Leonardo da Vinci Head of bear c.1480
Macgregor
Col. Douglas Macgregor:
“No, I think what you're seeing is this war has become financial as well as military. And the globalists understand that they’re going to lose this war.
And what will come of this is that the BRICS are going to be increased by 81 additional members. And… pic.twitter.com/mwaKdU6ocE
— Daniel Burke — Exonerate LaRouche (@Burke4Senate) May 19, 2023
https://twitter.com/i/status/1659594747466461184
Podolyak
https://twitter.com/i/status/1659602082679209995
RFK
Robert F. Kennedy Jr Says He's Determined to Trigger a 'Political Earthquake' With His Presidential Campaign
"Just watching the way the pandemic was conducted, the countermeasures were conducted, and then the war and the bank bailouts. I had enough. I see my country… pic.twitter.com/EGRl0nNfTw
— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) May 19, 2023
JUST IN – Robert F. Kennedy Jr Receives a Standing Ovation at the 2023 Bitcoin Conference Leaving Announcers Stunned
"We just heard one of the most amazing talks I've ever heard about Bitcoin at an event in my entire life, and I've been doing this for many years."… pic.twitter.com/O4vgE9gj0x
— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) May 19, 2023
https://twitter.com/i/status/1659720620978888705
“..a radical Marxist put in place by the Deep State and globalist billionaires to destroy America..”
• Real Revelation of the Durham Report: Obama is the REAL ‘Big Guy’ (Root)
We are living in an age of mass deception, distraction and denial, of mass brainwashing. We might as well all be living in Jonestown, Guyana and following the orders of Jim Jones. That’s how bad it is. It’s all laid out right in front of us. But no one can see it. Or maybe no one wants to see it. The Durham Report is “the canary in the coal mine.” It’s all Obama. It’s always been Obama. Obama is the REAL “Big Guy.” Obama is the REAL criminal mastermind. Obama was the head of the snake. Obama was the John Gotti of the US government, overseeing a massive criminal conspiracy. Obama was the head of the “Obama Crime Family.” Obama committed TREASON. And the worst part of all: Obama’s still in charge. Obama is pulling all the strings. He’s the one calling the shots. He’s the ventriloquist, speaking for the wooden dummy puppet Joe Biden. Obama is the real President of the United States, back for his third term.
I warned and predicted from the first day Obama appeared on the scene that my old Columbia University classmate was a Manchurian candidate, a radical Marxist put in place by the Deep State and globalist billionaires to destroy America. In my #1 bestselling book back in 2013, “The Ultimate Obama Survival Guide” I reported Obama’s plan was to “boil the frog slowly.” To destroy America in small steps, to move so slowly that we wouldn’t notice we were being destroyed, until it was too late. Hillary Clinton was supposed to finish the job. Hillary’s election was supposed to be Obama’s third term. But Donald J. Trump came along and ruined the plan. Trump became the first politician in history to beat a rigged election. That’s why Hillary and Democrats were so shocked. Obama rigged it, so Hillary could not lose.
How did Obama do that? In addition to the usual Democrat tricks of stuffing the ballot box in Democrat run inner cities, with no Voter ID and no signature match, Obama spied on the Trump campaign. But Trump brought out more working and middle-class voters than any candidate in history. He beat the rig. He won even though Obama spied on him. Even though Obama knew everything Trump was doing and planning- and gave it all to Hillary. Enter Russia Collusion. See the Durham Report. We now know for a fact this was a fraud made up by Hillary. We also know that Hillary laid out this scam to Obama and Biden in the Oval Office. Obama gave his approval. Then Obama rigged the game even further- making sure his handpicked DOJ and FBI would never prosecute these high crimes.
Obama also made sure they’d continue spying on the now President Trump. And use the weaponized federal government filled with Obama hacks to target, frame, demonize and destroy Trump the president. But wait, there’s more. I may despise Obama, but I also respect him. Because he’s brilliant. He ran the country like John Gotti ran his crime family. Nothing happened under Obama without him knowing. So, when Durham reports Obama’s FBI was not allowed to prosecute Hillary for her Clinton Foundation crimes (extorting world leaders), obviously Obama gave that order too. Obama knew everything Hillary was doing- she was his Secretary of State. And you can bet Obama got a piece of her corrupt loot in return for allowing her to do it, and for killing any DOJ/FBI investigations.
