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Debt Rattle October 10 2024

Oct 102024
 
 October 10, 2024  Posted by at 8:38 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  72 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh Peasant burning weeds 1883

 

• Chaos is Coming – John Rubino (USAW)
• 60 Minutes Under Fire For Deceptively Editing Kamala Harris Interview (ZH)
• Harris Attempts To Blame Trump For FEMA Hurricane Relief Failures (MN)
• US in Dangerous Hiatus Amid Biden’s Lame Duck Period – Jeffrey Sachs (Sp.)
• Trump Is Making A Mistake That Could Cost Him The Presidency (Marsden)
• Russian Victory Will Liberate Europe – Emmanuel Todd (RT)
• EU Running Out Of Time On Ukraine – Orban (RT)
• Refusal to Buy Russian Energy Endangers EU’s Economic Growth – Orban (Sp.)
• What Is Russia Deciding For Terms To End The War In The Ukraine (Helmer)
• Zelensky Cancels November ‘Peace Summit’ (RT)
• Russia Could Seek War Reparations From Ukraine (RT)
• US Global Economic Share Dips Below 15% For First Time (Sp.)
• US Spending on Mideast Conflict Tops $22 Billion in One Year (Sp.)
• Israel Seeks To Fix 2006 Failures, While Hezbollah Lies In Wait (Mehdi)
• Israel’s Collective Punishment Turns the World Against It (DeMartino)
• Iran ‘Fully Prepared’ For War – FM (RT)
• US Navy Was At Scene Of Nord Stream Blasts – Media (RT)
• US Antitrust Officials Consider Google Breakup As ‘Trustbusting Era’ May Return (ZH)
• Crypto Exchange Sues US Market Regulator (RT)

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1843706162509951236

JD RFK

DeSantis

Trump Elon MAGA
https://twitter.com/i/status/1843999824359919850

Tulsi
https://twitter.com/i/status/1843991681072566642

Doocy

60m
https://twitter.com/i/status/1843859310679601401

Megyn Day 1

Doral
https://twitter.com/i/status/1844088909078352250

Tampon Tim

 

 

 

 

“There’s no reason to protect speech that everybody agrees on..”

John Rubino is a long time fan of TAE. The idea he uses here of the “shrinking trust horizon” was first defined by Nicole Foss right here at TAE at least ten years ago.

• Chaos is Coming – John Rubino (USAW)

Analyst and financial writer John Rubino has long warned of a massive financial crisis. With unstoppable wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, Rubino says one thing is for sure, “Chaos is coming.” Rubino explains, “This does not get fixed easily, and to the extent this gets fixed at all, this gets fixed via chaos. Prepare for a really interesting decade. This is going to be unlike anything we have seen in our lifetimes. Not since the Great Depression, nothing like this has happened.”

This all feeds into what Rubino calls the “shrinking trust horizon.” Rubino points out, “When everybody is lying to you, you reach a point where you only trust your city councilman, or your mayor and your local farmers. . . . So, you just don’t put any stock in what your doctor tells you. You stop taking the vaccinations they tell you to take. . . . You stop doing the . . . statins for high blood pressure and cholesterol. You stop doing that because you don’t trust those people anymore. . . . Starting with the “weapons of mass destruction,” which the government lied to us to get us into a multi-trillion dollar war in Iraq, it’s been one big lie after another.

In 2016, there was Trump/Russia collusion. . . . It turned out to be Hillary Clinton opposition research. With the CV19 pandemic, it was just lie, after lie, after lie. . . . Now, you have what is going on in North Carolina and Tennessee after Hurricane Helene. People are figuring out they are being lied to one issue at a time. . . . You’ve got a whole new set of people watching the government screw up and behave incompetently or corruptly, and they are learning they cannot trust the guys in charge anymore. So, the trust horizon is shrinking everywhere you look.”

There are so many parts of the economy that are quietly facing huge trouble and big losses. Nothing could start a total all-sector market crash faster than an attack by Israel on Iran’s nuclear sites. Rubino says, “There you go. That could be the thing that sets everything off. Bombing nuclear weapons facilities or a nuclear power plants is one of those things that has so many unintended consequences. Iran would have to respond to that in a serious way. It’s possible that China and Russia would step in on the side of Iran. . . . Then you get something much bigger. . . . I think the financial markets would respond to that.

Oil would go to $150 a barrel. That would crash the stock market. Then you get all the other dominos falling: commercial real estate, residential real estate, government bonds, derivatives and everything starts blowing up. That could be the catalyst for a market crash much bigger than 2008 and 2009. This would be something we have not seen since the Great Depression. We are not far from that. I think Trump said he thinks Israel should bomb Iran’s nuclear facility. . . . Biden is the demented figurehead for the neocons who want WWIII because they think they can win it. Chaos is definitely coming, but I am hoping it is survivable chaos, and I am not sure that it will be.”

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Did they think no-one would notice?

• 60 Minutes Under Fire For Deceptively Editing Kamala Harris Interview (ZH)

CBS has come under fire for deceptively editing Kamala Harris’ “60 Minutes” interview – replacing her word-salad answer from a pre-interview teaser with a completely different answer in the version that aired. When asked by host Bill Whitaker why it seemed like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wasn’t listening to the United States, Harris originally replied: “Well Bill, the work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by, or a result of, many things, including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region.” But in the version that aired, Harris’ answer was: “We are not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.” Watch:

The Trump campaign has demanded that the network release the full interview. “On Sunday, 60 Minutes teased Kamala’s highly-anticipated sit-down interview with one of her worst word salads to date, which received significant criticism on social media,” said Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign’s national press secretary. “During the full interview on Monday evening, the word salad was deceptively edited to lessen Kamala’s idiotic response.” “Why did 60 Minutes choose not to air Kamala’s full word salad, and what else did they choose not to air?” she asked. “The American people deserve the full, unedited transcript from Kamala’s sit-down interview. We call upon 60 Minutes and CBS to release it.”

Trump also posted about it on Truth Social, writing “I’ve never seen this before, but the producers of 60 Minutes sliced and diced (“cut and pasted”) Lyin’ Kamala’s answers to questions, which were virtually incoherent, over and over again, some by as many as four times in a single sentence or thought…” Trump suggested that the network helping Harris may have been a “major Campaign Finance Violation,” and is a “stain on the reputation of 60 minutes that is not recoverable.” Trump also called for an investigation.

Several have called out the network over the propaganda. Investor Bill Ackman took to X, where he said: “And how could @60Minutes’ manipulation occur without the consent of @KamalaHarris? Let’s not forget she is the Vice President of the United States and she is being asked about our foreign policy in the Middle East and our relationship with the leader of our principal ally in the region. Thinking about this more, the only plausible explanation is that the Vice President herself and/or her administration found that her original answer, which implied that Israel’s actions in the region were a direct result of the Biden/Harris policy, would harm her campaign and would therefore need to be expurgated from the public record.

In order to execute such a violation of journalistic ethics, I would expect that CBS News CEO Wendy McMahon and possibly Shari Redstone herself would have had to approve the manipulated video. This is a story worthy of investigative journalism from real journalists. Where are they? Where are the whistleblowers? Or are all of them so ideologically compromised that they are prepared to sacrifice the truth and their integrity in an effort to elect their favored candidate?”

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“Trump hasn’t been in office since 2020, yet somehow a woeful federal government response to a hurricane that occurred in 2024 is his fault because he said some mean words.”

• Harris Attempts To Blame Trump For FEMA Hurricane Relief Failures (MN)

Kamala Harris reverted to her default position when talking to the cackling hags on The View about FEMA’s disastrous hurricane relief efforts. She attempted to blame Donald Trump. “He puts himself before the needs of others. I fear that he really lacks empathy,” Harris said of Trump, also describing his criticism of her as “callousness.” Trump hasn’t been in office since 2020, yet somehow a woeful federal government response to a hurricane that occurred in 2024 is his fault because he said some mean words.

It’s pathetic. She repeated the same script on Colbert’s propaganda parade.

While Harris is on The View, Stern and Colbert, Trump is giving out free accommodation to first responders prepping for the massive storm heading toward Florida, yet he’s the selfish one with no empathy according to her. Harris also claimed that Trump is using the hurricane to play political games, yet she outright lied Monday in claiming that Florida governor Ron DeSantis wouldn’t take her calls. Let’s also not forget that while Americans were begging for help, Kamala was appearing on a sex podcast, laughing about tampons. Her response is always either laugh inanely, talk about her mother, or blame Trump. As we earlier highlighted, in the same appearance Harris admitted that she wouldn’t do anything different to pudding brain Biden given the opportunity.

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“I hope for rationality by the next government, because we need a completely new foreign policy, based on negotiation, mutual respect with other great powers, and peace..”

• US in Dangerous Hiatus Amid Biden’s Lame Duck Period – Jeffrey Sachs (Sp.)

The United States is in a dangerous hiatus during outgoing President Joe Biden’s lame duck period, which several US allies are trying to exploit, Jeffrey Sachs, a world-renowned economist and president of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, told Sputnik. “President Biden is not really in full control anymore, both because of his waning mental status and his lame duck status,” Sachs said. “We are in a dangerous hiatus. [Israel’s Benjamin] Netanyahu is exploiting that hiatus, and [Volodymyr] Zelensky is trying to as well.” The United States backs Israel’s reckless behavior, talks openly about war with China, and continues a delusional policy in Ukraine that is bleeding that country while threatening to provoke more escalation, Sachs explained.

Zelensky has been pushing the Biden administration to allow Kiev to use US-supplied long-range missiles for deep strikes inside Russian territory, which Russia has warned could drag the United States directly into the conflict. To date, Biden has refrained from granting Ukraine its request. Meanwhile, in the Middle East, Netanyahu continues to expand his military operation in the region, shifting its focus from Gaza to Lebanon, which provoked Tehran to conduct its second aerial assault against Israel on Tuesday and left open the possibility for more military action by Iran. Sachs added that there is little chance Biden will steer the United States toward a “good direction” throughout the remainder of his term, but there’s also no guarantee that things will improve after either Republican candidate Donald Trump or Democratic candidate Kamala Harris comes into power on January 20.

“I hope for rationality by the next government, because we need a completely new foreign policy, based on negotiation, mutual respect with other great powers, and peace,” Sachs said. “The US doesn’t seem to have much sound thinking at the top right now.” Many other countries are trying to exploit US military power, including the United Kingdom, Poland, and the Baltic states, which are all urging reckless policies by the United States that could land it quickly in World War III, Sachs noted.

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Netanyahu is not Israel.

• Trump Is Making A Mistake That Could Cost Him The Presidency (Marsden)

When Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky recently stood next to Trump in search of support against Russia, looking like a kid being chewed out by the school principal, Trump reminded him that “it takes two to tango.” But, when it comes to Israel, Trump only sees a soloist, minding its own business and inexplicably eliciting the wrath of its neighbors. And Trump just can’t seem to shut up about it. That isn’t what his base signed up for. On the anniversary of the events of October 7, 2023, when Hamas fighters from Gaza attacked Israeli civilians at an adjacent music festival following years of anti-Palestinian oppression, Trump had a variety of options. His base expects him mainly just to butt out and focus on problems that affect the daily lives of Americans – not all of whom live in Israel, contrary to perception.

Trump fancies himself such a peacemaker on Ukraine that he’s said he could resolve that conflict in a jiffy. He has no such ambition for the Middle East, apparently. Instead, he threw on a yarmulke and stood beside some giant tablets with Hebrew inscriptions, and riffed about how he would “remove the Jew haters” if elected in November, and how the “bond between the United States and Israel is strong and enduring” and that he would ensure that it was “closer than it ever was before.” Trump called on Israel to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites. “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to hit? I mean, it’s the biggest risk we have, nuclear weapons,” Trump said at a recent rally, ignoring the fact that nuclear weapons have a magical way of inciting respectful behavior all-around, in the same way that Trump’s beloved second amendment does in the US.

That remark alone places Trump in a more pro-Israel and pro-war posture than the Biden administration, which has explicitly objected to Israel attacking Iranian nuclear facilities. He’s also more aggressively pro-Israel than his Democratic opponent, Vice-President Kamala Harris, who at least routinely pays lip service to the need to protect Palestinian civilians in light of Israeli bombardments and glaringly dodged the question when asked whether Israel is even an ally. Who is Trump even trying to appeal to? The establishment? Why even bother? He has long lost their support on everything else, and this certainly isn’t going to bring them back aboard. Republican neocons? Same thing. Certainly not his “MAGA” base, whose position is non-interventionist and in favor of butting out of tiffs between countries on the other side of the planet. There was no shortage of them who noticed Trump’s October 7 pandering and announced on social media something along the lines of, “that’s it, I’m out.”

Maybe he’s trying to charm American voters, more generally? A new Pew Research survey published this month found that just 31% of them have confidence in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with 75% of them now concerned that US forces will somehow end up getting dragged into the melee. A YouGov poll has found that just 33% of Americans sympathize with Israel over Palestinians in the Gaza conflict. A Gallup poll from March also found that a majority of US voters oppose Israel’s actions in Gaza. And that was even before it kicked off similar action against Syria, Lebanon, and “Hezbollah pagers” exploding in the vicinity of civilians.

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“If, as I believe, the US is defeated, NATO will disintegrate and Europe will be left free..”

• Russian Victory Will Liberate Europe – Emmanuel Todd (RT)

A Ukrainian defeat would represent a victory for Europe, French anthropologist Emmanuel Todd has claimed, in an interview with the Italian news outlet Corriere di Bologna published on Tuesday. According to Todd, who has stressed that he is not an explicit supporter of Moscow, if Russia were to lose in the Ukraine conflict, this would allow “European submission to the Americans to be prolonged for a century.” The leading intellectual has argued that Europe has effectively delegated the representation of the West to the US and has been paying the consequences ever since. He claims in the interview that nothing can be done to change this fact at the moment due to the ongoing Ukraine conflict, but suggests that its outcome will “decide the fate of Europe.” “If, as I believe, the US is defeated, NATO will disintegrate and Europe will be left free,” Todd told the outlet, noting that it is unlikely that Russia would be compelled to militarily attack Western Europe after establishing itself on the Dnieper River.

“Russia will have neither the means nor the desire to expand once the borders of pre-communist Russia are reconstituted. The Russophobic hysteria of the West, which fantasizes about the desire for Russian expansion in Europe, is simply ridiculous for a serious historian,” he said. A number of Western leaders have in recent months raised concerns that if Russia were allowed to defeat Ukraine it would eventually set its sights on other European and NATO countries. Moscow, however, has repeatedly stressed that it has no intention of attacking any other countries once it accomplishes its goals in Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin has dismissed talk of a ‘Russian threat’ as “nonsense” being peddled by Western governments to scare the European population in order to “extract additional expenses” from them.

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“..he will not wait until the inauguration ceremony … in order to manage a peace” in Ukraine..”

• EU Running Out Of Time On Ukraine – Orban (RT)

The European Union must act now to settle the Ukraine conflict or be consigned to irrelevance by the US, the Hungarian prime minister has warned. Viktor Orban predicted that if Republican nominee Donald Trump wins the US presidential election on November 5, he will start to deal with the crisis even before he takes office. The former US president has repeatedly claimed that if elected, he will persuade Kiev and Moscow to reach a diplomatic solution “within 24 hours.” His running mate, J.D. Vance, has suggested that Trump would likely freeze the conflict along the current frontline and offer Russia a guarantee that Ukraine will not join NATO. Speaking at a press conference in Strasbourg on Tuesday, Orban said that should Trump defeat his Democratic rival Kamala Harris, “he will not wait until the inauguration ceremony … in order to manage a peace” in Ukraine.

Trump “will act immediately, so we as European leaders don’t have any time to waste, because there would not be two or three months, as we usually have between the election and the inauguration of the new president,” Orban said. He urged European leaders to “react first intellectually, philosophically, then strategically, and then at the level of action as soon as possible.” The Hungarian prime minister also said he was glad that the EU leaders would convene for an informal summit in Budapest on November 7, describing the event as a good opportunity to discuss potential ways out of the Ukraine conflict. Orban also pointed to foreign policy differences between the current Democratic administration and the Trump team, and admitted that he is rooting for the GOP candidate. Unlike many EU member states, Hungary has long called for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict, and firmly opposed the delivery of weapons to Ukraine.

