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Debt Rattle March 6 2024

Mar 062024
 
 March 6, 2024  Posted by at 9:51 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  46 Responses »


Pablo Picasso The Rooster 1918

 

• Elon Musk Exposes the Democrats’ Secret Game Plan to Win Every Election (VN)
• Democrats Prepare to Resume Disqualification Efforts in Congress (Turley)
• Victoria Nuland Quits (RT)
• Tucker Carlson Compares US to Roman Empire (RT)
• It Has Been NATO Vs. Russia All Along (Pepe Escobar)
• NATO’s Role in Ukraine Is as Sleazy as the EU’s (Jay)
• ‘Untenable Positions’ – Warning Signs Abound (Alastair Crooke)
• Defense Ministry Reveals Possible Scenario of Attack on Russia (Sp.)
• Russian Armed Forces Continue to Push Ukrainian Troops Westward – Shoigu (Sp.)
• German Military Leak Becoming Massive Headache for West (Sp.)
• Israel’s Manpower Crisis Worsens As Wave Of Resignations Hits Army (Cradle)
• George Galloway Is Not A Threat To Democracy (Hryce)
• Galloway Explains Why RT Was Banned: ‘Too many people watched’ (RT)
• Gold – We Have Liftoff! (Egon von Greyerz)

 

 

 

 

Jon Stewart

 

 

Trump Elon
https://twitter.com/i/status/1765180141259641194

 

 

Trump

 

 

This freight train’s coming

 

 

Bannon Nuland

 

 

Tucker Ablow

 

 

Lots of outages on Super Tuesday..

 

 

@ SteveLovesAmmo:
I honestly don’t know how Donald Trump does it. He has been relentlessly attacked by the mainstream media since 2015. He has been arrested 4 times with 91 charges and is facing 700 years in prison over political persecution. He lost over 46% of his net worth since his Presidency, while the establishment continues to rake in and fatten their pocketbooks. He flies to numerous cities and states to greet his supporters in between court cases.

He could have thrown in the towel at any point and continued his lavish lifestyle but continues to fight daily for the American people. His home and his wife and sons possessions were violated by the FBI. That’s a man that has been battle tested and worthy of being President of the United States of America. Not some corrupt politician that has been milking the system for over 50 years. Donald Trump is a true American patriot and hero. No one can change my mind.

 

 

@jason_meister
Democrats illegally spied on Trump’s transition team, framed a three-star-general, sabotaged an administration, undermined a sitting US president, banned him from social media, impeached him 2X, arrested him 4X, charged him 91X, indicted him 4X, jailed his supporters, and raided his private residence. When all of that failed they attempted to remove him from ballots. And they go on national television to talk about how we need to vote for Democrats to save democracy.

 

 

 

 

“I mean, that’s a mercenary army by definition.” “Of course,” Macgregor replied, “And mercenaries fight for money. They fight for the people that pay them.”

• Elon Musk Exposes the Democrats’ Secret Game Plan to Win Every Election (VN)

Following Biden’s COVID-19 “vaccine” mandates and the war on middle America, the U.S. military is facing recruiting shortfalls. As a response to this challenge, Democrats are proposing illegal immigrants sign up for the armed forces, as a potential path to citizenship. One of the biggest proponents of this proposal is Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL). Not too long ago on the Senator floor, he said, “… if you are an undocumented person in this country and you can pass the physical and the required background test the like, you can serve in our military. And if you do it honorably, we will make you citizens of the United States. Do we need that? You know what the recruiting numbers are.” On Tucker Carlson Uncensored Monday evening, the conservative journalist asked retired Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor if Congress would be stupid enough to pass a law granting citizenship to illegal aliens who enlist in the military — to which Macgregor answered, “YES.”

“The problem is Washington is donor-occupied. Donor occupied. The donors own the political figure. So what do the donors want?” he asked. So, if the donor class wants illegal immigrants in the U.S. military, Macgregor thinks they have a high probability of getting their way. Macgregor also remarked: “I think the largest problem is that Washington is this ideological bubble. And everyone decides that anyone who doesn’t agree with them, that the world has to be refashioned in some new image that exists only in their minds, and that anybody who disagrees with them is by definition a criminal and has to be treated as such. What better solution than finding people who have no connection to the American people, arming them, and then sending them out to oppress us? Sounds like a great solution.” Carlson responded, “I mean, that’s a mercenary army by definition.” “Of course,” Macgregor replied, “And mercenaries fight for money. They fight for the people that pay them.”

On X, formerly known as Twitter, Elon Musk responded to a post by political commentator Ashley St. Clair. She said, “I was called a racist for saying this last year,” featuring a screenshot of a Daily Mail article that reads, “Biden administration ADMITS flying 320,000 migrants secretly into the U.S. to reduce the number of crossings at the border has national security ‘vulnerabilities.’” Musk replied: “It is obvious to anyone who is not a fool that this administration is deliberately importing vast numbers of illegals. “No grand conspiracy theory is needed to explain this, just simple incentives: they are far more likely to vote Democrat than Republican. “This is why Dems are constantly pushing to legalize illegals and won’t deport them, even when they are arrested for crime, which otherwise seem … I dunno … like an opportune time (shrug emoji). “If illegals can beat up American police on camera in Times Square, be released without bail, and get rewarded with free tickets to California, what more do you need to know?”

Is Musk being sensational? Take a listen to Senator Chris Murphy’s (D-Connecticut) words last month. He admitted to MSBNC host Chris Hayes that “the people we care about most” are “the undocumented Americans that are in this country.” TRANSLATION: “We want their votes!”

Hochul

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“It is the political version of the Big Gulp law, voters like consumers have to be protected against their own unhealthy choices..”

• Democrats Prepare to Resume Disqualification Efforts in Congress (Turley)

Calling it “one on a huge list of priorities,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D., Md.) announced that he will be reintroducing a prior bill with Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Eric Swalwell to disqualify not just Trump but a large number of Republicans from taking office. The alternative, it appears, is unthinkable: allowing the public to choose their next president and representatives in Congress. It appears that the last thing Democrats want is for the unanimous decision to actually lead to an outbreak of democracy. Where the Court expressly warned of “chaos” in elections, Raskin and others appear eager to be agents of chaos in Congress. Soon after the decision, Raskin went on the air at CNN to assure people that he and his colleagues would not stand by and allow the right to vote be restored to citizens in the upcoming election.

He pledged to offer a prior bill that would declare Jan. 6 an “insurrection” and that those involved “engaged in insurrection.” I previously wrote about these “ballot cleansing” efforts because it would not just disqualify Trump but potentially dozens of sitting Republican members of Congress. Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ) sought to bar 126 members of Congress under the same theory. Similar legislation offered by Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) to disqualify members got 63 co-sponsors, all Democrats. Raskin’s participation in this effort is crushingly ironic. In 2016, he sought to block certification of the 2016 election under the very same law as violent protests were occurring before the inauguration. The prior bills were sweeping and included members who did not engage in any violent acts (no member has been charged with such violence or even incitement) but merely opposed certification.

Raskin recently offered a particularly Orwellian argument for the disqualification of Trump and his colleagues in Congress: “If you think about it, of all of the forms of disqualification that we have, the one that disqualifies people for engaging in insurrection is the most democratic because it’s the one where people choose themselves to be disqualified.” In other words, preventing voters from voting is “the most democratic” because these people choose to oppose certification . . . as he did in 2016. After the ruling, Raskin added the curious claim that the justices “didn’t exactly disagree with [the disqualification theory]. They just said that they’re not the ones to figure it out. It’s not going to be a matter for judicial resolution under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, but it’s up to Congress to enforce it.”

That was sharply different from the pre-decision Raskin who insisted that there was no real question legally and that the case before the justices was “their opportunity to behave like real Supreme Court justices.” Well, they did act as “real Supreme Court justices” by unanimously opposing what the Court described as the “chaos” that would unfold with such state disqualification efforts. Raskin, however, is seeking a new avenue for chaos through Congress. Raskin’s statement is also bizarre in claiming that somehow the justices agreed with him and the others pushing disqualification. No one, not even the Trump team, questioned that Congress could act to bar people from office. It is expressly stated in the Constitution. It is not an “argument” but a fact. Of course, the Democrats would need to craft the legislation correctly to satisfy the standard and secure the support of both houses. Neither appears likely at this point.

However, Raskin is succeeding in one respect. He and his colleagues have bulldozed any moral high ground after January 6th. Most of us condemned the riot on that day as a desecration of our constitutional process. Yet, the Democrats have responded with the most anti-democratic efforts to prevent voters from exercising their rights in the upcoming election. For these members, citizens cannot be trusted with this power as Trump tops national polls as the leading choice for the presidency. It is the political version of the Big Gulp law, voters like consumers have to be protected against their own unhealthy choices.

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“Russophobia, proposed by Victoria Nuland as the main foreign policy concept of the United States, is dragging the Democrats to the bottom like a stone..”

• Victoria Nuland Quits (RT)

US Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland is poised to leave her post soon, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has announced. The senior official, widely regarded as a foreign policy hawk, played a key role in the Western-backed coup in Kiev in 2014. In a statement on Tuesday, Blinken noted that his friend “Toria” has held most of the jobs at the State Department, from a consular officer to ambassador and deputy secretary, over her 35-year career. Her most recent posting was as undersecretary for political affairs. She was also Blinken’s acting deputy after the July 2023 retirement of Wendy Sherman, until Kurt Campbell was confirmed to the post last month. “What makes Toria truly exceptional is the fierce passion she brings to fighting for what she believes in most: freedom, democracy, human rights, and America’s enduring capacity to inspire and promote those values around the world,” Blinken said.

He also noted that her “leadership on Ukraine” will be the subject of study “for years to come” by diplomats and students of foreign policy. Nuland was directly involved in the Maidan uprising and the subsequent coup in Kiev. In December 2013, she visited Ukraine to hand out pastries to the armed protesters in Kiev’s central square. She was then recorded discussing how to “midwife this thing” with then-US ambassador to Kiev, Geoffrey Pyatt, just days before the February 2014 coup. She resigned from the State Department during the Trump administration, taking the helm of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) think-tank before joining the Albright Stonebridge Group and the board of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). She rejoined the government after President Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2021.

In that capacity, she has worked on arming Ukraine and assembling a Western coalition that would supply Kiev with weapons and ammunition for the conflict with Russia. Last month, she pleaded to Congress to approve $61 billion in funding to Ukraine, arguing that most of it would be “going right back into the US economy,” to create jobs in the weapons industry. Her most recent trip to Kiev involved intervening with President Vladimir Zelensky on behalf of General Valery Zaluzhny, though to no avail. Zaluzhny was subsequently fired. In a CNN interview at the end of February, Nuland admitted the defeat of US policy towards Moscow, describing today’s Russia as “not the Russia that, frankly, we wanted.”

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova attributed Nuland’s exit to “the failure of the anti-Russian course of the Biden administration.” “Russophobia, proposed by Victoria Nuland as the main foreign policy concept of the United States, is dragging the Democrats to the bottom like a stone,” Zakharova said. Posting a photo of Nuland taken at an Orthodox church at some point, she said that if the US politician wanted to “go to a monastery to atone for your sins, we can put in a good word.” Nuland is married to neoconservative stalwart Robert Kagan. Her sister-in-law Kimberley Kagan, married to Robert’s brother Fred, runs the Institute for the Study of War. Her temporary replacement at the State Department will be Under Secretary for Management John Bass.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1765092971001848154

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“With four more years of Biden, the hordes of illegal aliens stampeding across our borders will exceed 40 to 50 million people,” Trump claimed, saying healthcare, education, and social security will collapse under the pressure.”

• Tucker Carlson Compares US to Roman Empire (RT)

Allowing illegal migrants into the US military as a means of granting them citizenship will lead the country towards inevitable collapse, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson said in a video posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday. In the clip, Carlson recalled the fall of the Roman Empire, stating that while historians have long debated the reasons for the collapse of one of history’s most powerful empires, one fact has been “pretty obvious.” “The roman military, its legions, became dominated by non-citizens, who in the end, because they weren’t loyal to Rome, turned against Rome’s citizens,” he explained. Carlson went on to say that this course of events was similar to what is currently happening in the US, which has been “flooded” with illegal aliens – over 7.2 million since President Joe Biden entered office, according to the White House’s official estimates.

“That number is greater than the population of 32 states,” he noted. But the main issue, according to the former Fox News host, is that instead of deporting these people, Congress is entertaining the idea of enlisting them into the US military. One such proposal is the Courage to Serve Act introduced by Pat Ryan, a Democratic congressman from New York. The bill would offer “qualified and vetted migrants” an expedited path towards citizenship if they serve in the military, Ryan said, noting that the US military missed its recruiting goals by around 41,000 in 2023. Carlson, however, vehemently rejected the idea, arguing that the military’s struggle to meet recruiting goals is the result of intentionally alienating white American men who have always made up the majority of the country’s fighting force.

But instead of addressing these issues and figuring out why young Americans don’t want to join the armed forces, Calrson claimed that Congress has decided to “allow an invasion of the country, not use the military to stop it, and then populate the military with people who are invading the country and hope for the best.” Former US President Donald Trump warned last month that America would collapse if Joe Biden remains in office following this year’s presidential election, suggesting that the country will have over 18 million illegal migrants by the end of the year. “With four more years of Biden, the hordes of illegal aliens stampeding across our borders will exceed 40 to 50 million people,” Trump claimed, saying healthcare, education, and social security will collapse under the pressure.

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X thread.

“There’s no NATOstan plan B. So back to Plan A: Forever Wars. Bring it on. Russia is ready.”

• It Has Been NATO Vs. Russia All Along (Pepe Escobar)

The – gray – cat is finally out of the bag, appropriately via weapons peddler Lloyd Raytheon: “If Ukraine is defeated, NATO will be at war with Russia.” Sideshows: The freakout by Le Petit Warmonger Roi – and his wet dreams of a pink can can Moulin Rouge army parading in the steppes of Novorossiya. Bundeswehr clowns dreaming of blowing up the Crimean bridge. Not to mention the astonishing abjectness 24/7 of the Liverwurst Reichskanzler – the one who betrayed his nation by duly accepting the Nord Streams bombing. The incoming, cosmic humiliation of NATO is one for the ages. And that inevitably extrapolates to the politico-economic sphere – where the strategic autonomy of the EU, the P.R. arm of NATO, is less than zero.

Enter psycho lowly functionaries of the Janet Yellen type dreaming of stealing Russian assets for good – a sort of financial bombing of the Crimean bridge. They actually believe the current free lunch system allows for sovereign assets to be simply stolen by the “rules-based international order” – and still they can get away with it because the US dollar won’t be toppled. It will. It’s just a matter of time. And they know it. De-dollarization is the economic arm of NATO’s cosmic humiliation, with Russia destroying Project Ukraine in the black soil of Novorossiya. There’s no NATOstan plan B. So back to Plan A: Forever Wars. Bring it on. Russia is ready.

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“What is not at all reported, even alluded to, is the racket being run by senior army officers close to him who are drawing the salaries of dead soldiers..”

“..Recently the EU agreed to send to Kiev 12.5 billion euros a year in cash for public sector salaries. Given the racket going on over dead soldiers salaries, this makes Brussels complicit in money laundering..”

• NATO’s Role in Ukraine Is as Sleazy as the EU’s (Jay)

Did Jens Stoltenberg really say that he had recently given “permission” to Ukraine to use F-16 fighter jets there in the war against Russia? If so, we can add it to the list of bumbling, buffoonish Freudian slips that he has chalked up himself while in office. But it does at least give us a glimpse of how western elites are no longer bothering to even cover up the fact that the war in Ukraine has, in reality, very little to do with Ukraine but rather is a much bigger war fought by the West against Russia. Yet the whole issue about F-16s in Ukraine will be shrouded in lies, doublespeak and fake news. The real story of these outdated fighter jets from the Netherlands – some might call a bribe to Biden to secure the Dutch prime minister as next NATO boss – will probably never be known. Journalists who even want to ask who will really fly these planes – Ukrainians or U.S. pilots – will never get a straight answer but be fobbed off with the normal NATO ‘secrets and lies’ which are what we have all come to understand is the normal modus operandi for this so-called defence organisation.

Timing is critical. Does Ukraine have the 6 months minimum time that Ukrainian pilots will need just to fly them, following intensive training? It’s a good bet that we will see them operational by the end of the summer with contracted, retired U.S. air force pilots flying them though – probably not in dogfight scenarios as they are no match for the newer Su-35s which Russia has – used in air to ground attacks. Of course, such a shift in strategy will lead Russia to target Ukrainian airfields, which some analysts are reporting is already happening but in reality, like so many decisions taken by NATO, this latest is just the latest in a long line of miscalculations. These 20-year old planes are going to be a real prize for Russia to shoot out of the skies like ducks on a Sunday afternoon. Pity the pilots who will be in their cockpits as they are on a suicide mission. The truth though will be very hard to get to with the F-16s. NATO will have already its fake news ready for the suppliant journalists ready to oblige.

It’s a similar story with a recent statement by Zelensky himself who claimed that something like 30,000 Ukrainians so far had died in battle. Did he forget a zero there reading from his notes? Did too much cocaine affect his vision? Was it a joke? No, it was no joke. Just more fake news dutifully processed by corrupt western media who don’t have journalists among them even capable of questioning the statement. However, the reason why the numbers of dead Ukrainian soldiers is such a polemic is interesting. You might be forgiven for thinking that if the real figure of at least 300,000 dead Ukrainians were to be admitted, that this would have a political consequence for Zelensky himself. And this would be true within a democratic context. But Zelensky has shut down all media that doesn’t replicate his propaganda, eliminated all opposition parties so it’s hardly likely anyone is going to question this ludicrous figure of 30,000 or so. In reality there is a much more salacious, if not mercurial reason why he needs to stick to this work of fiction: graft.

What is not at all reported, even alluded to, is the racket being run by senior army officers close to him who are drawing the salaries of dead soldiers – and how the West turns a blind eye, once again, to this particular scam involving millions of dollars of western aid. Recently the EU agreed to send to Kiev 12.5 billion euros a year in cash for public sector salaries. Given the racket going on over dead soldiers salaries, this makes Brussels complicit in money laundering. Would it be far fetched to assume that senior EU officials are receiving kickbacks, in return? Given Ursula von der Leyen’s murky dealings with Pfizer and the recent news that she is to evade any scrutiny for another 5 years in office, assuming her corrupt friends in the EU support her second term, it becomes clear what the EU and NATO’s objectives are in Ukraine of late: just keep the machine turning over and Zelensky in power.

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“With his plan for Gaza once military operations cease, Netanyahu has formally declared war on Biden and his campaign for re-election..”

• ‘Untenable Positions’ – Warning Signs Abound (Alastair Crooke)

Tuesday’s local elections were a flashing warning light for Israel. The ultra-Orthodox parties, the religious Zionist groups, and the far-right, racist parties – organized in a few communities and scored gains that are disproportionate to the true size of the groups they represent. Conversely, the democratic camp [largely secular liberal Ashkenazi], which for nearly a year turned out weekly for giant demonstrations on Tel Aviv’s Kaplan Street and dozens of locations around the country, failed in most cases to translate the anger into electoral gains in local governments”. “Another conclusion to draw from the elections” continues the Haaretz Editorial “is the growing similarity between the ruling Likud party and [Ben Gvir’s party] the far-right Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Supremacy). In Tel Aviv, the two parties ran together, in a move that was unimaginable in the pre-Benjamin Netanyahu Likud … We can learn from this that Likud is changing: Meir Kahane [a founder of the Jewish radical Right, and of Kach Party] defeated Ze’ev Jabotinsky; Jewish supremacy and forced population transfer replaced liberty”.

Put starkly, Israel is turning further to the Right. Another warning sign: In a (virtually) uncontested primary in the U.S., “a coalition of pro-Palestinian groups had set a modest target of 10,000 uncommitted votes—Trump’s margin of victory in Michigan in 2016—to send a message that voter frustration over Biden’s backing of Israel’s military campaign could cost him in November … ‘Uncommitted’ however, blew past the 10,000 target and clocked in at nearly 101,400 votes – about 13% of the tally. Biden earned more than 80% of the vote, yet the number of uncommitted votes were enough to send two ‘uncommitted’ delegates to the Democratic Party’s national convention in August”. “The biggest danger for the president here is not that too many people voted ‘uncommitted’”, said former Rep. Andy Levin (D., Mich.), who endorsed the effort. “The biggest danger is if he doesn’t get the message”.

A third warning sign: With his plan for Gaza once military operations cease, Netanyahu has formally declared war on Biden and his campaign for re-election: “Far from moving toward [the] two-state solution being promulgated by Biden, Netanyahu is calling for an increased and time-unlimited Israeli occupation not only of Gaza but also of the West Bank and all other areas of that which otherwise would constitute an independent Palestinian state. In effect, Netanyahu is calling for the total conquest by Israel of the remains of Palestine – the exact opposite of what Biden and the rest of the world are suggesting”. Put plainly: Netanyahu is putting Biden “between the devil and the deep blue sea”. The former knows that Biden is heavily dependent on not only the Jewish vote, but even more importantly, on Jewish money for his potential re-election.

Netanyahu seems to assess that he has the leeway safely to ignore Biden – and for the next eight months or so, to pursue his ambition unhindered: to seize control of ‘Greater Israel’ (up to the Litani River inside southern Lebanon) and to consolidate a Jewish Jerusalem. Even Tom Friedman at the New York Times is showing signs of panic: “It felt to me, at least, that the world was ready, initially, to accept that there were going to be significant civilian casualties if Israel was going to root out Hamas and recover its hostages … But now we have a toxic combination of thousands of civilian casualties and a Netanyahu peace plan that promises only endless occupation … So the whole Israel-Gaza operation is starting to look – to more and more people – like a human meat grinder whose only goal is to reduce the population so that Israel can control it more easily … And, I repeat, it is going to put the Biden administration in an increasingly untenable position”.

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“These factors expand the system of military threats to Russia and require a new level of security, where aerospace forces play a key role..”

• Defense Ministry Reveals Possible Scenario of Attack on Russia (Sp.)

An air-ground or air-sea operation could be launched against Russia that would begin with a rapid global strike and several massive missile and air strikes at the same time, reads an article in Military Thought magazine, published by the Russian Defense Ministry. According to the article, foreign experts are considering the emergence of new military structures called “joint operational formations.” These should be compact, highly mobile, multi-sphere groups of troops capable of inflicting a comprehensive defeat on an enemy’s administrative, political, and military-industrial infrastructure in all fields: land, sea, air, space, and information.

“The most expected forms of application of joint operational formations are air-ground campaigns. They begin with air (from 2030 air-space) offensive operations consisting of a quick strike and several (from 2-3 to 5-7) massive missile and air strikes. In this case, aviation will be one of the first to enter combat operations as the most maneuverable and adaptable type of troops, possibly even before the deployment of the main grouping,” the article says. Before the active phase of the operation starts, the enemy’s operational formations will carry out provocative, demonstrative, informational, and other potentially aggressive actions in order to control the situation. The aggressor will intensify all types of reconnaissance, regular aircraft and drone flights near the country’s borders, including flights of strategic bombers. It is also possible that there will be exercises with aircraft carrier groups and ships with cruise missiles.

The article stipulates that the amount of personnel within enemy’s joint operational formations in peacetime may be 50-70% of the troops that would operate during a war. “These factors expand the system of military threats to Russia and require a new level of security, where aerospace forces play a key role,” the Russian Defense Ministry concludes. The utmost importance of the Russian Aerospace Forces in military conflicts raises the need to equip them with new modernized aircraft, including drones and weapon complexes, introduce advanced automated control systems, and improve intelligence support.

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While they’re restructuring..

• Russian Armed Forces Continue to Push Ukrainian Troops Westward – Shoigu (Sp.)

The Russian armed forces did not allow Ukrainian troops who fled from the Avdeyevka strongpoint to gain a foothold on the new line and continue to push them westward, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Tuesday. “After Ukrainian fighters fled from the Avdeyevka strongpoint, the Russian group of troops did not allow them to gain a foothold on the Stepovoe-Lastochkyno-Severnoe line and continues to push the enemy westward,” Shoigu told a meeting with senior military officials. Russia has created Leningrad and Moscow military districts due to NATO military buildup near the country’s borders, Shoigu said.

“Amid NATO’s military buildup near Russian borders … Two inter-specific strategic territorial units of the armed forces have been created — the Leningrad and Moscow military districts,” Shoigu told a meeting with senior military officials President Vladimir Putin’s decree has established the military-administrative division of Russian, which now incorporates new regions, Shoigu added. Russia plans to create a prototype of a new Il-212 light military transport aircraft with jet engines by the end of 2026, Shoigu said. “The United Aircraft Corporation has already begun developing the technical design of the aircraft. Production of the prototype is planned for the end of 2026,” Shoigu told a meeting with senior military officials.

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“The hybrid war waged by the collective West against the Russian people is in full swing, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said..”

• German Military Leak Becoming Massive Headache for West (Sp.)

An audio recording of a conversation between high-ranking German military officers on security topics concerning Russia and Ukraine was published by Russian media on Friday. The publication of German military officers’ conversations about possible strikes on the Crimean Bridge has hurt the position of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, undermined Ukraine’s prospects of getting Taurus missiles, and showed the superiority of Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to a Politico article. “After so many years as Russia’s leader, Putin is still a master spy at heart. There is no greater pleasure than outwitting Russia’s adversaries,” the article said. “Nothing on the tape is manipulation. That’s why it’s so powerful: it’s not disinformation, it’s just information revealed,” the article summarized. The leaked recording revealed “the institutional frustration of the German military.”

Opposition politicians may launch an investigation into why Scholz doesn’t intend to send Taurus missiles to Ukraine, but it could take months to finish. This makes it even more unlikely that Kiev will get these weapons, the article concludes. Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of RT and Rossiya Segodnya, Sputnik’s parent media group, published a recording of the February 19 conversation between four German military officers on Friday. German news agency DPA reported earlier that the leaked audio recording was authentic. On Saturday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who has repeatedly ruled out the possibility of supplying Ukraine with Taurus missiles, said that the government was investigating the leak. The Russian Foreign Ministry has requested an explanation from German Ambassador to Moscow Alexander Graf Lambsdorff. The hybrid war waged by the collective West against the Russian people is in full swing, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

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“The situation is simply not good and does not match the threat map..”

• Israel’s Manpower Crisis Worsens As Wave Of Resignations Hits Army (Cradle)

The Israeli Army Spokesperson’s Unit, led by Lt Col Daniel Hagari, has witnessed a large wave of resignations. Among those who resigned are Hagari’s second in command, Colonel Butbol, as well Colonel Moran Katz and the army’s International Spokesman Lieutenant Richard Hecht. “A large number of officers recently announced their retirement from the unit responsible for the military’s information system,” Hebrew news outlet Channel 14 reported on 3 March. A number of female officers were also among those who resigned. The resignations came “after things did not work out ‘professionally and personally,’” Channel 14 correspondent Tamir Morg said. Several officers have reportedly complained about not moving up in the ranks, the Hebrew outlet explained.

“The picture is complex, since it is a military system and sometimes people reach retirement age and leave for no particular reason, but despite this, the number of people who retire at once during a war is unusual,” the correspondent said. The Israeli military has not responded to requests for comment. The resignations come as significant tension has overtaken Israel’s military establishment. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has been calling for an end to draft exemptions for Israel’s ultra-Orthodox community, citing a severe manpower crisis in the army. Gallant said he would only support legislation to settle the issue if certain members of the ruling coalition backed it.

“The army is in need of manpower now. It’s not a matter of politics, it’s a matter of mathematics,” the defense minister said on Sunday. Gallant’s position is causing tension with ultra-Orthodox parties in the coalition, viewed as integral to the current government’s survival, according to Hebrew media. Israel is taking severe losses from its genocidal war in Gaza and its attempt to eradicate the Palestinian resistance. While Israel claims that Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah is the final Hamas stronghold, the group’s military wing, along with several other factions, continue to fiercely confront Israeli troops across the strip. “The situation is simply not good and does not match the threat map,” Ynet reported on 1 March.

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“Galloway received 12,335 votes – over 40% of the votes cast – while the Conservatives gained 3,731 votes, and Labour, 2,402..”

• George Galloway Is Not A Threat To Democracy (Hryce)

Last week’s exchange of insults between newly elected MP George Galloway and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak highlighted the festering political divisions that have recently emerged in Western democracies over the ongoing conflict in Gaza. Their vituperative exchange also made clear that rational debate over Gaza is virtually impossible in those Western nations in which both major political parties uncritically support America’s pro-Israel foreign policy in Gaza. Debates over domestic culture war issues in the West have for decades been characterized by irrationality, demonization of opponents, the abolition of history, and the refusal to acknowledge the right to express a view contrary to dominant woke ideologies. Within such a neo-totalitarian intellectual culture, it would be foolish to expect that a debate over a historically contentious issue like Gaza could be conducted rationally. Nevertheless, last week, Galloway won a by-election in Rochdale, a poor Midlands electorate in the UK formerly held by the Labour Party.

It was an astounding and comprehensive victory. Galloway received 12,335 votes – over 40% of the votes cast – while the Conservatives gained 3,731 votes, and Labour, 2,402. Galloway labeled his win as “a thumping victory” over both major parties – and he described Keir Starmer and Sunak, in characteristically provocative fashion, as “two cheeks of the same backside” that he had just “spanked.” Galloway is a controversial and charismatic political figure. He is a former Labour and Independent MP who courageously opposed Tony Blair and George Bush’s war against Iraq, and he has been a trenchant defender of the Palestinian cause for decades. In the Rochdale by-election – an electorate with a Muslim population of around 30% – Galloway focused his campaign on calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. In the UK, the Gaza conflict has become a deeply divisive political issue over the past six months. During that time, more than 30,000 people have been killed by the Israeli military, most of them civilians and many of them women and children.

Many citizens in the West – to their credit – have refused to turn a blind eye to the distinction between terrorists and civilians, and the humanitarian crisis that America’s continuing support for the Netanyahu government has created in Gaza. It cannot be disputed that America’s persistent refusal to support a ceasefire in Gaza has resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians. In the UK and Australia, the governments and major opposition parties have, up until now, resolutely supported America’s stance and refused to call for an immediate ceasefire. In these countries, it has fallen to minor left-wing parties to oppose America’s position – in the UK, it has been Galloway’ Workers Party, and in Australia, it has been the Greens. But principled opposition to America’s Gaza policy does not end there.

Deep-seated divisions have emerged within the Democratic Party in America, the Labour Party in the UK, and the Labor government in Australia – as a result of significant segments of these parties strongly opposing the stance on Gaza taken by US President Joe Biden, UK Labour leader Keir Starmer, and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. The British parliament recently descended into complete chaos when Starmer pressured the speaker of the House of Commons to breach parliamentary convention and prevent debate over a Scottish National Party (SNP) motion calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

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“I give interviews to everybody. I’m a free man, I’m an elected free man. I have the right to speak and I will go on speaking to whomsoever wants to hear me..”

• Galloway Explains Why RT Was Banned: ‘Too many people watched’ (RT)

Fresh from his election to parliament to the British parliament, MP George Galloway spoke with RT on Tuesday about the state of media freedom in Britain and London’s disastrous policies in the Middle East and Ukraine. Galloway trounced both Tory and Labour candidates in last week’s Rochdale by-election, winning twice as many votes than both major parties combined. PM Rishi Sunak denounced the result as “beyond alarming” and a threat to “our democracy itself.” As Galloway pointed out, however, he has been elected to Parliament a total of seven times – far more than Sunak or Labour leader Keir Starmer. “These people are hypocrites. Things like democracy, human rights, rule of law, rules-based international order, it’s just lipstick on a pig. They wipe the lipstick off whenever they no longer feel the need to look prettier,” he claimed.

“As Sunak’s speech outside Number 10 [Downing Street] on Friday about my election makes clear, it’s not beyond them even to cancel elections,” he added. British authorities have banned RT and the Iranian PressTV outright, refused to renew the license of China’s CGTN, and blocked outlets like Venezuela’s TeleSur. “The reason is pretty simple if you think about it: Too many people were watching these TV channels. Too many people were watching RT. Not just in Britain, but even more so in Germany. That is why RT was closed down. Because too many of the public were watching it. How’s that for freedom?” said Galloway. The best illustration of press freedom in the UK is that “a good friend of mine is lying in the dungeon of Belmarsh top security prison,” Galloway said. “His name is Julian Assange He is convicted of no crime. And yet he is being held with mass murderers and terrorists in the worst prison for the worst people in England. And for what? For telling the truth as a publisher.”

He admitted the government might retaliate against him for speaking to RT, but said, “I don’t care.” “I give interviews to everybody. I’m a free man, I’m an elected free man. I have the right to speak and I will go on speaking to whomsoever wants to hear me. Nothing is solved by covering things up. Nothing is solved by denying people access to a different point of view,” Galloway said, recalling RT’s long-time slogan, “Question More.” Galloway is no stranger to RT. He has written many op-eds for the outlet and hosted his own TV show called ‘Sputnik Orbiting the World’ during his hiatus from Parliament.

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“..if we include off balance sheet assets including the shadow banking system and derivatives, we are looking at assets (which will become liabilities) in excess of $2 quadrillion..”

• Gold – We Have Liftoff! (Egon von Greyerz)

All Empires die without fail, so do all Fiat currencies. But gold has been shining for 5000 years and as I explain in this article, Gold is likely to outshine virtually all assets in the next 5-10 years. In early 2002 we made major investments in physical gold for our investors and ourselves. At the time gold was around $300. Our primary objective was wealth preservation. The Nasdaq had already crashed 67% but before the bottom was reached, it lost another 50%. The total loss was 80% with many companies going bankrupt. In 2006, just over 4 years later, the Great Financial Crisis started. In 2008, the financial system was minutes from imploding. Banks like JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and many others were bankrupt – BANCA ROTTA – Virtually unlimited money printing postponed the collapse and since 2008 US total debt has almost doubled to $100 trillion. Gold backing of a currency doesn’t always solve a debt problem but it certainly makes it more difficult for the government to cook the books which they do without fail.

So tricky Dick (Nixon) couldn’t make ends meet in the late 1960s – early 70s partly due to the Vietnam war. Thus in 1971 Nixon, by closing the Gold window, started the most spectacular bonfire of the US government budget books. How wonderful, no more accountability, no more shackles and no more gold deliveries to de Gaulle in France who was clever to ask for gold instead of dollars in debt settlement from the US. So from August 1971, the US embarked on a money printing and credit expansion bonanza never seen before in history. Total US debt went from $2 trillion in 1971 to $200 trillion today – up 100X! Since most major currencies were linked to the dollar under the Bretton Woods system, the closing of the gold window started a global free for all with the printing press (including bank credit) replacing REAL MONEY i.e. GOLD.

The consequences of this “temporary” move by Nixon is that all Fiat or paper money has declined by 97-99% since 1971. The price of assets have obviously inflated correspondingly. In 1971 total US financial assets were $2 trillion. Today they are $130 trillion, up 65X. And if we include off balance sheet assets including the shadow banking system and derivatives, we are looking at assets (which will become liabilities) in excess of $2 quadrillion. I forecast the derivative bubble and demise of Credit Suisse in this article (Archegos & Credit Suisse – Tip of the Iceberg) and also in this one (The $2.3 Quadrillion Global Debt Time Bomb). Luke Gromen in his Tree Rings report puts forward two options for the world economy which can be summarised as follows:

1. Dedollarisation continues, the Petrodollar dies and gold gradually replaces the dollar as a global commodity trading currency especially in the commodity rich BRICS countries. This would allow commodity prices to stay low as gold rises and drives a virtuous circle of global trade. If the above option sounds too good to be true especially bearing in mind the bankrupt status of the global financial system, Luke puts forward a much less pleasant outcome. And in my view, Luke’s alternative outcome is sadly more likely, namely:

2. “China, the US Treasury market, and the global economy implode spectacularly, sending the world into a new Great Depression, political instability, and possibly WW3…in which case, gold probably rises spectacularly all the same, as bonds and then equities scramble for one of the only assets with no counterparty risk – gold. (BTC is another.)”

