-16s On Russian Territory ‘Not Escalation’ – NATO Chief (RT)

Ukrainian strikes anywhere inside Russia using Western-donated F-16 aircraft would not be an escalation of the conflict and would not make NATO member states parties to it, according to the military bloc’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. He was asked on Thursday whether restrictions should be imposed on how Kiev can use the US-designed fighter jets. Several European nations intend to provide dozens of the warplanes once Ukraine has pilots and ground infrastructure to fly them. Speaking ahead of a NATO defense ministers’ gathering in Brussels, Stoltenberg said “different allies have different types of restrictions on the use of their weapons,” and welcomed the recent relaxation of these rules by some member states.

Washington reportedly gave Kiev the green light to fire American weapons at targets outside of what the two nations consider Ukrainian territory, allowing strikes inside Russia’s Belgorod Region as part of the fight for the neighboring Kharkov Region. Some other Western nations have also said their weapons can be used in similar ways. Ukraine has the right to defend itself, and this includes “striking legitimate military targets” on the territory of Russia, Stoltenberg declared. “Self-defense is not escalation,” he added. “And we have the right to help Ukraine,” he continued. “By doing that, NATO allies don’t become party to the conflict.” Moscow perceives the entire conflict as part of a US-initiated proxy war against Russia. It considers NATO’s increasing military presence in Ukraine and its intention to eventually bring the nation into the fold as major national security risks.

NATO member states arming Ukraine, providing “mercenaries” to bolster its troops, and helping Kiev to plan and deliver attacks against Russia are de facto participants in the hostilities, senior Russian officials have claimed. Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that any attacks using Western weapons deep inside Russia will be retaliated against. Moscow could supply long-range weapons from its own arsenal to third parties, who would then use them against Western military assets, he suggested. Such tit-for-tat escalation could lead to a major disaster for all parties involved, Putin has warned.Andrey Kartapolov, the chairman of the Russian State Duma Defense Committee, said last week that Moscow would consider any bases used by Kiev to fly donated F-16s as legitimate military targets regardless of what country they are located in.

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“..given the pledge is an “executive agreement” and not a formal treaty, it can be undone by future American administrations..”

• Biden, Zelensky To Sign 10-Year ‘Arm & Train’ Defense Deal at G7 (ZH)

As they meet on the sidelines of the Group of Seven summit in Italy, President Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky are planning to sign a deal for long-term US military assistance for Ukraine. The deal commits Washington to ten years of arming and training the Ukrainian military, and which bolsters the military-industrial complex toward producing more of its own needs for the nation’s armed forces. However, given the pledge is an “executive agreement” and not a formal treaty, it can be undone by future American administrations. CNN previewed of the expected soon to be announced deal, “The US-Ukraine agreement does not make a specific monetary pledge to support Ukraine’s defense, two of the sources familiar with the agreement said.”

“An annex in the agreement will lay out how the Biden administration plans to work with Congress on the implementation of the security commitments, one of the sources said, specifically the long-term funding that will be needed to support Ukraine’s defense,” the report added. White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby had further previewed Tuesday that the US “will continue to be right up front and clear” at the G7, and that Washington “will take bold steps to show Mr. Putin that time is not on his side and that he cannot outlast us, as we support Ukraine fight for freedom.”

While the big decade-long security pact will provide “consultations” for Kiev in the event of another future Russian attack on Ukraine, there’s nothing in it that legally binds the United States to direct intervention in its behalf in the future. Despite the continued talk out of Brussels of future Ukrainian membership in NATO, European powers continue to line up their own separate defense pacts with Ukraine. NATO still wants to “Trump-proof” its future commitments to Ukraine… “The pledge the US and Ukraine are expected to sign will be similar to the 14 other bilateral agreements Ukraine has already reached with other allies, including the UK, France and Germany,” CNN writes. “The US-Ukraine agreement will be the 15th such deal signed, one of the sources said, and 17 other countries have committed to negotiating similar bilateral security pacts with Ukraine,” the report underscores.

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“..arms supplies to Kiev will become obligatory for all NATO member states and will be coordinated by US Army Gen. Christopher Cavoli..”

• Biden Needs More Bloodshed In Europe To Stay In Power – Zakharova (TASS)

The administration of US President Joe Biden needs “to make Europe bleed even harder” to remain in power, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s official spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, wrote on her Telegram channel.”Do European Union countries realize that Washington is embroiling them into a direct confrontation with Russia under the NATO flag?” she wrote, commenting on NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s plans to make arms supplies to Kiev obligatory for all NATO members. “The West is hysterically feeding its public with claims of Russia’s alleged imminent aggression against Western countries, and it means only one thing – the Biden administration needs to make Europe bleed even harder to prevent the collapse of its own government and of the US economy.” Earlier, Stoltenberg said that arms supplies to Kiev will become obligatory for all NATO member states and will be coordinated by US Army Gen. Christopher Cavoli, commander of US European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe.

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“..once a Russian entity falls under US sanctions it is seen as radioactive elsewhere and other institutions steer clear..”

• Do The New US Sanctions Mark Russia’s Final Divorce From The Dollar? (Johston)

The endless parade of Western sanctions on Russia barely makes the news anymore. But this week the US Treasury did manage to conjure up something that has generated attention. In what may be the most ambitious package since the initial wave back in February 2022, the American authorities greatly increased the scope for applying secondary penalties on foreign financial institutions found working with restricted Russian entities, and placed the Moscow Exchange and its clearing house under blocking sanctions, among other measures. The exchange subsequently announced that it was suspending all settlements in dollars and euros. It’s the latter that is the most interesting and has elicited the most chatter. But, before pursuing this train of thought, let’s dig into the nitty-gritty a little bit and sort out what is actually going to happen to currency trading in Russia.

To trade currencies on the Moscow Exchange, banks and other players send ‘buy’ and ‘sell’ bids to the exchange throughout the day. These buyers and sellers do not trade with each other directly but rather though the exchange’s clearing house, the National Settlement Center (NSC). In the evening, these trades would be settled by the clearing center, which had correspondent accounts in foreign banks for each currency. In other words, currency trading on the exchange involved the participation of foreign banks. It was not an enclosed system such as trading in Russian stocks (where the shares of Russian companies are bought and sold in rubles by investors without the involvement of any foreign entity). It is exactly this ability to clear currency trades that has been taken away by the new sanctions. American correspondent banks will now be barred from carrying out settlements with the NSC. From a technical standpoint, it is actually the sanctions against the NSC – rather than the exchange itself – that are most sensitive.

The Russian central bank has stated that currency trading will henceforth take place over-the-counter (OTC), meaning in decentralized fashion. But what is important to understand is that this is hardly a radical move – currency markets across the globe are conducted OTC, so this will in a sense merely bring Russia in line with standard practice. Russia was unusual in that currency trading primarily took place on a centralized exchange, whereas generally currencies are traded through a decentralized network of banks, a system much more flexible than relying on an exchange. The New York Stock Exchange, for example, does not host currency trading. Moving to OTC doesn’t mean that currency trading in Russia is going to resemble every other currency market. But it does provide a bit of a context to understand that this shift itself isn’t particularly radical. In fact, Russia is already essentially halfway there. According to the latest report from the Bank of Russia, 58% of currency trading in the country takes place off-exchange.

The central bank will use as its official rate some sort of average based on information obtained each day from banks. The new arrangement will almost certainly be a bit messy, especially at first: spreads will be wider, liquidity lower, transparency reduced, and price discovery in general harder. Transactional costs will be higher, a sensitive point for importers, for example. The market will be more prone to manipulation, and some analysts have posited that different exchange rates could emerge: an official central bank rate, the rates offered by various banks and a black-market, ‘street’ rate. However, on Thursday the Bank of Russia provided assurances that the exchange rate would remain market-driven and unified.

What exactly will happen to the ruble exchange rate remains to be seen, but there are strong grounds to believe that it will not move significantly from current levels. After all, the fundamental supply-demand structure of the market will not change in any dramatic way. The ruble’s exchange rate is determined by supply and demand from foreign trade and not on which platform trading takes place. Early indications are the market will largely shrug off the closure of dollar and euro exchange trading. There is another important angle to consider here. Formally, only American correspondent banks have been barred from working with the NSC. But experience has shown that once a Russian entity falls under US sanctions it is seen as radioactive elsewhere and other institutions steer clear. The increasingly bellicose rhetoric about secondary sanctions emanating from Washington will surely only exacerbate this tendency.

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“[Dedollarization] means the demise of American power, because American power is based on the ability to pay bills by printing money..”

• Will Average Citizens Pay the Price for G7’s Theft of Russian Funds? (Miles)

News of the development emerged Thursday, although the group of Western economies has yet to formally approve the action. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni confirmed the reports, drawing a distinction between the expropriation of earned interest and the outright seizure of Russian savings held in European banks. “We are certainly not talking about confiscating these assets,” Meloni claimed at the G7 meeting in Fasano. But the move is nonetheless highly controversial in the precedent it sets, claims analyst Dr. George Szamuely, and may be seen as a prelude to the wholesale theft of the funds. The analyst at the London-based Global Policy Institute joined Sputnik’s The Final Countdown program on Thursday to discuss how the development will harm financially strained Western citizens. “It doesn’t in any way conform to international law,” said Szamuely of the G7’s plan, “and let’s keep in mind this has never been done before.”

“It is customary to freeze accounts of your adversaries during wartime,” the author continued. “It is not customary to then help yourself to that money and put it to whatever uses you want and, in this case, the uses it’s being put to are for Ukraine to buy weapons in order to kill Russians. So Russian money is being used to kill Russians. That is just so beyond outrageous.” The majority of frozen Russian assets at play are held in European banks, noted Szamuely. Leaders across the continent have urged restraint as plans involving Russian funds have been discussed in recent months, fearing repercussions and reputational damage to European financial institutions. Yet, in a striking demonstration of the United States’ power over its NATO allies, Washington eventually prevailed and forced through the plan. The move carries significant risks in its weaponization of the Western financial system, with observers claiming the confiscation will likely convince global financial interests to further decouple out of fear of the safety of their own assets.

“China has a lot of American assets and European assets, and assets around the world,” noted host Angie Wong. “That could be seized at any moment. And the same treatment could be made of them if they don’t play the way the G7 wants them to play.” “Isn’t this going to backfire on the US and some of the G7 leaders?” Wong asked. “Because ultimately that just means you’re not going to get the foreign investments from Russia or China, maybe Saudi Arabia, whoever their next target is going to be.” “I would’ve thought so and I would’ve thought that it would elevate pressure on China, Russia, India, and other countries to set up their own alternative financial systems,” said Szamuely, referring to efforts that are already under way within the BRICS economic bloc.

But the consequences of the loss of dollar hegemony could prove even more disastrous. Observers point out that the trend is already well underway with Russia, China, India and other countries increasingly inking deals to pursue trade denominated in their own currencies. The BRICS bloc has also investigated the possibility of creating its own currency. The dollar’s role as the de facto global reserve currency is so crucial that it has helped drive US foreign policy, with analysts claiming Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s plans to create a gold-backed African currency provided impetus for his Western-backed overthrow.

“[Dedollarization] means the demise of American power, because American power is based on the ability to pay bills by printing money,” noted US economist Paul Craig Roberts. “That would mean a massive US inflation. It’d be a kind of inflation that results from currency collapse. There’s nothing monetary authorities can do about that. Those kinds of inflations are the real inflations, the real deadly ones.”

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“..Ursula von der Leyen represents the old guard and everything which is wrong with the EU: deluded, outdated views run by elitists who believe the only solution to the EU’s power problem is to take more..”

• EU Now at a Crossroads: Reform or Self-Destruction (Jay)

Ursula von der Leyen represents the old guard and everything which is wrong with the EU: deluded, outdated views run by elitists who believe the only solution to the EU’s power problem is to take more

The EU has just experienced a monumental change, following years of failed immigration policies, which has ushered in a massive number of far-right MEPs in the more powerful EU member states. It’s too early to say whether this will make too much of a change to policy decisions at the highest echelons of the European Union but certainly the European Parliament itself is, possibly for the first time ever, going to be an interesting place with now a quarter of all of the 720 MEPs coming from far-right groups. Traditionally most people who voted in EU elections were stalwart supporters of the project and the ethos of one Europe united by a policy of free movement of goods, services and people and, for many, a single currency. The few who voted against the mainstream parties – the main bloc made up of Christian democrats and socialists – were those who wanted to use their vote as a throw-away gesture to send a signal to their own elites that they want change. That protest vote in the past was always very small as the EU elite in Brussels always benefited from a voting system which was tilted in their favour. But no more.

The European Parliament, which most sceptics considered to be a fake assembly whose only real role is to rubber stamp draft legislation from either the powerful European Commission or member states (via the European Council), could now become suddenly relevant to the whole project. For the last five years, there has only been two Irish MEPs to take the floor and tackle the European Commission head on, on its genocide in Gaza or its phoney war in Ukraine. But now something like 180 MEPs will use their two minutes speaking time to tackle the commission on its failed foreign policy, immigration and trade deals with China, for example. The Ukraine war could be a central theme which will probably be a thorn in the side of the European Commission and its chief – whoever that might be as, despite supporting statements from the Christian Democratic group in the European parliament, it is not a certainty that Ursula von der Leyen will return as Commission chief.

If she succeeds and stays on as EU Commission president, she will have a tough time in parliamentary plenary sessions as Europe’s biggest countries – who pay the most into the EU budget – have picked up the most far-right seats. Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National scored the most decisive victory, winning 30 of the country’s 81 seats, and more than double the votes of President Emmanuel Macron’s Renew party. That political slaughter pushed Macron to call a snap election. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy won 24 seats and increased her share of the national vote, and the Alternative for Germany (AfD) came second in Germany and snapped up 15 seats. Presently the AfD doesn’t have a pan-European group to align itself to and, under EU rules, benefit from huge amounts of cash from the EU parliament as it was kicked out of one of the two ‘groups’, prompting fears that it will create one itself and invite others to join it.

In the European parliament both France’s and Italy’s far-right MEPs are in different groups, but in reality, when it comes to voting, for sure there will be a unified policy on most issues which will give them leverage with the European Commission that we have never seen in the short history of the EU. It’s important to note that far-right parties topped the polls in Austria and Hungary, too, with important gains in Spain and Cyprus. All of these countries have one thing in common: real immigration problems which neither the mainstream political groups nor the EU has addressed. But the real issue is the identity and survival of the European Union itself as this shake-up is certainly going to threaten the traditional power structure.. Unlike President Macron who wisely stated to the press that the far-right votes were a message which he is listening to, von der Leyen’s statements were more about fighting the new threat.

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“You won’t see Macron’s face on my campaign posters, I can tell you that..”

• Macron’s Coalition Sees Him as Liability Ahead of Feared Snap Election (Sp.)

French President Emmanuel Macron’s coalition fears that he could drag it down in the polls ahead of the snap legislative election that is itself seen as a disaster in the making, Politico reported on Wednesday, citing lawmakers and party staffers. Macron’s five-party Besoin d’Europe coalition was dealt a staggering blow in the European Parliament elections last week where it won 14.6% of the vote, against the far-right National Rally’s 31.37%. Macron called a snap parliamentary vote in the hope of wresting the initiative back from the right, but his party and coalition members now fear they will be the ones to pay for this mistake. “We are being thrown under the bus for a mistake that belongs to him,” an adviser in Macron’s own Renaissance party told the Politico online newspaper on condition of anonymity. “The more he talks, the more we lose points,” another adviser to a member of the French parliament from Macron’s party said.

Heavyweights in Macron’s coalition have been reportedly urging the president to take a step away from the campaign trail to give them a fighting chance of winning. Francois Bayrou, Macron’s key ally and leader of the Renaissance-allied Modem party, came to the presidential palace on Monday to tell Macron that he “mustn’t get too involved in the campaign,” the news site quoted a centrist lawmaker as saying. Other coalition lawmakers have been reportedly distancing themselves from Macron as they gear up for the first round of the legislative polls, due June 30 “You won’t see Macron’s face on my campaign posters, I can tell you that,” a member of parliament from the president’s coalition told Politico. An official with Macron’s Renaissance parliamentary group accused the 46-year-old of being oblivious to France’s “anti-president” mood.

The news outlet said that polls show that Macron is being perceived as aloof and out of touch. An Elysee staffer was quoted as saying that Macron was so “intoxicated by his own presence” during D-Day celebrations last week that the results of the European elections “hit him hard.” Despite calls from his friends and allies, Macron plans to get heavily involved in the campaign, which his coalition partners reportedly see as a huge risk. He is said to be planning to saturate the media with three appearances per week, starting with a major speech on Wednesday.

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Google translate from Dutch.

• Fine, Penalty For Hungary: 1 Million A Day For Detaining Asylum Seekers (RTL)

Hungary must pay a high fine and a penalty because the EU country continues to lock up asylum seekers, in violation of European rules. The country is ‘deliberately’ evading the right to asylum and that is an ‘unprecedented and extremely serious violation’ of European legislation, the European Court of Justice ruled. The court ruled three and a half years ago that Hungary, which has been pursuing a very strict migration policy for years, is not adhering to the rules. For example, the country does not give rejected asylum seekers the time to await an appeal against their rejection in Hungary. The government of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has not adjusted that policy, the highest European court confirmed after a complaint from the European Commission.

Hungary must therefore pay a fine of 200 million euros. For every day that the government in Budapest continues with the contested policy, it must pay an additional penalty of 1 million. Such a high penalty is rarely imposed by the European Court of Justice. Poland was punished with a penalty of half a million euros three years ago. When that country refused to pay, the European Commission withheld the amount from EU subsidies for Poland.

Hungary is shifting its responsibility to the other EU member states, the court in Luxembourg ruled. “Including its financial responsibility.” The country is ‘seriously undermining the principle of solidarity and fair sharing of responsibility.’ Hungary has improved its life on one point after the 2020 verdict. The detention camps on the border with Serbia where the country locked up asylum seekers have been dismantled. Orbán finds the fine and penalty payment ‘scandalous and unacceptable’. Hungary is only defending the borders of the European Union, he says on X. “It seems that illegal migrants are more important to Brussels bureaucrats than their own European citizens.”

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Sacrificing Hunter to claim the system works for Trump, too?!

• Joe Biden Vows Not To Pardon Hunter (RT)

US President Joe Biden has promised not to pardon his troubled son Hunter Biden, who was recently found guilty of violating federal gun laws. A Delaware jury announced their verdict on Tuesday, several months before the 2024 presidential election where Joe Biden will face former President Donald Trump. “I am satisfied that I’m not going to do anything – I said I’d abide by the jury’s decision. I will do that. And I will not pardon him,” Biden said at a news conference during a G7 meeting in southern Italy. Asked by reporters whether he would commute his son’s sentence, he replied, “No.” The president reaffirmed his support for his son. “I’m extremely proud of my son Hunter. He has overcome an addiction. He is one of the brightest, the most decent men I know,” he said.

According to the prosecution, Hunter Biden violated gun laws by failing to disclose his addiction to crack cocaine when he bought a revolver in 2018. Hunter Biden has admitted to struggling with alcohol and drug addiction. His defense team, however, argued that he did not consider himself an addict at the time of purchasing the weapon. Hunter Biden could face up to 25 years in prison and a fine of up to $750,000, according to CNN. The sentencing date has not been set yet. Last year, the prosecution attempted to reach a plea deal with the younger Biden. The potential deal fell apart, however, after it was criticized by the judge. Republicans and conservative figures have accused Hunter Biden of corruption and influence peddling on his father’s behalf. The Bidens have denied any wrongdoing.

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“We must treat the Hunter Biden leaks as if they were a foreign intelligence operation — even if they probably aren’t.”

• WaPo Makes Last Plea to Keep Laptop “Conspiracy Theory” Alive (Turley)

Across the media, journalists have recognized that the Hunter Biden laptop is authentic and, as established early by American intelligence agencies, not “Russian disinformation.” With the authentication of the laptop in the Delaware trial as “real” and untampered, most media has chosen to walk away with a slightly embarrassed shrug. Not the Washington Post. Its columnist, Philip Bump, was one of the most prominent purveyors of what the U.S. government now calls a “conspiracy theory.” This week, Bump ran another column to assure liberals that they were right all along about the laptop story.In 2021, when media organizations were finally admitting that the laptop was authentic, Bump was still declaring that it was a “conspiracy theory.” Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Bump continued to suggest that “the laptop was seeded by Russian intelligence.”

After Bump had a meltdown in an interview when confronted over past false claims, I wrote a column about the litany of such false claims, including the laptop conspiracy theory. The Post surprised many of us by issuing a statement that they stood by all of Bump’s reporting, including the laptop conspiracy theory. That was in August 2023. Well, Bump is back. In his column, Bump takes after various people calling the media to account for burying this story before and after the election, including myself. In hitting Sean Hannity for a recent segment, Bump makes a common evasion among laptop deniers: “One is that he is conflating the laptop presented as evidence at the trial, the one obtained by the FBI in 2019, with the ‘laptop’ that was the source of the New York Post story.” For those of us who have covered the laptop since the story ran at the New York Post, it is as maddening as it is mendacious.

At the time of the story, some of us noted that the contents of the laptop could be confirmed since these emails and messages involved third parties. Some quickly confirmed the contents as authentic. The Bidens had long been accused of influence peddling and special dealing off of Joe Biden’s positions as senator, vice president, and president. Moreover, as the media was referencing the debunked letter of former intelligence officials on this possible likely Russian disinformation, American intelligence quickly confirmed that there was no such evidence to support that claim.The media ignored the actual intelligence agencies in favor of former intelligence officials who were organized by Biden campaign operatives to release the letter. Biden then cited the letter to refuse to answer questions about his son’s influence peddling and unlawful conduct.

Bump and others used the question over whether the laptop was an authentic copy or a tampered copy to avoid any serious investigation into the underlying emails. Many simply threw up their hands and said “oh well, what can we do.” To this day, the media has shown little interest in the influence peddling operation. Few people seriously argue that the media would have shown the same limited response if these emails tied Trump children to millions in foreign influence peddling schemes. But Bump was not done: “After Hannity lamented the media’s silence on the so-called “critical development,” Turley offered a theory for why that silence had ensued.‘If the laptop is authentic, if those files are real,’ he said, “then you have these detailed accounts of a multimillion-dollar influence-peddling operation run by the Biden family. Those would also be authentic. But the media just simply doesn’t want to go there.’ Except that we already know that many of those files were real, because we got access to them and verified them.

The reason the media ‘doesn’t want to go there’ on breathless claims about a ‘Biden family’ influence-peddling operation is that the material doesn’t prove any such operation. It shows — as has by now been exhaustively explained — work done by Hunter Biden and his Uncle James that involved lots of money but did not demonstrably involve President Biden. The entire point of the House Republican impeachment effort has been to prove Joe Biden’s involvement; they have been unable to do so.” Once again, Bump makes it sound like the Post vigorously and quickly verified the laptop. The belated acknowledgement did not come much later. It was not until March 2022 that the Post finally admitted that the laptop was real, but then did comparably little to pursue the corruption and other unlawful conduct detailed on the laptop.Washington Post columnist Thomas Rid probably was the most honest when he wrote the quiet part out loud by telling the media: “We must treat the Hunter Biden leaks as if they were a foreign intelligence operation — even if they probably aren’t.”

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“..a supposed “ecosystem” of citizens and organizations in the US, whose narratives “echo key messages of Russian propaganda..”

• Musk Wants Ukrainian NGO Designated As Terrorist Group (RT)

A Ukrainian NGO has compiled a database of influential American citizens, who it claims hold positions that ‘mirror’ those of Moscow. One of the blacklisted individuals is billionaire Elon Musk, who has called for the organization to be designated as a terrorist group. The NGO, Texty.org.ua, produced a lengthy report last week, which detailed a supposed “ecosystem” of citizens and organizations in the US, whose narratives “echo key messages of Russian propaganda” regarding the Ukraine conflict. On Wednesday, Republican members of the House Appropriations Committee added a provision to the markup of the State Department’s 2025 budget that bans Texty from receiving US funding. “It’s a good first step. They should be added to the list of sanctioned terrorist organizations,” Musk said on X (formerly Twitter) in reaction to the news.

The prohibition was championed by Representative Jim Banks, who was also targeted by the Ukrainian NGO. He told fellow Republicans that “federal bureaucrats should not support or partner with foreign groups that attempt to intimidate and silence US citizens and lawmakers.” His message alluded to a link between the department and Anatoly Bondarenko, a co-founder of Texty. He is also an instructor for the ‘TechCamp’ program, which provides training to foreign journalists, NGOs, and activists, according to the Conservative Thinker. The group has said its report was a piece of “data journalism,” and described itself as the victim of “an attack on freedom of speech and a display of chauvinism against the citizens of Ukraine. “Our critics believe that we do not have the right to investigate the streams of false information they produce about our country and us, simply because they are US citizens and we are not,” it claimed.

The original report described people on its list as “forces in the US impeding aid to Ukraine,” ranging “from Trumpists to Communists.” Highlighted in the report was the renowned anti-war group CODEPINK, organizations funded by billionaire Charles Koch, popular conservative speaker Jordan Peterson, and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Texty targeted Musk for supposedly allowing “Russian propaganda” on X, which he owns, and sharing with his followers a “highly skeptical view of the United States’ financial support for Ukraine.” Meanwhile, businessman Peter Thiel was accused of investing in Rumble, a free speech video sharing website. Unlike major platforms operated by US tech giants, it allows RT content. The report acknowledged that both entrepreneurs had contributed to Kiev’s war effort against Russia via Musk’s Starlink satellite internet system and Thiel’s Palantir big-data analysis platform, but placed them on its blacklist nevertheless.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Bhakdi

 

 

Hancock

 

 

Duckcat
https://twitter.com/i/status/1801293466665947209

 

 

Ice puppy

 

 

Dog touch

 

 

Tooth
https://twitter.com/i/status/1801305532407353827

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle May 7 2024

May 072024
 
 May 7, 2024  Posted by at 9:11 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  47 Responses »


Paul Klee In the Houses of Saint Germain 1914

 

• Russia Issues Military Ultimatum To UK (RT)
• The ‘Escalation Ladder’: French, British Threats Provoke Russian Warning (Sp.)
• Russia To Hold Nuclear Drills To ‘Cool Hot Heads’ In West – FM (RT)
• Western Leaders Are ‘Infantile Morons’ – Medvedev (RT)
• Israeli Tanks Enter Rafah (RT)
• The Beast Of Ideology Lifts The Lid On Transformation (Alastair Crooke)
• Russian Intelligence Claims US Wants To Replace Zelensky (RT)
• China Causing De-industrialization in EU – von der Leyen (RT)
• A Disbarred, Serial Perjurer Walks into a Court, Asks to Take an Oath (Turley)
• Witness Says Trump Did Not Ask Him to Carry Out ‘Hush Money’ Payments (ET)
• Trump Says Jack Smith Should Be ‘Arrested’ After Documents Revelation (ET)
• Trump Found In Contempt Again, Judge Threatens “Jail Sanction” Next (ZH)
• Prisoners of Themselves (Kunstler)

 

 

Merchan

 

 

Jan 6
https://twitter.com/i/status/1787540670883725753

 

 

Kash
https://twitter.com/i/status/1787550215592989176

 

 

Easter as a time of peace?

• Russia Issues Military Ultimatum To UK (RT)

Moscow will retaliate against British targets in Ukraine or elsewhere if Kiev uses UK-provided missiles to strike Russian territory, the Foreign Ministry told London’s ambassador on Monday. Ambassador Nigel Casey was summoned to the ministry following remarks by British Foreign Secretary David Cameron to Reuters that Ukraine has the right to use long-range missiles sent by the UK to strike deep inside Russia. ”Casey was warned that the response to Ukrainian strikes using British weapons on Russian territory could be any British military facilities and equipment on the territory of Ukraine and beyond,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement following the meeting.

The US and its allies had previously qualified their deliveries of long-range weapons to Kiev by saying they could only be used on territories that Ukraine claims as its own – Crimea, the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, and Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions. According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, Cameron’s statements to the contrary “de facto recognized his country as a party to the conflict.” Russia understands Cameron’s comments as “evidence of a serious escalation and confirmation of London’s increasing involvement in military operations on the side of Kiev,” the ministry added. Casey was urged to “think about the inevitable catastrophic consequences of such hostile steps from London and to immediately refute in the most decisive and unequivocal manner the bellicose provocative statements of the head of the Foreign Office.”

Earlier in the day, the Russian Defense Ministry announced an exercise to test the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons. President Vladimir Putin ordered the drills after “provocative statements and threats” by Western officials, the military said. Moscow hopes the drills will “cool down the ‘hot heads’ in Western capitals and help them understand the possible catastrophic consequences of the strategic risks they generate,” as well as “keep them from both assisting the Kiev regime in its terrorist actions and being drawn into a direct armed confrontation with Russia,” the Foreign Ministry said in a follow-up statement. French Ambassador Pierre Levy was also summoned to the Foreign Ministry. Moscow has not yet disclosed the details of the meeting.

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“The Russians are speaking pretty tough – tougher than ever before..”

• The ‘Escalation Ladder’: French, British Threats Provoke Russian Warning (Sp.)

While defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war,” said former US President John F. Kennedy during an address at American University in 1963. The remark, coming a few months after the previous year’s Cuban Missile Crisis, demonstrated Kennedy’s newfound sense of restraint in navigating Cold War tensions. The confrontation with the Soviet Union brought the world to the brink of nuclear war with both Washington and Moscow poised to save face by unleashing the deadliest weapons ever conceived by mankind. A repeat of the scenario must be avoided, Kennedy reasoned, with each world power tacitly accepting the other’s existence. Half a century later the slain leader’s realization has been forgotten, claimed former CIA analyst Ray McGovern on Sputnik’s The Critical hour program Monday.

The founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity joined hosts Garland Nixon and Wilmer Leon to discuss the latest developments in NATO countries’ proxy war against Russia in the Donbass. “Things are getting pretty intense and the Russians are pretty much saying, ‘okay, that’s enough,’” said McGovern, responding to the latest statement from Russian government officials. British Foreign Secretary David Cameron was quoted by media saying Ukraine could use UK-supplied weapons to strike within Russian territory during a visit to Kiev last week. The comment provoked a strong response from Moscow suggesting Russia could target British military assets in Ukraine or elsewhere in response to such an attack on its territory.

“We have those reports that [French President Emmanuel] Macron is crazy enough to want to send French troops into battle there in Ukraine, and… the Russians actually have claimed to have killed seven of them this morning,” McGovern added. “Friends vacationing in Cyprus or other military facilities run by the British, I would tell them to go and sun themselves on some other beach,” he said. “The Russians are speaking pretty tough – tougher than ever before. If one of these British long-range missiles does significant damage in Russia proper there will be retaliation. It will be tit-for-tat, and the Russians will be perspicacious, but they’ll be offensive. These will not be defensive measures.” McGovern claimed Russia’s response could even be nuclear in nature, noting, “the Russians are waving the nuclear possibility as never before. I can say ‘never’ because I’ve been around a while – would you believe six decades of watching Soviet and then Russian leaders? They don’t brandish nuclear weapons. Now they are.”

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Russia won’t back down.

• Russia To Hold Nuclear Drills To ‘Cool Hot Heads’ In West – FM (RT)

Russia’s upcoming exercises to test its tactical nuclear weapons should be viewed in light of the “belligerent statements” made by some Western officials and NATO’s “destabilizing actions,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Monday. Earlier in the day, Moscow announced plans to test its military’s ability to deploy tactical nuclear weapons. The exercises, which were ordered by President Vladimir Putin, will be held in the near future, the Russian Defense Ministry said. According to the Foreign Ministry, the move was a response to the continued “power politics” pursued by the US and its allies against Russia. Washington and Kiev’s other backers openly declare their support for Ukrainian “terrorist acts” and “directly contribute” to such attacks, the statement read, pointing to the continued supply of ever more powerful Western weapons to Ukraine. It particularly drew attention to the US-made ATACMS missiles capable of “striking targets deep inside Russian territory.”

Last week, former UK prime minister and current Foreign Secretary David Cameron stated that Kiev had every right to use British weapons to strike targets inside Russia as well. The US has also created new threats to Russia’s national security through deployment of its intermediate-range ground-based missile systems around the world, the ministry said. Such weapons were banned under the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), but Washington unilaterally withdrew from the agreement in 2019. The move left Russia with no choice but to leave the treaty as well. However, Moscow introduced a moratorium on fielding weapons that used to be covered by the treaty. Russia now reserves the right to a “mirror response” to American actions, the ministry said, adding that the moratorium could be lifted.

Moscow also slammed statements by French President Emmanuel Macron about a potential NATO troop deployment to Ukraine. “This cannot be perceived in any other way than a demonstration of the readiness and willingness to enter a direct military confrontation with Russia,” the ministry warned. Last week, Macron said that Western nations would have to consider such an option if Kiev officially requested it. “Such actions of the NATO member states show that they deliberately strive for further escalation of the Ukraine crisis towards a direct military clash between NATO and Russia,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

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Putin’s alter ego.

• Western Leaders Are ‘Infantile Morons’ – Medvedev (RT)

The US, the UK, France and other Western nations should take a Russian nuclear drill as a reminder of where escalation of the Ukraine conflict could take them, former President Dmitry Medvedev has said. On Monday, the Russian Defense Ministry announced an imminent exercise to test the capability to deploy non-strategic nuclear weapons. It said the training was ordered by President Vladimir Putin after “provocative statements and threats” by Western officials. Medvedev, who serves as deputy head of the Russian security council, referred to debates in the West about possible deployment of NATO troops to Ukraine, as well as “active encouragement [of Kiev] to use [Western] missile weapons against the entire Russian territory” as grounds for the drill. Russia “will have to respond” to the proposed deployment of Western soldiers, “and this response will not be” in Ukraine, the Russian official warned.

In that case “there will be no hiding on Capitol Hill, in the Elysee Palace or at 10 Downing Street. The situation is comparable to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, according to Medvedev. He said current Western elites were “infantile morons” who refuse to see the risk, unlike US President John F. Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khurshchev, who managed to walk back the escalation six decades ago. French President Emmanuel Macron has been advocating “strategic ambiguity” regarding Ukraine, maintaining that he could not exclude deployment of troops to the country under certain conditions. Multiple Western leaders said they had no intention to send their soldiers to fight Russia on Ukraine’s behalf, after he voiced his idea in February. Macron’s rhetoric may be explained by his ambition to make France the leader among EU members, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has suggested.

UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron told Reuters last week that Kiev “has the right” to use British-provided missiles to strike targets deep inside Russia. For years, major Western arms donors were reportedly conditioning their aid on Kiev’s pledge not to use the weapons outside of the territory that it claims. US Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink said American policy remained unchanged following Cameron’s remark. On Sunday, Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries claimed that “there’s a significant likelihood that America will have to get into the conflict – not simply with our money, but with our servicewomen and our servicemen” in the event of Ukrainian defeat. A victorious Russia would pose a threat to NATO, he reasoned during an interview with CBS News, repeating the case for continued aid made by the Biden administration for months. Moscow has said it has no intention of starting a direct conflict with the US-led military bloc.

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Footage is crucial.

• Israeli Tanks Enter Rafah (RT)

The Israeli army has entered the city of Rafah in southern Gaza, as West Jerusalem announced strikes against Hamas militants in the area. In a statement on Tuesday morning, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it was conducting “a precise counterterrorism operation in the eastern Rafah area” in a bid “to eliminate Hamas terrorists.” A video released by the IDF shows at least four Israeli tanks on the Gazan side of the Rafah Crossing on the border with Egypt. Part of the clip was apparently filmed by a soldier sitting on top of one of the vehicles. The IDF also said its troops have “managed to establish operational control of the Gazan side of the crossing.” It added that ground troops and the air force had destroyed Hamas military structures in the area, claiming to have eliminated approximately 20 militants. According to an unnamed Palestinian security official and an Egyptian official cited by the Times of Israel, Israeli tanks reached as close as 200 meters from the Rafah Crossing terminal, which is directly on the Egyptian border.

The Egyptian official told the paper that “the operation appeared to be limited in scope.” The IDF said it had encouraged local residents to evacuate to the expanded humanitarian area in Al-Mawasi, located on the coast and further away from the Rafah Crossing. The Rafah operation comes after the IDF said mortar shells had been fired from the area at Israeli troops, killing four soldiers and injuring several others. It also follows the decision by Hamas to accept an Egyptian-Qatari ceasefire proposal, the details of which so far remain unclear. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, however, said that the deal “is far from meeting Israel’s core demands.” It added that the national war cabinet had unanimously decided to push ahead with an IDF operation in Rafah, “in order to apply military pressure on Hamas” and to make progress on freeing hostages captured by the Palestinian militant group since the start of hostilities on October 7.

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“..collapsing under the leaden weight of western hypocrisy..”

• The Beast Of Ideology Lifts The Lid On Transformation (Alastair Crooke)

The Transformation is accelerating. The harsh, often violent, police repression of student protests across the U.S. and Europe, in wake of the continuing Palestinian massacres, exposes sheer intolerance towards those voicing condemnation against the violence in Gaza. The category of ‘hate speech’ enacted into law has become so ubiquitous and fluid that criticism of the conduct of Israel’s behaviour in Gaza and the West Bank is now treated as a category of extremism and as a threat to the state. Confronted by criticism of Israel, the ruling élites respond by angrily lashing out. Is there a boundary (still) between criticism and anti-semitism? In the West the two increasingly are being made to cohere. Today’s stifling of any criticism of Israel’s conduct – in blatant contradiction with any western claim to a values-based order – reflects desperation and a touch of panic.

Those who still occupy the leadership slots of Institutional Power in the U.S. and Europe are compelled by the logic of those structures to pursue courses of action that are leading to ‘system’ breakdown, both domestically – and concomitantly – provoking the dramatic intensification of international tensions, too. Mistakes flow from the underlying ideological rigidities in which the ruling strata are trapped: The embrace of a transformed Biblical Israel that long ago separated from today’s U.S. Democratic Party zeitgeist; the inability to accept reality in Ukraine; and the notion that U.S. political coercion alone can revive paradigms in Israel and the Middle East that are long gone. The notion that a new Israeli Nakba of Palestinians can be forced down the throats of the western and the global public are both delusional and reek of centuries of old Orientalism.