And if Obama knew about Hillary’s crimes extorting world leaders, you can also bet he knew about the Joe Biden “Big Guy” scam. Joe was his Vice President. You think Joe and his slimy son Hunter ran around the world extorting money from world leaders and Obama didn’t know about it? You can bet Obama got a piece of Biden’s corruption too. Just like John Gotti. The mafia Don always gets a piece of every scam run by the capos under him. Or they get wacked. And where was all the corrupt loot run out of? The Clinton Foundation. That’s why it was based offshore- far away from prying eyes. As one more layer of protection, Obama ordered the DOJ and FBI to look the other way. This is all called TREASON.
Bill Barr
Trump AG Bill Barr on Durham report, “the people who are criticizing it are the people who perpetuated the big lie of Russiagate and advanced that false narrative, peddled it to the American people + did immense damage to our country, to our institutions”..pic.twitter.com/Wv2bWw8eu8
— Catherine Herridge (@CBS_Herridge) May 19, 2023
If you’re not on the list you don’t count.
• Barack Obama Among 500 Americans Banned From Russia (RT)
The Russian Foreign Ministry on Friday published a list of 500 US citizens – including former president Barack Obama – who are banned from entering the country with immediate effect. The move is a response to the ongoing American sanctions against Moscow. “It is high time for Washington to learn that not a single attack against Russia will go without a strong reaction,” the ministry said in a statement. “The principle of inevitable punishment will be consistently applied, whether we are talking about tougher sanctions or discriminatory steps to hinder the professional activities of our citizens.” In reprisal for the US embassy in Moscow witholding visas for Russian journalists – which prevented them from accompanying Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to the UN Security Council last month – the Russian government has refused to grant the embassy’s request for a consular visit to Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal correspondent charged with espionage.
Besides Obama, the list Russian blacklist includes many members of Congress, governors and attorney-generals of several US states, former officials currently on boards of prominent think tanks, military contractors who supply weapons to Ukraine, and even the short lived “disinformation czar”Nina Jankowicz. Also on the list are “those in government and law enforcement agencies who are directly involved in the persecution of dissidents in the wake of the so-called Capitol insurrection,” the Russian Foreign Ministry noted. Notable names in that category include US Attorney for the District of Columbia Matthew Graves, his predecessor Michael Sherwin, DC Attorney General Karl Racine, and Michael Byrd, the Capitol Police officer who fatally shot unarmed protester Ashli Babbitt.
Among the prominent Biden administration officials who made the blacklist are Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Resources Geoffrey Pyatt (formerly the US ambassador to Ukraine in 2014); James Rubin, former State Department spokesman and current head of the Global Engagement Center; State Department Counselor Derek Chollet; and President Joe Biden’s senior advisor, Anita Dunn. TV hosts Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, Rachel Maddow, and Joe Scarborough were also among the sanctioned, along with former NBC presenter Brian Williams. Secretaries of the Army and the Air Force, Christine Wormuth and Frank Kendall, made the list as well, along with USAF Chief of Staff General Charles Q. Brown Jr. Think tanks and the military-industrial complex made the bulk of the list, however. Former secretary of defense and Marine general James Mattis was sanctioned for being on the board of General Dynamics, and ex-CIA director George Tenet as board member of agency contractor In-Q-Tel.
Former US ambassador to Russia John Tefft was sanctioned as a senior fellow at RAND Corporation. Nelson Strobridge “Strobe” Talbot III – formerly of the State Department – and Norm Eisen were sanctioned for their involvement with the Brookings Institute. Senior Russia and Eurasia researcher Eric Ciaramella was among the many Carnegie Foundation employees on the sanctions list, which also contained many names from the Atlantic Council and the Center for Strategic and International Studies think-tanks. Other prominent names on the Russian blacklist were Ukraine’s former finance minister Natalie Jaresko and former Russia expert at the National Security Council Fiona Hill.
“Can someone please ask Mr. Durham why he did not bring a charge of conspiracy to commit sedition under the RICO act against the whole gang of RussiaGate players..”
• Dum-Da-Dum-Dum…Dah (Kunstler)
It is impossible for now to know the constraints placed on Mr. Durham by Attorney General Merrick Garland — though it appears that Mr. Garland is just the latest initiate into the years-long shuck-and-jive that amounts to a seditious conspiracy against the republic. That is, add Mr. Garland to the long list of officials who have a lot at risk and a lot to hide, so he’s used his vested powers to hamstring Mr. Durham. But the heart of the story is out, despite all that, and pretty baldly stated: Hillary Clinton started the whole RussiaGate gag to take the heat off her own turpitudes. The federal agency heads and their lieutenants avidly used Hillary’s concocted falsehoods to foment malicious prosecutions and drive the naively accommodating President Trump out of office, and stopped at nothing until they succeeded.