Yes, Bitcoin could go to $1 million as I have often said but it could also go to Zero if it is banned. Too binary for me and not a good wealth preservation risk in any case. As Gromen says, there is a virtuous case and there is a vicious case for the world economy. But above both cases shines GOLD! So why hold the worthless paper money or bubble assets when you can protect yourself with Gold!

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

Plastic roads
https://twitter.com/i/status/1764876916194959761

 

 

Baby peacock

 

 

Hippo

 

 

Big Cats

 

 

Mutualism

 

 

Trunk
https://twitter.com/i/status/1764757944799727681

 

 

Puppies
https://twitter.com/i/status/1765103517000143069

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle August 28 2023

Aug 282023
 
 August 28, 2023  Posted by at 9:15 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  47 Responses »


Gustave Dore Dante and Virgil among the late penitents 1868

 

• Tucker Carlson: The People Who Run America Are “Dangerous And Insane” (Sp.)
• NATO’s Strategy on Ukraine Failed – Former Italian PM Conte (Sp.)
• Zelensky Aide Confirms ‘Secret’ Meetings With NATO Brass (Sp.)
• Realistically, How Strong Is America? (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Trump: The Leader of a Faction or a Party? (McCotter)
• Yes, Trump was Seeking Another Recount or Investigation in Georgia (Turley)
• Trump Mugshot Proves Fundraiser Miracle – Politico (RT)
• BRICS Nations Just Want What Is Theirs (Ullekh NP)
• ‘Welcome to the BRICS 11’ (Pepe Escobar)
• Gold Will Destroy The Keynesian Fallacies (Barron)
• Do Clintons Seek to Steal Thunder From Team Biden & Cash in on Ukraine? (Sp.)
• Hundreds of US Airline Pilots Suspected of Being Unfit to Fly (Sp.)

 

 

 

 

Levin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vivek

 

 


Abraham Lincoln looking out over the March on Washington – 60 years ago this weekend.

 

 

 

 

Good speech. Makes Tucker 2028 feel closer.

BTW: why did the US make a gay human rights lawyer ambassador to Hungary? To provoke perhaps?

• Tucker Carlson: The People Who Run America Are “Dangerous And Insane” (Sp.)

Tucker Carlson did not mince words as he ripped into US Ambassador to Hungary David Pressman during an event in Budapest, calling the diplomat a “creep” that needs to be fired for actions “so far from the norms of diplomacy.” The former Fox News host said he felt compelled to apologize for how Washington was “harassing” the country led by the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban. “The world is realigning at high speed, and turning against the United States. But the Biden Administration is spending its time harassing one of our last sincere allies in Europe, Hungary, for the crime of being too Christian,” said Carlson at the Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC) Feszt After event at Millenáris Park in Budapest. Hungary has been tightening laws targeting LGBT propaganda under Viktor Orban, who has been in power since 2010.

At present, same-sex couples are legally barred from adopting children, and gender change is also prohibited by law. David Pressman, America’s ambassador to Hungary, is a gay human rights lawyer who took up the position in September 2022. The California-born former aide to then-US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has frequently mounted open criticism of the Hungarian government, under Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Earlier this year Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto lashed out at Pressman, saying that he had no business interfering in Hungary’s domestic affairs. During his speech in Budapest, Tucker Carlson made the emphatic argument that Pressman, a “political activist and Biden-donor,” was working on behalf of “special interests”, rather than the American people,” and not focusing on building stronger relations with Budapest.

“For a creep like David Pressman . . . to show up in your country and lecture you about your culture – and threaten you because you do things differently from the way they do things where he lives – hurts the United States and is a grave embarrassment to me as an American and an outrage to me as someone who pays his salary… It’s disgusting,” said Carlson. The entire premise behind “diplomacy” is that countries are different, said Carlson, himself the son of a diplomat. Accordingly, an envoy should not “hector other nations,” or “show up in somebody else’s country and scream at them because they’re different from you.” The political pundit added, in referense to David Pressman, that he was “embarrassed that I share a country of birth with a man, with a villain like this. It’s horrifying.”

According to Carlson, every time he visited Hungary, it reminded him of America back in 1980s, or as he remembered it from his early youth. However, critics in the West were trying to paint Hungary as a “rogue” state for adhering to its own strong Christian values and refusing to allow foreign envoys to tell telling Hungarians how to live. As Carlson accused Washington of demanding that Hungarians “worship transvestites,” and denounced this as as a case of a “foreign power pushing its weird boutique religion on you, and it’s wrong,” he presumed to give Hungarians some advice: “Just wait it out. The United States is in a place now where this is not sustainable. You can’t run a global empire on the imposition of boutique sexual politics on countries that don’t want them.”

Weighing in on the current policy of the United States, Tucker Carlson claimed that the people who run his country are “dangerous and Insane”. “They hate Hungary, and they hate it not because of what it’s done but because of what it is. It’s a Christian country, and they hate that. That is enough to incite our policymakers in the United States. That’s exactly why they hate Russia, by the way.” “People running the United States are no longer even pretending to offer a better life to the people who love there,” stated Carlson. As for the media landscape, there is no “diversity.” And why is this the case? “Because they are lying to you,” said Carlson, adding: “Anyone who doesn’t lie is punished and pushed off the stage.”

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“..the Ukraine conflict has “exposed the European Union’s inability to develop an effective common strategy..”

Because the EU has no leadership. People like Ursula and Borrell are not leaders.

• NATO’s Strategy on Ukraine Failed – Former Italian PM Conte (Sp.)

“The strategy pursued so far in NATO, based on constant military supplies to Ukraine and the escalation logic, has not resulted in the desired military defeat of Russia. Quite the opposite. There was no defeat of the Russian army in Bakhmut [Artemovsk], no disintegration of its military units, no retreat during the Ukrainian counteroffensive,” Conte said on social media on Saturday. The economic sanctions imposed on Russia “did not lead to its bankruptcy and did not undermine its economy,” he added, noting that the possibility of internal destabilization in Russia had collapsed “in the face of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s strengthening leadership and growing domestic consensus,” and that Western policies had not led to Russia’s isolation.

“The isolation of Russia has by no means become a reality. On the contrary. The 15th summit of the BRICS group, led by Russia and China, has just wrapped up, with the concrete prospect of its further expansion in 2024, which will cover 45% of the world’s population and 38.2% of global GDP,” Conte said. In his opinion, the Ukraine conflict has “exposed the European Union’s inability to develop an effective common strategy and to exercise independent political and economic leadership,” he noted, adding that, in his opinion, the European leaders were subordinate to the United States. Russia launched its military operation in Ukraine on February 24, 2022 in response to calls by the republics of Donetsk and Lugansk for protection from Ukrainian troops. Since then, the EU imposed 11 packages of sanctions against Russia, and have been supplying Ukraine with arms.

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“..calling the crisis a proxy war “denies Ukraine agency.”

• Zelensky Aide Confirms ‘Secret’ Meetings With NATO Brass (Sp.)

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov first characterized the Ukrainian crisis as a NATO “proxy war” against Russia in April 2022. The US and its allies vocally rejected the characterization. But a series of Pentagon leaks, combined with statements made by Ukrainian officials themselves, have served to confirm the validity of Lavrov’s assessment. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s top advisor has confirmed that a “secret meeting” recently took place between Ukrainian Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi, other Ukrainian generals, and NATO top brass on the Polish-Ukrainian border. “There are a lot of meetings like that,” presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak said in an interview with Ukrainian television on Saturday. “Actually, Zaluzhnyi actively communicates with representatives of the ministries of defense and general staffs of our partners almost every day.”

“The General Staff is constantly making adjustments, depending on what is happening on the front line,” Podolyak added. “Obviously, these adjustments are always being discussed with our partners in order to actualize the deliveries” of additional weapons, including long-range missiles, armored vehicles, and air defense systems. The Zelensky aide also revealed that the NATO defense officials Zaluzhnyi most often communicates with are the Americans and the British, since “they know and understand better than others what is happening at the front.” Podolyak’s remarks confirm recent reports in US and UK media that the Ukrainian top commander and other Ukrainian top brass had met with Pentagon Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley, NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe Christopher Cavoli, and British Chief of Defense Staff Tony Radakin to push for a change in strategy in Ukraine’s faltering counteroffensive.

Zaluzhnyi was said to have verbally agreed with the “advice” of his NATO counterparts. The Biden administration, the US’ European allies, and Western media have adamantly refused to call the Ukraine conflict a “proxy war” between NATO and Russia, claiming the West’s only role is to “support the Ukrainian people as they defend their country,” and that calling the crisis a proxy war “denies Ukraine agency.” However, the extent of NATO support, including nearly $100 billion in military equipment, intelligence, and other aid, combined with the April 2022 US/UK move to sabotage Russian-Ukrainian peace talks, Pentagon Chief Lloyd Austin’s admission that Washington’s goal in Ukraine was to “weaken” Russia, and NATO’s longstanding efforts to incorporate Kiev into the Western military bloc, suggest otherwise.

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“..the United States might be the least safe place on earth for white people, even less safe than South Africa and Zimbabwe..”

• Realistically, How Strong Is America? (Paul Craig Roberts)

America’s weakness is overlooked by investment analysts. Having offshored manufacturing, the US is import-dependent, and having weaponized the dollar Washington is causing foreign central banks to stop holding dollars as reserves. The consequence is that the US has a rising issuance of debt to finance trade and budget deficits, but a declining supply of customers for that debt. Either the Federal Reserve has to monetize the debt or interest rates will rise. Note also that it appears there will be in about 4 months a large expansion of BRICS. Argentina, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates have been invited to join. I assume the Russians have the diplomatic sense not to invite someone unless they know they will accept. Otherwise, Russia will have set herself up for the Western media headline, “Country X refuses Russia’s invitation.”

In a slap down of Washington signifying the termination of the petrodollar, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan said, “the special, strategic relations with the BRICS nations promotes common principles, most importantly the firm belief in the principle of respect for sovereignty, independence and non-interference in internal affairs.” BRICS expansion will make the two largest South American countries members, and with the Saudis, Iranians, and UAE almost the entirety of Middle East oil goes into the Russian organization, which with Russia’s oil is essentially the world’s oil supply, and Egypt sits on the Suez Canal. China and India, the largest part of Asia, are already members. This suggests to me that the US dollar is headed for trouble and will need interest rate support.

If the dollar loses exchange value, the cost of imports will drive US inflation considerably higher. The worst inflations are always caused by currency decline. Gold investments make a lot of sense for Americans assuming that the criminals in Washington who are ruling us don’t confiscate them. Keep in mind also that the indictments of Trump are completely phony. If white-hating black Democrat prosecutors and white-hating black Democrat juries convict Trump of these phony charges, political upheaval could result. If the Americans simply accept the false conviction of an American president, they will fall into tyranny and no asset will be safe. The real American situation could be very different from what Wall Street thinks.

Dollar problems could make the US an unsafe investment climate, and if we take account of the extreme efforts of the Biden regime, American universities, public school boards, and Woke media and corporations, such as Disney, BlackRock, Starbucks, and Budweiser, to demonize white Americans and infuse white American children with racial guilt, the United States might be the least safe place on earth for white people, even less safe than South Africa and Zimbabwe. Indeed, it seems some American cities already are. It is not only that white confidence and white lives are at risk. So are Americans’ civil liberty. American law schools are in the hands of Woke ideologues who want “to reclaim America from constitutionalism.” Law schools such as Harvard and Yale teach that the US Constitution is undemocratic and racist and should be abandoned. Under the Woke regime the law schools and New York Times intend to impose, only the Woke and “official victims” would have rights. None of this reality is part of Wall Street’s world or stock and bond market valuations.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1696046348494311769

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No, Trump will not vow to endorse Asa Hutchinson or Chris Christie. It’s about credibility.

• Trump: The Leader of a Faction or a Party? (McCotter)

[..] former president Donald Trump has declined to sign the Republican National Committee’s colloquially termed “Beat Biden pledge.” The pledge would commit Mr. Trump to endorse the ultimate GOP 2024 presidential nominee. Signing the pledge also is required to participate in the GOP’s presidential debates. This is likely not a factor in Mr. Trump’s decision, as he has announced he will eschew the first debate. What, then, are some factors in Mr. Trump’s thinking? Per the New York Post: “I wouldn’t sign the pledge. Why would I sign a pledge? There are people on there that I wouldn’t have. I wouldn’t have certain people as, you know, somebody that I’d endorse,” Trump, 77, told Newsmax host Eric Bolling during an interview. “I can name three or four people that I wouldn’t support for president. So right there, there’s a problem,” Trump said of the Republican National Committee’s loyalty pledge requirement.

Presently, Mr. Trump holds a significant lead over his GOP rivals for the presidential nomination. If his lead holds and Mr. Trump wins the GOP nomination, his signing the “Beat Biden pledge” would put his opponents on the defensive. It would make it harder, though not impossible, for them to renege on their pledged support for Mr. Trump in the general election campaign. So, why did he not sign? Again, the RNC requires Mr. Trump’s GOP rivals to commit to endorsing the 2024 nominee to participate in the debates. Consequently, if Mr. Trump’s wins, everyone on the stage in Milwaukee has already committed to supporting him. Declining to be in the debate, Mr. Trump has no need to sign the pledge for that purpose. In fact, in expressing his refusal to sign the pledge, he has another opportunity to trash his GOP rivals as being unworthy of the debate. (And, in refraining from naming the “three or four” rivals he would not support, he casts all his rival under suspicion).

One would think this is political deftness. One would be mistaken. While Mr. Trump has a lead in a primary election – a segment of a segment of the overall electorate – he is in deep trouble in a general election. Again, per the New York Post, an AP-NORC Center survey found that 53% of Americans say they will “definitely not” vote for Mr. Trump, and 11% more say they “probably will not” vote for Mr. Trump. In sum, then, Mr. Trump should be leveraging his large primary lead not to denigrate and humiliate his GOP rivals, but rather to unite the Republican Party behind his candidacy. This is a point not lost upon the more politically savvy of his supporters. “There isn’t a real Republican Primary as President Trump continues to dominate the GOP primary in both national polls and early-state polls,” Republican House Conference Chair, Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), told Breitbart News. “All patriots should and must rally behind President Trump’s campaign to Save America and defeat the corrupt Deep State.”

True, to a point. While Mr. Trump has a large lead over each of his individual GOP opponents, the combined opposition to him is around 40%. As his rivals drop out, their voters are unlikely to go to Mr. Trump. Instead, they will go to other candidates until one challenger is left standing. This would be Mr. Trump’s nightmare scenario: one GOP rival left, who has garnered all the anti-Trump party support; and, should Mr. Biden not be the Democrat nominee, all bets could be off for Mr. Trump. Obviously, Mr. Trump wants to avoid this scenario. Further, as do all candidates, he wants to sew up the primary as soon as possible to stanch the loss of precious campaign resources in a drawn out primary. Nonetheless, presently the GOP is far from united behind Mr. Trump; and there is little to suggest this is going to change any time soon.

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And that’s not illegal.

• Yes, Trump was Seeking Another Recount or Investigation in Georgia (Turley)

First, a brief reminder of what “the call” is. This was not some back-room, smoke-filled political wheel-and-deal call. It was similar to a settlement discussion between largely antagonistic figures and their opposing teams. State officials and the Trump team were seeing if they could resolve their differences without further litigation. The Trump team wanted a new statewide recount. Trump had lost the state by less than 12,000 votes and was making the case that he could still show that he had won the state. He stated, “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state.” If you are going to argue for another recount or continued investigation, the obvious argument is that it would not take statistically many votes to make a difference.

I have long disagreed with Trump over his claim of systemic voting fraud. I criticized Trump’s Jan. 6 speech while he was giving it. I supported Vice President Mike Pence and his certification of the election of Joe Biden. I have also regularly criticized Trump when I felt that such criticism was warranted. This does not change my view of whether the call is compelling evidence of a crime. When the Washington Post first reported this call, I posted a critical tweet based on its initial, erroneous account that Trump had ordered Georgia officials to just “find” the needed votes. I noted that such a demand would be breathtaking and further noted that, even if they did so, it would not stop Biden from winning the presidency. But a few hours later, the actual transcript of the call was released, showing a strikingly different context for the “find” comment than the Post had reported.

Trump was clearly referring to his objective in finding votes and the threshold he needed to meet. That is a predictable argument for a candidate in pushing for a continued investigation. The Post also ran a misleading story on a separate, related call that left the same false impression. By the initial account, Trump had supposedly told investigator Frances Watson to “find the fraud” and promised that she would be “a national hero.” In fact, Trump had stated that, if the officials did a neutral investigation, “you’re going to find things” including “dishonesty.” The Post had to issue a correction at the top of this second story after the Wall Street Journal found a recording of the call. “The recording revealed that The Post misquoted Trump’s comments on the call, based on information provided by a source,” the paper acknowledged.

Phillip Bump’s recent Washington Post column continues to cite the paper’s original, skewed account of that call in order to criticize my commentary on it. Yet even in doing so, Bump inadvertently demonstrates the danger of using this call to prosecute Trump. As a threshold matter, Bump suggests (and many have repeated) that Trump was not seeking another recount because the recount had already occurred and Trump never uses the word “recount” in the first call. The argument shows the lack of good faith in the criticism. Obviously, Trump was seeking another recount or investigation. We all know that Georgia completed the recount. I wrote about it at the time and considered that recount to end reasonable doubts over the election. Trump, however, was making the case for another investigation or recount. That was the subject of the call. He wanted the state to take another look. That is further born out in the second call when he again asks them to take another look.

Trump’s demand is as simple and obvious as it was wrong. He wanted to maintain a challenge to the election in the courts and in Congress. Just a couple days after the election, I wrote a column predicted this strategy based on what the Democrats had done in prior years. I called it the Death Star strategy. To make it work, Trump needed to find evidence of fraud and delay or undermine state certifications. A new recount or continued investigation would achieve that purpose.

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“..make a contribution to evict Crooked Joe Biden from the White House and SAVE AMERICA during this dark chapter in our nation’s history.”

• Trump Mugshot Proves Fundraiser Miracle – Politico (RT)

Donald Trump’s recent mugshot, which has already become iconic among his supporters, has also helped his campaign raise a record-breaking sum, according to Politico. The Republican frontrunner faces a plethora of charges and turned himself in at the Fulton County jail in Atlanta, Georgia, on Thursday. On Saturday, the outlet reported that the former president had raised some $7.1 million since he had the photo taken by authorities. Politico quoted an anonymous source as saying that Trump’s campaign raked in $4.18 million on Friday alone – its single-highest 24-hour take to date. Shortly after the Fulton County’s Sheriff’s Office released the mugshot, the former president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., announced that he had launched a line of merchandise bearing the image and the tagline “NEVER SURRENDER!”.

In a post on X (formerly Twitter), he said that all proceeds from the sale of T-shirts, mugs, and posters would go to the Legal Defense Fund “to fight the tyranny & insanity we’re seeing before us.” On Thursday night, the Republican frontrunner posted a tweet of his own on X – his first since 2021 – directing supporters to his website. Its landing page features the mugshot and asks visitors to “make a contribution to evict Crooked Joe Biden from the White House and SAVE AMERICA during this dark chapter in our nation’s history.” After being booked on multiple charges relating to his alleged attempts to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election, he was then released on a $200,000 bond. Trump is the first former or sitting US president to have a police mugshot taken of himself.

Earlier this month, Fulton district attorney Fani Willis unsealed a 41-count indictment against the former president and 18 of his associates. Trump stands accused of violating Georgia’s organized crime laws, as well as conspiracy to interfere in an election, perjury, soliciting a public official to violate their oath, and other offenses. This is the fourth criminal indictment the 45th US president has faced since the start of the year. Federal prosecutors have already slapped him with dozens of felony counts, alleging he plotted to interfere in the 2020 elections, mishandled classified documents after leaving the White House in 2021, and paid hush money to porn actress Stormy Daniels during his 2016 election campaign. Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and described the charges as a politically motivated witch hunt designed to prevent him from running for president in 2024.

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“By Ullekh NP, a writer, journalist, and political commentator based in New Delhi. He is the executive editor of the newsweekly Open and author of three nonfiction books: War Room: The People, Tactics and Technology Behind Narendra Modi’s 2014 Win; The Untold Vajpayee: Politician and Paradox; and Kannur: Inside India’s Bloodiest Revenge Politics.”

• BRICS Nations Just Want What Is Theirs (Ullekh NP)

The BRICS nations, which had either rung out old monarchies or liberated themselves from colonial oppression, had long craved decolonization, but the US and its allies used every pretext to delay this overdue process. In the meantime, there were efforts such as the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) that demonstrated the passion of multiple countries to break out of the clutches of American-centric global institutions, especially financial institutions, which had become instruments zealously used by the US and certain former colonial powers to control the resources of other countries. Any bid to question the hegemony of these global power structures was considered blasphemy, and the Western mainstream media promptly denounced any alternatives to the economic order of the day as non-starters or damp squib.

At the same time, they kept silent on the aspirations of the countries that had fought colonial and expansionist powers tooth and nail in the first half of the century to rewrite world history. The inclusion of six new members to BRICS at the recently concluded Johannesburg summit attracted international attention, but the highlight of the discourse so far has been pessimism about the grouping’s potential success. True, BRICS, or BRICS+ now thanks to its expansion, has not outlined alternative institutions it is planning to build. Neither is it an ideologically aligned entity like the G7. Nor has this grouping, which has been meeting annually on a rotational basis under the chairmanship of its member countries since 2014, chalked out any common aims in foreign policy – in fact, they do not have much in common except that they are aggrieved at being unfairly treated by the West and its satellite institutions since the end of World War II.

What BRICS has is a bank it created in 2015 called the New Development Bank (NDB), formerly known as the BRICS Development Bank, with the aim of “mobilizing resources for infrastructure and sustainable development projects in emerging markets and developing countries.” But it is still at an early stage. So, what else does it have, Western commentators ask, some terming the summit “semi-farcical” and “meaningless.” It’s simple. These countries don’t want to be denied certain advantages that they are entitled to in the age of globalization. The times they are a-changin’, as Bob Dylan sang. The commentariat who see trade alone as the focus of BRICS+ must look at the political fragmentation taking place in the world where each country – from Asia to Latin America to Africa – is standing up to protect its own interests instead of remaining loyally aligned to blocs, no questions asked.

[..] … even the most neocon commentators who are silent on the splits within G7 cannot deny that the best days of the US economy are over and that the world order is shifting eastward. At this moment, there will always be desperate measures on the part of the existing hegemon to fight back inevitable change, perhaps through confrontation or through cooperation. Many economists hope that the countries in the Global South, those long denigrated, will have a greater reason than now to stick together. It is in that context that BRICS+ acquires a halo.

Read more …

Pepe reworks an earlier article. The Cradle adds graphs. Check the difference in debt.

• ‘Welcome to the BRICS 11’ (Pepe Escobar)

The road leading to BRICS 11, during the two days of discussions in Johannesburg, was hard and bumpy, as admitted by Russian President Vladimir Putin himself. The final result turned out to be a prodigy of trans-continental inclusion. West Asia was aggregated in full force. The Arab world has three full members, as much as Africa. And Brazil strategically lobbied to incorporate troubled Argentina. The global GDP-purchasing power parity (PPP) of BRICS 11, as it stands, is now 36 percent (already larger than the G7), and the institution now encompasses 47 percent of the world’s population. Even more than a geopolitical and geoeconomic breakthrough, BRICS 11 really breaks the bank on the energy front. By signing up Tehran, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, BRICS 11 instantly becomes an oil and gas powerhouse, controlling 39 percent of global oil exports, 45.9 percent of proven reserves and 47.6 percent of all oil produced globally, according to InfoTEK. A direct BRICS 11-OPEC+ symbiosis is inevitable (under Russia-Saudi Arabia leadership), not to mention OPEC itself.

Translation: The collective west may soon lose its power to control global oil prices, and subsequently, the means to enforce its unilateral sanctions. A Saudi Arabia directly aligned with Russia-China-India-Iran offers a stunning counterpoint to the US-engineered oil crisis in the early 1970s, when Riyadh started wallowing in petrodollars. That represents the next stage of the Russian-initiated and Chinese-finalized rapprochement between Riyadh and Tehran, recently sealed in Beijing. And that’s exactly what the Russia-China strategic leadership always had in mind. This particular diplomatic masterstroke is rife with meaningful details: BRICS 11 enters the fray on the exact same day, January 1, 2024, when Russia assumes the annual presidency of BRICS.

Putin announced that the BRICS 11 summit next year will take place in Kazan, the capital city of Russia’s Tatarstan, which will be yet another blow to the west’s irrational, isolation-and-sanctions policies. Next January, expect further integration of the Global South/Global Majority/Global Globe, including even more radical decisions, conducted by the sanctioned-to-oblivion Russian economy – now, incidentally, the 5th largest in the world by a PPP of over $5 trillion. The G7, for all practical purposes, has now entered an Intensive Care Unit. The G20 may be next. The new “Global Globe” G20 may be the BRICS 11 – and later on the BRICS 20 or even BRICS 40. By then, the petrodollar will also be on life support in the ICU.

[..] Putin went so far as to publicly call on all BRICS 11 to abandon the US dollar and expand trade settlements in national currencies – stressing that BRICS “oppose hegemonies of any kind” and “the exceptional status that some countries aspire to,” not to mention “a policy of continued neo-colonialism.” Importantly, as much as the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is celebrating its 10th anniversary next month, Putin drove home the necessity to: “…establish a permanent BRICS transport commission, which would deal not only with the North-South project [referring to the INTSC transportation corridor, whose key BRICS members are Russia, Iran and India], but also on a broader scale with the development of logistics and transport corridors, interregional and global.”

Read more …

The BRICS must use gold.

• Gold Will Destroy The Keynesian Fallacies (Barron)

Introducing gold into the trading system will expose the main fallacy of Keynesian economics; i.e., the elevation of aggregate demand to prominence in a nation’s economy rather than production. Keynes shunned Say’s Law of Markets in his General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money in order to hide his theory’s internal contradictions. As put succinctly by Emile Woolf, “Keynes endows the concept of ‘aggregate demand’ with god-like status while disregarding ‘production’-the only means of satisfying it.” Jean-Baptiste Say shows that production is required in order to enjoy the benefits of consumption.

On the face of it, it is hard to believe that anyone would believe that production either isn’t required for consumption or that it magically appears. Yet, this rather upside down theory appealed to politicians for obvious reasons; i.e., it gave them carte blanche to spend, all with money created out of thin air by the central bank. Rather than economize and prioritize spending that was absolutely necessary for the benefit of the entire nation, politicians were told by Keynes that it was their duty to spend if only to pay people to dig holes and others to fill them up.

The new international trade settlement system will require settlement in gold. A possible mechanism has been outlined by Alasdair Macleod of Goldmoney.com. The benefits of the new system will become obvious to every nation, not just the current BRICS members. The political benefits are that no one nation can control or manipulate the system for its unearned benefit. The economic benefits are that government spending will be minimized so that resources can be allocated to production rather than state aggrandizement. A member can expand imports only by expanding exports. This puts market pressure on member governments to reform their internal economies in order to increase production. To artificially increasing demand, per Keynesian orthodoxy, would be counterproductive, because gold would drain from the nation’s gold settlement account and imports would be suspended.

Therefore, the system encourages sound economic practices within its members’ individual economies. Printing money, excessive and unnecessary regulations, excessive taxation, and excessive government spending do nothing to aid a member’s ability to engage in trade. Nations like the US who have huge welfare obligations and who have politically connected industries that do not add to the nation’s capital base will struggle. Having lots of nuclear weapons will be irrelevant and having bases around the world will be liabilities rather than assets. An important point made by Macleod is that over time the gold settlement system for international trade will expand into members’ internal monetary systems. In other words, fiat currencies, which can be inflated/debased by governments, will be thrown on the ash heap of history. They will become “barbarous relics” instead of gold, as Keynes predicted in 1924.

Read more …

Haiti 2.0 or the White House?

• Do Clintons Seek to Steal Thunder From Team Biden & Cash in on Ukraine? (Sp.)

The Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) gathering scheduled for September is expected to bring together corporate leaders, Hollywood stars, and other celebrities with the aim to “address climate change, health care issues, gender-based violence, the war in Ukraine and a host of other issues.” The timing of the Clintons’ September gathering hints at two probabilities: first, they are showcasing their talents just as Democrats need to find viable candidates to replace Biden; second, they may be salivating over a potentially mammoth rebuilding package in Ukraine, as Wall Street analyst Charles Ortel told Sputnik. What is the Clinton Global Initiative? In March 2022, the Clintons revived the CGI, which has long been suspected of being a vehicle for “pay-to-play” schemes by Bill and Hillary Clinton and personal enrichment of the political dynasty.

“For decades, the elder Clintons have not been able to resist milking purported charities for personal and political gain. A vivid example – ‘Clinton Global Initiative’ – was born in 2004 just around the time the Little Rock Presidential Center was opened to the public,” Ortel, who has been investigating the Clintons’ charities for around eight years, told Sputnik. “The initial concept of having a grand, closed to the public, confab in New York, around the time of the UN Annual Meeting was actually inspired in principle, but grievously flawed in practice. Gathering globalists around world leaders and glitterati might have given rise to great philanthropy, had the Clintons and their advisors bothered to follow the laws and regulations in New York state and city pertaining to charities and to soliciting donations, but the parent Clinton Foundation and CGI thumbed their noses at these strict rules.”

In his articles and interviews with various media outlets, Ortel has repeatedly drawn attention to obvious discrepancies in founding documents and financial records of the Clinton Foundation and its numerous offshoots. Per the Wall Street analyst, the Clintons were not just cutting corners: these errors and omissions could hint at nothing short of fraud and influence peddling by the famous political dynasty. Remarkably, two forensic investigators-turned-whistleblowers, John Moynihan and Larry Doyle, who have been carrying out their own inquiry into the Clinton Foundation in parallel with Ortel, came to similar conclusions. On December 13, 2018, Doyle and Moynihan testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, suggesting that the Clinton Foundation owes the US government between $400 million and $2.5 billion in taxes.

According to the forensic investigators, the charity does not operate as a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization, but acts as a foreign agent. As such, the foundation should have registered under FARA (Foreign Agents Registration Act), which it never did. Both Ortel and the Clinton Foundation whistleblowers Doyle and Moynihan suspect the Clintons of engaging in a pay-to-play game with foreign governments and tycoons, something which the Biden family has also been accused of by GOP congressional investigators. “When you check public filings in New York state, you will see that neither the parent nor CGI bothered to register using legal or ‘doing business as’ names by 2005, validly explaining the tax-exempt purposes or results of CGI,” said Ortel. “Yet, tens of millions of dollars were raised for CGI for meetings in 2005 through 2008, including one in Hong Kong in 2008, just after Barack Obama’s selection of Hillary Clinton to serve as Secretary of State.

[..] “Then, in 2009, Bill Clinton and his advisors allowed a false and materially misleading application for tax exemption to be filed with the IRS for ‘Clinton Global Initiative, Inc.’ Unlike filings by conservatives before Lois Lerner’s IRS Department, the CGI filing, utterly false as it was, sailed through with swift approval,” the Wall Street analyst continued. Ortel highlighted that during Hillary’s tenure as secretary of state and through the 2015/2016 election cycle, “CGI went from strength to strength.” However, when Hillary lost the presidential race, support for CGI and for the parent and affiliates dried up, the analyst noted. “Now, with Biden stumbling and in deep trouble for much smaller pay to play schemes, the Clintons seem to be showcasing their talents just as Democrats need to find viable candidates to replace Biden and his inept Vice President [Kamala Harris],” said Ortel.

Read more …

Even before mentioning vaccine injuries.

• Hundreds of US Airline Pilots Suspected of Being Unfit to Fly (Sp.)

About 600 US pilots licensed to operate passenger flights are under investigation for lying about their medical records, US press reported Sunday, citing officials and internal records. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has been looking into 4,800 former military veterans turned airline and commercial pilots who might have submitted “incorrect or false information” as part of their medical applications, FAA spokesman Matthew Lehner admitted in a comment to the daily. The pilots were red-flagged after investigators at the Department of Veterans Affairs cross-checked federal databases to discover aviators who were receiving veteran benefits for mental health disorders and other serious conditions, while hiding their true medical history from the FAA in order to continue flying.

While the FAA relies on screening to identify safety risks, the tests are often cursory and pilots are expected to self-report conditions that can otherwise be difficult to detect, such as depression or post-traumatic stress, The Washington Post cited physicians who conduct the exams as saying. Officials told the newspaper they suspected many of the pilots under investigation of being either too sick to fly or defrauding taxpayers by exaggerating their disabilities to claim bigger benefits. The FAA disbursed $3.6 million starting last year to run additional tests on thousands of pilots deemed “potential risks.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

Goat
https://twitter.com/i/status/1695535072990855614

 

 

Ringtone
https://twitter.com/i/status/1695896301873856835

 

 

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How Far West Are the BRICS?

Aug 172023
 
 August 17, 2023  Posted by at 12:47 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  3 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh Quay with Men Unloading Sand Barges 1888


A topic we can have nice discusssions about ahead of next week’s BRICS+++ meeting in South Africa. As I said recently, BRICS have momentum, and they can’t stop that, not even China could if they wanted. The desire to create a space NOT controlled by US/EU/NATO is just too great. That said, the tentative “bloc” has plenty issues to solve.

How do all the 50+ or so countries who want to join, end up satisfied with their place in the order? If they establish a currency, will it be gold based? And what will that mean for countries who don’t have much gold but still want to join? I think they will announce a schedule next week for Pakistan, Argentina, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Nigeria, the real “big brothers”, to join, in some capacity, and take it from there.

That would add another 1-2 billion people to their team of already 3,5 billion. And then we will talk about PPP GDP.

Andrew has his thoughts, just as valuable:

 

 

Andrew Korybko:

“Alt-Media Was In Shock After The BRICS Bank Confirmed That It Complies With Western Sanctions” last month, and now the Alt-Media Community (AMC) just got hit with two more truth bombs after other leading officials confirmed that it doesn’t want to de-dollarize and isn’t anti-Western. South African Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana told Reuters earlier this month in an interview that the group’s focus is on expanding the use of national currencies rather than de-dollarization.

That outlet also quoted New Development Bank (NDB, popularly referred to as the BRICS Bank) Chief Financial Officer Leslie Maasdorp in the same article, who told them that “The bank’s operating currency is dollars for a very specific reason, U.S. dollars are where the largest pools of liquidity are…You cannot step outside of the dollar universe and operate in a parallel universe.” The official confirmation that BRICS doesn’t want to de-dollarize directly led to the next clarification about it not being anti-Western.

South African Ambassador to BRICS Anil Sooklal corrected false perceptions about the organization’s global role in an interview with Bloomberg several days back where he told them that “There’s an unfortunate narrative being developed that BRICS is anti-West, that BRICS was created as competition to the G7 or the Global North, and that is incorrect. What we do seek is to advance the agenda of the Global South and to build a more inclusive, representative, just, fair global architecture.”

In connection with this purpose, he also confirmed what Godongwana and Maasdorp said earlier in the month about how BRICS has no desire to de-dollarize. In Sooklal’s words, “Trading in local currencies is firmly on the agenda (but) There is no agenda item of de-dollarization on the BRICS agenda. BRICS is not calling for de-dollarization. The dollar will continue to be a major global currency — that’s a reality.” These revelations about BRICS might understandably overwhelm the average member of the AMC.

After all, many of them were misled by top influencers into imagining that this group is plotting to deal a deathblow to the dollar out of hatred for the West, but nothing could be further from the truth after what leading officials revealed in the last three weeks. President of the BRICS Bank Dilma Rousseff confirmed that it complies with the West’s anti-Russian sanctions; Godongwana, Maasdorp, and Sooklal confirmed that it doesn’t want to de-dollarize; and the latter also confirmed that it isn’t anti-Western.

BRICS can still “advance the agenda of the Global South and to build a more inclusive, representative, just, fair global architecture” exactly as Sooklal clarified is its intent in spite of the ‘politically inconvenient’ facts that were just shared, but it’ll be at a gradual pace, not an accelerated one. Therein lies the crux of the misperceptions about it, which Russia sought to correct earlier in the month after finally realizing that its soft power interests are threatened by supporters’ unrealistic expectations.