What else can one say when Senator Tom Cotton posts: “These little Gazas are disgusting cesspools of antisemitic hate, full of pro-Hamas sympathisers; fanatics and freaks”? When order unravels, it unravels quickly and comprehensively. Suddenly, the GOP conference has had its nose rubbed in dirt (over its lack of support for Biden’s $61bn for Ukraine); the U.S. public’s despair at open border immigration is disdainfully ignored; and Gen Z’s expressions of empathy with Gaza is declared an internal ‘enemy’ to be roughly suppressed. All points of strategic inflection and transformation – likely as not. And the rest of the world now is cast as an enemy too, being perceived as recalcitrants who fail to embrace the western recitation of its ‘Rules Order’ catechism and for failing clearly to toe the line on support for Israel and the proxy war on Russia. It is a naked bid for unchecked power; one nevertheless that is galvanising a global blow-back. It is pushing China closer to Russia and accelerating the BRICS confluence.

Plainly put, the world – faced with massacres in Gaza and West Bank – will not abide by either the Rules or any western hypocritical cherry-picking of International Law. Both systems are collapsing under the leaden weight of western hypocrisy. Nothing is more obvious than Secretary of State Blinken’s scolding of President Xi for China’s treatment of the Uighurs and his threats of sanctions for Chinas trade with Russia – powering ‘Russia’s assault on Ukraine’, Blinken asserts. Blinken has made an enemy of the one power that can evidently out-compete the U.S.; that has manufacturing and competitive overmatch vs the U.S. The point here is that these tensions can quickly spiral down into war of ‘Us’ versus ‘Them’ – ranged against not just the China, Russia, Iran “Axis of Evil”, but vs Turkey, India Brazil and all others who dare to criticise the moral correctness of either of the West’s Israel and Ukraine projects. That is, it has the potential to turn into the West versus the Rest. Again, another own goal.

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“..war financing schemes that yield “enormous profits” to both Kiev and Western arms manufacturers..”

• Russian Intelligence Claims US Wants To Replace Zelensky (RT)

The US has stepped up efforts to find a replacement for Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and has already talked with a number of politicians, including former President Pyotr Poroshenko and Kiev mayor Vitaly Klitschko, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) claimed on Monday. Zelensky is “clearly losing the battle for the hearts and minds” of Ukrainians, especially since his legitimacy as president will be “completely lost” after his term in office expires on May 20, the SVR wrote in a statement. Ukraine was supposed to hold a presidential election on March 31, but last December Zelensky canceled it along with all other elections, citing martial law and the conflict with Russia.

The US State Department and EU’s Diplomatic Service are “extremely” concerned by the growing discontent among Ukrainians over the “endless” protraction of the hostilities with Russia, according to the intelligence service. “Distrust in government institutions is growing and apathy is spreading rapidly,” the SVR said, adding that the number of desertions and voluntary surrenders in the Ukrainian armed forces is soaring. The US is now looking for alternatives to Zelensky, the SVR claimed, noting that Washington “is not even trying to hide the fact that essentially it doesn’t care” who will lead Ukraine. For the West, it’s crucial that the new president be capable of continuing the armed conflict, so that the “war till the last Ukrainian” does not stop, the agency said.

According to the SVR, Washington is in talks with Poroshenko and Klitschko. “Secret work” is also being carried out with the presidential head of office, Andrey Ermak, former top Ukrainian commander General Valery Zaluzhny, and the ex-speaker of the Ukrainian parliament, Dmitry Razumkov. However, the US and EU would like Zelensky to remain in his post for now as long as he is tied to war financing schemes that yield “enormous profits” to both Kiev and Western arms manufacturers, SVR added.

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Dumb.

• China Causing De-industrialization in EU – von der Leyen (RT)

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen intends to talk to visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping about policies that she claims pose a threat of de-industrialization in the bloc. The Chinese leader arrived in France on Sunday as part of a six-day, three-country trip to Europe, his first since 2019. The head of the EU executive branch said she would discuss “current imbalances” in Chinese trade during talks with Xi on Monday. ”China is currently manufacturing, with massive subsidies, more than it is selling due to its own weak domestic demand. This is leading to an oversupply of Chinese subsidized goods, such as EVs (electric vehicles) and steel, that is leading to unfair trade,” she claimed. ”Europe cannot accept such market-distorting practices that could lead to de-industrialization in Europe,” von der Leyen added.

In the last several weeks, the EU authorities have launched investigations into alleged unfair Chinese practices, including restrictions on the supply of European medical devices to the Asian nation’s market and subsidies for Chinese firms producing wind turbines, electric vehicles, and trains. Meanwhile, China has opened an anti-dumping probe into brandy imported from the EU, which particularly affects French exporters. The mutual investigations are perceived as a mounting tit-for-tat stand-off over protectionism. Von der Leyen has pushed for “de-risking” trade with China, but has not gone as far as to advocate decoupling from the economic powerhouse.

EU members have largely decoupled their economies from Russia in an attempt to penalize Moscow over the Ukraine conflict. The loss of access to cheap Russian natural gas has hit energy-intensive industries in Western Europe, forcing businesses to move manufacturing to other locations. The US was among their primary destinations, as the government offered subsidies to certain producers under the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. In an op-ed published in the French press ahead of his visit, Xi said Beijing was committed to reaching “new vistas” in its relationship with the country. He wrote: “France is advancing re-industrialization based on green innovation, whereas China is accelerating the development of new quality productive forces.” After France, the Chinese president is scheduled to visit EU member Hungary and Russia-friendly non-member Serbia.

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“..He has long marketed his curious skill of voluntarily saying whatever the highest bidder wants him to say..”

• A Disbarred, Serial Perjurer Walks into a Court, Asks to Take an Oath (Turley)

A disbarred, serial perjurer walks into a courtroom and asks to take an oath . . . No, seriously, this is not a joke. Michael Cohen will soon appear in a Manhattan courtroom in what is sure to be one of the most bizarre moments in legal history. Cohen nearly comprises the prosecution’s entire case against former President Donald Trump under a criminal theory that still has many of us baffled. It is not clear what crime Trump was supposedly trying to conceal by making “hush-money” payments to former porn actress Stormy Daniels. What is clear is that none of the witnesses called in recent weeks has had any direct involvement with Trump on the payments. The witnesses had a lot to say about Cohen, and most of it was not good. They described an unprofessional, self-proclaimed “fix-it man” who created a shell corporation to buy out Daniels with his own money. The money was later paid back by Trump after the election, with other legal expenses.

So Cohen will now make the pitch to the jury that they should put his former client in jail for following his own legal advice. This would be difficult even for a competent and ethical lawyer. For Cohen, it is utter insanity. But Bragg is betting on a New York jury looking no further than the identity of the defendant to convict. Cohen has an impressive history of lies and exaggerations that may be unparalleled. Just weeks ago, another judge denounced him as a serial perjurer who was still gaming the system. This is not the defendant, mind you, but Alvin Bragg’s star witness. I have been an outspoken critic of Cohen going back to when he was still representing Trump. His unethical acts were matched only by his unprofessional demeanor. In 2015, after students on the Harvard Lampoon played a harmless prank on Trump, Cohen was quoted by a student on the Lampoon staff as threatening them with expulsion.

When a journalist pursued a story Cohen did not like, he told the reporter that he should “tread very f—ing lightly because what I’m going to do to you is going to be f—ing disgusting. Do you understand me?” It is not hard to “understand” Cohen. He has long marketed his curious skill of voluntarily saying whatever the highest bidder wants him to say. He is a convicted perjurer who seems to lie even when the truth would do. Each time he is caught lying, he claims to be the sinner who has finally seen the light, seeking redemption. When he was called before the House to testify against Trump soon after his plea agreement with the Justice Department (for lying), Cohen was again accused of perjury. House Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), warned Cohen repeatedly that he had better tell the truth this time. Cohen then testified that Trump wanted him to work in his administration and offered him multiple jobs, which he turned down. He also claimed, “I have never asked for, nor would I accept, a pardon from President Trump.”

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It was all Michael Cohen.

• Witness Says Trump Did Not Ask Him to Carry Out ‘Hush Money’ Payments (ET)

A witness in President Donald Trump’s New York “hush money” trial on May 6 appeared to confirm his attorneys’ claims that payments at the center of the case were legal expenses and that he was not personally directed by the former president to make those payments. Former Trump Organization Controller Jeffrey McConney testified that payments sent to former attorney Michael Cohen were legal expenses, confirming defense attorneys’ arguments. “Michael Cohen was a lawyer?” Trump defense attorney Emil Bove asked Mr. McConney. Mr. McConney replied, “Sure, yes.” Mr. Bove asked, “And payments to lawyers by The Trump Organization are legal expenses, right?” Mr. McConney replied, “Yes.” Later, Mr. McConney said President Trump and Trump Organization official Allen Weisselberg never told him to log the payments to Mr. Cohen as legal expenses. “President Trump did not ask you to do any of the things you just described?” the attorney then asked. Mr. McConney replied, “He did not.”

Mr. Bove asked, “And as far as you know, President Trump did not ask anyone to do those things? “In none of the conversations that you had with Weisselberg, did he suggest that President Trump had told him to do these things?” Mr. Conney replied, “Allen never told me that.” Mr. McConney said his interactions with Mr. Cohen were “minimal.” He said that other than emails about invoices, he never spoke to Mr. Cohen about the reimbursement arrangement. In court papers, Trump lawyers have described the payments that were sent to Mr. Cohen as legal expenses, while prosecutors say it was an attempt to cover up the true nature of the payments during an election. Mr. Cohen used the funds to pay adult film actress Stormy Daniels to not speak publicly about allegations about an affair in 2006, which President Trump has denied. At one point, Mr. Bove asked Mr. McConney about the internal payment system, and Mr. McConney suggested that it was antiquated.

“Legal expenses [were] part of a drop-down menu?” Mr. Bove asked him. Mr. McConney replied, “Yes.” Mr. Bove asked, “[It] was a bit antiquated?” Mr. McConney replied, “Yes.” Mr. Bove asked, “These categories, there was a level of rigidity to them?” Mr. McConney replied, “Yes.” Mr. Bove asked, “So if you are talking about payments to an attorney, legal expenses was the category that was used?” Mr. McConney replied, “Yes.” The defense argued that the legal expenses were legitimate and not illegal. Mr. Bove got Mr. McConney to say that he didn’t know whether Mr. Cohen did legal work for President Trump in 2017. Also, when he was asked by the attorney if President Trump personally asked him to carry out any of the tasks, the former controller said that he “did not.” He also said he didn’t speak to President Trump on a regular basis, noting that any talks with him wouldn’t be about accounting programs.

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“..committed blatant Evidence Tampering by mishandling the very Boxes they used as a pretext to bring this Fake Case..”

• Trump Says Jack Smith Should Be ‘Arrested’ After Documents Revelation (ET)

Former President Donald Trump argued that special counsel Jack Smith’s classified documents case against him should be tossed after prosecutors wrote that they misled a judge about the order of items in an evidence box. In a post on Truth Social over the weekend, President Trump called for the arrest of Jack Smith and argued that the case should be thrown out based on the new court filing. It came after Mr. Smith’s team wrote that that the order of items within a box was “not the same” as they appear in digital photographs of materials after the FBI obtained those boxes from President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in August 2022. “Since the boxes were seized and stored, appropriate personnel have had access to the boxes for several reasons, including to comply with orders issued by this Court in the civil proceedings noted above, for investigative purposes, and to facilitate the defendants’ review of the boxes,” Mr. Smith’s team told U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon last week.

They added that there are “some boxes where the order of items within that box is not the same as in the associated scans.” His team also acknowledged in a footnote that federal prosecutors effectively misled the court after telling the judge that the evidence was exactly the same when it was seized. “The Government acknowledges that this is inconsistent with what Government counsel previously understood and represented to the Court,” the footnote said. Mr. Smith’s team provided multiple “possible explanations” as to why the documents were rearranged after seizing the boxes from Mar-a-Lago, according to the filing. “There are several possible explanations, including the above-described instances in which the boxes were accessed, as well as the size and shape of certain items in the boxes possibly leading to movement of items,” they wrote. “For example, the boxes contain items smaller than standard paper such as index cards, books, and stationary, which shift easily when the boxes are carried, especially because many of the boxes are not full.”

But President Trump wrote that Mr. Smith’s filing is effectively an admission of what he has “been saying happened since the Illegal RAID on my home, Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach … that he and his team committed blatant Evidence Tampering by mishandling the very Boxes they used as a pretext to bring this Fake Case. He then called for the case to be immediately dropped. President Trump has pleaded not guilty to 40 charges connected to allegations that he illegally retained classified documents at his home after leaving in January 2021 and obstructed officials’ attempts to retrieve them. Two of his aides, Walt Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira, have also been charged in the case. Legal group Judicial Watch also suggested that Mr. Smith’s classified documents case against President Trump should be tossed after the admission.

Judicial Watch head Tom Fitton wrote on X that prosecutors’ latest filing suggesting that there was “evidence tampering” involved is “yet more reason to throw out this sham prosecution.” He said that the filing also included an FBI “admission” that the agency was “completely screwing with the classified documents.” His comment pointed to a statement from the FBI that said that its agents had “created an index to correlate the documents with classification markings to codes,” labeled the cover sheets in the boxes, and “generally replaced the handwritten sheets with classified cover sheets annotated with the index code” after the boxes were brought to the Washington field office after they were taken from Mar-a-Lago, according to the court filing. “In many but not all instances, the FBI was able to determine which document with classification markings corresponded to a particular placeholder sheet,” it added.

Last week, President Trump’s lawyers wrote to Judge Cannon that the case should be dismissed, arguing that Mr. Smith and his team have an “improper political animus” against him. He said that White House lawyers worked with the National Archives and Records Administration when it referred the allegations to the Department of Justice and that it is an attempt to ensure that President Trump doesn’t get reelected.

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“Mr. Trump, I want you to understand the last thing I want to do is put you in jail.”

• Trump Found In Contempt Again, Judge Threatens “Jail Sanction” Next (ZH)

Former President Donald Trump has been found in contempt of court for a second time by a New York judge overseeing his hush-money trial. On Monday, judge Juan Merchan said that Trump had violated a gag order with additional social media posts about witnesses in the case, and will consider jail if there are additional violations. It appears that the $1,000 fines are not serving as a deterrent,” said Merchan. “Mr. Trump, I want you to understand the last thing I want to do is put you in jail.” “The magnitude of such a decision is not lost on me, but at the end of the day, I have a job to do.” Last week, Merchan fined Trump $9,000 and held the former president in criminal contempt of court for violating the gag order nine times.

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“Who will prosecute it if Jack Smith can no longer function as Special Counsel?”

• Prisoners of Themselves (Kunstler)

You realize, don’t you, that the gross misconduct of government officials from RussiaGate on down to the courtroom of Judge Juan Merchan has amounted to one continuous operation against the American people? If it were ever honestly adjudicated, many hundreds of them might go to prison, or worse. Each successive seditious and treasonous action they attempt against their arch-nemesis, Mr. Trump, only compounds their criminal liability — the Steele Dossier, CIA agent Eric Ciaramella’s 2019 impeachment prank, the Covid-19 caper, the George Floyd-BLM hustle, the 2020 election hijinks, the J-6 op and the House J-6 Committee conjured up to spin it, the present battery of farcical court cases — and yet the Golden Golem of Greatness not only remains defiantly at large, but seems to amass ever more electoral mojo.

The epic failure of these mighty efforts, and the humiliation entailed, has lately driven this vast bureaucratic cabal — collectively styled as “the blob” — to a stage of abject desperation that looks a lot like insanity. They fear for their lives, their fortunes, their chattels, and their families, and they seem ready to wreck the republic to save themselves. They have so far pretty much wrecked American justice with their lawfare tactics — a degenerate campaign to use the vested authority of prosecutors and judges to twist and cheat the law at the cost of the law’s legitimacy. Merrick Garland, Norm Eisen, Andrew Weissmann, Mary McCord, Lisa Monaco, Marc Elias, Christopher Wray, Letitia James, Fani Willis, Alvin Bragg have made law the enemy of the people.

All this becomes more obvious each day, for instance events of the past week in Judge Aileen Cannon’s federal courtroom in Florida where the Mar-a-Lago documents case proceeds. Turns out that Special Counsel Jack Smith has deliberately messed with the evidence, which is patently felonious. Also, turns out that sometime between the “Joe Biden” inauguration and the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago in August, 2022, boxes of presidential documents stored by the US General Services Administration were “delivered” to Mr. Trump’s mansion without any proper accounting for what might have been in them. A set-up you suppose? Why not? After everything else the FBI and the DOJ have attempted since 2015?

Christopher Wray in particular might have wanted some surefire probable cause to get his agents into Mar-a-Lago where, rumor has it, Mr. Trump kept his own dossier of evidence against the FBI and DOJ officials who concocted the “Crossfire Hurricane” chapter of RussiaGate. Even if you assume that Mr. Trump had multiple copies of the thing, FBI Director Wray — in position since 2017 throughout most of RussiaGate — surely wanted to see what Mr. Trump was holding if it would become necessary for current and former FBI / DOJ officials to defend themselves in court against very serious charges.

You see the desperation, don’t you? And how stupendously amateurish these machinations have been? Planting evidence and then fiddling around with it? I’m waiting for the moment when Judge Cannon summons Jack Smith and announces to his face that she is tossing the case for prosecutorial misconduct. Will she add a criminal referral to that? How will that affect the other case (attempting to overturn the 2020 election) brought against Mr. Trump in Judge Tanya Chutkan’s DC federal district court? Who will prosecute it if Jack Smith can no longer function as Special Counsel? And since the case was contrived in his name — even if Eisen, McCord, Weissmann, and others are really the authors — does that case blow up, too?

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Fish
https://twitter.com/i/status/1787532840034279879

 

 

GOAT
https://twitter.com/i/status/1787595853001019729

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle October 15 2023

Oct 152023
 
 October 15, 2023  Posted by at 8:45 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  32 Responses »


Rembrandt van Rijn Old Man Seated 1631

 

• Iran Warns Israel Escalation in Gaza Conflict Threatens Regional War (Sp.)
• UN Warns Of Mass Ethnic Cleansing As Refugee Shelters Overflow (RT)
• Palestinian President Rejects Eviction From Gaza (RT)
• Hamas Says It Appreciates Putin’s Stance On Gaza Settlement (TASS)
• Russia Can Play Crucial Role In Middle East Settlement – Hamas Official (TASS)
• White Flag In A Black Hole – Is Russian Neutrality A Force Or A Trade? (Helmer)
• Putin Weighs In On EU-Ukraine Accord (RT)
• Ex-Zelensky Aide Calls For New Government In Ukraine (RT)
• Zelensky Gags Media On Corruption – Editor-in-Chief (RT)
• Only 15% of Kiev Preschoolers ‘Actively Speak’ Ukrainian – NGO (RT)
• New Evidence May Destroy Biden’s Defense In Classified Documents Case (Turley)
• How About Hunter? DOJ Adds FARA Charge to Menendez Prosecution (Turley)
• Swiss Magazine ‘Spied On’ For Hosting Scott Ritter (RT)
• Poison Control (Iris Figueroa)

 

 

 

 

Rogan

 

 

MSNBC

 

 

Already the most deadly time in Gaza.

 

 

Trump
https://twitter.com/i/status/1712895938279494073

 

 

Panetta

 

 

“Various scenarios are emerging, including the possibility of military and non-military measures being taken against the Gaza Strip comparable to the siege of Leningrad during World War II,” Putin said. “We understand what that entails. In my opinion, this is unacceptable. More than two million people live there.”

 

 

 

 

“..he emphasized that Iran has “red lines” and would respond if Israel continues its military operation, particularly if it proceeds with a ground offensive in Gaza.”

“In light of the continued aggression, war crimes and blockade of the Gaza Strip, the opening of new fronts remains feasible..”

• Iran Warns Israel Escalation in Gaza Conflict Threatens Regional War (Sp.)

Iran expressed its desire to avoid exacerbating the situation in the Hamas-Israel war but made it clear that it may need to intervene if Israel’s military operation in Gaza continues, reports US media quoting diplomatic sources. The situation is of significant international concern as the conflict between Hamas and Israel holds the potential to escalate into a regional war if Iran becomes directly or indirectly involved. The warning sent by Iran to Israel through the UN coincides with the US’ efforts to deter Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah or others from entering the conflict, claims US media. The US has deployed an aircraft carrier group and fighter jets to the region to reinforce its stance.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian held a meeting with UN envoy to the Middle East, Tor Wennesland, in Beirut, reports US media quoting diplomatic sources. During this meeting, Wennesland implored Amir-Abdollahian to help prevent the conflict from spilling over into the broader Middle East region. In response, the Iranian foreign minister conveyed Iran’s reluctance to see the situation evolve into a regional war. He also expressed Iran’s willingness to aid in the release of civilians held hostage by Hamas in Gaza. However, he emphasized that Iran has “red lines” and would respond if Israel continues its military operation, particularly if it proceeds with a ground offensive in Gaza.

Wennesland, in turn, relayed Iran’s message to Israeli national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi and other officials. The meeting between Amir-Abdollahian and Wennesland focused on diplomatic efforts to secure the release of hostages, de-escalation, and the prevention of a broader conflict in the region. In a briefing with reporters in Beirut, Amir-Abdollahian, who had previously met with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, called on Israel to cease its actions against Gaza’s civilians, warning that time was running out. He also alluded to potential scenarios prepared by Hezbollah and the consequences they could bring, mentioning that any actions by the resistance would have a significant impact on Israel.

“In light of the continued aggression, war crimes and blockade of the Gaza Strip, the opening of new fronts remains feasible,” the minister told Lebanese broadcaster. The conflict, which began on October 7, has resulted in ongoing heavy bombardments in the Gaza Strip by Israel in response to a prior attack by Hamas. Violence has also escalated along the Israel-Lebanon border and in the West Bank.

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“..The UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees warned on Saturday that its shelters in Gaza “are not safe anymore..”

• UN Warns Of Mass Ethnic Cleansing As Refugee Shelters Overflow (RT)

Palestinians in Gaza face mass ethnic cleansing as Israel orders half the population of the densely populated strip to evacuate amid continued aerial bombardment and dwindling resources on the ground, UN human rights experts warned on Saturday. “In the name of self-defense, Israel is seeking to justify what would amount to ethnic cleansing,” UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese said, noting that “Israel has already carried out mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinians under the fog of war.” “There is a grave danger that what we are witnessing may be a repeat of the 1948 Nakba, and the 1967 Naksa, yet on a larger scale,” she warned, referring to Israel’s mass expulsions of at least 1 million Palestinians from their homes and land in 1947-48 and 1967. “The international community must do everything to stop this from happening again.”

The UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees warned on Saturday that its shelters in Gaza “are not safe anymore,” adding that the area’s 2.3 million residents were rapidly running out of water. Israel shut off electricity to Gaza following Hamas’ attack last Saturday, compounding the humanitarian crisis in the territory, which has been under an illegal blockade since 2007. The UN on Friday warned that Israel’s evacuation order targeting the 1.1 million Palestinians living in northern Gaza would create a “humanitarian catastrophe” amount to a certain “death sentence” for the sick and hospitalized, given the hospital system is already barely operational and several have been bombed. “Moving more than one million people across a densely populated warzone to a place with no food, water, or accommodation, when the entire territory is under siege, is extremely dangerous – and in some cases, simply not possible,” UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres told reporters on Friday ahead of a meeting with the Security Council.

Urging the government to rescind the order, UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons Paula Gaviria Betancur explained that “forcible population transfers constitute a crime against humanity, and collective punishment is prohibited under international humanitarian law.” On Thursday, Israel ordered the population of northern Gaza to move to the south within 24 hours, after which it launched a ground invasion of the north to “clear” it. The entire territory remains blockaded, with the exit via Egypt closed since Tuesday due to ongoing Israeli airstrikes. Following Hamas’ attack on Israel last weekend, which left some 1,200 Israelis dead, Israel has targeted Gaza with the most intense bombing campaign in its history, killing upwards of 1,900 Palestinians and injuring over 7,600 more, according to the UN. Over 423,000 people have been displaced in the last week.

Corridor

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“..Biden spoke on the phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, pledging further material support to the Israel Defense Forces and telling the PM that “unity and determination” were needed to achieve Israel’s combat goals..”

“The resulting Israeli bombing campaign – the heaviest in Gaza’s history – has killed upwards of 1,900 Palestinians and displaced over 430,000 inhabitants of the densely-populated territory..”

• Palestinian President Rejects Eviction From Gaza (RT)

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas categorically rejected the removal of Gaza’s inhabitants from their land in a phone call with US President Joe Biden on Saturday, Abbas’ office confirmed in a statement. Biden pledged to support the Palestinian Authority’s efforts to bring much-needed humanitarian assistance to Gaza, according to a White House summary of the call. The US president also claimed his administration has been working with the UN, Egypt, Jordan, and Israel “to ensure humanitarian supplies reach civilians in Gaza,” according to the summary, though Israel itself has pledged no electricity, water, or food will enter Gaza until the hostages taken by Hamas last Saturday are returned.

Abbas also told US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that he “rejects the forced displacement” of Palestinians from Gaza, warning the American diplomat during a meeting on Friday in Amman that going along with Israel’s evacuation order for north Gaza would amount to a “second Nakba” – a reference to Israel’s removal of 750,000 Palestinians from their land by force from 1947 to 1948. Also on Saturday, Biden spoke on the phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, pledging further material support to the Israel Defense Forces and telling the PM that “unity and determination” were needed to achieve Israel’s combat goals. Netanyahu thanked his American counterpart, according to a statement from his office.

Washington has repeatedly pledged to back Israel’s massive retaliation for Hamas’ attack last weekend, which left at least 1,300 Israelis dead. The resulting Israeli bombing campaign – the heaviest in Gaza’s history – has killed upwards of 1,900 Palestinians and displaced over 430,000 inhabitants of the densely-populated territory. Israel ordered the 1.1 million residents of northern Gaza to evacuate on Thursday. The order has come under fire from the UN and other international human rights observers, who argue it constitutes aggravated ethnic cleansing. Washington and many of its European allies, however, insist Israel’s actions are justifiable self-defense.

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“..He also noted that in the event of a ground operation in Gaza, civilian casualties would be unacceptable..”

• Hamas Says It Appreciates Putin’s Stance On Gaza Settlement (TASS)

The Palestinian Hamas movement appreciates the position of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Moscow’s efforts to settle the situation in the Gaza Strip, according to the group’s statement published on its Telegram channel. “Hamas appreciates Russian President Vladimir Putin’s position on the ongoing Zionist aggression against our people and the fact that he does not accept the blockade of the Gaza Strip, the stoppage of humanitarian aid and the attack on unarmed civilians. We also affirm that we welcome Russia’s tireless efforts to stop the systematic and barbaric Zionist aggression against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip,” the statement said.

Earlier, the Russian leader said that Israel has been subjected to a brutal attack, but the settlement of the conflict is possible only through the establishment of an independent Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital. He also noted that in the event of a ground operation in Gaza, civilian casualties would be unacceptable. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, for his part, pointed out that the forced evacuation of Gaza residents was a violation of human rights. He added that the exchange of blows between Israel and Palestine should stop. Tensions flared up again in the Middle East on October 7 when militants from the radical Palestinian Hamas movement staged a surprise attack on Israeli territory from the Gaza Strip.

Hamas described its attack as a response to the aggressive actions of Israeli authorities against the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the Old City of Jerusalem. Israel has announced a total blockade of the Gaza Strip as it has been delivering rocket attacks on Gaza as well as some districts in Lebanon and Syria. According to the latest official data, more than 1,900 Palestinians have been killed since the renewed outbreak of violence, while over 7,700 others have suffered wounds. In Israel, over 1,500 people have lost their lives and roughly 4,000 have been wounded in clashes, including on the West Bank of the Jordan River.

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“The Hamas movement has a high level of trust in Russia and its President Vladimir Putin..”

• Russia Can Play Crucial Role In Middle East Settlement – Hamas Official (TASS)

The Palestinian movement Hamas believes that Russia is capable of playing a key role to put an end to the military escalation in the Middle East, which was triggered by Israeli aggression, Ali Baraka, head of Hamas National Relations Abroad, told TASS. “The Hamas movement has a high level of trust in Russia and its President Vladimir Putin, so we will welcome Russian mediation in resolving the conflict,” he said. “We are interested in ending the civilians’ suffering, caused by Israel’s bombing and brutal blockade of the Gaza Strip, as soon as possible.” The senior Hamas official said that the movement’s leadership was in constant contact with Moscow.

“We are ready for possible meetings with Russian diplomats in one of the Arab countries and we welcome their efforts,” he said. According to the Hamas representative, the Palestinians highly appreciate Putin’s stance. “We follow the Russian leader’s statements in which he assesses regional developments,” Baraka said. “We view Russia as a power that stands up for international law and seeks justice for the oppressed.” He said that “for the Palestinians, Russia’s voice in their defense and Moscow’s demands to stop aggression, lift the blockade on the Gaza Strip and resume humanitarian aid deliveries are crucial.”.

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John Helmer thinks Russia should be more pro-active.. Be careful what you wish for.

• White Flag In A Black Hole – Is Russian Neutrality A Force Or A Trade? (Helmer)

The first Moscow newspaper analysis has appeared of Russia’s current position towards Israel and Palestine. It supports President Vladimir Putin’s public endorsement of the two-state solution between the Israelis and Palestinians. Entitled “Why Russia remains neutral in the conflict in the Middle East”, Vzglyad, the Moscow security strategy publication, posted the piece late on Friday evening, October 13. It added an opinion poll for its readers with a single question, “should Russia recognise Hamas as a terrorist organisation? The new analysis and conclusion are in contrast to Vzglyad’s call six months ago for Russia to reorient its position towards the Arab side. This is also a marked change of editorial line in the prevailing silence in Moscow: there has been no Security Council meeting since October 3; no State Duma debate; no national opinion polling of public attitudes.

The Arab-Israeli conflict is the one in which Israel is destroying the remnants of the Palestine state territories of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, and replaces that two-state solution with a single state; that is the Israeli one in which about 7 million Jews restrict about 2 million Arabs in bantustans administered according to an apartheid regime. The rules of this Jewish-based order have been fixed in Israel’s constitutional amendment enacted in 2018 as the “Basic Law: Israel – the Nation State of the Jewish People”, and ratified by the Israeli Supreme Court in 2021. This adopts the single- state solution expanding territorially by resettlement of the Palestinian territories “as a national value”; and in parallel, combating international opposition to the process by Israeli state operations to “preserve the cultural, historical and religious heritage of the Jewish People among Jews in the Diaspora.”

By equating Jewish ethnicity and religious faith with nationality of the Israeli state, this constitution eliminates Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim rights with the formula, “the exercise of the right to national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish People.” The corollary is that any Palestinian exercise of the right to self-determination on the expanding Jewish national territory is illegal, anti-Semitic, and terrorist. Internationally, it is the policy of Israel and its allies to make support for or discussion of Palestinian right to self-determination a thought and speech crime. In Russian politics, this is the one international conflict on which President Vladimir Putin has said so much since the start of his term, and done so little – this has been to advocate the two-state solution in public while in private to impose a do-nothing, say-catchword line on diplomats and military officials, and the state media.

The gap between the Kremlin and the General Staff and Defense Ministry became visible in September 2018 after the Israel Air Force caused the shoot-down in Syria of a Russian Ilyushin-20M electronic reconnaissance aircraft, and the killing of all fifteen crewmen on board. At that time the Russian military expressed a loss of confidence which had not been seen in public since President Boris Yeltsin countermanded orders for Russian military support of Serbia under NATO bombing between March and June 1999, and dismissed Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov on the US demand. In the present fighting between Palestinian, Arab and Israeli forces, the options for Russian action are numerous; the public debate over what the options should be has been nugatory. There have been no national opinion polls; no State Duma debate; no meeting of the Security Council since October 3.

An initial statement by Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church was carefully balanced between Palestine and Israel, referring to the “military conflict” between the two sides, not a unilateral act of terrorism. “Peaceful coexistence” between the religious communities, Kirill said, has a “religious dimension” and requires a “just peace”. In context, this was a tilt against Israel. The Church’s Department for External Church Relations issued the statement on October 7; there has been nothing since. As a bellwether of Russian security analysts, Vzglyad’s decision to publish a report of expert assessments on “the advantages of Russia’s neutrality in the conflict in the Middle East” is unusual. Vzglyad’s publishing record shows what the new report is not. Strategically, Russia is being obliged by the US and NATO alliance to fight an all-forces war in Europe, and commit small forces in separate conflicts in Syria; Transdnistria and Moldova; Azerbaijan and Armenia; with the possibility of engagement in the Kosovo fight against Serbia.

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“..The EU-Ukraine Association Agreement essentially envisaged the death of all Ukrainian industry..” ..“we now see exactly that there’s nothing left there already.”

• Putin Weighs In On EU-Ukraine Accord (RT)

The EU-Ukraine Association Agreement essentially envisaged the death of all Ukrainian industry, Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed. The ratification of the accord was put on hold in late 2013 by then-President Viktor Yanukovich, which sparked the Maidan coup that led to his overthrow. The new Ukrainian government signed the agreement in 2014. Speaking to reporters on Friday, Putin said: “If you read what the EU proposed to Ukraine, this is what is apparently being realized now – this was tantamount to the destruction of all key industries that the Soviet Ukraine once prided itself on.” The president added that “we now see exactly that there’s nothing left there already.” According to Putin, Yanukovich was weighing Kiev’s options and simply postponed the ratification of the agreement with the EU in 2013.

In an interview with Politico late last month, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmigal said Kiev expects full EU membership within two years, and will not settle for anything less. He cited the “huge price” his country has paid to join the bloc. Shmigal went on to pledge that Ukraine will “not be bringing problems” to the EU, but will be a helpful addition. Speaking at a press conference following a summit of EU leaders in the Spanish city of Granada last week, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the process of accession for any aspiring nation should be strictly “merit-based,” with certain “milestones that have to be achieved” first. The joint declaration adopted by the member states calls on Ukraine and other hopefuls to “step up their reform efforts, notably in the area of rule of law.”

European Council President Charles Michel said the EU should be ready to expand by 2030. However, this timeframe apparently did not sit well with all member states. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte insisted that “it’s not a question of when countries are ready; it’s a question of whether countries are ready.” Joining the EU has been among the key stated objectives of pro-West Ukrainian politicians for decades. Kiev had not achieved much progress on this path prior to February 2022, when Moscow launched its military operation in the country. The conflict appears to have re-invigorated the process, with top officials repeatedly demanding membership due to Ukraine’s perceived role in defending the EU from an allegedly looming Russian invasion.

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Pretty sure Arestovich has something on Zelensky (I’d put my money on corruption). He’s the only voice “allowed” this type of criticism.

“..Ukraine, by contrast, “suppresses business, civil liberties and political competitors, quarrels with neighbors and key partners, and encourages corruption.”

• Ex-Zelensky Aide Calls For New Government In Ukraine (RT)

Ukraine’s counteroffensive has failed, its troops have built no defensive lines, and President Vladimir Zelensky has allowed corruption and incompetence to flourish, former adviser Aleksey Arestovich said on Saturday. New elections are the only way out of the impasse, he argued. Zelensky’s focus on defending the Donbass city of Artyomovsk (known as Bakhmut in Ukraine) at all costs earlier this year drained men and resources that could have been sent south to participate in the summer counteroffensive against Russian forces, Arestovich wrote on Telegram. With weather conditions deteriorating, the counteroffensive has now halted. The four-month operation cost Ukraine 90,000 men (according to Russian figures), and resulted in extremely minimal territorial gains for Kiev.

Ukraine has achieved “nothing,”and Russian troops have switched to offensive operations along the entire front, Moscow’s ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, told the UN Security Council on Friday. With the roles reversed and the Ukrainians now defending, Arestovich noted that the Ukrainian military has not constructed defensive fortifications like those set up by Russia before the Ukrainian offensive. “Such structures would dramatically increase the combat stability of our troops, inflict even greater losses on the Russians, reduce the load on our forces and allow some of them to be redirected to offensive areas,” he wrote, adding that “this was not done, and this is our second strategic mistake.” Away from the battlefield, Arestovich said Russia is increasing its defense spending, stepping up the production of armaments, and reaching out to its friends and partners in the Global South.

Ukraine, by contrast, “suppresses business, civil liberties and political competitors, quarrels with neighbors and key partners, and encourages corruption.” “Our leadership, in my assessment, exhausted the limits of its competence a long time ago,” he wrote. In order to pull the country out of its current “dead end,” he urged Zelensky’s government to abandon its earlier decision not to hold elections until after the conflict, and accept that its goal of retaking Crimea and restoring Ukraine’s 1991 borders will not happen, despite the “blood, sweat, and tears” of the Ukrainian people. Although Arestovich was initially optimistic about the counteroffensive’s chances of success, he has offered a series of increasingly grim predictions of the country’s future in recent months. He predicted in August that an invasion of Crimea would cost 200,000 Ukrainian lives, and forecast in September that the conflict could drag on until 2035.

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“..the president told reporters to “remain silent until victory.” “If we remain silent, there will be no victory,” the editor-in-chief said..”

• Zelensky Gags Media On Corruption – Editor-in-Chief (RT)

President Vladimir Zelensky has allegedly ordered Ukrainian journalists to avoid bringing up the topic of corruption instead of reporting it to the authorities, the editor-in-chief of the Zerkalo Nedeli (‘Mirror of the Week’) news outlet has claimed. Speaking at the National Media Talk 2023, Yulia Mostovaya said that she had learned of Zelensky’s demand from colleagues who had attended an off-the-record meeting with him. The president reportedly made the request after the Ukrainian press published reports about inflated food prices paid by the country’s armed forces. According to Ukrainian media reports, including Zerkalo Nedeli, the Defense Ministry had been buying food and clothing for its service members at prices two to three times higher than the market price.