There it is. We will now have to muddle through and go forward, a savagely deformed polity. Still, it will be edifying to see Mr. Durham testify before The House Judiciary Committee next week, as Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) has requested. Mr. Durham may even wish to use the opportunity to redeem his tarnished reputation. Some items for review: Why did Mr. Durham omit to investigate the deceitful Mueller team (especially its actual director, Andrew Weissmann), which was an obvious cover-up operation? Ditto: the role played by President Barack Obama in the scheme to interfere in the 2016 election? Ditto: the operation to hide and then discredit Hunter Biden’s crime-stuffed laptop during the 2020 presidential election? Ditto: what has been the CIA’s role in all of this? I believe Mr. Durham will provide many interesting answers to these queries. It may be the only forum that will ever avail him to speak honestly. Presumably the House Judiciary Committee members are lawyers, and have a host of aide lawyers to fall back on for legal advice. Can someone please ask Mr. Durham why he did not bring a charge of conspiracy to commit sedition under the RICO act against the whole gang of RussiaGate players based on the “enterprise rationale” that the evidence suggests they were all vested in an effort to defenestrate a sitting president?
We will go forward from this whether we like it or not, of course, because the arrow of time flies only in that direction. What is the best way out of this wilderness of dishonor and disgrace? Take a lesson from the campaign, so far, of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. The way Mr. Kennedy has been straight-talking — around the coordinated slanders and scurrilities of an ignoble news media — he makes the current leadership of the Democratic Party look like the most pathetic claque of rascally whack-jobs ever assembled under a gonfalon. Keep your eye on RFK, Jr. He’s moving downfield, even without blocking. Side-note or post-script, for those interested in how the vaccination story is going: A close friend went into the CVS pharmacy looking for a “get well soon” card. There were none. A clerk on-hand right there in the aisle said, “we can’t keep them in stock.” No “sympathy” cards either. Draw your conclusions.
“Yet that compromise was exactly what he talked Zelenskyy out of agreeing to in April 2022, when most of the war’s dead were still alive..”
• US National Security Experts: Give Peace in Ukraine a Chance (CD)
On May 16, 2023, TheNew York Times published a full-page advertisement signed by 15 U.S. national security experts about the war in Ukraine. It was headed “The U.S. Should Be a Force for Peace in the World,” and was drafted by the Eisenhower Media Network. While condemning Russia’s invasion, the statement provides a more objective account of the crisis in Ukraine than the U.S. government or TheNew York Times has previously presented to the public, including the disastrous U.S. role in NATO expansion, the warnings ignored by successive U.S. administrations, and the escalating tensions that ultimately led to war. The statement calls the war an “unmitigated disaster,” and urges President Joe Biden and Congress “to end the war speedily through diplomacy, especially given the dangers of military escalation that could spiral out of control.”
If the U.S. persists in backing the plan for a Ukrainian offensive, instead of encouraging Zelenskyy to seize the moment for diplomacy, it will share considerable responsibility for the failure to seize the chance for peace, and for the appalling and ever-rising human costs of this war. This call for diplomacy by wise, experienced former insiders—U.S. diplomats, military officers, and civilian officials—would have been a welcome intervention on any one of the past 442 days of this war. Yet their appeal now comes at an especially critical moment in the war. On May 10, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that he is delaying Ukraine’s long-awaited “spring offensive” to avoid “unacceptable” losses to Ukrainian forces.
Western policy has repeatedly put Zelenskyy in near-impossible positions, caught between the need to show signs of progress on the battlefield to justify further Western support and arms deliveries and, on the other hand, the shocking human cost of continued war represented by the fresh graveyards where tens of thousands of Ukrainians now lie buried. It is not clear how a delay in the planned Ukrainian counter-attack would prevent it leading to unacceptable Ukrainian losses when it finally occurs, unless the delay in fact leads to scaling back and calling off many of the operations that have been planned. Zelenskyy appears to be reaching a limit in terms of how many more of his people he is willing to sacrifice to satisfy Western demands for signs of military progress to hold together the Western alliance and maintain the flow of weapons and money to Ukraine.
Zelenskyy’s predicament is certainly the fault of Russia’s invasion, but also of his April 2022 deal with the devil in the shape of then-U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Johnson promised Zelenskyy that the U.K. and the “collective West” were “in it for the long run” and would back him to recover all of Ukraine’s former territory, just as long as Ukraine stopped negotiating with Russia. Johnson was never in a position to fulfill that promise and, since he was forced to resign as prime minister, he has endorsed a Russian withdrawal only from the territory it invaded since February 2022, not a return to pre-2014 borders. Yet that compromise was exactly what he talked Zelenskyy out of agreeing to in April 2022, when most of the war’s dead were still alive and the framework of a peace agreement was on the table at diplomatic talks in Turkey.