A critical mass of the AMC came to be convinced that BRICS was something that it’s not through a combination of well-intentioned but naive influencers pushing their wishful thinking about it and others maliciously doing the same to generate clout, promote their ideology, and/or grift. In parallel, some of this camp’s Mainstream Media (MSM) rivals scaremongered about BRICS for the ulterior purpose of galvanizing Westerners against it, but which also extended false credence to the AMC’s populist claims.

Taken together, it’s easy in hindsight to understand why so many people fell for the false narrative that BRICS is plotting to deal a deathblow to the dollar out of hatred for the West, which is why the organization’s officials decided to set the record straight in recent weeks ahead of its next summit. They didn’t want their supporters’ unrealistic expectations leading to deep disappointment that in turn makes them susceptible to hostile suggestions, nor did they want to spook the West into overreacting either.

The first potential outcome that could have come to pass had the previously mentioned clarifications not been made risked filling its supporters with such despair that they might either become apathetic towards BRICS or possibly even turn against it after feeling that they were duped. Regarding the second, some among the West might have ramped up their pressure campaigns against BRICS and its partners, including through blackmail, political meddling, and sanctions threats, all to stop the bloc in its tracks.

After debunking the disinformation that’s been spewed about their organization by the AMC and MSM alike, each in advance of polar opposite agendas but still suspiciously relying on practically identical narratives, BRICS officials are now more confident that these worst-case scenarios can be averted. This reality check sobers their supporters up and prepares them to expect a prolonged transition to multipolarity while also reducing the chances that the West will overreact to their group’s goals.

To elaborate on the last observation, the events of the last eighteen months since the start of Russia’s special operation convinced the West that the global systemic transition to multipolarity is irreversible, which is why they’re now willing to entertain reforms to their hegemonic models. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, former Director for Europe and Russia at the US National Security Council Fiona Hill, and Goldman Sachs’ President of Global Affairs Jared Cohen all suggested this on the same day in mid-May.

They believe that the West must engage with the Global South on a more equal level, which necessitates scaling back some of its most blatantly exploitative practices in order to not lose more hearts and minds to the Sino–Russo Entente. To that end, they’re positively inclined towards accepting gradual changes to the global financial system such as those that BRICS’ officials confirmed that they have in mind, but will resolutely respond to any revolutionary developments that risk drastically accelerating this transition.

Simply put, BRICS wants to “play it safe” because all of its members apart from Russia are in relationships of complex economic-financial interdependence with the West, which isn’t expected to overreact to their piecemeal reforms since their own policymakers now believe that they’re inevitable. Among those four members, two schools of thought predominate as represented by China and India, whose respective differences of vision were explained at length here.

In brief, China wants to speed up the yuan’s internationalization and integrate BRICS into the Belt & Road Initiative (BRI), while India wants to prioritize national currencies and keep BRICS officially separate from BRI. Both agree that changes to the global financial system must be gradual, however, in order to avoid provoking a mutually detrimental overreaction from the West with whom all of them apart from Russia are in relationships of complex interdependence.

Everyone has the right to their own opinion about this reality that was just described, but the facts that were shared throughout this analysis in support of associated observations can’t be denied. Any top influencers among the AMC who still push the debunked narrative about BRICS plotting to deal a deathblow to the dollar out of hatred for the West are dishonest. Those among their audience who now know better should politely fact-check them under their posts to prevent others from being misled.

 

 

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Debt Rattle August 7 2023

Aug 072023
 
 August 7, 2023  Posted by at 9:00 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  53 Responses »


Edward Hopper Chair Car 1965

 

• Donald Trump Vows To Prosecute Biden If Elected (RT)
• Ukraine Warns Of ‘Significant Weapons Shortage’ (RT)
• NATO Instructors Trained Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion Soldiers in 2021 (Sp.)
• Zelensky Adviser Casts Doubt On Future Relations With Poland (RT)
• Peskov Says NYT Misinterpreted His Words About 2024 Election (TASS)
• US Dollar ‘Verging on Breakdown’ Hits Skids As Inflation Data Nears (Sp.)
• Gold Is Replacing The Dollar (Macleod)
• Maduro Castigates Silence Of European Leaders On Quran Burning (TASS)
• Zuckerberg Tells Musk He’s Ready To Fight ‘Today’ (RT)

 

 

 

 

When TRUMP won
https://twitter.com/i/status/1687988391986540544

 

 

 

 

“The tables must turn, and we will destroy the Deep State.”

• Donald Trump Vows To Prosecute Biden If Elected (RT)

Republican frontrunner Donald Trump told an audience in Alabama on Friday that he will appoint a special prosecutor to investigate potential illegality perpetrated by the “Biden crime family” on his first day in office if he reclaims the White House in 2024. Trump, who has been indicted three times in the past four months amid a range of criminal investigations into his conduct, told the crowd at a fundraising event in Montgomery: “On Election Day 2024, we are going to evict crooked Joe Biden from the White House. We are going to expel the criminals and thugs from the halls of power in Washington.” The former US president added that a special prosecutor would be appointed on his “first day in office,” who would “study each and every of the main claims being brought forth by Congress concerning all the crooked acts, including bribes from China and many other foreign countries that go into the coffers of the Biden crime family.”

Trump was speaking just a day after pleading not guilty to various charges, including conspiracy to defraud the United States, brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith as part of an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the January 6, 2021 riots at the US Capitol in Washington, DC. The 77-year-old also faces simultaneous probes related to allegations that he deliberately withheld classified documents at his Florida estate, and obstructed government efforts to recover them. He is also involved in another case brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg related to financial fraud and falsifying business records. He denies all claims of wrongdoing. Trump, whom polling suggests is the clear frontrunner to claim the Republican Party’s presidential nomination next year, told the Montgomery crowd that the “fake charges” being brought against him amounted to “election interference.”

“The reason this is happening is simple,” Trump said. “Joe Biden is the most incompetent and corrupt president in US history.”Trump didn’t elaborate on his claims of criminal activity by the Bidens but they are thought to be linked to allegations that Joe Biden and his son Hunter improperly profited from an association with Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings. The Bidens deny allegations of illegality linked to Ukraine, as well allegations of improper ties to China. Hunter Biden is also currently involved in court proceedings, including allegations of tax fraud. And if he returns to the Oval Office, Trump was clear on what he believes must be done: “The tables must turn, and we will destroy the Deep State.”

Read more …

No, you cannot “win the war” against Russia. Stop pretending. Save lives.

• Ukraine Warns Of ‘Significant Weapons Shortage’ (RT)

Ukraine’s military campaign is being held back by a lack of weaponry, and allies need to provide additional supplies to effectively counter Russia, the top aide to Ukraine’s president has claimed. “From the point of view of battlefield parity, there is indeed a significant shortage,” Mikhail Podoliak said on Friday, live on national TV. Kiev needs more artillery shells and long-range missiles, and is experiencing a “certain shortage” of de-mining equipment, he added. The military is also having difficulties repairing damaged armor. Podoliak said the key items Ukraine still lacks are anti-aircraft systems and sophisticated fighter jets, specifically the US-made F-16. Kiev has been asking its Western backers to provide F-16s for months, insisting that the fighters would help “win the war” against Russia.


Washington and its allies, however, have so far proven reluctant to provide the jets, with US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan suggesting the aircraft would have only a limited impact on the battlefield due to the extensive use of air defense systems in Ukraine. Since the start of the conflict, Ukraine has been demanding increasingly sophisticated weaponry from its backers. The Western-supplied hardware has been extensively used by Kiev in the current counteroffensive, launched in early June. The campaign has so far failed to yield any tangible results, while dozens of Western-supplied items, including US-made Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, German-made Leopard 2 tanks, and Swedish-made CV90 armored vehicles, have ended up destroyed or captured. Moscow has repeatedly urged the West to stop “pumping” Ukraine with assorted weaponry, warning that continued military aid will only prolong the conflict and inflict more destruction on Ukraine rather than change the ultimate outcome.

Read more …

Did the Russians really have a choice? Or were they forced to invade?

• NATO Instructors Trained Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion Soldiers in 2021 (Sp.)

NATO military instructors from Denmark and the United Kingdom trained Ukrainian soldiers at a base of the nationalist Azov battalion* (banned in Russia), despite Azov’s exclusion from US military funding due to its radicalism, according to documents from the Danish embassy in Kiev seen by Sputnik on Sunday. A note from the Danish embassy dated May 21, 2021, informed the Ukrainian Defense Ministry of the arrival of six instructors for the 56-th Ukrainian army brigade in Berdyansk and Urzuf, where Azov’s main base was located. “These sites were previously investigated by Russian law enforcement officers, and the materials found there directly point to intensive training of mobilized Ukrainian citizens by Western officers, using criminal methods of warfare, which the Azovs were fluent in,” a law enforcement officer told Sputnik.

The instructors of the UK’s OP ORBITAL training team had already been present in Ukraine before, the document showed. “Operation ORBITAL is the code name of a UK program to train Ukrainian army servicepeople from the mobilization reserve. I note that these officers, as stated in the text of the document, have access to classified information, which indicates that Ukraine has provided access to information constituting state secrets, including mobilization planning documents,” the officer said. Despite the fact that the Azov battalion has been recognized by the United States as a neo-Nazi organization, NATO forces were directly involved in training of nationalist armed formations, they noted. “This is evidence of Kiev’s intensive preparations for active combat operations under NATO’s supervision,” the law enforcement officer concluded.

In August 2022, the Russian Supreme Court designated Azov as a terrorist organization. The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office said that Azov militants use prohibited means and methods of warfare and are complicit in the torture of civilians and the killing of children.

Read more …

How about future borders with Poland?

• Zelensky Adviser Casts Doubt On Future Relations With Poland (RT)

Poland and Ukraine will begin “competing” after the resolution of hostilities between Kiev and Moscow, Mikhail Podoliak, the top aide to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, has claimed. The senior official made the remarks on Friday during a live appearance on Ukrainian TV. The existing “friendship” between Poland and Ukraine will not last forever, he warned. “Today, Poland is the most-close partner and the most close friend for us. And, basically, it will remain as such until the end of the war,” Podoliak stated. After the hostilities end the two countries will be “competing” with each other, he added, struggling to control “these or those markets, consumer markets, and so on.”

Over the course of the ongoing conflict, Warsaw has asserted itself as the main backer of Ukraine in Eastern Europe and one of its main supporters among Western countries. It has lavishly supplied Ukraine with assorted weaponry and military hardware while at the same time becoming a top hub for war-supply deliveries from elsewhere. In addition, the heavy presence of Polish-speaking mercenaries fighting for Kiev has been repeatedly reported from the frontline. The seemingly flourishing ties between Poland and Ukraine, however, have been heavily dented by a bitter row over agricultural produce. Earlier this year, Poland and other Eastern European nations endured mass protests by farmers, who called for an embargo on cheaper Ukrainian produce, which had damaged local markets.

The situation was temporarily defused by Brussels, which introduced ‘temporary restrictions’ on Ukrainian exports in May in order to protect farmers in Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria. However, the ban does not prohibit the transit of Ukrainian agricultural produce. This week, Polish agriculture minister Robert Telus vowed to unilaterally embargo Ukrainian produce should the EU fail to extend the restrictions, set to expire on September 15. “I want to make it clear that after September 15, Ukrainian grain will still not be transported to Poland,” Telus warned.

Read more …

Putin is too popular.

• Peskov Says NYT Misinterpreted His Words About 2024 Election (TASS)

Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov told TASS on Sunday that The New York Times has misinterpreted his words about the upcoming presidential election in Russia in 2024 where Putin will be re-elected by more than 90% of votes. The New York Times earlier on Sunday quoted Peskov as saying that presidential election in Russia “is not really democracy, it is costly bureaucracy” and that “Putin will be re-elected next year with more than 90% of the vote.” The article was written by Roger Cohen. “The author of the article interpreted [my words] in an absolutely wrong way,” Peskov told TASS. He confirmed that he had met and spoken to this journalist and one of his questions had been about the upcoming election.


“And the answer was the following: the level of consolidation around the president is absolutely unprecedented and it can be said already now that if he runs [for president], he will be reelected by an overwhelming majority, and the election – theoretically – only entail unnecessary spending,” he said. However, according to Peskov, he told the journalist that “the president insisted that the election be organized without fail, that this is what democracy requires.” “And the president said this in his state-of-the-nation address,” the Kremlin spokesman stressed. Apart from that, he added that he shared his personal opinion with the journalist. Presidential election will be held in Russia in March 2024. Putin has the right to run for another term in office but has not yet announced his election plans.

Read more …

Got the gold?

• US Dollar ‘Verging on Breakdown’ Hits Skids As Inflation Data Nears (Sp.)

Last month, the US dollar index sank below its critical 100-level benchmark, amid reports about the greenback being on the “verge of a decisive breakdown.” The US currency has dipped to a one-week low against a basket of currencies in the aftermath of the market’s focus turning to America’s soon-to-be-published inflation data. Media reports said that the so-called US dollar index (USDX) – a measure of the greenback’s value relative to a batch of foreign currencies – “last stood at 101.98, languishing near Friday’s low of 101.73.” US inflation data is due to be released on Thursday, amid speculation that the country’s core inflation soared by 4.7% on an annual basis last month.

Separate reports also suggested that the US Federal Reserve “may need to keep rates higher for longer” in light of a “still-tight labor market.” The current fall of the greenback comes after the USDX plummeted below its important 100 level in mid-July to a low of 99.47, prompting an American business news outlet to report that the US dollar is “on the verge of a decisive breakdown that would reverse much of the gains the currency enjoyed over the past two years.” The outlet cited senior analyst Will Tamplin of an independent market research company as saying that “the breakdown in the Dollar Index is associated with a pending breakout in the euro.”

These developments are unfolding against the backdrop of de-dollarization, the process of reducing the US dollar’s hegemony in global trade and financial operations by shifting to alternative exchange methods, including national currencies and domestic payment systems, as well as modifying currency reserves. Right now, numerous countries are lining up to move away from the greenback and scrap the use of the US currency in trade transactions. These include Russia, China, India, Brazil as well as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

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“Our politicians will have to wean themselves off from their habitual promises to give everyone everything..”

• Gold Is Replacing The Dollar (Macleod)

All the vibes coming out of the Russian and Chinese axis strongly point to a new gold-linked trade settlement currency being proposed at the BRICS summit in Johannesburg later this month. Until the details are revealed, we won’t know what this proposal actually is, whether it will fly, whether it will be simply imposed on BRICS members, or if they will have a say about its introduction and if so its form. All we can deduce is that Russia is leading this project and as an educated guess it will incorporate work by Sergei Glazyev. What we do know is that the majority of the world measured by population and GDP (on a PPP basis) is becoming confident enough to throw off the yoke of American imperialism, and with it will go the hegemonic power of the fiat dollar. And remaining tied to the dollar, it would appear that the days of western fiat currencies are similarly numbered.

In the western alliance, economists and investors alike will have to re-educate themselves about how the relationship between gold and credit works, and what is required to ensure that the link between them endures. Our politicians will have to wean themselves off from their habitual promises to give everyone everything. They will have to stop believing that they know how to deliver outcomes better than free markets. Social legislation must be rescinded, regulations annulled, and responsibility for the actions of individuals handed back to them. The position of Russia, China, the members associates and dialog partners of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and BRICS+ is far stronger. None of them are burdened with the social and socialist responsibilities of the so-called advanced nations. They are in a position to operate currency boards to secure the value of their credit systems.

But instead of a currency board attached to the dollar, it must be attached directly or indirectly to gold. A gold standard can be regarded as a type of currency board — indeed, it was its forerunner.

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I don’t get that silence. Respect people’s religions.

• Maduro Castigates Silence Of European Leaders On Quran Burning (TASS)

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has sharply criticized the silence of ruling circles in European countries over extremists who desecrated the Quran, the holy book for Muslims, in Sweden and Denmark. “I condemn these racist acts of hatred against Muslim nations,” he told the Al Mayadeen TV, “The silence of European leaders over the burning of copies of the Quran is surprising, which amounts to their complicity in the crime.” According to Maduro, it is impossible to turn a blind eye to such provocations that humiliate Islam and its followers. “What would European Christians say if a Bible was burned in front of them? Therefore, the angry reaction of the Islamic world to the desecration of copies of the holy book is quite natural,” he pointed out.


Anti-Islamic actions involving the burning of the Quran took place on July 25 near the embassies of Egypt and Turkey in Copenhagen. A similar action was carried out a day earlier in front of the Iraqi embassy. All were organized by the far-right ultranationalist group Danish Patriots. On June 28, the burning of the Quran took place during a police-authorized demonstration in downtown Stockholm. Salwan Momika, a 37-year-old Iraqi immigrant, tore pages from the Quran and set it on fire. On July 20, he staged another provocation in front of the Iraqi embassy in Stockholm, prompting protesters to attack the Swedish embassy in Baghdad.

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“Zuckerberg was left skeptical of the idea suggesting “a more reliable platform that can actually raise money.”

• Zuckerberg Tells Musk He’s Ready To Fight ‘Today’ (RT)

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is up in arms and ready to fight with his tech rival Elon Musk, but is doubtful the “cage match” will materialize, as X (formerly Twitter) owner, supposedly, has never accepted the date. “I am ready today,” Zuck posted on his social media platform Threads on Sunday, “but not holding the breath,” adding that his proposed date, August 26, has never been confirmed. The remarks come in response to Musk’s tweet on Sunday morning, when he announced that he was training for the battle. “Am lifting weights throughout the day, preparing for the fight,” he said. In a tweet later the same day, the SpaceX CEO claimed that “Zuck v Musk fight will be live-streamed on X with all proceeds going to charity for veterans.”


Zuckerberg was left skeptical of the idea suggesting “a more reliable platform that can actually raise money.” The high profile “cage match” between two billionaires was first mentioned in June, when Elon Musk and Zuckerberg were trading barbs for several days on social media, over Zuckerberg’s plan to launch a rival to Twitter. The Vegas Octagon arena, which hosts UFC fights, was suggested as a venue. Musk seemed serious in his intentions to fight his nemesis, allegedly appealing earlier this month to former UFC champion Khabib Nurmagomedov, for help with training, but was reportedly turned down. Elon Musk’s mother tried canceling the fight, asking people to stop encouraging her son to fight the Meta CEO.

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Debt Rattle May 16 2023

May 162023
 
 May 16, 2023  Posted by at 9:05 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  47 Responses »


Alessandro Allori Self portrait c1555

 

• John Durham: FBI Had No Verified Intel When It Opened Probe On Trump (JTN)
• IRS Abruptly Removes Investigative Team From Hunter Biden Probe (Straub)
• 3 FBI Whistleblowers To Testify On ‘Abuses Of Power’ (DM)
• Dirty Secrets (Jim Kunstler)
• Ukraine Is Not A Symbol of Freedom & Liberal Democracy (Muir)
• Prigozhin Denies Talking To Kiev About Selling Out Russian Troops (RT)
• Cries and Whispers Along the Russian Watchtowers (Pepe Escobar)
• West Acknowledges Direct Involvement In Conflict In Ukraine – UN Envoy (TASS)
• Hungary Blocks €500 Million Payment To Ukraine (RT)
• Musk Responds To Epstein Subpoena (ZH)
• US Empire of Debt Headed for Collapse (Pepe Escobar)
• A Disorderly Reset With Gold Revalued By Multiples (Egon von Greyerz)
Nonprofit Hospitals Made Huge Profits During Pandemic (ET)
• Climate Sceptics Target Scientists For Vicious Abuse On Musk’s Twitter (G.)
• Biden Finally Draws Larger Crowd Than Trump (BBee)

 

 

 

 

Watters


https://twitter.com/i/status/1658283426028605442

 

 

 

 

Zel speech

 

 

 

 

CNN

 

 

Gaetz

 

 

Trump

 

 

 

 

Oz social credit
https://twitter.com/i/status/1657785330936733698

 

 

Macron portrait

 

 

Tom Renz
https://twitter.com/i/status/1658306655090532353

 

 

 

 

There are voices that say Durham intends to go after the FBI next, but I doubt it. He has taken so long with his report that all the usual suspects have had the time to erase -the worst of- their tracks.

The FBI is a cesspit, but fear not: Wray has already made the changes needed. As you were. The smell is hard to bear.

There will be no new charges or arrests. Can you believe it? This has been a coup. There was never any proof for Crossfire Hurricane, but America’s rightfully elected president is gone anyway. And it’s him who’s under investigation, not the people who framed him.

• John Durham: FBI Had No Verified Intel When It Opened Probe On Trump (JTN)

Special Counsel John Durham released a damning final report Monday after more than three years investigating the Russia collusion probe, declaring the FBI had no verified intelligence or evidence when it opened the Crossfire Hurricane probe of President Donald Trump’s campaign in the summer of 2016. The prosecutor, however, recommended no new criminal charges. “Neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation,” Durham wrote in a 300-plus page report sent to Congress and others and obtained by Just the News. DOJ was slated to make the report public later Monday.

The prosecutor faulted the department and the FBI for failing to follow their own standards and allowing a probe to persist, including the surveillance of an American citizen, without basis under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. “Based on the review of Crossfire Hurricane and related intelligence activities, we concluded the Department and the FBI failed to uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law in connection with certain events and activities described in this report,” Durham wrote. “The FBI personnel also repeatedly disregarded important requirements when they continued to seek renewals of that FISA surveillance while acknowledging – then and in hindsight – that they did not genuinely believe there was probably cause to believe that the target was knowingly engaged in clandestine intelligence activities on behalf of foreign power.”

The report’s release touched off instant outrage and impact on Capitol Hill, where House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan tweeted he planned to summon Durham for testimony next week. The FBI immediately reacted, saying Durham’s findings justified the changes that current Director Christopher Wray made after taking over from fired Director James Comey. “The conduct in 2016 and 2017 that Special Counsel Durham examined was the reason that current FBI leadership already implemented dozens of corrective actions, which have now been in place for some time. Had those reforms been in place in 2016, the missteps identified in the report could have been prevented,” the FBI said. “This report reinforces the importance of ensuring the FBI continues to do its work with the rigor, objectivity, and professionalism the American people deserve and rightly expect.”

Durham specifically faulted the FBI for relying on evidence from the campaign of 2016 Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, including the now-discredited Steele dossier, saying leadership lacked the necessary distrust of politically motivated allegations. “Our investigation also revealed that senior FBI personnel displayed a serious lack of analytical rigor towards the information that they received, especially information received from politically affiliated persons and entities,” he wrote. “This information in part triggered and sustained Crossfire Hurricane and contributed to the subsequent need for Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation.”

“In particular, there was significant reliance on investigative leads provided or funded (directly or indirectly) by Trump’s political opponents. The Department did not adequately examine or question these materials and the motivations of those providing them, even when at about the same time the Director of the FBI and others learned of significant and potentially contrary intelligence.” The special prosecutor pointedly highlighted what he portrayed as a dual system of justice, noting the FBI never opened a counterintelligence probe of Clinton’s campaign, despite receiving intelligence she had authorized a dirty trick to paint Trump as a stooge for Russian President Vladimir Putin to impact the outcome of the election.

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“..This drastic action allegedly came on the orders of the Justice Department..”

• IRS Abruptly Removes Investigative Team From Hunter Biden Probe (Straub)

In an alarming move that has raised eyebrows and suspicions about the integrity of federal agencies, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) abruptly removed the entire team working on the high-profile tax fraud investigation of Hunter Biden, first son of President Joe Biden. This drastic action allegedly came on the orders of the Justice Department, adding to the widespread concern among conservatives about potential corruption and the abuse of power within the federal government. The abrupt reassignment of the investigative team has been perceived by many as retaliation against the supervisory special agent whistleblower, who alleged a coverup of the controversial probe. The agent, who has been overseeing the investigation since early 2020, was informed of this sudden personnel change, according to a letter from his attorneys, Mark Lytle and Tristan Leavitt, to Congress.

In the letter, Lytle and Leavitt suggested that the removal of the investigators not only constituted retaliation but could also be construed as an obstruction of a congressional inquiry. The attorneys pointed out that their client had a legal right to make disclosures to Congress under 5 U.S.C. § 2302 and that any attempt to prevent a federal employee from furnishing information to Congress is a direct violation of long-standing appropriations restrictions. They further emphasized that the removal of the experienced investigative team was the very issue the whistleblower initially sought to expose. Hunter Biden [..] is the alleged subject of the coverup claims. Communications retrieved from his abandoned laptop revealed that he had paid up to “half” of his income to his father, President Joe Biden.

This controversy arose simultaneously with the release of the long-awaited report by special counsel John Durham detailing bias in the FBI’s investigation of former President Donald Trump’s alleged links to Russia. The timing of these events has further incensed conservatives, fueling claims of a biased news cycle. The IRS whistleblower first surfaced last month when Lytle informed congressional leaders that his client wished to expose the “preferential treatment” in the Hunter Biden case and the alleged false testimony to Congress by Attorney General Merrick Garland. Garland had repeatedly reassured lawmakers that Delaware US Attorney David Weiss could unilaterally make charging decisions in the investigation. This information comes amid reports of “growing frustration” within the FBI over Weiss’s failure to bring charges against Hunter Biden, despite the bureau concluding most of its work last year.

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“..they were instructed to pursue Jan. 6 investigations over child sex crime cases, because they were ‘no longer a priority.'”

• 3 FBI Whistleblowers To Testify On ‘Abuses Of Power’ (DM)

Three FBI officials will testify on alleged ‘abuses of power’ by FBI leadership – ranging from discrimination against conservatives to inflation of domestic terrorism statistics – during a public whistleblower hearing by the House Select Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government Thursday, DailyMail.com has learned exclusively. Rep. Jim Jordan, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee and head of the select committee, has secured the in-person testimony of suspended FBI special agents Garret O’Boyle and Steve Friend, as well as former FBI State Operations Specialist Marcus Allen. President of Empower Oversight Tristan Leavitt will also be testifying. The hearing is set to be held at 9 a.m. ET Thursday and will focus on the ‘abuses of power’ the former officials witnessed.

They will be given the opportunity to detail how they have been ‘retaliated’ against by the FBI, according to a source familiar. O’Boyle and Friend participated in a closed door transcribed interview in February conducted by the select committee. According to notes from the interview, the former agents specifically expressed concerns with instructions from FBI leadership that they focus on pursuing ‘domestic violent extremism’ probes and disregard standard investigative procedures in January 6 cases. In addition, the former officials told the committee that they were instructed to pursue Jan. 6 investigations over child sex crime cases, because they were ‘no longer a priority.’ Specifically, the former agents accuse the FBI of inflating statistics on ‘domestic violent extremism’ to fit the Biden administration’s political narrative that extremism is on the rise nationwide.

‘The manipulative casefile practice creates false and misleading crime statistics, constituting false official federal statements,’ Friend wrote in an affidavit. ‘Instead of hundreds of investigations stemming from an isolated incident at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, FBI and DOJ officials point to significant increases in domestic violent extremism and terrorism around the United States.’ Friend had his security clearance revoked last September after he vocalized concerns to his superiors, which he described in an affidavit as being a clear retaliatory move by the agency against him. O’Boyle’s clearance has also been stripped. Allen, who has not yet sat before the select committee, is expected to present new evidence to the lawmakers Thursday.

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“Trump versus RFK, Jr. would bring the people of this country together and refocus the nation’s attention on things that matter. It would also be the Baby Boomer’s last stand.”

• Dirty Secrets (Jim Kunstler)

Like myriad institutions in recent decades, the Democratic Party had come to be dominated by women. Women, being hard-wired for safety-seeking, were easily manipulated by the security state into an hysteria fixated on Donald Trump, who was made to represent everything that seemed unsafe. They gave the game away on Mr. Trump’s inauguration day with their women’s march that featured thousands wearing the emblematic “pussy hats.” Message: don’t think you can have your wicked way with this! The hysteria hasn’t let up since then, and now that Mr. Trump is resurging from a thousand attempts to kill him off like some implacable axe-murderer in a horror movie, the corps of useful idiots is showing signs of nervous exhaustion.

The Democratic Party’s front-man, “Joe Biden” (or the claque behind him backstage), has screwed the pooch on just about every matter of vital public interest at home and abroad, and now this president stands revealed as the head of a racketeering operation that specialized in bribery. Yet, oddly, it is Mr. Trump who has been fed into the cogs of the judiciary on an unending set of Mickey Mouse charges. There’s a pretty fair possibility that none of that will work. The Democrats must suspect this, and their nemesis has declared his intentions for a return to power pretty clearly: fire all the seditionists in the security state, pardon all the people on the Right who were unjustly prosecuted, and commence some righteous prosecutions against people who actually deserve it.

Thus, the Left plunges ever-deeper into mental illness — celebrating it at every opportunity and even shoving it America’s face, Joker-style, in defiance: Here, have another drag queen…. A big part of the Left’s mental illness is the inability to even notice their own self-destructive trajectory. There’s a way out for them but it’s pretty drastic. That would be turning to RFK, Jr. for leadership. Trouble is, Mr. Kennedy intends to go after the Democrats’ patron, the security state itself, which he’s publicly blamed for the deaths of his father and uncle. Bobby Kennedy also happens to be an enemy of the US public health agencies and especially a critic of the Covid-19 vaccines that the Left has hung its identity on. They still can’t admit that getting vaxxed and boosted was a tragic mistake.

But an election contest between RFK, Jr. and Donald Trump would be a most salutary exercise for our country. Both of them want to dismantle the overgrown surveillance apparatus and severely reform the agencies under the executive branch. That is, they are both intent on disarming the security state and the Censorship Industrial Complex it spawned. They are both against the stupid Neo-con wars. Trump versus RFK, Jr. would bring the people of this country together and refocus the nation’s attention on things that matter. It would also be the Baby Boomer’s last stand.

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“Ukraine is not a symbol of Freedom & Liberal Democracy. It is a corrupt warmongering Proxy of the US and the Western Globalist Elites”

• Ukraine Is Not A Symbol of Freedom & Liberal Democracy (Muir)

Statements from the U.S. and other Western officials, as well as pervasive accounts in the news media, have created a stunningly misleading image of Ukraine. There has been a concerted effort to portray the country not only as a victim of brutal Russian aggression but as a plucky and noble bulwark of freedom and democracy. The conventional narrative would have us believe that Ukraine is an Eastern European version of Denmark. The promoters of that narrative contend that the ongoing war is not just a quarrel between Russia and Ukraine over Kiev’s ambitions to join NATO and Moscow’s territorial claims in Crimea and the Donbas. No, they insist—the war is part of a global struggle between democracy and authoritarianism, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a leader worthy of nothing less than Winston Churchill’s legacy.

President Biden, in his March 26 remarks on the war, said the conflict was “a battle between democracy and autocracy, between liberty and repression, between a rules-based order and one governed by brute force.” CNN’s John Blake literally compared Ukraine’s cause to America’s in its Revolutionary War. He claimed Ukrainians “are building their own monuments to democracy, with their blood.” The world, he said, “has been transfixed by their battle to repel the mighty Russian army and preserve the birth of democracy in their homeland.” He added that “the war in Ukraine isn’t just a geopolitical struggle—it’s a call to remember. The courage of the Ukrainian people is a reminder of what the U.S. used to be—a ‘beacon of liberty,’ where virtually every schoolchild memorised the ‘Concord Hymn’ poem inscribed at the base of the Minute Man statue.”

In a March 26 USA Today op-ed, John M. Bridgeland, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council under President George W. Bush, similarly expressed fawning admiration for Zelenskyy and Ukraine’s alleged commitment to democracy. “The world is seeing the bravery of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people, who are willing to die to defend their democracy and freedom,” he wrote. Indeed, Bridgeland said, “No cost is too high [for Ukrainians] to defend their democracy and beloved Ukraine.”

[..] The notion that Ukraine was such an appealing democratic model in Eastern Europe that the country’s mere existence terrified Putin may be a comforting myth to U.S. politicians and pundits, but it is a myth. Ukraine is far from being a democratic-capitalist model and an irresistible magnet for Russia’s groaning masses. The reality is murkier and troubling: Ukraine has long been one of the more corrupt countries in the international system. In its annual report published in January 2022, Transparency International ranked Ukraine 123rd of the 180 countries it examined, with a score of 32 on a one to 100-point scale.

Ukraine’s track record of protecting democracy and civil liberties is not much better than its performance on corruption. In Freedom House’s 2022 report, Ukraine is listed in the “partly free” category, with a score of 61 out of a possible 100. Other countries in that category include such bastions of liberal democracy as Rodrigo Duterte’s Philippines (55), Serbia (62), Hungary (59), and Singapore (47). Interestingly, Hungary—which has been a target of vitriolic criticism among progressives in the West because of Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s conservative social policy—ranks eight points higher than Ukraine, which is the recipient of uncritical praise from the same Western ideological factions.

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This was always a non-story. Makes no sense at all. Next!

• Prigozhin Denies Talking To Kiev About Selling Out Russian Troops (RT)

Evgeny Prigozhin, the head of Russia’s Wagner private military company, claims it would have been “physically impossible” for him to meet with Ukrainian military intelligence agents in Africa to make a treasonous proposal to them. The alleged contacts were described by the Washington Post based on purported leaks from the Pentagon. The outlet claimed on Sunday that classified US documents, which made their way to the public through a Discord server, claim there had been communication between Prigozhin and Ukrainian military intelligence (GUR).

The Wagner head allegedly sought to have Ukrainian troops withdraw from the area around the bitterly contested city of Artyomovsk (known in Ukraine as Bakhmut) in order to ease the pressure on his own troops for a while, in exchange for information on Russian troop positions elsewhere. The alleged contacts were said to take place by phone and an in-person meeting in Africa, where the Wagner Group is also active. Prigozhin dismissed the report as “speculation dumped by the Washington Post” and insisted he had not been to Africa since months before the hostilities in Ukraine broke out in February 2022. He suggested that the newspaper was overstating the supposed intel or had fallen victim to planted disinformation.

The Post said two Ukrainian officials confirmed the contacts between Prigozhin and the GUR, but when the newspaper asked Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky about them, he appeared to be angered and demanded to know who the sources in his government were. “Who is talking about the activities of our intelligence? Because this is the most severe felony in our country,” he said, before accusing the newspaper of trying to help Russia. The Post later redacted this portion of the interview on its website. In a statement, Prigozhin alluded to the apparent act of self-censorship, calling into question the Post’s reliability.

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“..the ground will start to be laid for US/NATO to eventually turn rump Ukraine, the Baltic lap dogs, rabid Poland and a few other extras into a sort of Fortress Eastern Europe engaged in a war of attrition against Russia with the potential to last decades. That may be the ultimate argument for Russia to finally go for the jugular, as soon as possible.”

• Cries and Whispers Along the Russian Watchtowers (Pepe Escobar)

Trademark American arrogance/ignorance does not erase the fact there seems to be a serious power struggle among the siloviki. Yevgeny Prigozhin, a siloviki, in fact denounced Shoigu and Gerasimov as incompetent, implying they only keep their posts out of loyalty to President Putin. This is as serious as it gets. Because it’s linked to a key question posed across several educated silos in Moscow: if Russia is widely known to be the strongest military power in the world with the most advanced defensive and offensive missiles, how come they have not wrapped up the whole deal in the Ukrainian battlefield? A plausible answer is that only 200,000 members of the Russian army are currently fighting, and about 400,000 to 600,000 are waiting in reserve for the Ukraine attack. While they wait they are in constant training; so waiting works to Russia’s advantage.

Once the famous “counter-offensive” peters out, Ukraine will be hit with massive force. There will be no negotiated settlement. Only unconditional surrender. What goin’ on right now – the Prigozhin drama – is subordinated to this logic, running in parallel to a quite sophisticated media operation. Yes, the Ministry of Defense (MoD) made several serious mistakes, as well as other Russian institutions, since the start of the SMO. To criticize them in public, constructively, is a salutary exercise. Prighozin’s tactics are a gem; he manipulates a degree of public outrage/indignation to put pressure on the MoD bureaucracy by essentially telling the truth. He could even go as far as naming names: officers who are abandoning different sectors of the frontlines. In contrast, his Wagner “musicians” are pictured as true heroes. Whether Prigozhin’s sound and fury will be enough to fine tune the MoD’s entrenched bureaucracy is an open question.