Last month, the Hungarian prime minister claimed that a growing number of EU nations were leaning toward abandoning their “pro-war” stance and “would like to join the peace camp.” According to the official, it was Hungary that “started this idea, because we stirred up a huge debate in Europe.” “Without the peace mission, such a debate would not have started and everyone would still only talk war,” Orban stressed. After Budapest took over the rotating presidency of the EU in June, the Hungarian prime minister visited Kiev, Moscow, Beijing and Washington as part of his “peace mission.” The initiative drew the ire of EU officials in Brussels at the time. According to Orban, “this war clearly has no solution on the battlefield… An agreement must be sought.” Earlier in September, he argued that Ukraine and Russia should first agree to a ceasefire before drafting a detailed peace plan.

After meeting with Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky late last month, Trump told reporters that he had not “changed from the standpoint that we both want to see this end and we both want to see a fair deal made.” He doubled down on his pledge to “get [the Ukraine conflict] resolved very quickly.” The last peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine broke down in the spring of 2022, despite the sides pre-approving a proposed peace treaty. According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as both Ukrainian and US officials, the West “ordered” Kiev to withdraw from the talks. He has also claimed that Kiev had initially agreed to transform Ukraine into a neutral country and restrict the size of its military. Moscow has since expressed its readiness to settle the conflict diplomatically on numerous occasions, insisting, however, on Kiev accepting the “territorial reality” of Russia controlling the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics as well as Kherson and Zaporozhye regions and Crimea.

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Very much.

• Refusal to Buy Russian Energy Endangers EU’s Economic Growth – Orban (Sp.)

The fact that the European Union is refusing Russian natural gas has significantly endangered the bloc’s economic growth, forcing it to focus on its own energy infrastructure, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Wednesday. He added that this move spurred on an increase of energy prices. “The EU productivity is growing at slower pace of our competitors, and our share of global trade is going down. EU businesses are paying two to three times more in energy prices than in the United States, and this is four to five times when it comes to natural gas. Moving away from Russian energy has endangered EU GDP growth and we now need to focus on energy support and building infrastructure for liquefied natural gas [LNG],” Orban said at the plenary session of the European Parliament.

The West stepped up sanctions pressure on Russia after the start of the special military operation in Ukraine in 2022. Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the West’s long-term strategy of containing Russia was hurting the global economy instead. In June, the EU approved the 14th sanctions package against Russia. For the first time it is targeting gas, banning re-exports of Russian LNG in EU waters and prohibiting new investments and services in LNG production projects in Russia.

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“..the terms of Istanbul-II for the politicians to draft and sign must follow the terms of armistice, unconditional surrender and disarmament to be dictated by the generals.”

• What Is Russia Deciding For Terms To End The War In The Ukraine (Helmer)

The Russian history of end-of-war negotiations for the capitulation of Germany and for the World War II peace settlement requires it to be understood now: it was the Red Army’s defeat of the enemy on the battlefield all the way to Berlin which preceded and which was the precondition for the paper promises and pacts offered to Moscow by those allies whom Joseph Stalin understood to be permanent enemies of Russia — the United States, United Kingdom, and France. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has just spelled this out in an especially timed essay published on October 2. Those lessons are being repeated now because they apply with equal force to the end-of-war negotiations with the US in the process nicknamed Istanbul-II. For Russian decision-makers in Moscow, and for the Russian people across the country, there can be no long-term security for the country without the military defeat of the enemy on the Ukrainian battlefield, capitulation of the Kiev regime, and withdrawal from Ukrainian territory of its US and NATO allies. This is first of all.

The political “guarantees”, “permanent neutrality” of the Ukraine, and treaty promises for the removal of foreign bases, forces, and weapons to continue war against Russia – terms spelled out in the pact of March 2022 known as Istanbul-I — come second. This is because the terms are unreliable and unenforceable, no matter what president of the US is elected next month and promises the day after — unless and until the Russian military has won the unconditional surrender of its enemies, and secured the battlefield against revival of the war in future. This battlefield security extends from the new Russian western border to the old Ukrainian borders with Poland, Hungary, Romania and Moldova. Which must come first now — war or politics?

The Russian answers to this question being debated in Moscow today are turning the old German theory of war and the state upside down, reversing the meaning of the well-known maxim of Carl von Clausewitz, “war is a continuation of politics by other means.” In Europe today — the Russian General Staff and Security Council insist — politics is the continuation of war by other means. Accordingly, the terms of Istanbul-II for the politicians to draft and sign must follow the terms of armistice, unconditional surrender and disarmament to be dictated by the generals.

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“Peace summit”, “victory plan”, f•ck off. Your people are dying.

• Zelensky Cancels November ‘Peace Summit’ (RT)

Ukraine is no longer planning to hold a second peace conference on ending hostilities with Russia, a senior aide to Vladimir Zelensky has said. The meeting had been scheduled for November. Zelensky held an ambitiously-named ‘peace summit’ in June at the Swiss resort of Luzerne, where he sought support for his ‘peace formula’ – a ten-point wishlist that Moscow had rejected as delusional. The event, to which Russia was not invited, was widely seen as a failure. ”The Second Peace Summit will not take place in November,” senior presidential aide Darya Zarivna told the media on Tuesday. According to Zarivna, work is continuing on preparations for such a meeting, with “thematic conferences” dedicated to each point so that everything will be ready for an eventual conference. The last of those thematic conferences, dealing with humanitarian concerns, should take place in Canada at the end of October, Zarivna said.

During his visit to the US last month, Zelensky said he presented a “victory plan” to President Joe Biden and both presidential candidates in the upcoming election, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. While the exact details have not been made public, the five points leaked to the media amount to the West ramping up financial and economic aid to Kiev, admitting Ukraine to NATO and the EU, and allowing long-range missile strikes into Russian territory. Moscow has described the last point as direct participation of the US and its allies in the conflict, which would require an adequate response. Russia has since updated its nuclear doctrine accordingly.

On Tuesday, the White House announced that Biden would not meet Zelensky in Germany as previously scheduled, since he has canceled all of his travel plans due to Hurricane Milton impacting Florida. According to Ukrainian media, Zelensky and Biden were supposed to discuss the ‘victory plan’ this coming Saturday. Moscow has ruled out participation in Zelensky’s conferences, dismissing any discussion of the purported formula as futile and pointless. Russian President Vladimir Putin laid out a set of terms for a ceasefire with Ukraine in June, which included “denazification” and a legally binding rejection of membership in NATO.

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”Everything… is accounted for in a database for damage incurred to the economy, businesses and individuals..”

• Russia Could Seek War Reparations From Ukraine (RT)

Russian officials are keeping track of damage caused by Ukrainian military actions, so that Moscow has accurate figures for potential reparation claims, a senior diplomat has said. Rodion Miroshnik, who is leading Moscow’s special mission to investigate alleged Ukrainian war crimes, discussed this aspect of the conflict with Izvestia newspaper on Wednesday. Much of this work is done on a regional level, but the data collection is coordinated by the central government, he explained. ”Everything… is accounted for in a database for damage incurred to the economy, businesses and individuals,” Miroshnik said. ”Much depends on the battlefield,” he added. “As we progress, an opportunity will arise to formulate our demands regarding those who committed crimes and to discuss realistic mechanisms for damage compensation.”

In February, Oleg Ustenko, who advises Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky on economic issues, estimated the total damages that the country would seek from Russia at $1 trillion. Last year, Prime Minister Denis Shmigal put the figure of prospective reparations at $750 billion, saying that “confiscated accounts of Russia and Russian oligarchs should be the key source.” In May, the US created national financial mechanisms, which can be used to finance Kiev now and to fund its eventual recovery using confiscated Russian assets. Western nations seized some $300 billion of Russian sovereign assets after the outbreak of hostilities in February 2022. Brussels has applied a windfall tax on profits generated by those funds to be spent on Kiev’s needs. Work is underway to create a $50 billion loan against future profits, which would then be transferred to Ukraine.

Russia has denounced those actions as theft of its property. Kiev wants the entire amount transferred to the country. Izvestia cited several estimates by Russian regions in relation to damage that could be claimed from Ukraine, ranging in value from roughly $200 million in the border Belgorod Region to $145 billion in Crimea. This was the biggest figure, set out in June by Vladimir Konstantinov, the parliament speaker of the former Ukrainian region. It included damages relating to Kiev’s economic blockade of the Crimean peninsula. The Ukrainian government cut water and power supplies to Crimea following a decision by its people to join Russia and reject the government that was installed in Kiev after the US-backed armed coup in 2014.

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“..a cumulative decline of 0.58% under Biden to 14.76%..”

• US Global Economic Share Dips Below 15% For First Time (Sp.)

The US share of the global economy has tanked below 15% during Joe Biden’s presidency. By the end of his term, it is projected to hit a record low of 14.76%, according to Sputnik calculations based on data from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. In 1990, the US accounted for 20.16% of the global economy, measured by purchasing power parity (PPP). That share peaked at 21.01% in 1999, with an economic output of $9.6 trillion, compared to a global output of $45.85 trillion. However, the US portion has steadily declined since, with the sharpest drop occurring between 2006 and 2008, when it fell by 0.6% annually. The US share temporarily increased during Barack Obama’s second term, reaching 16.26% in 2014 and 2015, but failed in sustaining the momentum.

By the end of Obama’s presidency, it fell to 16.04%. Subsequently, the US share declined by another 0.7% under Donald Trump. In Biden’s second year, the US share slipped below 15%, reaching 14.82% by the end of 2023. IMF estimates predict the trend will continue, with the US share falling by another 0.06% by the end of 2024, resulting in a cumulative decline of 0.58% under Biden to 14.76%. Meanwhile, China’s share of the global economy has surged to 18.76%, while Japan’s share has dropped by 4.33% over the past 33 years.

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“..it would take about $20 billion to end homelessness in the United States, or about $25 billion to end hunger in the country..”

• US Spending on Mideast Conflict Tops $22 Billion in One Year (Sp.)

The Biden administration began the emergency supply of weapons and ammunition to Tel Aviv immediately after the start of the Israel-Hamas War a year ago, further ramping up its involvement in the conflict by deploying carrier battlegroups, aircraft squadrons, air defenses and boots on the ground at bases across the Middle East. The United States has spent $22.76 billion on the conflict in the Middle East between last October and now, $17.9 billion of this for security assistance to Israel, and $4.86 billion on beefed up US deployments throughout the region, including for the flagging campaign against the Houthis, a new report by Brown University’s Cost of War project has revealed. The university says its estimates – accounting for the period from October 7, 2023 through September 30, 2024, are “conservative,” and do “not include any other economic costs” associated with the crisis, such as heightened costs to global shipping resulting from the Houthis’ partial blockade of the Red Sea to Israel-linked maritime traffic.

The report says US weapons deliveries to Israel have included some 57,000 artillery shells, 36,000 rounds of ammunition for cannons, 20,000 M4A1 rifles, nearly 14,000 anti-tank missiles (though Israel’s Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthi adversaries possess no tanks), and 8,700 MK 82 500 pound bombs. Other assistance included $4 billion to replenish Israel’s Iron Dome and David’s Sling air and missile defense systems, $1.2 billion for the Iron Beam laser air defense system, still in development, and $4.4 billion to replenish US armories emptied by the emergency deliveries to Tel Aviv. US aid also included 4,127,000 kg of JP-8 jet fuel, 14,100 MK 84 unguided 2,000 bombs, 3,000 Joint Direct Attack Munition dumb-to-smart bomb conversion kits, 3,000 Hellfire missiles, 2,600 250-pound GBU-39 Small Diameter Bombs, 1,800 M141 bunker buster bombs, 3,500 night vision devices, 200 Switchblade drones, 100+ Skydio X drones, and 75 Joint Light Tactical Vehicles.

Brown’s report noted that the $17.9 billion in direct arms aid to Israel over the past year is “substantially more than in any other year since the US began granting military aid” to the country in 1959. Before 2023-2024, an average year’s-worth of US assistance amounted to approximately $3.3 billion, with total aid between 1946 and early 2024 topping $300 billion, adjusted for inflation. The study also broke down US expenditures related to the Pentagon’s beefed up footprint in the Middle East amid the Gaza conflict, including a $2.4 billion supplemental, another $2.4 billion for costs associated with operating carrier strike groups and other missions against the Houthis, and $50-$70 million for additional combat pay.

Washington’s largesse fueling the conflict in the Middle East contrasts sharply with its economic neoliberalism-driven penny-pinching on social programs at home, with aid organizations calculating, for example, that it would take about $20 billion to end homelessness in the United States, or about $25 billion to end hunger in the country. The crisis in the Middle East is just one of three major security emergencies the US has been actively engaged in over the past year, with others including the ongoing NATO-fueled proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, and the spat with Beijing in Asia amid Washington’s efforts to hem China in along its coasts and prevent the peaceful, negotiated reunification of Taiwan with the People’s Republic.

The Kiel Institute for the World Economy estimates that the United States has sent over $82 billion-worth of support to Ukraine over the past two-and-a-half years, including $56.6 billion in military assistance. Former President Donald Trump believes that figure is much higher, estimating that the actual number is closer to $300 billion. “So, we’re into almost $300 billion for Ukraine, and yet they’re offering people $750 for immediate aid for the worst hurricane than anybody has ever seen,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News on Monday, referring to federal assistance to the victims of Hurricane Helene, which laid a path of flooding and destruction across the US southeast in late September, killing at least 200 people and causing over $38 billion in damage.

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“Anyone dumb enough to push a tank column through Wadi Saluki should not be an armored brigade commander but a cook..”

• Israel Seeks To Fix 2006 Failures, While Hezbollah Lies In Wait (Mehdi)

[..] in the wake of the assassinations of Nasrallah and other top Hezbollah commanders and strategists, the occupation state has ramped up its offensive in Lebanon, with devastating consequences. Targeted airstrikes on Hezbollah’s communication infrastructure and leadership compounds have claimed the lives of over 37 Hezbollah fighters, but it is the civilian casualties that have been most staggering. More than 2,000 Lebanese civilians, including women and children, have been killed – almost double the death toll of 2006 – and over 10,000 injured in less than two weeks, leading international organizations to consider these actions potential war crimes. In 2006, during 34 days of Israel’s aggressions, the total death toll was 1,300. The Israeli bombardment of southern Lebanon and Beirut today mirrors the devastation 18 years ago when villages in the Bekaa Valley and the southern suburbs of Beirut were similarly struck.

Despite the enormous setbacks, Hezbollah has continued to launch rocket attacks deep into Israeli territory, demonstrating a resilience that reflects its strategic gains from the 2006 war. In the last few days, the Lebanese resistance appears to have turned the tide further, striking key Israeli port city Haifa with over 200 projectiles in a historically unprecedented attack on the city and its environs. One of the key lessons Tel Aviv appears to have absorbed from its 2006 military campaign is to apply an excessive use of force, regardless of any accompanying international backlash. CSIS report author Daniel Byman points out that Israel’s war on Gaza and its recent assaults on Lebanon “have clearly shown that Israel’s doctrine of using force has also become more destructive.”

In 2008, the head of the Israeli military’s Northern Command, Major General Gadi Eisenkot, warned after the 2006 war that next time, Israel would destroy “every village from which it fires” and make Hezbollah pay a heavy domestic price for its actions. The CSIS report notes that Israel is less concerned about damaging its international reputation than it was in 2006: “After the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza, killing more in Lebanon is not likely to make it worse.” Despite its overwhelming firepower, Israel’s ground invasion during the 2006 war exposed significant tactical failures. After two weeks of heavy airstrikes, Israel launched “Operation Change of Direction,” deploying thousands of soldiers into southern Lebanon to eliminate Hezbollah fighters.

However, the ground incursion proved disastrous for the Israeli army. The Lebanese resistance, deeply entrenched in underground tunnels and well-versed in guerrilla warfare, inflicted heavy losses on Israeli forces, most notably in the Saluki Valley ambush, where Hezbollah blocked the southern end of a column of tanks, then fired anti-tank missiles to devastate Israeli units who were helpless without artillery and infantry support. “Anyone dumb enough to push a tank column through Wadi Saluki should not be an armored brigade commander but a cook,” reflected Timur Goksel, a Turkish diplomat, military officer, and former spokesman for the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).