For example, the ministry paid up to 17 hryvnia ($0.47) for a single egg and 22 hryvnia ($0.60) for a kilogram of potatoes, while the average prices for those goods at stores in Kiev at the time were about 7 hryvnia ($0.19) and 8 hryvnia ($0.22), respectively. Mostovaya stated that Zelensky’s request to avoid the topic of corruption in media publications was something the Ukrainian press may have considered if Zelensky had presented it in a “balanced manner” and explained that reporting on such issues could affect Ukraine’s battlefield capabilities. “We would accept these conditions if the president had said: ‘Here is a person. Here’s his phone number. If you have substantiated facts, please provide them to this person, he will immediately pick up the phone. And give us a week to respond. If there is no reaction within a week, send it to print.’”

However, no such proposal was put forward by Zelensky, Mostovaya claimed, noting that instead the president told reporters to “remain silent until victory.” “If we remain silent, there will be no victory,” the editor-in-chief said. The issue of corruption in Ukraine has repeatedly been brought up by journalists and officials, both within the country and in the West. Last week, the former president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, stated that Ukraine will likely be unable to join the EU anytime soon because it is “corrupt at all levels of society.” He also urged Brussels not to make any “false promises” to the Ukrainian people who are already “up to their neck in suffering.” Ukraine has for years been seen as among the most corrupt countries in Europe and was ranked 116th out of 180 in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index for 2022.

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Almost entirely a Russian-speaking country. Language is not easy to replace. It takes a long time.

• Only 15% of Kiev Preschoolers ‘Actively Speak’ Ukrainian – NGO (RT)

Only some 15% of preschoolers in Kiev are “actively using” Ukrainian, according to a survey conducted by Spilnomova, an NGO with the declared goal of “studying and changing the language situation” in the country. The results of the survey were revealed by Spilnomova’s founder, Andrey Kovalyov, in an interview with the outlet Texty.org.ua, published on Tuesday. Around 20% of preschoolers turned out not to speak Ukrainian at all, using Russian in daily life instead. The rest of the preschoolers are using a mix of Russian and Ukrainian, the survey found. Kovalyov did not discuss the exact methodology used to arrive at the findings. The language situation appears to vary from one kindergarten to another, depending on whether the institution is making an active Ukraininzation effort, as well as on the efforts of the parents.

sBut since the beginning of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, more parents have started using Ukrainian while speaking to their children, Kovalyov said. “There are kindergartens that constantly remind parents about this. And they have a higher percentage of children who use Ukrainian. But, unfortunately, such institutions are a minority. For the most part, kindergartens simply do not have any policy on this topic. They usually do nothing,” he stated. The situation with use of Ukrainian language is no better – and, apparently, even worse – among teenagers, according to the activist. While the city’s schools are teaching children in Ukrainian, the language policy appears to have little to no effect on actual real-life use, Kovalyov said.

“That is, we have a very peculiar situation. On the one hand, we see preschoolers in the Russian language environment, on the other hand, no changes are visible in the school environment.” “For example, only 10% of memes used by Kiev teenagers are in Ukrainian, 90% are in Russian or English. Here the question arises: can a child be creative with a language that is not dominant for him?” Despite efforts at promoting the official tongue, Ukrainian schools at present only enable children to learn it “passively,” effectively like any other language taught there, according to Kovalyov. Given that the language issue is “highly politicized” in the country, education officials appear to be afraid of actually doing something about it, opting to wait until it “somehow resolves itself,” he said.

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“..Biden’s counsel and associates conducted repeated searches and declared repeatedly that no further classified documents were found. That was repeatedly found to be untrue.”

• New Evidence May Destroy Biden’s Defense In Classified Documents Case (Turley)

This week, the House Oversight Committee released a new timeline on the discovery of classified documents in various locations associated with Biden. From the outset, many of us flagged problems with the account that had been given by Biden, who insisted that he had no knowledge or involvement in the removal or use of the documents. The most glaring problem is that, after they were removed at the end of his term as vice president, the documents were repeatedly moved and divided up. Some were found in the Penn Center office used by Biden in Washington, D.C. Others were found in his garage and reportedly in his library. Biden made clear from the beginning that he expected the investigation to be perfunctory and brief. He publicly declared that he has “no regrets” over his own conduct and told the public that the documents investigation would soon peter out when it determined that “there is no ‘there’ there.”

Now, however, it appears that a critical claim by the White House in the scandal may not only be false, but was knowingly false at the time it was made. The White House and Biden’s counsel have long maintained that, as soon as documents were discovered in the D.C. office, they notified the national archives. Many asked why they did not call the FBI, but the White House has at least maintained that, unlike Trump, they took immediate action to notify authorities.However, it now appears that this was not true. One of the closest aides to Biden and a close friend to Hunter Biden is Annie Tomasini. She referred to Hunter as her “brother” and signed off messages with “LY” or “love you.” Tomasini was once a senior aide to Joe Biden and, according to the Oversight Committee, inspected the classified material on March 18, 2021, two months after Biden took office — nearly 20 months before they were said to be found by the Biden team.

The committee now alleges that the White House “omitted months of communications, planning, and coordinating among multiple White House officials, [Kathy] Chung, Penn Biden Center employees, and President Biden’s personal attorneys to retrieve the boxes containing classified materials. The timeline also omitted multiple visits from at least five White House employees, including Dana Remus, Anthony Bernal, Ashley Williams, Annie Tomasini, and an unknown staffer.” If true, the evidence demolishes the timeline long maintained by the Biden team. That could have an immediate impact on both the criminal and impeachment investigations. The timeline has been a critical distinction drawn by the White House in distinguishing this matter from the Trump indictment, in which Smith charged the former president with 37 counts, including retaining classified information, obstructing justice and making false statements, and other charges.

Biden insisted that he was entirely “surprised” by the discovery of the documents in Nov. 2021. He echoed the narrative of both his lawyers and the media at large: “And they did what they should have done,” he said. “They immediately called the Archives — immediately called the Archives, turned them over to the Archives, and I was briefed about this discovery.” In reality, Biden’s counsel and associates conducted repeated searches and declared repeatedly that no further classified documents were found. That was repeatedly found to be untrue. Moreover, the concern is that Biden’s lawyers, in the course of these private searches, may have consolidated material and contaminated the scene by the time FBI agents conducted their searches. This includes changing how documents were originally stored and whether classified markings were visible to anyone working around the Biden home or garage.

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“They remain similar in every way except the charges.”

• How About Hunter? DOJ Adds FARA Charge to Menendez Prosecution (Turley)

The Justice Department this week hit Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) with a superseding indictment including a new but all-too-familiar charge: being an unregistered foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). I cannot recall another sitting member of Congress being criminally charged as a foreign agent. Yet even if this is the first such case, the charge has been freely used by the Justice Department in all but one case: Hunter Biden. The indictment accuses Menendez of being a foreign agent on behalf of Egypt. Also charged under the law is Menendez’s wife, Nadine, and Egyptian American businessman Wael Hana. After they discussed various foreign policy priorities at one dinner, Nadine is quoted as asking her Egyptian counterparts, “What else can the love of my life do for you?”

The government alleges that the couple agreed to have Menendez “use his power and authority to facilitate such sales and financing to Egypt.” In addition to other benefits, the government alleges that Hana promised to put Nadine on the payroll of his company in a “low-or-no-show job.” The indictment further alleges that the senator disclosed “nonpublic information about the United States’s provision of military aid to Egypt” during a dinner with Hana in 2018. It also claims that the senator “secretly edited and ghost-wrote” a letter “on behalf of Egypt” trying to convince other senators to release a hold on $300 million in aid to the country. The inclusion of the FARA charge against Menendez, his wife and his associate only highlights the absence of any such charge against President Biden’s son Hunter.

For years, some of us have raised the glaring contradiction in how the Justice Department has approached the Hunter Biden case with its treatment of past defendants like Donald Trump associate Paul Manafort. The Justice Department has been quick to indictment Manafort and others on FARA charges, but continues to prevaricate over such a charge for the president’s son. Indeed, when Menendez was charged, I wrote about the striking similarities in the cases, including the gifts and benefits showered on both men. They remain similar in every way except the charges.

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“..with Moscow allegedly making use of Swiss “media, opinion leaders, politicians, and topics like neutrality” to exert pressure on the country and influence local opinions in favor of Russia.”

• Swiss Magazine ‘Spied On’ For Hosting Scott Ritter (RT)

The Swiss weekly magazine Die Weltwoche claims it has obtained a confidential document from the Swiss Intelligence Service (NDB), said to be proof it was spied on by the authorities. The bombshell revelation was made by the outlet on Wednesday. The two-page document claims the magazine “provides a platform for a Russian influence actor,” as NDB described former US intelligence officer and UN weapons inspector, Scott Ritter. The magazine hosted Ritter for a lengthy interview in late September. Among other things, the NDB raised concerns over Ritter’s contributions to RT as well as other local media in which he discussed the benefits of Swiss neutrality, which some would argue the country has laid aside amid the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

According to the Swiss intel service, the articles penned by the former American military officer are designed to influence the “Western information space.” The NDB claimed Ritter has been spreading “Russian propaganda and disinformation,” as well as “hate speech.” The former US officer also attended a public event in Switzerland in late September, which the spy agency characterized as dedicated to dissemination of “Russian propaganda.” The NDB assessment concludes that Switzerland has been subjected to complex Russian influence activities, with Moscow allegedly making use of Swiss “media, opinion leaders, politicians, and topics like neutrality” to exert pressure on the country and influence local opinions in favor of Russia.

The document did not go into any specifics about how exactly media and local opinion leaders allegedly ended up under the sway of Russia, the magazine noted. The publication itself was targeted by the service simply “because it stands for neutrality rather than taking sides in the Ukraine conflict,” Die Weltwoche suggested. The outlet questioned how “surveillance of a media organization aligns with constitutional press freedom” as well as how an apparent intervention into domestic politics ended up within the competence of the NDB. “Apparently, the Ukraine conflict has transformed our country back into a surveillance state, which was supposedly overcome with a significant effort in the early 1990s,” Die Weltwoche concluded.

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X thread.

• Poison Control (Iris Figueroa)

“I gathered all vaccine ingredients into a list and contacted Poison Control. After intros and such, and asking to speak with someone tenured and knowledgeable, this is the gist of that conversation.

Me: My question to you is how are these ingredients categorized? As benign or poison? (I ran a few ingredients, formaldehyde, Tween 80, mercury, aluminum, phenoxyethanol, potassium phosphate, sodium phosphate, sorbitol, etc.)

He: Well, that’s quite a list… But I’d have to easily say that they’re all toxic to humans… Used in fertilizers… Pesticides… To stop the heart… To preserve a dead body… They’re registered with us in different categories, but pretty much poisons. Why?

Me: If I were deliberately to feed or inject my child with these ingredients often, as a schedule, obviously I’d put my daughter in harm’s way… But what would legally happen to me?

He: Odd question… But you’d likely be charged with criminal negligence… perhaps with intent to kill… and of course child abuse… Your child would be taken away from you… Do you know of someone’s who’s doing this to their child? This is criminal…

Me: An industry… These are the ingredients used in vaccines… With binding agents to make sure the body won’t flush these out… To keep the antibody levels up indefinitely…

The man was beside himself. He asked if I would email him all this information. He wanted to share it with his adult kids who are parents. He was horrified and felt awful he didn’t know… his kids are vaccinated and they have health issues…”

Here are just SOME vaccine ingredients present in routine vaccines:

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Anteater

 

 

 

 

Hognose

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle July 6 2023

Jul 062023
 
 July 6, 2023  Posted by at 9:17 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  63 Responses »


Nicolai Dubovskov Hushing (Calm Before the Storm) 1890

 

• NATO Contingent May Be Deployed To Ukraine After Vilnius Summit (TASS)
• French General Forecasts Failure Of Ukrainian Counteroffensive (TASS)
• White House Issues NATO Warning To Ukraine (RT)
• The CIA’s Blind Spot about the Ukraine War (Arkin)
• Kremlin Wars Of ‘High Threat’ Of Nuclear Sabotage By Ukraine (RT)
• Russians Increasingly Believe West Wants To Destroy Their Country (Timofeev)
• Medvedev Names How Ukraine Conflict Could ‘End In Days’ (RT)
• China Doubted We Shot Down Hypersonic Missiles – Kiev (RT)
• Kremlin Denies Media Report That Xi Warned Putin Not To Nuke Ukraine (RT)
• Germany Concerned About Western Escalations in Ukraine (LI)
• Federal Judge Rules Against Biden Admin Attack on Free Speech (Ramos)
• China Warns Chipmaking Export Curbs ‘Just The Beginning’ (RT)
• Culprit Who Brought Cocaine to White House May Never Be ID’d (Sp.)

 

 

 

 

Grossi

 

 

Biden RFK
https://twitter.com/i/status/1676632549806731265

 

 

Censorship
https://twitter.com/i/status/1676625507167657984

 

 

Arestovich
https://twitter.com/i/status/1676660447146131456

 

 

 

 

 

 

“..NATO countries “will find in the days remaining before the summit the wording that will not disappoint Ukraine..”

• NATO Contingent May Be Deployed To Ukraine After Vilnius Summit (TASS)

A NATO contingent may be deployed to Ukraine after the alliance’s summit due to be held in Vilnius on July 11-12, Vladimir Rogov, leader of the We Are Together With Russia movement, told TASS on Thursday. Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda said earlier that Ukraine would not receive an invitation to join the alliance at the summit in Vilnius, but NATO countries “will find in the days remaining before the summit the wording that will not disappoint Ukraine” and it would not be a mere pledge to admit it to the bloc after the combat operations are over.

“Zelensky’s plans include a nuclear false flag attack to try to push through a NATO summit decision to deploy a limited contingent of occupational forces from Poland and the Baltic republics. It will be the legalization of the occupation in a format of ensuring nuclear security on the territory controlled by the Zelensky regime. Such a formula is being looked at the [Ukrainian] presidential office,” Rogov said. As for territories where such a contingent can be deployed to, Rogov noted that Poland is interested in Western Ukrainian regions. Ahead of the NATO summit, Kiev has intensified rhetoric about its striving to join NATO. However, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has said that Ukraine cannot join the alliance as long as it is in a state of an armed conflict.

According to the NATO chief, the Vilnius summit will bring Ukraine closer to the alliance and it plans to set up a Ukraine-NATO Council during the summit. Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky said that the non-invitation to join NATO demotivates the Ukrainian army. His office warned that Zelensky would not go to the summit if the NATO leaders “don’t demonstrate courage” on the issue of Ukraine’s membership. Meanwhile, Russian presidential press secretary said earlier that Kiev’s striving for NATO membership demonstrate its unwillingness and inability to settle the conflict at the negotiating table. He stressed that Russia will continue efforts to ensure its security, which excludes NATO’s expansion by means of admitting Ukraine and thus approaching the Russian border.

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“Ukraine’s greatest vulnerability is its people, or rather a lack of them. Its best fighters have long been dead.”

• French General Forecasts Failure Of Ukrainian Counteroffensive (TASS)

Ukraine’s counteroffensive is doomed to fail as the Russian military has the edge over its adversary in all respects, Jean-Bernard Pinatel, a retired French general and the owner of the company called LexisNexis Business Information Solutions, said in a video interview provided to TASS. “I absolutely do not believe in the success of the Ukrainian counteroffensive. The Russians have a significant air superiority. But they also have an advantage on the ground. Even the Ukrainians themselves admit that they fire 4,000 shells a day, while Russia fires 20,000,” said Pinatel, who specializes in Russia and the Middle East. The general also said that the ratio of losses in equipment and personnel is 5 to 1 in favor of Russia. According to Pinatel, the Kiev regime is severely hampered by its lack of human resources.

“What we are witnessing today is a confrontation between a nuclear power and a country that, of course, is sponsored by the Anglo-Saxons, but which does not have significant technical and human potential,” he said. “And I don’t think that the biggest disadvantage Ukraine faces is so much the amount of military equipment, which, by the way, is not always of high quality, because the West supplies Kiev with outdated equipment. Ukraine’s greatest vulnerability is its people, or rather a lack of them. Its best fighters have long been dead.” The general said he believes that, provided NATO doesn’t directly step into the conflict, Kiev’s defeat is only a matter of time. The West’s policy of prolonging the Ukrainian conflict “is only leading to more casualties,” Pinatel said. “Conversations about helping Ukraine until it wins are completely stupid and nonsensical. It will achieve nothing and will only increase the number of deaths among young Ukrainians and Russians,” he said. However, the US and Europe do not care, the retired French general said, because their main goal is not the victory of Ukraine, but the weakening of Russia. Western sanctions, according to Pinatel, have done the most damage to Europe itself.

“Europe cannot do without Russian gas,” he pointed out. “The global gas market, the European market in particular, cannot do without Russian supplies. Before the crisis, Europe used to consume 200 billion cubic meters of Russian gas, while North America supplied only 2 billion. Who are you going to replace Russia with?” Europe is now facing an economic crisis, the general said. “By the winter of 2022, Germany had managed to fill its gas storage facilities, which lasted it through the cold season, but it will not be enough for the next year,” he said. “And many German companies have already closed their doors because of high gas prices. If Germany goes into recession, all of Europe, and France in particular, will be in trouble, because the Germans are our main economic partners.” Russia, on the contrary, is flourishing and developing economically, working hand in hand with Africa and Asia and developing partnerships, according to Pintel.

“This is because Russia is independent of the rest of the world in every way, be it raw materials, grain or energy, but the capitalist world cannot do without the resources supplied by Russia,” he explained. “This war has weakened Europe more than Russia.” European leaders, the retired general went on to say, expected “the whole world to impose sanctions against Russia, but in reality, only about thirty countries have done so, and all the rest are using this opportunity to strengthen the partnership with Moscow.” He said strife is rampant in the bloc of countries that have joined forces against Russia. “The Americans undoubtedly want to hobble economic cooperation between Europe and Russia, which would take away their domination on the international stage. The US strategy is to create a new Berlin Wall between Russia and Europe, but now that wall runs through Ukraine,” Pinatel said.

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Cold feet?

• White House Issues NATO Warning To Ukraine (RT)

Ukraine must implement “reforms” before it can even consider joining the NATO bloc, the White House has said, suggesting that even when the conflict with Moscow is resolved, membership for Kiev could still be far off as it struggles to meet the organization’s standards. Asked whether Ukraine would be offered a “clear pathway to NATO membership” at an upcoming summit in Lithuania next week, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters that Kiev still had many hurdles to clear before it could seriously think about becoming a member. “The president has said this over and over again: Ukraine would have to make reforms to meet the same standards as any NATO country before they join,” she said at a Wednesday briefing.

And while Washington remains committed to NATO’s open door policy, she noted that “any decision” on NATO expansion must be supported by all members of the bloc. While Jean-Pierre did not specify the reforms Kiev would need to make, Biden previously stated that the military bloc would not “create special conditions for Ukraine to join,” arguing it would be required to meet the same criteria as any other nation seeking membership. “I think they have done everything to demonstrate the ability [of] military coordination, but there is a whole question, is their system safe, and is it not corrupt?” the president said last month. He went on to ask whether it meets “all the standards that any other country in NATO meets?”

Despite those prior comments, during a meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg last month, the two leaders reportedly discussed a scheme to simplify the accession process for Ukraine. Under Stoltenberg’s plan, the country would not be made to complete a “membership action plan” typically required of applicants. While other Eastern European states went through the procedure before being admitted, NATO’s most recent member, Finland, was spared the process after applying to join last year. Multiple US media reports have stated that Biden appeared “open” to the idea, though some outlets, like the New York Times, suggested Washington would seek an alternative to full NATO membership for Kiev, instead proposing an ‘Israel model’ based on the US relationship with the Jewish state.

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has opposed any “substitute for NATO” and reportedly even told Western partners at some point that he would not attend the upcoming NATO summit unless the bloc offered “concrete” guarantees or a roadmap to full membership. NATO’s official position on Ukrainian membership remains unchanged since 2008, when it declared that Ukraine “will become a member” at an unspecified point in the future. While Kiev formally applied to join last September, little progress has been made since. Some US and allied officials have suggested the issue should be resolved only after the conflict with Russia is over, as Ukraine joining NATO would place the bloc at war with Russia. Moscow has repeatedly said that it views NATO’s expansions to the east as a threat to its security, and has listed Ukraine’s neutrality as one of the conditions for any lasting peace between the two countries.

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Newsweek.

“Is the CIA on the ground inside Ukraine?” he asks rhetorically. “Yes, but it’s also not nefarious.”

• The CIA’s Blind Spot about the Ukraine War (Arkin)

One of the biggest secrets of the Ukraine war is how much the CIA doesn’t know. The Agency is as uncertain about Volodymyr Zelensky’s thinking and intentions as it is about Vladimir Putin’s. And as the Russian leader faces his biggest challenge in the aftermath of a failed mutiny, the Agency is straining to understand what the two sides will do—because President Joe Biden has determined that the United States (and Kyiv) will not undertake any actions that might threaten Russia itself or the survival of the Russian state, lest Putin escalate the conflict and engulf all of Europe in a new World War. In exchange, it expects that the Kremlin won’t escalate the war beyond Ukraine or resort to the use of nuclear weapons. America’s stance is under threat because the near-mutiny by Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner Group, raises the question as to whether Moscow has run out of options.

“Putin’s back is really against the wall” a senior defense intelligence official tells Newsweek, warning that while the CIA fully grasps how much Russia is stuck in Ukraine, it is very much in the dark with regard to what Putin might do about it. With talk of Russian nuclear weapons possibly being deployed to Belarus, and in light of Prigozhin’s public exposure of the terrible costs of fighting, something that Moscow has suppressed, the official says that it is a particularly delicate moment. “What is happening off the battlefield is now most important,” says the official, who was granted anonymity in order to speak candidly. “Both sides pledge to limit their actions, but it falls to the United States to enforce those pledges. This all hinges on the quality of our intelligence.”

“There is a clandestine war, with clandestine rules, underlying all of what is going on in Ukraine,” says a Biden administration senior intelligence official who also spoke with Newsweek. The official, who is directly involved in Ukraine policy planning, requested anonymity to discuss highly classified matters. The official (and numerous other national security officials who spoke to Newsweek) say that Washington and Moscow have decades of experience crafting these clandestine rules, necessitating that the CIA play an outsize role: as primary spy, as negotiator, as supplier of intelligence, as logistician, as wrangler of a network of sensitive NATO relations and perhaps most important of all, as the agency trying to ensure the war does not further spin out of control.

“Don’t underestimate the Biden administration’s priority to keep Americans out of harm’s way and reassure Russia that it doesn’t need to escalate,” the senior intelligence officer says. “Is the CIA on the ground inside Ukraine?” he asks rhetorically. “Yes, but it’s also not nefarious.”

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The threat is still alive.

• Kremlin Wars Of ‘High Threat’ Of Nuclear Sabotage By Ukraine (RT)

A possible Ukrainian attempt to sabotage the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant in Russia’s Zaporozhye Region would lead to “catastrophic” results, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has claimed. The situation around Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, which has been under Russian control since March 2022, remains “tense,” Peskov told journalists on Wednesday. “Really, there’s a high threat of sabotage by the Kiev regime; sabotage that might lead to catastrophic results,” Peskov warned. According to the spokesman, an attack on the facility cannot be ruled out because the Ukrainian leadership “has many times shown its readiness to stop at nothing” to achieve its goals. Peskov said one example was the collapse of the Russian-controlled Kakhovka dam in early June, which Moscow has blamed on Kiev. The incident had “horrific consequences,” the Kremlin spokesman noted.

The destruction of the dam led to flooding on both banks of the Dnieper River and caused multiple deaths. Ukraine has claimed that the incident was caused by Russia. “All measures are being implemented to resist the threat [to the Zaporozhye nuclear plant],” Peskov added. Renat Karchaa, a senior official at Russian nuclear power plant operator Rosenergoatom, warned on Tuesday that Kiev was planning to strike the Zaporozhye facility with long-range high-precision munitions and kamikaze drones. Intelligence obtained by Rosenergoatom suggests that Kiev could also attempt to target the plant with a Soviet-made Tochka-U tactical ballistic missile loaded with radioactive waste, Karchaa claimed. Moscow and Kiev have repeatedly accused each other of shelling the Zaporozhye plant throughout their conflict.

The Russian Defense Ministry also claimed to have repelled several attempts to retake the station by Ukrainian assault units, which reportedly approached the facility on boats via the now-drained Kakhovka reservoir. The Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant has returned to the spotlight in recent weeks after senior officials in Kiev claimed that Russia was preparing a nuclear incident at the facility. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky alleged that Moscow wanted to cause a “radiation leak” at the plant, while presidential aide Mikhail Podoliak accused the Russian military of mining the plant’s cooling pond. Peskov previously rejected those claims as “yet another lie.” The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Mariano Grossi, recently visited the facility and said that “no mines were observed at the site” during his inspection.

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“The goals are believed to be defeating Russia, wrecking its military potential, restructuring its statehood, reshaping its identity and possibly eliminating it as a state, in its current form..”

• Russians Increasingly Believe West Wants To Destroy Their Country (Timofeev)

There is an increasingly widespread view in Russia that the goal of the US – and the “collective West” it leads – is to achieve a “final solution” to the “Russian question.” The goals are believed to be defeating Russia, wrecking its military potential, restructuring its statehood, reshaping its identity and possibly eliminating it as a state, in its current form. For a long time, this view remained on the periphery of foreign policy thinking. However, much has changed in the past year and a half. Today, this perception of the West’s goals has gone mainstream. Indeed, it seems quite rational, when placed into the proper context. Meanwhile, Russia itself is pursuing a similar sort of policy towards the Ukrainian state, the existence of which in its former form and borders is perceived in Moscow as a key security challenge.

The historical experience of the last century shows that inflicting total defeat on an enemy and then rebuilding its statehood is the rule rather than the exception in foreign policy practice. There is an important difference to the conflicts of the 18th and 19th centuries, when military defeat of the enemy was seen as a way of extracting concessions from it, but not of rebuilding its very foundations. The experiences of the 20th and 21st centuries are not always linear, but their repetition is obvious. Germany’s defeat in the First World War led to a palpable reshaping of its statehood, determined more by internal contradictions, which grew from the military loss. Germany’s surrender after the Second World War had far more radical consequences. The country was divided, stripped of its foreign policy autonomy and almost completely rebuilt.

Military defeat and subsequent occupation also led to the reformatting of the other large powers, Japan and Italy. The Soviet Union, as a victorious country, was a key player in resolving the “German question.” The USSR was also active in establishing socialist regimes in countries liberated from the Nazi occupation. The subsequent Cold War made this redrawing more difficult. Every attempt was met with resistance from the West. Sometimes the battle ended in a draw, as in Korea. Sometimes the Soviet Union got the upper hand – it helped to inflict a painful defeat on the US in Vietnam, for example. In other situations, the US was successful, for example in supporting anti-Soviet forces in Afghanistan. The collapse of the Soviet Union gave Washington a free hand. Despite Moscow’s rhetoric that the Cold War had ended in victory for both sides, the reality was different.

Many of the former socialist countries were quickly integrated into Euro-Atlantic structures with the active help of new local elites and broad public support. Russia itself loudly proclaimed a desire to return to the ‘civilized world.’ The US-led collective West was given carte blanche to reshape a vast area, which they not unreasonably saw as a result of their bloodless victory over the Soviet Union.

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“..if Washington and its allies stopped the deliveries..”

• Medvedev Names How Ukraine Conflict Could ‘End In Days’ (RT)

The ongoing conflict between Moscow and Kiev has been dragging on for so long because of continued Western arms shipments to Ukraine, Russian former president Dmitry Medvedev told TASS on Wednesday. “If NATO, primarily the US and its vassals, had stopped supplying weapons and munitions to Ukraine, the [Russian] special military operation would have ended in mere months,” Medvedev told the news agency. It can still end “in days,” however, if Washington and its allies stopped the deliveries, he added. Medvedev said that any war, regardless of its scale, could end “very quickly … if a peace treaty is signed or if one does what the Americans did in 1945, by using their nuclear weapons and bombing Japanese cities.” The US strikes did stop hostilities at the time, though he noted that “the price was 300,000 civilian lives.”


The US nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki claimed up to 80,000 lives each. The long-term consequences of the attacks, including radioactive contamination, might have brought the estimated number of victims up to 166,000 in Hiroshima and 140,000 in Nagasaki. Medvedev, who currently serves as deputy head of the Russian Security Council, warned that Russia would prevent Ukraine from joining NATO, even if it meant engaging in a “permanent” conflict. Moscow has demanded its security concerns be respected when it comes to NATO expansion, he said, adding that “Russia’s existence is at stake” and it would not hesitate to stop this threat “one way or another.” The former president also spoke against US nuclear weapons deployment to Poland, warning that it could trigger a nuclear conflict. Earlier, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki called on NATO to include Warsaw in the bloc’s Nuclear Sharing Program.

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Not just China.

• China Doubted We Shot Down Hypersonic Missiles – Kiev (RT)

When Kiev announced shooting down a Russian hypersonic missile, people in Washington were exhilarated, but a visiting Chinese official didn’t believe the claim and left before he could be shown proof, according to Ukrainian Defense Minister Aleksey Reznikov. The reactions were described by The Financial Times on Wednesday, based on the minister’s account. Reznikov’s department claimed it had intercepted a Russian Kinzhal missile for the first time in May, using a US-made Patriot anti-missile system. Kiev has since reported downing over a dozen such weapons, which Moscow mocked as not corresponding to reality. The Ukrainian official declared that his nation had proven that hypersonic weapons can be defended against, showcasing in the process the advanced capability of NATO systems.

He claimed that when he delivered the news of the first success to a US official, the response was: “Fantastic!” But Li Hui, China’s special representative for Eurasian affairs, who was visiting Kiev in mid-May, was skeptical about Kiev’s ability to down Kinzhals, Reznikov explained. “I proposed that if there are doubts, we are ready to provide proof,” Reznikov told the newspaper, adding that Li left the country without viewing the purported evidence. The Kinzhal is an air-launched hypersonic missile, which is believed to be derived from the quasi-ballistic ground-launched Iskander projectile. The Russian forces have used both types of weapons against military targets in Ukraine, though details about hypersonic strikes have been scarce.

In May, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said the number of Kinzhal missiles, which Kiev claimed to have intercepted, was larger than the number actually fired by the Russian side. Some military experts have suggested that Ukrainian officials were misrepresenting debris from Iskander missiles as coming from Kinzhals, when presenting them as evidence of successful intercepts. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has claimed that the Patriot system’s capability made it uniquely important for his country’s defense. He told The Wall Street Journal last month that Ukraine needed 50 batteries – which cost an estimated $1.1 billion apiece – for sufficient protection.

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The FT publishes some weird pieces these days.

• Kremlin Denies Media Report That Xi Warned Putin Not To Nuke Ukraine (RT)

The Kremlin has dismissed “fictitious” claims in the Western press that Chinese President Xi Jinping warned his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, not to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. The claim was reported by The Financial Times, based on anonymous diplomatic sources. “I cannot confirm that,” Putin’s Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Wednesday, when asked about the FT article. He suggested that official statements regarding Xi’s “important” visit to Moscow in March were “sufficient” to make conclusions about its nature. According to FT, Chinese officials have “privately taken credit for convincing the Russian president to back down from his veiled threats of using a nuclear weapon against Ukraine.”

The newspaper alleged that “deterring Putin” from an atomic strike was a key part in Beijing’s diplomatic strategy regarding Europe. The Chinese government has blamed Western policies, including the expansion of NATO in Europe, for the Ukraine conflict, rejecting the Western view that Russia’s military operation was “unprovoked”. It has also publicly urged Moscow not to use its nuclear capability. The purported warning from Xi to Putin gave supporters of Kiev confidence that “China is backing up its public rhetoric behind closed doors,” the FT article said. Moscow has called the Ukraine conflict part of a wider Western proxy war waged against Russia. Putin, as well as other senior Russian officials, have repeatedly cited the Russian nuclear doctrine, which allows the use of such weapons to prevent an existential threat to the Russian state.

Western officials and media outlets have framed those remarks as indicating a possible nuclear attack against Ukrainian forces. However, Putin has stressed that he is against the idea of a limited nuclear strike for any purpose other than saving the nation from destruction.“First of all, we have no need for that. Second, the very speculation about this is a factor that lowers the threshold for the use of the weapon,” he explained during the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum last month. The Russian leader added that his recent decision to station some Russian tactical weapons on the territory of ally Belarus was meant as deterrence against “those who think they can inflict a strategic defeat on us,” referring to the stated US goal in Ukraine.

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“..we were once again in agreement that the Alliance must never become a party to a conflict..”

• Germany Concerned About Western Escalations in Ukraine (LI)

Top German officials have voiced anxiety regarding Western escalations in Ukraine, signaling that Berlin will push back against the most provocative proposals. Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Germany was reluctant to send longer-range weapons to Ukraine over concerns the arms will be used to attack Russian territory. London has provided Kiev with Storm Shadow air-launched cruise missiles which have a range of more than 155 miles. According to recent reporting, the White House is also closing in on a decision to provide Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS), munitions capable of striking targets roughly 200 miles away. Last month, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu warned the West that Ukraine using long-range weapons to attack the Crimean Peninsula could lead to a direct war between Moscow and NATO.

“The use of these missiles outside the zone of our special military operation would mean that the United States and Britain would be fully dragged into the conflict and would entail immediate strikes on decision-making centers in Ukraine,” he said. Berlin is now receiving requests from Kiev to provide Taurus KEPD 350 missiles, an air-launched missile with a range of over 300 miles. Scholz said Germany is considering the request. = Germany has faced intense pressure throughout the war due to Berlin’s occasional reluctance to provide Kiev with all requested aid. However, officials have repeatedly caved to Kiev’s demands. In one example, Germany resisted sending its Leopard 2 main battle tanks to Ukraine, but quickly reversed course after Poland, the UK and the US pledged to send their own advanced tanks. Dozens of its Leopard 2s were ultimately provided.

Some of the German tanks have already been destroyed on the battlefield and Kiev is asking Berlin for replacements. Meanwhile, the American Abrams tanks have not yet arrived in the country due, in part, to a lengthy refurbishment process. Berlin has also pushed back on plans to give Ukraine an official timeline for NATO membership at an alliance summit in Vilnius next week. In an interview published in Rzeczpospolita on Monday, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said the military bloc could not resolve the issue until the conclusion of the war with Russia. “In my recent meetings with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, we were once again in agreement that the Alliance must never become a party to a conflict,” he said. “Therefore, we will not be able to answer the question of Ukraine’s accession to NATO as long as the war continues in Ukraine.” Pistorius went on to explain that Germany is committed to supporting Ukraine’s war effort for as long as the conflict continues, noting that Berlin would deliver dozens of older Leopard 1 tanks in the coming weeks.

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“..the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth.’”

• Federal Judge Rules Against Biden Admin Attack on Free Speech (Ramos)

Judge Terry Doughty of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana ruled that several federal agencies and officials from the Biden administration cannot collaborate with social media companies in restricting certain speech. Doughty wrote in his introduction to the ruling, “If the allegations made by Plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.” The ruling states officials and agencies from the Biden administration are restrained from communicating with social media firms “for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech posted on social-media platforms.”

The ruling does not restrict the government from speaking to companies regarding criminal activity, national security threats, voter suppression, foreign attempts to influence elections and other malicious activity. The lawsuit brings up issues such as COVID-19 health policies, the origins of the pandemic, election security, Hunter Biden’s laptop and others as those targeted for suppression. Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey described the case as the “most important First Amendment lawsuit in a generation.” Doughty wrote in the ruling, “The Plaintiffs have presented substantial evidence in support of their claims that they were the victims of a far-reaching and widespread censorship campaign,” and, “This court finds that they are likely to succeed on the merits of their First Amendment free speech claim against the Defendants.”

Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry said in a statement, “The evidence in our case is shocking and offensive with senior federal officials deciding that they could dictate what Americans can and cannot say on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other platforms about COVID-19, elections, criticism of the government, and more.” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, Director of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas and other State Department and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officials were named in the injunction. Doughty also likened the evidence to a dystopian scenario. Specifically, “During the COVID-19 pandemic, a period perhaps best characterized by widespread doubt and uncertainty, the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth.’”

Biden Big Tech

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..gallium and germanium..

• China Warns Chipmaking Export Curbs ‘Just The Beginning’ (RT)

China’s export controls on key components for computer chip manufacturing are “just the beginning,” an influential trade policy adviser warned on Wednesday. Earlier this week China announced that starting next month, special licenses will be required to export gallium and germanium, two key metals used to make computer chips. Speaking to the China Daily newspaper, former Vice Commerce Minister Wei Jianguo said that should Washington place tougher technology restrictions on Beijing, the government will escalate the countermeasures. The decision to restrict the export of industrial products and materials containing gallium and germanium was made after thoughtful consideration, he added. The comments follow a report by the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday that the US plans to restrict China’s access to cloud computing to close a loophole that allows Chinese artificial intelligence firms to bypass the current chip export control rules.


Cloud services allow customers to gain powerful computing capabilities without buying advanced equipment, such as chips. Washington and Beijing have been involved in a dispute over semiconductors and other advanced technologies for several months. Reuters reported in May that US officials were considering tightening a rule designed to slow the flow of artificial intelligence chips to China by clamping down on the amount of computing power the chips can have. Last October, Washington introduced export control rules, effectively cutting China off from certain semiconductor chips made with US equipment. China retaliated in May, by banning memory chips manufactured by Micron, the biggest US producer. This week, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for “stable and smooth functioning of regional and industrial supply chains” ahead of US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s visit to Beijing to discuss economic issues between the two nations.

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Ha ha ha. We have no idea!

Maybe Hunter can invite Zelensky for a slumber party.

• Culprit Who Brought Cocaine to White House May Never Be ID’d (Sp.)

Sunday evening, a small baggie of white powder was found in the West Wing, prompting a brief shutdown of the White House campus. Preliminary tests determined the substance was cocaine, allowing the White House to be reopened and the bag shipped out for further analysis. As the US Secret Service undertakes its investigation into who brought a bag of cocaine to the White House, an unnamed law enforcement official has told US media the culprit may never be found. On Tuesday, lab results confirmed that the substance was cocaine. While the Secret Service and the White House have refused to say exactly where the baggie was found, both have said it was located at a heavily trafficked area. The Secret Service described it as a “work area of the West Wing” while White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said it was in an area frequented by guests and noted tours had taken place on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

“Where this was discovered is a heavily traveled area, where many […] West Wing visitors come through this particular area,” Jean-Pierre said during Wednesday’s White House briefing. “I just don’t have anything more to share, it is under investigation by the Secret Service, this is in their purview.” Jean-Pierre added the White House has “confidence the Secret Service will get to the bottom of this.” US media outlets have reported on an unnamed official familiar with the investigation who said it is possible the investigation may not discover who brought the illicit substance into the White House because of the area’s high traffic between government officials and tourists. “It’s gonna be very difficult for us to do that because of where it was,” the official reportedly said. The Secret Service said they are reviewing visitor logs and video cameras as part of the investigation. A reporter noted on Wednesday that the baggie remains at the lab for additional tests, including for fingerprints and DNA.