Still, media coverage of the whole drama is essential; now that these problems are in the public domain, people will expect the MoD to act. And by the way, this is the essential fact: Prighozin has been allowed (italics mine) to go as far as he wants by the Higher Power (the St. Petersburg connection). Otherwise he would be in a revamped-gulag by now. So the next few weeks are absolutely crucial. Putin and the Security Council certainly know what everyone else doesn’t – including Prighozin. The key take away is that the ground will start to be laid for US/NATO to eventually turn rump Ukraine, the Baltic lap dogs, rabid Poland and a few other extras into a sort of Fortress Eastern Europe engaged in a war of attrition against Russia with the potential to last decades. That may be the ultimate argument for Russia to finally go for the jugular, as soon as possible. Otherwise the future will be bleak. Well, not so bleak. Remember Putin: “We haven’t even started anything yet.”

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“..Baerbock said that possible arms supplies by third countries to Russia were unacceptable because they could be equated to participation in the conflict..”

• West Acknowledges Direct Involvement In Conflict In Ukraine – UN Envoy

The West has outright acknowledged its direct involvement in the conflict in Ukraine, Russia’s UN Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya told a meeting of the UN Security Council on Monday. “Recently [German Foreign Minister] Annalena Baerbock said that possible arms supplies by third countries to Russia were unacceptable because they could be equated to participation in the conflict,” the permanent representative pointed out. “And what about the fact that now the entire military machine of the West is working to keep the war going?” Nebenzya asked. “This is yet another open admission of direct Western involvement in the conflict,” Nebenzya said.

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Hungary seems to always cave in the end.

• Hungary Blocks €500 Million Payment To Ukraine (RT)

Hungary has blocked the transfer of €500 million ($544 million) worth of arms and military equipment from the EU to Ukraine, Italy’s ANSA news agency reported on Monday. With Kiev scrambling for Western arms to bolster its long-promised counteroffensive against Russian forces, the package was supposed to be sent next week. The package was supposed to be the eighth drawdown for Ukraine from the European Peace Facility (EPF), a €5.6 billion ($6.08 billion) fund that the bloc uses to finance foreign militaries and reimburse its own members who send arms to foreign conflicts. Prior to last February, the ‘Peace Facility’ had only been used to supply non-lethal equipment to Georgia, Mali, Moldova, Mozambique, and Ukraine, for a total of less than $125 million.

Budapest refused to authorize the latest transfer unless it received “guarantees” that the EPF would remain “global” in its scope, and not be used solely to arm Ukraine, ANSA reported, citing “an informed source.” That Hungary would block the supply of arms to Kiev is not surprising. While Hungary is a member of NATO, Prime Minister Viktor Orban has refused to allow the US-led bloc to send weapons to Ukraine via Hungarian territory. Orban has accused the US and his fellow NATO allies of stoking the conflict “at the expense of European interests,” while his government supports a Chinese plan aimed at resolving the conflict diplomatically. Late last year, Hungary held up an €18 billion ($19.5 billion) tranche of economic aid for Ukraine, which the bloc would have borrowed on global markets. Orban argued that by doing so, the EU would have become “indebted” over Ukraine. He eventually relented when the bloc lifted a freeze it had placed on grant money for Hungary.

In January, Hungary also blocked the release of the seventh tranche of EPF arms for Ukraine, although the package was approved several weeks later. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has repeatedly called on the West to supply him with heavier weapons and more ammunition ahead of a much-vaunted counteroffensive against Russian forces. Zelensky toured Italy, Germany, the UK, and France in recent days and secured further promises of aid from all four, but he still insists he needs fighter jets and longer-range missiles to make good on his promise to retake the Russian territories of Kherson, Zaporozhye, Donetsk, Lugansk, and Crimea. American military officials have publicly expressed doubt that the Ukrainian military can achieve these goals, and leaked Pentagon documents suggest that Washington is bracing for the failure of Kiev’s offensive.

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This stinks.

• Musk Responds To Epstein Subpoena (ZH)

Update: Musk has replied news that he’s been subpoenaed in the US Virgin Islands lawsuit against JPMorgan over their relationship with Epstein. “This is idiotic on so many levels,” said Musk, adding “That cretin never advised me on anything whatsoever.” “The notion that I would need or listen to financial advice from a dumb crook is absurd.” Lastly, Musk claims that JPMorgan “let Tesla down ten years ago, despite having Tesla’s global commercial banking business, which I then withdrew. I have never forgiven them.”
* * *
Elon Musk was issued a subpoena by the US Virgin Islands as part of its lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase over the bank’s alleged facilitation of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking ring, a court filing revealed Monday. According to the filing, the Virgin Islands has attempted to serve Musk since late April, because Epstein “may have referred or attempted to refer” Musk as a client to JPMorgan. “The USVI hired an investigative firm to try to locate an address from Musk, and also contacted one of the CEO’s lawyers, who in the past has waived the requirement of him being personally served with legal documents in past federal cases, according to the filing in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.” -CNBC.


“The Government contacted Mr. Musk’s counsel via email to ask if he would be authorized to accept service on Mr. Musk’s behalf in this matter but did not receive a response confirming or denying his authority,” reads the filing. JPMorgan is accused of servicing approximately 55 Epstein accounts between 1998 and 2013, years after his 2006 arrest for soliciting minors in Florida. Meanwhile, the US Virgin Islands has also been unable to subpoena Google co-founder Larry Page in connection with its investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, according to federal court filings.

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“what’s happening in the banking crisis today is that debts grow faster than the economy can pay..”

• US Empire of Debt Headed for Collapse (Pepe Escobar)

Prof. Michael Hudson’s new book, The Collapse of Antiquity: Greece and Rome as Civilization’s Oligarchic Turning Point” is a seminal event in this Year of Living Dangerously when, to paraphrase Gramsci, the old geopolitical and geoeconomic order is dying and the new one is being born at breakneck speed. Prof. Hudson’s main thesis is absolutely devastating: he sets out to prove that economic/financial practices in Ancient Greece and Rome – the pillars of Western Civilization – set the stage for what is happening today right in front of our eyes: an empire reduced to a rentier economy, collapsing from within. And that brings us to the common denominator in every single Western financial system: it’s all about debt, inevitably growing by compound interest.

Ay, there’s the rub: before Greece and Rome, we had nearly 3,000 years of civilizations across West Asia doing exactly the opposite. These kingdoms all knew about the importance of canceling debts. Otherwise their subjects would fall into bondage; lose their land to a bunch of foreclosing creditors; and these would usually try to overthrow the ruling power. Aristotle succinctly framed it: “Under democracy, creditors begin to make loans and the debtors can’t pay and the creditors get more and more money, and they end up turning a democracy into an oligarchy, and then the oligarchy makes itself hereditary, and you have an aristocracy.” Prof. Hudson sharply explains what happens when creditors take over and “reduce all the rest of the economy to bondage”: it’s what’s called today “austerity” or “debt deflation”.

So “what’s happening in the banking crisis today is that debts grow faster than the economy can pay. And so when the interest rates finally began to be raised by the Federal Reserve, this caused a crisis for the banks.” Prof. Hudson also proposes an expanded formulation: “The emergence of financial and landholding oligarchies made debt peonage and bondage permanent, supported by a pro-creditor legal and social philosophy that distinguishes Western civilization from what went before. Today it would be called neoliberalism.”

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Egon talks his book.

• A Disorderly Reset With Gold Revalued By Multiples (Egon von Greyerz)

Tectonic shifts lie ahead. These will involve a US and European debt crisis ending in a debt collapse, a precipitous fall of the dollar and the Euro with Gold emerging as a reserve asset but at multiples of the current price. The next phase of the fall of the West is here and will soon accelerate. It has been both precipitated and aggravated by the absurd sanctions of Russia. These sanctions are hurting Europe badly and affecting the US in a way that they didn’t expect, but was obvious to some of us. The Romans understood that free trade was essential between all the countries that they conquered. But the US administration blocks have both the money and the ability to trade of the countries they don’t like.

But shooting yourself in the foot really hurts and the consequences are in front of our eyes. No foreign country will want to hold US debt or dollars. That is a catastrophic problem for the US as their deficits will grow exponentially in coming years. So a debt collapse is not just a looming disaster but a bomb hurling towards the US economy at supersonic speed. With the imminent death of the petrodollar and explosion of US debt, there is only one solution for the funding requirements of the US Government – the FED which will stand as the sole buyer of US Treasuries.

So the DEBT spiral of higher debt, higher deficits, more Treasuries, higher rates and falling bond prices will soon turn into a DEATH spiral with a collapsing dollar, high inflation and most probably hyperinflation. Sounds like default to me but that word will probably never be used officially. It is hard to admit defeat even when it stares you in the face! Yes, the US will probably obfuscate the situation with CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies) but since that is just another form of Fiat money, it will at best buy a little time but the end result will be the same.

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“American life expectancy during this period sharply declined by a staggering 2.5 years from 2019 through 2022..”

• Nonprofit Hospitals Made Huge Profits During Pandemic (ET)

Federal officials gave more than $23 billion in COVID-19 aid to the nation’s top 20 nonprofit hospitals, even as a 62 percent increase in their collective net assets led to parallel surges in the institutions’ total profits and revenues during 2018–2021, according to a new report. Only two of the 20 institutions have repaid the government for the COVID-19 aid they received. “The 20 largest nonprofit hospitals in the country continued making massive profits while their cumulative net assets soared to $324.3 billion in 2021, up from $200.6 billion in 2018. “Those hospital systems received congressional COVID bailouts of $23 billion and only two providers partially paid their COVID bailout back,” according to the report compiled by Open The Books, an Illinois-based research nonprofit that compiles and posts spending by all levels of government in the United States.

The two institutions that have partially repaid the government weren’t identified. The biggest jump among the top 20 was 92 percent by the Mayo Clinic, based in Rochester, Minnesota, whose assets surged to $17.7 billion in 2021 from $9.2 billion in 2018. The Mayo Clinic received $350,000 in federal COVID-19 aid, the lowest amount received among the top 20 institutions. The Cleveland Clinic Health System, based in Independence, Ohio, saw its assets rise 60 percent, to $15.7 billion from $9.8 billion, while receiving $118 million in federal COVID-19 aid. Intermountain Healthcare, based in Salt Lake City, the 12th-largest of the top 20, enjoyed a 63 percent growth in net assets to $11.6 billion from $7.1 billion; Intermountain received $518 million in aid.

[..] As the revenue poured in for the 20 hospitals, compensation for their top executives soared, often beyond $10 million annually, according to the report. For example, the CEO of Ascension Healthcare, which is based in St. Louis and is the nation’s second-largest such system, received $13 million in 2021 and more than $22 million over the period covered by the study. [..] The recipient among the top 20 of the most COVID-19 aid was San Francisco-based CommonSpirit Health with $3.6 billion, followed by Providence St. Joseph Center with $3 billion, Ascension Healthcare with $2.7 billion, Livonia, Michigan-based Livonia Health with $2.3 billion and Sutter Health, based in Sacramento, California, with $1.7 billion. Meanwhile, the overall health of Americans got worse between 2018 and 2021. “American life expectancy during this period sharply declined by a staggering 2.5 years from 2019 through 2022. While ‘comparable country averages’ rebounded from a COVID-related drop in 2021, the United States continued declining in life expectancy,” the report found.

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Yeah, “The Science” doesn’t do it anymore. You’ll have to work again.

• Climate Sceptics Target Scientists For Vicious Abuse On Musk’s Twitter (G.)

Some of the UK’s top scientists are struggling to deal with what they describe as a huge rise in abuse from climate crisis deniers on Twitter since the social media platform was taken over by Elon Musk last year. Since then, key figures who ensured “trusted” content was prioritised have been sacked, according to one scientist, and Twitter’s sustainability arm has vanished. At the same time several users with millions of followers who propagate false statements about the climate emergency, including Donald Trump and rightwing culture warrior Jordan Peterson, have had their accounts reinstated. Climate scientists say the change has been stark, and they are fighting to make themselves heard over a “barrage” of often hostile comments.

“There’s been a massive change,” said Mark Maslin, professor of earth system science at University College London and the author of popular books including How to Save Our Planet. “I get so much abuse and rude comments now. It’s happening to all of us, but I challenge the climate deniers so I’ve been really targeted.” Maslin says he used to have regular meetings with Sean Boyle, Twitter’s former head of sustainability, who was laid off in Musk’s mass cull of staff shortly after he took over in Aprll 2022. Maslin said Boyle discussed the platform’s work to develop ways of ensuring that trusted information was pushed to the top. “They were using climate change as a good test bed, because it was fairly clear who the good and bad actors were,” Maslin said. “But he was sacked and Twitter became the wild west.”

Maslin said he will stay on the platform and push back against conspiracy theories with scientific evidence. “I want people to understand there are solutions. There is a real need for us to be on social media defending the truth, however nasty the responses get.” But not all scientists have found standing up to regular hostility an easy feat. Doug McNeall, a statistician working on climate change at the Met Office Hadley Centre at Exeter University, said he had blocked or muted many accounts on Twitter even before Musk’s arrival. “I got to the point where it was definitely affecting my mental health,” he said. “I spent years debating quite strongly with climate sceptics, including people I assume were paid,” he added. “But there can be a real personal cost interacting over a long time with people who are abusing you.”

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El Paso.

• Biden Finally Draws Larger Crowd Than Trump (BBee)

The mainstream media has been heaping praise on President Biden for finally drawing a larger crowd than former President Trump. According to reports, hundreds of thousands are gathering in El Paso and it’s all because of President Biden. “These are truly historic numbers we are seeing! Trump could never get this many people even at his biggest rallies,” gushed CNN anchor Anderson Cooper. “This is an incredible moment for President Biden. He’s clearly resonating with the American people — well, the people, anyway — and it’s clear that his policies are making a real difference.”


Upon seeing the massive crowds, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow added, “This just goes to show that people are hungry for real leadership and real strength. President Biden is clearly delivering on that front.” Many news sites praised the crowd for its youthfulness and diversity. “Just look at how young of a crowd Biden pulls!” exclaimed Anderson Cooper. “All those unaccompanied minors — I mean democrat voters and it’s all thanks to Biden.” When asked for comment, even Trump had to admit that it was a “tremendous and unbelievably large crowd of people that — to be quite frank with you — I could never draw, believe me!”

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Smile

 

 

Flower matis

 

 

 

 

Moose
https://twitter.com/i/status/1658079007307444227

 

 

Puma
https://twitter.com/i/status/1657802557731766274

 

 


Blue footed

 

 

Lynx

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle April 27 2023

Apr 272023
 
 April 27, 2023  Posted by at 9:11 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  52 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Woman sitting in a armchair 1910

 

• Pentagon Top Brass Pleased With Carlson Exit – Politico (RT)
• Tucker Carlson Reappears In 8PM Time Slot, But Not With Fox (ZH)
• Poland Seizes Russian Embassy And Trade Mission Funds (RT)
• Russia Understands Western Sanctions Aren’t ‘Temporary’ – PM (RT)
• Moscow Reacts To Xi-Zelensky Call (RT)
• Kiev Could ‘Capture Small Russian Towns’ For Leverage – WaPo (RT)
• Ukraine Conflict Helps Prepare For Potential China Clash – Pentagon (RT)
• Zelensky’s Right-Hand Man Contradicts US General (RT)
• Biden Threatens North Korea With Annihilation (RT)
• The Historic US-Saudi Relationship Cannot Bounce Back (Sweidan)
• Twitter, Tiktok And Instagram To Face Much Stricter Content Rules In EU (Az.)
• Ex-CIA Boss Intervened On Russia Collusion In 2016, Benghazi In 2012 (JTN)
• The RFK Jr. Tapes (David Samuels)
• Musk’s Lawyer Invokes ‘Deepfake’ Defense (RT)
• EU Countries Sinking In Debt – Bloomberg (RT)
• Gold Leading ‘Revolt Against Dollar’ – Economist (RT)

 

 

 

 

Macgregor It’s over and Ukraine is doomed

 

 

 

 

RFK Tucker

RFK – Unavoidably unsafe

RFK pharma ads
https://twitter.com/i/status/1651222441715281921

 

 

Digital trap

 

 

“Alexander Dugin, a prominent Russian thinker, in a conversation with Al-Mayadin: The global structure is between two possible scenarios; The first scenario belongs to the year 2050, in which the complete and irreversible victory for globalization and the unipolar era and the emergence of the post-human era and the destruction of all types of humanity have been achieved. The second possible future is that we will win and everything will change and a multipolar world will emerge.

Russia is currently fighting the real devil, Joe Biden, George Soros, and Western crazies; We need to create a new network outside of Western control. We need the continuation of international relations in a successful global trade system, without Western domination. The world is not limited to the West and globalism does not necessarily have a Western meaning. I believe that we are on the verge of the global collapse of liberalism. Its main cause is the growth of internal contradictions in the world system; A new global network should be created based on justice and equality. Globalization is nearing its collapse and end.”

 

 

 

 

“What we absolutely won’t do is take personnel advice from a talk show host or the Chinese military.”

• Pentagon Top Brass Pleased With Carlson Exit – Politico (RT)

Senior Pentagon officials have welcomed the departure of Tucker Carlson from Fox News, Politico has claimed. The popular host regularly criticized the US military’s diversity and inclusivity policies, claiming they were imposed at the expense of battle readiness. “We’re a better country without him bagging on our military every night in front of hundreds of thousands of people,” a senior Defense Department official told the news outlet on condition of anonymity. The source claimed Carlson had “made a mockery” of the free press and “repeatedly cherry-picked department policies and used them to destroy DoD [Defense Department] as an institution.” Commenting on Carlson’s exit from the conservative network, another official reportedly said: “Good riddance.”

The popular former prime-time host regularly accused the Pentagon of undermining US fighting capabilities for the sake of ideologically-motivated inclusivity, imposed under pressure from President Joe Biden’s administration. In a March 2021 segment, Carlson blasted the introduction of flight suits for pregnant aviators, suggesting that Washington was heading in entirely the wrong direction – unlike its rival Beijing. “While China’s military becomes more masculine as it assembles the world’s largest navy, our military needs to become, as Joe Biden says, more feminine,” Carlson said. “This is a mockery of the US military and its core mission, which is winning wars.”


The remarks triggered a rare direct rebuke by the Pentagon, with then-spokesman John Kirby responding: “What we absolutely won’t do is take personnel advice from a talk show host or the Chinese military.” “We know we’re the greatest military in the world today and even for all the things we need to improve, we know exactly why that’s so,” Kirby insisted. When asked by Politico what he thought about the reported glee at his departure among senior Pentagon officials, Carlson replied in a text message: “Ha! I’m sure.” The news that Carlson and Fox News were parting ways broke on Monday, shortly before his prime-time show was due to be broadcast. Neither party has offered an explanation for the split.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1651421792936894467

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“Where can you still find Americans saying true things? There aren’t many places left, but there are some – and that’s enough..”

• Tucker Carlson Reappears In 8PM Time Slot, But Not With Fox (ZH)

After Tucker Carlson’s surprise split from Fox News, the #1 rated cable news host in history re-emerged from his home office on Wednesday to offer a stunning 8PM monologue covering his thoughts on the media landscape, and his future. According to Carlson, one of the things one notices when one takes a little ‘time off’ is “how unbelievably stupid most of the debates you see on television are. They’re completely irrelevant. They mean nothing. “In five years we won’t even remember that we had them… and yet, at the same time, the undeniably big topics – the ones that will define our future – get virtually no discussion at all. War, civil liberties, emerging science, demographic change, corporate power, natural resources. When was the last time you heard a legitimate debate about any of those issues?”

“Debates like that are not permitted in American media,” Carlson continued, adding “Both political parties, and their donors, have reached consensus on what benefits them – and they actively collude to shut down any conversation about it. “Suddenly the United States looks like a one-party state,” Carlson said. Carlson doesn’t think this will last, however, noting that while the above is a “depressing realization,” he doesn’t think this is permanent. “Our current orthodoxies won’t last. They’re brain-dead. Nobody actually believes them. Hardly anyone’s life is improved by them. This moment is too inherently ridiculous to continue, and so it won’t.


The people in charge know this, that’s why they’re hysterical and aggressive. They’re afraid. They’ve given up persuasion – they’re resorting to force. But it won’t work. When honest people say what’s true, calmly and without embarrassment, they become powerful. At the same time, the liars who’ve been trying to silence them shrink – and they become weaker. That’s the iron-law of the universe; true things prevail.” Tucker rhetorically asked “Where can you still find Americans saying true things? There aren’t many places left, but there are some – and that’s enough. As long as you can hear the words, there is hope. See you soon.”

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Wild West.

• Poland Seizes Russian Embassy And Trade Mission Funds (RT)

All the money in the accounts of the Russian embassy and trade office in Warsaw has been seized by the Polish prosecutor’s office, Ambassador Sergey Andreyev revealed on Wednesday. “We received a notification from the prosecutor’s office that the funds from the Santander Bank accounts of the embassy and the trade representation were transferred to the accounts of the prosecutor’s office,” Andreyev told RIA Novosti. Santander Bank then informed the embassy that it had “ceased cooperation” with the Russian government and closed the accounts, Andreyev added. There were “significant amounts” of both US dollars and Polish zlotys in both accounts, according to the diplomat. Andreyev called the incident “a flagrant violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations,” the 1961 treaty governing the rights and responsibilities of diplomats.

The Polish authorities had previously frozen the embassy account, citing suspicions that it might be involved in “money laundering or terrorism.” When this prevented the embassy from paying the lease on a recreational facility near Warsaw, the Polish authorities terminated the lease and seized the property in November 2022. Another property, a residence on 100 Sobieski Street, was seized last spring. Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski said at the time it should be handed to refugees from Ukraine. The Polish foreign ministry said the building was “illegally owned” by the embassy as it was not being used for diplomatic or consular purposes. The embassy’s explanation, that the building was unfit for occupancy as it needed repairs, was ignored.

Poland has also sought to confiscate the embassy-operated school in Warsaw, citing the same pretext. The Russian Foreign Ministry has protested both seizures as a flagrant violation of international law. Many EU and NATO countries have expelled dozens of Russian diplomats after the Ukraine conflict escalated in February 2022, but most did not go so far as to sever relations with Moscow. The US and its allies have insisted they are not actually involved in the conflict, even while they sent Kiev over $100 billion worth of weapons and financial aid.

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“..slapping Russia with restrictions to “disrupt the economy, hurt the people and hit their standard of living, ‘cancel’ Russia and strip it of the ability to choose its own path based on its peoples’ interests.”

• Russia Understands Western Sanctions Aren’t ‘Temporary’ – PM (RT)

Russia’s leadership is well aware the nation is likely to live under Western sanctions for a long time, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said on Wednesday. The government is calculating all the risks associated with the existing and potential future restrictions and is ready for any scenario, he added. “We understand that sanctions are not a temporary phenomenon. They will not be lifted in an instant. Our former partners have gone too far to just turn around and retreat,” he told the ‘Znanie’ (‘Knowledge’) forum in Moscow. According to the prime minister, the US and its allies have been slapping Russia with restrictions to “disrupt the economy, hurt the people and hit their standard of living, ‘cancel’ Russia and strip it of the ability to choose its own path based on its peoples’ interests.”

The Russian economy has been weathering the sanctions push well so far and demonstrated its resilience, Mishustin said, adding that some industries still need to fully restore their production chains. The prime minister earlier told the State Duma that the downturn the Russian economy experienced in 2022 was not as drastic as had been predicted, adding that the nation is going back to economic growth now. The Russian government’s head also warned that the “sanctions war” ultimately led nowhere and only impeded global economic development. The world is now dominated by developments affecting every aspect of life, the prime minister said, naming the rapid development of information technologies used in various fields as one of such processes. “They [IT technologies] are now an important condition of long-term quality economic growth,” he said.

Last week, the head of the Russian Central Bank, Elvira Nabiullina, said that the Western sanctions Russia had to face last year were worse than “even the most pessimistic scenario.” Although no one could have predicted anything like that, both the Russian people and the country’s businesses demonstrated remarkable adaptability in the face of this new reality, she added. The US and EU have introduced a total of ten rounds of sanctions over the conflict. In December, the EU, along with the G7 countries and Australia, introduced a price cap on Russian seaborne oil, set at $60 per barrel.

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“She said Russian and Chinese visions for a path to peace were “broadly in tune” with one another. “The problem lies not with the lack of good plans,” Zakharova said.”

• Moscow Reacts To Xi-Zelensky Call (RT)

Ukraine’s “unrealistic” demands are standing in the way of peace negotiations, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has stated. She made her comments in response to a question about the phone call between Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and Chinese President Xi Jinping. The leaders spoke on Wednesday for the first time since Russia launched its military operation in the neighboring state in February 2022. Zakharova praised Beijing for its efforts to help restart meaningful negotiations. She said Russian and Chinese visions for a path to peace were “broadly in tune” with one another. “The problem lies not with the lack of good plans,” Zakharova said.

“The Kiev regime has so far not been receptive to any reasonable initiative aimed at a political and diplomatic settlement of the Ukrainian crisis. Its occasional agreement to hold negotiations is being tied to ultimatums with obviously unrealistic demands.” The spokeswoman blamed Kiev for the eventual breakdown of negotiations last spring when Russian and Ukrainian teams held several rounds of meetings. Kiev, meanwhile, has repeatedly said that negotiations can resume only after Russia surrenders its recently incorporated territories. Moscow has called such demands unacceptable. Crimea voted to leave Ukraine and join Russia in the wake of the 2014 coup in Kiev. The Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, as well as the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, did the same after holding referendums on the matter in September.

In October, Zelensky signed a decree that declared the “impossibility” of conducting negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Beijing, which unveiled a 12-point roadmap for peace in Ukraine in February, has maintained that the conflict can only end through dialogue. China, unlike many Western countries, has also refused to condemn Russia for its actions. China named diplomat Li Hui its special envoy to Ukraine and “other countries” on Wednesday. Xi said that the envoy would be tasked with conducting “in-depth communication with all parties on the political settlement of the Ukraine crisis.” Li was China’s ambassador to Moscow from 2009 to 2019. Zelensky, meanwhile, has appointed former strategic industries minister Pavel Ryabkin as the country’s new ambassador to China.

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“The profile of the unit published by the Post claims that Azov has “evolved” away from its neo-Nazi origins..”

• Kiev Could ‘Capture Small Russian Towns’ For Leverage – WaPo (RT)

The interim commander of Ukraine’s Azov Brigade (the current incarnation of a former volunteer unit known for its neo-Nazi ideology) has said that Kiev’s forces could capture Russian towns and use them to put pressure on Moscow. In an interview with the Washington Post, Bogdan Krotevich was asked about Ukraine’s much-anticipated planned offensive against Russia. He was referring to the experience of Chechen militants in the mid-1990s who “adopted a strategy of capturing small Russian towns to use as leverage to recover Russian-held areas” during the military conflict in the southern Russian republic. The Ukrainian fighter said his country “may do the same,” the newspaper reported on Wednesday. It was not clear which episodes of the conflict in Chechnya Krotevich was referring to.

One of the most tragic examples of violence spilling outside of the Chechen Republic at the time came in June 1995, when a militant force led by Shamil Basayev raided the city of Budyonnovsk, taking over 1,000 civilians hostage at a local hospital. Another raid targeted the city of Kizlyar in Dagestan the next year, in which Chechen militants led by terrorist Salman Raduyev likewise resorted to hostage-taking. Dozens of people were killed in both cases. The Post’s article noted the desire of Krotevich and other Azov leaders to have more prisoner exchanges between Russia and Ukraine so that captured members of the unit can be returned. The man himself spent several months in Russian custody after he and other Azov fighters surrendered in the Donbass city of Mariupol. Krotevich was freed in a Türkiye-mediated swap last September.

“I came to the conclusion that the fastest way to release our prisoners is to take more Russian soldiers prisoner, and to end this war with our victory,” Krotevich stated. The profile of the unit published by the Post claims that Azov has “evolved” away from its neo-Nazi origins. Moscow regards the original Azov Battalion, which was created in 2014, and its successor organizations as a terrorist group. The unit was incorporated into the Ukrainian National Guard early in its history and has now become one of nine ‘Attack Guard’ volunteer brigades. The Interior Ministry revealed them in February, touting service in the units as “an opportunity to dispose of enemies” of the country.

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Dress rehearsal.

• Ukraine Conflict Helps Prepare For Potential China Clash – Pentagon (RT)

The Pentagon will use the lessons learned from supplying military aid to Ukraine to help Taiwan in a potential conflict with China, US Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks has said. “There are many advantages we’ve gained for a potential Pacific challenge from the Ukraine conflict,” Hicks told Bloomberg in an interview published on Wednesday. “We’re learning now to grow our industrial base and to study that industrial base, which has been for the last 60 years in a bit of a feast and famine cycle.” The conflict highlighted the difficulties of quickly procuring enough weapons and equipment for Kiev, Hicks explained. The US repeatedly used the Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA) to speed up the transfer of stockpiles to Ukraine and plans to do the same with Taiwan.

“We’re thinking about how we use those authorities right now to generate faster and higher-capacity delivery of munitions to provide to our forces in the Pacific,” Hicks said, adding that the Pentagon has “a clear strategy that’s focused on China.” Although the deputy secretary admitted that the US did not believe Beijing was planning an “imminent attack” on Taiwan, she maintained that the Pentagon was committed to “making sure that the (Chinese) leadership wakes up every day and says today is not the day to undertake aggression that threatens US interests.” In December, US President Joe Biden signed the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, which includes $2 billion in military loans to Taipei. The law also allows Washington to muster an emergency stockpile of ammunition worth up to $100 million on or near the island.

Taiwanese Premier Chen Chien-jen said on Monday that negotiations of assembling “regional contingency stockpiles” were still ongoing. Beijing held large-scale military exercises around the island this month in response to a visit by Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen to the US. Beijing considers Taiwan – which has been ruled by a separate government since the late 1940s – its territory and views contact between local and foreign officials as meddling into its domestic affairs. China has also accused Washington of backing “secessionist forces” on the island. Chinese President Xi Jinping said last year that Beijing favored peaceful “reunification” with Taiwan but reserved the right to use force if necessary. The US supports the ‘One China’ policy by refraining from establishing formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan. At the same time, Washington has been selling arms to the local authorities and promised to defend the island in case of an invasion.

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“..98% of promised combat vehicles had already been delivered..”

• Zelensky’s Right-Hand Man Contradicts US General (RT)

Ukraine still needs more weapons and equipment for the much-hyped spring “counteroffensive,” especially artillery ammunition, President Vladimir Zelensky’s adviser Mikhail Podoliak said on Wednesday. He disagreed with the US general commanding NATO forces in Europe, who told Congress earlier in the day that 98% of promised combat vehicles had already been delivered. General Christopher Cavoli gave that statistic to the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday morning. “I am very confident that we have delivered the materiel that they need and we’ll continue a pipeline to sustain their operations as well,” Cavoli added, responding to questions about the expected Ukrainian attack.

Podoliak challenged that assessment later in the day, speaking during a telethon hosted by Ukrainian television. He said only the Ukrainian General Staff can offer accurate numbers, and that Cavoli’s statistics weren’t up to date. “In my opinion, 98% is too much, too large a number. He proceeds from certain mathematical data, things he knows today,” the adviser said, referring to Cavoli. “There should be much more equipment, there is a real shortage of shells, especially of heavy calibers. We are trying to solve this problem.”

The current rate of supply allows the Ukrainian military to take “certain actions” at the frontline, Podoliak said, adding that there is “never enough” weapons and equipment when facing an enemy such as Russia. The much-anticipated counteroffensive may have already begun, he suggested, urging the public not to regard it as a single event but a large number of engagements on various fronts Multiple US outlets have sought to temper expectations about the Ukrainian attack over the past week, citing anonymous government officials worried about the political fallout from its possible failure. Last Friday, the White House even warned of a possible Russian offensive taking place instead.

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Biden=Trump.

• Biden Threatens North Korea With Annihilation (RT)

US President Joe Biden declared on Wednesday that a North Korean nuclear attack on his country or South Korea would spell doom for Pyongyang. Under a new agreement between Washington and Seoul, the US would respond to such an attack with nuclear weapons, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol added. “A nuclear attack by North Korea against the United States or its allies or partners is unacceptable and will result in the end of whatever regime were to take such an action,” Biden told reporters at the White House. Speaking alongside Biden, Yoon declared that “sustainable peace on the Korean peninsula does not happen automatically.”

“We can achieve peace through the superiority of overwhelming forces and not a false peace based on the goodwill of the other side,” Yoon said, adding that in the event of a nuclear attack from the north, the US and South Korea would “respond swiftly, overwhelmingly and decisively using the full force of the alliance, including US nuclear weapons.” Biden’s words echo those of his predecessor, Donald Trump, who in 2017 warned North Korea that he would respond with “fire and fury like the world has never seen” if the country threatened the US with nuclear weapons. Although the north tested a nuclear bomb a month later, Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un agreed to a detente and went on to meet several times, and the north’s missile tests came to a halt for most of Trump’s remaining time in office.

These tests have since restarted and ramped up. Pyongyang has test-fired more than 100 missiles since the beginning of 2022, and this month tested its first solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile and a nuclear-capable underwater attack drone. Officials in Washington and Seoul have claimed since last year that the north is gearing up for its seventh underground test of a nuclear weapon. Yoon’s predecessor, Moon Jae-in, largely went along with Trump’s policy of diplomatic outreach to Kim. Yoon, however, has taken a much more hardline stance on his neighbor to the north. In a speech in January, Yoon raised the possibility of his administration acquiring “our own nuclear weapons,” something that more than two thirds of South Koreans want, according to recent polls.

The agreement signed on Wednesday has brought an end to that idea, as it stipulates that Seoul will not pursue its own nuclear armament. Known as the ‘Washington Declaration’, the agreement boosts nuclear information-sharing between the US and Korea, and provides for more joint military drills and the deployment of nuclear-armed US submarines and bombers to South Korea on a rotating basis.

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“..all US efforts to persuade Riyadh to flood global oil markets have failed, and the Russians have managed to maintain both their exports and their economy..”

• The Historic US-Saudi Relationship Cannot Bounce Back (Sweidan)

Since the Cold War era began, oil has been a key pillar of the Russian (and former Soviet) economy. It has long been a US priority to be able to influence prices as a pressure tool against Moscow. Since Saudi Arabia is considered an oil superpower, Washington’s cooperation with Riyadh – despite its own dramatically reduced Saudi oil imports – is at the heart of US economic strategies to counter Russia. For example, in the mid-eighties, during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the US asked the Saudis to flood oil markets in order to lower prices and undermine the oil revenue-reliant USSR. In 1986, oil prices dropped by two-thirds, from $30 per barrel to nearly $10 per barrel, ultimately crippling the Soviet economy and its geopolitical reach. But attitudes have sharply altered during the intervening 37 years.

Saudi Arabia now views the US as an energy market competitor due to Washington’s increased shale oil production and disinterest in boosting oil imports. Between 2010 and 2021, US shale oil production grew from approximately 0.59 million bpd to 9.06 million bpd. Riyadh’s response to this new geo-economic development was to raise oil production in 2016, with the aim of lowering prices to undercut the US shale industry, which operates at significantly higher costs. The Saudis indeed fear a declining role as a strategic supplier of global oil, in large part due to expanded US shale production and energy self-sufficiency. This has driven the Saudis to try and reimpose their oil superiority by lowering prices to undercut competitors with higher production costs – despite the short-term domestic damage caused by increased Saudi oil production.

To this day, Saudi Arabia continues to present an obstacle to US energy interests, and has instead found most common ground with Washington’s main adversaries – Russia, China, Iran – with whom Riyadh’s energy interests intersect. Contrary to expectations since the outbreak of the Ukraine war in February 2022, all US efforts to persuade Riyadh to flood global oil markets have failed, and the Russians have managed to maintain both their exports and their economy. It has become manifestly clear to Washington’s decision-makers that Saudi Arabia today is not the Saudi Arabia of 1985, willing to undermine its own revenues and energy interests in order to serve a US geopolitical agenda. Discussions in Washington today have likewise turned to the feasibility of maintaining the US commitment to Saudi Arabia’s security, particularly since Riyadh neither provides Americans with energy nor follows its political diktats.