“Meanwhile, the slaughter in the city of Bakhmut continues. It is similar in idiocy, if not in numbers, to the slaughter in Verdun and the Somme during World War I.”
• The Ukraine Refugee Question (Seymour Hersh)
Last Saturday the Washington Post published an exposé of classified American intelligence documents showing that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, working behind the back of the Biden White House, pushed hard earlier this year for an expanded series of missile attacks inside Russia. The documents were part of a large cache of classified materials posted online by an Air Force enlisted man now in custody. A senior official of the Biden administration, asked by the Post for comment on the newly revealed intelligence, said that Zelensky has never violated his pledge never to use American weapons to strike inside Russia. In the view of the White House, Zelensky can do no wrong.
Zelensky’s desire to take the war to Russia may not be clear to the president and senior foreign policy aides in the White House, but it is to those in the American intelligence community who have found it difficult to get their intelligence and their assessments a hearing in the Oval Office. Meanwhile, the slaughter in the city of Bakhmut continues. It is similar in idiocy, if not in numbers, to the slaughter in Verdun and the Somme during World War I. The men in charge of today’s war—in Moscow, Kiev, and Washington—have shown no interest even in temporary ceasefire talks that could serve as a prelude to something permanent. The talk now is only about the possibilities of a late spring or summer offensive by either party.
But something else is cooking, as some in the American intelligence community know and have reported in secret, at the instigation of government officials at various levels in Poland, Hungary, Lithuania, Estonia, Czechoslovakia, and Latvia. These countries are all allies of Ukraine and declared enemies of Vladimir Putin. This group is led by Poland, whose leadership no longer fears the Russian army because its performance in Ukraine has left the glow of its success at Stalingrad during the Second World War in tatters. It has been quietly urging Zelensky to find a way to end the war—even by resigning himself, if necessary—and to allow the process of rebuilding his nation to get under way.
Zelensky is not budging, according to intercepts and other data known inside the Central Intelligence Agency, but he is beginning to lose the private support of his neighbors. One of the driving forces for the quiet European talks with Zelensky has been the more than five million Ukrainians fleeing from the war who have crossed the country’s borders and have registered with its neighbors under an EU agreement for temporary protection that includes residency rights, access to the labor market, housing, social welfare assistance, and medical care. An assessment published by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees reports that the estimate excludes roughly 3 million Ukrainian refugees who escaped from the war zone without a visa into any of the 27 European nations that have abolished border control between each other under the Schengen agreement.
“I have even seen proposed maps carving up Russia after they destroy its government and subjugate its people, as they once planned to carve up China. It is sad to say, but unless Ukraine loses this war, we are in for a total worldwide war on an unprecedented scale post-2024.”
• Why Ukraine Must Lose to Save the World (Martin Armstrong)
There is a major problem with Ukraine’s claims of shooting down a barrage of supersonic missiles. This cannot be confirmed independently and Ukraine is notoriously always putting out fake news typically to get more money. The incentive to create this type of fake news is that Western countries who have been supporting Ukraine are concerned that the military support for Kiev may soon peak as they run out of funds. There is concern that funds for Ukraine will be curtailed ahead of the 2024 presidential election in the United States, the Financial Times recently reported. The Neocons are desperately trying to create World War III before the 2024 election. They are fighting against any cutbacks for Ukraine. This has highlighted that European officials now are increasingly concerned about the flow of aid next year as the US enters a divisive presidential campaign.
According to the FT, Washington has been Kiev’s major source of military aid. US officials interviewed by the newspaper say the remaining funds preapproved by Congress could sustain Ukraine for about another five months. Western officials in regular contact with the US over Ukraine told the FT that Washington sees that period of time as the last real chance for Kiev to change the situation on the ground. There is a twist. That is the debt ceiling and funds would stop flowing after June 1st unless Biden yields on his insane agenda. European official told the FT newspaper “We can’t keep the same level of assistance forever.” Politico reported earlier that only $6 billion of the original $48 billion military aid package that the US had approved previously is all that is left. Without Congressional approval, US aid to Ukraine will be finished by mid-summer.
This claim of shooting down every supersonic missile just does not ring true and it would be typical of Ukraine to boast in order to keep the money flowing. Ukraine’s air defenses conveniently claim that they shot down “[a]ll 18 missiles were destroyed by the forces and means of air defense of the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.” We must be cautious about claims during war for the first causality is ALWAYS the truth, especially when this claim comes at the precise moment when the funds may end in a few weeks. Meanwhile, Zelensky is the WAR CRIMINAL here as are our Western leaders. The real war criminals are the leaders who instigate war. You are correct about his meeting with the Pope was all for a theatrical display. Zelensky stated that he saw no sense in trying to involve Russia in a dialogue at this stage. He rejected the Pope’s offer to mediate He said: “One cannot make a mediation with Putin. He just knows how to kill. It is not a question of the Vatican, Latin America or China.”