Jean-Pierre refused to answer a reporter’s question about whether US President Joe Biden wanted the culprit to be prosecuted if the investigation reveals the source of the cocaine. “I am just not going to get into hypotheticals from here, let’s let the Secret Service do their job, it’s under their purview,” she said. Biden and his family were not in the White House when the cocaine was discovered – that includes the president’s son Hunter Biden, who at the time was vacationing at Camp David with his father and first lady Jill Biden. However, Hunter Biden, who has a well-documented history of cocaine use, including multiple instances that were caught on video, was at the White House on Friday. At the Wednesday briefing, Jean-Pierre noted all visitors to the White House have to go through security checkpoints; however, she was not asked by reporters and did not clarify if that applies to members of the first family.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

Crowned pigeon
https://twitter.com/i/status/1676578997411500034

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle April 6 2023

Apr 062023
 
 April 6, 2023  Posted by at 8:08 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  75 Responses »


Paul Cézanne Forest 1902-04

 

• Kiev ‘Not Ready’ For New Offensive – Ex-Polish Army Commander (RT)
• Ukraine ‘Ready’ To Give Up Crimea, Says Zelensky Advisor (ZH)
• Ukraine Defense Minister: No Negotiations With Russia, War Ends This Year (Az.)
• Zelensky Vows ‘No Borders’ Between Ukraine And Poland (RT)
• Finland’s NATO Membership Aimed At Escalation With Russia – Philippot (TASS)
• Macron Warns China Against Supplying Russia With Weapons (TASS)
• NATO Chief Issues Warning To China (RT)
• Russia Demands Release Of Ukrainian Bishop (RT)
• France Braces For Further Protests on Thursday (RT)
• Ukraine Offers One Third Of Its Gas Storage To Europe For Next Winter (TASS)
• Saudis Aren’t Afraid Of US Anymore (Bhadrakumar)
• The Trump Case is a Test For the President And The Legal System (Turley)
• Trump Case Shows Divide Among US Elites, Political Crisis Near – Expert (TASS)
• Why the Panic Is Just Beginning (Rickards)
• Swiss Banks Faced Risk Of ‘Full-scale’ Deposit Run – Regulator (RT)
• Fully Vaxxed Lose 25 Years of Life Expectancy (Slay)

 

 


“Some of us still believe that, without freedom, human beings cannot become fully human and that freedom is therefore supremely valuable” – Aldous Huxley

 

 

McCain

 

 

 

 

Harmeet

 

 

Mark Levin

 

 

Farage Giuliani

 

 

Pepe Escobar:
Saudi FM Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud and Iranian FM Hossein Amirabdollahian have held the first Saudi-Iran official meeting in seven years in…… Beijing. They are starting to bury trillions of Exceptionalist dollars spent on Divide and Rule.

 

 

 

 

“Zelensky is visiting Poland to prepare a “diplomatic coalition” for eventual peace talks with Russia..”

• Kiev ‘Not Ready’ For New Offensive – Ex-Polish Army Commander (RT)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky is visiting Poland to prepare a “diplomatic coalition” for eventual peace talks with Russia, retired Polish general Waldemar Skrzypczak has claimed. He argued that Kiev cannot achieve its aims on the battlefield, and will need Western support for negotiations with Moscow. Skrzypczak was speaking to the Rzeczpospolita newspaper on Wednesday, as Zelensky arrived in Warsaw to meet senior officials. The former commander of the Polish Land Forces rejected the idea that Ukraine should use Western weapons for a last-ditch offensive against Russia – a scenario reportedly being pressed upon Kiev by its foreign backers. “Pushing the Ukrainians into an offensive is unjustified at the moment, because they are not ready for it. Now it’s time for politicians,” Skrzypczak argued.

The retired general believes that “neither side has an advantage” on the battlefield and that there is “no chance of a military end to [the conflict].” The Polish government is among the most vocal supporters of Ukraine in its confrontation with Russia. Zelensky has traveled to the country to meet with Polish President Andrzej Duda and Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, among other officials. Warsaw has described the occasion as the first “official” visit by the Ukrainian leader since hostilities escalated in February 2022, even though Zelensky previously passed through Poland on his way to the US and the UK. According to Warsaw, the trip demonstrates Poland’s important international role. Publicly, the US and other Western nations have pledged to assist Ukraine “for as long as it takes” to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia.

Kiev has vowed not to negotiate with Moscow until Ukrainian forces have regained control of all its former territories, including Crimea. Moscow has repeatedly said it is open to talks with Kiev on condition that it recognizes “the reality on the ground.” That includes the new status of four former Ukrainian regions which voted overwhelmingly to join Russia last autumn. Skrzypczak, who resigned his command under then-President Lech Kaczynski in 2009 but went on to hold several roles in the Polish Defense Ministry, predicted that Ukraine’s chances of a military victory in the long run would be undermined by a dwindling level of foreign support. “The West is slowly getting tired of the war, and voters that support aiding Ukraine are getting smaller in numbers. That is why it is necessary to build a front of support for Ukraine so that it has a strong voice in future talks,” he explained.

Read more …

Tectonic plates are shifting.

• Ukraine ‘Ready’ To Give Up Crimea, Says Zelensky Advisor (ZH)

There has been much talk and reporting of the coming Spring counteroffensive by Ukraine forces, but with the fight for Bakhmut not going so well for Kiev, there’s also been talk of the need for compromise, at a moment Ukrainian casualties in the east are believed to be high. Last week we reported on President Volodymyr Zelensky’s voicing rare doubts concerning Bakhmut – as if preparing his people for news of a devastating defeat. And now, on Wednesday, the Financial Times is reporting the single most important development to come out of the conflict in a long time: Zelensky’s office says he’s ready to compromise on the future of the Crimean peninsula.

Naturally, the Ukrainians present themselves as speaking from a position of having the upper hand, which is the general tone of the remarks that Andriy Sybiha, who is deputy head of Zelensky’s office, gave to FT. Per the publication, “Kyiv is willing to discuss the future of Crimea with Moscow if its forces reach the border of the Russian-occupied peninsula” – which marks the “most explicit statement of Ukraine’s interest in negotiations since it cut off peace talks with the Kremlin last April.” “If we will succeed in achieving our strategic goals on the battlefield and when we will be on the administrative border with Crimea, we are ready to open [a] diplomatic page to discuss this issue,” Sybiha said, previewing his high hopes for an imminent counteroffensive.

He explained however that “It doesn’t mean that we exclude the way of liberation [of Crimea] by our army.” But given that Ukrainian forces are nearly completely surrounded in the strategic city of Bakhmut in Donetsk region, despite pouring in massive amounts of manpower and equipment, the whole notion of “liberation of Crimea” is a pipe dream. Western officials themselves have in many cases long acknowledged the extreme unlikelihood of any Ukraine attempt to take Crimea at reaching success. The FT report hints at this in the following: Sybiha’s remarks may relieve western officials who are skeptical about Ukraine’s ability to reclaim the peninsula and worry that any attempt to do so militarily could lead President Vladimir Putin to escalate his war, possibly with nuclear weapons. To date Zelenskyy has ruled out peace talks until Russian forces leave all of Ukraine, including Crimea.

All of this represents a public reversal of sorts from Zelensky’s prior hardened stance of seeking the return of every inch of Ukrainian territory. For example, last October while feeling emboldened after billions in defense aid was pledged from the US and Western allies, he declared in a nightly address, “We will definitely liberate Crimea.” “We will return this part of our country not only to the all-Ukrainian space, but also to the all-European space,” Zelensky had said, not for the first time. He also repeated the same as recently as Sunday. Interestingly, FT cites yet another high-ranking Western defense official who admits the near impossibility of Ukraine actually taking Crimea militarily:

Rear Admiral Tim Woods, the British defense attaché in Washington, said on Wednesday that Crimea would need “a political solution because of just the concentration of force that is there and what it would mean for the Ukrainians to go in there”. He added: “I don’t think there’s going to be a very quick military solution…hence we need to see what are favorable conditions for Ukraine to negotiate and I think Ukraine would be up for that.”

Milan
https://twitter.com/i/status/1643612335792087041

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“..The results of sociological surveys also show that the people of Ukraine do not want peace but victory..”

• Ukraine Defense Minister: No Negotiations With Russia, War Ends This Year (Az.)

Ukraine will not agree to peace agreements with the Kremlin regime and Russian President Vladimir Putin, said the Minister of Defense of the country Oleksii Reznikov, Report informs. According to him, the war may end this year: “The peace treaty with Russia is an exception. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he would not sit down at the negotiating table with Putin. The results of sociological surveys also show that the people of Ukraine do not want peace but victory. Therefore, all our partners must understand: we will not compromise.” Reznikov said that the military-political leadership is ready for negotiations only under the conditions of Ukraine – no change in the position. The minister called the war in Ukraine the biggest war on the planet after the Second World War:

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“Seizing control of the western territories of modern Ukraine, the so-called Kresy [‘borderlands’ in Polish], is the coveted dream of the Polish nationalists..”

• Zelensky Vows ‘No Borders’ Between Ukraine And Poland (RT)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky met his Polish counterpart Andrzej Duda in Warsaw on Wednesday, during his first official visit to Poland since the beginning of hostilities between Russia and Ukraine in February 2022. “You have stood shoulder to shoulder with us, and we are grateful for it,” Zelensky stated during the meeting, pledging “no borders in political, economic and – especially important – in historical terms” between the two countries. The Polish president, for his part, promised to continue supporting Kiev in the conflict, revealing that Warsaw was ready to send all its MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine “in the future.” Poland has previously pledged 14 of its Soviet-made jets.

“Today we are trying to get for Ukraine… additional guarantees, security guarantees, which will strengthen Ukraine’s military potential,” Duda said, adding that Kiev had been protecting the whole of Europe from what he called the threat of “Russian imperialism.” Poland has been one of Zelensky’s top allies, transferring assorted hardware to bolster the Ukrainian military, including tanks and self-propelled howitzers, as well as rallying international support for such deliveries. Moscow, however, has claimed Warsaw has an alternate agenda, accusing it of pushing Kiev into a military catastrophe in order to seize western Ukrainian lands.

On Tuesday, the head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), Sergey Naryshkin, claimed that Poland’s military assistance to Ukraine was actually part of a secret land grab plan aimed at certain territories that historically belonged to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which today are part of Ukraine. “Seizing control of the western territories of modern Ukraine, the so-called Kresy [‘borderlands’ in Polish], is the coveted dream of the Polish nationalists,” Naryshkin said, adding that Warsaw sees “the collapse of Ukrainian statehood after a military defeat as a condition for implementing this idea.” Over the course of the ongoing conflict, Naryshkin has repeatedly warned of the alleged Polish designs on Ukraine’s territory. Warsaw, however, has denied such claims, dismissing them as an information warfare operation.

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“NATO is an entity of American imperialism, which should have disappeared when the Cold War ended in the early 1990s.”

• Finland’s NATO Membership Aimed At Escalation With Russia – Philippot (TASS)

Finland’s accession to NATO is a provocation aimed at escalating the conflict with Russia, leader of France’s Les Patriotes (The Patriots) party Florian Philippot told TASS on Wednesday. “I view it as a provocation aimed at adding more fuel to the conflict with Russia,” Philippot said, commenting on Finland’s accession to the North Atlantic Alliance. “I consider this step to be inappropriate and aggressive,” the politician added. According to Philippot, “NATO is an entity of American imperialism, which should have disappeared when the Cold War ended in the early 1990s.” The French politician also called for France’s withdrawal from the North Atlantic Alliance.


In May 2022, Helsinki and Stockholm submitted their applications to join the US-led alliance but the process was blocked by Ankara who demanded that the two Nordic countries extradite people to Turkey suspected of terrorism and being involved in the 2016 coup, and bans on weapons supplies to Turkey should be lifted. In order to resolve these issues, Turkey, Finland and Sweden signed a memorandum listing specific steps that, according to Ankara, the two Nordic nations should take. Turkey’s parliament passed a bill ratifying a protocol on Finland’s NATO membership on March 30. On Tuesday, Helsinki officially became NATO’s 31st member.

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Imagine you’re invited to China and you start by insulting your host.

• Macron Warns China Against Supplying Russia With Weapons (TASS)

French President Emmanuel Macron said while visiting China that it was not in China’s interest to provide weapons to Moscow, Reuters reported on Wednesday, quoting Macron as saying. “China’s interest isn’t to have a lasting war,” Macron said, adding that should China send any arms to Russia, it “would be complicit in a breach of international law.” According to Agence France-Presse, the French president said that at a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping he was not going to threaten China with sanctions. On February 18, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken claimed that China was “strongly considering providing lethal assistance to Russia,” adding it might include ammunition and weapons.


In response, China’s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning said that the Chinese government did not accept coercion or pressure on Chinese-Russian relations from the US in context of China’s alleged military assistance to Russia. On Wednesday, Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen traveled to China on a visit that will last until April 7. It is Macron’s first visit to China in 3.5 years, since he visited Beijing in the fall of 2019 during his first term in office. Macron plans to focus on the Ukraine conflict and the bilateral French-Chinese ties, especially in the economic sphere, in Beijing.

Read more …

More warnings…

“..And it props up Russia’s economy..”

• NATO Chief Issues Warning To China (RT)

NATO Secretary Jens Stoltenberg has urged China to halt its “growing alignment” with Russia, warning that any military assistance from Beijing to Moscow during the conflict in Ukraine would be a “historic mistake” with major consequences. Speaking after the conclusion of a NATO foreign ministers meeting in Brussels on Wednesday, Stoltenberg sounded alarms over Moscow’s friendly ties with the People’s Republic, suggesting Beijing could soon offer weapons to Russia despite its insistence that it has no plans to do so. “China refuses to condemn Russia’s aggression… And it props up Russia’s economy,” he claimed, adding “Allies have been clear that any provision of lethal aid by China to Russia would be a historic mistake, with profound implications.”

While the NATO head did not elaborate on those “implications,” Washington has previously threatened a response to Chinese military support, while the US Treasury has already moved ahead with sanctions for several China-based companies accused of supplying parts for drones allegedly used by Russian forces. Beijing has rejected any suggestion that it intends to supply weapons to Moscow, insisting it is “completely objective” toward the conflict while accusing US officials of spreading “disinformation” on the matter. Russia, too, has denied previous reports that it requested Chinese military gear. The two countries have nonetheless stepped up relations over the last year, with Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping vowing to “further deepen military mutual trust” after talks at the Kremlin last month. However, Putin has since stated that Russia is “not creating any military alliance with China,” despite their “cooperation in the sphere of military-technical interaction.”

Noting that the latest NATO meeting was largely focused on Ukraine, Stoltenberg went on to say that the alliance had agreed to create a “strategic multi-year assistance program” for Kiev. He voiced hopes that the project would “increase Ukraine’s interoperability with NATO, and to bring it up to NATO standards,” as well as assist the country “on its path to Euro-Atlantic integration.” During a press briefing after the first day of discussions in Brussels on Tuesday, Stoltenberg was asked when Kiev would be admitted into the bloc, but could not provide an answer, merely saying that NATO’s “position on membership is unchanged.” While the alliance first offered a seat to Ukraine back in 2008, it appears little progress has been made in the 15 years since, with one unnamed Western diplomat recently telling the Financial Times that NATO is simply “ignoring” Kiev’s membership application.

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“It also condemned President Vladimir Zelensky for claiming last week that Ukraine was a bastion of religious freedom “in our part of Europe.”

• Russia Demands Release Of Ukrainian Bishop (RT)

Russia has demanded the release of Metropolitan Pavel, a senior bishop of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), stating that it is concerned about his wellbeing. Pavel was taken into custody last week as Kiev sought to oust UOC monks from the historic monastery which he heads. In a statement on Wednesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry said it was angered by the Ukrainian government’s pressure to remove the UOC from the Kiev Pechersk Lavra. It added that Moscow is worried about the monks and priests, who “face the threat of a physical and moral crackdown,” and claimed Pavel’s arrest was a prime example of religious persecution. The leading bishop is being held under house arrest “in electronic shackles,” the statement remarked. It also condemned President Vladimir Zelensky for claiming last week that Ukraine was a bastion of religious freedom “in our part of Europe.”

Russian diplomats branded the remarks “the pinnacle of cynicism.” “We demand the immediate release of Metropolitan Pavel and his medical treatment,” the Foreign Ministry said. Pavel was taken into custody last Saturday, after the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) accused him of inciting religious hatred and “justifying and denying Russian military aggression.” The court which ruled on his arrest was forced to interrupt proceedings when the senior cleric complained of health issues. Pavel was removed from Kiev and ordered to stay in a village 50km from the capital. The SBU has conducted raids on UOC churches and clerics, claiming to be looking for stockpiled weapons and evidence of treason. A report by the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said last month that the actions “could be discriminatory,” prompting a rebuke from Kiev.

Days before his arrest, Pavel blamed Zelensky personally for the crackdown on the UOC, vowing that God “will not forgive this action, neither to you nor to your family.” The Russian Foreign Ministry accused Zelensky of insulting the UOC’s ruling council by refusing to meet them and ignoring millions of people who support the church in Ukraine and beyond. “The Kiev regime stubbornly ratchets up its policy of moral terror against citizens and the faithful,” it said. Moscow also reiterated its criticism of the US government for a failure to address the situation, claiming that this proved Washington cannot be an arbiter on religious freedom. US reports on the issue are “bogus propaganda and puny political hackery,” the Foreign Ministry asserted.

Orthodox

Read more …

While Macron is in China.

• France Braces For Further Protests on Thursday (RT)

French trade unions called for record turnout at protests on Thursday, after negotiations with the government over a controversial pension reform bill broke down. France has been consumed by protests and riots since President Emmanuel Macron’s government hiked the retirement age without a vote in parliament. Union representatives met with Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne on Wednesday, warning beforehand that they would walk out if Borne refused to entertain the idea of bringing the retirement age for most workers back to 62 from 64. Borne refused, and the union representatives walked out, calling for strikes and mass demonstrations the following day.

“We again told the prime minister that the only democratic outcome could be the text’s withdrawal,” Cyril Chabanier, who heads the CFTC union, told reporters. “The prime minister replied that she wished to maintain the text, a grave decision.” “We decided to put an end to this useless meeting,” the leader of the CGT union, Sophie Binet, added. “The prime minister has chosen to send us back to the streets.” Borne passed the text in question last month, invoking special constitutional powers to enact the pension reform legislation without a parliamentary vote. Raising the retirement age from 62 to 64 has long been a project of President Emmanuel Macron, who described the move as a “just and responsible” way to keep France’s social security system afloat.

The bill’s passage triggered an immediate wave of demonstrations and riots, with the largest protest drawing more than a million people into the streets across the country. Marches in Paris and some other cities turned violent, with black-clad rioters setting fires, smashing storefronts, and hurling rocks at police. The union chiefs called for similar turnout on Thursday. “We have to continue mobilizing until the end, until the government understands there is no way out other than withdrawing this reform,” Binet told the AFP news agency. “We can’t move on to anything else until this reform is repealed.” The bill is currently being examined by France’s Constitutional Council, which will issue a verdict on its legality next week. While the council can strike down or amend parts of the text, it rarely tosses entire bills.

Read more …

Ha ha ha. I offer to store your Russian gas …..

• Ukraine Offers One Third Of Its Gas Storage To Europe For Next Winter (TASS)

Ukraine offered up to 10 billion cubic meters of its gas storage facilities to European countries, the Brussels-based Euractive portal reported on Wednesday, citing Alexey Chernyshev, Chairman of the Board of Naftogaz of Ukraine. “We want to offer our storages to Europeans <…>. “Right now, we are able to provide up to 10 bcm of storage,” Chernyshov said as quoted by the publication. According to the portal, he made such an offer during a discussion between representatives of Ukraine and the EU on the results of the first heating season in Europe without full-fledged supplies of Russian gas.


Chernyshev also said that Ukraine has the largest gas storage facilities in Europe, with a total volume of about 31 billion cubic meters. This, according to him, is more than enough for domestic consumption. “I can guarantee that I can rent this empty space to European countries that can store gas in Ukraine. And when they need it, they can get it back to Europe,” said the head of the company.

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“The Saudis are only doing what they need to do, and the White House has no say in the matter..”

• Saudis Aren’t Afraid Of US Anymore (Bhadrakumar)

All that the Western leaders can complain about is that the OPEC+ cut in oil output has come at an inappropriate time. But the woes of Western economies cannot be laid at the door of OPEC+ as there are inherent problems which are now coming to the surface. For instance, the large scale protests in France against pension reform or the widespread strikes in Britain for higher wages show that there are deep structural problems in these economies, and the governments seem helpless in tackling them. In geopolitical terms, the OPEC+ move came after a meeting between Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak and Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman in Riyadh on March 16 that focused on oil market cooperation. Therefore, it is widely seen as the tightening of the bond between Russia and Saudi Arabia.

In fact, in May, as the largest members of OPEC join Russia in its unilateral reduction, the balance of quotas and the ratio of market shares between and amongst the participants in the OPEC + deal will return to the level set when it was concluded in April 2020. The big question is, how Moscow might profit from the OPEC+ decision. The rise in crude oil prices particularly benefits Russia. Simply put, the production cuts will tighten up the oil market and thus help Russia to secure better prices for the crude oil it sells. Second, the new cuts also confirm that Russia is still an integral and important part of the group of oil producing countries, despite the western attempts to isolate it.

Third, the consequences of Sunday’s decision are all the greater because, unlike the previous cuts by the OPEC+ group at the height of the pandemic or last October, today, the momentum for global oil demand is up, not down — what with a strong recovery by China expected. That is to say, the surprise OPEC+ reduction further consolidates the Saudi-Russian energy alliance, by aligning their production levels, thus placing them on equal footing. It is a slap in the face for Washington. Make no mistake, this is another signal regarding a new era where the Saudis are not afraid of the US anymore, as the OPEC “leverage” is on Riyadh’s side. The Saudis are only doing what they need to do, and the White House has no say in the matter. Clearly, a recasting of the regional and global dynamics that has been set in motion lately is gathering momentum. The future of petrodollar seems increasingly uncertain.

Read more …

“If the New York bench retains any integrity, this case will be thrown out as legally improper..”

• The Trump Case is a Test For the President And The Legal System (Turley)

For months, many have raised objections to the effort of Manhattan District Attorney to use a flawed legal theory to essentially litigate a federal election violation that the Justice Department opted not to charge. This bootstrap theory has been widely criticized, but many in the media sought to cut off that debate by suggesting that Bragg might be basing his prosecution on some unknown crime. Last week, Michael Cohen’s attorney Lanny Davis went as far to “warn all the pundits and everyone speculating…that there are lots of facts, lots of documents, lots of evidence of multiple crimes.” We now have the indictment, and it is basically what many of us anticipated. It is a series of stacked counts of falsifying business records for the purpose of influencing the election.

The indictment seems to address the lack of legal precedent with a lack of specificity on the underlying “secondary” felony. Bragg has done nothing more than replicated the same flawed theory dozens of times. This is where math and the law meet. If you multiply any number by zero, it is still zero. If the New York bench retains any integrity, this case will be thrown out as legally improper with an admonition to Bragg and his office for politicizing the criminal justice process. That, however, may be asking a lot of state judges who are elected on both the trial and appellate levels. They also may prove to be lawyers on the Wilde side.

The cost, however, to the legal system will be immense. In a single indictment, Alvin Bragg bulldozed any high ground that the Democrats had after January 6th. He has fulfilled the narrative of the Trump campaign by supplying a raw and undeniable example of the politicization of the legal system. What is most shocking is that this attack on the rule of law was met with the rapturous applause of many, including lawyers and legal pundits. They not only will ignore the affront to the integrity of our legal system, but celebrate its demise. Bragg himself threw a flag on the effort to indict Trump being pushed by a lawyer brought in as a special assistant district attorney for that purpose. Mark F. Pomerantz and his colleague Carey R. Dunne resigned — and their resignation letter was then leaked to an eager media.

Pomerantz then took a step that floored many of us: he wrote a tell-all book based on the still ongoing investigation. However, Pomerantz admits that career prosecutors balked at his radical proposals to find a crime — any crime — to nail Trump. That included an entirely bonkers money laundering charge against Trump where he would be the victim of an extortion effort. In his book, Pomerantz admits that “many of the lawyers were relentlessly negative.” Some prosecutors were clearly so upset by his efforts that they “defected” from the team. He also admitted that Bragg told him “that the consensus among the group of prosecutors with whom he had been speaking was not to go forward.”

Read more …

“..this case against the former American leader may ferment a further political crisis with dangerous consequences for the whole country..”

• Trump Case Shows Divide Among US Elites, Political Crisis Near – Expert (TASS)

The legal proceedings against former US President Donald Trump are a testament to the rift in the US establishment and this case against the former American leader may ferment a further political crisis with dangerous consequences for the whole country, the board chairman of the Foundation for the Development and Support of the Valdai discussion club, Andrey Bystritsky, told TASS on Wednesday. The expert drew attention to yesterday’s reports about Trump’s two-hour arrest in the United States and the charges brought against him on 34 counts of falsifying the Trump Organization’s financial statements.

“This is a really big event and a very dangerous one for the United States, because it signals a deep split within the establishment and growing friction therein,” he stressed. Notably, the campaign against Trump gained momentum after the former president publicly expressed his intention to run for the US presidency again in 2024. The analyst called this a “big challenge” and did not rule out that the legal proceedings against Trump would ferment a deep political crisis. “This crisis didn’t start yesterday. In all likelihood, it will grow deeper [against the backdrop of the Trump case]. Things will get dicey,” the expert concluded.

On Tuesday, Trump was charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying the business records of the Trump Organization to bury allegations of extramarital affairs with porn actress Stormy Daniels that arose during his first White House campaign in 2016. The falsification of financial statements as such does not carry a prison sentence, but it becomes an aggravating circumstance, if the forgery was committed to cover up another crime. According to the prosecution, Trump tried to cover up certain offenses committed during the 2016 campaign. This is the first case ever of criminal charges brought against a former US president. Trump was kept in custody for about two hours under US procedural law. After his release he flew from New York to Florida.

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“This could be the crisis where the panic moves from the banks to the dollar itself…”

“What’s going on is a crisis caused by a shortage of Treasury bill collateral to support derivatives positions and shrinking balance sheets as a consequence of the collateral shortage.”

• Why the Panic Is Just Beginning (Rickards)

[..] the 2008 crisis reached the acute stage on September 15, 2008, with the bankruptcy filing of Lehman Brothers. But that crisis began in the spring of 2007 when HSBC surprised markets with an announcement that mortgage losses had exceeded expectations. It then continued through the summer of 2007 with the failures of two Bear Steans high-yield mortgage funds, and the closure of a Société Générale money market fund. The panic then caused the failures of Bear Stearns (March 2008), Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (June 2008), and other institutions before reaching Lehman Brothers. For that matter, the panic continued after Lehman to include AIG, General Electric, the commercial paper market, and General Motors before finally subsiding on March 9, 2009.


Starting with the HSBC announcement, the subprime mortgage panic and domino effects lasted twenty-four months from March 2007 to March 2009. Averaging our two examples (1998, 2008) the average duration of these financial crises is about twenty months. This new crisis is one-month old. It could have a long way to run. On the other hand, this crisis could reach the acute stage faster. That’s because of technology that makes a bank run move at the speed of light. With an iPhone you can initiate a $1 billion wire transfer from a failing bank while you’re waiting in line at McDonald’s. No need to line up around the block in the rain waiting your turn. In addition, the regulatory response is faster because they’ve seen this movie before. That begs the question of whether regulators are out of bullets because they’ve already guaranteed almost everything so they don’t have more rabbits to pull out of the hat.

This could be the crisis where the panic moves from the banks to the dollar itself. If savers lose confidence in the Fed (we’re almost there) not only will the banks collapse, but the dollar will collapse also. At that point, the only solution is gold bullion. [..] Further evidence comes from the fact that no sooner was the Credit Suisse shotgun wedding completed than investors aimed their sights at Deutsche Bank, another perennial weak link in the chain. Who’s next? Barclays? Santander? We don’t know. Neither do regulators or investors. But we do know more failures are coming. By the way, this is not really a banking crisis even though it plays out in the form of bank failures. What’s going on is a crisis caused by a shortage of Treasury bill collateral to support derivatives positions and shrinking balance sheets as a consequence of the collateral shortage.


Why doesn’t the Treasury just issue, say, $2 trillion of new T-bills and let the primary dealers and Fed underwrite them with as much printed money as needed? One reason is that neither Jay Powell nor Janet Yellen understands what we just described. The other reason is that we’re up against the X-Date when the Treasury runs out of cash and can’t borrow more because of the debt ceiling. Is Congress ready to raise the debt ceiling? Nope. It’s the usual Democrat versus Republican game of chicken with no resolution in sight. So, we go from bank runs to a Treasury bill shortage to a debt ceiling standoff in no time. Do regulators and financial journalists understand this? No, they don’t know how to connect the dots. But you get it.

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36,000 jobs lost?!

• Swiss Banks Faced Risk Of ‘Full-scale’ Deposit Run – Regulator (RT)

The takeover of the troubled Credit Suisse by rival banking giant UBS has allowed Switzerland’s economy to avoid major problems, including deposit runs at other banks, national regulator FINMA claimed on Wednesday. FINMA and the Swiss central bank brokered the historic takeover for 3 billion Swiss francs ($3.3 billion) in a deal announced last month. As part of the transaction, the regulator ordered Credit Suisse to write down to zero some 16 billion Swiss francs ($17.6 billion) of its Additional Tier 1 (AT1) bonds – widely regarded as higher risk investments – with the aim of bolstering the bank’s capital and resolving its liquidity problems. According to FINMA CEO Urban Angehrn, the bankruptcy plan was “de-prioritized early on due to its high tangible and intangible costs.”

The chief executive pointed out that insolvency would have left the functional parts of Credit Suisse in operation as a Swiss-only bank, but one with a “damaged reputation.” A temporary takeover by the Swiss government would reportedly have exposed taxpayers to the risk of losses. “The parent bank Credit Suisse AG would have gone under – a Swiss bank with total assets of over 350 billion Swiss francs ($387 billion) and ongoing business also running into many billions,” Angehrn stated. “It is not difficult to imagine the disastrous impact the bankruptcy of a bank and wealth manager as large as Credit Suisse AG would have had on Switzerland’s financial center and private banking industry,” he explained. “Many other Swiss banks would probably have faced a run on deposits, as Credit Suisse itself did in the fourth quarter of 2022.”

The FINMA CEO went on to claim that “the damage to the Swiss economy, financial center and Switzerland’s reputation would have been enormous, with unquantifiable effects on tax revenues and jobs.” He also argued that the merger plan was ultimately favored both to stabilize Credit Suisse and to prevent a domino effect on the global banking sector. “The current fragile state of the financial markets due to the shift to monetary tightening in 2022, the uncertain economic outlook, the crisis at certain banks in the US and the whole geopolitical backdrop were also relevant to our decision,” Angehrn maintained. “There was a high probability that the resolution of a global systemically important bank would have led to contagion effects and jeopardized financial stability in Switzerland and globally.”

The US banking crisis exacerbated the troubles of Credit Suisse, which had been already battling a string of scandals, legal issues, and customer outflows. In addition, its biggest investor, Saudi National Bank, announced in March that it would not be able to provide financial assistance due to regulatory and statutory limits. Credit Suisse reported a 2022 net loss of 7.3 billion francs (nearly $8 billion) and warned that it would incur another “substantial” loss in 2023 before returning to profitability in 2024.

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If you claim stuff like this, you better be on very solid ground (I don’t think they are):

“..someone who’s had 4 or 5 shots and is 30 years old today can now expect to live to 55 at the oldest.”

• Fully Vaxxed Lose 25 Years of Life Expectancy (Slay)

Those who have been fully vaccinated for COVID-19 with mRNA shots will lose 25 years of their life expectancy, a bombshell new study has revealed. Researchers analyzed government data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Cleveland Clinic Data, and insurance company risk assessment data. The analysis uncovered a disturbing trend showing life spans plummetting in those who had multiple doses of the shots. The latest Cleveland Clinic Data and the latest US data were analyzed by Josh Stirling, founder of Insurance Collaboration to Save Livess and former #1 ranked Insurance Analyst. Stirling’s study shows an incredibly disturbing trend. The damage to health caused by each vaccine dose does not lessen over time as it appears to continue indefinitely.

In fact, CDC All-Cause Mortality data shows that each vaccine dose increased mortality by 7% in the year 2022 compared to the mortality in 2021. Those who have had 5 doses were 35% more likely to die in 2022 than they were in 2021. If you have had one dose then you were 7% more likely to die in 2022 than you were in 2021. If you are unvaxxed then you were no more likely to die in 2022 than you were in 2021. The data shows that every year, excess deaths are soaring dramatically as all forms of mortality accelerate, despite the level of injections people take going down. The issue is not isolated to the United States, however, and is impacting nations all around the world. Recent government data out of Australia shows that the excess deaths in 2022 were 5162% higher than in previous years.

A year ago, doubly vaccinated Australians were 10.72x more likely to catch Omicron than the unvaxxed. Now they are 20 times more likely and the triply or more vaxxed are 35x more likely, as the latest NSW Health stats show. According to the study based on government data out of Cleveland, the average age of a man is around 80 years if he’s unvaxxed. Yet, the rate of vaxxed deaths is growing in comparison to unvaxxed. The study found that someone who’s had 4 or 5 shots and is 30 years old today can now expect to live to 55 at the oldest.

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125,000 years
https://twitter.com/i/status/1643534912501284864

 

 


Distortion in the Mercator map

 

 

These two snails live in different oceans, but their shell coils are identically inverted . Thatcheria mirabilis and Architectonica perspectiva fit together because their coils follow math rule known as Raup’s model

 

 

Heroine

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle February 4 2023

Feb 042023
 
 February 4, 2023  Posted by at 9:45 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  66 Responses »


Henri Matisse Olive trees at Collioure 1906

 

• Building A New World Order Is Now An Existential Issue For Russia (Trenin)
• US-China War By 2025: A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy? (Fomenko)
• Pentagon Allows Ukraine To Fire Long-range Missiles At Will (RT)
• Russia Responds To Latest US ‘Escalation’ (RT)
• From Imperial Failures to Imperial Excuses (Batiushka)
• UK MIlitary Could Run Out Of Ammo In Single Afternoon – Ex-commander (RT)
• Serbia Names ‘Greatest’ Mistake By West (RT)
• RAND Gets It, Sort Of (Helmholtz Smith)
• The Arsenal of Democracy Isn’t (Schryver)
• Sanctions On Russian Oil Not Working – Analysts (RT)
• Lose-Lose (Jim Kunstler)
• Republicans to Force Nancy Pelosi to Testify About Jan 6 (TP)
• Musk Wins Lawsuit Over ‘Funding Secured’ Tweet (ZH)
• Thai Princess Coma Mystery – World Expert Says It’s A Covid Jab Injury (DTNZ)
• Biden Announces U.S. Surrender To Chinese Balloon (BBee)

 

 

 

 

OH SH*T, HERE WE GO (MacGregor)

 

 

 

 

What Becomes of NATO After The Loss In Ukraine

 

 

 

 

Trump Ukraine

 

 

 

 

“..a defeat – if it is hypothetically possible – could provoke a destabilization of the country, accompanied by the disintegration of Russian statehood.”

• Building A New World Order Is Now An Existential Issue For Russia (Trenin)

Let us begin by assessing the current situation. One effect of the conflict has already been a fundamental change in the external environment in which Russia finds itself. Its political relations with the collective West, and its allies, have become openly hostile and the armed conflict in Ukraine is a proxy war by the West against Russia. Economic relations with this part of the world have been permanently undermined and are shrinking like Mars bars. Cultural, scientific, sporting and humanitarian ties have been severely curtailed, the information war has reached maximum intensity, and the Iron Curtain in Europe has been rebuilt – this time by the West. However, Russia is not completely isolated. It maintains and develops partnerships in many areas with the world’s new centers of power, and other countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

This part of the world community includes most of the world’s states, where the majority of the human population lives and where more than half of the global economy is concentrated. It can rightly be called a world majority with the clear understanding, of course, that this majority is not a bloc and that its members are not allies of Russia. They are guided primarily by national interests and are deeply integrated into the global economy and the Western-centric institutions that serve it, which significantly limits interaction with Moscow. The dramatic shift in the external cycle has led to profound changes within Russia. The old model of mainly exporting raw materials and importing technology no longer works. The political system, which was built on liberal American-French models and then adapted more or less successfully – in substance, not in form – to domestic traditions, is obviously in need of a profound overhaul.

The quasi-ideology of pragmatism and the cult of money, which dominated the country after the collapse of the USSR, proved to be flawed and harmful. In short, the end of the historical orientation towards integration with the Western world logically requires Russia to reorient itself. But what does this mean? To which “self”? Soviet, tsarist or otherwise? A prerequisite for Russia’s long-term strategy is victory in the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. The most important criterion for such a victory is a state that is guaranteed not to lead to a renewed war after some time. On the contrary, a defeat – if it is hypothetically possible – could provoke a destabilization of the country, accompanied by the disintegration of Russian statehood. The stakes for Russia in the current conflict are therefore existential and fundamentally higher than those of the US and its allies. This in itself is a factor working in Russia’s favor, but it certainly does not guarantee its success.