Some believe that the US’ role of acting as a security guarantor in the Persian Gulf merely serves Beijing’s interests by securing China’s main energy sources. Yet others argue that a US military withdrawal from the Persian Gulf will create a vacuum filled by Beijing, which will keenly seek to ensure its own energy security. The one point of clarity, however, is that US-Saudi energy interests are no longer synergistic and that Riyadh’s interests line up far more closely with those of Beijing and Moscow. This remains a key factor driving Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy and economic diversification today. What remains to be seen is how far the Saudis – deeply and historically bound to western interests – will be willing to challenge the US’ regional hegemony as their goals diverge and Riyadh finds common cause with Washington’s rivals.

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“..a “Very Large Online Platform” (VLOP) or a “Very Large Online Search Engine” (VLOSE)..”

• Twitter, Tiktok And Instagram To Face Much Stricter Content Rules In EU (Az.)

The list features platforms with more than 45 million monthly active users, which also includes certain services from Amazon, Google, Meta, Instagram and Microsoft. The volume of users puts the platforms under a new EU law, known as the Digital Services Act (DSA), imposing measures from August such as annual audits and a duty to effectively counter disinformation and hate content. In four months’ time, “these platforms and search engines will not be able to act as if they were ‘too big to care’,” Thierry Breton, the EU’s internal market commissioner, said in a statement. “This new supervision system will cast a wide and tight net and catch all points of failure in a platform’s compliance,” he added.

Platforms meeting the 45-million-plus threshold include Twitter, owned by US billionaire Elon Musk; Alphabet’s Google Search, Google Maps, Google Shopping and Google Play units as well as its YouTube subsidiary; and Meta’s Facebook and Instagram. Microsoft’s LinkedIn, Apple’s iOS App Store, online encyclopedia Wikipedia, messaging app Snapchat and creative image website Pinterest are also covered under the legislation. Under the DSA, they are categorised as a “Very Large Online Platform” (VLOP) or a “Very Large Online Search Engine” (VLOSE). Most of the companies on the list are US-based but Chinese-owned platforms TikTok and e-commerce site AliExpress also feature. The commission also listed German online fashion retailer Zalando. Breton told journalists today that his team will hold “stress tests” to check Twitter’s compliance readiness at the end of June.

He added that TikTok had also expressed an interest in cooperating to ensure compliance. The announcement follows a deadline in February for online companies to publish user figures in Europe. The DSA has a wide range of objectives, including forcing platforms to better protect children, strengthen transparency around digital services, prohibit the sale online of unsafe goods and allow users to have greater choice when online in the EU. The rules allow the EU to impose fines of up to six percent of the platforms’ annual global sales for repeated infringements. By 25 August, the 19 platforms must have an independent compliance system in place and give their first annual risk assessment to the European Commission, including how they plan to handle content on mental health and gender-based violence.

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Lying and cheating. Working for Hillary, Obama and Biden. For years. It’s a sad picture.

• Ex-CIA Boss Intervened On Russia Collusion In 2016, Benghazi In 2012 (JTN)

Morell, a 33-year veteran of the CIA who retired shortly after Brennan took over in 2013, has now stirred controversies in three straight elections with actions that relied in part on his intelligence community ties. In September 2012, as Obama was seeking reelection in a close race against Republican Mitt Romney, Morell edited intelligence talking points to delete references to al Qaeda’s role in the deadly attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi. The edits ended up sending National Security Advisor Susan Rice onto the Sunday talk shows to make a false insinuation that an anti-Muslim video spurred the attack on Benghazi when in fact the CIA had strong evidence an al Qaeda-related arm had instigated it.

Republicans accused the former CIA chief of a cover-up. Morell defended his actions in testimony two years later, insisting his edits were not designed to be political but instead were well-meaning actions taken in the heat of a dramatic intelligence drama. “These allegations accuse me of taking these actions for the political benefit of President Obama and then secretary of state Clinton,” Morell testified. “These allegations are false.” But by that time, the talking points had become a major controversy in the 2012 election.

In 2016, Morell’s insertion into the Russia collusion narrative came as Brennan, his successor, was warning Obama the Clinton campaign was crafting a dirty trick. In declassified notes, Brennan recounted how during a July 28, 2016 meeting with Obama he relayed a warning that there was intelligence that Clinton was trying to conjure up a Trump-Russia scandal to distract from Mrs. Clinton’s email controversies. The Clinton campaign had helped fund the Steele dossier, it was later learned. “We’re getting additional insight into Russian activities from [REDACTED],” Brennan’s notes read. “Cite alleged approval by Hillary Clinton of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisers to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security services.”

Two months later, Brennan’s CIA would send a similar warning to the FBI, which was investigating Russian collusion based in part on the now-discredited Steele dossier. CIA is aware of an intercept “discussing US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s approval of a plan concerning US presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering US elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server,” the agency wrote in a teletype to the bureau. Brennan’s warning to Obama was significant because just four days earlier the Clinton campaign — where current Biden National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan served at the time as a security adviser — put out a statement saying Russia hacked the Democrat Party documents to help Trump. Mueller’s probe found no proof Trump or his team played a role in the hack.

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Long read.

• The RFK Jr. Tapes (David Samuels)

The heir to the family’s political mantle in the third generation of Kennedys was always Bobby. It was Bobby who became the leader of his tribe of orphaned brothers and sisters after their father’s death, trying and failing to make up for the absence of a charismatic father and the near-total absence of adult supervision. A friend who was close to the family in those years recalls visits to their home in Hickory Hill, Virginia, as like visiting a zoo—quite literally, with live sea mammals in the swimming pool, and animals of all shapes and sizes, frequently untamed, roaming freely throughout the house. Bobby’s hawks nested in the eaves and children climbed in and out of windows. Eventually, the friend’s mother forbade further visits, on account of it being too physically dangerous.

If the Kennedys were a kind of American royalty, then Bobby was their Prince Hal—charismatic and beloved, yet also dangerous and frequently out of control, a fatherless child who was trying to emulate the adult father figures who had been taken from him before he could truly understand who they were or what their brand of world-shaping masculinity meant. In 1983, Bobby was found nodding off in an airplane bathroom, and then pleaded guilty to heroin possession. The death of his brother David, who worshipped Bobby, a year later from a heroin overdose, made an uphill climb back to respectability seem even more unlikely, even after he got clean, and his decades of hard work as an environmental lawyer for Riverkeeper and the NRDC established him as one of the most effective environmental activists in the country.

During the 1990s and early 2000s, Bobby kept his name alive in political circles through a familiar striptease dance with the New York press, which was no doubt orchestrated in part by his best friend from college, Peter Kaplan, the sharp-eyed editor of The New York Observer: A dutiful accounting of his environmental good works ridding New York’s waterways of deadly toxins, a dash of Kennedy fairy dust, a tour of his falcons—falconry being a lifelong hobby, pursued with characteristic dedication—and a tantalizing hint of a possible future race for some political office that would re-up his star power and help promote his advocacy. Of course, he never ran—which prevented the publication of the inevitable attack articles ripping him to pieces.

Running would have been messy. His sister Kerry was married to the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo—heir to another political dynasty whose name meant more in New York state than the name Kennedy did. Then it all came apart. In 2005, Kerry and Andrew Cuomo divorced. In 2010, Bobby separated from his wife, Mary Richardson, who had been Kerry’s college roommate at Brown and appeared to be suffering from substance abuse issues; a judge awarded temporary full custody of their four children to Bobby. In 2012, Mary Richardson hung herself. In 2013, Peter Kaplan died of cancer.

Meanwhile, Bobby Kennedy Jr. found success as an environmentally friendly venture capitalist along with a new cause: vaccines. In 2005, Kennedy wrote a blockbuster Rolling Stone magazine article titled “Deadly Immunity,” which presented compelling evidence of an ongoing vaccine safety cover-up led by U.S. national health bureaucrats, including transcripts of a 2000 CDC conference in Norcross, Georgia, where researchers presented information linking the mercury compound thimerosol with neurological problems in children. At its root, the case Kennedy made in his article was no more or less plausible and empirically grounded than the cases that he and dozens of other environmental advocates had been making for decades against large chemical companies for spewing toxins into America’s air, water, and soil, and then lying about it.

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“..the company’s defense could make all of Musk’s public statements “immune” from legal scrutiny simply because he is “famous.”

• Musk’s Lawyer Invokes ‘Deepfake’ Defense (RT)

A judge has ordered Elon Musk to testify under oath about whether he made certain claims about his company’s electric cars, after Tesla lawyers said statements attributed to him by plaintiffs in an ongoing lawsuit could have been fabricated with ‘deepfake’ software. The ruling from California Judge Evette Pennypacker was handed down on Wednesday, part of a lawsuit against Tesla over the death of Walter Huang, who was killed in a car wreck involving one of the company’s vehicles in 2018. Musk was ordered to provide a three-hour interview under oath regarding some of his past comments about Tesla cars and their ‘Autopilot’ capabilities, as the CEO is alleged to have claimed that some models could “drive autonomously with greater safety than a person” at a conference in 2016.

The plaintiffs in the suit say the claims were misleading and that the self-driving features on Huang’s Tesla had failed, resulting in his death. The carmaker, however, maintains that Huang was on his cell phone before the crash and had disregarded warnings from the vehicle, denying any liability. Company lawyers also dispute the comments pinned on Musk, saying that he, “like many public figures, is the subject of many ‘deepfake’ videos and audio recordings that purport to show him saying and doing things he never actually said or did.” Though Huang’s family cited a 2016 YouTube video which appears to show Musk making the statement in question, Tesla’s legal team has opposed the CEO’s deposition, also stating that he cannot remember his past comments.

Judge Pennypacker said Tesla’s claims are “deeply troubling,” suggesting the company’s defense could make all of Musk’s public statements “immune” from legal scrutiny simply because he is “famous.” She warned similar arguments could allow celebrities and public figures to “avoid taking ownership of what they did actually say and do.” However, the judge’s order was tentative, meaning that another hearing will be held on Thursday to determine whether Musk will be deposed under oath. Such rulings are not uncommon in California courts, which frequently allow parties to offer additional arguments to dispute motions before they are finalized.

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Join the crowd.

• EU Countries Sinking In Debt – Bloomberg (RT)

Countries in Eastern Europe have borrowed some $32 billion so far this year, three times more than during the same period a year ago, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. Poland has tapped overseas markets for nearly $9 billion, putting it second among emerging-market economies in terms of overseas borrowing, trailing only Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, Romania and Hungary, which have borrowed a respective $6 billion and $5 billion, are the fourth and fifth largest emerging-market borrowers. This marks the first time in a dozen years that three Eastern European countries are among the top five overseas emerging-market borrowers.

The surge in borrowing is attributable to an increasing need to dole out subsidies due to the still-raging energy crisis, as well as soaring spending related to the military conflict in Ukraine, according to Bloomberg. Eastern European countries have had to build up their military capabilities and help refugees from the neighboring state. Meanwhile, hawkish policies pursued by key central banks have made it much more expensive to borrow in bond markets, even for highly rated nations. Poland is paying 5.5% in annual interest on a new 30-year bond, significantly above the less than 4% the same bond would have sold for back in 2021.

Rising interest rates are projected to add to the suddenly swelling budget deficits across Eastern Europe, inevitably putting more pressure on finances in the region. According to analyst estimates on Bloomberg, Eastern Europe’s budget deficit will surge to 4.3% of the region’s gross domestic product in 2023, up from the 1.3% recorded two years ago. The conflict in Ukraine “hits fiscal deficits from both sides,” Daniel Wood, a fixed income portfolio manager at William Blair International, told Bloomberg. “It lowers growth, which reduces revenue collection for the government, and on the expenditure side it has been necessary for governments to help those that have been hit hard by the cost of living.”

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“Some countries began to seek alternatives after seeing Russian assets frozen abroad and the country cut off from the SWIFT global financial messaging system. “Suddenly, it was clear that any nation could be a target..”

• Gold Leading ‘Revolt Against Dollar’ – Economist (RT)

Central banks around the world are shifting away from the US dollar and turning their attention to gold as a safe haven asset, the chairman of Rockefeller International, Ruchir Sharma, has said. Prices for the commodity have surged 20% in the past six months, with demand coming not from “the usual suspects” such as large and small investors “seeking a hedge against inflation and low real interest rates,” but from “heavy buyers” like central banks, Sharma wrote in the Financial Times on Sunday. According to the investment expert, regulators are sharply reducing their dollar holdings and seeking a safe alternative. Central banks now account for a record 33% of monthly global demand for gold and are ramping up gold-buying more than at any time since data began in 1950, Sharma added.

“This buying boom has helped push the price of gold to near-record levels and more than 50% higher than what models based on real interest rates would suggest,” he explained, adding that “clearly, something new is driving gold prices.” Sharma pointed out that nine of the top ten central bank buyers are in the “developing world,” including Russia, India, and China. “Not coincidentally, these three countries are in talks with Brazil and South Africa about creating a new currency to challenge the dollar,” Sharma noted. He attributed the rush for the precious metal to increasing sanctions pressure exerted by the US and its allies, with as many as 30% of nations facing international penalties – up from 10% in the early 1990s.

“Thus, the oldest and most traditional of assets, gold, is now a vehicle of central bank revolt against the dollar,” Sharma argued. Some countries began to seek alternatives after seeing Russian assets frozen abroad and the country cut off from the SWIFT global financial messaging system. “Suddenly, it was clear that any nation could be a target,” Sharma wrote. According to the expert, the US saw sanctions as a “cost-free way to fight Russia,” but in reality the weaponization of the dollar has come at a cost for Washington as even allies such as Thailand and the Philippines have started to look for alternatives.

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CO2

 

 

 

 

Progress

 

 

 

9/11

 

 


Biologists found a marine green algae during a trip to the island in 2019. It took two years to identify it and give it a name: acetabularia jalakanyakae. The main feature of the species is that the plant is made up of one gigantic cell with a nucleus

 

 

Tippy taps

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle February 1 2023

Feb 012023
 
 February 1, 2023  Posted by at 9:52 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  88 Responses »


Claude Monet Water lillies 1914 – 1917

 

• A Panicked Empire Tries To Make Russia An ‘Offer It Can’t Refuse’ (Escobar)
• Desperate Actions (Dionísio)
• The War and the Future (Batiushka)
• France ‘Open’ To Sending Fighter Jets To Ukraine. UK Says “Not Practical” (ZH)
• House GOP Kicks Off Biden Corruption Investigations (ZH)
• Gold And The Shrinking Trust Horizon (John Rubino)
• Norway’s Wealth Fund Posts Heavy Losses (RT)
• Buzzfeed Sacks 180 Journalists, Replaces Them With AI (RT)
• The Press Versus The President, Part Two (CJR)
• Twitter Makes Move That Could Take Out ‘Woke’ PayPal (TPN)
• Who Will be Spared from COVID-19 Vaccine Injury? (McCullough)
• Did 7.5 Million People Die From Covid Shots? (Horowitz)
• Massive Mask Meta-study Undermines Remaining Covid Mandates (JTN)
• How Ivermectin Kills Prostate Cancer Cells (PR)
• Quantum Entanglement Just Got A Whole Lot Weirder (Siegel)

 

 

 

 

U.S. Not Prepared to take on Russia / Macgregor

 

 

 

 

Tucker Dore

 

 

Winning

 

 

Gonzalo primer

 

 

 

 

Involves the John Helmer piece we mentioned recently.

• A Panicked Empire Tries To Make Russia An ‘Offer It Can’t Refuse’ (Escobar)

Realizing NATO’s war with Russia will likely end unfavorably, the US is test-driving an exit offer. But why should Moscow take indirect proposals seriously, especially on the eve of its new military advance and while it is in the winning seat? Those behind the Throne are never more dangerous than when they have their backs against the wall. Their power is slipping away, fast: Militarily, via NATO’s progressive humiliation in Ukraine; Financially, sooner rather than later, most of the Global South will want nothing to do with the currency of a bankrupt rogue giant; Politically, the global majority is taking decisive steps to stop obeying a rapacious, discredited, de facto minority. So now those behind the Throne are plotting to at least try to stall the incoming disaster on the military front.

As confirmed by a high-level US establishment source, a new directive on NATO vs. Russia in Ukraine was relayed to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Blinken, in terms of actual power, is nothing but a messenger boy for the Straussian neocons and neoliberals who actually run US foreign policy. The secretary of state was instructed to relay the new directive – a sort of message to the Kremlin – via mainstream print media, which was promptly published by the Washington Post. In the elite US mainstream media division of labor, the New York Times is very close to the State Department. and the Washington Post to the CIA. In this case though the directive was too important, and needed to be relayed by the paper of record in the imperial capital. It was published as an Op-Ed.

The novelty here is that for the first time since the start of Russia’s February 2022 Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine, the Americans are actually proposing a variation of the “offer you can’t refuse” classic, including some concessions which may satisfy Russia’s security imperatives. Crucially, the US offer totally bypasses Kiev, once again certifying that this is a war against Russia conducted by Empire and its NATO minions – with the Ukrainians as mere expandable proxies. The Washington Post’s old school Moscow-based correspondent John Helmer has provided an important service, offering the full text of Blinken’s offer, of course extensively edited to include fantasist notions such as “US weapons help pulverize Putin’s invasion force” and a cringe-worthy explanation: “In other words, Russia should not be ready to rest, regroup and attack.”

The message from Washington may, at first glance, give the impression that the US would admit Russian control over Crimea, Donbass, Zaporozhye, and Kherson – “the land bridge that connects Crimea and Russia” – as a fait accompli. Ukraine would have a demilitarized status, and the deployment of HIMARS missiles and Leopard and Abrams tanks would be confined to western Ukraine, kept as a “deterrent against further Russian attacks.” What may have been offered, in quite hazy terms, is in fact a partition of Ukraine, demilitarized zone included, in exchange for the Russian General Staff cancelling its yet-unknown 2023 offensive, which may be as devastating as cutting off Kiev’s access to the Black Sea and/or cutting off the supply of NATO weapons across the Polish border.

Read more …

RAND Corp.

• Desperate Actions (Dionísio)

Something is changing on Mount Olympus and it is leaving in tatters the union of tendencies connected to the U.S.-state falconry. To understand and predict the actions of the political elite that commands, through their transnational mandataries, our destinies, implies knowing what one of the most important US defense think tanks reflects and publishes. This research leads us to an entity that rarely appears in the “informative” moments of the North Atlantic press: the RAND Corporation. RAND’s best-known moment with regard to the conflict in Eastern Europe is signaled by the publication of the report “Extending Russia – Competing from Advantageous Ground”. This report contains the entire menu of malfeasance that, in the claims made public and repeated by the US power summit, would lead to a fulminating defeat of the political, economic, and military power of the Russian Federation.

The analysis expressed publicly, by the various political actors, was that the Russian Federation was nothing more than “a gasoline bomb with nuclear weapons,” a “paper tiger” with a GDP equal to that of Holland, and a people gagged by a “mad dictator” who remained in power only through “authoritarianism” and “repression”. Based on an analysis whose information seemed to substantiate such political positions, the RAND report advocated a type of intervention, some of which were well reported – others not so well reported – in the official press. This was the case with the attempted “colored” revolutions made in CIA in Belarus, Kazakhstan, and the Central Asian countries, which, together with Georgia and Moldova, would probably be “promoted” and “supported” to the condition of an actual Ukraine.

The Russian Federation, having to meet all the fires, some because they would become proxy armies (like Ukraine), others turned into bases of destabilizing operations launched by the CIA, would eventually “extend” itself until it broke into pieces and collapsed, putting an end to the current threat. Even without this partition, a point could always be reached where, after the destruction of the incumbent political power, a more docile “regime” would be installed, pointing to a more “advantageous position on the ground.” Given to be known only in 2019, we are forced to note that this strategy had long been in preparation, especially since the Russian president lost hope that he could count on a Western “partnership” and announce the end of the unipolar world. Fact is, the report has a logical connection with the 2018 National Defense Strategy (US national defense strategy).

At any rate, this strategy points to the “Yugoslavization” of the Russian Federation. The truth is that the constant itinerary of this work has been followed almost scrupulously by the U.S. security and defense establishment: “colored” revolutions; states transformed into proxy armies; communication and disinformation campaigns; destabilization and sabotage operations; economic sanctions and embargoes. A menu of fulminating “democratic” activities on the rise! And why is it important to talk about this today? It is important because in the last few days a new paper from the RAND corporation was published, but this time in reverse, a study entitled “Avoiding a Long War U.S. Policy and the Trajectory of the Russia-Ukraine Conflict.”

Lula

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“First of all, probably within the next fifteen months, we shall see the full liberation of the Ukraine..”

• The War and the Future (Batiushka)

Since the historic Special Military Operation to liberate the peoples of the Ukraine from their US puppet tyrants in Kiev began on 24 February 2022, the post-1945 settlement has been over. In fact, it should have been over with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 or, at latest, at the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. However, the USA was blinded by its exceptionalist hubris as ‘the only Superpower’ and engaged in its latest fantasy of destroying Islam, which it mistakenly saw as a serious rival, arrogantly dismissing Russia, China and India as minor players. So, as a sectarian rogue-state, the USA began its war of terror on all who thought differently, which it so humiliatingly lost. This can be seen in the dramatic pictures of the last flights out of Kabul in 2021.

In other words, after the end of the Soviet Union, which had been born directly out of World War One and formally founded in 1922, the end of the American Union (= NATO) should have followed, and with it the end of the worldwide American Empire. Thus, today NATO is an anachronism, well past its best before date, which is why has begun meddling all over the world, from the foothills of the Himalaya to the Pacific Ocean. NATO is just like the alphabet soup of other US organisations and fronts, IMF, EU, WTO, OECD, G7, G20 and UN, with its mere five Security Council members, including minor Great Britain and France. What might await us as a result of the liberation of the Ukraine on the centenary of the 1945 settlement, in 2045?

1. After the Ukraine. First of all, probably within the next fifteen months, we shall see the full liberation of the Ukraine. With the eastern Novorossija half of the Ukraine returning to Russia, the remaining half, Central and Western Ukraine, perhaps minus Zakarpattia (returning to Hungary as an autonomous region under the Balogh brothers) and Chernivtsy (returning to Romania), will return to being Malorossija, its capital in Kiev. Thus, the way will at last be open to form the Confederation of Rus’. The at last freed East Slav lands and peoples, Eurasian Russia and the Eastern European Belarus and Malorossija, could together form such a Confederation of Rus’, with a total population of just under 200 million.

2. The Reconfiguration of Eurasia . After the Ukrainian question has been solved and the USA has lost its political, military and, above all, economic power to bully the rest of the world, all of us in Eurasia will be able to start living in our new-found Freedom and building Justice and Prosperity for all. We foresee first of all the expansion of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU).

Wagner

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“..given training on the Abrams M1 tank could take at minimum six months, something as sophisticated as Western-made fighter jets could take years for pilots unfamiliar with their systems to get combat ready on..”

• France ‘Open’ To Sending Fighter Jets To Ukraine. UK Says “Not Practical” (ZH)

Here we go again… French President Emmanuel Macron in Monday comments signaled openness to sending Ukraine advanced fighter jets, something which Kiev has broadly asked its allies for since nearly the start of the Russian invasion. “Nothing is excluded in principle,” Macron said immediately following talks with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte when pressed by reporters about the question of fighter jets for Ukraine. The Dutch premier himself had weighed in too saying, “There is no taboo but it would be a big step.” But he noted, “It is not at all a question of F-16s, there has been no demand (from Ukraine).” Macron added that the French “are not making this request at the moment for fighter jets” – in what appears a first confirmation that the Ukrainian government has not yet gone through with a formal ask.

Macron’s fresh remarks, however, are likely to be seen from Kiev as an invitation to proceed with a formal request, while will putting more pressure on Paris and the Western alliance. Ukrainian officials have long been going through Poland, it seems, to press the jet issue with NATO command in Brussels. Macron stipulated that jets for Ukraine must “not be escalatory” – meaning that they would “not be likely to hit Russian soil but purely to aid the resistance effort.” But obviously advanced fighters would be escalatory by the very nature of sending them after Moscow has reiterated its “red lines”. As for the rest of Europe, on the same day that the White House said that it would not be sending jets, Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said it would not be practical.

“The UK’s … fighter jets are extremely sophisticated and take months to learn how to fly. Given that, we believe it is not practical to send those jets into Ukraine,” a spokesperson for the British prime minister told reporters. “We will continue to discuss with our allies about what we think what is the right approach.” Indeed given training on the Abrams M1 tank could take at minimum six months, something as sophisticated as Western-made fighter jets could take years for pilots unfamiliar with their systems to get combat ready on. Germany too has issued a firm “no” amid mounting pressure from Ukraine for jets. Meanwhile it’s no surprise that the European country pressing the hardest to send jets continues to be Poland. Warsaw has been pressing the rest of NATO to transfer jets since the opening months of the war. On Monday Polish officials expressed readiness to send US-made F-16s to Ukraine, but emphasized it would only do so in coordination with NATO. “We will act in full coordination here,” Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said.

Boris

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“..organized GOP members into “task forces” to come up with oversight and legislative priorities..”

• House GOP Kicks Off Biden Corruption Investigations (ZH)

Newly empowered House Republicans are kicking off their long-planned investigations into a wide variety of issues, beginning with hearings on the US-Mexico border crisis, the origins of Covid-19, and pandemic relief programs. The House Judiciary Committee’s first meeting of the new Congress, led by Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH), will be “The Biden Border Crisis: Part I.” Then, the House Energy and Commerce investigations subcommittee will hold a hearing titled: “Challenges and Opportunities to Investigating the Origins of Pandemics and Other Biological Events,” as part of its probe into the origins of Covid-19. Meanwhile, the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, led by James Comer (R-KY) will kick off a hearing on waste, fraud and abuse related to federal pandemic spending, The Hill reports.

“I don’t think history will be kind to the PPP loan program,” said Comer during a Monday appearance at a National Press Club event, referring to the program that provided businesses with forgivable loans. “I think it’ll be eventually viewed in the same manner that the big bank bailouts were when people find out where a lot of that money was going.” Republicans had been plotting extensive investigations into the Biden administration for more than a year before the midterm elections. Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), in preparation for taking the House majority, organized GOP members into “task forces” to come up with oversight and legislative priorities. Republican members of committees started investigations last year when they were in the minority.

Republicans now have control over committee hearing topics, a better chance of getting answers from administration officials, and are armed with subpoena power to compel testimony and documents — though no committee has used it yet. Next week, the Oversight panel is set to hold a hearing on the U.S.-Mexico border and a hearing with former Twitter employees about the platform’s suppression of the New York Post’s story on the Hunter Biden hard drive in 2020. -The Hill Speaking of the Bidens, the Oversight panel is also conducting an ‘extensive probe’ into the business dealings of President Biden’s family which will focus on Hunter Biden. Republicans on the House Oversight, Judiciary and Intelligence committees have also sought information related to President Biden’s mishandling of classified information, while the House Foreign Affairs and Armed Services committees are going to be investigating the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan.

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“..the military industrial complex is starting (potentially nuclear) wars all over the place. Government debt is growing exponentially. Wall Street has turned the markets into one big casino. Universities have become (very expensive) insane asylums. Congress is full of insider traders who amass fortunes while “serving the public.”

• Gold And The Shrinking Trust Horizon (John Rubino)

[..] believe it or not, the public health establishment losing its credibility is related to precious metals, via something called the trust horizon. It works like this: When things are good and the people in charge of big systems seem to be running them well, we’re content to trust the experts. We keep most of our money in banks, brokerage houses, and crypto wallets that exist for us only as websites. We buy produce that’s grown in a different hemisphere and shipped via boats, trains, and trucks to corporate chain grocery stores. We vaccinate ourselves and our kids according to the schedules set by the NIH or the CDC. We pop pills on our doctor’s orders without doing any research. We eat processed foods on the assumption that the FDA keeps them free of dangerous additives. And we believe what we see on cable news.

In other words, our trust horizon, defined as the distance from ourselves at which we’ll believe what we’re told, is global. We assume everything everywhere is working for our benefit and we’re thus willing to put our welfare in those distant hands. But let some big systems fail to take proper care of us and we pull back, finding people and institutions closer to home that we can see and judge first-hand. We move our money out of distant banks and brokers and into local credit unions whose managers live down the street. We start buying groceries from farmers markets or directly from local farmers. Instead of popping whatever pill is standard for our ailments we look into “food as medicine” and other lifestyle remedies like exercise, supplements, and meditation. We homeschool our kids and join gun clubs. We buy homesteads and start raising chickens.

So where are today’s Americans on the trust horizon spectrum? Well, the military industrial complex is starting (potentially nuclear) wars all over the place. Government debt is growing exponentially. Wall Street has turned the markets into one big casino. Universities have become (very expensive) insane asylums. Congress is full of insider traders who amass fortunes while “serving the public.” And our presidents, well, insert your sarcastic phrase here. It’s safe to say that for a growing number of disillusioned people, trust now extends to – maybe — the governor’s mansion, city hall, local farmers, their church and one or two community banks. And that’s about it.

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“The market was impacted by war in Europe, high inflation, and rising interest rates. This negatively impacted both the equity market and bond market at the same time, which is very unusual. All the sectors in the equity market had negative returns, with the exception of energy.”

• Norway’s Wealth Fund Posts Heavy Losses (RT)

Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, Government Pension Fund Global, posted a record loss of 1.64 trillion kroner ($164.4 billion) in 2022, according to data published on the fund’s website on Tuesday. The return on investment last year was negative 14.1%, according to the released figures. The fund’s equities holdings posted a 15.3% loss, while its fixed-income portfolio was down 12.1%. Nicolai Tangen, CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management, the entity that manages the fund, commented: “The market was impacted by war in Europe, high inflation, and rising interest rates. This negatively impacted both the equity market and bond market at the same time, which is very unusual. All the sectors in the equity market had negative returns, with the exception of energy.”


Despite the record loss, the overall value of the fund increased by 89 billion kroner ($8.9 billion) year-on-year. This was largely due to a record 1.1 trillion kroner ($109 billion) inflow, a figure roughly three times larger than the previous high from 2008. Currency fluctuations also helped, adding some 642 billion kroner ($64 billion) to the fund’s value. The fund, which reportedly lost the status of the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund to China Investment Corporation, had a value of 12.4 trillion kroner ($1.2 trillion) as of December 31, 2022. The fund invests the revenue from Norway’s oil and gas sales, which grew substantially last year after the country became Europe’s largest gas supplier due to the drop in Russian flows. The fund holds stakes in some 9,300 companies globally and owns the equivalent of 1.3% of all listed stocks.

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“..the use of the technology could be extended further to help “create, personalize, and animate the content itself..”

• Buzzfeed Sacks 180 Journalists, Replaces Them With AI (RT)

Struggling online publisher BuzzFeed will start using artificial intelligence (AI) to help write its quizzes after laying off dozens of employees, Report informs referring to The Telegraph. The media company, known for its light-hearted articles and “listicles”, will work with OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, on the initiative. The chatbot, which provides human-like written responses to prompts, has attracted praise from tech executives, academics and politicians amid hopes it could simplify and transform tasks across a range of industries. The technology will be used to create quizzes on the website that are tailored to an individual, with, for example, a pitch for a personalized rom com.


The quiz would ask prompt questions such as “Pick a trope for your rom com” and “Tell us an endearing flaw you have” before using AI to generate a write-up based on the responses, according to a memo to staff from chief executive Jonah Peretti. Peretti said he planned to increase the use of AI across BuzzFeed’s editorial output and business operations this year, according to the memo seen by the Wall Street Journal. Peretti said he expected AI to assist the creative process and enhance the content, while humans would provide “cultural currency” and “inspired prompts”. But he suggested the use of the technology could be extended further to help “create, personalize, and animate the content itself” over the next 15 years. sThe company’s push into AI comes just over a month after it sacked 12pc of its workforce – around 180 employees.

Read more …

4-part series.

• The Press Versus The President, Part Two (CJR)

In a windowless conference room at Trump Tower, on January 6, 2017, Comey briefed the president-elect about the dossier about him and Russia. Trump had heard, from aides, media “rumblings” about Russia, but, in an interview, he said he was unaware of the dossier until he met with Comey. Comey’s one-on-one with Trump came after the intelligence community briefed him on a new “Intelligence Community Assessment” (ICA) on Russian activities in 2016. The ICA claimed that Russia had mounted an “influence campaign” aimed at the election but had not targeted or compromised vote-tallying systems. Its most important, and controversial, finding was that “Putin and the Russian government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump,” as opposed to Russia’s usual goal, which was generally sowing chaos in the United States.

An unclassified version of the ICA was released the same day in Washington. The dossier, actually a series of reports in 2016, was included in the assessment, but it remained secret, temporarily, because a summary of it was attached as a classified appendix. “The only thing that really resonated,” Trump said about the briefing, “was when he said four hookers,” a reference to the unsubstantiated claim of a salacious encounter in Moscow. Trump’s immediate reaction was that “this is not going to be good for the family,” he recalled. But his wife, Melania, “did not believe it at all,” telling him, “That’s not your deal with the golden shower,” Trump recalled. Trump’s marriage might have survived but his hoped for honeymoon with the press was about to end. The dossier, largely suppressed by the media in 2016, was about to surface.

But first came the ICA. It received massive, and largely uncritical coverage. Some other reporters weren’t convinced. Gessen called the ICA “flawed” because it was based on “conjecture” and incorporated “misreported or mistranslated” and “false” public statements. They criticized the major media, including the New York Times, for describing the ICA as a “strong statement.” In an interview, Gessen said that their skepticism left them isolated and they began to “lose confidence.” The dossier wound up in the ICA because the FBI pushed it, despite reservations at the CIA. Agency analysts saw it as an “internet rumor,” according to Justice Department documents. Two “senior managers in the CIA mission center responsible for Russia” also had reservations, according to a memoir by Brennan, the head of the agency at the time.

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A lot of people will like an alternative to Paypal.

• Twitter Makes Move That Could Take Out ‘Woke’ PayPal (TPN)

Twitter CEO Elon Musk is not messing around. The billionaire truly does want to take over the world. Back in October, Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion and made it clear from day one that he had high ambitions. As Elon Musk strives to revive Twitter, the company has taken action by submitting applications for regulatory licenses in various parts of the US and developing the necessary software to incorporate payments within the social media platform. This would directly compete with PayPal who has been slammed by Conservatives for their ‘woke’ practices including banning and suspending payments from people who they don’t agree with. Check out what the Financial Times reported:

“Esther Crawford, a fast-rising lieutenant to Musk inside Twitter, has started to map out the architecture needed to facilitate payments on the platform with a small team, according to two people familiar with the company’s plans. The nascent moves to allow payments through the site are a critical part of Musk’s plan to open up fresh revenue streams. Twitter’s $5bn-a-year advertising business has cratered since he bought the platform for $44bn in October, with marketers citing concerns over its management and moderation. Musk has previously said he wants Twitter to offer fintech services such as peer-to-peer transactions, savings accounts and debit cards, as part of a masterplan to launch an “everything app” that incorporates messaging, payments and commerce. In 1999, Musk co-founded X.com, one of the first online banks, which later became part of payments giant PayPal. [..] Twitter is also pushing forward with the regulatory checks needed before launching a payment service. In November, Twitter registered with the US Treasury as a payments processor, according to a regulatory filing. It had now also begun to apply for some of the state licences it would need in order to launch, these people said.

Shortly after he acquired the tech company, Musk hinted that a payment processor would be coming soon. “The man who reinvented the payment system back in 1999 is all set to do it again,” tweeted ‘DogeDesigner’ on Twitter. Musk responded to the tweet, agreeing that he would be reinventing the payment system again. “It’s gonna be great,” Musk said.