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“..the enemy at this point, honestly, not just of Lebanon, or of Palestine, or Syria, or Iran. Israel is becoming an enemy of humanity.”

• Israel’s Collective Punishment Turns the World Against It (DeMartino)

In 2008, Israel Defense Forces colonel Gabriel Siboni described what would be named the Dahiyeh doctrine. ”In Lebanon, attacks should both aim at [Hezbollah’s] military capabilities and should target economic interests and the centers of civilian power that support the organization… [Israel] will have to respond disproportionately,” he wrote. The collective punishment carried out by the state of Israel on the people of Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon has turned the world against it and could be its undoing. The repercussions of Israel’s indiscriminate and murderous campaign can be seen both locally and across the globe. “There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel, everything is closed [in Gaza]. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said days after the October 7 attack. Inside Gaza, Hamas was facing a popularity crisis, with only 20% of the population supporting them before October 7 according to James Zogby of the Arab-American Institute.

By launching Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, Hamas hoped to change its image and increase its popularity. “Hamas sought to use October 7th as an attempt to reconfigure its image as an authoritarian militant group into a fighting force protecting Palestinians against Israeli aggression. Hamas believed that by framing October 7th as a revolutionary act of resistance against Israel, Palestinians would see them as protectors of their struggle and see Hamas in a favorable light,” wrote Abdelhalim Abdelrahman in an article for antiwar.com on the anniversary of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. A recent poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found that 56% of Palestinians in Gaza say that armed resistance is “the best means of achieving Palestinian goals in ending the occupation and building an independent state,” increasing from 50% in September 2023. The same trend is happening in Lebanon with Hezbollah, the editor of The Cradle told Sputnik’s Fault Lines on Tuesday.

“What has been happening in Lebanon I think is actually creating more support for Hezbollah because even among the people who dislike the existence of the Lebanese resistance, they dislike Israel more,” he argued. “You’re not all of a sudden gonna start taking the side of the people who are bombing your city, your capital, your country. So indiscriminately cutting off the land route to Syria, threatening to start bombing from the sea, as well as from the air… this is the Dahiyeh doctrine.” “They were hoping that at some point Palestinians would be like enough is enough, we are going to turn against Hamas, and that never happened. And, it’s never gonna happen here in Lebanon as well,” Carrillo continued. “Even if they spark some sort of color revolution, it’s gonna fizzle out because Israel, at the end of the day, is the enemy at this point, honestly, not just of Lebanon, or of Palestine, or Syria, or Iran. Israel is becoming an enemy of humanity.” In the region, Israel’s actions have erased decades of work that its government and the US put into normalizing relations with its neighbors.

“[October 7] sidelined what appeared to be an upcoming, soon to be realized, entente between Saudi Arabia and Israel. That would have sidelined… the notion of Palestinian self-determination. But, with October 7, the opposite is in play with the Saudi leadership now contending that no normalization with Israel is possible unless the question of Palestinian self-determination and statehood is on the table,” Dr. Gerald Horne, a historian that holds the John J. and Rebecca Moores Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston told Sputnik’s The Critical Hour. “You can also say that October 7, 2023, weakened the Abraham Accords. Those are the accords initiated by US President, Mr. Trump, which called for normalizing of relations between Morocco and Bahrain and Sudan,” continued Horne. “We now know that with Sudan’s leadership inking those ill-fated accords, it was greeted with hostility on the streets of Khartoum, leading to what is now [a] de-facto civil war.” Across the globe, Israel is finding that countries that were previously satisfied with the status quo are no longer supportive of the zionist state.

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“We are ready for any scenario, the armed forces are fully prepared,” Araghchi stressed. He, however, noted that Iran’s policy is to stop the hostilities and reach an “acceptable ceasefire.”

• Iran ‘Fully Prepared’ For War – FM (RT)

Iran does not want an escalation of tensions in the Middle East and supports efforts for a ceasefire but is fully prepared for war, the country’s foreign minister, Seyed Abbas Araghchi, has stated. The Islamic Republic launched a barrage of missiles at Israel last Tuesday, striking a number of military bases in what Tehran said was a response to recent Israeli killings of Hamas and Hezbollah leaders. Israel vowed a “serious and significant” strike in reprisal. “We have stated many times that Iran does not want to increase tension, although we are not afraid of war, we are fully prepared…” Araghchi told reporters on Tuesday in Tehran on the sidelines of the ‘Al-Aqsa Storm; The Beginning of Nasrallah’ conference. “We are ready for any scenario, the armed forces are fully prepared,” Araghchi stressed. He, however, noted that Iran’s policy is to stop the hostilities and reach an “acceptable ceasefire.”

According to Mehr News, the top diplomat said at the conference on Tuesday that Israel should not test Tehran’s will. He warned that any attack on Iran would be met with a crushing response. The Iranian military has prepared “at least ten” scenarios for a possible Israeli strike, according to media reports on Monday. The Iranian parliament is reportedly drafting a so-called ‘resistance pact’ to bolster regional security and counter potential external threats, particularly from the US and Israel. According to the Tehran Times, citing the text of the proposal, all member countries will be required to provide comprehensive support – including military, economic, and political assistance – should any member come under attack from Israel or its allies.

Monday marked the one-year anniversary of the raid into southern Israel by Hamas, which claimed some 1,200 lives. The Jewish State responded by declaring war on the Gaza-based militant group and imposing a near-total siege on the enclave. Nearly 42,000 Palestinians have been killed, most of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. Tensions have also risen between Israel and neighboring Muslim countries, which have sided with the Palestinians. Earlier this month, Israel launched a ground operation in Lebanon and has targeted the leadership of the Hezbollah organization.

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We know.

• US Navy Was At Scene Of Nord Stream Blasts – Media (RT)

US Navy vessels were operating at the scene shortly before the explosions that crippled the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in the Baltic Sea, Danish newspaper Politiken has reported, citing a local harbormaster. The crucial energy infrastructure, built to deliver Russian gas to Germany and the rest of Europe, was ruptured by underwater blasts in September 2022. The piece by Politiken was published on September 26 but largely went unnoticed. However, it resurfaced on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday, with claims being reposted by Glenn Greenwald and other prominent independent journalists. According to the article, American warships had been operating in the area east of the Danish island of Bornholm with their transponders switched off. The paper spoke to John Anker Nielsen, the harbormaster at the Danish port of Christianso, located near Bornholm.

He said he had decided to share details of the events of September 2022, despite initially being “not allowed to say a thing” about them. According to Nielsen, he launched a rescue operation in the area four or five days before the Nord Stream blasts after spotting ships with their transponders switched off and assuming there was an emergency. However, when Danish rescuers approached the scene, they saw that the vessels in question were US Navy ships, Nielsen said. The Naval Command then told Nielsen and his colleagues to turn back, the harbormaster recalled. Politiken said Nielsen does not believe Western media claims that Nord Stream was sabotaged by Ukraine, supposedly using a yacht, named Andromeda, and a small crew to carry out the sophisticated attack. According to the paper, the harbormaster instead has “some faith” in the version of events provided by legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh.

In early February 2023, Hersh authored a report claiming that US President Joe Biden had given the order to destroy Nord Stream. According to an informed source who talked to the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, the explosives that were detonated on September 26, 2022 had been planted at the pipelines during the previous June by US Navy divers under the cover of a NATO exercise called ‘Baltops 22’. The White House denied the report, calling it “utterly false and complete fiction.” Senior Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, have previously pointed the finger at the US as the possible culprit behind the Nord Stream explosions. They have argued that Washington had the technical means to carry out the operation and stood to gain the most, considering that the attack disrupted Russian energy supplies to the EU and forced a shift to more expensive US-supplied liquefied natural gas.

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“Google will battle this in the courts for years.”

• US Antitrust Officials Consider Google Breakup As ‘Trustbusting Era’ May Return (ZH)

The US Department of Justice and a group of states submitted a document detailing a proposed remedy framework in the ongoing antitrust case against big tech giant Google. The case centers around Google’s violations of Section 2 of the Sherman Act for illegally maintaining monopolies, including general search services and text advertising. On Aug. 5, US District Judge Amit Mehta, Washington, DC, ruled that Google violated antitrust law by spending billions of dollars to create an illegal monopoly as the world’s default search engine on smartphones, computers, and tablets. The ruling paved the way for antitrust enforcers to submit a 32-page document on Tuesday that explained the potential remedies for the judge to consider as the case moves into the remedy phase.

On page 9 of the remedy framework document, the DoJ specifies the government has a “full range of tools previously identified such as structural and additional behavioral remedies as well as term extensions” to restore competition in the marketplace that would modify Google’s business from using products such as its Chrome browser or Android operating system to create advantages for the big tech firm’s search engine. “Fully remedying these harms requires not only ending Google’s control of distribution today, but also ensuring Google cannot control the distribution of tomorrow,” DoJ said. Antitrust enforcers said Google colluded with other big tech companies to make its search engine the default option on devices.

Google quickly responded in a blog post titled “DOJ’s radical and sweeping proposals risk hurting consumers, businesses, and developers” to the remedy framework document on Tuesday evening. Google Vice President of Regulatory Affairs Lee-Anne Mulholland wrote in the post that the DoJ’s remedy framework is “radical” and could have “negative unintended consequences for American innovation and America’s consumers.” Google’s market capitalization (as of Tuesday’s close) of just a little over $2 trillion makes it the world’s fourth-largest company. Mounting legal pressure sent shares down around 1% in premarket trading in New York. Antitrust pressure has been building, with multiple cases being pushed against Google. It also faces the threat of breakup in a separate government lawsuit centered around its online advertising business.

Across the Atlantic, European Union watchdogs have voiced similar concerns with antitrust enforcers in the US about the need to break up Google’s businesses. EU competition chief Margrethe Vestager recently said that “divestiture is the only way” to settle these worries with the big tech firm. Daniel Ives, managing director and senior equity analyst at Wedbush Securities, commented on Google’s potential breakup, indicating it’s “unlikely at this point despite the antitrust swirls,” adding, “Google will battle this in the courts for years.” There has been a four-decade lull in the government breaking up major companies. The last major one came with the 1984 breakup of AT&T. Before that, the 20th century was considered the ‘trustbusting era’, with Standard Oil, American Tobacco, and a railroad trust known as Northern Securities forced to spit up by the government.

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The SEC was never fit for the task.

• Crypto Exchange Sues US Market Regulator (RT)

The cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com has filed a lawsuit against the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for what it believes to be an overstepping of legal boundaries in regulating the crypto industry. The decision by Crypto.com to sue the SEC came after it received a so-called Wells Notice from the regulator, according to a statement issued on the company’s website on Tuesday. The company claims to be seeking to protect the future of the industry. A Wells Notice is a formal declaration that the regulator intends to recommend an enforcement action against it. According to Reuters, retail trading platform Robinhood’s crypto business, major US crypto exchange Coinbase, and NFT marketplace OpenSea are among the companies in the digital assets industry that have received such notices.

The SEC’s “unauthorized and unjust” actions towards the crypto industry have left no other choice than to file a suit, Singapore-based Crypto.com stated. “Our lawsuit contends that the SEC has unilaterally expanded its jurisdiction beyond statutory limits and separately that the SEC has established an unlawful rule that trades in nearly all crypto assets are securities transactions no matter how they are sold…” “We seek to stop the SEC’s illegal actions in excess of their authority and in violation of federal law in their tracks,” the statement reads. Separately, the company filed a petition with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the SEC, seeking a joint interpretation to confirm that certain cryptocurrency derivative products are solely regulated by the CFTC.

The crypto industry has faced a US regulatory crackdown since the 2022 collapse of FTX. The Bahamas-based exchange was exposed as a Ponzi scheme used to siphon investor funds into the pockets of executives and, via donations, to politicians. Crypto companies have since accused the SEC of overreach and of violating its jurisdiction, while the agency has claimed that it has the authority to regulate crypto under existing laws. The SEC’s cryptocurrency-related actions increased by more than 50% in 2023 over the previous year, according to the US law firm Troutman Pepper. The firms expects this trend to continue.

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Dr. Phil

 

 

Bigtree

 

 

Trump Scots

 

 

Eva

 

 

“Where were you”

 

 

Dog cam
https://twitter.com/i/status/1844067125335556209

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle August 15 2024

Aug 152024
 
 August 15, 2024  Posted by at 8:38 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  97 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh The Rispal Restaurant at Asnieres 1887

 

• Will Trump End Elections? Anatomy Of A Failed Hoax (Miele)
• Olympic Boxer’s “Cyberbullies” Lawsuit A Threat To Free Speech (MN)
• Olympic Gold Winner Sues Musk Over ‘Cyber Harassment’ (RT)
• ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness’ WaPo Urges White House Crackdown on Media (Sp.)
• WaPo Reporter Calls on White House to Censor Trump for America (Turley)
• Scott Ritter Says FBI Monitored Him For Years (TASS)
• The Murder of Others (Scott Ritter)
• Hunter Biden Asked State Department To Aid Burisma Deal While Joe Was VP (ZH)
• Biden Admits ‘Direct Contact’ With Ukraine Over Assault On Kursk (RT)
• Ukraine Wants Talks Using Kursk Nuclear Plant Seizure as Ultimatum (Sp.)
• Ukraine Has Defaulted – Fitch (RT)
• Pro-Israel Lobby Overrides US Public Opinion on Gaza (Miles)
• Cracks in the Dome: Israel’s Security Mirage (Raiss)
• FTC Hints Tech ‘Monopolist’ Google Should Be Broken Up (ZH)

 

 

 

 

Doocy

 

 

One time

 

 

Kamala headlines

 

 

Internet czar
https://twitter.com/i/status/1823379194258010348

 

 

Taliban

 

 

 

 

Benz

 

 

O’Leary

 

 

RFK
https://twitter.com/i/status/1823592168549728720

 

 

RFK

 

 

 

 

“This election will be the most important election in the history of our country. We’re going to save our country with this election.”

• Will Trump End Elections? Anatomy Of A Failed Hoax (Miele)

The good news is that Donald Trump is very familiar with the Democrats’ tactic of character assassination. For the past nine years he has been subjected to endless false attacks that aimed to polarize him as first a Russian stooge, then a white supremacist, and finally an enemy of democracy who threatened a “bloodbath” if he wasn’t reelected in 2024. Those attacks have all been exposed as partisan chicanery, but that doesn’t stop his opponents from repeating them every chance they get. Two weeks ago, Democrats and the mainstream media were caught red-handed as they tried to jump-start a new hoax that suggested Trump would cancel future elections if he were elected this year. The video that played on Sunday morning shows and across the universe of cable news channels for three days at the end of July came from a speech that Trump delivered to the Turning Point Action Believers Summit on Friday, July 26.

This clip from CNN typified the way Trump’s words were portrayed, with one commentator saying that “it certainly sounds like a presidential candidate that is determined to shut down the democratic process.” CBS News reached the same conclusion, saying that on social media there were “some calls of alarm in response to Trump’s comments, expressing concern that they alluded to authoritarianism and could be interpreted as an indication that he would not leave office if he wins the election.” That’s ridiculous, of course, and if there should be any concern about Trump’s words, it would be about how nonchalantly the media distorted them for the purpose of character assassination.

The part of Trump’s speech that was played or quoted ad infinitum by mainstream media for those three days was this: “Christians, get out and vote, just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what, it’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine, you won’t have to vote any more, my beautiful Christians … In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.” Twisting those words to suggest Trump was planning “to shut down the democratic process” is just cynical. But if anyone were sincerely alarmed, you’d think that their next step would be to listen to the entire speech where these words were uttered to find out if there was any missing context.

A real journalist would look for answers before running with a hugely damaging and potentially slanderous story. But this episode demonstrates conclusively that there are very few real journalists left in America. I knew the real meaning of Trump’s words because I had watched the speech live on a streaming channel, but how much work would it take for a highly paid network reporter or anchor to look at the Believers speech after the fact before accusing the former president of plotting to eliminate elections? If they had, they would have found that, a little over 37 minutes into his speech, Trump explained to his audience that Christians vote in disappointingly low numbers, and if they wanted him to return to the White House, they needed to go out and vote “at least this election.” Here’s the full quote that I don’t believe was ever played, not once, by any major media outlet:

“And by the way, Christians have to vote. You know, I don’t want to scold you, but do you know Christians do not vote proportionately, they don’t vote like they should. They’re not big voters … They have to vote. If they don’t vote, we’re not going to win the election. If you do vote, we’re going to win in a landslide. Too big to rig. We’re gonna win in a landslide. … You know, you have tremendous power, but you just don’t know that. But you have to use that power. Christians are a group that’s known not to vote very much. You have to go out at least this election, just get us into that beautiful White House. Vote for your congressmen and women. Vote for your senators. We will change this country for the better. This country will be great again like never before. You gotta vote. … This election will be the most important election in the history of our country. We’re going to save our country with this election.”