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“..It also sees the competition catching up, however, and is ready to use all means necessary, and to take massive risks, to prevent the rise of rival powers. ”

• US-China War By 2025: A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy? (Fomenko)

American Four-Star General Mike Minihan, head of the US Air Force Air Mobility Command (AMC) believes the US and China will go to war by 2025. “I hope I am wrong. My gut tells me we will fight in 2025,” Minihan reportedly wrote in a memo to his officers, obtained by media outlets. The message instructs AMC personnel to train and get their affairs in order so that they are “legally ready and prepared.” This prediction is the most direct and blunt yet from an American official on the prospect of a potential conflict between the US and China, besides President Joe Biden’s indications that the US would intervene on the side of Taiwan if China invaded.

Of course, Minihan is not a policymaker, and the memo is not an official statement of US military policy towards China. But the influence of the US military and by extension, the military-industrial complex, on US foreign policymaking and on the mood in Washington in general, should not be underestimated. The reality is, especially as seen in Ukraine, that the risk of a major-power conflict is arguably at the highest it has ever been since the end of World War II or the height of the Cold War. That is because the US sees itself as a rightful and permanent global hegemon. It also sees the competition catching up, however, and is ready to use all means necessary, and to take massive risks, to prevent the rise of rival powers. As such, the US and China risk falling into the so-called, “Thucydides Trap,” which is described as “an apparent tendency towards war when an emerging power threatens to displace an existing great power as a regional or international hegemon”.

The current distribution of power in the world is described as “emerging multipolarity”. Following three decades of American unipolarity, when the US ruled unchallenged, a number of emerging powers are changing the international order. Multipolarity differs from “bipolarity,” where two powers compete for hegemony, the best known example being the US and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. While bipolarity brings a form of stability, as the military capabilities of both powers are evenly matched and the stakes of a potential conflict are extremely high, history shows multipolarity typically brings instability as it creates an insecure, unpredictable, and competitive international environment. The world of 1914, where a theatre of competing European powers scrambled for international dominance, ultimately combusted into the First World War. As competing world powers expanded their imperialist ambitions, they sought to contain others by forming alliances and starting arms races.

Sounds familiar? It should. Today’s world has some disturbing parallels. The US – an insecure hegemon whose relative power is diminishing as other world powers emerge – is desperately seeking to degrade, undermine and contain its rivals by triggering arms races and expanding alliance systems. Already, the focus on expanding NATO has provoked the conflict in Ukraine, but worse still, the Biden administration is actively seeking to expand that model to East Asia against China, in the form of blocs such as the Quad and AUKUS.

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“..Moscow will “push back” the Ukrainian troops to a range at which they will not be a threat.”

• Pentagon Allows Ukraine To Fire Long-range Missiles At Will (RT)

It is up to the government in Kiev to decide how to use the new rockets for the US-supplied HIMARS launchers, the Pentagon said on Friday, confirming that the latest batch of munitions the American taxpayers are funding will include Ground Launched Small Diameter Bombs (GLSDB).The Boeing-manufactured munitions consist of a rocket motor mated with an airplane bomb, with an estimated range of up to 150 kilometers. While Friday’s announcement listed “additional ammunition” for the HIMARS and “precision-guided rockets,” Brigadier-General Patrick Ryder told reporters that this indeed included the GLSDB, confirming the information leaked to Reuters earlier this week. Ryder also confirmed that the US won’t stand in the way of Ukrainians using the missiles to strike deep inside Russia.

“When it comes to Ukrainian plans on operations, clearly that is their decision. They are in the lead for those,” he said on Friday. “So, I’m not going to talk about or speculate about potential future operations, but again, all along, we’ve been working with them to provide them with capabilities that will enable them to be effective on the battlefield.” The GLDSB are produced by Boeing in cooperation with Swedish Saab AB, and combine the GBU-39 small-diameter bomb with the M26 rocket motor. It was unclear how many of the munitions the Pentagon intended to send, or whether they would come from the US military stockpile or need to be freshly produced. Reuters claimed to have seen a Boeing document saying the first deliveries could be “as early as spring 2023.”

Meanwhile, Bloomberg cited unnamed officials who said the timeline could be as long as nine months, depending on when the US Air Force issues the contract. Bloomberg also reported the GLSDB order would account for $200 million of the $1.75 billion in the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative funding, referring to contracts for weapons and ammunition not coming out of the Pentagon stockpile. Whenever the missiles actually arrive, Russia has already hinted at how it will respond. On Wednesday, President Vladimir Putin tasked the military with “eliminating any possibility” of Ukrainian artillery strikes on Russian territory. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview on Thursday that Moscow will “push back” the Ukrainian troops to a range at which they will not be a threat. “The longer range the weapons supplied to the Kiev regime have, the further the troops will need to be moved,” Lavrov said.

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“the longer range the weapons supplied to the Kiev regime have, the further the troops will need to be moved.”

• Russia Responds To Latest US ‘Escalation’ (RT)

The decision to supply Ukraine with longer-range missiles marks a “deliberate escalation” by the United States, Russia’s ambassador to Washington has said, warning that Moscow would not tolerate strikes on Russian cities. In a statement on Friday evening, Ambassador Anatoly Antonov commented on the latest round of US military aid approved for Ukraine earlier in the day, which is set to include Ground Launched Small Diameter Bombs (GLSDB) – munitions with an operational range of 93 miles (150 kilometers). “Washington sees no boundaries in seeking to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia. The transfer of increasingly powerful weapons to the Kiev regime is a deliberate escalation of the conflict by the United States,” he said, adding “Any attempt to harm the Russian Federation is doomed to failure. The sooner the United States realizes this, the sooner the current conflict will end.”

Though the Pentagon did not mention the GLSDB by name in announcing the weapons transfer, Brigadier-General Patrick Ryder later confirmed that it would be included in the next round of aid, also noting that US officials would not stop Kiev from using the missiles to strike inside Russia. Fired from the US-supplied HIMARS missile launcher, the GLSDB is among the longest-range weapons authorized for Kiev to date, and could theoretically reach targets deep within Russian territory. Antonov went on to say the United States is “de facto inciting its proteges to attack Russian regions,” arguing that Moscow makes no distinction between newer territories which voted to join the Russian Federation last year and other Russian lands.

“For us there is no difference when we talk about a possible attack by Kiev criminals on the Zaporozhye or Bryansk regions, the Crimea or the Smolensk region,” he continued. Though the new weapons could take up to nine months to reach the Ukrainian battlefield, Russia has already suggested how it might react, with President Vladimir Putin ordering the military to eliminate “any possibility” of Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory earlier this week. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, meanwhile, said Russian forces would repel Ukrainian soldiers to a distance from which they would not pose a threat, declaring: “the longer range the weapons supplied to the Kiev regime have, the further the troops will need to be moved.”

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“..Only through such a crushing defeat for Western hubris can further crazy adventures, including nuclear ones, be avoided.”

• From Imperial Failures to Imperial Excuses (Batiushka)

Western support for the Ukraine, the most corrupt country in Europe, has done nothing for America’s authority. It had already been undermined by war crimes, water-boarding, economic decline, a drugs epidemic, mass shootings, a trashed health system for 40 million in poverty and military debacles from Vietnam to Afghanistan. The ‘regime changes’, assassinations, electoral frauds, black propaganda (also called PR), massacres, torture in global black sites, proxy wars and military interventions carried out by the United States since 1945 have resulted in over 20 million dead and planetary revulsion for U.S. imperialism. ‘Yanks go home’. Blood lies on the US. Did they really expect to get away with this?

The conflict in the Ukraine is effectively World War III, or if you prefer, World War I, Part III. A proxy hot war between Washington and Moscow. Yes, the military phase is local, having started between Russia and the Ukraine in 2014. But the repercussions for Russia are enormous. They mark the end of a 300-year period when Russia was enamoured with the West. Now Western deceit means that Russians have lost their illusions and naivety for ever. Now Russia will fight on until the Armed Forces of Ukraine and all those who took up arms and have been fighting Russians for almost nine years are no longer a threat to anyone. The Kiev Army will be routed and Russia will return to its roots of over 300 years ago.

However, the political and economic repercussions for the Western world, held on a tight leash by its feudal US owner, are even more enormous: the end of the rule of the dollar. True, there are those who predict a second military phase between Iran and the US colony of Israel. And a third could be between China and the US, the pretext being the Chinese Ukraine, Taiwan. But nothing is certain. After the coming Russian victory in the Ukraine, all could still be averted, for that victory will be sobering for the Western world. This indeed is the last hope, that defeat here will at last bring the Western world back to its senses and reality. Only through such a crushing defeat for Western hubris can further crazy adventures, including nuclear ones, be avoided.

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“..British armed forces “are smaller and less ready to fight than at any time in living memory.”

• UK MIlitary Could Run Out Of Ammo In Single Afternoon – Ex-commander (RT)

The UK could deplete its ammunition stocks in mere hours should it be drawn into large-scale fighting, a former British general warned on Thursday. This and other issues make the UK military unfit to be regarded as a “top tier” NATO member, he said. Retired General Richard Barrons, who formerly headed the UK’s Joint Forces Command, sounded the alarm in an op-ed published by The Sun in which he said the fighting force has been “hollowed out by spending cuts.” Barrons claimed that the British armed forces “are smaller and less ready to fight than at any time in living memory.” He also warned that the UK Army is on course to slip below 76,000 troops. However, even these service members often do not receive inadequate training, Barrons noted.

British tanks, armored vehicles, and artillery pieces mostly date to the previous century, while “years of cuts to ammunition production mean that, for some types of key weapons, the army would run out in a busy afternoon,” the general said. Barrons added that the Royal Navy and Air Force are “in better shape” and boast some “outstanding modern equipment,” but cautioned that without experienced personnel, ammunition, and spare parts they might turn out to be just a “glittering shop window” without much to show for it on the actual battlefield. The former commander said the UK should focus on Europe, arguing that the “tilt to Asia can wait.” He urged London to invest in modern capabilities, including drones, missiles, and cyber and electronic warfare capabilities.

Britain should also double its reserves to 60,000 troops, he said. Regarding Russia, Barrons estimated that to be able to handle a “surprise attack,” the British Army will need to spend “£3 billion ($3.67 billion) this year, and every year for the next ten years.” British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace admitted in the House of Commons on Monday that the military has been “hollowed out and underfunded.” His comments followed a Sky News report alleging that a top US general had told Wallace that British forces are “barely tier two” in terms of fighting capabilities.

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“..the West’s “biggest” political mistake because it effectively manages to “unite the Russians like never before.”

• Serbia Names ‘Greatest’ Mistake By West (RT)

The West’s recent announcement that it would be supplying Ukraine with main battle tanks marks a major miscalculation, Serbian president Aleksandar Vucic said on Friday. That’s as Moscow has threatened to burn any Western equipment that enters Ukraine and has vowed to retaliate “far beyond the scope of armored vehicles.” Vucic noted that the decision to supply Ukraine with tanks, especially with the “terrifying” German Leopard 2s, is the West’s “biggest” political mistake because it effectively manages to “unite the Russians like never before.” Last month, Germany and the US agreed to provide a number of heavy tanks to Kiev. Washington has promised between 30 and 50 of its M1 Abrams tanks, while Berlin pledged 14 Leopard 2A6s from the Bunderswehr’s own stocks.

An additional 51 of the same model and 88 of the older Leopard 1 model may also come from Rheinmetall as they get refurbished, Germany said. Berlin also gave the green light to countries that have expressed a desire to export their own Leopards to Ukraine. Those include Poland, Finland, Spain, Norway and the Netherlands. The UK and Canada have also said they would be sending their heavy equipment to Kiev. The decision has been heavily criticized by Russia, which has called it an “extremely dangerous” move that threatens to escalate the conflict in Ukraine. On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin likened the new threat of “German Leopard tanks with crosses on their hulls” to the Soviet Union’s struggle against Hitler’s forces and warned that Moscow’s response would not be limited to weapons.

Other countries have also voiced their concerns about the West’s move. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the delivery of NATO tanks to Ukraine was a “high-risk endeavor” that would fail to help end the conflict and only “line the pockets of gun barons.” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban also slammed Germany’s decision, noting that these Western countries are “drifting” towards becoming active participants in the conflict. Orban has insisted that instead of arming Kiev, the West should be pursuing “a ceasefire and peace talks” in Ukraine. Moscow has repeatedly objected to Western weapon deliveries to Ukraine, arguing that non-stop arms shipments only serve to prolong the conflict and risk direct confrontation with NATO. The Kremlin has also insisted that no amount of military aid will prevent Moscow from reaching its objectives and warned that the tanks would “burn like the rest of Western weapons” supplied to Kiev.

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“morally repugnant Russian invasion”, “international community”, “illegitimate and illegal”, “aggression”, “humanitarian reasons”, “international norms.”

• RAND Gets It, Sort Of (Helmholtz Smith)

A few years ago RAND put out a report Overextending and Unbalancing Russia. “This brief summarizes a report that comprehensively examines nonviolent, cost-imposing options that the United States and its allies could pursue across economic, political, and military areas to stress—overextend and unbalance— Russia’s economy and armed forces and the regime’s political standing at home and abroad.” One of the things recommended was exploiting Russia’s “greatest point of external vulnerability” by “providing lethal aid to Ukraine.” (Only someone as paranoid as Putin, of course, could see any hostility in this). Well, they did it and it’s time for a new RAND report – Avoiding a Long War.

To save you the bother of reading this trivial effort, I will summarize – they start with the usual posturing – “morally repugnant Russian invasion”, “international community”, “illegitimate and illegal”, “aggression”, “humanitarian reasons”, “international norms.” Then on to how Russia is losing – “Russia’s conventional capabilities have been decimated in Ukraine”, “the weakened state of Russia’s conventional military”, “It will take years, perhaps even decades, for the Russian military and economy to recover from the damage already incurred.” But, as you wade on, you begin to suspect that the authors aren’t as triumphant after all – perhaps victory is not quite so close “given the slowing pace of Ukraine’s counteroffensives in December 2022, restoring the pre-February 2022 line of control—let alone the pre-2014 territorial status quo—will take months and perhaps years to achieve” or even so certain “Continued conflict also leaves open the possibility that Russia will reverse Ukrainian battlefield gains made in fall 2022.”

The authors spend some space explaining why a long war is not to America’s advantage. So, RAND, they followed your advice but things aren’t going very well. Time to try and get out of it. “Since avoiding a long war is the highest priority after minimizing escalation risks, the United States should take steps that make an end to the conflict over the medium term more likely.”

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“..the US armaments industry is effectively a modestly scaled high-end boutique..”

• The Arsenal of Democracy Isn’t (Schryver)

You see, for all its massive plunder of the public purse, the US armaments industry is effectively a modestly scaled high-end boutique. And there is simply no way this domestic US industry can expeditiously expand its production. It would literally take years – probably a full decade – for the US to expand its military production to a seriously potent industrial scale. For one, the labor pool for these industries is extremely finite and highly specialized. In the overwhelmingly financialized and service-oriented US economy, there is a shocking dearth of technical expertise of ALL kinds. It’s not simply a boomer cliché that “kids these days are innocent of almost any mechanical know-how”. If the US wants to staff new armaments factories any time soon, it will have to import the skilled labor from Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea.

Beyond that, the permitting of new factories, with the attendant bureaucratic delays, public hearings, environmental impact studies, and various special interest road-blocking … well, everyone knows how these things work now in America. It took five years to build the Hoover Dam in the early 20th century. It would take FIFTY here in the early 21st century – if it could be built at all. Those clamoring for the US to intervene in the Ukraine war in order to “teach those filthy Russians a lesson they’ll never forget” simply have no conception of the catastrophe that would ensue were their dreams to be fulfilled. If the Pentagon consented to such an undertaking, it could probably amass no more than 250,000 combat-capable troops in the theater, and to do so would entail the evacuation of virtually every major US military base on the planet (and most of the minor ones).

It could probably assemble an additional quarter million troops from the active reserves and National Guard units in the United States. That said, it is empirically impossible that 500,000 combat troops could be satisfactorily equipped for high-intensity conflict such as would be the scenario in a war between the US and Russia in eastern Europe. And even if they could be assembled and equipped, it would be an insufficient force to face over a million Russian troops, close to a third of which are already “battle-hardened” from almost a year of high-intensity combat in Ukraine. In anticipation of the casualties attendant to great power warfare, it would become necessary for the United States to reinstitute conscription almost immediately. If a strong anti-war movement had not already been incited by its previous actions, conscription in America would almost certainly induce a widespread political upheaval, with large and aggressive public protests cropping up in all the major cities of the nation.

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“oil friendships are greasy”

• Sanctions On Russian Oil Not Working – Analysts (RT)

Sanctions imposed by the West on Russian crude oil exports have so far “failed completely,” and new price caps could also prove ineffective, according to a CNBC report on Friday, citing analysts. The conclusions come as the European Union plans to ban imports of Russian refined petroleum products, including diesel and jet fuel, from February 5. The bloc had already prohibited imports of seaborne crude oil from Moscow in December. The EU, G7 countries, and Australia have also set a $60-per-barrel price cap, which blocks Western companies from providing insurance and other services to shippers of Russian oil unless the cargo is purchased at or below the set price. The price cap “was invented by bureaucrats with finance degrees. None of them really understand oil markets,” Paul Sankey, president and lead analyst at Sankey Research, told CNBC.

“It’s been a total bomb; it has failed completely,” he stressed. According to Sankey, Russian oil supplies have not been significantly interrupted and “they’ve sustained exports at high levels.” “I heard it from a great source that the Saudis have been asking around as to how come Russian oil is still flowing,” he said. “That brings the question of what will happen with the sanctions coming up on products, because it just doesn’t seem to work.” The founder of analytics firm Vanda Insights, Vandana Hari, also told the US broadcaster she was skeptical about the upcoming restrictions on Russian refined oil products, noting that “the crude price cap was pretty inconsequential.” “I think the refined product caps that they’re planning – about a $100 [per barrel] for diesel and clean products and perhaps around $45 for dirty fuels like fuel oil – are probably going to be immaterial as well,” the analyst explained.

According to Hari, Russian oil will find its way into the markets that are “still welcoming it” such as China and India. “China and India have benefited quite a big deal last year from heavily discounted Russian crude prices and the same’s going to happen to Russian refined products,” Hari predicted, adding that it could be more complicated for Moscow to find markets for such products. Paul Sankey also noted that “oil friendships are greasy” and there’s a lot of different ways to move Russian oil around the world, bypassing the price caps. Meanwhile, the EU has been struggling to agree on the price cap for Russian oil products, with some members reportedly claiming the proposed level is too generous for Moscow, and seeking a lower ceiling. The measures are expected to come into effect on February 5 after gaining the approval of all 27 EU member states.

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“..The USA has tossed its national identity on the garbage barge of “diversity, equity, and inclusion..”

• Lose-Lose (Jim Kunstler)

For those of you not paying attention the past thirty-odd years, Russia, incorporated as the Soviet Union, collapsed in 1991. The USSR was a bold experiment based on the peculiar and novel ill-effects of industrialism, especially gross economic inequality. Alas, the putative remedy for that, advanced by Karl Marx, was a despotic system of pretending that individual humans had no personal aspirations of their own. That business model could be reduced to the comic aphorism: We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us. It failed and the USSR gurgled down history’s drain. Russia reemerged from the dust, minus many of its Eurasian outlands. Remarkably little blood was shed in the process. Mr. Orlov’s book points to some very interesting set-ups that softened the landing. There was no private property in the USSR, so when it collapsed, nobody was evicted or foreclosed from where they lived.

Very few people had cars in the USSR, so the city centers were still intact and people could get around on buses, trams, and trains. The food system had been botched for decades by low-incentive collectivism, but the Russian people were used to planting gardens — even city dwellers, who had plots out-of-town — and it tided them over during the years of hardship before the country managed to reorganize. Compare that to America’s prospects. In an economic crisis, Americans will have their homes foreclosed out from under them, or will be subject to eviction from rentals. The USA has been tragically built-out on a suburban sprawl template that will be useless without cars and with little public transport. Cars, of course, are subject to repossession for non-payment of contracted loans. The American food system is based on manufactured microwavable cheese snacks, chicken nuggets, and frozen pizzas produced by giant companies.

These items can’t be grown in home gardens. Many Americans don’t know the first thing about growing their own food, or what to do with it after it’s harvested. There’s another difference between the fall of the USSR and the collapse underway in the USA. Underneath all the economic perversities of Soviet life, Russia still had a national identity and a coherent culture. The USA has tossed its national identity on the garbage barge of “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” which is actually just a hustle aimed at extracting what remains from the diminishing stock of productive activity and giving the plunder to a mob of “intersectional” complainers — e.g. the City of San Francisco’s preposterous new plan to award $5-million “reparation” payments to African-American denizens of the city, where slavery never existed.

As for culture, consider that the two biggest cultural producers in this land are the pornography and video game industries. The drug business might be a close third, but most of that action is off-the-books, so it’s hard to tell. So much for the so-called “arts.” Our political culture verges on totally degenerate, but that is too self-evident to belabor, and the generalized management failures of our polity are a big part of what’s bringing us down — most particularly the failure to hold anyone in power accountable for their blunders and turpitudes. This might change, at least a little bit, as the oppositional House of Representatives commences hearings on an array of disturbing matters. Meanwhile, be wary of claims in The New York Times and other propaganda organs that our Ukraine project is a coming up a big win, and that the racketeering operations of the Biden family are a right-wing conspiracy theory. These two pieces of the conundrum known as reality are blowing up in our country’s face. It will be hard not to notice.

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“… Nancy, we’ll get you, and we’ll fly you back from Italy once you’re the ambassador.”

• Republicans to Force Nancy Pelosi to Testify About Jan 6 (TP)

As the Biden Documents Scandal continues to build and the Chinese spy balloon over Montana dominates the headlines, some Republicans are still focused on holding Nancy Pelosi to account for the failures of security at the US Capitol on January 6th, failures to which they claim she is connected. One such Republican is Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), who said: “The reason there wasn’t a proper security presence on that day goes right to the speaker’s staff and the speaker’s office. As you go back and look at the communications, there’s this pattern that develops where the Sergeant of Arms is meeting with Pelosi’s staff. Many of those meetings, Republican staff wasn’t allowed to be there, but they had this pattern where everything had to run through her office, her staff, before the Sergeant of Arms could make a decision.”

Joining Rep. Jim Jordan was Rep. Troy Nehls, who said “And Nancy Pelosi. You do have questions you need to answer … Nancy, we’ll get you, and we’ll fly you back from Italy once you’re the ambassador.” The statements from Jordan and Nehls follow a late-December of 2022 report released by Republicans that blamed Pelosi for the security failures at the Capitol on that day, faulting her for creating “political pressures” that led to lackluster security and inadequate preparations. The New York Post, reporting on that report, said: “Leadership and law enforcement failures within the U.S. Capitol left the complex vulnerable on January 6, 2021,” says the report, which is based on a trove of texts and email messages, and testimony from Capitol Police leaders and rank-and-file officers.

House Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving, who answered to Pelosi as one of three voting members of the Capitol Police Board, “succumbed to political pressures from the Office of Speaker Pelosi and House Democrat leadership,” was “compromised by politics and did not adequately prepare for violence at the Capitol.” Pelosi and her staff “coordinated closely” with Irving on security plans for the Joint Session of Congress on Jan. 6, but Republicans were deliberately left out of “important discussions related to security.” And, in an apparent attempt to hide from Republicans the fact that they were being excluded from discussions, Irving asked a senior Democratic staffer to “act surprised” when he sent “key information about plans for the Joint Session on Jan. 6, 2021, to him and his Republican counterpart.”

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“..Musk testified that the “funding secured” tweet was “absolutely truthful..”

• Musk Wins Lawsuit Over ‘Funding Secured’ Tweet (ZH)

Having previously noted the absurdity of the trial, Elon Musk has defeated a shareholder lawsuit alleging that tweets claiming he had the “funding secured” to take Tesla private cost investors billions of dollars in losses. As The Wall Street Journal reports, the nine-person San Francisco-based jury said the investors who brought the class-action case failed to prove that Mr. Musk hurt them by tweeting about a possible deal. “The jury got it right,” Alex Spiro, a lawyer for Musk, said after the verdict. Musk testified that the “funding secured” tweet was “absolutely truthful,” touting what he described as an “unequivocal” commitment by Saudi Arabia even though he had nothing in writing. As Bloomberg reports, Musk gave jurors other reasons to believe him.

He said he felt compelled to reveal that he was considering taking Tesla private because earlier that day, the Financial Times reported that Saudi Arabia was building a sizable stake in Tesla. He testified he was afraid his going-private plans might also be leaked, and that he wanted to put all Tesla investors on equal-footing by broadcasting his plans on Twitter. Musk also said that if required, he could’ve divested his ownership stake in his closely held rocket-ship company, SpaceX, to fund the transaction. This case is unusual for having gone to trial. From 1997 to 2001, less than 0.2% of federal securities class-action cases, excluding those involving mergers or acquisitions, were tried to a verdict, according to Cornerstone Research.

Musk, who had taken the stand as a witness in the case, was present in court during closing arguments. As The FT reports, the “funding secured” tweet has already proven costly for Musk. He and Tesla each paid $20mn to settle legal action from the Securities and Exchange Commission. Musk also had to resign as the carmaker’s chair, although he kept his position as chief executive. However, Musk has criticized the SEC in the years since, saying he felt pressured to settle and suggesting that doing so made him appear guilty. This case, he said in a deposition, was an opportunity to “clear the record.” And now he has!

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“.. Pfizer BioNTech is going to have to pay back those billions to Thailand, with which Thailand will recompensate those peoples that have lost their existence…”

• Thai Princess Coma Mystery – World Expert Says It’s A Covid Jab Injury (DTNZ)

44 year old Princess Bajrakitiyabha of Thailand collapsed while out walking her dogs on 14 december last year. According to sources she had not felt well after receiving her 3rd booster. After her collapse she lost consciousness and remains in a coma. According to a report in The Independent, she is ‘on medical equipment supporting her heart, lungs and kidneys.’ Princess Bajrakitiyabha is the eldest child of current King Rama X. The law graduate is a senior diplomat in the Thai government. The Thai palace confirmed she had suffered a ‘heart issue’. But the explanation given by the authorities and a local university that it was caused by a bacterial infection has been called ‘ridiculous’ by medical expert Professor Sucharit Bhakdi.

Thai-born Bhakdi, a former professor of microbiology at the University of Mainz in Germany had a celebrated career in medical science as a world expert on the immune system and arterial disease, until mainstream narratives and ‘fact checkers’ labelled him a ‘conspiracy theorist’ for his strong opposition to the COVID ‘vaccines’. According to Bhakdi, who claims he and his contacts have been in direct contact with the Thai Royal Family over the matter, the princess’ collapse was an adverse reaction to the COVID jab. She was previously healthy with no known medical conditions. Speaking on the ‘neutralswiss‘ Rumble channel yesterday, Bhakdi said:

“This whole COVID-19 agenda is a fake… And I was able to lay out for them the proof that the COVID vaccinations were based on fraud… The EMA declared that safety pharmacological studies were never performed – never. And they were never deemed necessary. So now we have it. So, when I told the Thais this, you know guys, they jumped up. They jumped up in the room. And so they said to me ‘we will see to it that Thailand is the first country in the world that is going to declare this contract null… Which means that Pfizer BioNTech is going to have to pay back those billions to Thailand, with which Thailand will recompensate those peoples that have lost their existence…”

“‘One daughter of the present king Rama X collapsed and is in a coma… within 23 days after the third shot, 44 years old, never been seriously ill, collapsed and is now in a coma. The diagnosis that was given by the authorities and by the university is so ridiculous – she’s supposed to have a bacterial infection that will never do what she suffered from. And so we are determined, and the activists in Thailand who have been on this many many months now – great guys, also a professor from the University of Bangkok, he’s gotten in touch with the Royal Family, and we are sending information to the Royal Family to alert them to the fact that in all probability the princess is suffering as a victim of this jab, as so many people around the world have been suffering.’

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Whenever a story this crazy comes along, we suspect something’s hiding behind it.

• Biden Announces U.S. Surrender To Chinese Balloon (BBee)

In a surprise statement to the world from the White House Situation Room, President Biden has announced America’s unconditional surrender to the Chinese Spy Balloon. “Listen, folks, it’s over,” said Biden as a single tear ran down his face. “We’re outgunned here. There’s no hope that we can match the awesome power of this giant balloon.” Biden’s voice was drowned out by the dozens of weeping journalists gathered outside the room. “I urge you all to hug your loved ones and embrace your children, for the end is near. God help us all,” Biden finally said before signing off for the last time. At publishing time, Americans had been urged by the administration to start learning Mandarin.

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Sika deer
https://twitter.com/i/status/1621524781127573509

 

 

Water is life
https://twitter.com/i/status/1621438461151526912

 

 

Gallop croc
https://twitter.com/i/status/1621580255835181064

 

 

Dog doc
https://twitter.com/i/status/1621730772670349313

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle January 21 2023

Jan 212023
 
 January 21, 2023  Posted by at 9:45 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  58 Responses »


Edward Hopper Night in the park 1921

 

• Russo-Ukrainian War: The World Blood Pump (Big Serge)
• Russia ‘Fights To The End’ – Borrell (RT)
• Germany Says ‘Nein’ On Tanks At Allies’ Big Ramstein Meeting (ZH)
• Poland Could Send Leopard Tanks To Ukraine Without German Approval (G.)
• Pentagon Wants Kiev’s Backers To ‘Dig Deeper’ (RT)
• Elon Musk Warns Against ‘Relentless Escalation’ In Ukraine (RT)
• Top EU Official Comments On Sanctions ‘Debate’ With Kiev (RT)
• Moscow Outlines What West Can Do To Resolve Ukraine Crisis (RT)
• UK Finds Loophole To Buy Russian Oil – Media (RT)
• A Page Turns (Jim Kunstler)
• World Economic Fuck’em (QTR)
• Investigation Pulls Back Veil On Soros’ ‘Indoctrination’ Efforts (RT)
• I Have No Regrets: Biden Breaks Long Silence With Shattering Admission (Turley)
• Men Live Longer (Happier?) Lives Taking Viagra; New Study Finds (ZH)
• Medical Board Takes Action Against Misinformation Doc (MPT)

 

 

 

 

Tucker Biden is done

 

 

CNN turns on Biden
https://twitter.com/i/status/1616149123052208131

 

 

 

 

Dowd 23%
https://twitter.com/i/status/1616505902185517059

 

 

 

 

BARDA
https://twitter.com/i/status/1616609901156892673

 

 

Lavrov UN Charter
https://twitter.com/i/status/1616412193196474371

 

 

 

 

From yesterday: “United States advises Ukraine to withdraw its forces from Artemovsk (Bakhmut),” Agence France-Presse reports, citing a senior American official.

• Russo-Ukrainian War: The World Blood Pump (Big Serge)

At the present moment, the Ukrainians are not encircled, but the continued creep of Russian positions ever closer to the remaining highways is easily discernable. At the present moment, Russian forces have positions within two miles of all the remaining highways. Even more importantly, Russia now controls the high ground to both the north and south of Bakhmut (the city itself sits in a depression surrounded by hills) giving Russia fire control over much of the battle space. I am currently anticipating that Russia will clear the Bakhmut-Siversk defensive line by late March. Meanwhile, the denuding of Ukrainian forces on other axes raises the prospect of decisive Russian offensives elsewhere.

At the moment, the front roughly consists of four main axes (the plural of axis, not the bladed implement), with substantial agglomerations of Ukrainian troops. These consist, from north to south, of the Zaporozhia, Donetsk, Bakhmut, and Svatove Axis (see map below). The effort to reinforce the Bakhmut sector has noticeably diluted Ukranian strength on these other axes. On the Zaporozhia front, for example, there are potentially as few as five Ukrainian brigades on the line at the moment. At the moment, the majority of Russian combat power is uncommitted, and both western and Ukrainian sources are (belatedly) becoming increasingly alarmed about the prospect for a Russian offensive in the comin weeks. Currently, the entire Ukrainian position in the east is vulnerable because it is, in effect, an enormous salient, vulnerable to attack from three directions.

Two operational depth objectives in particular have the potential to shatter Ukrainian logistics and sustainment. These are, respectively, Izyum in the north and Pavlograd in the South. A Russian thrust down the west bank of the Oskil river towards Izyum would simultaneously threaten to cut off and destroy the Ukrainian grouping on the Svatove axis (S on the map) and sever the vital M03 highway from Kharkov. Reaching Pavlograd, on the other hand, would completely isolate the Ukrainian forces around Donetsk and sever much of Ukraine’s transit across the Dneiper.

The bird’s eye view of this conflict reveals a fascinating meta-structure to the war. In the above section, I argue for a view of the front structured around Russia progressively breaking through sequential Ukrainian defensive belts. I think that a similar sort of progressive narrative structure applies to the force generation aspect of this war, with Russia destroying a sequence of Ukrainian armies. Let me be a bit more concrete. While the Ukrainian military exists at least partially as a continuous institution, its combat power has been destroyed and rebuilt multiple times at this point through western assistance. Multiple phases – life cycles, if you will – can be identified:

In the opening months of the war, the extant Ukrainian army was mostly wiped out. The Russians destroyed much of Ukraine’s indigenous supplies of heavy weaponry and shattered many cadres at the core of Ukraine’s professional army. In the wake of this initial shattering, Ukrainian combat strength was shored up by transferring virtually all of the Soviet vintage weaponry in the stockpiles of former Warsaw Pact countries. This transferred Soviet vehicles and ammunition, compatible with existing Ukrainian capabilities, from countries like Poland and the Czech Republic, and was mostly complete by the end of spring, 2022. In early June, for example, western sources were admitting that Soviet stockpiles were drained.

With Warsaw Pact stockpiles exhausted, NATO began replacing destroyed Ukrainian capabilities with western equivalents in a process that began during the summer. Of particular note were howitzers like the American M777 and the French Caesar. Russia has essentially fought multiple iterations of the Ukrainian Army – destroying the pre-war force in the opening months, then fighting units that were refilled from Warsaw Pact stockpiles, and is now degrading a force which is largely reliant on western systems. This led to General Zaluzhny’s now-famous interview with the economist in which he asked for many hundreds of Main Battle Tanks, Infantry Fighting Vehicles, and artillery pieces. In effect, he asked for yet another army, as the Russians seem to keep destroying the ones he has.

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“It would be absurd to think that Russia has lost the war or that its military is incompetent..”

Ergo: Double down on Hitler and Napoleon’s errors.

• Russia ‘Fights To The End’ – Borrell (RT)

EU foreign policy commissioner Josep Borrell said on Friday that the West must keep sending weapons to Kiev, warning those who think Russia has lost or is doing poorly that Moscow has a history of winning long wars. “Russia is a great country, a great nation that is used to fighting to the end, almost losing and then recovering,” Borrell said in a speech in Madrid, bringing up the 1812 invasion by Napoleon Bonaparte’s French empire and the 1941 invasion by Adolf Hitler’s Germany as historical examples of this. “It would be absurd to think that Russia has lost the war or that its military is incompetent,” Borrell added. He claimed that so far Moscow “has been losing the war but it still has enormous strength and capacity to continue [fighting].” Because of this, he said, “now is the time to continue arming Ukraine with the necessary material and military means to wage the kind of war it has to wage.”

He described this as “not only a defensive war but one that allows it to take the initiative and break fronts and prevent Russia from launching a new, very powerful and bloody offensive in a few months.” Borrell’s invocation of Napoleon and Hitler was unusual, as Moscow has repeatedly compared the current efforts by the collective West with the two invasions, known as the Patriotic War and the Great Patriotic War, respectively. Napoleon led a multinational army recruited from all across French-dominated Europe and reached Moscow, but failed to compel Russia’s surrender. The war ended with Russian cavalry on the streets of Paris two years later. Hitler’s effort, also aided by numerous continental allies and vassals, fell just short of Moscow. The Axis armies were savaged at Stalingrad and turned back at Kursk, with Russian soldiers taking Berlin in 1945.

According to Russian estimates, the US and its allies funneled almost $100 billion worth of weapons, ammunition and supplies to the Ukrainian military in 2022. Despite this unprecedented effort, Borrell on Friday continued to insist the West was not a party to the conflict, and that the EU did everything it could to avoid it. Former leaders of Germany and France, however, publicly admitted that the European-mediated Minsk agreements had been a ploy to buy Ukraine time to prepare for war. The EU’s high commissioner for foreign affairs spoke at Madrid’s Teatro Real, where he was presented with the New Economy Forum 2022 Award. One of the presenters was Javier Solana, Borrell’s predecessor at the EU post and NATO’s secretary general in 1999, when the US-led bloc launched an unprovoked war against Yugoslavia.

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“..we have to be careful because we have a duty to look carefully and intensively at what might be the consequences for anybody in that conflict.”

• Germany Says ‘Nein’ On Tanks At Allies’ Big Ramstein Meeting (ZH)

Is that a definitive nein on tanks? New German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius in fresh statements has confirmed that defense leaders gathered for a much anticipated meeting in Ramstein failed to achieve consensus on tanks for Ukraine. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was present for the meeting which reportedly involved top military officials from some 50 nations, most of them NATO, who met to coordinate the path forward in arming Ukraine. There’s been intense, uneasy back-and-forth this week between Berlin and Washington on the question of supplying Western-manufactured heavy tanks to Kiev, namely the Leopard as well as M1 Abrams. Hawks among the alliance have seen Berlin as essentially standing in the way.

“Today, we can all not yet say when a decision will be made about Leopard and what this decision will look like,” German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said at the end of the Ramstein Air Base meeting. Amid accusations that Germany is waffling and thus weakening Western allies’ resolve, Pistorius continued, “We are not really hesitating we are just very carefully balancing all the pros and contra [cons] — we are not talking just about delivering anything to anybody, this is a new kind of measure we would choose, so we have to be careful because we have a duty to look carefully and intensively at what might be the consequences for anybody in that conflict.” While there was agreement to boost military aid to Ukraine among the allies gathered for the meeting, CNBC underscores that “Germany wavered on further EU tank deliveries despite mounting calls from Kyiv and fellow allies.”

The German defense minister continued, according to the remarks translated by CNBC: “I must say there is very clearly no unanimous opinion. The impression that has occasionally been made that there is a closed coalition and Germany stands in the way of this is wrong. There are many allies who say we share the opinion that I explained here today again, there are good reasons for the delivery and there are good reasons against it.” Going into the meeting it was widely reported days ago that Berlin has told European allies that it will authorize Leopard tanks only if Washington first leads the way with supply its own Abrams tanks. But the Biden administration has shut the door on these heavy, advanced tanks for the time being.