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“..80% of the Pfizer deaths have come from ~30% of lots, whereas 80% of the Moderna deaths have come from 20% of lots…”

• Who Will be Spared from COVID-19 Vaccine Injury? (McCullough)

Americans have become numb with newsreels of sudden cardiac death, blood clots, stroke, seizures, hospitalization, and death after COVID-19 vaccination. Many have vowed to decline future boosters and get off the vaccination train. However, a common question is: will I be spared? A Zobgy survey in 2022 found that 15% of individuals who took a COVID-19 vaccine had some new medical problem for which they were seeking care.1 A concordant survey done by Dr. Mark Skidmore at Michigan State University found that 22% of Americans knew someone who was seriously damaged by the vaccines.2 The CDC V-Safe data showed that 7-8% of those who took received a COVID-19 vaccine had to seek urgent care from an emergency department or similar facility.

These data suggest that ~85% of those who have received COVID-19 vaccines have no significant problems, and ~15% have been damaged. While this number is unacceptably high, and the vaccine campaign should be stopped, many are wondering now: “why me?” There are almost certainly factors related to the vaccine product that plays a role. In general, Moderna with 100 mcg of mRNA appears to be more toxic than Pfizer with 30 mcg of mRNA.Janssen seems to be similar acutely to Pfizer, but with a better longer-term safety profile. Novavax, with 5 mcg of purified Spike protein, appears to have the most favorable safety profile with no genetic material being injected into the body.

It has been reported that 80% of the Pfizer deaths have come from ~30% of lots, whereas 80% of the Moderna deaths have come from 20% of lots. Thus, the lot number must be a proxy for mRNA content, contaminants, or some other factor related to the product. Patient susceptibility factors make a syndrome more likely to be expressed if it is going to occur. For example, a family or personal history of a genetic blood clotting disorder, use of estrogens, obesity, and immobility make a person more likely to develop severe thromboembolic syndromes after vaccination. Atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease makes it more likely for the vaccines to cause a heart attack or stroke. Baseline cardiomyopathy, mutations in various ion channels, and possibly internal adrenalin during sleep or sports may trigger vaccine-induced myocarditis and sudden death.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1620546600799195136

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Starting to look that way.

• Did 7.5 Million People Die From Covid Shots? (Horowitz)

There is simply no macro epidemiological evidence that the COVID jabs saved any lives from the virus. To the contrary, there are numerous data points showing negative efficacy. Moreover, over 70% of the 6.75 million recorded COVID deaths occurred precisely after the shots were unleashed. In fact, many parts of the world that barely experienced COVID deaths during the first year, such as Scandinavia, Australia, and far East Asia, incurred almost all of their deaths after the shots were in the arms of every senior. So now that we established there was no mortality benefit, what was the cost? What if I told you it was 7.5 million – even more than the recorded number of COVID deaths? A new peer-reviewed study from Michigan State University estimated that as of Dec. 18, 2021, the time of the survey, 278,000 Americans died of reactions to the jabs.

The study, published last week in BMC Infectious Diseases, used Dynata, the world’s largest first-party data platform, to create a random sample of 2,840 Americans to report their experience with the shots: 15% of those surveyed indicated they had experienced a health issue after vaccination, and 13% of those indicated that a severe adverse event had occurred, in line with many other surveys. Using extrapolations from the survey juxtaposed to state-by-state VAERS deaths, the researcher estimates that, as of Dec. 18, 2021, there were a total of 278,000 vaccine fatalities in the U.S. Further, “severe” adverse events are estimated to be about one million nationwide, and “less severe” adverse events are about 2.1 million. Estimated nationwide fatalities, “severe” injuries, and “less severe” injuries tally to 3.4 million.

This is just after the first year of the vaccine. The results should shock the conscience of the public. So how many died in the world over two years of vaccination? Using the numbers from Our World in Data, 493 million doses of the vaccine were administered in the U.S. at the time of the Michigan State survey. So, if 493 million doses were enough to kill 278 thousand Americans, how many would have died at the same rate globally from the beginning until today? At 13.24 billion doses administered globally, that would result in 7.47 million vaccine fatalities, more than the Holocaust! That would be in addition to 27 million severe injuries globally!

What is shockingly eerie about this projection is that it’s almost identical to what I estimated in terms of the global death toll two months ago based on the CDC’s V-SAFE data demonstrating an underreporting factor in VAERS of 26. Using the URF of 26, and multiplying for the global doses administered, I estimated a back-of-the-envelope total of 7.855 million COVID shot deaths globally. Using this extrapolation just for the U.S. based on the total current number of doses, it would work out to about 372,000 deaths in the U.S. Some estimate as many as 550,000 non-COVID excess deaths, which could demonstrate potentially an even higher death toll.

Insurance analyst
https://twitter.com/i/status/1620512597798977539

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“..failed to find even a modest effect on infection or illness rates from masks of all qualities..”

• Massive Mask Meta-study Undermines Remaining Covid Mandates (JTN)

An international research collaboration that reviewed several dozen rigorous studies of “physical interventions” against influenza and COVID-19 through last year failed to find even a modest effect on infection or illness rates from masks of all qualities. Published in the peer-reviewed Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, run by the British evidence-based medicine charity Cochrane, the study raises new doubts about ongoing mask mandates and public health recommendations worldwide. The CDC is still recommending masking in areas with “high” transmission levels — fewer than 4% of U.S. counties — as well as indoor masking to protect high-risk contacts in “medium” counties (27%).

Masks are still required in educational institutions in Democratic strongholds such as New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Washington and California, according to the Daily Mail. Boston Public Schools denied its “temporary masking protocol” in early January was a “mandate,” following a public letter against the policy by student Enrique Abud Evereteze. South Korea is still requiring masks on public transport and in medical facilities after dropping COVID mandates in most indoor settings, including gyms, Monday, Reuters reported. The researchers for the Cochrane study are affiliated with a geographically disparate range of institutions in the U.K., Canada, Australia, Italy and Saudi Arabia. Half are affiliated with the Institute for Evidence-Based Healthcare at Australia’s Bond University. The corresponding author is the University of Calgary’s John Conly.

The team added 11 new randomized controlled trials and “cluster-RCTs,” which randomize groups of subjects rather than individuals, to its prior review from November 2020, for a total of 78 studies. The additions included COVID pandemic trials: two from Mexico and one each from England, Norway, Denmark and Bangladesh, the latter two well known internationally. The Danish study had trouble finding a major journal willing to publish its controversial findings that wearing surgical masks had no statistically significant effect on infection rates, even among those who claimed to wear them “exactly as instructed.” Mainstream media overlooked red flags in the Bangladeshi mask study, which found no effect for surgical masks under age 50 and a difference of only 20 infections between control and treatment groups among 342,000 adults.

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Very interesting. But there’s still no profit in IVM.

• How Ivermectin Kills Prostate Cancer Cells (PR)

I spent the first semester of my course, The Biology of Cancer, reviewing all of the aspects of The Hallmarks of Cancer. This morning, firing up Pubmed to continue preparing my lecture prostate cancer, I found this gem of a study, which happens to be a collaboration between my former employer, The University of Pittsburgh, and Southern Medical University-Guangzhou. I don’t know the authors:


Title: “Integrated analysis reveals FOXA1 and Ku70/Ku80 as targets of ivermectin in prostate cancer” The authors exposed various prostate cancer cells lines to Ivermectin and found that ivermectin binds to two proteins: FOXA1 and Ku70/Ku80. This leads to the inhibition of androgen receptor (AR), E2F1 expression, and DNA damage repair activity. The cells stopped dividing (G0/G1 cell cycle arrest), experience extensive DNA damage, and die. A retrospective study of the rates of cancer and rates of death from cancer among unvaccinated people who prophylactically used Ivermectin over a long period of time vs those who did not is in order.

Study Abstract:


Ivermectin is a widely used antiparasitic drug and shows promising anticancer activity in various cancer types. Although multiple signaling pathways modulated by ivermectin have been identified in tumor cells, few studies have focused on the exact target of ivermectin. Herein, we report the pharmacological effects and targets of ivermectin in prostate cancer. Ivermectin caused G0/G1 cell cycle arrest, induced cell apoptosis and DNA damage, and decreased androgen receptor (AR) signaling in prostate cancer cells. Further in vivo analysis showed ivermectin could suppress 22RV1 xenograft progression. Using integrated omics profiling, including RNA-seq and thermal proteome profiling, the forkhead box protein A1 (FOXA1) and non-homologous end joining (NHEJ) repair executer Ku70/Ku80 were strongly suggested as direct targets of ivermectin in prostate cancer. The interaction of ivermectin and FOXA1 reduced the chromatin accessibility of AR signaling and the G0/G1 cell cycle regulator E2F1, leading to cell proliferation inhibition. The interaction of ivermectin and Ku70/Ku80 impaired the NHEJ repair ability. Cooperating with the downregulation of homologous recombination repair ability after AR signaling inhibition, ivermectin increased intracellular DNA double-strand breaks and finally triggered cell death. Our findings demonstrate the anticancer effect of ivermectin in prostate cancer, indicating that its use may be a new therapeutic approach for prostate cancer.

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“..multiple quanta have inherent properties that are both indeterminate, but the properties of each one aren’t independent of the other..”

• Quantum Entanglement Just Got A Whole Lot Weirder (Siegel)

In the quantum Universe, things behave very differently than our common experience would suggest. In the macroscopic world we’re familiar with, any object we can measure appears to have intrinsic properties that are independent of whether we observe it or not. We can measure things like mass, position, motion, duration, etc., without worrying about whether that object is affected by our measurements; reality exists completely independently of the observer. But in the quantum world, that’s demonstrably not true. The act of measuring a system fundamentally changes its properties in an irrevocable way. One of the weirdest quantum properties of all is entanglement: where multiple quanta have inherent properties that are both indeterminate, but the properties of each one aren’t independent of the other.

We’ve seen this demonstrated for photons, electrons, and all sorts of identical particles before, enabling us to test and probe the fundamental and surprising nature of reality. In fact, the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded precisely for investigations into this phenomenon. But in a novel experiment, quantum entanglement has just been demonstrated between different particles for the first time, and already the technique has been used to see an atom’s nucleus like never before. In principle, quantum entanglement is a simple idea to understand, and it’s built on the idea of quantum indeterminism. Imagine you pull a ball out of a hat, and there’s a 50/50 chance that the ball has one of two properties.

• Perhaps it’s color: the ball could be black or white. • Perhaps it’s mass: either you pulled out a light ball or a heavy ball. • Perhaps it’s which direction it’s spinning: the ball could be “spin up” or “spin down.” If you only had one ball, you might wonder: upon pulling it out and examining the ball, did it always have those properties, even before you looked at it? Or did the ball have a set of indeterminate parameters, where it was a mix of: • black-and-white • light-and-heavy, • and spinning as a mix of both up-and-down, that was only determined at the instant you took the critical measurement?

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Thessaloniki 2023 Greece

 

 


The regal moth (Citheronia regalis), also called the royal walnut moth or the hickory horned devil, is one of the largest moths in North America. Its caterpillar can grow up to 15 centimetres (5.9 in) long

 

 


Jellyfish don’t have hearts, brains, or blood and have been that way for more than 650 million years. Photo: Jeff Hamilton

 

 


Charles Darwin brought back a 5 year old Tortoise named Harriet from the Galápagos Islands that would be later owned by Steve Irwin. Harriet died in 2006 at the age of 176

 

 

Up

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle January 29 2023

Jan 292023
 
 January 29, 2023  Posted by at 10:09 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  67 Responses »


Edward Hopper Cat boat 1922

 

• What’s Next? (Helmholtz Smith)
• Ex-Polish FM Names Two Major Ukrainian Problems (RT)
• Neutrality and Peaceful Multi-Ethnicity (Rosel)
• Air Force General Predicts War With China In 2025 (NBC)
• NATO Ready For Direct Confrontation With Russia – Official (TASS)
• If WWIII Breaks Out, It Won’t Start On Tanks Or Fighter Jets – Medvedev (TASS)
• White House Confronted Over Tanks To Ukraine (RT)
• Britain ‘Modeling Cyber Strikes’ On Russian Infrastructure – Moscow (RT)
• Mozart Group Trains Ukrainians To ‘Kill Russians’ – Founder (RT)
• As West, Debt & Stocks Implode, East Gold & Oil Will Explode (Von Greyerz)
• Are You Really Against Fossil Fuels? Read This Before You Answer (RCE)
• Zuckerberg-Funded “Non-Profit” Gears Up for 2024 Elections (GP)
• Bill Gates Trashes Effectiveness of COVID Vaccines (CHD)
• Meet Hamilton 68, the New King of Media Fraud (Matt Taibbi)
• Responding to Hamilton 68 (Matt Taibbi)

 

 

 

 

Douglas Macgregor – We are co Belligerents

 

 

 

 

“At first, the Germans sent soldiers’ helmets [to Ukraine], saying that they did not want to supply lethal weapons there. Now it’s come to tanks, and there are already talks about planes.” “Step by step, the Germans are drifting towards war,”
– Viktor Orban

 

 

Gonzalo Lira 2023.01.28 The West Has Lost Already

 

 

 

 

Madness

 

 

Ethical Sceptic

 

 

 

 

• Gonzalo: The last numbers I was confident of came from Col. Douglas Macgregor: He reported 157,000 KIA as of a few days ago.
• According to unofficial data circulating online, AFU Chief Valery Zaluzhny reported to the Pentagon and NATO on the number of losses of Ukrainian servicemen. According to the Ukrainian command, the AFU has lost a total of 232,000 killed since the start of the special operation.
• According to the private company Stratfor Forecasting, Ukraine’s losses exceed 305,000 killed.

 

 

 

 

“This grinding away can continue until Ukraine collapses because it is easier for the Russians to let the enemy come to them than go after them.”

• What’s Next? (Helmholtz Smith)

I don’t know what the Russians are going to do in Ukraine and neither does anyone else outside of their high command. But there sure have been a lot of wrong predictions. Leaving aside the Western propaganda mill (of which more below), serious observers seem to get the timing wrong. We know the correlation of forces favors Russia but we expect things to happen more quickly. We agree that Moscow was expecting something shorter, less bloody and quicker at the beginning and was probably surprised by the resistance of the Kiev regime and NATO’s unhinged support. Therefore there was a re-examination and the call-up of further forces. Thus far we are in agreement – it’s the timing of the next step that we seem to get wrong.

I’ve been thinking about why this is so and I have come to the following conclusions. By now everybody who is paying attention knows that the Ukraine battlefield is part of a world war in which those who control the US empire are trying to hold onto their dominance. For those outside the NATO propaganda bubble there is general agreement that
1/ Russia is winning both in the Ukraine battlefield and the wider theater.
2/ Time is on Russia’s side.

First the Ukraine battlefield. The first aim in war is to destroy the enemy’s power and that Russia is doing, especially in the Bakhmut slaughterhouse. Kiev is determined to stand and fight here and the Russians are quite happy to let them do so – “artillery conquers and infantry occupies” – and that is what we see here. Slowly slowly the Russian forces advance over mountains of Ukrainian bodies. In the last week or so Russian forces have begun to advance on other fronts too. This grinding away can continue until Ukraine collapses because it is easier for the Russians to let the enemy come to them than go after them. Meanwhile Russian missiles destroy the infrastructure Kiev needs to continue the war. Time and developments favor Russia and there is no incentive to make “big arrow” movements.

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Ukraine went steeply downhill due to corruption.

“..the country had “nuclear plants, an aviation industry, no debt and the most fertile land in the world.”

• Ex-Polish FM Names Two Major Ukrainian Problems (RT)

Ukraine was never able to achieve economic prosperity despite having a head start due to widespread graft among officials and delusions of being a significant global player, former Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski has suggested. In an interview with the magazine Krytyka Polityczna on Friday, Sikorski, who has represented Poland in the EU Parliament since 2019, stated that Ukrainian elites “were simply wasting their time.” In his view, they were “hiding their corruption and delusions of grandeur behind a story” that they were playing some big game with the US, Russia, Europe, and China.

The MEP recalled that after the collapse of the USSR in 1991, Ukraine had a huge edge over many other ex-Soviet republics and members of the former Eastern bloc. In particular, he said the country had “nuclear plants, an aviation industry, no debt and the most fertile land in the world.” However, even before Russia launched its military operation in Ukraine last year, the country “had a GDP four times smaller than Poland,” the former minister pointed out, adding that Ukrainians “are now paying dearly for this maneuvering” by the elites. Earlier this week, Sikorski suggested that Warsaw had considered partitioning Ukraine in the first weeks of the conflict. The allegation, however, was vehemently denied by Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who accused Sikorski of acting “like a Russian propagandist.”

Once the second-largest economy in the Soviet Union, Ukraine was Europe’s poorest country by per-capita GDP as of 2020. Even before Russia’s military operation in February 2022, a major economic problem facing Ukraine stemmed from a popular revolt and hostilities in industry-heavy Donbass, which were sparked by a Western-backed coup in Kiev in 2014. Another major reason Ukraine had become something of an economic backwater, however, is rampant corruption. According to Transparency International’s Corruption Perception index, Ukraine ranked 122 out of 180 countries globally as of 2021. The same year, Freedom House, a US government-financed non-profit organization, described graft in Ukraine as “endemic,” noting that the government’s efforts to combat it “have met resistance and experienced setbacks.”

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“For those two diplomats Minsk was not a sham, it was an attempt in good faith to bring peace to Ukraine..”

• Neutrality and Peaceful Multi-Ethnicity (Rosel)

Switzerland has been neutral since the year 1815. The great powers at that time guarantied the territorial integrity of Switzerland in the borders of 1815 provided that Switzerland would remian neutral in future conflicts. But even before 1815 the independence of the confederation from the great powers Austria and France was intertwined with its neutrality. Neutrality has been an issue in Switzerland since the latest Ukraine conflict began. A few months back the Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis was considered to be negligent in the matter of neutrality and as a result a referendum is now being prepared by the Swiss People’s Party which will confirm, clarify and strengthen Switzerland’s neutrality. Switzerland is not unique. Austria is also neutral, meaning that it is not a member of NATO, and in this way it avoided being partitioned after World War II as Germany was.

Switzerland is also a multi-ethnic country. Despite its population of only 8 million, there are four cultural groups and four official languages. There is an unofficial custom which parliament always observes when electing a new government: the three main regions must always be represented in the government. All ministers are bilingual. There are no ethnic tensions. If you want to talk about values, think about neutrality and peaceful multi-ethnicity! Switzerland’s last war was in 1848 and it was a very short civil war. It is also said that the neutrality of Switzerland allows it to be an honest broker. Thus many international agencies and summits are hosted in Geneva. Switzerland is a go-between the estranged nations United States and Iran.

The change in government in Kiev in 2014 can be considered to be a coup d’état since the elected government was replaced by a government according to the wishes of the United States, as was evidenced by the leak of an infamous telephone conversation between the US ambassador and the US diplomat (who is now known for her undiplomatic language) Victoria Nuland. The Maidan coup d’état resulted in severe ethnic tensions in a politically fragile country, which at that time had only been a nation state for a total of 28 years including the years from 1917 to 1922. There was for example a massacre in Odessa in which 46 anti-Maidan demonstrators were killed.

When the conflict in Ukraine broke out in 2014 after the troubles on the Maidan square and the violent change of government, Switzerland held the presidency of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe OSCE. Therefore the Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini (called “the facilitator” and praised by Bloomberg) was allowed to work on a ceasefire agreement which resulted in the Minsk I and the Minsk II Protocols, both signed for the OSCE by Tagliavini. She was supported by Swiss President Didier Burkhalter who at that time was President of the OSCE. He cautioned all parties not to pour oil on the fire. For those two diplomats Minsk was not a sham, it was an attempt in good faith to bring peace to Ukraine. Burkhalter retired prematurely from politics two years later.

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“If you are comfortable in your approach to training, then you are not taking enough risk.”

• Air Force General Predicts War With China In 2025 (NBC)

A four-star Air Force general sent a memo on Friday to the officers he commands that predicts the U.S. will be at war with China in two years and tells them to get ready to prep by firing “a clip” at a target, and “aim for the head.” In the memo sent Friday and obtained by NBC News, Gen. Mike Minihan, head of Air Mobility Command, said, “I hope I am wrong. My gut tells me will fight in 2025.” Air Mobility Command has nearly 50,000 service members and nearly 500 planes and is responsible for transport and refueling. Minihan said in the memo that because both Taiwan and the U.S. will have presidential elections in 2024, the U.S. will be “distracted,” and Chinese President Xi Jinping will have an opportunity to move on Taiwan.

He lays out his goals for preparing, including building “a fortified, ready, integrated, and agile Joint Force Maneuver Team ready to fight and win inside the first island chain.” The signed memo is addressed to all air wing commanders in Air Mobility Command and other Air Force operational commanders, and orders them to report all major efforts to prepare for the China fight to Minihan by Feb. 28. During the month of February, he directs all AMC personnel to “fire a clip into a 7-meter target with the full understanding that unrepentant lethality matters most. Aim for the head.” He also orders all personnel to update their records and emergency contacts. In March he directs all AMC personnel to “consider their personal affairs and whether a visit should be scheduled with their servicing base legal office to ensure they are legally ready and prepared.”

Minihan urges them to accept some risk in training. “Run deliberately, not recklessly,” he writes, but later adds, “If you are comfortable in your approach to training, then you are not taking enough risk.” He also provides a window into one capability the U.S. is considering for possible conflict with China — commercial drone swarms. He directs the KC-135 units to prepare for “delivering 100 off-the-shelf size and type UAVs from a single aircraft.”

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Looks like he’s actually saying that NATO is not ready:

“The fact that your enemy has better weapons is not the problem of the enemy. That is your problem..”

• NATO Ready For Direct Confrontation With Russia – Official (TASS)

Chair of the NATO Military Committee Rob Bauer said that the US-led bloc is ready for a direct confrontation with Russia in an interview with Portugal’s RTP TV channel. Replying to a question on the matter, he asserted: “We are ready.” That said, he added that NATO is going to respond only if Russia crosses the red line by invading one of NATO member states. The military official stressed that NATO should be better prepared because currently Russia has the military initiative. “The fact that your enemy has better weapons is not the problem of the enemy. That is your problem,” he said. The interview also raised the issue of introducing “a war-time economy but in peace time,” however, Bauer admitted that this process would be difficult.

Chair of the NATO Military Committee Rob Bauer – A doofus
https://twitter.com/i/status/1619357056032710657

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“Then everything will definitely be turned to dust..”

• If WWIII Breaks Out, It Won’t Start On Tanks Or Fighter Jets – Medvedev (TASS)

Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev has lambasted Western attempts to justify arms deliveries to Kiev as an alleged effort to prevent a world war. “Firstly, defending Ukraine, which nobody needs in Europe, will not save the senile Old World from retribution if anything occurs. Secondly, once the Third World War breaks out, unfortunately it will not be on tanks or even on fighter jets. Then everything will definitely be turned to dust,” Medvedev wrote on his Telegram channel on Saturday. In this post, Medvedev commented, in particular, on Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto’s remarks that the Third World War would erupt if Russian tanks reached Kiev and “the borders of Europe”, and that the weapons sent to Ukraine were meant to stop the escalation. Medvedev equated his remarks to the calls from the United Kingdom to provide Kiev with all the weapons NATO has.

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“What actions will you take to ensure that our military equipment is not falling into the hands of criminal networks, terrorists, or being sold for profit?”

• White House Confronted Over Tanks To Ukraine (RT)

Several Republican lawmakers have raised red flags about the decision by the administration of US President Joe Biden to send M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine. They claim that the move comes at a time when the US is struggling with domestic problems, while the delivery itself is bound to face numerous challenges. In a letter released on Friday, representatives Troy Nehls, Paul Gosar, Eli Crane, and Lauren Boebert demanded answers from Biden and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin about the unprecedented step of sending Ukraine 31 M1 Abrams tanks to help it in its fight against Russia. The lawmakers said they were not elected by the American people “to continually spend their hard-earned money into a conflict halfway around the world” without the ability to properly track the use of military assistance to Ukraine.

They further argued that it is “shameful that the American taxpayer is continuing to subsidize the ongoing Ukraine conflict” while the White House is “turning a blind eye” to the issue of domestic security, particularly the record-high number of illegal crossings at the southern border. The delivery of heavy armor is certain to face logistical challenges, they said, noting that Abrams tanks could be delivered only in several months, while Ukrainian service members will have to undergo lengthy training to learn how to operate the machinery. The letter also noted that Ukraine has a history of being a hotbed for illegal arms trafficking. “What actions will you take to ensure that our military equipment is not falling into the hands of criminal networks, terrorists, or being sold for profit?” the lawmakers asked Biden and Austin.

They also wondered how the Pentagon intended to track the weapons and how the administration would account for the destruction of hardware provided under US military assistance and reimburse American taxpayers. In November, congressional Republicans called for an audit of US government funds appropriated for aid to Ukraine. A month later, however, the initiative was narrowly defeated in the House of Representatives, with Democrats arguing that it would send the wrong signal to Kiev.

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All sides, all the time.

• Britain ‘Modeling Cyber Strikes’ On Russian Infrastructure – Moscow (RT)

Britain has been modeling cyberattacks on Russia’s critical infrastructure, the country’s deputy foreign minister, Oleg Syromolotov, said on Saturday. He added that the simulated hacks included energy facilities and were conducted under NATO guidance. The deputy minister stated that attempts to hack Russian government entities by foreign actors have “increased by two to three times” over the course of last year. Syromolotov was reacting to a story published by The Times last month, in which Lt. Gen. Tom Copinger-Symes, the deputy commander of the UK’s strategic command, was quoted as saying the National Cyber Force was seeking to recruit people with Russian degrees.

“The British are systematically using their offensive capabilities to target Russia’s information [sector],” Syromolotov told the TASS news agency. He added that London regularly conducts exercises, including joint NATO drills, simulating attacks on “Russian critical infrastructure.” “They include the modeling of strikes on government entities in the Kaliningrad Region and Moscow’s energy system,” the diplomat said. The Kaliningrad Region is a Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea that borders Poland and Lithuania. Syromolotov said that last year Russia was hit by “unprecedented cyberattacks from abroad,” with the majority of intrusions coming from the US and other NATO members, as well as Ukraine. “We have become a target of coordinated aggression involving intelligence services, transnational IT corporations and hacktivists from the collective West and its puppets.”

According to Syromolotov, government services have been targeted the most. The Foreign Ministry has been repeatedly attacked, he said. “Overall, around 50,000 hacker attacks were repulsed last year.” On April 11, 2022, on the eve of Russia’s Cosmonautics Day celebrations, hackers targeted the website of the country’s space agency, Roscosmos, according to its press service. Also last year, intruders gained access to the database of one of the contractors of the Russian national postal service, leaking some internal documents. On Wednesday, cyber attackers briefly hijacked a TV signal in Russia’s Belgorod Region and Crimea and broadcast an excerpt from a speech by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. Crimean officials blamed Kiev’s intelligence services for the intrusion.

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“Why do we train guys? It isn’t simply to defend themselves, it’s to kill the enemy.”

• Mozart Group Trains Ukrainians To ‘Kill Russians’ – Founder (RT)

Despite its professed humanitarian mission in Ukraine, the Mozart Group is a private military company training Ukrainian soldiers to kill Russians, its founder and CEO told RT’s Afshin Rattansi on Saturday’s episode of ‘Going Underground.’ Founded by US citizens Andrew Milburn and Andrew Bain last March, the Mozart Group has been described as the Western answer to the Wagner Group – the Russian private military company currently fighting the Kiev forces for control of the key Donbass city of Artyomovsk (known as Bakhmut in Ukraine). Speaking to Rattansi, Milburn was keen to dispel any comparison between Mozart and Wagner. He told the RT host that his group’s mission is “purely humanitarian,” and that Mozart’s members primarily work to supply and evacuate civilians living near the front lines.

However, the group’s other mission is the training of Ukrainian soldiers, which often takes place “very close to the front line,” Milburn, a former US Marine Corps commander, said. “Sadly in this war – in any war actually – the more of the adversary you take off the playing field, or kill, the less the danger is to your own guys,” he said. “Why do we train guys? It isn’t simply to defend themselves, it’s to kill the enemy.” “Everything we’re doing is exactly within the parameters of NATO policy,” he continued. “The West is providing Ukraine with lethal weapons that kill Russians. Why are they doing that? It’s to kill Russians.” “When we train soldiers that is their goal. It’s why we teach them how to operate their weapons.”

While Mozart survives on private donations, Milburn has previously called for “funding from Western governments,” asking Newsweek last month, “What the hell is stopping the US, or UK, or European Union governments from reaching out and saying ‘Let us help you?’” Milburn is currently embroiled in a legal dispute with Bain, who accused the retired commander of violating US arms trafficking regulations and seeking to expand Mozart’s training operations into Armenia. The suit also accused Milburn of embezzling money donated to the organization, orchestrating the burglary of humanitarian supplies in Ukraine, sexually harassing a female co-worker, and bribing Ukrainian military leaders. Milburn in turn accused Bain of seeking money from the Mozart Group, and claimed that Bain is “heavily invested in Russia,” which he denies.

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“Before the Western Ponzi scheme comes to an end, these three nations will virtually hold 100% of their own debt. At that point, the bonds will be worthless and interest rates will have reached infinity. Not a pretty prospect!”

• As West, Debt & Stocks Implode, East Gold & Oil Will Explode (Von Greyerz)

“The risk of over-tightening by the European Central Bank is nothing less than catastrophic” says Prof Kenneth Rogoff . At Davos he also said: “Italy is extremely vulnerable. But this could pop anywhere. Global debt has gone up massively since the pandemic: public debt, corporate debt, everything.” Rogoff believes that it is a miracle that the world averted a financial crisis in 2022, but the odds of a major accident are shortening as the delayed effects of past tightening feed through. As Rogoff said: “We were very fortunate that we didn’t have a global systemic event in 2022, and we can count our blessings for that, but rates are still going higher and the risk keeps rising.” But lurking in the murkiness is also the global financial assets/liabilities which is almost $500 trillion including the shadow banking system at 46% of the total. The shadow banking sector includes pension funds, hedge funds and other financial institutions which are largely unregulated.

Shadow banking is not subject to the normal mark-to-market rules. Thus no one knows what the real position or losses are. This means that central banks are in the dark when it comes to evaluation of the real risks of the system. Clearly, I am not the only one harping on about the catastrophic global debt/liability situation. And no one knows the extent of total global derivatives. But if they have grown in line with debt and also with the shadow banking system, they could easily be in excess of $3 quadrillion.

Cultures don’t die overnight, but the US has been in decline since at least the Vietnam war in the 1960s. Interestingly, the US has not had a real Budget surplus since the early 1930s with a handful of years of exception. But when you, like the US, live on borrowed time and borrowed money, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep up appearances. In 1971, the pressures on the US economy and currency became too great. Thus Nixon closed the Gold Window with the dollar having lost over 98% in real terms since then. This is of course a total catastrophe and a guarantee that the remaining 2% fall to ZERO will come in the near term future, whether it takes 5 or 10 years for the dollar to reach oblivion. Remember that the final 2% is 100% from today!


The US, EU and Japan have now reached the stage when no one wants their debt. So sovereign debt of these nations is no longer a question of “passing the parcel” but keeping the parcel. When every third party holder of these debts is a seller, who will buy? These three countries will end up holding their own debt. Japan already holds over 50% of its debt. Before the Western Ponzi scheme comes to an end, these three nations will virtually hold 100% of their own debt. At that point, the bonds will be worthless and interest rates will have reached infinity. Not a pretty prospect!

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Why Just Stop Oil is a pretty dumb statement.

• Are You Really Against Fossil Fuels? Read This Before You Answer (RCE)

It is easy for anyone to say that they are against fossil fuels. Opposition to coal, oil and natural gas is fashionable and will prompt heads to nod and even hands to applaud in most places. But are people aware of the extent to which their lives are dependent on fossil fuels? Do they know that more than 90 percent of things used in their everyday lives are derived from fossil fuels? From your toothbrush to your car tire, a majority of the things you use today has been made possible because of fossil fuels. Shoes, refrigerators, washing machines, coffee makers, furniture, pens, eating utensils, eyeglasses, commodes, medical gear, camping equipment, and the list goes on and on.


Consider the computer or the phone from which you are reading this article. They are made of glass, metal, plastic, lithium and silicon – all of which require fossil fuels to mine, process or manufacture. While some are chemical derivatives of fossil fuels, all depend one way or another on their combustion for electricity generation, process heat or transportation. You wouldn’t have the iPhone, Android or MacBook without fossil fuels. Imagine the irony of typing out “end oil” from a phone that is made from fossil fuels! Or supporting climate activism by relaying video that was recorded with a camera made from fossil fuels! Of course, this sort of irony is displayed regularly and missed constantly. In short, the most fundamental necessities – and the most cherished conveniences – of daily life are products dependent on the use of fossil fuels.

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“Twenty-four states have enacted bans or restrictions on private funding of local election offices. But the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence has been working to ingratiate itself with local offices.“

• Zuckerberg-Funded “Non-Profit” Gears Up for 2024 Elections (GP)

The Zuckerberg-funded group the Center for Tech and Civic Life that gave out $420 million to election offices in 2020 is doing the same in 2024. Through the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence, they are funneling $80 million in election grants to local election offices. A report from election integrity watchdogs Honest Elections Project, John Locke Foundation, and Florida’s Foundation for Government Accountability issued a warned that the Alliance “is focused on systematically reshaping election offices and pushing progressive voting policies.”

Epoch Times reported: Election integrity watchdogs, including Virginia-based Honest Elections Project (HEP), North Carolina’s John Locke Foundation, and Florida’s Foundation for Government Accountability, are again raising the alarm about CTCL—this time, a year before the election rather than months after—claiming its Alliance is a front for boosting Democratic turnout, especially in Democratic strongholds within swing states. “No matter what it claims to be, the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence is nothing more than a dark money-fueled scheme to push liberal voting policies and influence election administration in key states,” HEP Executive Director Jason Snead told The Epoch Times.

“The work of the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence is ‘Zuck Bucks 2.0,’” John Locke Foundation Civitas Center for Public Integrity Director Dr. Andy Jackson said, claiming in a statement that the Alliance is a vehicle “for the private funding of elections by left-wing donors.” Snead and Jackson collaborated in producing a Jan. 19 Zuck Bucks 2.0 report that claims CTCL’s Alliance “is focused on systematically reshaping election offices and pushing progressive voting policies,” adding, “How state and local governments respond will have ramifications for free and fair elections in 2024 and beyond.” An investigation from House Republicans found that less than 1% of the funds were spent on personal protective equipment. Twenty-four states have banned or restricted private funding for local election offices.

Fox News reported:” CTCL issued about $400 million in grants during the 2020 election to fund a variety of work and equipment. That included ballot drop boxes, voting equipment, additional manpower, protective gear for poll workers and public education campaigns on new voting methods, among other expenses.… House Republicans found in an investigation that less than 1% of the funds were spent on personal protective equipment. Instead, the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence appears to be another effort by Zuckerberg and CTCL to influence local election operations, according to critics. “The work of the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence is Zuck Bucks 2.0, which is why they avoided states that have instituted bans on the private funding of election administration,” Andy Jackson, director of the Civitas Center for Public Integrity, said in a statement. Twenty-four states have enacted bans or restrictions on private funding of local election offices. But the U.S. Alliance for Election Excellence has been working to ingratiate itself with local offices.“ The GOP needs to stop this!

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“He invested $55 million in BioNTech back in 2019 and it’s now worth north of $550 million.

• Bill Gates Trashes Effectiveness of COVID Vaccines (CHD)

Bill Gates, long recognized as one of the world’s foremost proponents of vaccines, raised some eyebrows at a recent talk in Australia when he admitted there are “problems” with current COVID-19 vaccines. Speaking at Australia’s Lowy Institute as part of a talk entitled “Preparing for Global Challenges: In Conversation with Bill Gates,” the Microsoft founder made the following admission: “We also need to fix the three problems of [COVID-19] vaccines. The current vaccines are not infection-blocking. They’re not broad, so when new variants come up you lose protection, and they have very short duration, particularly in the people who matter, which are old people.” Such statements came as a surprise to some in light of Gates’ longstanding support of — and investments in — vaccine manufacturers and organizations promoting global vaccination.