Zelensky’s statement shows the hatred of the majority of Ukrainian people toward Russians. He cares nothing for all the Ukrainians who have fled to other countries. He cares nothing for all the Ukrainians dying. Alessandro Di Battista, an Italian journalist, and former lawmaker, reported on Zelensky’s European tour visiting several European countries showed that he was only interested in getting more weapons, not peace.= “Zelensky went on a tour to get ammunition. The only thing he’s after is weapons because he’s not interested in peace,” Di Battista was quoted as saying by the Adnkronos news agency. In addition, Zelensky’s wife, Yelena Zelenskaya, went to Seoul and asked South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol to ship air defense systems to Ukraine and provide assistance with modern technology.
This illustrates that Ukraine will sacrifice its people rather than seek peace and simply honor the Minsk Agreement. This is what the American Neocons want – sacrifice every Ukrainian just to conquer Russia. The Neocons have ZERO respect for human life on either side. Indeed. Zelensky prays for the destruction of more Ukrainian property so he will get his cut from Blackrock for rebuilding Ukraine which our computer says WILL NOT HAPPEN! I stress once again – do NOT invest in this Blackrock venture which rubs its hands in blood and at least Pilot tried to wash his hands after sentencing Christ – not Blackrock or Zelensky. It will become a classic short. Sorry – I do not believe Aladdin has the database needed to make such a speculative investment.
“..makes Western countries de facto direct parties in the conflict..”
• US To Allow Allied Transfers Of F-16s To Ukraine (RT)
The US government will not block allied countries from sending F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine if they decide to do so, multiple news outlets reported on Friday, citing American officials. Sources cited by the Washington Post, CNN, NBC and other media said the White House is prepared to allow F-16 shipments after months of Ukrainian requests for the aircraft, which is being used by more than two dozen nations. A senior White House official told NBC that Washington had already informed its partners about the decision. Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan on Saturday, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said that “in the coming months, we will work with our allies to determine when the planes will be delivered, who will be delivering them, and how many.”
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced earlier that London would back the creation of an “international coalition” to supply the F-16s and other aircraft to Kiev. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky met with the PM this week and lobbied for Western fighter jets, insisting they are needed for Kiev’s much-touted counteroffensive. The US military is currently training Ukrainian pilots to fly the F-16s. However, Washington has so far declined to provide its own warplanes to Kiev. Moscow has warned against supplying Kiev with weapons, arguing that it will only prolong the fighting and do little to deter its military objectives. The Kremlin says that military support to Ukraine, which includes the training of troops and sharing of intelligence, makes Western countries de facto direct parties in the conflict.
“How can you engage in equal talks with a half-decayed neo-Nazi country, which is under external governance? ”
• Medvedev Sees ‘No Need At All’ For Talks On Ukraine (TASS)
Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Security Council Dmitry Medvedev sees no point in conducting negotiations on the situation in Ukraine and around it at the moment, because talks should be conducted only with the Kiev government’s ‘masters’ in Washington and only about post-conflict world order. Commenting on European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s latest remarks against equal negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, Medvedev wrote on his Telegram channel on Friday that he would “find it difficult to disagree” with her in this regard. “This is certainly so. How can you engage in equal talks with a half-decayed neo-Nazi country, which is under external governance?
Talks are possible only with its masters, namely with Washington. There is no one else to talk to,” Medvedev wrote. In his opinion, negotiations are possible only on the subject of “post-conflict world order.” “However, it is too early to speak about it,” the Russian official added. “That is why there is no need at all for any negotiations.” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Hiroshima on Friday that equal negotiations between Russia and Ukraine must be rejected. In her words, G7 member states must support Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s so-called peace plan.
“.. Russia is not a party to the Rome Statute that created the court. Neither are the US, China, India and several dozen other countries.”