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Abrams tanks: “..three gallons to the mile with jet fuel..”

And then you have to supply that fuel. To battle theaters. And Abrams are prone to breaking down. Get real.

• Poland Could Send Leopard Tanks To Ukraine Without German Approval (G.)

The Polish prime minister has said his country would be willing to send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine without securing Germany’s approval if Berlin does not agree to their re-export at Friday’s meeting of western defence ministers at Ramstein airbase. Mateusz Morawiecki said in a radio interview on Thursday that “consent was of secondary importance” when it came to German-made tanks, because the key issue was to get military aid to Ukraine urgently. “We will either obtain this consent quickly, or we will do it ourselves,” Morawiecki added, heaping further pressure on Berlin to allow German made Leopard 2s to be sent to Ukraine in preparation for a spring offensive.

His comments came as the US Defense Department formally announced new military assistance for Ukraine valued at up to $2.5bn, including armoured vehicles and support for Ukraine’s air defence. The aid includes 59 Bradley fighting vehicles and 90 Stryker armoured personnel carriers, but not Abrams tanks. Poland, along with Finland, has said it wants to give 14 Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, which would normally require German approval, but it is one of a number of countries trying to force the pace at a time when Berlin is still negotiating. Arvydas Anusauskas, Lithuania’s defence minister, said others could follow suit at the Ramstein meeting on Friday. “Some of the countries will definitely send Leopard tanks to Ukraine, that is for sure,” he said.

Lloyd Austin, the US defence secretary, met his newly appointed German counterpart, Boris Pistorius, in Berlin on Thursday, but neither mentioned the Leopard standoff in brief commentsbefore their meeting. Previously, German officials signalled Berlin was willing to break the logjam if the US would also agree to send over some of its own Abrams tanks to Ukraine. But the US said on Wednesday it did not want to do that, because the Abrams, which has a jet turbine engine, is fuel inefficient and so requires complex logistics support. Colin Kahl, the US undersecretary of defence for policy, said: “The Abrams tank is a very complicated piece of equipment. It’s expensive, it’s hard to train on, it has a jet engine – I think it’s about three gallons to the mile with jet fuel. It is not the easiest system to maintain.”

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Maybe they can empty our bank accounts?!

• Pentagon Wants Kiev’s Backers To ‘Dig Deeper’ (RT)

Nations providing weapons to Ukraine need to double down on their effort because the country is facing a make-or-break moment, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said on Friday ahead of a key meeting of military donors in Germany. “We need to keep up our momentum and our resolve, and we need to dig even deeper,” the Pentagon chief said in his opening remarks before a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group at the US Ramstein air base. He described this as “a decisive moment for Ukraine and a decisive decade for the world.” Austin touted the latest military assistance package announced by the Pentagon this week as an example of Washington’s leadership. The $2.5 billion commitment boosted total US military aid to Ukraine since hostilities with Russia broke out last February to over $26.7 billion, the US official noted.

He praised a number of NATO partners, including Poland, Canada, Germany, France, for their lethal aid to Kiev and urged further arming of the Ukrainian forces. “The Ukrainian people are watching us. The Kremlin is watching us. And history is watching us,” Austin declared. Ukrainian Defense Minister Aleksey Reznikov will ask donors at the Ramstein meeting for more anti-aircraft systems, offensive weapons, including tanks, and “systematic ammo supplies,” his department said in a tweet. Whether or not Kiev will be given Western-made tanks has been a point of contention among NATO members. Poland and several other nations have said they were willing to provide German-made Leopard 2 main battle tanks from their fleets, pending Berlin’s consent. The German government has reportedly conditioned its permission on the US leading by example.

The Pentagon declined to include M1 Abrams tanks in its latest package to Ukraine, citing “sustainment issues.” The tank requires jet fuel to operate and is difficult to maintain, so it “just doesn’t make sense to provide that to the Ukrainians at this moment,” Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told journalists on Thursday. Moscow has accused the US and its allies of prolonging the conflict in Ukraine by forcing Kiev to eschew the pursuit of peace and also pumping it with weapons. It has pledged to achieve its security goals in the conflict regardless of how much support its adversary receives.

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“I am super pro Ukraine, but relentless escalation is very risky for Ukraine and the world.”

• Elon Musk Warns Against ‘Relentless Escalation’ In Ukraine (RT)

Billionaire Elon Musk urged caution on Friday following reports that the US is changing its stance on whether it should assist Ukraine in attacking Russia’s Crimean Peninsula. Earlier this week, the New York Times reported, citing sources, that Washington is starting to concede that Kiev needs to have the ability to strike deep into Russian territory, even if this entails the risk of escalation. US officials are said to be “discussing with their Ukrainian counterparts the use of American-supplied weapons, from HIMARS rocket systems to Bradley fighting vehicles, to possibly target … Crimea.” The peninsula overwhelmingly voted to join Russia in 2014 following the Maidan coup in Kiev. Musk responded to a Twitter user who posted a link to the Times article by saying: “I am super pro Ukraine, but relentless escalation is very risky for Ukraine and the world.”


This is not the first time the tycoon has weighed in on the Ukraine conflict. In October, Musk came up with a peace plan to end the hostilities between Moscow and Kiev. According to his proposal, Russia should “redo elections of annexed regions under UN supervision,” with Moscow withdrawing from these areas if this is what the people want. He was referring to the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, as well as Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions, which overwhelmingly voted to join Russia last year. However, the Twitter CEO also suggested that Crimea should remain part of Russia, sparking outrage in Kiev. Ukraine’s former ambassador to Berlin, Andrey Melnik, told him to “f**k off.” Later, Musk noted that Russia views Crimea as an integral part of its territory, and attempts to seize it by a foreign power could trigger a nuclear war. “If Russia is faced with the choice of losing Crimea or using battlefield nukes, they will choose the latter,” he wrote at the time.

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“Negotiations regarding further sanctions on Russia with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky are becoming increasingly complicated with each new round..”

• Top EU Official Comments On Sanctions ‘Debate’ With Kiev (RT)

Negotiations regarding further sanctions on Russia with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky are becoming increasingly complicated with each new round, European Council President Charles Michel said during a trip to Kiev on Thursday. The statement came after Zelensky urged the EU to impose even tighter restrictions on Moscow. “Each debate on sanctions is much more difficult than the previous one,” Michel told reporters, as quoted by Bloomberg. “We have good debates with President Zelensky, and I will brief my colleagues on what are the Ukrainian proposals and we will consult. I’m confident we will be able to strengthen the pressure on the Kremlin.” Michel added that the EU will adopt a tenth sanctions package on Moscow. “We have to see which additional sectors can be targeted in the future,” he said.

The EU imposed sweeping restrictions on Russia after Moscow launched its military operation in Ukraine in late February. Zelensky called on Brussels on Thursday to target Russia’s nuclear industry, including “all entities involved in the Russian missile program.” He also asked for a full ban on Russian energy exports. The bloc’s efforts to completely relinquish Russian oil and gas have been met with resistance from countries such as Hungary, whose economy is heavily dependent on Russian energy. Budapest has managed to gain several carve-outs that allow it to continue receiving supplies from Moscow. “Russian [energy] accounts for 85% of Hungary’s gas consumption and 65% of oil demand. This cannot be changed overnight,” Tamas Menczer, the state secretary for foreign affairs, explained last week.

The Hungarian government shared survey results this month indicating that “97% of Hungarians reject sanctions that cause serious damage.” It added that “the message is clear: the Brussels sanctions policy must be reviewed.” The Kremlin stated last month that the Russian economy has adapted to the sanctions and that it is impossible to deny that the restrictions are hurting the EU countries as well. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused the West on Wednesday of trying to use sanctions to incite “a revolution” in Russia and assert “the dominance of the US by all means.”

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“Germany, France and Ukraine were playing a swindle game with the Minsk agreements. Now is payback time..”

• Moscow Outlines What West Can Do To Resolve Ukraine Crisis (RT)

US-Russia relations are at their lowest point ever amid the crisis in Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday. As the conflict deteriorates, the only way to reverse it is for Western nations to acknowledge their mistakes and change their policies, he added. Despite initial hopes that under President Joe Biden the US would engage Russia diplomatically, the last two years “have been very bad for our bilateral relations,” the official told journalists. They are now “probably at their lowest point, historically” he added, and “there is no hope for improvement anytime soon.” The Ukraine hostilities – the focus of the confrontation between Russia and Western nations – are in “an upward spiral” according to Peskov.

“We can see a growing indirect, and sometimes direct involvement of NATO nations in this conflict,” he stated. The nations that back Kiev are acting under “a delusion that Ukraine has any chance to win on the battlefield,” he explained. Asked how the vicious circle could be broken, Peskov suggested that the US and its allies had to mentally turn the clock back to the end of 2021, “when Russia was suggesting a discussion of its concerns at the negotiations table” only to be dismissed. Western repentance for its “cynicism” was also in order, he added. “Germany, France and Ukraine were playing a swindle game with the Minsk agreements. Now is payback time,” he said, referring to the roadmap for Ukraine reconciliation, which the three nations signed with Russia in 2015.

Angela Merkel, Francois Hollande and Pyotr Poroshenko, the leaders at the time of Germany, France and Ukraine respectively, have since stated that the deal they negotiated with Russia was meant to give Kiev time to rebuild its military. Moscow considers these admissions to be evidence that the negotiations were conducted in bad faith and that the Ukrainian government and its backers had always intended for the Minsk agreements to fail and for the Donbass standoff to be resolved by military means. Russia claimed that its military campaign in Ukraine launched last February preempted an offensive planned by Kiev with NATO’s help. Ukraine, Germany, and France “lied to the people of Donbass, as they had a terrible fate planned for them, which Russia prevented,” Peskov explained.

Read more …

I see the name Singapore pop up in these schemes, not just India.

• UK Finds Loophole To Buy Russian Oil – Media (RT)

British consumers are indirectly buying Russian oil and petroleum products despite a Western embargo on crude exports from the sanctioned country, OilPrice reported on Monday, suggesting that the bulk of it may come from India. A ban on Russian seaborne oil exports, along with a price cap of $60 per barrel, was introduced by the EU, G7 nations and Australia on December 5. Another embargo banning almost all imports of Russian oil products kicks in on February 5. The UK, which has been among the most vocal advocates of abandoning Russian energy imports, has claimed to be one of the most successful countries in achieving this target. London committed to phasing out Russian oil by the end of 2022, slashing down imports to £2 million ($2.45 million) in October.

However, diesel accounted for 18% of its total demand last year, according to OilPrice, and a number of UK consumers may have replaced direct Russian imports with supplies from Russian-fed refineries. The outlet suggests that the UK has been using India as a “back door,” given a sharp increase in the country’s imports of Russian oil, which hit a record high of 1.2 million barrels per day in December. Prior to last year, India’s imports of Russian crude were insignificant, due to high freight costs. However, the volumes that New Delhi is now buying and re-exporting suggest that some of the refined crude from the sanctions-hit country may ultimately be pumped in UK filling stations.

High diesel prices in Europe and steep discounts on Russian crude offer “a window of opportunity” for Indian refiners, the outlet said. According to tracking data from Kpler, in 2022 the Jamnagar refinery on India’s west coast boosted, by a factor of four, its imports of oil and fuel oil from Russia compared to 2021. Meanwhile, the UK has purchased a total of 10 million barrels of diesel and other refined products from Jamnagar since the beginning of 2022.

Read more …

“..We do understand how “Joe Biden” won the 2020 election: via massive fraud engineered by fraud-master Marc Elias, king of the Lawfare trolls..”

• A Page Turns (Jim Kunstler)

I’ll never understand — and neither will you — how “Joe Biden” got propelled out of ignominious defeat in the earliest presidential primaries, to sweep the field on Super Tuesday, March 3, 2020. Around the same time, all his rivals magically dropped out of the race for the nomination. Some kind of message must have gone out from Deep State Central. Who wanted this licentious old grifter in White House? Well, probably his old boss, Barack Obama, and just about everyone in officialdom connected to the shenanigans in Ukraine dating back to 2014, and then the RussiaGate illegalities that ensued from it, especially former CIA boss John Brennan and his cronies. Under Mr. Obama, the whole US government had become something like a rotten log infested with sowbugs of grift, deceit, and malfeasance. Installing the dotty old bird in the White House would give Mr. Obama a stealth third term. Mostly, it would prevent the dreaded Golden Golem of populism, Donald Trump, from bringing any harm to that cabal and its, ahem, interests.

We do understand how “Joe Biden” won the 2020 election: via massive fraud engineered by fraud-master Marc Elias, king of the Lawfare trolls, who fine-tuned the mail-in ballot operation during the likewise engineered Covid-19 public health ruse. That wicked election business, of course, is just another grave matter requiring the utmost protection to prevent any inquiry from ever gaining traction. And yet all of it, the monumental government crime spree of recent years is all unraveling before our eyes — even before Jim Jordan or anyone else has even said boo from a House committee chair.

It’s all falling apart — along with America’s economy, our institutions, and our culture. The Biden family’s cover stories are collapsing, the government’s censorship and propaganda machine has thrown a rod, the Covid-19 story looks day-by-day like organized mass murder, election fraud issues still stalk the land despite every effort to squash them — and the grim reality coalesces that Russia is going to clean up the mess we made in Ukraine, and, in the aftermath, probably produce a shit-ton of evidence of American corruption and villainy there.

“Joe Biden,” the phantom president, has entered the air-lock, waiting to be jettisoned into the deep space of ignominy, chocolate mint chip ice cream cone in hand. Kamala Harris watches the action offstage in a fugue of anxiety and depression. She does not want to become president — and, guess what, nobody really wants her to be, either. She won’t even have to be induced to step aside. Her hysteria will be so great that not even the hypnotists of the Intel Community will be able to calm her down. She’ll run shrieking from it back to California. The levers of control finally fail. By a caprice of history, and the genius of the founding fathers, Kevin McCarthy lands in the White House. A page turns. The coup is finally over. That’s my fantasy du jour.

Read more …

“..authoritarian catnip to the dingleberries that assemble at the World Economic Forum every year..”

• World Economic Fuck’em (QTR)

[..] the “Forum” is harboring incredible influence, mostly with “useful” bureaucratic idiots on the left who are happy to take their cues on how to napalm individual rights for betterment of advancing their agendas from anyone who will help, regardless of their motivation. That’s right: gone are the days of joking about The Great Reset, owning nothing and liking it and shifting to a diet of mealworms and crickets.I’ve arrived at a point past that – a point of being sickened by watching people that in no way, shape or form represent me or the people in my life, yammer on about what my future will or won’t look like and what things I stand for are “right” or “wrong”.


It’s right in the WEF’s mission statement: “The World Economic Forum is an independent international organization committed to improving the state of the world by engaging business, political, academic and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas.” The truth is no matter how much each narcissistic and likely psychotic guest would love to speak on behalf of millions, or even billions of people, they simply don’t. I don’t expect these people to understand the consequences of painting with a broad brush, nor do I think they care about them. Take the Covid vaccines as an example. Isn’t the idea of jabbing every single person on Earth, regardless of age, health status and lifestyle (lest we forget whether or not they consent to it reckless? Of course it is. But it doesn’t matter – because someone wanted it to be done…and, with that, it was put into action.

Wild, right? This unilateral implementation of mandates during Covid, regardless of what the individual may want for themselves and their families, was authoritarian catnip to the dingleberries that assemble at the World Economic Forum every year. I’m certain it has enabled many participants to think: we did it with vaccines – we cut them off from travel, we put their jobs and their livelihoods on the line and we even arrested and jailed them – now we can do it with anything else. I don’t need to be in Davos this week to understand how little I have in common with the people of the World Economic Forum. I know this because I was recently in Washington DC during the International Monetary Fund’s most recent circle jerk world conference.

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“Maria Zakharova: [..] Should it be proven that the leading US media outlets “received money for adjusting their coverage, all US democracy could be wrapped up in their Constitution and thrown out into the garbage heap of history..”

• Investigation Pulls Back Veil On Soros’ ‘Indoctrination’ Efforts (RT)

Billionaire George Soros has links to dozens of prominent media figures in the US and beyond via organizations he funded, a conservative US watchdog claims. In the last report of a three-part investigation, published on Tuesday, MRC Business examined the ties of the Budapest-born liberal mogul, coming to the conclusion that he “cemented himself as one of the most powerful influencers in global politics through his incredible influence in the media.” MRC Business said that it had uncovered at least “54 major figures in journalism and activist media who are connected to Soros-funded organizations.” The list includes CNN’s chief international anchor Christiane Amanpour, NBC News anchor Lester Holt, and Cesar Conde, the NBCUniversal News Group chairman, who oversees the outlets NBC News, MSNBC, and CNBC.

Many of the 54 individuals play prominent roles in institutions funded by Soros. For instance, Amanpour is a senior adviser at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), which received $2.75 million from the mogul between 2018 and 2020, while Holt is listed as a board member in the same organization. Conde is a trustee at the Aspen Institute, which received over $1 million from the billionaire between 2016 and 2020. According to MRC, in total Soros has funneled over $32 billion into his organizations in a bid “to spread his radical ‘open society’ agenda on abortion, Marxist economics, anti-Americanism, defunding the police, environmental extremism and LGBT fanaticism.” These efforts have paid off, allowing him to “help indoctrinate millions with his views on a day-to-day basis”, the group claims.

MRC has previously claimed that Soros has financial ties to at least 253 media organizations globally, funding them through his non-profit groups and enabling him to reach viewers and listeners in virtually every corner of the world. Commenting on the report, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova noted on Thursday that such revelations could be compared to a “nuclear bombshell.” Should it be proven that the leading US media outlets “received money for adjusting their coverage, all US democracy could be wrapped up in their Constitution and thrown out into the garbage heap of history,” she said.

Read more …

If his own party goes after him, this is probably how.

• I Have No Regrets: Biden Breaks Long Silence With Shattering Admission (Turley)

President Joe Biden has something that he wants the public to know. After the discovery of highly classified material in Biden’s former office, his garage and library, the President wanted to make one thing (and only one thing) perfectly clear: “I have no regrets.” It was a moment that rivaled his disastrous observation that, while classified material was found in his garage, it is a locked garage that also housed his beloved 1967 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray. While Biden’s “corvette standard” for storing classified documents was baffling, his declaration of “no regrets” is downright infuriating. It is also remarkably moronic with a special counsel in the field. Either the President believes that Special Counsel Robert K. Hur will paper over the entire affair or he is doing his best to force his hand with a criminal charge.

Biden was miffed to be even asked about the matter after stonewalling the press for days. He ventured out of his White House bunker to tour storm damage in California and used the victims as a virtual human shield: “You know what, quite frankly, bugs me is that we have a serious problem here we’re talking about. We’re talking about what’s going on. And the American people don’t quite understand why you don’t ask me questions about that.” The problem is that recent polls show that, while the President has no regrets, the public overwhelmingly does. Most citizens view his conduct as negligent. Roughly two-thirds believe that Congress should investigate the President, including a majority of Democrats. Sixty percent believe that he acted inappropriately with classified material.

Nevertheless, after days to hunkering down with this aides and polls, Biden decided to stick with total and absolute denial of regret or responsibility. It was not a surprise for many of us who have following Biden and his family through the years. I wrote at the start of this scandal that Biden’s ” silence is hardly surprising. Biden has always been better at expressing revulsion than responsibility. Time and again, he has literally rushed before cameras to denounce others, often without basis, for alleged crimes. He has not waited for investigations, let alone trials.” When it has come to his own alleged misconduct, Biden will deflect, deny, but rarely declare responsibility.”

The comments on Thursday were classic Biden. He first deflected by using the California victims. He then denied any real responsibility. Despite the appointment of a special counsel to investigate his conduct, he shrugged off the entire matter as something akin to finding a neighbor’s borrowed hammer from 2017 in his garage: “We found a handful of documents were filed in the wrong place. We immediately turned them over to the Archives and the Justice Department …I think you’re going to find there’s nothing there. I have no regrets. I’m following what the lawyers have told me they want me to do. It’s exactly what we’re doing. There’s no there there.”

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Hey, it makes the blood flow!

• Men Live Longer (Happier?) Lives Taking Viagra; New Study Finds (ZH)

The second study in two years shows Viagra might reduce the risk of heart disease in men. Researchers from the University of Southern California (USC) found that men who took the little blue pill experienced a 39% reduction in heart disease. USC researchers gathered data from 70,000 men with an average age of 52 who were diagnosed with erectile dysfunction within the last decade. They believe Viagra increases blood flow and oxygen into the heart and throughout the body. Viagra users also were 17% less likely to suffer heart failure and had a 22% reduction in developing unstable angina. All of those conditions are fatal if untreated. Men who used the drug achieved longer life and decreased the risk of early death by 25%.


“Viagra was associated with lower incidence of [heart complications], cardiovascular death, and overall mortality risk compared to non-exposure,” the researchers wrote. The last study, published in the American College journal of Cardiology and titled “Association of Phosphodiesterase-5 Inhibitors Versus Alprostadil With Survival in Men With Coronary Artery Disease,” showed older men with cardiovascular disease who took the erectile dysfunction pill lived a healthier life. According to the American Heart Association, erectile dysfunction could be an early warning sign of heart disease in otherwise healthy men.

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Straight from the Middle Ages.

• Medical Board Takes Action Against Misinformation Doc (MPT)

An Idaho pathologist who previously came under fireopens in a new tab or window for prescribing ivermectin to COVID-19 patients and spreading falsities about vaccines, is facing disciplinary actionopens in a new tab or window by the Medical Commission in Washington state, where he is also licensed to practice. Ryan Cole, MD, is said to have made “numerous false and misleading statements” during public presentations on the pandemic, COVID vaccines, the use of ivermectin to treat COVID, and the effectiveness of masks, according to a statement of chargesopens in a new tab or window issued by the Washington Medical Commission earlier this month. He also allegedly provided negligent care to a number of patients in the prevention or treatment of COVID.

“Due to their specialized knowledge and training, licensed physicians possess a high degree of public trust,” the commission wrote in the statement. “That public trust is essential to effective delivery of medical care. Knowingly false statements or those made in reckless disregard for the truth, such as the medical disinformation statements by respondent … erode the public’s trust in physicians and their medical treatment and advice, and thereby injure public health.” Specifically, at all times relevant to the case, Cole, an anatomical and clinical pathologist, ran an independent medical laboratory that he owns, provided direct care to patients via telemedicine through the website MyFreeDoctor.com, and spoke at public and private forums, as well as on news shows and podcasts, the statement noted.

According to the commission, since March 2021, Cole is said to have made false and misleading comments during his presentations, including, “Children survive [COVID-19] at a hundred percent,” and “A hundred percent of world [ivermectin] trials have shown benefit.” Other public statements Cole is said to have made include that the COVID vaccine is “an experimental biological gene therapy immune-modulatory injection,” in addition to “a fake vaccine … the clot shot, needle rape.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Assange

 

 

 

 

Burns

 

 


Percentage of new bonds that mature in one year.

 

 

Sugihara

 

 

Condor
https://twitter.com/i/status/1616377887086739456

 

 

Dragonfly
https://twitter.com/i/status/1616388910162284546

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle January 3 2023

Jan 032023
 
 January 3, 2023  Posted by at 10:00 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  75 Responses »


Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Portrait of Vincent van Gogh 1887

 

• Damar Hamlin Is Not Expected To Make A Full Recovery (Kirsch)
• The American Public is Extremely Worried About the Vaccines (MWD)
• DeSantis: We’re Suing Big Pharma for Killing Americans With COVID Shots (NP)
• Did Pfizer Perform Safety Testing for mRNA Vaccine in Preclinical Studies? (SL)
• Expect Three Things From Government to Cover Up Vaxx-Weakened Immunity (Rucker)
• ICAN Obtains Disturbing Information About AstraZeneca Covid-19 Vaccine (ICAN)
• Israel to Declare Covid Pandemic Over, Downgrade It to Flu Status (YW)
• Virgin Islands AG Loses Her Job Days After Suing JPMorgan Over Epstein (L&C)
• German MP Warns Against ‘Unimaginable Escalation’ (RT)
• Ex-NATO General Predicts Ukraine Ceasefire (RT)
• Putin’s Approval Rating Ends 2022 At 81% (BNE)
• Is Western Propaganda Failing? (Larry Johnson)
• Questions and Answers (Kunstler)
• Pentagon, FBI, DHS Failed On Jan. 6 – Former Capitol Police Chief (WaPo)
• Turkey Supreme Court Bans Genetically Modified Grains Imports (S4S)

 

 

 

 

Ayyadurai – First Amendment

 

 

 

 

Bowden

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I already saw a lot of articles about vaccine risks last night, before Damar Hamlin collapsed on the field on live TV. When you combine that collapse with the new Rasmussen poll out yesterday, that says “More Than 1-in-4 Think Someone They Know Died From COVID-19 Vaccines”, and “49% of American Adults believe it is likely that side effects of COVID-19 vaccines have caused a significant number of unexplained deaths..”, we may be looking at an awakening. A large part of that 49% now think they know what happened with Hamlin. Try cover that up.

“CPR was administered for 9 minutes. Normal is 3 to 5 minutes. After 10 minutes you’re basically dead.”

• Damar Hamlin Is Not Expected To Make A Full Recovery (Kirsch)

Update 11:20pm: It was announced in the hospital parking lot that Hamlin is not expected to make a full recovery. Hamlin was vaccinated. The Buffalo Bills is a 100% vaccinated team. I also got a Twitter DM from someone who knows this for a fact who asked that I not disclose his identity. This is a shame since we know know, thanks to my readers, that there is no death benefit to the COVID vaccines. Update 7:39pm: This was called “unprecedented” on ESPN. Hamlin has been intubated and currently listed in critical condition. All the announcers said they’d never seen it in the NFL. This was a joint decision by both the NFL and the players to stop the game. This is unprecedented. One of my nurse friends wrote, “How often has a young healthy football player that didn’t take that hard of a hit had a heart attack or stroke.” CPR was administered for 9 minutes. Normal is 3 to 5 minutes. After 10 minutes you’re basically dead.

McCullough said that we will not know for 24 hours whether he will bounce back. He could make a full recovery. Dr. Peter McCullough just wrote me (7:54pm): “I watched the play live both as a fan and a cardiologist and I saw blunt neck and chest trauma, a brief recovery after the tackle and then a classic cardiac arrest. I have communicated to one of the most experienced trainers in the world and we agree that it was a cardiac arrest in the setting of a big surge of adrenalin. If Damar Hamlin indeed took one of the COVID-19 vaccines, then subclinical vaccine-induced myocarditis must be considered in the differential diagnosis. We have been told he was successfully defibrillated on the field and has been intubated and is not spontaneously breathing which is consistent with anoxic encephalopathy. The nation prays for his complete recovery.”

Peter got it right…. 3 hours after he said that, the Buffalo Bills confirmed he was correct: Note that McCullough originally speculated that the injury that Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin was due to commotio cordis (a phenomenon in which a sudden blunt impact to the chest causes sudden death in the absence of cardiac damage). The time delay from the hit until he collapsed is expected in commotio cordis. Peter believes that the ventricular tachycardia and ventricular fibrillation could have been set up by the vaccine if he took it. Hamlin was shocked back to rhythm. He now has anoxic encephalopathy. He’s in critical condition at the hospital. If you think the vaccines are safe, this article is very troubling. Therefore, it is viewed as “inappropriate.” If you think the vaccines are not safe, this article is confirming and people have no objection.

Interesting, isn’t it? It now appears that, if Hamlin was vaccinated (which we all believe is highly likely but we don’t have the evidence to say he was), the vaccine likely played a very major role in his injury until proven otherwise. However, I believe it is highly unlikely that there will be a proper autopsy where they examine Damar Hamlin’s heart tissue similar to what they did in the Schwab study. In America, we do not want to know what kills people. This is why there are virtually never any autopsies after someone dies post-vaccine, even if they die less than 24 hours after the jab. So deaths like this will continue because people don’t want to upset the government safe and effective narrative.

Read more …

The Rasmussen survey is here. Since it is a endless litany of numbers and percentages, I go with a write-up by the Substack A Midwestern Doctor.

“49% of American Adults believe it is likely that side effects of COVID-19 vaccines have caused a significant number of unexplained deaths, including 28% who think it’s Very Likely”.

• The American Public is Extremely Worried About the Vaccines (MWD)

Although Rasmussen typically makes their polls be behind a paywall (since they have to stay in business), they felt compelled to make this one be publicly available. This poll evaluated 1000 American adults, of whom 71% reported being vaccinated. The results Rasmussen found were as follows:

The results of each of these questions have profound implications for the general public losing its trust in the mainstream narrative. The second is particularly important: 28% know someone directly they believe died from a vaccine. Even if the correlation is false (although I believe it is the opposite as many of the deaths are not recognized), 28% of the population believing the government and every authority they were raised their life to trust would push something this dangerous onto them shatters the institutional trust our entire society is built upon. Put differently, this is not a problem more propaganda can solve or half-hearted pseudo-apologies like Emily Oster’s disingenuous plea for amnesty or Peter Hotez’s “apology” that followed him being called out for his egregious conduct with the vaccines.

At this point in time, the major challenge our movement is facing is bridging the gap from the evidence of harm (there is far more than enough data to end this program) to persuading the public that this data matters and the vaccines need to be pulled. This is why Rasmussen’s survey results so important, as they illustrate that gap is beginning to be overcome. When it comes to ending these mandates, how the vaccines are perceived by the public is the most important thing and what politicians will listen to. [..] One of the interesting things about today’s poll was how each demographic answered:

For example, when asked if they knew someone who they suspected had died from the vaccine, 33% of Democrats said yes, while 26% of both Republicans and those who were not affiliated with either party said yes. Rasmussen argues this (along with many other demographic response rates) suggests the poll’s results were valid, and explained this result being due Democrats, while being less likely to want to acknowledge a vaccine injury, likely knowing far more people who were vaccinated, and thus being exposed to a higher rate of deaths.

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Again, let’s hope Florida stays the course.

• DeSantis: We’re Suing Big Pharma for Killing Americans With COVID Shots (NP)

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is suing Pfizer and Moderna for killing millions of Americans with their toxic mRNA jabs. “I think people want the truth that I think people want accountability. You need to have a thorough investigation into what happened with the shots,” DeSantis told a crowd earlier in December. “I promise to hold these manufacturers accountable for this mRNA [shot] because they said there were no side effects and we know that there have been a lot.” Naturalnews.com reports: Back in October, Florida Surgeon General Joseph A. Ladapo recommended against the use of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines for males aged 18 to 39. His recommendation was based on a study that found an 84 percent increase in the relative incidence of cardiac-related death among males aged 18 to 39 within 28 days of vaccination.

“Studying the safety and efficacy of any medications, including vaccines, is an important component of public health,” Ladapo said. “Far less attention has been paid to safety and the concerns of many individuals have been dismissed – these are important findings that should be communicated to Floridians.” DeSantis has banned strict vaccine mandates in schools and businesses back in November 2021 to make sure people continued to earn a living and have protections at their place of employment. He also emphasized that parents should be able to direct the upbringing of their kids, especially when it came to dealing with the pandemic.

“The plain truth is COVID shots have led to horrifying effects, such as myocarditis, blood clots, additional injuries and sudden deaths,” Patrick Tims of NaturalHealth365 wrote. “The mainstream media in the United States and elsewhere will never admit it, yet the truth is the vast majority of people would have enjoyed better health outcomes had they avoided the mRNA shots altogether.”

Comer Fauci Files
https://twitter.com/i/status/1609944249436602371

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“My goal is to illustrate the complete breakdown of the previously known to be rigorous ethical drug development process..”

• Did Pfizer Perform Safety Testing for mRNA Vaccine in Preclinical Studies? (SL)

The cursory nature of the entire preclinical program for mRNA injections conducted by Pfizer can be briefly summarized as “we did not find any safety signals because we did not look for them”. The omissions of standard safety studies and glaring scientific dishonesty in the studies that were performed are so obvious that they cannot be attributed to the incompetence of the manufacturers and regulators. Rather, the questions of fraud and willful negligence should be raised.

The focus of my review was the scope and adequacy of the program of non-clinical assessment for a novel gene therapy “vaccine” with a brief discussion of relevant regulatory frameworks. I did not dive deeply into the results of specific animal studies. My goal is to illustrate the complete breakdown of the previously known to be rigorous ethical drug development process, as well as the shocking negligence on the part of the regulatory agencies that are supposed to keep the pharmaceutical manufacturers honest. It turns out that both the regulators and the manufacturers were highly dishonest and pushed an entirely novel technology and product on millions of people without a single well designed toxicology assessment.

In summary, I have identified the following:

Finding 1: Pfizer’s program did not include a comprehensive end-to-end test of all components as well as the final chemical entity of the mRNA product. The studies included in the FDA approval package were for a variety of versions of the product with no comparability assessments, thus no comprehensive assessment of the product safety can be made.

Finding 2: The toxicity/safety pharmacology of the Covid 19 vaccine’s active ingredient (mRNA BNT162b2) was never evaluated!

Finding 3: Pfizer claimed absence of potential for “vaccine-elicited disease enhancement” based on studies of an animals that did not get sick from Sars-Cov-2.

Finding 4: CDC, FDA and Pfizer lied about “vaccine staying in the injection site” – the injected substance is carried by the LNPs all over the body and into all organs.

Finding 5: Pfizer waived major categories of safety testing for their product altogether using self-serving interpretation of WHO recommendations from 2005.

Finding 6: Both FDA and Pfizer knew about major toxicities associated with gene therapy class of medicines, and therefore cannot claim lack of anticipatory knowledge of these risks.

Turbo cancer
https://twitter.com/i/status/1609634122863104000

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“..they KNOW they will eventually be caught. That’s not a concern for them because their goal of getting as many men, women, and children jabbed as many times as possible cannot be reversed by the truth coming out..”

• Expect Three Things From Government to Cover Up Vaxx-Weakened Immunity (Rucker)

After two years of completely controlling the Covid “vaccine” narrative and gaslighting the people into thinking they were “safe and effective,” an avalanche of news has been coming out lately that is prompting more people to ask questions. While most “normies” are still in the dark because they’re getting their news from corporate media, a small but growing number of them are waking up to the fact that they’ve been conned. While there’s still a huge leap to be made between getting people to ask questions and making them believe this is a worldwide depopulation and control agenda, the interim goal of getting them to stop getting more jabs is a worthy accomplishment. This is why we post articles and do videos on a constant basis to give people the ammunition they need to stir more of the masses to enlightenment. We need to hand out as many “vaccine red pills” as we can.

Unfortunately, the powers-that-be are aware they’re losing bits of control over the narrative so we fully expect them to fight back tooth-and-nail in 2023. They will continue to use propaganda and censorship through corporate media and Big Tech, but they realize even in those controlled venues they have challenges. Therefore, they are in the process of engaging in three variations of their current strategy to keep the con going as long as possible. It’s important to note that they KNOW they will eventually be caught. That’s not a concern for them because their goal of getting as many men, women, and children jabbed as many times as possible cannot be reversed by the truth coming out. Just because someone becomes aware that the jabs are harming them doesn’t mean they can go get themselves unjabbed. The powers-that-be know they cannot hide the truth forever, so they are working to subvert the truth and distort it in ways that will continue to serve their goals even after the masses finally wake up.

The first step is already happening. Rather than deny that people’s immune systems are weakening and many are dying suddenly with no viable explanation, they’re acknowledging the deaths but offering alternative reasons.. For example, the American Heart Association released a “study” last August that claimed increased cases of Myocarditis in children is due to Covid-19 itself, not the vaccines. It’s an extremely dishonest report from the AHA for multiple reasons, not the least of which is that if someone is jabbed AND had Covid, those Myocarditis cases are counted as caused by Covid. Then, there’s the fact that they do not count Myocarditis cases that were discovered more than 28-days after getting jabbed.

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“..the study found vector DNA in the sciatic nerves, bone marrow, livers, lungs, and spleens of the mice following vaccination.”

• ICAN Obtains Disturbing Information About AstraZeneca Covid-19 Vaccine (ICAN)

AstraZeneca study finds vector DNA in the sciatic nerve, bone marrow, liver, lungs, and spleen of vaccinated mice. Because AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine is not licensed in the United States, all documents within the FDA’s possession concerning this vaccine are exempt from disclosure. This means that anyone who received an AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine cannot – and might not ever be able to – access any of the data concerning the vaccine from the US government. Not satisfied by this complete lack of transparency, ICAN, through its attorneys, submitted an information request to the United Kingdom’s FDA equivalent – the Medicines and Healthcare Products Registry Agency (MHRA) — in April 2022 seeking information relating to its authorization of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, as well as that relating to its authorization of the Janssen, Moderna, and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines.

MHRA’s initial response was to threaten to deny ICAN’s request but, after ICAN pushed back and, in the case of the AstraZeneca vaccine, narrowed the scope of the request to seven specific items related to safety testing, MHRA dropped its objection. MHRA recently provided 166 pages of records containing the studies MHRA relied on to authorize AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine. One of these studies investigated biodistribution of the AstraZeneca vaccine, meaning where it goes in the body after injection, in mice. This study revealed that the viral vector DNA did not remain localized in the injection site but instead migrated to other organs. Disturbingly, the study found vector DNA in the sciatic nerves, bone marrow, livers, lungs, and spleens of the mice following vaccination.

The study documents further revealed that, in early 2021, AstraZeneca was forced to amend its data sheet for the vaccine after concluding that there may have been a causal association between the vaccine and serious hypersensitivity including anaphylaxis. Another perhaps unsurprising revelation was the inclusion of disclaimer that a number of vulnerable populations, such as pregnant and lactating women and immunocompromised persons, were excluded from pre-market human safety studies. In its Marketing Authorization Application, AstraZeneca stated that because these populations were excluded from the studies, the safety of the vaccine in these groups was unknown. This also led the UK’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization (JCVI) to recommend against the AstraZeneca vaccine for pregnant women – a sentiment that was echoed in the UK’s vaccination schedule guide, commonly referred to as the “Green Book.”

Read more …

Covid is not the concern, the vaccines are. And Israel is the test lab for those.