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Wonder who set up XY for this.

• Olympic Boxer’s “Cyberbullies” Lawsuit A Threat To Free Speech (MN)

A human rights lawyer has warned that a lawsuit brought by Algerian Olympic boxer Imane Khelif against the likes of Elon Musk and JK Rowling could set a significant precedent against free speech. Khelif, who competed and won a gold medal in the women’s welterweight division, despite having XY chromosomes, is charging that prominent personalities and bodies engaged in “acts of aggravated cyber harassment.” Questions were raised by both the World Boxing Organisation and the International Boxing Association regarding Khelif’s eligibility to compete as a woman following two previous ‘failed’ gender tests. Speaking to GB News, human rights lawyer David Haigh warned that the lawsuit could lead to “policing of social media” across borders. Haigh outlined “If they proceed with this, the Paris prosecutors have the reach jurisdiction to come to other countries. And if that is the case, that then is a very concerning development.”

“You can have countries around the world basically policing social media in other countries. It could be a very, very significant case in free speech, the use of social media,” Haigh added. He continued, “are we now going to see France trying to extradite or issuing arrest warrants for JK Rowling? It’s a very slippery slope and it could become a very significant case.” The lawyer also noted that the case could also set a legal precedent in terms of gender ideology. “If it proceeds, and that’s a big if, it could have significant ramifications. Whether or not there has been harassment, you will have a debate on what is and isn’t a man or a woman in the court,” he noted. “If part of whether or not there has been harassment and abuse comes down to whether or not that boxer is a man or a woman, obviously evidence will need to be put forward on both sides of that,” Haigh further explained.

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Trump will also be part of the suit. You could get a Paris prosecutor go after a US president for saying “I will keep men out of women’s sports!”

They want a French judge to redefine for the whole world what a woman is.

• Olympic Gold Winner Sues Musk Over ‘Cyber Harassment’ (RT)

French prosecutors have opened a probe into a claim by Algerian Olympic boxer Imane Khelif over alleged “acts of aggravated cyber harassment” during the games by several prominent figures, including Elon Musk, according to Variety magazine. Prosecutors reportedly said on Wednesday that the X (formerly Twitter) owner was named in the criminal complaint, along with Harry Potter author JK Rowling. In the complaint, Khelif claimed she was targeted by a “misogynist, racist and sexist campaign” as she fought her way to gold in the women’s welterweight division. Nabil Boudi, the Paris-based attorney for Khelif, told the magazine that the complaint was posted to the anti-online hatred center of the Paris Prosecutor’s Office on Friday.

The prosecutor’s office reportedly confirmed that an investigation had been launched. “J. K. Rowling and Elon Musk are named in the lawsuit, among others,” Boudi told the magazine, adding that former US President Donald Trump would be part of the investigation. “Trump tweeted, so whether or not he is named in our lawsuit, he will inevitably be looked into as part of the prosecution,” he stated. The attorney also noted that the lawsuit was filed against X, which under French law means that it was filed against unknown persons. That “ensure[s] that the ‘prosecution has all the latitude to be able to investigate against all people,” Boudi said. The 25-year-old boxer, who on Saturday won the Olympic gold medal in the women’s 66-kilogram boxing competition, has found herself at the center of a gender controversy. Khelif became the subject of global attention after defeating Italian boxer Angela Carini in just 46 seconds in a preliminary match.

The short bout sparked outrage online, with many calling the Algerian athlete ‘male’ due to previous failed gender tests. According to Algeria, Khelif is not transgender at all but a woman affected by a condition known as hyperandrogenism, characterized by a high level of testosterone and the presence of XY chromosomes. Following the match, J. K. Rowling posted on X a picture of the boxers, accusing Khelif of being a man who was “enjoying the distress of a woman he’s just punched in the head.” Musk, meanwhile, shared a post that claimed “men don’t belong in women’s sports,” captioning it “Absolutely.” Trump’s post about the boxing match was accompanied by the message: “I will keep men out of women’s sports!” The International Olympic Committee, for its part, defended Khelif and denounced those peddling misinformation.

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“..you think your job is to collude with the White House press secretary to censor Americans with whom you disagree?”

• ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness’ WaPo Urges White House Crackdown on Media (Sp.)

Washington Post White House reporter Cleve Wootson Jr. is taking flak from conservatives, media impartiality and free speech activists after a controversial exchange with WH press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre apparently urging the federal government to “stop” the spread of “misinformation” relating to the 2024 campaign and beyond. “I think that misinformation on Twitter is not just a campaign issue. It’s an America issue. What role does the White House or the president have in sort of stopping that, or stopping the spread of that or intervening in that?” Wootson asked in anticipation of the Elon Musk-Donald Trump interview on X Monday night, which reportedly wound up garnering as many as a billion combined views. “You’ve heard us talking about this many times from here about the responsibilities that social media platforms have when it comes to misinformation and disinformation.

I don’t have anything to read out from here about specific ways that we’re working on it. But we believe that they have the responsibility. These are private companies, so we’re also mindful of that too. But I think it is incredibly important to call that out as you are doing. I just don’t have any specifics on what we have been doing internally,” Jean-Pierre responded. The Wootson-Jean-Pierre exchange spread like wildfire online, with commentators sarcastically recalling the Washington Post’s ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness’ slogan and expressing concern over the outlet’s apparent request that the White House “cancel the Bill of Rights,” whose Free Press Clause protects the publication of information and opinions, no matter their content. “The Washington Post trying to get the government to shut down private citizen interviews with presidential candidates. Because democracy dies in people speaking freely,” one popular response quipped.

“Washington Post reporter asks if Biden/Kamala administration should permit Trump to talk to Elon Musk or if the government should block their conversation. This is where we are, much of the media opposes free speech,” one person lamented. “Truly pathetic…You are a White House reporter for the Washington Post. And you think your job is to collude with the White House press secretary to censor Americans with whom you disagree? Do you understand how dumb and dangerous you sound? You’re truly shameful,” another wrote. WaPo critics’ outrage over Wootson’s suggestion is itself somewhat of a surprise, given the increasingly well-documented collusion between the US government, traditional media and Big Tech, from orders to ban or otherwise restrict foreign media (including Sputnik), to revelations in the ‘Twitter Files’ detailing some of the “specifics” mentioned by Jean-Pierre of government-big tech complicity in taking down stories and banning users to try to control informational awareness on topical issues ranging from wars and politics to elections.

The Washington Post’s request that the White House cracks down on “misinformation” also comes in the face of increasingly bald-faced attempts by the mainstream media to control the narrative relating to the upcoming US election, with a slew of blunt efforts by outlets to prop up one candidate, or silence criticism of said candidate’s lack of media interviews, being met with increasingly loud resistance.

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“There was a time when a reporter calling for censorship of a political opponent would have been a matter for immediate termination in the media..”

• WaPo Reporter Calls on White House to Censor Trump for America (Turley)

In my new book on free speech, I discuss at length how the mainstream media has joined an alliance with the government and corporations in favor of censorship and blacklisting. The Washington Post, however, appears to be taking its anti-free speech campaign to a new level with open calls for a crackdown. The newspaper offered no objection or even qualification after its reporter, Cleve Wootson Jr., appeared to call upon the White House to censor the interview of Elon Musk with former President Donald Trump. Under the guise of a question, Wootson told White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre that censoring its leading political opponent is “an America issue.” During Monday’s press briefing, the Washington Post’s Cleve Wootson Jr. flagged the interview and said “I think that misinformation on Twitter is not just a campaign issue…it’s an America issue.” After making that affirmative statement, Wootson then asked

“…What role does the White House or the president have in sort of stopping that or stopping the spread of that or sort of intervening in that? Some of that was about campaign misinformation, but, you know, it’s a wider thing, right?” Note how his question was really a political statement. Wootson begins by stating as a fact that Musk and X are engaging in disinformation and it is a threat to the country. He then asks a perfunctory softball question at the end to maintain appearances. Jean-Pierre’s response was equally telling. While noting that this is a private company, she praised the Washington Post for calling for action, saying “[i]t is incredibly important to call that out, as you’re doing. I just don’t have any specifics on what we have been doing internally.” So let’s recap. The Washington Post used a White House presser to call for censorship of one of the leading candidates for the White House and then demanded to know what the White House would do about it. The censorship was framed as an “America issue.”

There was a time when a reporter calling for censorship of a political opponent would have been a matter for immediate termination in the media. Instead, the newspaper that prides itself on the slogan “Democracy dies in Darkness,” has been entirely silent. No correction. No qualification. The Washington Post has long run columns supporting censorship of information that it deems disinformation or misinformation. For many of us in the free speech community, it has become one of the most hostile newspapers to free speech values. Now censorship has become “an America issue” for the Washington Post. The collapse of any semblance of support for free speech is complete. The call for censorship for disinformation is ironic given the Post’s publication of a series of false stories and conspiracy theories. When confronted about columnists with demonstrably false statements, the Post simply shrugged.

[..] The decline of the Post has followed a familiar pattern. The editors and reporters simply wrote off half of their audience and became a publication for largely liberal and Democratic readers. In these difficult economic times with limited revenue sources, it is a lethal decision. Robert Lewis, a British media executive who joined the Post earlier this year, reportedly got into a “heated exchange” with a staffer. Lewis explained that, while reporters were protesting measures to expand readership, the very survival of the paper was now at stake: “We are going to turn this thing around, but let’s not sugarcoat it. It needs turning around,” Lewis said. “We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff. Right. I can’t sugarcoat it anymore.”

Other staffers could not get beyond the gender and race of those who would be overseeing them. One staffer complained “we now have four White men running three newsrooms.” The Post has been buying out staff to avoid mass layoffs, but reporters are up in arms over the effort to turn the newspaper around. Yet, in this case, a reporter openly advocated for censorship and pushed the White House to take action against X and Trump; to use government authority to “intervene” to stop Trump from being able to make certain claims on social media.

We have previously written how the level of advocacy and bias in the press has created a danger of a de facto state media in the United States. It is possible to have such a system by consent rather than coercion. The Biden White House has become more open in its marching orders to media, including a letter drafted by the Biden White House Legal Counsel’s Office calling for major media to “ramp up their scrutiny” of House Republicans. President Biden has even instructed reporters “[t]hat is not the judgment of the press” when asked tough questions. To the credit of the Post, it is not killing “democracy in the darkness.” This incident occurred in the light of day for all to see as its reporter pushed the White House for the censoring of political opponents.

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“It came down to their concern about my relationship with the Russian government, and that somehow I’m taking direction from the Russian government..”

• Scott Ritter Says FBI Monitored Him For Years (TASS)

Former US intelligence officer Scott Ritter said the FBI had monitored him for years. “They admitted that they’ve been monitoring me for years,” he said on a podcast called Judging Freedom, which is hosted by Andrew Napolitano. “I got nothing to hide here. But they [the FBI] are concerned. It came down to their concern about my relationship with the Russian government, and that somehow I’m taking direction from the Russian government,” the former officer said. On August 7, NBC television reported Ritter’s home was subjected to a search. The FBI confirmed to TASS that its agents conducted investigative actions at the former officer’s home. Ritter had previously said the searches could be related to the US government’s concerns about violations of the US Foreign Agents Registration Act. The Times Union reported that the law requires individuals and organizations representing foreign interests in the United States to register with the Department of Justice and disclose their activities. Ritter strongly denies all of the allegations. He also stated the US government is seeking to intimidate him.

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“There was, literally, no valid reason to drop an atomic bomb on a Japanese city.”

• The Murder of Others (Scott Ritter)

Ignoring the fact that the Soviet Union and its leader, Joseph Stalin, were exhausted by a war that had destroyed a third of its industry and killed more than 27 million of its citizens and, as such, were looking for peace, not a new war with the West, Truman fell under the sway of his closest advisers, including his choice to be secretary of state, James Byrnes, who viewed the Soviets as a threat that had to be contained and, if necessary, confronted by U.S. military power in the post-war period. How to square the need to simultaneously defeat Japan, deal with the increasing political pressure to demobilize, and present a strong military posture to the Soviet Union was one of the more pressing challenges facing Truman and the men he had gathered in the White House cabinet room. The answer lay in the atomic bomb — J. Robert Oppenheimer’s “gadget ”— which was, at the time of the June 18 meeting, being prepared for testing in the badlands of New Mexico.

The huge responsibility that attached itself to the existence and potential use of this new weapon weighed heavily on the attendees. During this meeting, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson reminded those present that “our leadership in the war and in the development of this weapon [the atomic bomb] has placed a certain moral responsibility upon us which we cannot shirk without very serious responsibility for any disaster to civilization which it would further.” When the discussion turned to the use of the atomic bomb as a “war winning” tool designed to break the spirit of the Japanese and compel them to surrender unconditionally, Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy proposed a compromise: why not show flexibility regarding the need for “unconditional surrender,” such as allowing the Japanese emperor to stay in place as the head of state, and, as a way of reinforcing to the Japanese the reality of America’s overwhelming superiority in arms, tell the Japanese about the existence of the atomic bomb, giving them the clear option of capitulating under reasonable terms or watching their cities be destroyed?

Truman, intrigued with the concept, had McCloy take his proposal to Byrnes to see what the future secretary of state thought about it (Byrnes was, at the time, in the process of being confirmed by the U.S. Senate). Byrnes, concerned about the perceived threat from the Soviet Union, rejected McCloy’s proposal, opting instead to go forward with the use of the atomic bomb on Japan with the dual mission of helping bring a rapid end to the war with Japan and, perhaps more importantly, since McCloy and others believed Japan was ready to surrender, obviating the need to use the bomb, as a demonstration of U.S. military power to the Soviet Union in an effort to deter any post-war antics on their part in Europe.

Byrnes’ strategy, however, was nonsensical given what subsequently transpired. On July 17, 1945, Truman was in Potsdam, Germany, for a major post-war conference with Joseph Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (the “Big Three”). The day before, July 16, Oppenheimer had successfully tested a prototype of a plutonium bomb in the deserts of Alamogordo, New Mexico. (Oppenheimer and his team of nuclear scientists had also developed an atomic bomb that made use of highly enriched uranium as its core. This weapon was far simpler in its design, and as such the need to test it was not as acute.)

Truman revealed the existence of this weapon to Stalin on July 24. The Soviet leader, nonplussed, said he hoped the Americans would put it to good use against the Japanese. Stalin had committed to entering the war against Japan no later than Aug. 15. Soviet forces, fresh from their victory over Nazi Germany, were being redeployed to the Soviet Far East, where they would be used to defeat the more than 1 million Japanese soldiers who occupied northern China and Korea. With the promised involvement of the Red Army, the military defeat of Japan was assured. Truman, in notifying Russia of the existence of the bomb, had put the Soviets on notice about the reality of American military might. There was, literally, no valid reason to drop an atomic bomb on a Japanese city.

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“The Ambassador already replied to one letter from Mr. Biden. He may be shopping for more support than he got here..”

• Hunter Biden Asked State Department To Aid Burisma Deal While Joe Was VP (ZH)

While Joe Biden was vice president, his son Hunter attempted to obtain State Department assistance in securing a deal for Ukrainian gas company Burisma, of which Hunter was a highly-compensated board member despite having no experience in its industry, the New York Times reported on Tuesday. The revelation of the 2016 episode underscores allegations that Hunter sought to enrich himself by trading on his father’s influence. The Times report draws on newly-released government records pertaining to Hunter’s pushing of a Burisma deal in Italy. The Biden White House had resisted releasing the files for years, only to relent soon after Biden was pressured into abandoning his reelection bid. The Times says it was unable to read Hunter’s email to the US ambassador, as it appears to have been “redacted in its entirety” somewhere within the trove of documents turned over by the government.