However, they were the latest in a string of developments in recent weeks that have increasingly called the COVID-19 vaccines, in particular, into question. Several analysts and commentators were critical of Gates — but not due to disagreement with the statements he made in Australia. Instead, they argued that he had previously heavily invested in mRNA vaccines at the same time he encouraged a global COVID-19 vaccination campaign and supported mandatory vaccination. Speaking Jan. 25 on The Hill TV’s “Rising,” co-hosts Briahna Joy Gray and Robby Soave addressed Gates’ statements. Soave initially agreed at face value with Gates’ criticism of current mRNA vaccines, saying: “He really nails it on the issues that we’re having: the short duration of protection, not a significant discernable impact on the transmission of cases … not a massive benefit for a lot of otherwise healthy and younger people.”

However, Soave — who on Jan. 19 revealed “Facebook files” indicating the CDC significantly influenced content moderation and censorship on the platform pertaining to COVID-19 vaccines — then pointed out Gates’ prior investments that contributed to the development of mRNA vaccine technology. Soave said, “Bill Gates was a major proponent of mRNA technology … he was an investor in BioNTech, which developed the mRNA vaccine for Pfizer.” “We were just doing some digging,” continued Soave, “[and] we saw that he sold a lot of those shares at … how much profit was that?” “10x,” replied Gray. “He invested $55 million in BioNTech back in 2019 and it’s now worth north of $550 million. He sold some stock … at the end of last year, I believe it was, with the share price over $300, which represented a huge gain for him over when he invested.”

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“No evidence to support the statement that the dashboard is a finger on the pulse of Russian information ops.” “Hardly evidence of a massive influence campaign.”

• Meet Hamilton 68, the New King of Media Fraud (Matt Taibbi)

If one goes by volume alone, this oft-cited neoliberal think-tank that spawned hundreds of fraudulent headlines and TV news segments may go down as the single greatest case of media fabulism in American history. Virtually every major news organization in America is implicated, including NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times and the Washington Post. Mother Jones alone did at least 14 stories pegged to the group’s “research.” Even fact-checking sites like Politifact and Snopes cited Hamilton 68 as a source. Hamilton 68 was and is a computerized “dashboard” designed to be used by reporters and academics to measure “Russian disinformation.” It was the brainchild of former FBI agent (and current MSNBC “disinformation expert”) Clint Watts, and backed by the German Marshall Fund and the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a bipartisan think-tank. The latter’s advisory panel includes former acting CIA chief Michael Morell, former Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, former Hillary for America chair John Podesta, and onetime Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol.

The Twitter Files expose Hamilton 68 as a sham: The secret ingredient in Hamilton 68’s analytic method was a list of 644 accounts supposedly linked “to Russian influence activities online.” It was hidden from the public, but Twitter was in a unique position to recreate Hamilton’s sample by analyzing its Application Program Interface (API) requests, which is how they first “reverse-engineered” Hamilton’s list in late 2017. The company was concerned enough about the proliferation of news stories linked to Hamilton 68 that it also ordered a forensic analysis. Note the second page below lists many of the different types of shadow-banning techniques that existed at Twitter even in 2017, buttressing the “Twitter’s Secret Blacklist” thread by Bari Weiss last month. Here you see categories ranging from “Trends Blacklist” to “Search Blacklist” to “NSFW High Precision.” Twitter was checking to see how many of Hamilton’s accounts were spammy, phony, or bot-like. Note that out of 644 accounts, just 36 were registered in Russia, and many of those were associated with RT.

Examining further, Twitter execs were shocked. The accounts Hamilton 68 claimed were linked to “Russian influence activities online” were not only overwhelmingly English-language (86%), but mostly “legitimate people,” largely in the U.S., Canada, and Britain. Grasping right away that Twitter might be implicated in a moral outrage, they wrote that these account-holders “need to know they’ve been unilaterally labeled Russian stooges without evidence or recourse.” Other comments in internal company emails: “These accounts are neither strongly Russian nor strongly bots.” “No evidence to support the statement that the dashboard is a finger on the pulse of Russian information ops.” “Hardly evidence of a massive influence campaign.”

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“I genuinely wanted to hear an innocent explanation if they had one. They still said nothing. Only after the story blew up online yesterday did they put out an explanation.”

• Responding to Hamilton 68 (Matt Taibbi)

Days before yesterday’s Twitter Files report about Hamilton 68, I wrote the public relations officers of both of the sites’ parent organizations, the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD) and the German Marshall Fund (GMF). I told them I was in possession of the Hamilton 68 list, which purported to track “Russian influence activities.” I said I had a slew of internal Twitter documents that among other things identified their project as “bullshit.” Toward the end I added: Given the sheer quantity of news stories sourced to Hamilton 68, this has to go down as one of the great media frauds of all time. Unless you have an explanation for how and why hundreds of non-Russians like Dennis Michael Lynch, Patrick Hennigsen, Joe Lauria, and [I inserted the name of a San Diego school board member] came to be on this list, there’s no other conclusion.

I hope you will treat this matter with respect and answer this query. My story is going to identify not just people like Clint Watts but members of the ASD advisory board as party to this. The story eventually published, “Move Over, Jayson Blair: Meet Hamilton 68, The New King of Media Fraud,” was based on email assessments of Twitter executives like Yoel Roth and Nick Pickles, the forensic analysis Roth had done in 2017 and which was excerpted yesterday, and interviews with people on the list. These elements — especially the interviews — made for a pretty ironclad case that the much-ballyhooed Hamilton 68 “dashboard” was a sham, that took real opinions of real people and falsely declared them part of a “network” of “Russian influence activities.”

On the remote chance Hamilton 68 had inside information legitimizing the linking of Dennis Michael Lynch, David Horowitz, and @TrumpDyke to “Russian influence activities,” I not only reached out to Hamilton’s creators, but when they were quiet, threw a tantrum on Twitter, tagging every member of the ASD advisory board in an effort to hear from them pre-publication. I genuinely wanted to hear an innocent explanation if they had one. They still said nothing. Only after the story blew up online yesterday did they put out an explanation.

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Elon Mars
https://twitter.com/i/status/1619140353743015936

 

 

 

 

Musk landing

 

 


This 1974 photograph shows the freshly excavated pit with 2,000-year-old terracotta warriors still showing the original color scheme before the rapid deterioration that made them as we know them today

 

 

Mandarin duck

 

 


The sabertooth longhorn beetle is one of the largest beetles reaching a length of up to 17.7 cm. Its larval stage can last up to 10 years, while its adult phase is likely to last no more than a few months

 

 

Odd couple
https://twitter.com/i/status/1619316157235986432

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle November 24 2022

Nov 242022
 
 November 24, 2022  Posted by at 9:25 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  49 Responses »


Salvador Dali Bay of Cadaques 1925

 

• The Fear of Fear Itself: The Gripping Truth Out of Ukraine (Butler)
• It Was Never About Ukraine (Antiwar)
• Black Holes And Digestive Systems, Or Why Hegemon Is Doomed (FMAN)
• New York Times Confirms SBF To Speak Alongside Zelensky, Yellen (ZH)
• EU Parliament Brands Russia ‘State Sponsor Of Terrorism’ (RT)
• Russia Is Not ‘State Sponsor Of Terrorism’ – US Ambassador (RT)
• Huge Swathes Of Ukraine Without Power & Water (ZH)
• Ukraine – Lights Out, No Water And Soon No Heat (MoA)
• Germany Rejects Boris Johnson Claims It Said Ukraine Should Fold To Russia (G.)
• EU Has ‘No Right’ To Get Tired Of Ukraine Conflict – Kiev (RT)
• Ukraine Halts Russian Oil Transit To EU – Transneft (RT)
• EU Claims To Have Fully Substituted Russian Gas (RT)
• China Secretly Hoarding Gold To Ditch Dollar – Media
• NATO Contacts Claim Is Media ‘Invention’ – Moscow (RT)
• Anti-Twitter Advertisers Have Been Under-Performing The Market For Months (ZH)
• Elon Musk: Coalition of Political Groups Behind Lack of Moderation Council (ET)

 

 

 

 


Jim Garrison in his book, “On the Trail of the Assassins.”
“I knew by now that when a group of individuals gravitated toward one another for no apparent reason…inexplicably headed in the same direction as if drawn by a magnetic field..as often as not the shadowy outlines of a covert intelligence operation were somehow becoming visible”

 

 

Elon AOC

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Since Putin’s gas hike was not enough to stir Americans into a blood ritual for total war, the liberal world order is throwing grocery prices into the mix.”

• The Fear of Fear Itself: The Gripping Truth Out of Ukraine (Butler)

Now we are asked to be afraid of Vladimir Putin weaponizing gas! We must act in defense of the Russian’s weaponizing food! And Vladimir Putin personally killed J.F.K. with a BB-Gun from the Texas book depository in Dallas. Did Russia’s leadership wake up one morning in 2014 and decide a NATO regime was needed in next-door Ukraine? Well, no. Were the Russians shelling people with Polish DNA in Kyiv for eight years? Certainly not. The EU, NATO, and the New York Times would have informed us of that. So why would Russia act the way she has recently? I see no one out there gazing with practical eyes on this situation. Oh, commodities and controlling them! Money! Tons and tons of money! That has to be it.

Some weeks back, Vladimir Putin’s government decided to allow the free passage of grain ships through the Black Sea out of southwestern Ukraine. The “food” was ostensibly headed to the starving people of Africa and Asia that Washington, London, and Brussels were berserk over. Even the United Nations has held that starving people worldwide need to blame Russia. I was reading a Voice of America report on recent UN meetings about the Ukraine/Black Sea shipments, and it reads like intel for Wall Street commodities brokers. And there’s the point. Food security worldwide is now the red-hot poker western elites are jabbing Russia with now. Since Putin’s gas hike was not enough to stir Americans into a blood ritual for total war, the liberal world order is throwing grocery prices into the mix.

For those in the dark or dizzied by all these events, and I am often with you, the accessible version is to simply call this World War III. Yes, we are already in it. But think about the sequence of recent events and their impact for proper clarity. First, Nord Stream was blown up. The next day a pipeline from Norway to Poland carrying much more expensive natural gas went into operation. A few days after this, the Poles demanded trillions in reparations from the Germans for WW2 grievances settled decades ago. The essentials that power economies and people are being weaponized, but the perpetrators hide in plain sight behind the media they own.

Retired U.S. Colonel Douglas MacGregor gave the best appraisal of the situation in a talk with Aaron Maté and Katie Halper. MacGregor, dubbed “America’s Greatest Warfighter,” is a war hero and former strategy advisor during the Trump administration. He says, in no uncertain terms, that Washington and London’s leaders are on a mission to destroy Germany and the German-Russian cooperative potential. I believe he is right on all counts, but he leaves off how the western elites (banksters) are profiteering from it all. This is a multiple-pronged strategy, not some haphazard knee-jerking.

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“Russia refused to play by the rules..”

• It Was Never About Ukraine (Antiwar)

In his March 21 press briefing, State Department spokesman Ned Price told the gathered reporters that “President Zelenskyy has also made it very clear that he is open to a diplomatic solution that does not compromise the core principles at the heart of the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine.” A reporter asked Price, “What are you saying about your support for a negotiated settlement à la Zelenskyy, but on whose principles?” In what still may be the most remarkable statement of the war, Price responded, “this is a war that is in many ways bigger than Russia, it’s bigger than Ukraine.” Price, who a month earlier had discouraged talks between Russia and Ukraine, rejected Kiev negotiating an end to the war with Ukraine’s interests addressed because US core interests had not been addressed. The war was not about Ukraine’s interests: it was bigger than Ukraine.

A month later, in April, when a settlement seemed to be within reach at the Istanbul talks, the US and UK again pressured Ukraine not to pursue their own goals and sign an agreement that could have ended the war. They again pressured Ukraine to continue to fight in pursuit of the larger goals of the US and its allies. Then British prime minister Boris Johnson scolded Zelensky that Putin “should be pressured, not negotiated with.” He added that, even if Ukraine was ready to sign some agreements with Russia, the West was not.” Once again, the war was not about Ukraine’s interests: it was bigger than Ukraine. At every opportunity, Biden and his highest ranking officials have insisted “that it’s up to Ukraine to decide how and when or if they negotiate with the Russians” and that the US won’t dictate terms: “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.”

But that has never been true. The US wouldn’t allow Ukraine to negotiate on their terms when they wanted to. The US stopped Ukraine from negotiating in March and April when they wanted to; they pushed them to negotiate in November when they did not want to. The war in Ukraine has always been about larger US goals. It has always been about the American ambition to maintain a unipolar world in which they were the sole polar power at the center and top of the world. Ukraine became the focus of that ambition in 2014 when Russia for the first time stood up to American hegemony.

Alexander Lukin, who is Head of Department of International Relations at National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow and an authority on Russian politics and international relations, says that since the end of the Cold War Russia had been considered a subordinate partner of the West. In all disagreements between Russia and the US up to then, Russia had compromised, and the disagreements were resolved rather quickly. But when, in 2014, the US set up and supported a coup in Ukraine that was intended to pull Ukraine closer into the NATO and European security sphere Russia responded by annexing Crimea, Russia broke out of its post Cold War policy of compliance and pushed back against US hegemony. The 2014 “crisis in Ukraine and Russia’s reaction to it have fundamentally changed this consensus,” Lukin says. “Russia refused to play by the rules.”

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“This black hole is now swallowing the entire Energy System of the country as you read this, and attracting dangerously some of the closest objects to its orbit such as Poland, the Baltic Bonsai Countries and the neighboring EU..”

• Black Holes And Digestive Systems, Or Why Hegemon Is Doomed (FMAN)

Ukraine is like a black hole. It swallows everything you throw at it… Billions of dollars in assistance, millions of tons of military material, and (I hope not) hundreds of thousands of lives of Khokhol and its Nazi buddies, especially if they allow the Clown-Zirkus to remain in power for much longer without a check. This black hole is now swallowing the entire Energy System of the country as you read this, and attracting dangerously some of the closest objects to its orbit such as Poland, the Baltic Bonsai Countries and the neighboring EU, all of them being steered directly to the void, in suicide mode, by their (brain disabled, dim-witted, deranged and psychopathic) ruling elites.

But what are really black Holes? You can ask yourself. From an astronomical standpoint, it is simply a star (of some mass) that, at the end of its life, collapses into a point (the singularity) due to the gravity produced by its own mass. This gravity is so intense that not even light can escape from it, hence the name “Black Hole”. They can achieve this state through a variety of processes, but the end result is always the same: something from which you cannot escape if you fall within its event horizon. And that is only defined by its mass, electric charge, and momentum. Whatever falls behind its event horizon is forever out of reach of observers on the outside.

There might be another (more convenient) meaning for this particular Ukrainian black hole. I read in my university days an anthology edited by Jerry Pournelle, where he said that Russians never use the term, because it has some eschatological connotations… some kind of biology-related obscenity. I don’t know if it is true, but I have to say that comparing Banderastan to the black hole at the end of the digestive system of some kind of mythological beast (let’s call it Hegemon) looks like much more pertinent in this case. This end has a particularly long and interesting list of possible denominations.

The beast, has an insatiable hunger, if allowed it would devour us all. The crazy psychopaths ruling elites in the West are feeding it as quickly as possible and as much as they can (wasting in the process the wealth, health and resources of those they govern) because they are also part of the parasites sucking the life and energy off the beast. The more they throw into the mouth, the more they suck out of it. The system works perfectly for them and, what is left, once processed and liberated of most of the real substance and value, is excreted through the blackhole at the end.

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Max Keiser:
• I guess the good news about the FTX racketeering scandal is that it looks like it’ll take down several high profile media outlets, the entire ‘crypto’ farce and many scammy VC’s and banks.
• [NYTimes] @dealbook just indicted itself as being part of a criminal enterprise and participating in the FTX racketeering scandal.

• New York Times Confirms SBF To Speak Alongside Zelensky, Yellen (ZH)

As we discussed last night, Sam Bankman-Fried has now demonstrated that he is both a pathological liar and a sociopath, the kind who in “explaining” to his employees how he stole billions (over $4 billion according to new FTX CEO John J. Ray) from the now bankrupt FTX, an act which left it insolvent and without liquidity, called it “loans” which were “generally” not used for “large amounts of personal consumption” (just “small amounts” used for such trivial items as $40 million penthouses and private jets). And the only reason we don’t officially call him a criminal just yet, is because he has not yet confirmed he used clienOutrage After New York Times Confirms SBF To Speak Alongside Zelenskyy, Yellent money from his exchange to fund his personal hedge fund, an act which would cost any other individual decades in jail… but not prominent democrats like SBF or Jon Corzine, of course.

Plus it’s the US legal system’s job to do that, not ours. Although we are growing increasingly skeptical this prominent Democratic donor will ever see the inside of a courtroom. It’s not just us: with much of the entire world demanding to know how this corpulent 30-year-old still has not been thrown in prison, or at least charged with a variety of crimes, the NYT just confirmed to the entire world what a farce the one-time paper of record has become, and how it is willing to whore itself out for clicks – not to mention prominent Democrat donors – because moments after SBF tweeted that he will be speaking with Andrew Ross-Sorkin moderated NYT “summit” on Nov 30… … Sorkin quickly confirmed as much.

And so, instead of being under arrest, SBF will instead be treated like a luminary alongside other such other Democrat icons as Zelenskyy (who according to some may have been intimately familiar with FTX fund flows in the past year) and of course the woman who along with Ben Bernanke and Jerome Powell, made it all possible by blowing the biggest asset bubble of all time: Janet Yellen. And while we are certain that the NYT – which we assume is done writing puff pieces on behalf of SBF after it became a laughing stock last week – would be quick to mercilessly cancel and expel from its “prestigious” conference anyone who had misgendered some post-op transsexual, it is willing to give this thieving pathological liar and sociopath a forum in which to profess his innocence to the entire world, and by association with other Democrat “celebrities”…

 

 

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Europe is not where the brains are.

• EU Parliament Brands Russia ‘State Sponsor Of Terrorism’ (RT)

The European Parliament adopted a non-binding resolution designating Russia as a “state sponsor of terrorism” on Wednesday. In a strongly worded but largely symbolic document, MEPs also called on the European Union to further reduce diplomatic ties with Moscow and quickly adopt a ninth package of anti-Russia sanctions. Diplomatic relations with Russia should be cut “to the absolute minimum necessary” and Russian “state-affiliated institutions,” such as Russian cultural centers and diaspora organizations, should be closed and banned, the MEPs said. As the European Union cannot officially designate states as sponsors of terrorism at present, the parliament called on bloc members to put in place the necessary legal framework and to consider adding Moscow to the relevant list.

It also urged EU members to initiate “a comprehensive international isolation” of Russia and “to swiftly complete its work on a ninth sanctions package.” The resolution, which was supported by a vast majority of parliamentarians, accused Russia of conducting “deliberate attacks and atrocities” against Ukrainian civilians, of destroying critical infrastructure in the country, and of violating human rights. Therefore, it said, the European Parliament “recognizes Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism and as a state which uses means of terrorism.” Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky welcomed the resolution, tweeting that “Russia must be isolated at all levels and held accountable.”

In recent weeks, similar largely symbolic declarations were adopted by NATO’s Parliamentary Assembly and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. While Kiev has repeatedly urged the West to declare Russia a “state sponsor of terrorism,” only a few countries – including Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the Czech Republic – have heeded the call, and their actions have been limited to symbolic gestures. Those with the power to enforce anti-terrorism sanctions against other states, specifically the US, have so far refused to take such a step. In August, the Russian Foreign Ministry warned Washington that designating Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism would become “a point of no return” in bilateral relations.

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“..Van Schaack said the US is “very interested in what the Europeans are doing,” adding that such a resolution “carries great weight.”

• Russia Is Not ‘State Sponsor Of Terrorism’ – US Ambassador (RT)

The US cannot designate Russia as a “state sponsor of terrorism” since it simply does not fit the relevant criteria, the US Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice Beth Van Schaack told a briefing on Tuesday, while commenting on a similar initiative by European lawmakers. The EU parliament adopted a resolution calling Russia a “state sponsor of terrorism” on Wednesday. “The designation of a state sponsor of terror in terms of the way US law defines it is not a good match for Russia here,” Van Schaack told journalists. Washington is currently “exploring other potential designations” that would allow it to potentially imposed further sanctions on Moscow, the ambassador added. According to Van Schaack, such a label would not be necessary since the US is already “utilizing our sanctions to an incredible degree.”

The non-binding resolution by the EU parliament was supported by 494 MEPs while 58 voted against it and 44 abstained. The MEPs particularly stated that Russia’s attacks on “the civilian population of Ukraine [and] the destruction of civilian infrastructure” amount to “war crimes” and “acts of terror.” The document also called on Brussels to develop a relevant legal framework allowing it to officially designate entire nations as sponsors of terrorism, adding that it is currently not possible. The resolution also demanded what it called the “comprehensive international isolation” of Russia, including the further reduction of diplomatic relations and the swift adoption of a new round of sanctions. “Contacts with its official representatives at all levels (should) be kept to the absolute minimum necessary,” the document said.

On Tuesday, Van Schaack said the US is “very interested in what the Europeans are doing,” adding that such a resolution “carries great weight.” The EU parliament’s document adopted so far is largely symbolic as it does not impose any legal commitments on Brussels. On Wednesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry blasted any such designations as a way for the West to legitimize their “unilateral coercive measures” against their perceived adversaries. “A number of nations representing the ‘collective West’ use such labels as a ‘terrorist state,’ ‘terrorist regime’ or a ‘state sponsor of terrorism’ to designate those nations [they consider] ‘unwelcome’ and not fitting their warped perceptions of democracy,” Ivan Nechayev, the deputy head of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Information and Press Department, told the Russian media.

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“Everything is fine with the station. There is nowhere to generate electricity.”

• Huge Swathes Of Ukraine Without Power & Water (ZH)

Ukraine’s energy operator Energoatom has announced Wednesday emergency power shutdowns in effect across all regions of the country amid a new large wave of Russian airstrikes. Sirens have been sounding throughout the day across the country. President Volodymyr Zelensky in follow-up estimated that 10 million Ukrainians now lack access to electricity due to the attacks. “There are emergency shutdowns in addition to planned, stabilization ones,” he explained. “The elimination of the consequences of another missile attack against Ukraine continues all day.” Casualties have been reported in the eastern cities of Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia, and at least one person has been reported killed in Kiev.

Speaking of the renewed attacks on the capital, Mykhailo Podolyak, head of the Office of the Ukrainian President’s office said, “A new massive attack on infrastructure facilities is underway.” He described, citing recent anti-air defense systems acquired from Western countries, “While someone is waiting for World Cup results and the number of goals scored, Ukrainians are waiting for another score – number of intercepted Russian missiles. A new massive attack on infrastructure facilities is underway. In NASAMS, IRIS-T and Air Defense Forces we trust.” Kiev’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, issued an emergency message on social media warning that ongoing Russian strikes are “Hitting one of the capital’s infrastructure facilities. Stay in shelters! The air alert continues.”

Also alarming is that the mayor in a follow-up message said that water services have been suspended in Kiev after the major strikes. While it’s not the first time that some war-hit parts of Ukraine have been left without electricity and water, the country is now in an extremely dire and urgent phase, having already seen an estimated half its national power infrastructure degraded or destroyed. Temperatures are quickly dropping, with the capital having witnessed its first snow earlier this month. Nuclear power generation is also being severely impacted: Several units were shut down at the Pivdennoukrainsk nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine due to a loss of power during Russian air raids across Ukraine, Ukraine’s nuclear energy firm Energoatom said. An Energoatom spokesperson said, “Everything is fine with the station. There is nowhere to generate electricity.”

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“To stop these attacks requires a political solution. Ukraine will have to give up and find some agreement with Russia.”

• Ukraine – Lights Out, No Water And Soon No Heat (MoA)

Earlier today the Russian military shut down the Ukrainian electricity network. Previous attacks had limited the distribution capacity to some 50% of demand. Controlled blackouts over several hours per day allowed to give some electricity for a few hours to most parts of the country. The attack today created a much larger problem. Not only were distribution networks attacked but also so the elements that connect Ukraine’s electricity production facilities to the distribution network. All four nuclear power stations of Ukraine with their 15 reactors are now in shutdown mode. Kiev along with most other cities of Ukraine no longer has electricity. Moldavia is likewise effected as it received some 20% of its electricity from Ukraine. When the Ukrainian network shut down the only local thermal power plant shut down too. It is likely that it can be switched on again but that can be a complicate process.

Limited electricity imports from the European system into Ukraine may still be possible but that electricity would only be available in Ukraine’s western cities. Before today’s attack the Washington Post reported of the difficulties in repairing the network. As we ad explained before the Russian attacks are hitting the transformers that connect the national 330 kilovolt backbone network. These are hard to replace: “As the scope of damage to Ukraine’s energy systems has come into focus in recent days, Ukrainian and Western officials have begun sounding the alarm but are also realizing they have limited recourse. Ukraine’s Soviet-era power system cannot be fixed quickly or easily. In some of the worst-hit cities, there is little officials can do other than to urge residents to flee — raising the risk of economic collapse in Ukraine and a spillover refugee crisis in neighboring European countries….

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said that about half of the country’s energy infrastructure was “out of order” following the bombardment…. For weeks, Russian missiles have targeted key components of Ukraine’s electrical transmission system, knocking out vital transformers without which it is impossible to supply power to households, businesses, government offices, schools, hospitals and other critical facilities. During a briefing for reporters on Tuesday, Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, the head of Ukrenergo, the state-run power grid operator, called the damage to the power system “colossal.”… Russians, he said, were mainly targeting substations, nodes on the electrical grid where the current is redirected from power stations. The main components of these substations are autotransformers — “high-tech and high-cost equipment” that is difficult to replace….

A list of “urgent needs” from DTEK, the country’s largest private energy company, circulating in Washington, lists dozens of transformers along with circuit breakers, bushings and transformer oil…. But it is the autotransformers — the “heart” of the substations, in the words of Kudrytskyi — that are at the top of the Ukrainians’ list of needs and the key to keeping the country’s electrical grid functioning. The Ukrainians have tried to buy up every autotransformer they can find, going as far as South Korea to purchase them, but they still need to place orders for more to be built.“We try to collect everything around the world that they have now, and order more,” said Olena Zerkal, an adviser to Ukraine’s Energy Ministry. Any attempts to repair the network are useless as long as Russia continues to attack it. To stop these attacks requires a political solution. Ukraine will have to give up and find some agreement with Russia.

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Ha ha ha. I bet Boris spoke the truth for once.

• Germany Rejects Boris Johnson Claims It Said Ukraine Should Fold To Russia (G.)

Germany has angrily dismissed claims by Boris Johnson that in the run-up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine it said it would be better for Ukraine to fold than to become embroiled in a long war. Johnson, interviewed by CNN, also claimed that the French president, Emmanuel Macron, was in denial about the threat of invasion, and that Italy, led at the time by Mario Draghi, said it could not help because it was so dependent on Russian hydrocarbons.A spokesperson for the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, rejected the claims with a diplomatically phrased dig at Johnson. “We know that the very entertaining former prime minister always has a unique relationship with the truth; this case is no exception,” the official said. Miguel Berger, the German ambassador to the UK, backed the dismissal of Johnson’s account.

Johnson’s claims appear similar to comments from Andriy Melnyk, the former Ukrainian ambassador to Germany, who has said German politicians told him before the invasion that they expected Ukraine to be defeated within three days and so it was pointless to provide any help. Melnyk claimed on Twitter in March: “On 14 February we were warning German politicians: ‘Kyiv may be bombed in the coming days! We urgently need 12 thousand anti-tank rockets from Germany.’ In response: just mockery. So sad. So furious.” He later claimed that the German finance minister, Christian Lindner, was against supplying weapons to Ukraine or cutting Russia off from the international Swift banking payments. Melnyk told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that Lindner had told him with a smile that he thought Ukraine would collapse within a few hours and that he was ready to talk to a puppet regime that would be installed by Russia.

The German finance ministry denied the accusation. Macron was broadcast before the invasion making desperate pleas to Vladimir Putin to hold talks with Joe Biden. Johnson stressed in his interview that EU nations had later rallied behind Ukraine and were providing steadfast support, but he said that was not universally the case in the period before the invasion in February. “This thing was a huge shock … we could see the Russian battalion tactical groups amassing, but different countries had very different perspectives,” Johnson told CNN’s Richard Quest in Portugal. “The German view was at one stage that if it were going to happen, which would be a disaster, then it would be better for the whole thing to be over quickly and for Ukraine to fold,” he claimed, citing “all sorts of sound economic reasons” for that approach.

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This should stop EU support right there and then, of course. First give us your billions, then we’ll read you your rights. And cut off your energy.

• EU Has ‘No Right’ To Get Tired Of Ukraine Conflict – Kiev (RT)

The European Union must cast aside all doubts about new anti-Russia sanctions and double down on slapping Moscow with new restrictions that would curb its missile industry, Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba said on Tuesday. Speaking at a regular briefing, Kuleba urged the EU to speed up the work on its ninth sanctions package, which he described as long overdue. “We are only hearing about an attempt to start serious work on its preparation. Such a situation is totally unacceptable,” the minister said. In the same vein, he called on his EU colleagues “to put aside any doubts or, as it is fashionable to say, ‘fatigue,’ and to start to quickly complete the ninth sanctions package.” “If the Ukrainians are not tired, then the rest of Europe, all the more, has neither the moral nor the political right to get tired,” Kuleba stressed.

He called on the EU to focus on sanctions impacting Russia’s capability to produce missiles, which are used by Moscow to conduct strikes on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure. Russia has been targeting Ukrainian energy facilities, including power stations, since October 10, after accusing Kiev of attacking Russian structures, including the strategic Crimean Bridge. Due to these strikes, Ukraine has been experiencing rolling blackouts, with authorities there saying that these attacks have knocked out about 40% of the nation’s energy infrastructure. On Tuesday, Politico reported that the EU has not officially started working yet on the ninth sanctions package against Russia. However, according to two of the outlet’s sources, the new measures may potentially focus on Russian individuals that can be linked to the Ukraine conflict.

The previous sanctions package was adopted by the EU in early October and sought to deprive Moscow of €7 billion ($7.2 billion) in revenues from the import of products which support the Russian economy, including steel products, various machinery, textiles and non-gold jewelry. Following the start of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine in late February, Western countries imposed sweeping new sanctions on Moscow, freezing around half of Moscow’s gold and foreign exchange reserves. According to Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov, these assets “have been essentially stolen” by the West. Last week, Nikolay Patrushev, the secretary of Russia’s National Security Council, claimed that the US, which has supported the sanctions, is seeking to weaken and destroy Russia, and is using Ukraine as a “battering ram” to achieve that goal.

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See? Just to make their point that you have “No Right’ To Get Tired Of Ukraine Conflict”, they cut off your gas…

• Ukraine Halts Russian Oil Transit To EU – Transneft (RT)

Kiev has stopped the operation of a section of the southern branch of the ‘Druzhba’ (Friendship) oil pipeline that transits Ukraine, RIA Novosti reported on Wednesday, citing Russian oil-exporting company Transneft. According to the report, oil transmission has been suspended for an indefinite period. “In Ukraine, the section [of Druzhba] has been stopped, from Brod to the Carpathians,” said Igor Demin, an adviser to the president of Transneft. He added that deliveries via the Belarusian section of the pipeline were continuing. Last week, Kiev stopped oil flows to Hungary through the Druzhba pipeline, explaining the suspension was linked to a Russian air strike that reportedly had hit a transformer station near the border with Belarus.


It stated that the service was suspended due to a “drop in voltage.” Kiev later announced plans to raise transit fees for Russian oil running through the pipeline to the EU, due to higher costs resulting from Russian air and missile attacks targeting the country’s energy infrastructure. Ukrainian oil transit fees have already been raised twice this year. The last hike, in April, reportedly brought the total increase on an annualized basis to 51%. Built in the 1960s, Druzhba is one of the longest pipeline networks in the world, which carries crude some 4,000km from Russia to refineries in the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.

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We don’t believe you. But still, question: what did you pay?

• EU Claims To Have Fully Substituted Russian Gas (RT)

The European Union has entirely replaced Russian natural gas imports with LNG and pipeline gas from alternative reliable suppliers, Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson told a plenary session of the European Parliament on Wednesday. The bloc is due to debate a gas price cap proposal on Thursday to prevent sky-high costs for consumers. “Diversification, demand reduction, a common storage policy [and] our #RepowerEU actions are making a difference,” Simson tweeted after the session, adding: “But we need to stay vigilant.” The substitution of Russian pipeline gas came on the back of the increased purchases of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the United States, experts told RIA Novosti. According to the European Commission, between January and August the total volume of gas imports from Russia, including LNG, decreased by 39 billion cubic meters (bcm).


During the same period, LNG supplies from the United States jumped by almost 80% in annual terms. Last year, Russia accounted for around 45% of the EU’s gas imports. According to the International Energy Agency, Moscow supplied 155 bcm to the bloc, while this year imports are expected to drop to a little over a third of that (around 60 bcm). Meanwhile, analysts from the research firm Kpler warned this month that replacing Russian pipeline gas supplies with LNG would result in significant costs for the EU. Unlike pipeline gas, which is usually supplied under long-term contracts, LNG is more often purchased on the spot market, and its cost tends to be many times higher. Meanwhile, increased purchases by the EU have been making it difficult for developing countries to buy LNG, as they are being now forced to compete on price with wealthier nations.

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“Gold purchases by regulators more than quadrupled in the July-September period and totaled 399.3 tons..”

• China Secretly Hoarding Gold To Ditch Dollar – Media

Central banks across the world have stepped up their gold purchases after Russia’s overseas assets were frozen as part of sanctions this year, according to strategists cited by the Japanese business daily Nikkei Asia. Some $300 billion of Russian foreign reserves, and billions more from individuals and businesses, have reportedly been frozen by the US and its allies. The Kremlin has repeatedly slammed the seizures as “theft.” Gold purchases by regulators more than quadrupled in the July-September period and totaled 399.3 tons, according to data revealed in the November report of the World Gold Council. The figure marks a dramatic surge from 186 tons recorded in the preceding quarter, and 87.7 tons in the first quarter of this year. Meanwhile the year-to-date total surpasses any full year since 1967.

Emin Yurumazu, a Japan-based economist from Turkey, told the media that “anti-Western countries are eager to accumulate gold holdings on hand,” after nations saw how Russia’s overseas assets were frozen as part of sanctions. The central banks of Turkey, Uzbekistan and India previously said they had bought 31.2 tons, 26.1 tons and 17.5 tons, respectively. It is currently unclear which nations purchased the rest of the 300-ton total calculated in the industry group’s report. Some unidentified purchases are to be expected, but an unspecified slice of “this magnitude is unheard of,” Koichiro Kamei, a financial and precious-metals analyst, was cited by the agency as saying. “China likely bought a substantial amount of gold from Russia,” market analyst and former Japan director for the World Gold Council, Itsuo Toshima, said.

He explained that the People’s Bank of China likely purchased a portion of the Central Bank of Russia’s gold holdings of over 2,000 tons. The analyst noted that this is typical behavior from the Chinese monetary regulator, which did not disclose any gold purchases from 2009 to 2015, and then reported it had increased the reserves by 600 tons. The People’s Bank of China has not published any new reports on gold purchases since 2019. The gold-buying frenzy comes as part of the latest attempts made by central banks to protect their assets by reducing their exposure to the US dollar. China has been a dominant force in the current de-dollarization trend. According to data from the US Treasury Department, the nation sold $121.2 billion in US bonds between March and October.

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Of course they talk. The US wants to know what Russia is thinking.

• NATO Contacts Claim Is Media ‘Invention’ – Moscow (RT)

Russia’s top military commander, Valery Gerasimov, did not communicate with Rob Bauer, the chair of NATO’s Military Committee, contrary to what some Western media outlets have claimed, the Russian Defense Ministry has stated. Reports about “typical” conversations between the two military officials and an agreement on the “safe passage of ships in the Black Sea” are “an invention from the start to the end,” a statement released on Wednesday said. Earlier in the day, the news outlet EurActiv, which specializes in covering EU affairs, cited a NATO source as saying that some Eastern European members of the alliance “raised their reservations” about alleged contact between Bauer and Gerasimov.