• Russia Orders Arrest Of ICC Prosecutor (RT)
The Russian Interior Ministry on Friday issued an arrest warrant for Karim Asad Ahmad Khan, the British lawyer currently acting as chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. In March, Khan sought the arrest of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, children’s rights commissioner, for the alleged war crime of “unlawful deportation and transfer” of children from “occupied areas of Ukraine” to Russia. The ICC had acted on claims by the government in Kiev that Russia’s evacuation of children from civilian areas under fire by Ukrainian forces amounted to forcible transfer of population, which was defined as a crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Three days after Khan’s announcement, on March 20, the Russian Investigative Committee launched a probe into the prosecutor, as well as three ICC judges who approved his warrant – Tomoko Akane, Rosario Salvatore Aitala and Sergio Gerardo Ugalde Godinez. The investigation focused on articles 299 and 360 of the Russian criminal code, namely bringing criminal charges against persons known to be innocent, and preparations for an attack on a representative of a foreign state enjoying international protection in order to complicate international relations. Moscow has dismissed the ICC warrants against Putin and Lvova-Belova as null and void, as Russia is not a party to the Rome Statute that created the court. Neither are the US, China, India and several dozen other countries.
“Greenpeace activists have engaged in spreading anti-Russian propaganda, and have called for the further economic isolation of our country and the toughening of sanctions.”
• Russian Prosecutor General Designates Greenpeace As ‘Undesirable’ (TASS)
The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office has designated the activities of Greenpeace International within the country as undesirable, the law enforcement agency’s press service told reporters on Friday. “According to the findings of a study of the available materials, investigators have established that the activities of the international non-governmental, non-profit organization Greenpeace International (Stichting [a Dutch form of legal entity] Greenpeace Council, Greenpeace International, Greenpeace Foundation Council, Greenpeace, the Netherlands) represent a threat to the fundamental constitutional order and security of the Russian Federation,” the Prosecutor General’s Office said.
Investigators pointed out that, “when applied to the Russian Federation, the environmental activities of Greenpeace are in fact accompanied by the active promotion of a political agenda, [as well as] attempts to interfere in the domestic affairs of the country, and are aimed at undermining its economic foundations.” Since the start of Russia’s special military operation for the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine, “Greenpeace activists have engaged in spreading anti-Russian propaganda, and have called for the further economic isolation of our country and the toughening of sanctions.” As the Prosecutor General’s Office explained, Greenpeace’s work is often connected with efforts to obstruct the implementation of Russian government programs by means of organizing information campaigns and unauthorized mass public actions in order to engender negative public opinion and impede the implementation of infrastructure and energy projects that are beneficial to the country.
In addition, the foundation finances the activities of Russian organizations that have been designated as foreign agents and demands changes in Russian legislation to the detriment of our society and citizens. “The foundation’s efforts are aimed at destabilizing the social and political situation and attempting to effect regime change in the country in an unconstitutional manner,” investigators said, adding that information about Greenpeace’s activities being designated as undesirable in Russia was forwarded to the Russian Ministry of Justice for inclusion in the official list of foreign and international non-governmental organizations whose activities have been deemed undesirable in Russia. Greenpeace has been active in Russia for more than 30 years, since the late 1980s.
“Every single foreign adversary the US has encountered has always been depicted as an “imminent threat” to American values in a way articulated to provoke fear amongst the population..”
• Is China The Only Issue Holding The US Together? (Fomenko)
The US is a vast and diverse nation. It has a population of over 300 million people across a territorial expanse which is the third largest in the world by some definitions. Across its 50 states, a variety of different ethnic and social backgrounds can be found. Your Baptist pastor from Alabama has nothing in common with your ambitious young middle-class banker living in New York City, and even less with your struggling African-American family in the same city. In incorporating such diversity, the political system of the US is also by constitution decentralized, delegating power into multiple branches of government dispersed across federal, state and local levels. It is no surprise that this has produced a political system which is beset by often bitter division and intense ideological and value-based conflicts.
This has been enough, as history demonstrates, to plunge the country into a civil war. The development of mass media and social networks has only made it worse. Thus, starting in the 20th century, the American elite structure has sought to maintain control over its nation by vesting itself in the politics of fear mongering, which forces a continual emphasis on “American values,” namely democracy and liberty, in the bid to maintain a basic consensus for the justification of the state itself. Every single foreign adversary the US has encountered has always been depicted as an “imminent threat” to American values in a way articulated to provoke fear amongst the population, as if to constantly remind them of what they have. This has ranged from the Soviet Union, to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, to North Korea, to Russia and to China.
Every adversary is depicted as almost omnipotent, with power to infiltrate, sabotage, and subvert the US. In doing so, as we are seeing now with the debt ceiling crisis, every single one of these adversaries is deemed to benefit from whatever fundamental disagreement US politicians may be having, subsequently forcing them to coalesce around a position of unity for the “greater good” – as if it doesn’t exist otherwise. When analyzed through this lens, if the US runs out of adversaries and threats, politicians genuinely might have difficulty justifying the existence or unity of the nation altogether in its current form. The US centralizes itself through fear and hysteria, because if not for those things constantly looming, Americans wouldn’t have a whole lot to agree on, be it guns, abortion, LGBTQ rights, immigration, or anything else.