However, in communications sparked by Hunter’s 2016 inquiries, federal government officials appear to have been anxious about Hunter’s request. For example, a Commerce Department official assigned to America’s embassy in Rome wrote: “I want to be careful about promising too much. This is a Ukrainian company and, purely to protect ourselves, USG should not be actively advocating with the government of Italy without the company going through the [Commerce Department] Advocacy Center.”

The White House told the Times that then-Vice President Biden had no knowledge of his son’s inquiries. Hunter’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, acknowledged that Hunter asked US ambassador to Italy John R. Phillips and “various people” for help facilitating a dialogue between the president of Tuscany and Burisma leaders. “No meeting occurred, no project materialized, no request for anything in the U.S. was ever sought and only an introduction in Italy was requested,” Abbe told the Times. Burisma was pursuing a geothermal energy project. Though Burisma didn’t respond to inquiries, an unnamed businessman associated with the Italian machinations told the Times that Biden’s moves came when Burisma or partner entities were struggling to obtain regulatory approval for a geothermal project.

The initiative was also the subject of communications that were found in Hunter’s infamous laptop, which he abandoned at a Delaware repair shop. For example, Hunter business partner Eric Schwerin wrote an email to an Italian businessman who had connections to Tuscany’s president. “Burisma is hoping that some of its executives can get a meeting with the president to discuss their geothermal business in Tuscany,” he wrote in July 2016. Meanwhile, the government records seem to suggest a persistent effort by Hunter across multiple US government channels. “The Ambassador already replied to one letter from Mr. Biden. He may be shopping for more support than he got here,” a Commerce official emailed other federal officials.

Read more …

To what extent did they push for the assault?

• Biden Admits ‘Direct Contact’ With Ukraine Over Assault On Kursk (RT)

Washington is in touch with Kiev about Ukraine’s ongoing incursion into Russia’s Kursk Region, which is creating a problem for Moscow, US President Joe Biden has said. Last week, Ukraine sent several thousand troops across the Russian border to seize a dozen villages and indiscriminately target civilians, according to Moscow. “I have spoken with my staff on a regular basis, probably every four or five hours for the last six or eight days and it’s creating a real dilemma for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin,” Biden told reporters on Tuesday, in his first remarks about the Kursk offensive. “And we’ve been in direct contact, constant contact with the Ukrainians. That’s all I’m going to say about it while it’s active,” he added. The US leader spoke just outside Air Force One, as he arrived in New Orleans. Earlier in the day, EU foreign policy commissioner Josep Borrell said that Kiev had the bloc’s “full support” for the Kursk offensive.

Washington and Brussels have previously responded to press inquiries about the events in Kursk by quoting generalities about support for Ukraine and unchanging policies. “We’re in touch with our Ukrainian counterparts, and we are working to gain a better understanding of what they’re doing, what their goals are, what their strategy is, and I’m going to leave a little bit of space for us to have those conversations before I try to characterize what’s going on,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said on Friday. Later that same day, the US announced another $125 million in military aid to Ukraine. On Monday, however, Senator Lindsey Graham – a South Carolina Republican – went to Kiev and praised the Kursk incursion as “bold” and “beautiful.” He also urged retired Western pilots to enlist in the Ukrainian air force and fly NATO-provided F-16 fighters against Russia.

At least 12 Russian civilians have been killed and another 121 wounded by Ukrainian invaders, acting regional governor Aleksey Smirnov said on Monday. Ukrainian soldiers who spoke to Western outlets have admitted taking significant casualties in the invasion. They also said their objectives were to capture some territory that could be traded away in possible peace talks with Moscow, as well as to relieve pressure on the Donbass front. On Monday, Putin said that the Russian forces were actually advancing at a faster pace, while military enlistments were up because of the fighting in Kursk.

Read more …

Failed.

• Ukraine Wants Talks Using Kursk Nuclear Plant Seizure as Ultimatum (Sp.)

The Ukrainian Armed Forces went on the offensive on August 6 to seize territory in Russia’s Kursk region, but their advance was stopped, said Valery Gerasimov, chief of Russia’s General Staff. He stressed that the operation in Kursk will be completed by defeating the enemy and reaching the state border. Units of the Russian Armed Forces are in the Kursk city of Sudzha, which the enemy does not control but there are daily clashes, commander of the Akhmat special forces Apti Alaudinov told Russian media. “Today there are units of the Russian Defense Ministry in Sudzha. There is an enemy around and in some parts of the city. There are active clashes there every day. The enemy cannot say that he completely controls Sudzha, because he does not really control it,” Alaudinov said.

The major general also said that Kiev is planning on seizing the Kursk nuclear power plant on August 11 and use this to start negotiations with Moscow with an ultimatum. “We received very interesting materials — the whole layout of the operation, which was being prepared, by what forces and what was planned. What can I say: on the 11th [of August] it was necessary to take the nuclear power plant in Kurchatov… [Ukrainian President] Zelensky’s blitzkrieg, which was planned with the seizure of the Kursk nuclear power plant and already entering negotiations with an ultimatum… failed,” Alaudinov explained. The operation had not been completed, despite all the reserves directed by Kiev in this direction, Alaudinov said. “Most of the equipment has already been destroyed from what was deployed in the Kursk direction,” Alaudinov concluded.

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There’ll be nothing left after Zelensky.

• Ukraine Has Defaulted – Fitch (RT)

Fitch Ratings has downgraded Ukraine’s credit rating to ‘restricted default’ on Tuesday, citing the expiry of a ten-day grace period for the coupon payment on the country’s $750 million 2026 Eurobond, which was due on August 1. The US-based credit-rating agency said it has lowered the rating on the 2026 Eurobond to ‘D from ‘C’ and affirmed the other foreign-currency bonds at ‘C.’ The downgrade comes after Kiev passed a law permitting the suspension of foreign debt payments until October 1. On July 18, the Ukrainian parliament approved legislation that allows the government to temporarily suspend payments on state and state-guaranteed external commercial debt until a restructuring agreement with external commercial debt creditors is completed. “This marks an event of default under Fitch’s criteria with respect to the sovereign’s IDR [Issuer Default Rating] as well as the individual issue rating of the affected security,” Fitch stated.

Rival US ratings agency S&P Global also cut Ukraine’s rating to ‘selective’ default on August 2. Ukraine has been negotiating with creditors a restructuring of its nearly $20 billion in international debt. A preliminary deal with a committee of its main bondholders was achieved on July 22, two weeks before the grace period for coupon payment expired. Kiev secured a preliminary deal to suspend debt repayments back in 2022 after the escalation of its conflict with Russia. The two-year payment moratorium on payments expired on August 1. Fitch had earlier projected Ukraine’s state deficit to remain high, at 17.1% of the country’s GDP this year, noting that defense spending amounted to 31.3% of its annual economic output in 2023. The agency expects government debt to surge to 92.5% of GDP in 2024.

According to the Ukrainian Finance Ministry, the country’s public debt surged by more than $1 billion in June, with its total volume now exceeding $152 billion. The International Monetary Fund in June revised downwards Ukraine’s gross domestic product forecast for this year to 2.5% from its April estimate of 3.2%, citing worsening sentiment among consumers and businesses over the course of the conflict with Russia.

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“It is acting with complete, insouciant, contemptuous disregard for international law, conventions, and common morality..”

• Pro-Israel Lobby Overrides US Public Opinion on Gaza (Miles)

“It is most especially in the conduct of foreign relations that democratic governments appear to me to be decidedly inferior to governments carried on upon different principles,” wrote Alexis de Tocqueville in 1835 after his famous visit to the United States. The famed French political philosopher was impressed by the still-nascent experiment in self rule underway in the young country, walking away with numerous insights and accolades. But Tocqueville questioned whether the country’s democratic principles could extend to the realm of international affairs, writing, “foreign politics demand scarcely any of those qualities which a democracy possesses; and they require, on the contrary, the perfect use of almost all those faculties in which it is deficient.” Nearly two centuries later questions remain over the extent to which the popular will can dictate matters of foreign relations, which often require rapid and complex decision making.

Analysts claim the functioning of the US government has only become more opaque since the mid-twentieth century, with the development of nuclear weapons requiring an unprecedented level of secrecy that informed the creation of the modern-day “deep state.” Independent journalist Dr. Jim Kavanagh joined Sputnik’s The Critical Hour program Tuesday to discuss the Biden administration’s foreign policy and the growing gulf between public opinion in the United States and its actions on the world stage. “Israel has crossed all and everybody’s red lines,” Kavanagh wrote in a recent piece published on the website The Polemicist. “Israel is telling the world it will kill anyone and any number of people, anywhere, at any time of its choosing and it does not give a damn about what anyone in the world thinks of it. It is acting with complete, insouciant, contemptuous disregard for international law, conventions, and common morality, certainly of the people and nations it considers its adversaries and of the countries on whose support it depends.”

“Israel is only slightly less contemptuous of Americans than the Palestinians,” the journalist claimed, noting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s skill in manipulating the United States to serve his interests. “Palestinians they consider subhuman and dispensable persons versus the Americans they consider necessary fools whom they have to pretend they’re interested in ceasefires and two-state solutions for because the Americans are stupid enough to believe it.” “They just got to keep the Americans around because the Americans are their patrons,” he continued. “The United States of America is the indispensable patron of Israel. They could not do anything that they’re doing without it. And we are completely complicit in it.” The longtime Israeli Prime Minister once claimed the United States is “a thing you can move very easily” in private comments secretly recorded in 2001. Since then the controversial leader has often publicly waded into US politics, perhaps most famously in 2015 when he gave a speech to a session of the United States Congress denouncing former President Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal.

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“..its most prized defensive weapon is part of a broader branding effort, rooted in techniques pioneered by Edward Bernays..”

• Cracks in the Dome: Israel’s Security Mirage (Raiss)

The Iron Dome, touted as Israel’s most-effective defense shield, was designed to project an image of security and technological superiority. Promoted as a cutting-edge mobile air defense system, it was intended to symbolize an impenetrable barrier safeguarding the occupation state from external threats. However, the reality reveals a different picture: much like a child in a knight costume – impressive against plastic swords but utterly defenseless against real weapons – the Iron Dome excels mainly against the relatively crude weapons of the Palestinian resistance in Gaza. Israel’s carefully-crafted image of its most prized defensive weapon is part of a broader branding effort, rooted in techniques pioneered by Edward Bernays. The occupation state has positioned itself as a cosmopolitan, progressive, and democratic society – in stark contrast to neighboring West Asian states, which it portrays as violent and repressive.

The Iron Dome is not just a defense system but also a psychological construct designed to reinforce the image of an invulnerable entity under constant threat from less enlightened neighbors. Despite its reputation, the Iron Dome’s performance has often fallen short. Numerous videos have surfaced showing malfunctions – the Tamir missiles performing erratic maneuvers, exploding near civilian areas, or being triggered by false alarms and causing damage to infrastructure. These failures contrast starkly with Israel’s claims of a 90–99 percent interception rate. Professor Emeritus Theodore Postal of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) offers a vastly different assessment. “I would say that the intercept rate is at best 4 or 5 percent,” Postal said in an interview with the Boston Globe last October. In a 2018 study published in the Journal of Global Security Studies, Michael Armstrong also questions the Iron Dome’s touted “90 to 99 percent” interception rate.

For starters, he clarifies that “the interception rate is the percentage of rockets destroyed before they hit defended areas; it ignores rockets over undefended areas.” In other words, the defense system is, from the onset, only targeting a small portion of the rockets fired. For example, Israeli officials claimed that of the approximately 1,000 projectiles fired into Israel by Hamas during November 2012’s Operation Pillar of Defense operation, Iron Dome identified two-thirds as “not posing a threat” and only intercepted 90 percent of the remaining 300 rockets. Armstrong points out further holes in the calculations of Iron Dome proponents:

The empirical analysis suggests that Iron Dome batteries intercepted less than 32 percent of all hazardous rockets during Pillar of Defense, but between 59 and 75 percent during Protective Edge … The calculations further suggest the number of rockets hitting populated areas during Pillar of Defense may have been understated. The number of threats to populated areas, on the other hand, may have been overstated. This implies that Iron Dome’s effective interception rate may have been significantly lower than reported.

The situation is particularly dire in northern occupied territories, where the town of Kiryat Shmona – a settlement once believed to be under the Iron Dome’s protection – has seen its population flee from rising threats. Thousands of residents have abandoned their homes, exposing the vulnerabilities the Iron Dome was supposed to eliminate. With Hezbollah expanding its rules of engagement, the number of displaced persons is likely to rise, further exposing the system’s inadequacies. As Israel desperately scrambles to expand its defense options, the new solutions prove equally flawed, leaving the population vulnerable beneath a defense system that no longer lives up to its myth. The once-vaunted shield is crumbling, and with it, the carefully constructed narrative of invincibility that has long underpinned Israel’s security strategy.

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No-one ever mentions their ad monopoly.

• FTC Hints Tech ‘Monopolist’ Google Should Be Broken Up (ZH)

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed an amicus brief in the Epic Games antitrust lawsuit against Google’s monopolistic behavior, suggesting that the court impose stringent actions against such practices. The lawsuit was filed in 2020 by developer Epic Games against Google. Epic claimed that Google violated antitrust regulations by monopolizing two markets: the market for distribution of mobile apps for Android users and the market for processing payments. In addition, Google benefits from gaining access to user data. “Google has thus installed itself as an unavoidable middleman for app developers who wish to reach Android users and vice versa,” Epic said. In December 2023, a district court jury in California ruled in favor of Epic, finding that the game developer proved that Google was in violation of antitrust laws. District Judge James Donato has yet to decide on what relief Epic should be provided.

Naveen Athrappully reports for The Epoch Times that on Aug. 12, the FTC filed an amicus brief in the case, suggesting how the court could consider remedies. Ensuring antitrust laws are strictly enforced “is essential for protecting and preserving economic freedom and the free-enterprise system,” the agency pointed out. “When a company engages in business practices that are found to violate the antitrust laws, courts are empowered to remedy those violations by ordering all relief necessary to restore competition in the affected markets,” it stated. This includes “identifying and requiring actions that the defendant must affirmatively take toward that end.” If companies violating antitrust laws reap the advantages secured through such actions, it will end up incentivizing other firms to engage in similar behavior, the agency warned. As such, the district court should ensure that the violating firm does not continue securing the benefits obtained via breaching antitrust rules, it stated.

Though it should be said that at no point does the FTC outright say that Google should be broken up, Duncan Riley reports via SiliconAngle.com, that any lay reader with a knowledge of U.S. antitrust law and English can reasonably come to that conclusion. And there’s more. “Looking forward in cases like Epic v. Google often requires the consideration of network effects, data feedback loops, and other key features of digital markets,” the FTC writes. “This could help ensure that potential competitors can overcome the advantages established digital platforms often gain, which include network effects and data incumbency.” But the real kicker comes towards the end. “Google’s monopolistic behavior has significantly harmed millions of users in the United States,” the FTC adds. “Allowing monopolists to reap the rewards of illegal monopolization while avoiding the costs of restoring the competition that they unlawfully eliminated would undermine deterrence.” There is a strong possibility that the FTC is hinting at a possible breakup of Google as a negotiating tactic; nonetheless, it should be taken seriously.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

D*ck

 

 

Trump Roseanne
https://twitter.com/i/status/1823751458988167540

 

 

AI
https://twitter.com/i/status/1823742501884453312

 

 

Mark Jon
https://twitter.com/i/status/1823790299061030988

 

 

Lesson

 

 

Why?

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle August 6 2024

Aug 062024
 
 August 6, 2024  Posted by at 9:01 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  62 Responses »


Pablo Picasso The actor 1904

 

• And Suddenly Things Change (Kunstler)
• Apocalypse Now or Later? (Johnston)
• Bitcoin Falls Below $50,000 (RT)
• Biden-Harris Released 99 Illegal Aliens On FBI Terror Watchlist Into US (ZH)
• Scientific Consensus Needed in Sports Gender Debate – IOC
• From The Glass House, A Hail Of Stones Rains Down On Venezuela (Karganovic)
• America’s Election Meddling Will Finally Be Its Own Sword To Fall On (Jay)
• The 1948 Irgun re-born? (Alastair Crooke)
• West Too Fearful Of Escalation With Russia – Zelensky (RT)
• Jailed US Reporter Knew He Was Handling Classified Russian Data (RT)
• In ‘Biggest Antitrust Case Of The 21st Century’, Google Ruled A Monopoly (CD)
• Neil Gorsuch Issues Dire Warning Over Biden’s Reforms (HUSA)
• House Judiciary Launches Probe into Loren Merchan’s Work for Kamala (HUSA)
• Downing Street In Row With Musk Over UK Riots (RT)
• British Army Won’t Act Against Protesters – MOD (RT)

 

 

 

 

Trump ad
https://twitter.com/i/status/1820293998277165106

 

 

Woke

 

 

O’Leary
https://twitter.com/i/status/1820614293643223286

 

 

Byron Donalds

 

 

Orban Soros

 

 

Bukele

 

 

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

 

 

Tucker Maine

 

 

 

 

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

• And Suddenly Things Change (Kunstler)

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

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

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

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

Read more …

Little later.