The source claimed that the two had regular exchanges aimed at deescalating the conflict, particularly in the Black Sea, and that the parties had agreed to “be careful” to avoid accidents. Unnamed members of the alliance questioned the practice, but others said Bauer was entitled to have his channel of communication with Russia. The Dutch admiral served as the chief of defense in his home country before becoming the chair of NATO’s Military Committee in June last year. The Military Committee is composed of the defense chiefs of all member states, while Bauer has the role of the topmost adviser on military strategy to the North Atlantic Council, NATO’s decision-making body. General Gerasimov heads the Russian General Staff, a position equivalent to that of a chief of defense in NATO states.

The EurActiv source claimed that the US, Türkiye, and nations in western and southern Europe “fortunately” countered the push by the UK, Eastern European, and Scandinavian members for “a zero-sum approach” in relations with Russia. Berlin’s role in the alliance has been reduced to virtually nothing, the outlet claimed. “Germans pay, give and don’t speak,” the source was quoted as saying. Nevertheless, NATO members were mostly on the same page in terms of supporting Ukraine, as long as it didn’t compromise their own national security, according to the same tip. The report said that applicants Finland and Sweden were unlikely to join the US-led bloc before June next year, when Türkiye holds national elections. Ankara blocked their accession, claiming that the two nations were not committed to fighting terrorist groups threatening Turkish national security.

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“Oddly, the advertisers are abandoning the platform as its user-base is growing to record highs…”

• Anti-Twitter Advertisers Have Been Under-Performing The Market For Months (ZH)

The last few months have seen a growing number of companies choosing to exercise their freedom of speech by choosing to abandon any advertising platforms that dare allow freedom of speech to virulently spread among its users. Since Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, the fearmongery and virtue-signal-ery has been turned up to ’11’ as the ‘woke-est’ of those companies have reportedly pulled hundreds of millions of dollars worth of advertising from the social media platform (despite Musk’s insistence that “Twitter’s strong commitment to content moderation remains absolutely unchanged.”) Oddly, the advertisers are abandoning the platform as its user-base is growing to record highs…

So, in an effort to quantify just how broke you can become if you go woke, we created the ‘woke advertisers’ basket. This is a market-cap weighted index of 34 stocks representing our best aggregation of the woke-est companies who have publicly claimed they are withdrawing/pausing their advertising on Twitter… and in most cases, have played the ‘virtue signal’ card while doing so over the “dangers” of being on such a “hate-filled” platform”.

Note: an * means the company has issued a statement or was publicly reported as stopping its ads on Twitter and subsequently confirmed. Otherwise, companies identified on this list are “quiet quitters”, based on a Media Matters analysis of Pathmatics data. These companies were previously advertising on Twitter, but then stopped for a significant period of time following direct outreach, controversies, and warnings from media buyers. Since the start of June, when US economic surprise data started to turn down and economic weakness began to be acknowledged – the companies that make up the basket of stocks that have decided to pull back from advertising on Twitter have been underperforming (-11.4% vs S&P -1.9%)…

Additionally, the anti-Twitter basket has significantly underperformed since 03/25 when Musk made his initial offer to buy Twitter (-17% vs S&P -11%) and also underperformed since Musk took over Twitter on 10/27 (+3.3% vs S&P +5.1%), even as the broad market has squeezed notably higher. Is the signaling of how virtuous they are by antagonizing Elon Musk merely a cover for extensive cost cutting and marketing budget reductions as the C-Suite sees recession imminent… Who knows? sBut we suspect that if things are about to shift from bad to worse in the global economy, these anti-Twitter companies are perhaps more likely to underperform (having shown their cards already).

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“They broke the deal..”

• Elon Musk: Coalition of Political Groups Behind Lack of Moderation Council (ET)

Elon Musk said Tuesday that Twitter is lacking a moderation council because of the actions of a “large coalition of political and social activists.” The billionaire businessman took over the platform in October and promised shortly after that Twitter would be forming a “content moderation council” that had “widely diverse viewpoints” and that “no major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes.” However, the Tesla CEO said on Tuesday that the absence of a moderation council was due to a group of political and social activists who he claimed broke an agreement with him by encouraging companies to stop advertising on Twitter. Musk was responding to a Twitter user who accused him of penning a “completely fictional” tweet regarding the establishment of a moderation council.


“A large coalition of political/social activist groups agreed not to try to kill Twitter by starving us of advertising revenue if I agreed to this condition,” Musk wrote on Twitter on Tuesday. “They broke the deal,” he added. [..] Earlier this month, Musk claimed that Twitter’s revenue was declining because of “activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists.” “Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America,” Musk said. The businessman later threatened to name and shame the advertisers who were boycotting the platform following his takeover of the site and despite his assurance that the platform would not become a “free-for-all hellscape” where anything could be said, “with no consequences.” “In addition to adhering to the laws of the land, our platform must be warm and welcoming to all,” Musk wrote in an open letter to advertisers in October.

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Schwaub Schools Dr Urso

 

 

 

 

 

 

Peach Faced Lovebird Parrot on a Saguaro Cactus, Phoenix, Arizona

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle September 9 2022

Sep 092022
 
 September 9, 2022  Posted by at 8:11 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  63 Responses »


Andy Warhol Queen Elizabeth, Reigning Queens Series 1985

 

• The Price Of Poker (Denninger)
• Putin: The West is Failing, the Future is Asia (Celente)
• Asia’s Future Takes Shape In Vladivostok, The Russian Pacific (Escobar)
• Putin’s 12,000 Ton Gold Hoard Sets The Stage For Asian Bretton Woods (Macleod)
• Six Months In, What Exactly Does Russia Hope To Achieve In Ukraine? (Trenin)
• The Coming Victory of Native Europeans in the UK and the EU (Batiushka)
• A Dirty Joke: Ukraine’s Hero Comedian President Zelensky (Celente)
• Ukraine Planned To Use IAEA Experts As A Tool For Blackmail (Ritter)
• Pentagon Sent GPS-Guided Rounds To Ukraine (RT)
• Italy’s Berlusconi Believes He Can Help Resolve Ukraine Crisis (RT)
• Germany’s Energy Suicide: An Autopsy (Escobar)
• We the Silent Majority (AT)
• Fell Asleep A Princess, Awoke A Queen (CD)
• Hillary Plays The Victim Despite History Of Avoiding Criminal Charges (Turley)
• Greece Warns Of Ukraine-style War With Turkey In East Mediterranean (MEE)

 

 

London Bridge is down.

 

 


“Can’t believe they are going to make a MAN queen. This woke nonsense has gone too far.”

 

 

Ghana TV
https://twitter.com/i/status/1567873066260172800

 

 

 

 

Draghi

 

 

 

 

 

 

“For those who claim Russia is waging an “energy war” well, perhaps they are, but let’s not forget the west is attempting to wage an economic one! ”

• The Price Of Poker (Denninger)

It appears that Putin’s government has announced that Nordstream I will not be restarted until western sanctions are lifted. “Russian natural gas supply via the Nord Stream pipeline to Germany will remain shut until the Western sanctions that impede gas turbine repairs are lifted, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday. The gas crisis in Europe took a turn for the worse at the end of last week, when Russian gas giant Gazprom said after three-day maintenance ended on Friday that Nord Stream would remain shut until “operational defects in the equipment are eliminated,” upping the ante in its gas war against Europe.” As a reminder the pipeline had only one operational gas-turbine driven pump which, according to Gazprom, requires maintenance.

There are usually five of them available for service with a sixth held in reserve as a spare at that specific station through which the gas flows. As things stand now there are no spares and one sort-of-operating one that was shut down as a result of a fault discovered during an inspection. There are people saying that Russia could operate the one with the leak anyway but why does anyone believe there is any sort of duty to do so and shave the margins of safety? There clearly is no such duty and, further, the gas is Russia’s so if you think you have the right to sanction a nation and then demand they trade with you its rather obvious to me that your IQ is smaller than your shoe size. For those who claim Russia is waging an “energy war” well, perhaps they are, but let’s not forget the west is attempting to wage an economic one!


I’ve never in my life seen a “war” in which the people backing one side of it demand that the party on the other side continue to trade with them and not only that, but then attempt to put in price controls such that they demand not only the product but also what they pay for it. Putin obviously thinks that’s crazy. Now the West and Europe in particular get to choose: Either drop the sanctions or you get no gas. I fail to understand how this cannot be viewed as an entirely-reasonable position unless your view is that Russia has no right of national sovereignty at all, including the natural resources that lay within her border and those that transit same. If that’s your position — that the West has the right to impose a political and economic structure on a sovereign government then just come out and say it.

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“Beijing has been clear that it believes the world arrived at this point due to Washington’s interference in Kyiv.”

• Putin: The West is Failing, the Future is Asia (Celente)

Russian President Vladimir Putin took an unveiled swipe at the U.S. Wednesday and said “Western nations” are hurting everyone — including their own people in their effort to maintain global order. “The West is failing,” Putin said. “The future is Asia.” Putin will meet with his Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Uzbekistan next week, according to Russian media. Russia sees China as an economic lifeline. China is Russia’s top trade partner with total trade last year jumping 35.9 percent to a record $146.9 billion. Reuters said trade between the two countries jumped 50 percent after the 2014 annexation of Crimea. That trend has continued. During the first five months of the year, trade between the countries hit $65.81 billion, up 28.9 percent from 2021.

Despite attempts from the Biden administration, China has refused to speak out against the Russian invasion. There’s a theory that when Putin met with Xi at the Winter Olympics in Beijing, he got the Chinese leader’s blessing before the conflict. Russia would be sunk without China’s support. Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s top diplomat, has mentioned a new “world order.” “We, together with you [China], and with our sympathizers will move towards a multipolar, just, democratic world order,” Lavrov said in a video statement in April. President Joe Biden mentioned an emerging ‘new world order’ earlier that month and said it must be led by the U.S. Beijing has been clear that it believes the world arrived at this point due to Washington’s interference in Kyiv.


Shortly after the conflict started, Hua Chunying, the Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman, said the invasion of Ukraine could have been avoided. “China has taken a responsible attitude and persuaded all parties not to escalate tensions or incite war,” she said. “Those who follow the U.S.’s lead in fanning up flame and then shifting the blame onto others are truly irresponsible.” The Russian president said the ongoing economic global crisis was triggered by elites in the West “who would not, or even cannot, acknowledge objective facts” about changes in the world. He said they only see a “world order that benefits only them, forcing everyone to live under the rules, which they invented and which they regularly break and constantly change depending on the situation,” The Global Times reported.

Putin Western elites

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“Russia is ready for winter. There will be warmth and light everywhere.”

• Asia’s Future Takes Shape In Vladivostok, The Russian Pacific (Escobar)

Pavel Sorokin, Russian First Deputy Minister of Energy, dismissed the notion of a storm or typhoon in the energy markets: “It’s a far cry from a natural process. It’s a man-made situation.” The Russian economy, in contrast, is seen by most analysts as slowly but surely designing its Arctic/Asian cooperation future – including, for instance, the creation of a sophisticated trans-shipment infrastructure for Liquified Natural Gas (LNG). Energy Minister Nikolay Shulginov made sure that Russia will actually increase its gas production, considering the rise of LNG deliveries and the construction of Power of Siberia-2 to China: “We will not merely scale up the pipeline capacity but we will also expand LNG production: it has mobility and excellent purchases on the global market.”

On the Northern Sea Route, the emphasis is on building a powerful, modern icebreaker fleet – including nuclear. Gadzhimagomed Guseynov, First Deputy Minister for the Development of the Far East and the Arctic, is adamant: “What Russia has to do is to make the Northern Sea Route a sustainable and important transit route.” There is a long-term plan up to 2035 to create infrastructure for safe shipping navigation, following an ‘Arctic best practices’ of learning step by step. NOVATEK, according to its deputy chairman Evgeniy Ambrosov, has been conducting no less than a revolution in terms of Arctic navigation and shipbuilding in the last few years.


Kniessel, the former Austrian minister, recalled that she always missed the larger geopolitical picture in her discussions when she was active in European politics (she now lives in Lebanon): “I wrote about the passing of the torch from Atlanticism to the Pacific. Airlines, pipelines and waterways are moving East. The Far East is actually Pacific Russia.” Whatever Atlanticists may think of it, the last word for the moment might belong to Vitaly Markelov, from the board of directors of Gazprom: Russia is ready for winter. There will be warmth and light everywhere.”

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“There is the Chinese one kilo bar four-nines standard, which is widely owned, has already been adopted throughout Asia, and is traded even on Comex.”

• Putin’s 12,000 Ton Gold Hoard Sets The Stage For Asian Bretton Woods (Macleod)

Unreported by western media, there are some interesting developments taking place in Asia over the future of currencies. Earlier this summer, it emerged that Sergei Glazyev, a senior Russian economist and Minister in charge of the Eurasian Economic Commission (EAEU), was leading a committee planning a new trade currency for the Eurasian Economic Union. [..] Logic suggests that a gold-backed currency will be the outcome of Glazyev’s EAEU committee’s trade currency deliberations after all, because of a subsequent announcement from Moscow concerning a new Russian bullion market.

In accordance with western sanctions, the London Bullion Market refused to accept Russian mined and processed gold. It was then natural for Russia to propose a new gold market based in Moscow with its own standards. It is equally sensible for Moscow to set up a price fixing committee, replicating that of the LBMA. But instead of it being the basis for a far larger unallocated gold deposit account offering by Russian and other banks, it will be a predominantly physical market. Based in Moscow, with a new market called the Moscow International Precious Metals Exchange, the Moscow Gold Standard will incorporate some of the LBMA’s features, such as good delivery lists with daily, or twice daily fixings. The new exchange is therefore being promoted as a logical replacement for the LBMA.


But could that be a cover, with the real objective being to provide a gold link to the new trade currency planned by Glazyev’s EAEU committee? Timing suggests that this may indeed be the case, but we will only know for sure as events unfold. If it is to be backed by gold, the considerations behind setting up a new trade currency are fairly straightforward. There is the Chinese one kilo bar four-nines standard, which is widely owned, has already been adopted throughout Asia, and is traded even on Comex. Given that China is Russia’s long-term partner, that is likely to be the standard unit. The adoption of the Chinese standard in the new Moscow exchange is logical, simplifying the relationship with the Shanghai Gold Exchange, and streamlining fungibility between contracts, arbitrage, and delivery.

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The focus is gradually shifting.

• Six Months In, What Exactly Does Russia Hope To Achieve In Ukraine? (Trenin)

Putin’s latest comments reveal that Moscow’s thinking has shifted and compromise is no longer on the agenda Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin referred to Ukraine as an “anti-Russian enclave” which has to be removed. He also said that the Russian soldiers taking part in the military operation there were fighting for their “own country.” These statements carry important implications. Over the last six-plus months, the mantra of the Russian officialdom has been that all aims of the offensive will be reached. On purpose, however, the specific objectives, such as how far Moscow’s forces plan move into Ukraine, have never been spelled out. This cannot but raise speculation about what the Kremlin is actually hoping to achieve. The only person who can authoritatively answer that question, however, is the president, and second-guessing him makes no sense.

Yet, two things cannot escape close attention. One is the radicalization of Moscow’s position on Ukraine as a result of both Western policies and Kiev’s actions; two is the widening gap between the minimum result of the military campaign that Russia can be satisfied with, and the maximum amount of what the US and its allies can accept. [..] Shortly after the start of hostilities Russia and Ukraine began peace talks. In late March 2022 at a meeting in Istanbul, Moscow demanded that Zelensky’s government recognize the sovereignty of the two Donbass republics within their constitutional borders, as well as Russia’s own sovereignty over Crimea, which was formally incorporated into the Russian Federation in 2014, plus accept a neutral and demilitarized status for territory controlled by Kiev.

At that point, Moscow still recognized the current Ukrainian authorities and was prepared to deal with them directly. For its part, Kiev initially appeared ready to accept Moscow’s demands (which were criticized by many within Russia as overly concessionary to Ukraine), but then quickly reverted to a hardline stance. Moscow has always suspected that this U-turn, as on previous occasions, was the result of US behind-the-scenes influence, often aided by the British and other allies. [..] As the fighting in Ukraine quickly became a proxy war between Russia and the US-led West, Russia’s views on Ukraine’s future radicalized further. While a quick cessation of hostilities and a peace settlement on Russian terms in the spring would have left Ukraine, minus Donbass, demilitarized and outside NATO, but otherwise under the present leadership with its virulently anti-Russian ideology and reliance on the West, the new thinking, as Putin’s remarks in Kaliningrad suggest, tends to regard any Ukrainian state that is not fully and securely cleansed of ultranationalist ideology and its agents as a clear and present danger; in fact, a ticking bomb right on Russia’s borders not far from its capital.

Dmitry Trenin is a Research Professor at the Higher School of Economics and a Lead Research Fellow at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations. He is also a member of the Russian International Affairs Council

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“Johnson’s unelected replacement, MissTrust..”

• The Coming Victory of Native Europeans in the UK and the EU (Batiushka)

A spectre is haunting Europe – it is the spectre of poverty. The bets are now on as to which European country will collapse first. Among the front runners you will find Portugal, Latvia, Ireland, Romania, Italy, Moldova, Spain, the Czech Republic, Germany, Bulgaria, France and Slovakia. But perhaps none of them is more likely to fall first than the UK. For it has a new Prime Minister, who, unthinkably, is an even greater clown than the last one and even threatens to press the nuclear button. Let me digress for a moment with a visit to the islands off the coast of North-Western Europe.

My visit to the UK, after Wiesbaden in Germany, came at a time when the English peasants were revolting, but the governing elite did not yet know it. In one last Marie-Antoinette farewell moment the unlate, unlamented Mr Johnson advised the revolting peasants of the UK to spend £20 buying a new and more economic kettle, so that after two years (if the Chinese-made kettle lasted that long) they could save £10 a year on their £2,500 + annual energy bills. ‘Let them eat cake’, he may as well have shouted to the breadless masses. The effete and wealthy Tory Party never understood the people. Johnson’s unelected replacement, MissTrust, for whom we should beg the CIA (which has long funded Nobel Prizes) to fund a Nobel Prize for Geography (after all Mr Obama won a Nobel Prize for Peace), faces many challenges:

Firstly, there is the self-inflicted mess Mr Johnson made of Brexit, notably by separating Northern Ireland from Great Britain as regards imports and exports and failing to impose any laws for necessary immigration and against unnecessary immigration. It was the Tory Party that imposed on the British people the then Common Market (later becoming the EU) in 1973. The people never asked to join – they were never consulted. Secondly, there is the self-inflicted covid chaos. Tory-imposed lockdowns bankrupted many and were hated by even more. The much-vaunted vaccines turned out to be useless after three months, and even extremely harmful to some. Today a million vaccinated Britons have covid week in, week out. The people never asked for lockdowns and false vaccines – they were never consulted.

Thirdly, there is the self-inflicted energy crisis and the spiralling energy and food prices, caused by illegal Tory government sanctions against the Russian decision to rescue Russians from Kiev’s genocide and persecution. The people never asked to be cold and hungry – they were never consulted. Fourthly, there are the self-inflicted dramatic problems of always underfunded national infrastructure, whether that of the Health Service (people dying in their homes and in ambulances because the hospitals are so full that they have to wait for many, many hours before they can be admitted), the ‘privatised’ electricity, gas, water and telecom companies, airports and railways, which are all breaking down. The people never asked for public services which are appalling because they are private – they were never consulted.

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“Zelensky ignored four draft notices on 15 April 2015, 23 June 2014, 15 August 2014, and 10 October 2015…”

• A Dirty Joke: Ukraine’s Hero Comedian President Zelensky (Celente)

During the 2019 campaign, Zelensky’s history of draft-dodging became a focal point that former President Petro Poroshenko tried to scrutinize. On April 13, 2019, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry took to Facebook to confirm that Zelensky ignored four draft notices on 15 April 2015, 23 June 2014, 15 August 2014, and 10 October 2015. “Citizen Zelensky V.O. did not arrive at the military commissariat at his call,” the post read. [..] Zelensky has been criticized since the start of the invasion for not allowing fighting-aged men to leave the country and using the strategy of issuing military summonses at gas stations and other public areas. The New York Times reported that young men in Ukraine are required to do military service “unless they fall into an exempt category, like being enrolled in a university, having a disability or having at least three children.”

The European Court of Auditors released a special report in September that found “grand corruption and state capture” were still widespread in the country despite 20 years of European Union efforts to intervene and help in its reform agenda. “The EU has long been aware of the connections between oligarchs, high-level officials, politicians, the judiciary and state-owned enterprises. However, it has not developed a real strategy for targeting grand corruption,” the auditors said in a statement. Up until the Russian invasion, the EU has been the largest donor to Ukraine. The European Commission has committed around €5.6 billion to macro-financial assistance programs and €2.2 billion to assistance programs since 2014, the statement said. The Commission also guarantees European Investment Bank loans of €4.4 billion.


Juhan Parts, the member of the European Courts of Auditors responsible for the report “despite varied support the EU has offered to Ukraine, oligarchs and vested interests continue to undermine the rule of law in Ukraine and to threaten the country’s development.” Freedom House’s 2022 report lists Ukraine as “partly free,” with a score of 61 out of a possible 100.

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No, Russia will not leave.

• Ukraine Planned To Use IAEA Experts As A Tool For Blackmail (Ritter)

On August 29, Grossi’s team travelled to Kiev, where the next day they met with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. Zelensky told Grossi that Ukraine believed it was critical for the IAEA to press home its demands for a demilitarized zone, which would enable Ukraine to take control of the plant. On September 1, Grossi and his team set off for the Zaporozhye facility. Prior to their arrival, they were stopped by Ukrainian officials, who warned Grossi that military activity in and around the facility had picked up that morning. According to Russian military sources, the Ukrainian army had attempted to seize the power plant in a commando raid that was thwarted by Russian forces.

As Grossi’s 14-man team arrived at the power plant, the sound of nearby combat could be readily heard. The deteriorating security situation at the facility prompted Grossi to withdraw the bulk of his team later that day. A six-person sub-team was tasked with remaining on-site for a few days longer, after which four inspectors would depart, leaving behind a two-person element, who would provide a permanent presence, on a rotational basis, at the facility. Afterwards, Grossi stated that the mission had been valuable. “We knew a lot before too, but of course it is being inspected now. We are trying to do a thorough assessment of the current situation.”


As to the security of the plant, Grossi noted that “[t]he physical integrity of the facility has been violated not once, but multiple times. This is by no means acceptable.” In addition to their personal observations, the team was presented with a petition signed by 20,000 residents from Russia-controlled parts of the Zaporozhye region demanding that the IAEA condemn the attacks on the nuclear power plant, which the signatories said were conducted solely by the Ukrainian forces. This was not the result either the Ukrainian government or its Western backers could have envisioned when they were pushing for the mission’s dispatch in mid- to late-August.

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Dangerous.

• Pentagon Sent GPS-Guided Rounds To Ukraine (RT)

The Pentagon is spending over $90 million to acquire new M982 Excalibur munitions, Bloomberg reported on Thursday. The department is replacing a stockpile previously sent to Ukraine, according to budget documents cited in the article. The 155mm shells, each of which costs tens of thousands of dollars and may go well over $100,000, depending on the variant and year they were manufactured, are designed to strike within two meters of the GPS coordinates of a target. The munitions were developed by Raytheon and BAE and are certified to be used with a number of NATO artillery pieces, including American M777 howitzers and German PzH2000 howitzers, which Ukraine possesses.

A document issued last month says that the Pentagon will spend $92 million to purchase “replacement M982 Excalibur munitions transferred to Ukraine in support of the international effort” to undermine Russia’s military operation, as quoted by Bloomberg. The money buys roughly 900 projectiles, a military analyst estimated for the news agency. The funds come from more than $40 billion in emergency spending authorized by the Additional Ukraine Supplemental Act, which US President Joe Biden signed into law in May. The Pentagon was allocated at least half of the sum, including $9 billion to replenish US military stocks.


The US did not officially announce the delivery of Excalibur munitions to Kiev. But Ukrainian troops have shared videos on social media in which they apparently fired the shells on the battlefield. In one video, reposted by a Russian war correspondent as proof that the precision rounds were being used by the Ukrainian side, a Ukrainian soldier jokingly remarked that his unit will “throw to the wind a heap of money” before loading the munition into a gun and firing it. Canadian media reported in April that their country was quietly shipping Excalibur shells to Ukraine to complement the declared deliveries of the US-made M777 howitzers.

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“..his dream is to one day see Russia become a member of the EU..”

• Italy’s Berlusconi Believes He Can Help Resolve Ukraine Crisis (RT)

Western attempts to force Russia to change course regarding Ukraine with economic sanctions are backfiring, former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has said. The conflict must be resolved through diplomacy, he added, offering himself and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel as potential mediators. Berlusconi, who is currently running for a seat in the Italian Senate, offered his diplomatic services on Wednesday night on the TV program Porta a Porta. Discussing the situation in Ukraine, he argued that Russia will not be swayed by sanctions from the US and its allies. The recent G7 initiative to enforce a price cap on Russian oil will also fail, since there will be high demand for Russian crude in countries like China and India, he added.


Berlusconi lamented the fact that Russia is being pushed into allying itself with China, while his dream is to one day see Russia become a member of the EU. Host Bruno Vespa asked if Berlusconi could leverage his personal relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The politician said the hostilities in Ukraine have to end with diplomacy, so someone will eventually need to be the mediator between Putin and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. “There is a person who could do that instead of me or together with me. It’s former German Chancellor Angela Merkel,” he said. “With Merkel, I feel I could try to mediate and put an end to the conflict between Ukraine and Russia.”

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“It was Berlin and Brussels – mere messengers of Big Finance – which weaponized the supply of European energy on behalf of a financial racket, and against the interests of European industry and consumers.”

• Germany’s Energy Suicide: An Autopsy (Escobar)

On the interminable soap opera involving the Nord Stream 1 turbine, the crucial fact is that Canada deliberately refused to deliver the repaired turbine to Gazprom – its owner – but instead sent it to Siemens Germany, where it is now. Siemens Germany is essentially under American control. Both the German and Canadian governments refuse to grant a legally binding sanction exemption for the transfer to Russia. That was the straw that broke the (Gazprom) camel’s back. Gazprom and the Kremlin concluded that if sabotage was the name of the game, they couldn’t care less whether Germany received zero gas via Nord Stream 1 (with brand new Nord Stream 2, ready to go, blocked by strictly political reasons).

Kremlin spokesman Dmity Peskov took pains to stress “problems in [gas] deliveries arose due to sanctions that have been imposed on our country and a number of companies by Western countries (…) There are no other reasons behind supply issues.” Peskov had to remind anyone with a brain that it’s not Gazprom’s fault if “the Europeans (…) make a decision to refuse to service their equipment” which they are contractually obligated to do. The fact is the whole Nord Stream 1 operation hinges on “one piece of equipment that needs serious maintenance.” Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, who knows one or two things about the energy business, cleared up the technicalities:


“The entire problem lies precisely on [the EU’s] side, because all the conditions of the repair contract have been completely violated, along with the terms of shipping of the equipment.” All that is inscribed into what Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov describes as “a total war declared against us”, which is “being waged in hybrid forms, in all areas”, with “the degree of animosity of our opponents – of our enemies” being “enormous, extraordinary.” So none of this has anything to do with “Putin weaponizing energy”. It was Berlin and Brussels – mere messengers of Big Finance – which weaponized the supply of European energy on behalf of a financial racket, and against the interests of European industry and consumers.

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“Our political system is broken, our multicultural societies are in chaos, inflation is soaring, we’re bankrupt and awaiting possible mass civil protests in the near future..”

• We the Silent Majority (AT)

We the silent majority were laughing at the ‘Woke’ Cultural Revolution and diversity obedience training years before it became fashionable. It was already obvious what would happen way back in 1993, coincidently, shortly after the collapse of the USSR when the European Union emerged offering the gullible an unhealthy dose of Gramscian Cultural Marxism disguised as freedom. As the vocal minority now scratch their collective heads at the mess they’ve created, we’re the silent majority occasionally heard muttering “I told you so.” Likewise, we are not responsible for the current political, economic and moral decline around you. We did not support corporate fascism in minimum wage gig-economies, lock downs, non-existent alternative energy sources, or an unhealthy obsession with homosexuality believing it had anything to do with freedom and democracy.

As attention spans wane due to a lack of sensationalism and the Ukraine becomes just another ongoing news item, the next self-inflicted crisis is an energy one. We silent majority raise an eyebrow as we’re told that Russia is an unreliable energy supplier sanctioned from supplying the oil needed and the reason behind rising food prices is the fault of a European drought as we had two weeks of hot sun in the summer. In our brave new world, everyone’s smiling but no one’s happy. Moreover, when we glance around us we all know something is wrong. The only difference between us is who we point our fingers at. Currently, it’s all Biden’s fault but yesterday Trump was to blame. Today it’s Russia, tomorrow it will be China (again). Russian and Chinese societies aren’t collapsing, ours are and we’ve got nowhere to flee as the stupid lash out in all directions to prolong the agony of indoctrinated beliefs they’re hiding behind.


Our political system is broken, our multicultural societies are in chaos, inflation is soaring, we’re bankrupt and awaiting possible mass civil protests in the near future; that’s if the fools in charge don’t lead us into a nuclear conflict first. Yet whilst muttering “here we go again”, nevertheless we the silent majority are prepared to join the coming mass civil disobedience protests as the minority complain about the agents of social programming they not so long ago cheered for and are too stupid to realize they’re the cause of, but think more of it is the solution.

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“Rhinos all night”

• Fell Asleep A Princess, Awoke A Queen (CD)

Princess Elizabeth was deep in the Kenyan forest on the adventure of a lifetime, spotting wildlife from high up in the treetops, when her father died and she became queen. The world awoke on February 6, 1952, to the death of King George VI, who had succumbed during the night to lung cancer at the royal Sandringham residence in Norfolk. His 25-year-old daughter and heir to the throne only heard the news later the same day, when word reached Elizabeth thousands of miles from home in the wilderness of the Aberdare Range. Kenya, then a British colony, was the first stop on Elizabeth’s tour of the Commonwealth she had embarked upon with her husband, Prince Philip, in place of her ill father.

The royal couple had taken a night out of their official engagements to stay at a one-of-a-kind game-watching lodge perched in a tree in the Aberdares. It was during their night at the Treetops hotel that the king would die, and Elizabeth would become queen. Jim Corbett, the naturalist and hunter who accompanied the royal couple to Treetops, is credited with writing in the visitor book: “For the first time in the history of the world, a young girl climbed into a tree one day a Princess and, after having what she described as her most thrilling experience, she climbed down from the tree next day a queen.” In fact, the Duke of Edinburgh broke the news to Elizabeth after they had left Treetops but the story stuck and the hotel became the fabled locale where a princess became a queen.


First opened in 1932 as an overnight stay for wealthy and intrepid visitors, Treetops overlooked a watering hole from its position in a giant fig tree. In its day, there wasn’t really anything like it. A private setting among branches, remote in the African bush, Treetops offered the privileged elite a chance to encounter wildlife up close, and in safety, as they grazed below. Elizabeth and Philip kept a handwritten tally of what they saw, recorded on a sheet of paper framed at Treetops. Large herds of elephant — “about 40” in one sighting — were spotted at the watering hole, along with baboons and waterbuck. “Rhinos all night”, read the list dated February 5/6, 1952, and signed by the Princess and Prince, and “in the morning, two bulls fighting”..

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“Virtually everything about that claim is breathtakingly untrue..”

• Hillary Plays The Victim Despite History Of Avoiding Criminal Charges (Turley)

“I can’t believe we’re still talking about this, but my emails. . .”: Hillary Clinton’s disbelief this week was shared by many critics left dumbfounded by her claim her private server contained “zero” classified documents. The expression of utter incredulity was classic Clinton — she’s selling hats reading “But her emails” for $30 a pop. But Hillary’s denial of what was found on her server exposes something far more serious than signature hypocrisy. It reflects establishment figures’ sense of license that they can literally rewrite history with little fear of contradiction by the media. While calling for limits on free speech over “disinformation,” Hillary has no qualms about falsely denying what published government reports detail.

“As Trump’s problems continue to mount, the right is trying to make this about me again. There’s even a ‘Clinton Standard.’ The fact is that I had zero emails that were classified,” her but-my-emails tweet continued. “Comey admitted he was wrong after he claimed I had classified emails. Trump’s own State Department, under two different Secretaries, found I had no classified emails.” Virtually everything about that claim is breathtakingly untrue. Let’s quickly deal with the light lifting before getting back to the “Clinton Standard.” A 2018 Department of Justice inspector general report revealed “81 email chains containing approximately 193 individual emails” were “classified from the CONFIDENTIAL to TOP SECRET levels at the time.” Clinton is echoing her allies’ recent spin that there were only three documents with classification markings among 33,000 emails. It is utter nonsense.

The Clinton email scandal is a scandal because these were emails. There is no classification automatically stamped on text being typed out and sent within minutes. While attachments can have classification markings, the whole point of using secure servers is that emails are created in the moment with inevitable slips in referencing classified material. Nevertheless, the emails had classified information, including top-secret information tied to “Special Access Programs.” Yet some allies emphasize the inspector general also noted that in some cases there was “conscious effort to avoid sending classified information, by writing around the most sensitive material.” It failed. The emails still contained classified information.

That’s why she was reckless to use her own server: Such mistakes on private servers are more vulnerable to capture by foreign intelligence services. Indeed, according to the FBI, “hostile actors gained access” to some of the information through the emails of Clinton’s associates and aides. “Comey admitted he was wrong. It’s not clear what Hillary is referencing here. But Comey never said there was no classified information in her emails — he said the opposite. He condemned her handling of the classified material while saying it didn’t warrant prosecution. Comey did backtrack later, but not on this point. He said his “mistake” was in how he described her conduct: “I should’ve worked harder to find a way to convey that it’s more than just the ordinary mistake, but it’s not criminal behavior, and find different words to describe that.”

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For now it’s just words.

• Greece Warns Of Ukraine-style War With Turkey In East Mediterranean (MEE)

Tensions are boiling in the Eastern Mediterranean, with Greece saying the region risks falling into a war similar to that seen in Ukraine after Turkey raised the spectre of military action against its neighbour. Turkey and Greece have long been enmeshed in a series of disputes, including over maritime rights, the sovereignty of Aegean islands, natural gas and airspace boundaries. The Nato allies had a brief rapprochement after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis making a rare visit to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul. Relations have, however, since plummeted. On Tuesday, Erdogan reiterated a veiled threat, stating Turkey could “come all of a sudden one night,” in response to what he claimed were hostilities emanating from Greece.

“What I’m talking about is not a dream,” he said at a press conference in the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo. “If what I said was that we could come one night all of a sudden [it means] that, when the time comes, we can come suddenly one night.” The comments sparked an outcry in Greece, a country of 10 million people which fought a brutal war of independence from the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century. Many parts of Greece remained under Ottoman control before the empire’s collapse after the First World War. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Greek-Turkish war of 1919-1922 and, on 30 August, Turkey celebrated Victory Day, when it drove Greek forces from Anatolia.


The war culminated in the population exchanges between the two countries known in Greece as the Catastrophe, and the battle over Greek-majority cities along the Anatolian coast, such as Smyrna, which is today the city of Izmir. On Saturday, Erdogan made a pointed reference to the city, stating “Greece, look at history, go back in time; if you go too far, the price will be heavy. We have one thing to say to Greece: Remember Izmir.” In response, Athens sent letters to Nato, the European Union and the United Nations slamming what it called Erdogan’s “openly threatening” and “inflammatory” statements. The letters called for the organisations to condemn Erdogan’s statements, which they said “imbue the Turkish people with hatred, enmity and contempt towards their Greek neighbors”.

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Tucker Glenn Beck

 

 

 

 

Romanian MEP Cristian Terhes
https://twitter.com/i/status/1567582404193173505

 

 


Green bee eater

 

 

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