• Israel to Declare Covid Pandemic Over, Downgrade It to Flu Status (YW)

Israel will officially declare the Covid-19 pandemic over next month and downgrade the country’s handling of the virus to that of the flu as of January 18th, according to reports. Israel’s Home Front Command had been shouldering the responsibility for all Covid-related treatment and testing since the virus first became a major health concern in the country, but those responsibilities will now be shifted to the civilian health system. On the last day of January, Covid will officially be downgraded to flu status, the pandemic control center will be shuttered, and Covid patients will no longer be required to isolate themselves.


“We’re hoping that our health care system can cope with these winter infections, including Covid,” Professor Cyrille Cohen, a member of the Health Ministry’s advisory board, told i24News. Once the winter is over, the Health Ministry hopes and expects that the virus will be endemic in the country, with infections coming at a regular rate, rather than in waves – making it far more bearable. “We are more in a scenario where we are behaving like any other viral disease in the winter,” Cohen added.

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Rogan O’Handley @DC_Draino: “Remember when Biden got the Ukrainian prosecutor fired for investigating Hunter/Burisma? Well on Dec. 27 the USVI AG filed a lawsuit against JPMorgan for helping Jeffrey Epstein. Biden flew to USVI & the AG was fired days later.”

• Virgin Islands AG Loses Her Job Days After Suing JPMorgan Over Epstein (L&C)

Virgin Islands Attorney General Denise George lost her job after suing JPMorgan Chase in connection with her Jeffrey Epstein investigation. The Virgin Islands top prosecutor who reached a more than $105 million settlement with Jeffrey Epstein’s estate has lost her job days after suing JPMorgan Chase in connection with her probe. The federal lawsuit, filed in New York, accused the bank of having “facilitated, sustained, and concealed” Epstein’s human trafficking network. On Dec. 27, then-Virgin Islands Attorney General Denise George filed a blistering and heavily redacted 30-page lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase.

“JP Morgan turned a blind eye to evidence of human trafficking over more than a decade because of Epstein’s own financial footprint, and because of the deals and clients that Epstein brought and promised to bring to the bank,” the lawsuit alleged. “These decisions were advocated and approved at the senior levels of JP Morgan, including by the former chief executive of its asset management division and investment bank, whose inappropriate relationship with Epstein should have been evident to the bank. Indeed, it was only after Epstein’s death that JP Morgan belatedly complied with federal banking regulations regarding Epstein’s accounts.”

[..] Days after the AG’s filing of the lawsuit — on New Year’s Eve — George was removed from her post. Local news outlets in the Virgin Islands reported that the attorney general had not informed the territory’s Gov. Albert Bryan about her impending enforcement action. [..] The development was first reported by The Virgin Islands Consortium, citing anonymous sources. Bryan subsequently confirmed George’s termination — without providing an explanation for it — in a statement sent to multiple news outlet. “I relieved Denise George of her duties as attorney general this weekend,” Bryan wrote in a statement sent to Law&Crime. “I thank her for her service to the people of the territory during the past four years as attorney general and wish her the best in her future endeavors.”

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“Berlin will continue to refrain from any “ill-considered unilateral moves..”

• German MP Warns Against ‘Unimaginable Escalation’ (RT)

Berlin has no plans to send modern Western-made tanks to Ukraine, as the risks are too high, a German lawmaker said on Monday. Such a move could make NATO a direct party to the conflict between Moscow and Kiev and lead to an escalation, Michael Mueller told Germany’s ARD broadcaster. Berlin will continue to refrain from any “ill-considered unilateral moves,” Mueller, who is a member of the German Bundestag’s Foreign Policy Committee, told ARD’s Morganmagazin show. “We would only deliver such weapons in coordination with our NATO partners,” he said, adding that the military bloc wants to avoid becoming a direct party to the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

“That would be in the interests of all of us… If NATO became a direct war party against Russia, it would be an escalation that none of us want to imagine,” Mueller, a member of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD), warned. No other nations who possess “comparable” military hardware – including the US and France – have supplied them to Ukraine, Mueller pointed out, adding that those countries appear to share Germany’s concerns. The lawmaker also said that dialogue with Russia should be maintained. “There should always be an offer to talk,” he argued, criticizing his party’s coalition partners – the Greens and the Free Democrats – for failing to understand that.

Mueller said Chancellor Scholz is now the only leader who continues to seek such contacts, adding that the Foreign Ministry should also look for options for dialogue. Scholz has previously repeatedly said that resolving the conflict between Russia and Ukraine would be much harder without dialogue with Moscow. Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, on the contrary, has taken a staunch anti-Russia position, vowing to ramp up sanctions against Moscow and stating that “normal relations” with the Kremlin are out of the question.

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“Between February and May, it is likely that both parties will realize “that they are getting stuck..”

I don’t think so. Not both parties.

• Ex-NATO General Predicts Ukraine Ceasefire (RT)

A senior German Army officer and former Commander of Allied Joint Force Command Brunssum, General Hans-Lothar Domröse, has predicted that the Russia-Ukraine conflict will run into a stalemate and some sort of a ceasefire will be reached by summer. “I expect a standstill in early summer,” Domröse told the newspapers of the German Funke media group on Sunday, arguing that by such time, both sides will feel that continued fighting is “no longer of any use.” Between February and May, it is likely that both parties will realize “that they are getting stuck,” the former general said, adding that this will be the moment to begin ceasefire negotiations. “We will have a truce sometime in 2023,” Domröse predicted, cautioning that this would not mean an immediate lasting peace.

“A ceasefire means: We stop shooting,” he said, but negotiations are “likely to take a long time.” Regarding the current state of the conflict, Domröse said that Russia has the advantage of having “more tanks and more missiles,” while Kiev is “absolutely dependent” on Western arms supplies. “It’s hard for me to imagine Ukraine regaining [the Russian-held territories] completely – even if the West supplies the heavy weapons that are required, especially tanks and artillery,” he added. Since the start of Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine last February, Germany, along with most other Western nations, has been supplying Ukraine with weapons. However, Chancellor Olaf Scholz has been reluctant to supply Leopard 2 battle tanks to Kiev, arguing that since no other nation has yet sent such modern weaponry, Germany should not blaze a trail.

The general claimed that if “we take our responsibility seriously, we must provide [Kiev] with the heavy weapons” before its stockpiles run dry, because it could take well over a month from the government’s decision to have Leopard 2 tanks on the ground in Ukraine. “At some point Ukraine will have lost its last tank, then it will need supplies. And at some point there will be a ceasefire, then Ukraine will also need further support and weapons,” Domröse said. “It is high time that the European countries that have Leopard tanks now form a coalition of the willing and deliver together in a coordinated manner.” Moscow has consistently argued that Western weapons deliveries to Ukraine only serve to prolong the conflict. It has also warned that NATO member states are getting increasingly involved in the hostilities, which could potentially lead to an all-out military confrontation between the bloc and Russia.

The general acknowledged that the only way to end the conflict is through a negotiated agreement acceptable to both sides, suggesting that a possible solution could be for Zelensky to waive Kiev’s demand to immediately integrate Crimea into Ukraine and instead agree to a “transition period” of 50 years. However, the Kremlin previously called such proposals a non-starter, insisting that if Ukraine wants peace it should take into account “the new realities,” referring to the four former Ukrainian regions that voted to join Russia last fall, after Crimea did the same in 2014 following a coup in Kiev.

Michael Flynn

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The only question in approval rating is the Duma.

• Putin’s Approval Rating Ends 2022 At 81% (BNE)

If anything, support and trust in Russian President Vladimir Putin has increased since the war in Ukraine started at the end of February. Putin’s personal popularity ranking stood at 83% in March (chart), with 15% holding an unfavourable opinion of the president and 2% unsure, and stayed at that level until August, when things started to go wrong with the campaign in Ukraine. His popularity fell to 77% (21%, 2%) in September, according to the Levada Centre, after Ukraine’s spectacular Kharkiv counter-offensive began, but recovered to 79% in October and November to end the year in December at 81% (17%, 2%).


Overall, Putin has been enjoying the same “patriotic bump” that lifted his ratings following the annexation of Crimea in 2014. During the previous two years of 2020 and 2021 his ratings wavered between 61% and 69% but only crossed into the 70%-plus range as the rhetoric with the West went up a notch at the start of the crisis at the beginning of 2022.

Likewise, the approval of Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin has also been given a lift. He polled a 60% (35%, 5%) approval rating in February but that leapt to 71% (23%, 6%) in March after the war started. Since then, his approval has hovered around 70% to finish the year in December with 71% (23%, 6%). The government also remain popular. In the pre-war years the government was benefiting from the improving economy. However, the shine came off in 2021, when its ratings fell to around 50%. When the war started their approval leapt from 55% (42%, 3%) in February to 70% (27%, 3%) in March. The governors ended the year in December with an approval rating of 68% (28%, 4%).

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“You see, Putin can’t handle tough questions. Oops!! Wait a minute. We have breaking news. Turns out that Putin held a 48 minute press conference three days before Western Christmas..”

• Is Western Propaganda Failing? (Larry Johnson)

As someone who played a minuscule role in a CIA information operation that targeted Soviet military operations in Afghanistan in November 1985, I feel somewhat qualified to comment on the mammoth propaganda campaign the United States and Europe have unleashed on Russia. I have never seen anything so perverse and so dishonest. Let me give you a recent example. Remember this recent “news” headline? “DUCKING FOR COVER: ‘SICKLY’ PUTIN CANCELS BIGGEST SPEECH OF HIS LIFE AS FIRST RUSSIAN STATE OF NATION SINCE INVASION IS MYSTERIOUSLY AXED” https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/20827701/putin-sick-russian-speech-ukraine-invasion This was courtesy of the UK’s SUN. Lacking any reliable source, The SUN opted for speculation: “VLADIMIR Putin has cancelled his state of the nation address fuelling rumours he is in hiding from the Russian people and could be in failing health. Putin’s spokesman finally confirmed the speech – which would be one of biggest in Vlad’s life – will not go ahead before the New Year. . . . It comes after the mad tyrant also cancelled his end of year press conference and his annual hockey game.”

Got it? Putin is either deathly ill — suffering from Parkinsons, cancer, Irritable Bowel, etc. — or deathly afraid of having to explain the ass whooping that Ukraine is delivering to Russia. You see, Putin can’t handle tough questions. Oops!! Wait a minute. We have breaking news. Turns out that Putin held a 48 minute press conference three days before Western Christmas (does this count as “end of the year”?): It would appear that Putin delights in trolling the Western pundits and media. Does Putin look like a man suffering from some devastating illness? Does he give off the vibe of a guy who cannot control his bowels and is called Mr. Poopy Pants behind his back? Joe Biden could not pull this off even if he consumed Zelensky’s weekly dose of cocaine. Putin is coherent and in command of facts.

It would be one thing if the Western propaganda effort was focused solely on ridiculing and trying to foment opposition inside Russia to Vladimir Putin. But it is not. Western propaganda is demonizing all things Russian — e.g., literature, art, chess, sports figures, and actors and actresses. This approach is not creating a reservoir of good will towards the West. Just the opposite. It is fortifying Russian nationalism and solidifying support for Putin.

anti-Nazi

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“I hope it’s not too impertinent to suppose that the January 6 Riot was engineered by our government to embarrass and punish its political opponents..”

• Questions and Answers (Kunstler)

Next Mr. Wray has to answer for the FBI’s infiltration of social media. How did the top lawyer at the FBI, Jim Baker, come to be employed as the right-hand to Twitter’s chief censor, Vijaya Gadde? How did all those former FBI agents land at the company along with Jim Baker, and what did Mr. Wray have to do with the FBI demands to censor news and persons on matters of critical national importance such as vaccine safety and election fraud? How did more than a hundred former federal agents land on Facebook, Google, and other platforms? How did Mr. Wray decide to shut down the avenues of the First Amendment to the Constitution?

Next up: Attorney General Merrick Garland. On what grounds are pre-trial January 6 Riot suspects being held in the decrepit DC federal lockup without bail on rinky-dink charges two years after the event? How does that square with American due process of law? What did he know about the existence of the Hunter Biden laptop and the evidence it contained? What is he doing about it? How did Mr. Garland happen to target for prosecution parents protesting school board policies on race and sexual matters? Of course, Mr. Garland is going to evade answering by using the ploy that all these questions “pertains to ongoing investigations.” Mr. Jordan had better hire a gutsy chief counsel with some brains to penetrate that bodyguard of lies.

If the Special Subcommittee on the January 6 Riot is disbanded, turn the matter over to the Andy Biggs’ Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security. Let’s hear from Nancy Pelosi’s staff as to why her office (of the Speaker) turned down offers from the Trump White House for national guard protection that day. Let’s also hear from the then-chief of the Capitol Police, Steven Sund, who resigned from that job two days later — in consternation or disgrace? Bring back Mr. Wray and Mr. Garland. How many federal agents were circulating in the crowd the night before and on the day of the January 6 riot? Why was one Ray Epps never indicted for his much-recorded incitements to enter the Capitol? Who opened the magnetically-locked doors from the inside of the building? Stuff like that. What was the decision process for not charging officer Michael Byrd in the shooting death of Ashli Babbitt?

I hope it’s not too impertinent to suppose that the January 6 Riot was engineered by our government to embarrass and punish its political opponents — taking advantage of the First Amendment “right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances,” which was what that crowd had come to do in Washington DC that day.

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The only reason they can keep up this story is that the other side has been imprisoned and silenced.

• Pentagon, FBI, DHS Failed On Jan. 6 – Former Capitol Police Chief (WaPo)

In a new firsthand account of the frantic efforts of Capitol Police officers to protect Congress and themselves from an armed mob on Jan. 6, 2021, the department’s former chief blames cascading government failures for allowing the brutal melee. The federal government’s multibillion-dollar security network, built after 9/11 to gather intelligence that could warn of a looming attack, provided no such shield on Jan. 6, former Capitol Police chief Steven A. Sund writes in a new book. The FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and even his own agency’s intelligence unit had been alerted weeks earlier to reams of chilling chatter about right-wing extremists arming for an attack on the Capitol that day, Sund says, but didn’t take the basic steps to assess those plots or sound an alarm. Senior military leaders, citing political or tactical worries, delayed sending help.

And, Sund warns in “Courage Under Fire,” it could easily happen again. Many of the factors that left the Capitol vulnerable remain unfixed, he said. The Washington Post obtained an advance copy of the book, which will be published Tuesday. In his account, Sund describes his shock at the battle that unfolded as an estimated 10,000 protesters inflamed by President Donald Trump’s rally earlier in the day broke through police lines and punched, stabbed and pepper-sprayed officers, outnumbering them “58 to 1.” Sund said his shock shifted to agony as he unsuccessfully begged military generals for National Guard reinforcements. Though they delayed sending help until it was too late for Sund’s overrun corps, he says that he later discovered that the Pentagon had rushed to send security teams to protect military officials’ homes in Washington, none of which were under attack.

Sund reserves his greatest outrage for those Pentagon leaders, recounting a conference call he had with two generals about 2:35 p.m., 20 minutes after rioters had broken into the Capitol and as Vice President Mike Pence and other lawmakers scurried to hiding places. Sund writes that Lt. Gen. Walter Piatt told him he didn’t like the optics of sending uniformed Guard troops to the Capitol but could allow them to replace police officers at roadside checkpoints. Listening incredulously and trying to explain that he needed help to save officers’ lives, Sund said, he felt both “nauseated” and “mad as hell.” “It’s a response I will never forget for the rest of my life,” Sund writes. While on the call, Sund recalls hearing the frantic voice of an officer being broadcast into the command center: “Shots fired in the Capitol, shots fired in the Capitol.” Sund’s anger boiled over and he shouted the report of gunfire into the conference call: “Is that urgent enough for you now?” Then Sund hung up to deal with this new crisis.

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A sliver of good news.

• Turkey Supreme Court Bans Genetically Modified Grains Imports (S4S)

The Turkish Supreme Court has reimposed an import ban on the import of the genetically modified maize product MON810. This is the latest development in Turkey’s efforts to restrict genetically modified (GM) products. In 2010, the Turkish government enacted a biosafety law, banning the cultivation and import of biotech crops for food and feed use unless approved by the Ministry of Agriculture. In 2013, approval was suspended for products containing the GM maize MON810, effectively banning imports. This impacted shipments of Distillers Dried Grain with Solubles (DDGS) from the United States.


This ban was reversed by the Turkish High Court in 2015. However, the Supreme Court decision, announced in December 2022, now reimposes the prohibition of importing corn and other products containing MON810. What is more, the North Club noted that its correspondents in Turkey, Vitsan advise that vessels carrying DDGS cargo will be boarded upon arrival by the authorities who will take their own samples. If their analysis detects the presence of MON810, even if by contamination, they may refuse the import of cargo. Vitsan further recommend that vessels intending to load DDGS cargo destined for Turkey should check the cargo quality certificates or analyses certificates prior to loading as to whether it contains banned GM products.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Cobalt

 

 

 

 

Melibe viridis
https://twitter.com/i/status/1609703285044174848

 

 

Randomly
https://twitter.com/i/status/1609964527394902017

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle December 11 2022

Dec 112022
 
 December 11, 2022  Posted by at 9:55 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  58 Responses »


Paul Gauguin Tahitians at rest (unfinished) 1891

 

• THE TWITTER FILES part 4: The Removal Of Donald Trump, Part 2 (ZH)
• Elon Musk Should Probably Do A Little Housecleaning (NR)
• Musk Forces A Free-Speech Reckoning For Politicians And Pundits (Turley)
• US Republicans Pledge To ‘Roll Out Red Carpet’ For Musk (RT)
• The EU Demands That The Balkans Pick The ‘Right’ Side (Marsden)
• France And Germany Owe ‘Genocide Compensation’ To Donbass – Moscow (RT)
• EU Nations Multiply Trade With Russia – RIA (RT)
• Fascism in the EU (Vogel)
• Catastrophic Losses, Failing Wonder Weapons, NATO Escalation (MoA)
• Pentagon Gives Ukraine Green Light For Drone Strikes Inside Russia (Times)
• Prejudice Against COVID-19 Unvaccinated Around the World (ET)
• EU’s Oil Price Cap Creates a Price Cap… on Stupidity (Luongo)
• Federal Judge Declines To Hold Trump In Contempt Of Court (Fox)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

McCullough

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shellenberger’s format is hard to do in the Debt Rattle format.

• THE TWITTER FILES part 4: The Removal Of Donald Trump, Part 2 (ZH)

On January 7, @jack emails employees saying Twitter needs to remain consistent in its policies, including the right of users to return to Twitter after a temporary suspension. After, Roth reassures an employee that “people who care about this… aren’t happy with where we are” Around 11:30 am PT, Roth DMs his colleagues with news that he is excited to share. “GUESS WHAT,” he writes. “Jack just approved repeat offender for civic integrity.” The new approach would create a system where five violations (“strikes”) would result in permanent suspension. “Progress!” exclaims a member of Roth’s Trust and Safety Team.

The exchange between Roth and his colleagues makes clear that they had been pushing @jack for greater restrictions on the speech Twitter allows around elections. The colleague wants to know if the decision means Trump can finally be banned. The person asks, “does the incitement to violence aspect change that calculus?” Roth says it doesn’t. “Trump continues to just have his one strike” (remaining). Roth’s colleague’s query about “incitement to violence” heavily foreshadows what will happen the following day.

On January 8, Twitter announces a permanent ban on Trump due to the “risk of further incitement of violence.” On J8, Twitter says its ban is based on “specifically how [Trump’s tweets] are being received & interpreted.” But in 2019, Twitter said it did “not attempt to determine all potential interpretations of the content or its intent.” The *only* serious concern we found expressed within Twitter over the implications for free speech and democracy of banning Trump came from a junior person in the organization. It was tucked away in a lower-level Slack channel known as “site-integrity-auto.”

“This might be an unpopular opinion but one off ad hoc decisions like this that don’t appear rooted in policy are imho a slippery slope… This now appears to be a fiat by an online platform CEO with a global presence that can gatekeep speech for the entire world…”

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Twitter thread by Name Redacted.

“They were ALL hired since @realDonaldTrump was elected.”

• Elon Musk Should Probably Do A Little Housecleaning (NR)

1. @elonmusk , Your new company @Twitter has many ex FBI/CIA agents in high ranks. Should probably do a little housecleaning.
2. Kevin Michelena – current Twitter Sr. Corporate Security Analyst. Ex FBI Intelligence Analyst 12 years
3. Doug Hunt – current Twitter Senior Director. Ex FBI Special Agent 20 years.
4. Mark Jaroszewski – current Twitter Director Corporate Security/Risk. Ex FBI 20 years
5. Douglas Turner – current Twitter Senior Manager, Corporate and Executive Security Services. Ex FBI 14 years. Ex Secret Service 7 years.
6. Patrick G. – current Twitter Head of Corporate Security. Ex FBI Special Agent 23 years.
7. Karen Walsh – current Twitter Director – Corporate Resilience. Ex FBI Special Agent 21 years
8. Russell Handorf – current Twitter Senior Staff Technical Program Manager. Ex FBI 10 years.
9. Michael B. – current Twitter Senior Corporate Security Manager. Ex FBI 23 years.
10. Vincent Lucero – current Twitter Senior Security Manager. Ex FBI Special Agent 22 years.
11. Kevin L. – current Twitter Corporate Security Manager. Ex FBI Special Agent 25 years.
12. Matthew W. – current Twitter Senior Director of Product Trust, Revenue Policy, and Counsel Systems & Analytics. Ex FBI 15 years.
13. Claire O. – current Twitter Senior Corporate Security Analyst. Ex FBI 8 years.
14. Bruce A. – current Twitter Director, Corporate Security. Ex FBI 23 years.
15. Jeff Carlton – current Twitter Senior Manager. Ex FBI & CIA Intelligence Analyst 3 years.
16. What do all of these Twitter employees have in common? They were ALL hired since @realDonaldTrump was elected. Why, after Trump was elected, did Twitter hire over a dozen ex FBI/CIA agents and place them in Senior Management roles?
17. @elonmusk – how many “Jim Bakers” are imbedded in Twitter, possibly working against you? or…..”watching” you. I’d advise you to do some investigating and clean house.

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“Twitter executives were praised for their speed to impose “visibility filters” so the tweet could not be “replied to, shared, or liked..”

• Musk Forces A Free-Speech Reckoning For Politicians And Pundits (Turley)

What these files suggest is an utter license to control political speech on social media platforms. Twitter executives often sound like overlords determining what the public should be allowed to read or say. This is hardly surprising, given the constant stroking by many politicians and pundits who say they are saving democracy by limiting free speech. In speaking to media figures in April, former President Barack Obama called upon “our better angels” to shape voters’ opinions. Similarly, President Joe Biden has said social media editors are vital to protecting citizens from their own misguided values or assumptions. Without enlightened editors, he asked, “How do people know the truth?” Such comments show total contempt for the ability of people to make up their own minds on subjects ranging from elections to vaccinations.

Yet social media executives readily embraced their role in framing “the truth.” Former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal pledged to “focus less on thinking about free speech” and more on “who can be heard.” While some of us denounced his anti-free-speech agenda, others rose in defense of Twitter maintaining one of the largest censorship systems in history. Now, these Twitter files show precisely what it means to manipulate “who can be heard” — a process that went beyond controversial suspensions of users to include a broader, secret effort to suppress disfavored viewpoints. The new documents show Twitter using blacklists and “visibility filters” to interfere with user searches or to shadow-ban individuals and prevent their tweets from trending.

The new material also indicates that “visibility filtering” was directed at various Republican campaigns, throttling or reducing candidates’ visibility before the 2020 election. Most striking in the latest documents is how Twitter censors knowingly discarded even their own policies to hamper then-President Donald Trump in the 2020 election. In one tweet, Trump referenced a mail-in voting problem in Ohio that was found to be true. Nevertheless, Twitter executives were praised for their speed to impose “visibility filters” so the tweet could not be “replied to, shared, or liked,” and the staff received a censorship “attaboy”: “VERY WELL DONE ON SPEED.”

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“This is an investigation of Joe Biden, and that’s where the committee will focus in this next Congress.”

• US Republicans Pledge To ‘Roll Out Red Carpet’ For Musk (RT)

US Republicans want Twitter owner and CEO Elon Musk to testify before the House Oversight Committee next year. By revealing how his predecessors censored stories damaging to the Biden family, Musk has already done “a great service” to the committee, incoming chairman Rep. James Comer told the New York Post. “I have reached out to Elon Musk through backchannels to tell him that we would love for him to come before the committee,” Comer told the newspaper. “I’m pretty confident he’s going to provide more information, but he is welcome to come before our committee. We will roll out the red carpet for Elon Musk.” In the final weeks before the 2020 presidential election, Twitter banned the sharing of links to a New York Post story sourced from a laptop belonging to then-candidate Biden’s son, Hunter.

The story, and later articles that followed, alleged that Hunter Biden potentially earned tens of millions of dollars introducing foreign contacts – among them Mexican, Chinese and Ukrainian businessmen – to his father. Documents released by Musk last week showed that some of Twitter’s former senior executives – including legal head Vijaya Gadde, safety chief Yoel Roth, and General Counsel Jim Baker – deliberately suppressed the story and removed election-related tweets on behalf of the FBI and other government agencies. Musk’s disclosures also revealed that Twitter moderators regularly deleted content at the request of “the Biden team,” and planned the suspension of Donald Trump’s account months in advance.

“[Musk is] doing a great service to the Oversight Committee and America by disclosing all of the emails and correspondence between the Biden campaign and the Democratic National Committee and Twitter,” Comer continued. He added that Gadde, Roth and Baker have all been summoned to testify about their role in the censorship operation. Comer and incoming House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan announced last month that they will lead a twin-track investigation into the Biden family’s foreign business dealings and the alleged politicization of the Justice Department by President Biden, when Republicans hold the balance of power in the House of Representatives in January. “I want to be clear,” Comer stated at the time. “This is an investigation of Joe Biden, and that’s where the committee will focus in this next Congress.”

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“Von der Leyen rhetorically dive bombed into the region this week, pointing out that the world is divided between autocracies and democracies and that the Balkans needed to pick a side.”

• The EU Demands That The Balkans Pick The ‘Right’ Side (Marsden)

The Russia-Ukraine conflict reflects on the Balkans as a struggle between “autocracies and the law of the strongest” and “democracy and the rule of law”, European Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen said during an EU-Western Balkans partnership summit in the Albanian capital Tirana this week. The last Balkan country to actually ascend to European Union membership was Croatia, in 2013. And this year, the Balkans have had to contend with the spectacle of Brussels gushing over Ukraine and rushing to grant Kiev candidate status. For context, it took Albania five years to receive candidate status (which it did in 2014). It took Serbia three years (a candidate since 2012) and Montenegro two years (a candidate since 2010).

Just imagine: You’ve been waiting years for Brussels to make a commitment, or to even show signs that it’s serious about the relationship, and suddenly it only has eyes for Kiev and seems to have forgotten about your existence.So it’s not exactly surprising that the citizens of these countries would start feeling like maybe the bloc simply isn’t marriage material. At the moment, 55% of North Macedonians have a negative view of the EU, while just 21% of Serbs see the EU positively and a majority of them are now against joining the bloc. Even in Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina, confidence in European institutions has recently dipped. So it makes sense that the EU is running over there now for a big summit, worried about someone else stealing their loyalty – specifically Russia or China.

Serbia is a big friend of Russia, and Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said recently that Belgrade’s ties with Albania and North Macedonia in particular have never been better – even though Albania has been viewed over the past couple of decades by the West as one of its staunchest allies, including militarily, by committing troops to its efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Serbia isn’t onboard with the EU and its anti-Russian sanctions and agenda, refusing to march in lockstep with Brussels on its foreign policy towards Russia. Vucic refused to sign the summit’s Tirana Declaration, whose top clause referred to Russia’s “escalating war in Ukraine,” and reiterated his disagreement with the bloc’s sanctions policy.

It’s not a stretch to imagine that Brussels could see a threat to its anti-Russia agenda in all of this, or be concerned that other Balkan countries that followed the Western sanctions lead could feasibly start comparing their economic and energy challenges to Serbia’s situation, which still enjoys the benefits of cheap Russian gas, comprising about 85% of its gas imports. So how does the EU handle this powder keg? With all the subtlety of a hand grenade. Von der Leyen rhetorically dive bombed into the region this week, pointing out that the world is divided between autocracies and democracies and that the Balkans needed to pick a side. “We notice very clearly that the Ukraine war is not only Russia’s cruel war against Ukraine, but also a question of whether autocracies and the law of the strongest will prevail. Or whether democracy and the rule of law will prevail. And this struggle is also noticeable in the Western Balkans,” Von der Leyen said.

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“..Putin said he was disappointed and shocked when he heard Merkel’s statement, adding that this was further proof that Moscow made the correct decision when it started its military operation in Ukraine..”

• France And Germany Owe ‘Genocide Compensation’ To Donbass – Moscow (RT)

Berlin and Paris should pay reparations to the Donbass civilians who have been suffering Ukrainian attacks since 2014, according to Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the State Duma – Russia’s lower house of parliament. His comments came after former German chancellor Angela Merkel admitted that the Minsk peace agreements had been just a ploy to provide Kiev with enough time to build up its military. Merkel’s confession means that Berlin and Paris – who brokered the deal – “bear moral and material responsibility for what is happening in Ukraine,” Volodin wrote on Telegram on Saturday.

The premeditated failure to fulfill obligations under the accords constitutes “not only a loss of trust, but also a crime for which the signatories of the Minsk agreements – Merkel, [former French president Francois] Hollande, and [former Ukrainian president Pyotr] Poroshenko – must answer,” he stated. “They will have to pay compensation to the residents of Donbass for eight years of genocide and damages,” Volodin added. According to the MP, the ongoing Ukraine crisis has been brought about by “the deceitful policies” pursued by the French and German leaders. Volodin recalled that in 2014, Berlin and Paris also brokered a deal between the government of the democratically elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich and the nation’s opposition to stop violent riots in Kiev. The unrest erupted in Ukraine’s capital after Yanukovich refused to sign an association agreement with the EU.

“It all ended with a coup d’etat in Kiev,” he stated, and “the genocide” of people in the Donbass. When the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics broke away from Kiev, Germany and France took part in signing the now-defunct Minsk agreements, which were supposed to pave the way for peace by giving the two territories a special status within the Ukrainian state. However, Russia has repeatedly accused Kiev of failing to implement the terms of the accords. Volodin’s comments came after Russian President Vladimir Putin said he was disappointed and shocked when he heard Merkel’s statement, adding that this was further proof that Moscow made the correct decision when it started its military operation in Ukraine.

Putin Merkel
https://twitter.com/i/status/1601240676905078785

Lukashenko
https://twitter.com/i/status/1601247988797837312

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“Russia’s trade with Bulgaria and Greece reportedly soared 240% and 230% respectively..”

• EU Nations Multiply Trade With Russia – RIA (RT)

Three quarters of EU member states boosted their trade turnover with Russia in the first eight months of 2022, RIA Novosti is reporting on Saturday, citing data collected from the bloc’s various national statistics departments. Russia’s trade with Bulgaria and Greece reportedly soared 240% and 230% respectively, while trade turnover with Slovenia doubled during January-to-August period this year. At the same time, Austria and the Czech Republic boosted their trade with the sanctions-hit nation by 80%. Meanwhile, Russia’s trade turnover with both Hungary and Italy surged 70%. Belgium and Cyprus also registered increases, of 60%. All-in-all, 20 out of the 27 bloc members saw a year-over-year increase of 34% in mutual trade with Russia.

In monetary terms the trade turnover surged to €177.3 billion compared to €132.4 billion recorded for the same period a year ago. At the same time, Russia’s mutual trade with Malta saw a dramatic decline of 80%, while both Denmark and Sweden reduced their trade with the nation by 49%. Luxembourg’s trade turnover with Russia also declined, by 28%. Drops in Russia’s mutual trade with Finland and Lithuania totalled 7% and 6% respectively. Portugal reduced its trade turnover with the nation by 3%. Trade between these seven countries and Moscow amounted to €14.2 billion, against €17.3 billion a year earlier.

As a result, Russia-EU trade turnover saw an increase of 28% in January-August 2022 compared to the same period a year ago, and amounted to €191.5 billion. Of these, EU exports to Russia totalled €36.2 billion, while imports from Russia amounted to €155.3 billion. Thus, the EU’s trade deficit for the first eight months of the current year amounted to €119.1 billion, reaching its highest since 2008, when it amounted to €151 billion for the entire year.

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“..filters out the vast majority of “crimethink.”

• Fascism in the EU (Vogel)

Supreme command is in the hands of EU governments. Even though in most EU nations, the separation of powers is enshrined in the constitution, in practice that separation is not evident. Thus, EU governments are able to use a combination of often overtly abusive police action and the judicial system (judges also being dressed in black!) to subdue the citizenry and to control public opinion and public debate. The media, or the so-called free press, both private and public (with the alleged guarantees to ensure its impartiality, like in Germany), also plays a key role in controlling public opinion. Expressed in military terms, EU governments enjoy “full-spectrum dominance” in the entire public domain.

Under these conditions, it was not difficult to ban Russian media from the EU a few days after the beginning of the Russian Special Military Operation in the Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The few voices raised in protest against this massive and unprecedented censorship were easily silenced and suppressed. It is perhaps no coincidence that EU censorship was decreed by a German, namely the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. Germany is the European nation that has enjoyed the longest continuous censorship and strict media control anywhere: ever since Hitler ended press freedom in 1933, the Germans have been living with controlled media and the curtailment of speech. Free speech has now been banned in Germany for almost a century! Today, the very policies first applied by the nazis have become the norm and standard all over the EU.

An essential tool for managing and controlling public debate is to ridicule and frame the opposition. Thus anybody who does not buy into the official narrative is branded a “hater,” “denier” or “conspiracy theorist.” On that account alone, it is suggested such people are unfit to participate in the public debate. If they do so nonetheless, sharper weapons are produced. In that case, it is stated the culprit has “dangerous ideas” or that he is a “potential terrorist.” As such he needs to be taken care of, for instance thrown in jail or subjected to psychiatric treatment. Numerous EU journalists and others saying unwelcome truths have been indicted, thrown in jail or interned in a psychiatric ward. In case someone proves particularly difficult to deal with, he is eliminated by way of a car accident, a “lone wolf” or a suicide.

Fortunately, those violent methods rather rarely need to be applied. State censorship with the help of the police and kangaroo courts takes care of most cases. And even before that, the maintaining of “community standards” on social media such as Facebook, Apple (I-phone), Google, Youtube, Instagram, Amazon (until recently, Twitter as well) and other platforms filters out the vast majority of “crimethink.”

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“A unit that has 50% casualties is usually no longer able to fight and must be replaced. But the Ukrainians leave their units on the frontline until nearly nobody is left in them.”

• Catastrophic Losses, Failing Wonder Weapons, NATO Escalation (MoA)

Newsweek spoke with a ‘former’ U.S. Colonel who, together with ‘volunteers’, trains Ukrainian soldiers. Here is what he says about Ukrainian losses: “Bakhmut is like Dresden, and the countryside looks like Passchendaele,” he said, referring to the German city destroyed by allied bombing in World War II and the infamously muddy and bloody World War I battlefield. “It’s just a horrible and miserable place. Ukraine closely guards its casualty figures, but its forces are believed to be suffering badly around Bakhmut. “They’ve been taking extraordinarily high casualties,” Milburn said of the units training with Mozart. “The numbers you are reading in the media about 70 percent and above casualties being routine are not exaggerated.”

Despite their “tremendous morale,” Milburn said the defenders “have an acute ‘regeneration problem,’ which means getting new recruits into the line as quickly as possible.” This means those being thrown into the fight have little beyond basic training. “Typically about 80 percent of our intake who are coming off of the line have never even fired a weapon before,” Milburn said. “We’ve got our work cut out for us.” A unit that has 50% casualties is usually no longer able to fight and must be replaced. But the Ukrainians leave their units on the frontline until nearly nobody is left in them. So the number of 500 casualties per day on the Bakhmut front seems realistic. Over the last months the daily report of the Russian ministry of defense listed on average some 300 Ukrainian casualties per day.

But the ministry does not report the casualties from Bakhmut as the operations of the private military contractor Wagner are not included in it. So the daily total over the last month, despite little movement of the front lines, must have been some 800 dead Ukrainians. In the 30 days between the two maps at the top at least 24,000 Ukrainian soldiers have left the battle field. It is no wonder that such high numbers can not be replaced. The mix of dead or wounded will likely be 1 to 1 as medical evacuation from the frontline trenches is extremely difficult. Most wounded will just die there. It is not only the men that are lost. The equipment they used is mostly lost with them. 24,000 men are the equivalent of 6 to 7 NATO brigades. The German army has now only 8 of those.

When I was it that army it had 36 brigades plus significant reserve units. The same large downgrade happened with the general state of NATO. It is not ready for a war with Russia. The western wounder weapons have done little for Ukraine. The Russians have update their air defense systems to now detect and shoot down HIMARS missiles. They report some 10 to 20 of such kills per day. The shooting down of small and medium sized Ukrainian drones has dropped from 20-30 per day in the summer to 2-3 per day. Either the Ukrainians have run out of drones or the weather has made theirs unusable.

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Escalate.

• Pentagon Gives Ukraine Green Light For Drone Strikes Inside Russia (Times)

The Pentagon has given a tacit endorsement of Ukraine’s long-range attacks on targets inside Russia after President Putin’s multiple missile strikes against Kyiv’s critical infrastructure. Since daily assaults on civilians began in October, the Pentagon has revised its threat assessment of the war in Ukraine. Crucially, this includes new judgments about whether arms shipments to Kyiv might lead to a military confrontation between Russia and Nato. This represents a significant development in the nine-month war between Ukraine and Russia, with Washington now likelier to supply Kyiv with longer-range weapons. “We’re still using the same escalatory calculations but the fear of escalation has changed since the beginning,” a US defence source told The Times.

“It’s different now. This is because the calculus of war has changed as a result of the suffering and brutality the Ukrainians are being subjected to by the Russians.” Washington is now less concerned that new long-range strikes inside Russia could lead to a dramatic escalation. Moscow’s revenge attacks have to date all involved conventional missile strikes against civilian targets. Previously, the Pentagon was warier of Ukraine attacking Russia because it feared the Kremlin would retaliate either with tactical nuclear weapons or by targeting neighbouring Nato nations. However, Washington does not want to be seen publicly giving the green light to Kyiv attacking Russian soil.