• Apocalypse Now or Later? (Johnston)

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

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

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

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HODL.

• Bitcoin Falls Below $50,000 (RT)

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

Read more …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Scientific Consensus Needed in Sports Gender Debate – IOC

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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He gets uneasy.

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

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

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

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

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Of course he did.

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

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

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

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

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Good. Now break ’em up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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I think they will.

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

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

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

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

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Sit down

 

 

Unclog

 

 

Cat elevator
https://twitter.com/i/status/1820530525272199634

 

 

Service dogs

 

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

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The State of TAE

Dec 132023
 
 December 13, 2023  Posted by at 4:54 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  6 Responses »


Eugene Delacroix Greece expiring on the Ruins of Missolonghi 1826

 

 

(TAE=The Automatic Earth). I wanted to talk about some things at the end of this year. In early 2015 things changed for me. When Donald Trump announced his candidacy for President, the world of news acquired a whole new outlook. It’s one thing to not like, or agree with, someone or something. It’s quite another to go after it, or him, en masse with all you got and all of your friends. In the beginning, it seemed almost innocent. Because everyone was so convinced that he had no chance anyway.

As the year went on, that idea changed. Even though at the end, 17 months later, in November 2016, there were still plenty polls that gave Hillary Clinton a 90%-or so chance to win. It’s when I first started thinking that maybe we should adapt the approach to news at the Automatic Earth. It was no longer commenting on the news, but changing it completely. The Trump presidency was unlike any other. “They” were awake now. He remained under investigation non-stop for 4 years. Which is odd, because the Constitution invests a lot in the rights and privileges of the President.

But the losing side never stopped their attempts to interfere with both Trump and his presidency. The Mueller probe lasted for years with 10x a day insinuations, and ended in nothing found, zero, zilch, nada. It’s hard not to think from time to time that such a thing should not be possible. But Washington (both sides) did let it happen, because it’s allergic to outsiders. Both Washington and the court system have made that abundantly clear, and continue to do so. Today, he faces an insane 91 charges and 4 indictments. Which he wouldn’t if he had not declared a renewed candidacy.

What finally caught up with Trump was Covid. The only advisors he had for that (Fauci, Birx) were in the “other team”. He bought their stories hook line and sinker because there was no-one else. Operation Warpspeed has caused more deaths and disabilities than anything in American history, and they haven’t even started blaming it on him. The worldwide death toll from mRNA vaccines now stands at some 17 million, lifelong adverse effects is a multiple of that (10x?) , and we’re just 2-3 years into what will be a long tragedy.

Covid really changed my view of both TAE and the so-called news. It is one thing to interpret the available news for readers, but the story changes when there is no alternative available. Then you really need to start digging. Ironically, it was thanks to pre-Musk Twitter, which censored left right and center, including us, that we did get at least some info. There was a group of medical professionals, McCullough, Kory, Urso, Meryl Nash etc etc, who had the guts -and knowledge- to stand up to Pfizer and Fauci et al.

We now know for sure that the vaccines don’t save lives, they kill people. If we would have had a policy of, right from the start, handing out vitamin D3/K2, zinc and magnesium, even before Ivermectin and HCQ, millions of lives would have been saved, and tens of millions of disabilities would have been averted.

The reaction to reporting on that has been to demonitize us. And that hurts. Elon Musk can say Go F*ck Yourself, and Zerohedge can work around similar funding difficulties, but, small as we are, the only way we can make up for losing 1/3 of our revenue, is our readers. And you can say: grow bigger!, but Twitter sent us warnings pre-Musk, Facebook closed our account, and Google has now “officially” blacklisted us. And for what? Inciting violence? Gun trade? Drug trade? Sex trade? No, for questioning the party line.

 

All this is why we moved to making the Debt Rattle news overviews the overarching item on TAE. You can offer an different view on something the MSM report, but when you’re faced with an info tsunami, that becomes impossible. When Ukraine became the next hot topic after Trump and Covid, we started including Russian news agencies. The ones that are banned because they are “Russian propaganda”. But it’s impossible to know what happens in Ukraine just from western MSM. So are we not supposed, or allowed, to know what goes on? Thing is, that’s exactly what TAE is meant to clear up.

I notice that the four topics that have driven us since 2015, Trump, Covid, Ukraine and now Gaza, are all very much alive long after they first became “news”. Trump more than ever, 91 charges. Covid with renewed vax campaigns, despite the vax victims. Ukraine despite the fact that they lost, decidedly. Gaza despite the children’s slaughterhouse. And I will not stop saying about any of these topics, what I think must be said.

That Trump, whatever you think of him, was the most disrespected President in US history, which means the Constitution was violated and dragged through the mud. A big thing, there’s no route back from that. That Covid was Washington -and Brussels- conspiring with Big Pharma to murder millions of people. That Ukraine is a ploy to depopulate a crucial plot of land in the center of Europe, on Russia’s border. And that murdering 1000s of innocent children is never okay, period.

 

A bit more about the ads: a few years ago, we noticed that Google was taking an ever bigger part of revenues. We went from $1,000 a month to $3-400. We had the idea that their monopoly was largely over, so we looked for alternatives. We tried a whole series of those, but the end result is that the only viable way to get a reasonable return is through Google (+ added-on ads). It’s a virtual monopoly, and it’s hard to see why that still exists. As I said, now Google has blacklisted TAE, so we’re screwed in this field. And Google to this day still sends us mails about policy violations, even if we haven’t hosted their ads for years. One wonders what they think over there.

The policy violations mails say there’s something in a post that they don’t like. But not what that is. You have to guess where in a 8,000-9,000 word post their feelings are offended. The only way would seem to be to take down the entire post. We can only post what a faceless person at Google (or G-d knows, an AI engine) allows us to. It is an impossible demand.

Long story short: we should have $1,000 each from Paypal donations, Patreon, and ads. But one third of that has been missing for a few years now. And I see Paypal and Patreon also creeping down. Hopefully a Christmas fundraiser appeal will wake our readers up. I’ve said many times that I abhor paywalls. But I do think sometimes that if our core group of 5,000 readers would pay $1 a month, we’d be fine, and free to worry about other things.

 

All of this of course also affects the Monastiraki kitchen project (“Self-managed Social Kitchen Monastiraki”). Which the Automatic Earth has been supporting for 8,5 years already. And proudly so. Because when you’re old and look back on your life, you will find that what’s important is the things you did for other people. And because when you find a project such as this that lasts this long, with scores of people who bring nothing but their time and energy and often their own money, you need to cherish that. Because it’s rare.

 

 

Here’s me doing a copy and paste from last year:

Most of you will know the drill of this by now: any donations ending in $0.99 or $0.37 go straight to the Monastiraki kitchen, while other donations go to the Automatic Earth -which also badly needs them, especially for Christmas-.

I dislike few things more than asking people for money, even though the Automatic Earth now runs primarily on donations, and there’s some sweet justice in that as well, in depending on people’s appreciation of what we do, instead of ad revenues.

But I cannot do this on my own right now. To get through the winter in one piece, the Monastiraki kitchen will realistically need about €1,000 per month. I don’t have that to spare. So I’m calling on you. In earlier times, 2016-2017, we had way more than that with Konstantinos, but both Filothei and I decided a few years back, independently from each other, that we didn’t want to work with him anymore.

So let’s see where we can get today, shall we? I want to write the perfect article with the perfect plea, but there is of course no such thing. Therefore, I will be back in a few weeks time with a reminder -and updates-, hoping that y’all have gotten the message.

I love all you people so much, and I’m sorry I can’t thank you all individually who have supported -and still do- the Monastiraki kitchen and the Automatic Earth all this time, and I ask you to keep on doing just that. The details for donations on Paypal and Patreon, for both causes, are in the top of the two sidebars of this site. Could not be much easier.

Love you. Thank you.

 

 

Here’s Filothei’s photo project covering 10 years of Monastiraki kitchen, entitled Ekei (“There”).

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle June 15 2023

Jun 152023
 
 June 15, 2023  Posted by at 8:47 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  73 Responses »


Georgia O’Keeffe New York Street with Moon 1925

 

• Ukraine Lost Some 7,500 People on Contact Line Since June 4 – Russian MoD (Sp.)
• House Dems Refuse To Say Whether They Support Cluster Bombs For Ukraine (IC)
• US Knew Ukraine Planned To Destroy Kakhovka Dam – Moscow (RT)
• Hungary Hope For Trump’s Return To White House To Bring Peace To Ukraine (TASS)
• US, Chinese FM’s Phone Call Could Be Precondition for Future Dialogue (Sp.)
• West Very Afraid New, Large-Scale War Will Break Out – Lukashenko (TASS)
• Moscow Offered To ‘Lease’ Crimea From Kiev – Lukashenko (RT)
• How African Leaders Decided To Broker Peace Between Russia And Ukraine (Az.)
• Erdogan Nixes Sweden’s NATO Bid (Cradle)
• Western Sanctions Backfired – US Analyst (RT)
• The Biden Family Multi-Million Dollar Crime Spree (GP)
• Burisma Energy Accountant, Who Exposed Biden Bribery Scheme Found Dead (TPV)
• $10M Magically Appeared In Biden 2017 Tax Return; House GOP Investigating (TPN)
• EU Regulators Seek Breakup Of Google Ad Business Over “Illegal” Practices (ZH)
• Confidential Pfizer Document Shows 1.6 Million Adverse Events (Horowitz)

 

 

 

 

600 pages
https://twitter.com/i/status/1669021253594750983

 

 

Nap Macgregor

 

 

 

 

RT trolling

 

 

House Walensky

 

 

 

 

Trump 77th

 

 

Happy BDay

 

 

Capsized refugee boat off Greek coast yesterday. 79 dead, hundreds missing.

Sachs
https://twitter.com/i/status/1669016814754443266

 

 

Pepe Escobar @RealPepeEscobar
R.I.P. UKRAINE 1/2
Last month, hush hush, the Kiev gang SOLD Ukraine to $8.5 trillion-worth BlackRock. The deal was sealed by the Government of Ukraine and BlackRock’s VP Philipp Hildebrand. They will set up a Ukrainian Development Fund (UDF) for “reconstruction”.

R.I.P. UKRAINE 2/2
“Reconstruction” of Ukraine by BlackRock will focus on energy, infrastructure, agriculture, industry and IT. ALL remaining valuable assets in rump Ukraine will be gobbled up – from Metinvest and DTEK (energy) to Naftogaz, Ukrainian Railways and Ukrenergo.

 

 

 

 

Add in the Russian deaths and that’s over 1,000 a day. For what?

• Ukraine Lost Some 7,500 People on Contact Line Since June 4 – Russian MoD (Sp.)

Ukrainian troops have lost about 7,500 military both killed and injured on the line of contact alone since June 4, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Wednesday. “In total, since June 4, the Ukrainian armed forces have lost about 7,500 people killed and wounded on the line of contact alone, not counting the dead military personnel as a result of the use of Russian long-range precision weapons and aviation in the depths of Ukrainian territory,” the ministry said in a statement. Over the past day, Ukraine unsuccessfully conducted offensives in the South Donetsk, Zaporozhye and Donetsk directions, continuing to suffer losses, the ministry said. Losses of the Ukrainian army in the Donetsk direction exceeded 205 military and 10 pieces of equipment over the past day, the ministry said.

In the Donetsk direction near the settlements of Pervomaiskoe and Petrovskoe, Russia successfully repulsed two enemy attacks, the ministry said in a statement. “During the fighting, the losses of Ukrainian troops amounted to more than 205 military personnel, two armored combat vehicles, seven vehicles, and two D-20 howitzers,” the ministry said. Near the Vremevka ledge, Russia also repelled two attacks, the ministry said, adding that Ukraine lost 11 armored vehicles, including four tanks. Ukraine lost more than 800 soldiers and 20 tanks in the South Donetsk and Zaporozhye directions in the past day, the ministry said. “In total, in the past day, enemy losses in the South Donetsk and Zaporozhye directions amounted to more than 800 Ukrainian military, 20 tanks, four infantry fighting vehicles, 15 armored combat vehicles, two US-made M777 artillery systems, Msta-B and D-30 howitzers, as well as a Grad multiple rocket launcher combat vehicle,” the ministry said.

Russian aviation prevented the attack of Ukrainian assault units in the Zaporozhye direction near the settlement of Zherebyanky, the ministry added. “[On Tuesday night], the Russian armed forces carried out group strikes with sea and air-based long-range high-precision weapons at places of concentration of reserves of the Ukrainian armed forces and foreign mercenaries, as well as warehouses of ammunition, weapons and military equipment of foreign production,” the ministry said in a statement, adding that all assigned objects are hit. The Russian armed forces carried out missile strikes on Ukrainian reserves, foreign mercenaries, as well as warehouses of foreign-made equipment over the past 24 hours, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Wednesday.

Read more …

War criminals. 1,000 deaths a day is not enough.

• House Dems Refuse To Say Whether They Support Cluster Bombs For Ukraine (IC)

Rep. Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said recently that he is keeping the door open to sending cluster munitions — widely banned around the world due to their track record of maiming and killing civilians — to Ukraine. In a May interview with Politico, Smith said that the advantage of cluster munitions “is we have a lot of them. To the extent that we’re unable to provide sufficient ammo in other areas, they could certainly fill that gap.” He also framed the munitions as a potential way to end a conflict with no end in sight. “If our cluster munitions could bring the war to a conclusion sooner, it’s something I’m open to,” Smith said. This followed comments Smith made a week earlier at a Council on Foreign Relations event where he similarly described the pros and cons of sending cluster munitions to Ukraine.

Ukraine has asked the United States to provide it with cluster bombs, which Russian troops have deployed against Ukrainian civilians and which Ukraine has reportedly used as well. The Biden administration has expressed concerns about Ukraine’s requests, but it also hasn’t rejected them outright — and U.S. lawmakers continue to press the administration to provide the weapons. While most of those calls have come from Republicans, Smith’s openness to the idea, amid a general bipartisan consensus on sending arms to Ukraine, shows that congressional pressure is ramping up.

The administration seems unlikely to approve sending cluster munitions to Ukraine, but that the idea is even on the table has raised concerns among international security advocates about the disintegration of humanitarian law and the potential for the U.S. to further erode standing norms of civilian protection. “As long as the administration holds the line, keeping with the approach that so many of our NATO allies and others in the global community takes, that will be positive,” said Jeff Abramson, senior fellow at the Arms Control Association. “It’s frustrating that much of what you’re hearing from [Capitol Hill] is a call for sending cluster munitions. That Representative Smith did not fully cut off the possibility is also wrongheaded. These weapons have not been used by the United States in more than a decade.”

[..] The United States has not used cluster munitions since 2009, when it used the weapons during a strike in Yemen, and cluster munitions have not been produced in the U.S. since the manufacturer Textron shut down production in 2016. Yet the U.S. military maintains massive stockpiles of them. Under a 2017 policy directive, the U.S. military is still authorized to use weapons containing submunitions, in sharp contrast to the dozens of countries that have banned them. The international community has entrenched norms against the use of cluster munitions, said Cesar Jaramillo, executive director at Project Ploughshares, a peace research institute in Canada, namely because they cause indiscriminate harm to civilians and prolong the impacts of war by leaving unexploded munitions. Cluster munitions fracture before impact, sending out a cascade of small bombs that can impact well beyond their intended target.

Read more …

And with US weapons too.