Talk about a threat to America…
Even if we ignore the fact that there is no provision in the US constitution for a federal police force, it is nonetheless apparent that the FBI, which now bills itself primarily as an intelligence organization, is simply duplicating the work of countless other organizations in this respect. There are at least 18 intelligence organizations current being funded by US taxpayers. Further, prosecuting any real crime does not require an additional layer of federal law. Fraud, theft, murder, and assault are all already illegal in every single US state. If a huge continent-spanning police force is necessary to keep law and order, how is it that Europe somehow manages to survive without a Europe-wide police? Data sharing organizations like INTERPOL—which is staffed by agents with no power to arrest or launch their own investigations—somehow manage to work. The FBI will no doubt argue that it brings valuable resources to cash-strapped police forces when more resources are needed.
The FBI only has access to these resources, however, because the federal government extracts more than $10 billion dollars from state and local taxpayers first, and then hands it over to the FBI to “help” the locals. The Durham report is only the latest indication that the true nature of the FBI. In a 2020 essay, Angelo Codevilla examined the rot at the core of the FBI. He goes far too easy on the FBI in early decades, but he was right enough when it came to the present state of the agency. He wrote: Thus FBI officers became standard bureaucrats who learned to operate on the assumption that all Americans were equally likely as not to be proper targets of investigation. They replaced the distinctions by which they had previously operated with the classic bureaucratic imperative: look out for yourselves by making sure to please the powerful.
A class society.
• Israel’s State-Building Project Is Unraveling – From Within (Cook)
As Israel celebrates its 75th anniversary, the state-building project it cemented into place in 1948 by expelling 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland is showing the first signs of unraveling. The surprise is that Israel’s woes spring not, as generations of its leaders feared, from outside forces – a combined attack from Arab states or pressure from the international community – but from Israel’s own internal contradictions. Israeli leaders created the very problems they all too obviously lack the tools to now solve. Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bombardment of Gaza in recent days, killing dozens of Palestinians, should be understood in that light. It is one more indication of Israel’s internal crisis.
Once again, the Palestinians are being used in a frantic bid to shore up an increasingly fragile “Jewish” unity. Israel’s long-term problem is underscored by the current, bitter standoff over Netanyahu’s plan for a so-called judicial overhaul. The Israeli Jewish population is split down the middle, with neither side willing to back down. Rightly, each sees the confrontation in terms of a zero-sum battle. And behind this stands a political system in near-constant paralysis, with neither side of the divide able to gain a stable majority in the parliament. Israel is now mired in a permanent, low-level civil war.To understand how Israel reached this point, and where it is likely to head next, one must delve deep into the country’s origin story.
The official narrative is that Israel was created out of necessity: to serve as a safe haven for Jews fleeing centuries of persecution and the horrors of the Nazi death camps in Europe. The resulting ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the erasure of hundreds of their towns and villages – what Palestinians call their Nakba, or Catastrophe – is either mystified or presented simply as a desperate act of self-defense by a long-victimized people. This colossal act of dispossession, aided and abetted by western powers, has been reinvented for western publics as a simple morality tale, as a story of redemption.
Israel’s establishment was not only a chance for the Jewish people to gain self-determination through statehood so they would never again be persecuted. Jews would also build a state from scratch that would offer to the world a more virtuous model of how to live. This tapped neatly, if subliminally, into a western, Christian-derived worldview that looked to the Holy Land for salvation. Jews would restore their place as “a light unto the nations” by “redeeming” the land they had stolen from the Palestinians and offering a path by which westerners could redeem themselves too.
“..peace-making is no longer made in the US or Israel, as China’s success in mediating between Iran and Saudi Arabia has significantly shifted Middle Eastern geopolitics..”
• Israel and the ‘New’ Middle East (Sheikh)
In 2020, when Israel, backed by the US, signed the Abraham Accords with the UAE and some other Middle Eastern states, the Israeli government looked well in charge of the trajectory of the peace process in the Middle East. Three years later, peace-making is no longer made in the US or Israel, as China’s success in mediating between Iran and Saudi Arabia has significantly shifted Middle Eastern geopolitics’ local and international dynamics. Locally, more and more Arab states are now pursuing ‘normalisation’; internationally, Beijing, rather than Washington, is playing the lead role. This adds to Israel’s troubles, as it can no longer influence these developments even indirectly via Beijing for obvious reasons. At the same time, if the underlying logic of the Abraham Accords was to expand Israeli influence in the Arab world and further isolate Iran, this is no longer possible.