Its position on Ukraine’s attacks inside Russia was defined this week by Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, who said: “We have neither encouraged nor enabled the Ukrainians to strike inside of Russia.” However, a US defence source said: “We’re not saying to Kyiv, ‘Don’t strike the Russians [in Russia or Crimea]’. We can’t tell them what to do. It’s up to them how they use their weapons. But when they use the weapons we have supplied, the only thing we insist on is that the Ukrainian military conform to the international laws of war and to the Geneva conventions. “They are the only limitations but that includes no targeting of Russian families and no assassinations. As far as we’re concerned, Ukraine has been in compliance.”

Within these limited constraints laid down by the Pentagon, Kyiv is now adopting a more aggressive, more persistent offensive against targets inside Russia. Ukraine has been careful to use its own drones, not US-supplied weapons, to carry out the strikes. The drones, based on Soviet Tupolev TU-141 Strizh surveillance systems developed in the 1970s, have been reprogrammed to give them longer range and a sizeable munition for launching at low altitude. The modified TU-141s were deployed this week in three raids against military bases 300 miles inside the Russian border and on fuel tanks about 80 miles across the Ukrainian border, in each case evading air defences. The drones can fly at 600mph at low altitude, like cruise missiles.

Putin counter strike
https://twitter.com/i/status/1601334569344856065

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Sheep.

• Prejudice Against COVID-19 Unvaccinated Around the World (ET)

[..] participants were presented with brief descriptions of a series of fictitious individuals and asked to imagine that these are people whom one of their close relatives intends to marry. They were shown two profiles at a time, side by side, and asked to rate each profile by saying whether they agree or disagree with statements such as, “I would be unhappy if this person married one of my close relatives,” and “I think this person is untrustworthy.” One of the six attributes describing these targeted individuals has been their COVID-19 vaccination status, randomly varying between “fully vaccinated” and “unvaccinated.” The other attributes were age, occupation, hobbies, personality, and “family background,” which distinguished between people “born and raised in [the respondent’s country]” and people who “immigrated from the Middle East.”

Across six countries—Germany, India, Indonesia, Morocco, South Africa, and the United Kingdom—selected to represent both affluent Western and developing non-Western nations, the unvaccinated were found to be disliked among vaccinated people (14 percentage points) as much as people with drug addiction (15 percentage points), and significantly more so than people who had been in prison (10 percentage points), atheists (7 percentage points), or people with mental illness (6 percentage points). In addition, the overall dislike of the unvaccinated among vaccinated people (13 percentage points) was found to be two and a half times greater than that of Middle Eastern immigrants (5 percentage points).

In fact, according to the paper, unvaccinated people face significantly more hostility than immigrants even in 10 countries that are deemed unfriendly to immigrants. Interestingly, discriminatory attitudes against unvaccinated Middle Eastern immigrants were found to be just as strong as those toward unvaccinated natives. By contrast, researchers found that the unvaccinated respondents on average showed almost no discriminatory attitudes toward the vaccinated. “The results demonstrate that prejudice is mostly one-sided,” the authors wrote. “Only in [the] United States and Germany do we find that the unvaccinated feel some antipathy towards the vaccinated. But even here we do not find statistical evidence in favor of negative stereotyping or exclusionary attitudes.”

“The observation that vaccinated individuals discriminate against those who are unvaccinated, but that there is no evidence for the reverse, is consistent with work on the psychology of cooperation,” said leading author Alexander Bor, a political psychologist at the George Soros-funded Central European University (CEU).

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“..Janet Yellen may be stupid, but she’s not that stupid. She knows what this price cap she’s championed will do..”

“..push capital investment into competing energy technologies — like nuclear, hydrogen and unicorn farts.”

• EU’s Oil Price Cap Creates a Price Cap… on Stupidity (Luongo)

The EU and the US went forward with their long-debated, long-telegraphed move to put a price cap on Russian oil at $60 per barrel. By believing they can pressure suppliers into not hauling Russian oil lest they run afoul of the sanctions that support the price cap, they believe they can take only Russian oil off the market for the long run. Because of the way oil is actually traded in the real world, versus the way it trades in Janet Yellen’s head, this policy is actually much harder to implement than it actually looks. You don’t buy oil at the crude oil counter at Target or Wal-Mart. There isn’t a price tag you can look at and say yes or no too. As Tsvetana Paraskova at Oilprice points out, crude contracts are written based on a discount or premium to a benchmark price at a particular moment in time.


“Physical traders rarely trade on a fixed price,” John Driscoll, chief strategist at JTD Energy Services Pte Ltd, told Bloomberg. “It’s a much more complex space where they trade on formulas and spot differentials to a benchmark crude for the trading of actual cargoes as well as for hedging that follows,” said Driscoll, who has more than 30 years of trading oil in Singapore. To complicate things further, the EU wants to remain flexible to change the cap at its discretion. “The price cap is not set in stone – it “is fixed for now but adjustable over time,” the EU said last week. If this sounds like a recipe for complete disaster, it is. No matter what happens here, the quantity of oil to be produced under this cap, even if it isn’t successful, will go down. Period. See chart below. If you disagree with this then you might just qualify to replace Yellen as Treasury Secretary of the US.

That said, Janet Yellen may be stupid, but she’s not that stupid. She knows what this price cap she’s championed will do. So, as always, with these people the question you shouldn’t be asking isn’t, “Will this work?” or “How will Russia respond?” but rather, “Is this the point of the exercise?” [..] If everyone involved knows that price floors and price ceilings always and without fail create production shortages, then why did they do this when the world clearly need more oil? Because this is a feature of the policy, not a bug. By doing this, like every other intervention into oil delivery since the start of the war in Ukraine, the goal was to take Russia’s supply offline and hope that other producers would see the opportunity to take market share from the evil Russians while simultaneously trying to push capital investment into competing energy technologies — like nuclear, hydrogen and unicorn farts.

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The Mar-a-Lago invasion.

• Federal Judge Declines To Hold Trump In Contempt Of Court (Fox)

A federal judge has declined to take action to hold former President Trump in contempt of court during a closed-door hearing on Friday, according to two sources with knowledge of the proceedings. Friday’s hearing was in relation to a federal probe into Trump’s handling of classified material at his Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago. Judge Beryl Howell urged lawyers from the Department of Justice and Trump’s team to work out the matter on their own during a 90-minute meeting in a Washington, D.C., federal court. The Justice Department has become increasingly frustrated with lawyers for Trump over the past few months for allegedly failing to comply with a subpoena asking for classified documents in Trump’s possession to be returned, sources tell Fox News.


[..] Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate was the subject of a search warrant executed in August by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents, where classified documents were allegedly found to have been in his possession. Steven Cheung, senior communications adviser to Trump, told Fox News Digital that the former president and his lawyers will continue to cooperate. “The President and his counsel will continue to be transparent and cooperative, even in the face of the highly weaponized and corrupt witch-hunt from the Department of Justice. Hillary Clinton was allowed to delete and acid wash 33,000 emails after they were subpoenaed by Congress, yet absolutely nothing has happened to hold her accountable. If the Department of Justice can go after President Trump, they will surely come after any American who they disagree with. President Trump is the only one who stands in the way of the un-American weaponization of law enforcement,” Cheung said.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Ali

 

 

Gonzalo – Unconditional Surrender Is Now Russia’s Goal

 

 

Judge Nap/ Macgregor

 

 


Chief John Smith, a Chippewa Native American who was reputed to be 137 years old when he died.

 

 


U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service @USFWS
Important announcement: We’re designating the northern cardinal as the best holiday season bird. It just makes sense and we won’t be taking any questions at this time. Thank you.

 

 

Pigeon cat
https://twitter.com/i/status/1601689156182110208

 

 


Striped Indian mackerels open their cavernous mouths as they swim, sieving zooplankton with gill rakers like a net. Photo Alex Mustard.

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle September 24 2022

Sep 242022
 
 September 24, 2022  Posted by at 7:56 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  71 Responses »


Joan Miro Montroig, la iglesia y el pueblo 1918

 

• 4 Ukrainian Regions Vote In Referendums On Joining Russia (ZH)
• Historic Context Of The Referenda In Ukraine (MoA)
• Von der Leyen’s Warning Message To Italy Irks Election Candidates (Pol.eu)
• Reaping the Whirlwind (Scott Ritter)
• Talks With Ukraine Necessary – Kremlin (RT)
• Hungary Explains ‘Red Line’ For Russia Sanctions (RT)
• Sanctions On Russia Lead To More Ship Emissions, Says Cargill (ZH)
• Macron Suggests Covid As Reason For Ukraine Conflict (RT)
• I Know What I’d Do In Putin’s Shoes – Jordan Peterson (RT)
• US Military Bought Tool That Can See 93% Of Internet Traffic – Senator (RT)
• “Joe Biden’s” Last Stand (Kunstler)
• Biden Family Worked to Sell American Gas to China (ET)
• Who Controls Those Who Control Us? (Ugo Bardi)
• Judge Orders NYPD Union Members Fired Over Vax Mandate Reinstated (YP)
• The Vaccine Narrative Is as Leaky as the Vaccines (Thakur)

 

 

 

 

Normalizing myocarditis
https://twitter.com/i/status/1573134151376687104

 

 

 

 

Clay Travis

 

 

 

 

 

 

This map makes very clear what’s at stake: all of southeast Ukraine. Things will escalate on Tuesday at the latest.

• 4 Ukrainian Regions Vote In Referendums On Joining Russia (ZH)

On Friday Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine kicked off voting in referendums on joining the Russian Federation, according to announcements by a series of separatist leaders, in the biggest political development on the ground thus far in the seven-month long invasion. These ‘popular referendums’ are taking place in four areas of Ukraine in the east and south, namely the self-declared republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, and in large parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia – despite these not yet being under full Russian military control. The voting is expected to continue over a period of five days.

In total the four regions make up nearly 20% of Ukraine’s territory, and signals huge escalation given this week President Vladimir Putin vowed to use “all the means at our disposal” – including the potential of nuclear arms – to defend Russia’s “territorial integrity”. Of course, by bringing whole swathes of Ukraine into Russia, Putin effectively issued a ‘by all means’ declaration for military defense of these territories. The Ukrainian presidency’s office denounced the move as illegal and a “propaganda show”, saying, “Today, there is no legal action called a ‘referendum’ in the occupied territories.” According to a statement by Zelensky adviser Mykhailo Podolyak: “There is only – 1. [A] Propaganda show for z-conscription. 2. The territory of Ukraine that needs an immediate release,” he added, citing the “Z” letter and symbol that has become synonymous with Russia’s offensive.

Ukraine’s Western backers have also dismissed the voting as a “sham” – even as there’s widespread acknowledgement the results will likely be overwhelming in favor of joining Russia, given these are by and large places of a concentrated pro-Kremlin and Russian speaking population (especially among those Ukrainians who’ve remained there under Russian occupation). Western pundits are also seeing the move toward annexation as an act of desperation, following Ukrainian forces’ largely successful counteroffensive which has threatened Moscow’s grip on the east in particular. But officials from the two breakaway republics in the Donbas in particular have pointed to years of shelling and atrocities conducted by Ukraine’s military and nationalist militias such as Azov battalion.

According to international figures, some 14,000 people had died in total among both sides of fighting in what was essentially a localized civil war since even before the current conflict, since 2014. The Ukrainian government has all along initiated polices in attempts to stamp out Russian language and culture.

Read more …

And this map shows the context of “historical” Ukraine.

“..one of the first laws implemented by the new government removed the Russian language from official use. Instead of overcoming the differences between its people it only sealed the predominant split in Ukraine..”

• Historic Context Of The Referenda In Ukraine (MoA)

Voting for membership in the Russian Federation has started in four oblast of Ukraine: “Russian proxy officials in four regions — Donetsk and Luhansk in the east, and Kherson and Zaporizka in the south — earlier this week announced plans to hold referendums over four days beginning on Friday. Russia controls nearly all of two of the four regions, Luhansk and Kherson, but only a fraction of the other two, Zaporizka and Donetsk. Ukrainian officials have dismissed the voting as grotesque theater — staging polls in cities laid to waste by Russian forces and abandoned by most residents.” President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked Ukraine’s allies for their steadfast support and said “the farce” of “sham referenda” would do nothing to change his nation’s fight to drive Russia from Ukraine.

The Ukrainian regime has resorted to pure terrorism to prevent the votes from happening: “Ukrainian partisans, sometimes working with special operations forces, have blown up warehouses holding ballots and buildings where Russian proxy officials preparing for the vote held meetings. Ukrainian officials have acknowledged that they are engaged in a campaign to assassinate key Russian administration officials; more than a dozen have been blown up, shot and poisoned, according to Ukrainian and Russian officials.” Such behavior by the Zelenski regime against its still Ukrainian compatriots will only encourage the people in the four oblast to vote for an alignment with Russia. The propaganda in the ‘west’ will declare that the vote is irregular and that the results, likely to be pro-Russian, will be fake.

[..] In 2014, after the violent fascist coup in Kiev, one of the first laws implemented by the new government removed the Russian language from official use. Instead of overcoming the differences between its people it only sealed the predominant split in Ukraine. The election promise of the current Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelenski to make peace with the Russia aligned rebellious Donbas region by adhering to the Minsk 2 agreements was rewarded with a large share of southeastern votes for his presidency. However, after having been threatened with death by fascists, Zelenski has made a 180 degree turn and has since posed as Ukrainian nationalist. In consequence he has lost all support in southeastern Ukraine.

The southeastern parts of today’s Ukraine have for centuries been part of the central Russian empire. They were only attached to the Soviet Republic of Ukraine under Lenin’s rule in 1922 and, in the case of Crimea, in 1954 under Nikita Khrushchev who himself had grown up in the Donbas region. A likely high turnout and majority vote for membership in the Russian Federation will only correct the historic misalignment created by those illogical transfers.

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She is unelected. Maybe that’s why she doesn’t understand.

• Von der Leyen’s Warning Message To Italy Irks Election Candidates (Pol.eu)

Italian politicians asked European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen not to intervene in domestic politics after she warned that Europe has “the tools” to deal with Italy if things go in a “difficult direction.” During a conference on Thursday at Princeton University, an attendant pointed out to von der Leyen that “figures close to Putin” were among candidates for the upcoming legislative election on Sunday. “We’ll see,” she replied. “If things go in a difficult direction — and I’ve spoken about Hungary and Poland — we have the tools.” This is a clear reference to the ability of the European Commission to cut funds allocated to member countries when they are deemed to be violating the rule of law. Last week, the Commission proposed to cut €7.5 billion of funds allocated to Hungary.

Von der Leyen’s remark came just a day before Italy’s campaign goes quiet for the weekend, and has provoked the ire of multiple candidates during their final stretch. “What is this, a threat? This is shameful arrogance,” tweeted Matteo Salvini, the leader of Italy’s far-right League party. He asked von der Leyen to “respect the free, democratic and sovereign vote of the Italian people.” He also said on Italian TV that “if anyone in Brussels thinks of cutting the funds that belong to Italy, because the League wins the elections, then we have to rethink this Europe,” adding that “this is institutional bullying.”

Italy is the biggest beneficiary of the Next Generation EU fund, a package of grants and loans to tackle the economic challenges after the COVID-19 pandemic. Even Matteo Renzi, the EU-friendly, liberal leader of the Italia Viva party, asked von der Leyen “not to enter into Italian affairs in the slightest.” “I’m sure she will clarify her sentence,” said a more lenient Enrico Letta, who leads the center-left democratic party. He assured Italian voters that “there is no blackmail from the EU.”

Ursula

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“..a post-SMO military operation will be one configured to destroy an active threat to Mother Russia itself..”

• Reaping the Whirlwind (Scott Ritter)

Putin’s decision to order a partial mobilization of the Russian military, when combined with the decision to conduct the referendums in the Donbass and occupied Ukraine, radically transforms the SMO from a limited-scope operation to one linked to the existential survival of Russia. Once the referenda are conducted, and the results forwarded to the Russian parliament, what is now the territory of Ukraine will, in one fell swoop, become part of the Russian Federation — the Russian homeland. All Ukrainian forces that are on the territory of the regions to be incorporated into Russia will be viewed as occupiers; and Ukrainian shelling of this territory will be treated as an attack on Russia, triggering a Russian response.

Whereas the SMO had, by design, been implemented to preserve Ukrainian civil infrastructure and reduce civilian casualties, a post-SMO military operation will be one configured to destroy an active threat to Mother Russia itself. The gloves will come off. The U.S. and NATO, having committed to a program designed to defeat Russia via proxy, must now decide whether they continue to follow through with their political and material support for Ukraine and, if so, to what extent. Does the goal remain the “strategic defeat” of Russia, or will the aid be tailored simply to assist Ukraine in defending itself? These are two completely different goals.

One allows for the continued attrition of any Russian force that seeks to project power from Russian territory into Ukraine but, in doing so, respects the reality, if not the legitimacy, of the Russian incorporation of the Donbass and southern Ukrainian territories under occupation into the Russian Federation. The other continues to sustain the current policy of the Ukrainian government and its Western allies of evicting Russia from the Donbass, occupied Ukraine and Crimea. This means attacking Mother Russia. This means war with Russia. For its part, Russia considers itself already to be in a war with the West. “We are really at war with…NATO and with the collective West,” Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said in a statement that followed Putin’s announcement regarding partial mobilization.

“We mean not only the weapons that are supplied in huge quantities. Naturally, we find ways to counter these weapons. We have in mind, of course, the Western systems that there exist: communication systems, information processing systems, reconnaissance systems, and satellite intelligence systems.” Put in this context, the Russian partial mobilization isn’t designed to defeat the Ukrainian military, but to defeat the forces of NATO and the “collective West” that have been assembled in Ukraine.

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“But, as we have already said, we do not see any prerequisites for the negotiation process..”

• Talks With Ukraine Necessary – Kremlin (RT)

Negotiations between Russia and Ukraine are needed, but there are no signs that such a dialogue could resume in the near future, Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said on Friday. He also pointed out that Kiev backed out of talks with Moscow months ago. Speaking to reporters, Peskov was asked whether Moscow believes that talks with the government in Kiev are warranted under the current conditions. The Kremlin spokesman signaled that dialogue is “of course needed.” “And it is needed to achieve our goals. But, as we have already said, we do not see any prerequisites for the negotiation process,” he stated. Peskov went on to say that Russian President Vladimir Putin has already explained that “Ukraine left the negotiations several months ago.”

The Russian leader, he added, also offered the reminder that various Kiev officials had signaled that they “intend to solve their problems on the battlefield.” “You know very well how our president reacted to this,” he said. On Wednesday, Putin announced a partial mobilization in which 300,000 reservists will be called up to take part in the conflict with Ukraine. The move came a day after the two Donbass republics and the Russian-controlled Zaporozhye and Kherson Regions decided to hold referendums over September 23-27 on whether to unite with Russia. Russia has repeatedly said that it is ready to talk with Ukraine, but insisted that it isn’t interested in “a meeting for the sake of the meeting.”

Moreover, earlier this month, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov noted that Moscow had never dismissed the idea of peace talks, warning, however, that “the longer this process is delayed, the harder it will be to reach an agreement.” Meanwhile, in late July Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky said Kiev refused to negotiate with Moscow, claiming that Russia would not stop until it gets “smashed.” The last time Russia and Ukraine sat down at the negotiating table was in late March. At that time, the two parties were discussing a draft peace agreement that would have made Ukraine a neutral state in exchange for security guarantees given by major world powers. Later, however, Kiev ended the talks after accusing Russian troops of having committed war crimes, an allegation that Moscow has vehemently denied.

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Energy. Simple as that.

• Hungary Explains ‘Red Line’ For Russia Sanctions (RT)

Hungary is against imposing new sanctions on Moscow, especially in the energy sector, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Friday after meeting his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov. According to the minister, energy sanctions are “a clear red line” for Hungary as Europe is grappling with soaring gas prices. “Our position is very clear. We see no reasonable reasons to discuss a new package of sanctions, especially when it comes to energy,” Szijjarto said on Friday, RIA Novosti reports. The pair met on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York. According to a Hungarian outlet Index, he added that “this is a clear red line for us. We do not want the Hungarian people to pay a price for a war they have nothing to do with,” referring to the ongoing hostilities between Russia and Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Szijjarto signaled that Hungary doesn’t plan to shun any debate on the new sanctions package, but it “wouldn’t consent to anything that is contrary to our national interests.” The minister also addressed the criticism he may face for holding talks with Lavrov, highlighting the fact that peace “will not come without dialogue.” If there are no negotiations, “the world will face even more serious consequences”, he said. Szijjarto warned that the European economy is heading into recession. In recent months, Europe has been plagued by an energy crisis, which was largely caused by skyrocketing natural gas prices due to sanctions the EU has imposed on Russia.

Hungary is heavily dependent on Moscow for energy and gets around 80% of its gas from Russian energy giant Gazprom and while Russia has cut off a number of countries from gas supplies, in late August, Hungary signed a deal with Moscow for additional deliveries on top of the already agreed volumes. On Wednesday, following Moscow’s bid to support referendums in the two Donbass republics and Russian-controlled Zaporozhye and Kherson Regions on joining Russia, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said that the bloc had made a “political” decision to slap new sanctions on Moscow. The exact nature of the restrictions, however, is so far unclear.

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“.. the whole strong climate action EU has been promoting to decarbonize its grid to save the planet is at risk of unraveling this winter.”

• Sanctions On Russia Lead To More Ship Emissions, Says Cargill (ZH)

The unilateral sanctions that Western countries slapped Moscow with are igniting even more man-made carbon-dioxide emissions from the shipping industry as Europe rejiggers energy supply chains away from Russia by sourcing energy products from far away. Jan Dieleman, Cargill Inc.’s head of ocean transportation business, told Bloomberg that European importers are hiring tankers for long-distance hauls of energy products from countries halfway around the world. If it weren’t for the sanctions, natural gas and other refined energy products would flow via pipelines from Russia to Europe. But since Europe is hellbent on rapidly shifting its entire energy supply chain away from Russia. EU importers are hiring tankers to source liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Asia.

In a recent note, we outlined the insanity behind the EU’s panic buying of LNG from China. It’s so idiotic because China is just reselling Russian LNG… Dieleman said higher fuel costs for vessels mean ship operators are switching to dirtier-burning fuels like diesel or crude oil on these long-haul trips. Meanwhile, EU countries are aggressively restarting fossil fuel power plants ahead of what could be a very dark and cold winter. Some governments have even asked residents to burn firewood to heat their homes as the energy crisis could induce rolling blackouts during peak demand hours. So the whole strong climate action EU has been promoting to decarbonize its grid to save the planet is at risk of unraveling this winter.

The very fact that Europe has to source LNG from Asia on longer routes while vessels burn dirtier fuel is entirely hypocritical to the bloc’s stance about saving the planet. For some context, shipping is responsible for almost 3% of man-made carbon-dioxide emissions.

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Ha ha ha! You sure it’s not the vaccines?

• Macron Suggests Covid As Reason For Ukraine Conflict (RT)

Russian foreign policy regarding Ukraine is dictated by the whims of President Vladimir Putin rather than rational thinking, his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, has claimed. Macron speculated about Putin’s mindset and the reasons he ordered Russian troops to enter Ukraine in late February, during an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Thursday. “I have no rational explanation. I think this is a series of resentment, this is a strategy of hegemony in the region, and I would say this is a post-Covid-19 consequence, isolation,” he said. The French leader argued that when Putin “decided to launch his war on 21 February, I think he made the first mistake, a huge one. And he decided to put Russia in a situation indeed to be the new imperial country and to launch a colonial war.”


On February 21, Putin signed orders recognizing the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics as sovereign states. Moscow pledged troops to defend the two Donbass republics, and called on Kiev to withdraw its forces from the territory they claimed as their own, which the Ukrainian government refused to do. Russia launched its military campaign against Kiev on the 24th. The hostilities followed decades of Russian complaints over NATO expansion in Europe, which the US and its allies pushed forward with in spite of their promises to not do so, made to the last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev.

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“..we can’t say ‘no’ to Putin because we sold our soul for his oil and gas..”

• I Know What I’d Do In Putin’s Shoes – Jordan Peterson (RT)

Popular conservative political commentator Jordan Peterson has tried to get into Russian President Vladimir Putin’s head and predict how Russia’s conflict with the West in Ukraine will unfold. Peterson said that if he were the Russian president he would leave the EU without energy supplies in the winter. “I know what I’d do in his shoes,” he said on the Piers Morgan Uncensored show on Thursday. “I’d wait till the first cold snap and shut off the taps.” Peterson was referring to supplies of Russian natural gas to EU nations. He argued that Moscow indirectly warned that a full shutdown would happen when Russian gas giant Gazprom started curtailing deliveries through the Nord Stream pipeline to Germany, citing maintenance issues.

The political commentator declined to endorse a notion popular in the West that Putin resembles Adolf Hitler or Josef Stalin in his thinking, calling the claim “foolish” and not backed by any actual evidence. Putin “is a lot more like everybody else than anyone thinks,” Peterson argued. He added that “there is a bit of Hitler and Stalin in everyone,” before going into an explanation of how accepting government-imposed lies under pressure was part of human nature. “The totalitarian state is actually the grip of the lie. And people would certainly go along with that. We’ve seen this emerge with [the] cancel culture. It’s like ‘Lie! Or else!’,” he said. He mocked the idea that Ukraine and its Western backers could “win” against Russia as “naïve.” “I just don’t understand that. What do you mean we are going to win? What are we going to win exactly?” he demanded.

The Russian government, Peterson believes, would consider simply devastating Ukraine an acceptable outcome, if no better alternative can be achieved. And the West would not be able to stop it due to Russia’s role as a global supplier of energy, he argued. “We can’t win against Vladimir Putin in any way because you cannot win against someone you cannot say ‘no’ to. Period. And we can’t say ‘no’ to Putin because we sold our soul for his oil and gas,” he said. “And we did that to elevate our moral stature in relation to ‘saving the planet.’ And here we are, facing a very dire winter, hoisted on the petard of our very own foolishness and moral presumption,” he added. Peterson was referring to the concern that humanity was facing an existential threat due to climate change, a threat that he believes to be exaggerated.

The unintended consequences of the West’s conflict with Russia are a far more imminent and real threat to humans, he pointed out, as “the World Bank already estimated that we’ve put 350 million people into what they call ‘food insecurity’.” “But the planet has too many people on it anyway, so, you know… It’s just poor people,” he added. Peterson is a Canadian psychology professor who rose to international prominence over his commentaries on various contemporary issues, such as transgender acceptance policies in the West, the role of Christianity in cultures originating in Europe, and geopolitical conflicts. His YouTube channel has over 5.5 million subscribers

Peterson

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No surprise, but now it has a name.

• US Military Bought Tool That Can See 93% Of Internet Traffic – Senator (RT)

Multiple branches of the US military have bought access to “petabytes” of American citizens’ private internet use data via a tool called Augury, giving them access to an almost omniscient set of data points, including an individual’s email communications, browsing history, and other behaviorally identifying information, all on demand and without a warrant, Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) claimed in a letter to the Office of the Inspector General on Wednesday. The senator asked the OIG to investigate the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department’s purchase and use of any such records, citing a report his office received from a military whistleblower regarding the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) buying and using netflow data from data broker Team Cymru.

Netflow data includes proprietary information normally available only to internet service providers, and is likely being provided without the informed consent of those providers – let alone judicial authorization. Wyden’s own investigation of the whistleblower’s claim appeared to reveal that US Cyber Command, the Army, FBI, and Secret Service had also purchased the company’s data sets. An investigation by Motherboard found they paid a total of $3.5 million to use Team Cymru’s tool Augury, which allegedly can access 93% of internet traffic. It uses a technology called packet capture data (PCAP), which one cybersecurity technology professional referred to as “everything… there’s nothing else to capture except the smell of electricity.”

A spokesman from the Navy Office of Information told Motherboard that “The use of net flow data by NCIS does not require a warrant,” claiming the agency had not used netflow for criminal investigation purposes – only for “various counterintelligence purposes.”The other agencies which reportedly purchased Augury did not respond to the outlet’s request for comment. For their part, Team Cymru has insisted its tool “is not designed to target specific users or user activity. The platform specifically does not possess subscriber information necessary to tie records back to any users.” However, previous studies have shown that relatively few data points are needed in order to de-anonymize individuals in a database, meaning that even the “limited sampling of the available data” it allows may be enough to unmask an individual – and gain access to the totality of their online existence.

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“They engineered the 2014 coup in Kiev that ousted the elected president, Mr. Yanyukovich, to set up a giant grifting parlor and international money-laundromat.”

• “Joe Biden’s” Last Stand (Kunstler)

Let us agree that the place called Ukraine was never any of America’s business. For centuries we ignored it, through all the colorful cavalry charges to-and-fro of Turks and Tatars, the reign of the dashing Zaporozhian Cossacks, the cruel abuses of Stalin, then Hitler, and the dull, gray Khrushchev-to-Yeltsin years. But then, having destroyed Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia and sundry other places all on a great hegemonic lark, the professional warmongers of our land and their catamites in Washington made Ukraine their next special project. They engineered the 2014 coup in Kiev that ousted the elected president, Mr. Yanyukovich, to set up a giant grifting parlor and international money-laundromat. The other strategic aim was to prepare Ukraine for NATO membership, which would have made it, in effect, a forward missile base right up against Russia’s border. Because, well, Russia, Russia, Russia!

An early beneficiary of these arrangements, you might recall, was one Hunter Biden, the drug-addicted, sex-obsessed, no-account son of Barack Obama’s no-account vice-president then known simply as Joe Biden sans quote-marks — because in 2014, he was a closer approximation of a real person than is sadly now the case. In fact, he was known as “The Big Guy” among Hunter’s business coterie (though listed as “Pedo Peter” on Hunter’s speed-dial). After the 2014 coup, and for years beyond, Hunter pulled a steady revenue stream out of Ukraine’s Burisma Holdings, a natgas distributor (among other things), serving as a know-nothing, no-show board member. When this monkey business came to the attention of President Trump, and he made a telephone inquiry about it, he was instantly beset by swarms of DC swamp vermin hoisting writs of impeachment.

Fast forward through the past eight years and you have Kiev’s persecution of the Russian-speaking Donbas provinces, the constant shelling and harassment by Banderite Nazis. Between that and the ever more strident urgings for Ukraine to join NATO, President Putin of Russia, Russia, Russia apparently had enough. In February of this year, he started the Special Military Operation to put an end to these hostilities. By April, when whole battalions of Ukrainian Nazis had been exterminated, a call to peace talks was issued by Mr. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister. This was shot-down without ceremony by “Joe Biden” (that is, by the junta behind him). The genius strategists in Foggy Bottom aimed to “weaken” Russia.

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Under the carpet.

• Biden Family Worked to Sell American Gas to China (ET)

The Biden family was selling U.S natural gas to China long before Joe Biden became president, who was aware of how his son Hunter Biden was making the sale possible, according to Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, citing documents and information provided by a whistleblower. Hunter Biden had a Chinese Communist Party member as his assistant while dealing with the Chinese side for the shipping of American natural gas to China in 2017, and the Biden family was promising business associates that they would reap rewards once Biden became president, said Comer in a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen dated Sept. 20.

“The President has not only misled the American public about his past foreign business transactions, but he also failed to disclose that he played a critical role in arranging a business deal to sell American natural resources to the Chinese while planning to run for President,” Comer wrote. Joe Biden, Comer said, was a business partner in the arrangement and had office space to work on the deal, and a firm he managed received millions from his Chinese partners ahead of the anticipated venture. While part of what Comer stated had previously been reported in the news, the letter, citing whistleblower testimonies, as well as emails, a corporate PowerPoint presentation, screenshot of encrypted messages, and bank documents that committee Republicans obtained, provides a more complete picture suggesting Biden’s knowledge and involvement in the plan from at least 2017.

From 2017 to 2021, the Bidens promised business associates that Joe Biden would run for president in 2020 and those who worked with them from 2017 onward would “reap the rewards in a future Biden administration,” according to Comer’s recount of a whistleblower testimony to Oversight Committee Republicans. “As America now struggles in an energy crisis, it is critical to understand why the Biden family was selling American energy reserves to the Chinese, if that is affecting President Biden’s decision making today, and why President Biden has never disclosed his relationship with the Chinese to the American public,” Comer wrote to Yellen.

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History lesson.

• Who Controls Those Who Control Us? (Ugo Bardi)

It never was a secret that Benito Mussolini started his political career as a shill for the British secret services. His task was pushing Italy to join the allies in World War One. Recent data show that, in 1917, he was still being paid by the British M15 to the tune of 100 pounds per week, a respectable sum at that time. We don’t know what role the British Services had in Italy in the events after the end of WW1, but it is likely that they continued to support Mussolini, directly or indirectly. The British wanted a stable Italy that they saw as a staunch ally and a barrier against the ambitions of rival powers in the Mediterranean sea. Italy had played that role from when it had been created as a unified state, in 1861, with the help and financing of the British.

Italy was friendly to Britain, yes, but not a disinterested friend. Italians wanted something in exchange for their friendship, and they had it in the form of coal. Italy had no significant coal reserves, it was fully dependent on imports. It was British coal that had created the Italian industrial economy, from the early 1800s onward. That created a relationship between the two countries that many defined as a true brotherhood (fratellanza). But things changed in 1913, when Britain went through its “peak coal.” Production stopped increasing and was disrupted by strikes and social unrest. Britain still had enough coal for its internal needs, but exports were affected. This was especially bad for Italy, which saw a precipitous drop in coal imports after the end of WWI. At that time, the change of mood toward the British in Italy was palpable.

D. H. Lawrence reports in his “Sea and Sardinia,” published in 1921, how insulting the “English” was a common subject of conversation among Italians. Now, put yourself in the shoes of someone who managed the British secret services in the early 1930s. It must have been clear to them that there was a problem with Italy. An enormous problem. Germany’s coal production was still increasing and Germany could easily supply 100% of Italy’s needs. Then, Italy and Germany were natural allies. Germany had no direct strategic interests in the Mediterranean sea, while Italy could use Germany’s support to become the leading Mediterranean power. By taking control of the Suez Canal, Italy could effectively kick Britain out of the Mediterranean: truly a disaster for the British Empire. (Italy actually tried to do exactly that in 1940).

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“To be unequivocally clear, this Court does not deny that at the time it was issued the vaccine mandate was appropriate and lawful..”

• Judge Orders NYPD Union Members Fired Over Vax Mandate Reinstated (YP)

In a major victory for members of the NYPD’s largest police union, a judge ruled Friday cops who were fired for not getting vaccinated against the coronavirus have to be reinstated. In the stunning decision, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Lyle Frank wrote that the city’s vaccine mandate on the Police Benevolent Association was invalid “to the extent it has been used to impose a new condition of employment” on the union. The mandate was also invalid because it issued enforcement beyond “monetary sanctions” prescribed in the law, Frank wrote — ordering that all PBA members put on leave or canned be reinstated.

It would be a “gross overstatement” of the city’s Department of Mental Health and Hygiene to say it could enforce the vaccine mandate through termination, unpaid leave or suspension, Frank said. “To be unequivocally clear, this Court does not deny that at the time it was issued the vaccine mandate was appropriate and lawful,” the ruling stated. But the city hadn’t “established a legal basis or lawful authority for the DOH to exclude employees from the workplace and impose any other adverse employment action as an appropriate enforcement mechanism of the vaccine mandate.”

Any new condition of employment would have to be included in a collective bargaining agreement between a labor union and the city, the judge wrote. Frank is the same judge who recently ruled to toss the city Department of Education’s budget. [..] The ruling is the second big blow against the Big Apple’s COVID-19 measures in a week, after a Manhattan judge ruled last week an NYPD cop who sued over the mandate couldn’t be fired for refusing to get jabbed. Brooklyn cop Alexander Deletto, 43, should be allowed to keep his job after the city offered no explanation why it rejected his request for a religious exemption.

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“..governments don’t ban products merely because they are not beneficial. Bans apply only to products that inflict harms. So the unstated reality is the benefit: harm ratio is no longer favorable.”

But that’s only in Denmark?!

• The Vaccine Narrative Is as Leaky as the Vaccines (Thakur)

Let’s start with two simple questions. If regulators had the information available to them of the leakage between Covid-19 vaccine efficacy rates in controlled trials and their effectiveness in the real world, would they still grant emergency use authorization? Would their legal framework permit them to do so? Remember, all laws serve a dual purpose. On the one hand, they are permissive and enabling, granting powers to do certain things. On the other, they are limiting and restrictive, ring-fencing what may lawfully be done even by the state. Second, is Denmark being ruled by an anti-vaxxer government and health authority? From July 1 Denmark, which has an excellent health infrastructure including data collection, banned under-18s from being vaccinated and in mid-September the ban was extended to boosters for under-50s, other than in exceptional circumstances for immunocompromised and high-risk individuals in both cases.

The explanation offered by the health authorities is interesting both for what they said and what they did not say. They anticipate a rise in Covid-19 infections over autumn and winter and “aim to prevent serious illness, hospitalisation and death.” This risk applies to 50-year olds and above and not those younger. Because the vaccines are not meant to prevent infection, they will no longer be offered to the under-50s. However, governments don’t ban products merely because they are not beneficial. Bans apply only to products that inflict harms. So the unstated reality is the benefit: harm ratio is no longer favorable. The really interesting question therefore is: why don’t they say so? The empirical data from around the world demonstrates negligible to negative vaccine effectiveness for healthy under-50s and greater risk of serious adverse events. Denmark’s decision marks official if implicit acknowledgment that harms are greater than benefits.

The lockdowns across the Western world remain, to me, inexplicable and baffling. The abandonment of a century’s worth of cumulative scientific knowledge and global and national pandemic preparedness plans were based neither on new science nor emerging data. Rather, they were based firstly on apocalyptic modelling using flawed assumptions and secondly on dubious data from China whose authoritarian policies played to innate instincts in our own health bureaucrats and politicians, cheered on by the mainstream media. In a further nod to anti-scientific groupthink conformism, critical and contrarian voices within the health and political establishments were silenced and exorcised. Outside government, they were vilified and expelled from the public square in active collusion with the social media tech giants.

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