• US Knew Ukraine Planned To Destroy Kakhovka Dam – Moscow (RT)

Washington was perfectly aware of Kiev’s plan to destroy the Kakhovka dam since US-supplied HIMARS multiple rocket launchers were used in the attack, high-ranking Russian diplomat Konstantin Gavrilov said on Wednesday. HIMARS launchers are “high-precision systems that make use of the US GPS navigation system for targeting,” Gavrilov, who heads Russia’s delegation at the Vienna talks on military security and arms control, said. Any targets picked out by Kiev for these systems are “coordinated with the Americans,” he added. According to the official, Ukrainian forces struck the Kakhovka dam with more than 300 HIMARS missiles over the summer and autumn of 2022. “The Americans knew about it. Yet, they did nothing to prevent the catastrophe,”Gavrilov said.

On Wednesday, Russian officials also presented their estimates of the damage caused by the destruction of the dam. The losses amounted to over 1.2 billion rubles ($14 million), according to the Russian Emergencies Ministry. More than 7,000 people have been evacuated from the risk zone, the ministry added. The dam collapsed last week, leading to both banks of the Dnieper River being flooded and multiple deaths. Moscow and Kiev have since traded accusations over who is to blame for the disaster. Officials in Kiev claimed that Russia blew up the dam to supposedly stop the Ukrainian counteroffensive in the area. However, this idea was dismissed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who said the local terrain was already extremely unfavorable for an attack even before the incident. He also said that Russia would have had no interest in destroying the dam, as it would spell “severe consequences for those territories that we control and which are Russian.”

Last week, Ukraine slammed Türkiye for suggesting a UN-backed three-party investigation into the incident. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba said at that time that he was “sick and tired” of calls to probe events that occurred during the conflict. The Ukrainian envoy to the UN, Sergey Kislitsa, claimed that launching such a probe would be“impossible.” Russian officials said they were not surprised by Kiev’s reaction to the Turkish proposal. Moscow’s ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, also accused Washington of attempts to “whitewash” Kiev by shifting the blame onto Russia. The envoy stated that Ukraine’s “patrons” in Washington “never criticize Kiev,” but instead approve of all of its actions.

Read more …

Nice angle.

• Hungary Hope For Trump’s Return To White House To Bring Peace To Ukraine (TASS)

Hungary is pinning its hopes on a comeback by former US President Donald Trump, who could then bring the armed conflict in Ukraine to an end, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said. “If President Trump had won the last presidential election here in the United States, this war [in Ukraine] would not have broken out. <…> We do look at his possible return to the White House as a hope for a peaceful future,” the top Hungarian diplomat told Newsmax TV. Szijjarto also wished the former president victory in the 2024 presidential election and a favorable conclusion to all of the lawsuits filed against him. Budapest has repeatedly said that, in its view, not only Ukraine and Russia, but also the US, which is the biggest military and financial backer of the Kiev regime, should engage in peace talks to settle the conflict.

Speaking about Trump, Szijjarto called the politician “a true friend of Hungary” and wished him success in the upcoming lawsuits. “Whenever a conservative leader has a good chance to win an important [presidential] election as [former] President Trump, [who,] as far as we understand, has a good chance to return to the White House, then he or she gets immediately under an enormous attack by the liberal mainstream,” the top diplomat pointed out. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban earlier openly supported Trump. The US District Court for the Southern District of Florida filed two indictments against the former US president. Specifically, he is charged with mishandling classified documents and falsifying the business records of his company, the Trump Organization.

Orban is one of the few world leaders, if not the only one, to publicly support Trump in connection with the lawsuits filed against him. The Hungarian prime minister has long been a supporter of the former US president and openly wished him success in the last presidential election as the candidate of the Republican Party. At the same time, Orban has had tense relations with the administration of Trump’s Democratic successor, President Joe Biden. The US does not approve of Budapest’s independent stance on a number of international issues, including Ukraine, and Budapest in turn accuses Washington of seeking to interfere in Hungary’s domestic affairs and supporting the political opposition.

Read more …

Lukewarm welcome.

• US, Chinese FM’s Phone Call Could Be Precondition for Future Dialogue (Sp.)

Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang held a telephone conversation with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on June 14, a Chinese national broadcaster revealed. The conversation occurred ahead of a reported visit by the top American official to the country. According to the report, during the conversation, the Chinese top diplomat highlighted that China-US relations have faced new difficulties and challenges this year, and “whose responsibility (for this) is clear”. He also stressed that the American side should show respect, refrain from meddling in China’s internal affairs, and stop undermining Beijing’s sovereign interests in security and development under the pretext of competition. Wang Yiwei, director of the Institute of International Affairs at Renmin University of China, noted that there has been a shift in the bipartisan consensus in the United States regarding pressure on China.

“Business circles in the United States consider the Chinese market to be very important and call for the economy not to be ‘held hostage’ by politics. They advocate adhering to normal principles of economic development and market principles, and avoiding the formulation of an Indo-Pacific strategy or any other form of ideologization,” the expert said. Moreover, there is still a year to go until the presidential elections in the United States, and Trump, who has already declared that he will immediately stop the conflict between Russia and Ukraine if he wins, could be Biden’s potential rival. According to Wang Yiwei, Biden is currently facing two main points of pressure. “First, the need to seek China’s support on the issue of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, hoping that China can play an active role. Second, there is the issue of the US economy and the national debt”.

Although the debt ceiling has been raised, the problem is far from being solved, and the United States hopes that China will continue to buy US Treasury bonds. In fact, the economic chaos in the United States is closely related to the disruption of production chains, to which they themselves have contributed, and this has also led to tremendous pressure from American business circles. Against this backdrop, there are hopes in the United States for closer relations with China. However, the American media recently published fake news claiming that “China is building a surveillance base in Cuba (to spy on the US)”. “Considering that Blinken’s previous visit to China was postponed due to the balloon incident, this phone call could become a precondition for future dialogue in order to prevent further ruptures in contacts,” Wang Yiwei noted.

[..] Earlier, several US media outlets reported that Blinken was planning to make his delayed trip to China in the coming days, with an unnamed US official giving June 18 as the tentative date of his arrival in Beijing. The Chinese Foreign Ministry, however, has not confirmed these reports. If Blinken’s trip goes ahead, it will be the first one for a top US diplomat since 2018. Blinken canceled the February trip after the United States accused China of sending spy balloons into US airspace. Beijing has since denied the allegations.

Read more …

“..Volodya Zelensky. He is a `hero’ now, touring the globe. He is being kissed, hugged and all that. I thought he was smarter..”

• West Very Afraid New, Large-Scale War Will Break Out – Lukashenko (TASS)

Despite its latest steps, the West is very afraid about the possibility of a new large-scale war or a nuclear disaster, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said in an interview with the 60 Minutes talk show on Rossiya-1 television. “I have met with people playing an important role in this, who make radical, drastic and final decisions in the event of an `if’,’” Lukashenko said. “What they fear most is a nuclear disaster, and they have been sincere about this. They are afraid of using nuclear weapons in Ukraine. It’s only natural,” he added. Minsk does not want things to play out that way either, Lukashenko assured. “We are not seeking that either, and we, too, are afraid. Because this, experts say, could cause a global catastrophe, and this planet may deorbit, if all these weapons explode,” he maintained.


According to Lukashenko, Russia may use nukes, if the enemy invades its territory or if this act of aggression threatens the existence of the state. He urged talks as long as there is an opportunity for them, but the West, he said, has been banning Ukraine from engaging in any. “I am confident and I have it on good information that the overwhelming majority in Ukraine, including the military who has been fighting and getting killed over there, would like to stop this war now,” the Belarusian leader maintained. “But then there are those hyped-up top-level officials led by [Ukrainian President] Volodya Zelensky. He is a `hero’ now, touring the globe. He is being kissed, hugged and all that. I thought he was smarter,” Lukashenko lamented.

Read more …

Moscow has flatly denied this.

• Moscow Offered To ‘Lease’ Crimea From Kiev – Lukashenko (RT)

Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko has claimed that Russia offered financial compensation to Ukraine for Crimea, when the two nations were engaged in peace talks mediated by Minsk. Speaking to a Russian media outlet on Wednesday, the Belarusian leader said that Russian President Vladimir Putin had shown him a draft document which was provisionally accepted by Moscow and Kiev. The proposed treaty was “fine” and included “some kind of long-term lease” regarding Crimea, Lukashenko stated. “It was a good process, but [the Ukrainians] dropped out of it,” he added. Belarus served as a mediator between Russia and Ukraine for years, and hosted talks in 2014 and 2015 which resulted in the signing of the so-called Minsk agreements, the UN-endorsed roadmap for Kiev’s reconciliation with Donbass.

After open hostilities broke out last year, several rounds of peace negotiations were held in Belarus, but talks later moved to Istanbul. The Türkiye-based round of discussions produced a draft agreement under which Kiev pledged to become a neutral state in exchange for security guarantees. However, it made a U-turn soon after, which Moscow described as Ukraine following a US order to continue fighting. Before Crimea rejected the 2014 armed coup in Kiev and voted in a referendum to rejoin Russia, Moscow paid Kiev an annual lease to use Sevastopol as the home base of its Black Sea Fleet. It was last renewed in 2010, when Moscow offered a gas price discount for the extension. With Crimea’s status changing, the Russian government declared the treaty null and void.

In the interview, Lukashenko claimed that the Minsk agreements had been negotiated in bad faith by Kiev and its backers, who used them to buy time for a military buildup in Ukraine. The resulting lack of trust poses a challenge for all future talks, he suggested, before reiterating his vision on how to stop hostilities. “If we agree to a peace process, the war stops, no movements, no tanks, no troops. If anyone is redeployed, I believe we should use nuclear weapons. That is the only way we can talk to them,” Lukashenko said of Ukraine and its backers. Minsk is a close Russian ally and has allowed the use of its territory for the military operation against Ukraine. In March, Russia announced that it would station some of its tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus at Lukashenko’s request.

Read more …

Good thing they’re finding their voice.

• How African Leaders Decided To Broker Peace Between Russia And Ukraine (Az.)

In a bold diplomatic move, seven African heads of state are preparing to embark on a journey to Ukraine and Russia later this week, as they bid to engage their counterparts in both countries in peace talks. Coordinated by the Brazzaville Foundation, a renowned non-governmental organization specializing in conflict resolution, the African Peace Initiative delegation is scheduled to meet Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky in Kiev on June 16, followed by a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg the next day. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa first announced the African peace plan, now aptly titled ‘The Road to Peace’, on May 16. Although the details of the initiative have not been made public, Ramaphosa said that the team will meet with Putin and Zelensky to discuss how to resolve the conflict in Ukraine.

Mzuvukile Jeff Maqetuka, South Africa’s ambassador to Russia, told RT that the initiative differs from others in that the leaders are not presenting pre-drawn proposals. He stated that they would first sit down with their counterparts from Russia and Ukraine and discuss what caused the conflict. The mission has strategically drawn leaders from the continent’s five regions: southern, northern, central, eastern, and western. Senegalese President Macky Sall will represent West Africa, after leading the first African Union (AU) mission to Russia to plead for peace on the continent’s behalf at the start of the conflict in 2022. The southern region will be led by South Africa’s Ramaphosa and Zambia’s Hakainde Hichilema, while Egypt’s Abdel Fattah El-Sisi will represent North Africa. Denis Sassou Nguesso of Central Africa’s Congo will also be making the trip, while Azali Assoumani of Comoros, who serves as president of the African Union, will represent the east of the continent alongside Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni.

These countries have all declared their non-aligned positions in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, refusing to make a unilateral decision. Vladimir Antwi-Danso, director of academic affairs at the Ghana Armed Forces Command and Staff College, told RT that the mission is significant because it demonstrates that Africa can be proactive in intervening in global affairs. He emphasized that Africa has long taken a backseat to the international community, including the US, regarding action in conflicts that directly affect the continent. Ramaphosa, who is leading the initiative, has described the Ukraine conflict as “devastating,” adding that Africa is also suffering greatly as a result of the fighting. Congolese President Denis Sassou Nguesso said on Monday that Africa cannot “remain silent” because everyone is “suffering” the consequences.

Philani Mthembu, executive director at the Institute for Global Dialogue, believes the African leaders are trying to shield the continent from Western pressure to pick a side in the conflict, while also seeking to avoid the division that the crisis could cause within the African Union. South Africa, which has maintained a non-aligned stance, has also been pressed to take sides. Its ties with Russia as a BRICS member have led to accusations that the country has backed Moscow. Meanwhile, Confidence Isaiah-MacHarry, a security analyst at SBM Intelligence in Nigeria, said “the African attempt at peace efforts is an important pointer to the fact that Russia is still not isolated.”

Read more …

Hungary’s also a hold-out.

• Erdogan Nixes Sweden’s NATO Bid (Cradle)

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has shot down the notion of Sweden joining the US-led security alliance NATO during next month’s Vilnius summit. According to Erdogan, the Nordic state has failed to uphold Ankara’s requests, as it recently permitted supporters of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) to demonstrate on the streets of Stockholm. Earlier this week, while on his way to Azerbaijan, the Turkish president told journalists that “terrorists” were allowed to protest, despite the fact that Stockholm said it was dedicated to meeting Ankara’s requirements to join NATO. These requirements involved extraditing members and supporters of the PKK, which the Turkish government considers “terrorists” due to its long-standing rivalry with Kurdish militants in Syria and Iraq.

When asked about NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, an integral figure in pushing Sweden’s NATO bid, Erdogan remarked: “While Stoltenberg was expressing these views to us, unfortunately, at that time, terrorists were demonstrating in the streets again in Sweden,” adding that “now, we cannot approach this work positively within this table.” The presence of individuals linked to the PKK has hindered Sweden’s ability to acquire NATO membership following the launch of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, which broke Sweden and Finland’s neutrality after decades of refraining from joining any security bloc. Despite Ankara’s continued block of Sweden’s ascension, Turkiye officially granted Finland eligibility to join NATO at the end of March.

Turkiye remains indecisive about Sweden’s proposal, claiming Swedish officials have not taken the necessary measures to crack down internally on members of the PKK and allied Kurdish militia groups, many of whom continue to reside in Stockholm. Earlier this year, a far-right Swedish politician burned several copies of the Quran, which further inflamed tensions. Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson described the act as “extremely serious” and an attempt to sabotage the nation’s NATO application.

Read more …

Day two of the St. Petersburg Economic Forum (SPIEF) today. Over 17,000 participants from 130 countries.. What boycott?

• Western Sanctions Backfired – US Analyst (RT)

The attempts by the US and its allies to isolate Russia have failed, while the many rounds of sanctions havebackfired and not crippled the country’s economy as intended, American political analyst and car-industry veteran Douglas Andrew Littleton told RT on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg Economic Forum (SPIEF). Littleton added that he was disappointed with his government’s sanctions policy against Moscow. “I think what happened with the sanctions it’s backfiring on the West, and especially on America, in my humble opinion,” the analyst said. “I’m happy that Russia has been able to bypass and skirt the sanctions in so many ways with their friends and allies,” he added.


The US, EU, and allies have hit Russia with numerous rounds of unprecedented sanctions since the launch of Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine. The penalties have affected entire sectors of the Russian economy, as well as businesses and individuals, including President Vladimir Putin. Discussing how the Russian economy has handled the Western pressure, Littleton said he believes that what Russia has been able to accomplish is “absolutely fantastic.” When asked about his impression of the St. Petersburg forum, he said: “I am in shock how big this forum is but very pleased to be here.” Over 17,000 participants from 130 countries have reportedly attended the SPIEF, which kicked off on Wednesday. Over the course of the four-day event, participants will discuss key issues related to the Russian and global economy.

Read more …

“..she wanted to testify, but to testify she wanted to be in the Witness Protection program. And she had four colleagues of hers who were willing to testify and support her.”

• The Biden Family Multi-Million Dollar Crime Spree (GP)

As TGP reported on Tuesday — there are several eye witnesses with over a dozen audio recordings and numerous bank receipts that detail the Biden Crime Family’s illegal bribery payments. On Saturday America’s Mayor Rudy Giuliani told Rita Cosby on Newsmax that he has a high-level witness who is the former chief accountant at Burisma who is willing to testify on the Biden crimes. She even has the Biden bank account transactions. She has the receipts! Rudy Giuliani: It’s extraordinary. I gave them one witness that any investigator would jump through hoops to go to. Gave them a witness who is a woman who was the chief accountant at this crooked company, Burisma. She was the wife of the former owner who died under suspicious circumstances. And, she was willing to give up all of the offshore bank accounts, including the Bidens’ accounts. She supervised the transfer of a lot more cash to the Bidens and other crooked politicians for Burisma.