While the US and Israeli officials have stated that the Iran-Saudia deal doesn’t impact the politics and the possibility of the possible extension of the Abraham Accords, it remains that the deal has not materialised despite various rounds of talks. While one of the key reasons is the change of government in the US, with the Biden administration not sharing the Trump administration’s enthusiasm for both peace in the Middle East and deep ties with Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia, too, is not keen to make this deal. In other words, the China-led ‘new’ peace process in the Middle East is nothing short of a setback for Israel. This is most clearly evident from the way Saudi position vis-à-vis talks with Israel has hardened in the past few months or so.
As reported in the mainstream media in the US as well, not only is Saudi Arabia demanding additional security guarantees from Washington but is also seeking the latter’s help to develop its civilian nuclear programme. This is besides the Saudi demand from the US to loosen restrictions on the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia. These demands are in addition to a persistent Saudi demand from Israel to “do something to address Palestinian aspirations for independence.” From the US and Israeli perspectives, the Saudis are only using the scenario to extract maximum concessions from them in exchange for ‘normalisation.’ From their perspectives, they might ultimately need to address some of the Saudi demands, given that a peace process in the Middle East that excludes Israel as a player will ultimately lead to Israeli isolation in the region insofar as other states are most likely to continue pursuing their normalization politics under the Chinese auspices.
As irony would have it – and as it may further complicate the US position – China recently offered its services to mediate between Israel and Palestine to develop a realistic peace plan. If the US fails to convince Saudia, Israel, fearing increasing isolation, may ultimately move towards China for a new peace process. The US, so far, has failed to make any headway in this direction i.e., towards an Israel-Saudi peace process. In fact, the failure to address Saudi demands is pushing the latter in the opposite direction. Saudi Arabia, as again reported in the US mainstream media, is moving to normalise and streamline its ties with Hamas, a Palestinian militia resisting Israel but designated by the US as a ‘terrorist group.’
“.. in 2030, Poland will be wealthier than we are,” he said. “In 2040, we will be the poor man in Europe.”
• UK In ‘Geriatric Decline’ – Legendary Financier (RT)
Brexit has weakened the UK economy and driven the nation into a “sort of geriatric decline,” British financier and chairman of the private equity firm Terra Firma told Bloomberg on Friday. Since the UK left the European Union, it has been competing on the world stage, but the country’s current laws might not be suitable for the new environment, billionaire Guy Hands suggested in the outlet’s weekly ‘In The City’ podcast. Unless change happens, the UK risks becoming poorer and poorer compared to other European countries. “I look at the UK and see that, in 2030, Poland will be wealthier than we are,” he said. “In 2040, we will be the poor man in Europe.”
According to Hands, the UK should not have left the EU, as the country needs rule of law and consistency, but not a single politician is talking about going back. He lamented that Brexit has essentially thrown the country back 50 years, to the 1970’s, a decade that is widely remembered as a time of crisis, with skyrocketing inflation, high unemployment, strikes and power cuts. The enormous amount of political change that has happened in the UK over the past seven years has left investors concerned, and the public lacking confidence, the billionaire believes.
Now that the UK is out of the EU, the British government could take a radical approach and change some of its laws, Hands said, citing the country’s “extraordinarily complex” labor laws that are “a nightmare” compared to other European countries. The UK also needs some “boring bookkeeping,” and the current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak seems to be good at it, according to Hands. The financier noted that the British government has succeeded in repairing some of the damage caused by Liz Truss, whose economic policies were “absolutely disastrous” and would have led to the country needing a bailout. Truss’s argument, however, that the UK needed to become much more productive to be more competitive was “100% right”.
Elon 2008
First, let’s go back to 2008.
The economy was collapsing…
…and Elon nearly had to pick between saving either Tesla or SpaceX.
Last minute funding kept Tesla going…
…but Elon was financially tapped out.pic.twitter.com/pCbNEj8tKS
— Jon Erlichman (@JonErlichman) May 19, 2023
The Japanese paradise flycatcher is a medium-sized passerine bird native to southeastern Asia. Photo by Young Sung Bae
Rotor
Helicopter rotor tail. pic.twitter.com/6CzOyrseT2
— The Best (@Figensport) May 18, 2023
Acorn
196 day time lapse of an oak tree sprouting from an acorn
[full video, Box Lapse: https://t.co/gm0RAWmlxh]pic.twitter.com/KiJzC9IjMU
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) May 19, 2023
Severely damaged by a storm, the tallest tree in Wales was supposed to be cut down. But chainsaw artist Simon O’Rourke found a better solution to symbolise the tree’s last attempt to reach the sky…
‘The Giant Hand Of Vyrnwy’
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