On Monday Rudy Giuliani shared more details with the War Room audience. Rudy’s Burisma witness had FOUR COLLEAGUES willing to testify! Rudy Giuliani: “There was one very extraordinary piece of evidence. We had a woman in Ukraine who was the chief accountant for Burisma, the wife of the former partner of Mycola Zlochevsky who owned Burisma and is the major crook who was paying off the Bidens. And she wanted to turn she wanted to testify, but to testify she wanted to be in the Witness Protection program. And she had four colleagues of hers who were willing to testify and support her. She claimed that over an eight year period she supervised all of the offshore illegal bank accounts. All the money laundering went through her. Now, we weren’t sure she was telling the truth but we did have one transaction that I had gotten very early of a complete money laundering transaction for $14 million, some of which went through to Joe Biden with an indication that Joe got $900,000 of it and his family got a total of about 3 million of it.”

Watters
https://twitter.com/i/status/1669008669072142337

Read more …

And there goes Giuliani’s witness… The DOJ wanted nothing to do with her.

• Burisma Energy Accountant Who Exposed Biden Bribery Scheme Found Dead (TPV)

The chief accountant at Ukraine’s Burisma Energy, who offered to provide US authorities with damning evidence regarding financial crimes involving Joe and Hunter Biden, has been found dead before she could testify. The Burisma whistleblower, who has been identified as the wife of the former Burisma owner Mykola Lisin, who also died in suspicious circumstances during the years of the Obama administration when vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter were active in Ukraine. Giuliani discussed the fate of the now-deceased whistleblower during an interview on Newsmax’s “Saturday Report” with Rita Cosby. According to Giuliani, who first brought to light Hunter Biden’s notorious “Laptop from Hell”, the whistleblower was the chief accountant at Burisma, the notoriously corrupt Ukrainian energy company.

During Joe Biden’s tenure as vice president under Obama, Burisma compensated Hunter with tens of thousands of dollars per month for his position on the company’s board, despite his complete lack of experience in the energy sector. During that period, then-Vice President Biden withheld U.S. assistance to Ukraine as a means of pressuring the government to dismiss Viktor Shokin, a senior prosecutor who was investigating Burisma and its owner for fraudulent activities. Giuliani, who previously served as President Donald Trump’s attorney, says the whistleblower offered to give a U.S. attorney highly compromising financial information about the Bidens. However, Giuliani says US authorities did everything they could to ignore her, bouncing her case around various offices, in an attempt to make her go away.

He revealed that the Pittsburgh attorney general had initially been investigating the case. But the investigation was later transferred to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Delaware, under former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr. Giuliani claims the Delaware office buried the case, despite the whistleblower being under threat of death. He says the whistleblower had evidence that included offshore bank account information that showed millions of dollars in bribes flowing to the Biden family and “other crooked politicians.” Despite the explosive nature of the evidence, Giuliani says prosecutors stonewalled the case and she died suddenly before she could testify. And now the mainstream media are refusing to acknowledge her existence.

“Well, of course, that’s the most ridiculous, idiotic statement to make on a day in which we find out that the Bidens took a $10 million bribe from a Ukrainian Mykola Zlochevsky, which I could have told you, you know, and did tell [the DOJ] three years ago,” Giuliani told Newsmax. “And they followed up on none of the evidence I gave them. They were hoping that people would disappear or die. It’s extraordinary.”

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Link to China?!

• $10M Magically Appeared In Biden 2017 Tax Return; House GOP Investigating (TPN)

House Republicans are demanding increased transparency from President Joe Biden on his personal tax returns after an investigation found one of his corporate entities reported nearly $10 million in revenue without detailing the sources. The president’s critics believe the sudden influx of money may be related to allegations of bribery against the president. CelticCapri Corp, an S-corporation for the president, was not listed on the president’s personal tax returns or campaign website, raising eyebrows as to why the 46th president would conceal such a large income source from the public. While it is common to not list corporate revenue on a personal income statement, politicians running for national office typically disclose all sources of income in an attempt to appear as transparent as possible.

According to Breitbart, the conservative Federalist Society took issue with a 2020 article by USA Today which attempted to hold water for the president by claiming he earned “$15.6 million … from speaking fees and book deals” between 2017 and 2019 and that “more than $10 million of that total income was profits from Biden’s memoir ‘Promise Me, Dad’ and $3 million in profits from Jill Biden’s book.” Following the citations within the USA Today article led readers to no details on the S-corporation, creating what the Federal Society referred to as a “smokescreen.” House Republicans believe they may have found a bone to pick as they race to uncover the truth behind testimony from an FBI informant that President Biden took $5 million in bribes from a Ukrainian official to assist in the firing of another official and easing the path for his son Hunter Biden to conduct business operations in the country.

Members of the Republican caucus told Breitbart that the latest lack of transparency from the president is deeply concerning. “The President seems to find selling out our country funny. We don’t,” said Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC). “If he’s serious about proving our allegations wrong he should release his and his family’s unredacted bank records and show the American people where all this money is coming from. The FBI can’t protect him forever.” Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ), a successful businessman in his own right, told Breitbart News Joe Biden should come clean about the money in lieu of the alleged pay-for-pay scheme.

“The fact that there are credible claims signaling that a foreign national bribed the President of the United States with cash in exchange for influence over U.S. policy decisions is appalling. The American people deserve to know who paid the Bidens and what exactly they were paid for,” he said. “Now that we know there are recordings of conversations Joe Biden and his degenerate son had with a Burisma executive, it’s becoming more and more obvious how the indictment of President Trump is meant to be a distraction,” Crane added. “It would shock no one in this town if Joe Biden received millions of dollars from selling out the country in a bribery scheme and then hid that money in shady shell companies.”

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Yeah, break up that monopoly. It’s a disgrace.

• EU Regulators Seek Breakup Of Google Ad Business Over “Illegal” Practices (ZH)

On Wednesday, European Union regulators informed Google that it “breached EU antitrust rules by distorting competition in the advertising technology industry.” Regulators seek to break up the US multinational technology company’s advertising empire. The European Commission, the European Union’s antitrust regulator, said, “Google abused its dominant positions” in the buying and selling of online ads across third-party apps and websites. ] The commission said that its preliminary view is Google must sell segments of its ad business to resolve the “inherent conflicts of interest” in digital advertising. However, there was no mention of what was to be sold. Regulators said Google “holds a dominant position” on “both sides of the market with its publisher ad server and with its ad-buying tools.” “The Commission preliminarily finds that, in this particular case, a behavioural remedy is likely to be ineffective to prevent the risk that Google continues such self-preferencing conducts or engages in new ones.

“Google is active on both sides of the market with its publisher ad server and with its ad buying tools and holds a dominant position on both ends. Furthermore, it operates the largest ad exchange. This leads to a situation of inherent conflicts of interest for Google. The Commission’s preliminary view is therefore that only the mandatory divestment by Google of part of its services would address its competition concerns.” The EU’s announcement comes months after the US Justice Department and eight states filed a lawsuit over Google’s ad business, claiming it illegally monopolizes the online ad market. This is the second US antitrust suit federal authorities have brought against the company’s ad empire.

“For 15 years, Google has pursued a course of anticompetitive conduct that has allowed it to halt the rise of rival technologies, manipulate auction mechanics, to insulate itself from competition, and force advertisers and publishers to use its tools,” Attorney General Merrick Garland wrote in a press release in January. The outcome of these three cases could have widespread implications for Google’s parent company, Alphabet, which recorded $60 billion in profit last year from advertising.

“So Google is present at almost all levels of the so-called adtech supply chain. Our preliminary concern is that Google may have used its market position to favour its own intermediation services. Not only did this possibly harm Google’s competitors but also publishers’ interests, while also increasing advertisers’ costs. If confirmed, Google’s practices would be illegal under our competition rules,” Margrethe Vestager, the executive vice president of the European Commission who oversees digital and competition policy, said in a statement. Earlier this week, The Wall Street Journal reported the EU was considering ordering a breakup of Google’s ad-tech business. And with pressure on both sides of the Atlantic, the walls are closing in on Google’s ad business.

Read more …

Painful at best.

• Confidential Pfizer Document Shows 1.6 Million Adverse Events (Horowitz)

Over 10,000 categories of nearly 1.6 million adverse events – many of them serious and debilitating – brought to you by Pfizer! You might not have heard it in the news, but in recent months, Pfizer’s pharmacovigilance documents requested by the European Union’s drug regulator, the European Medicines Agency, have been released. They show that Pfizer knew about a sickening level of injury early on. An August 2022 document shows that the company already had observed the following scope of vaccine injury: • 508,351 individual case reports of adverse events containing 1,597,673 events; • One-third of the AEs were classified as serious, well above the standard for safety signals usually pegged at 15%; • Women reported AEs at three times the rate of men; • 60% of cases were reported with either “outcome unknown” or “not recovered,” so many of the injuries were not transient; • Highest number of cases occurred in the 31-50 year age group, and 92% did not have any comorbidities, which makes it very likely it was the vaccine causing such widespread, sudden injury.

These numbers alone suggest that all COVID shots should be defunded and Congress must immediately remove liability protections from the manufacturers. But a more recent document released by the Europeans is even more devastating, because it breaks down the 1.6 million adverse events observed by Pfizer by category and subcategory of ailment and injury. The 393-page confidential Pfizer document, dated Aug. 19, 2022, shows that Pfizer observed over 10,000 categories of diagnosis, many of them very severe and very rare. For example:

• Pfizer was aware of 73,542 cases of 264 categories of vascular disorders from the shots. Many of them are rare conditions.
• There were hundreds of categories of nervous system disorders, totaling 696,508 cases.
• There were 61,518 AEs from well over 100 categories of eye disorders, which is unusual for a vaccine injury.
• Likewise, there were over 47,000 ear disorders, including almost 16,000 cases of tinnitus, which even Mayo Clinic researchers observed as a common but often devastating side effect early on.
• There were roughly 225,000 cases of skin and tissue disorders.
• There were roughly 190,000 cases of respiratory disorders.
• Disturbingly, there were over 178,000 cases of reproductive or breast disorders, including disorders you wouldn’t expect, such as 506 cases of erectile dysfunction in men.
• Very disturbingly, there were over 77,000 psychiatric disorders observed following the shots, lending credence to Dr. Peter McCullough’s research observing case studies showing psychosis correlating with vaccination.
• 3,711 cases of tumors – benign and malignant
• Of course, there were almost 127,000 cardiac disorders, running the gamut of about 270 categories of heart damage, including many rare disorders, in addition to myocarditis.
• There were over 100,000 blood and lymphatic disorders, for both of which there’s a wealth of literature linking them to the spike protein.

2009

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Humming

 

 

Magpie
https://twitter.com/i/status/1669017609776373768

 

 

Coconut Crab

 

 

Kids play
https://twitter.com/i/status/1668656979424817160

 

 

Cat masks
https://twitter.com/i/status/1668958969333972992

 

 

 

 

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Shadow Ban 2.0

Nov 292022
 
 November 29, 2022  Posted by at 1:37 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  22 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh Autumn landscape 1885

 

 

I’m not sure if what I’m going to tell you would officially be called a shadow ban, but it sure feels like it. A few years ago, we noticed that our ad revenues, then from Google, which had been falling for a while, had plummeted by some 80% from high to lowest. On top of that, at some point Google started sending Policy Violation mails. Which say “you violated our policies”, without ever specifying in what way(s). Now, you could read through all these policies, and guess at what you have done “wrong” and delete the “offending” material, you could delete the entire post, or you can just ignore these mails.

Given that we have no intention of having someone else decide what we write, ignoring them seems the only option. If they decide what we can say, we might as well not say it. What’s the use? If the web is to have any function at all, it will always be to provide diverse opinions. In that, we very much agree with Elon Musk. But yes, through the interference of companies like Google we have moved in the opposite direction. First with Trump, than with Covid, and now with Ukraine. Media and politics are hellbent on wiping out any views and ideas that don’t conform to theirs, but there is no future in that.

 

With the declining revenues, and the violation mails, we decided to look beyond Google for ad providers. Google had a total monopoly in the field before, but there appeared to be other, smaller companies popping up that offered some competition. The 80% revenue drop at first looked to us like Google was simply taking a bigger part of what came in, and that is certainly part of what happened, but there was also something else. That we initially didn’t recognize. Now we do.

We did a number of trial runs with alternative ad providers, which typically started at a promising level, and then all fell down to “Google levels”. These trial runs take months, you have to give the new provider time to get their end right etc. I think we tried 4-5 of them, over a 2-3 year period. Once they’re down to 20% of the initial highs of years ago, you think: this doesn’t improve the situation. And you wonder why, is it their effort, is it their models, it’s hard to see at times. And then the last company we tried sort of opened our eyes.

We had spent quite a bit of time setting things up with them, video calls, mails etc. We in this is me and invaluable friend Danny, who keeps an eye on the back end of TAE. We have good visitor and page view numbers, and one stat that I like a lot, and that should appeal to advertisers a lot. The bounce rate when people log in is close to 30%, which seems normal. But even with that, the average time spent on the site is almost 5 minutes. An advertisers’ dream, or so you would think. But then, just as we were ready to launch with them a few weeks ago, they blew it off.

They said: it’s no use doing this, our biggest advertisers don’t want to work with you. Not good news, but enlightening. This has undoubtedly been a factor in all the trial runs we did, all the way back to and including Google, but nobody ever told us. And why did they not want to work with us? Not because they did their own research, they have other things to worry about. There’s only one source I can imagine them basing this on, and that takes us back to Google. Who have built up a file, a database, of websites they issue Policy Violation mails to.

“Don’t trust those guys, they don’t toe the line. They offer alternative views on Covid and Ukraine”. The end result is that for now we don’t have any ads. I went back to our Google AdSense page, thinking maybe we could go back to their generic ads for a bit, and there are two warnings there now.

• Ads are disabled on one or more of your sites – no ads are serving on one or more of your sites because of policy violations. Please investigate the reasons for this in the Policy Center.

• Due to the war in Ukraine, we will pause monetization of content that exploits, dismisses, or condones the war.

Yes, it sounds exactly like what Musk found at Twitter. Just on a much smaller scale. Twitter banned lots of doctors that didn’t parrot Fauci and Pfizer, tried to ruin their careers and reputations. And now we have plastic blood clots, heart attacks and dying and disabled children. Twitter also won’t allow anything but NATO narratives about Ukraine. And now we have one country in the dark, and a whole continent about to experience something similar, while being forced to pay for the pleasure. No amount of Policy Violation warnings can turn that around. But Google’s “policies” are the same as “the old” Twitter’s.

We cannot think for ourselves. Someone else, organized in groups, wants to do our thinking for us. And tells themselves they have the right to do so. Nay, the obligation, lest we stray from their path. Not only do we find that path uninteresting, it would also mean the Automatic Earth can stop publishing. We don’t intend to do that. But at the same time we realize what we’re up against. We are lucky to have people donating on Paypal and Patreon, but losing $400-$1,000 per month from ads of course still hurts. Who knows anymore what an uninterrupted ad revenue stream would look like by now?

Just thought I’d let you know.

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle March 12 2022

Mar 122022
 
 March 12, 2022  Posted by at 9:48 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  72 Responses »


René Magritte The victory 1939

 

• A Global Monetary & Commodity Inferno Of Nuclear Proportions (Von Greyerz)
• Inflation: SMOKING (Denninger)
• Crashin’ and Burnin’ (Kunstler)
• ‘A New Page in the Art of War’ (Escobar)
• On a Knife’s Edge in Ukraine (Lauria)
• Russia Allows Chinese Banks To Buy Oil Without Letters Of Credit (ZH)
• In Praise of “Whataboutism” (Kimberley)
• Are You SURE This Is A Good Idea? (Denninger)
• One Ukrainian Billionaire Funded Hunter Biden, Zelensky, Azov Battalion (Koa)
• Pfizer Vaccine Accumulates In Ovaries; Ovarian Cancer At All Time High (DE)
• Forget About Covid, They Say (Tucker)
• Some Australians Face A Fourth Covid Booster Shot – And One Every Year (DM)
• Google Ministry of Information Announces Zero Tolerance Policy (CTH)
• Restaurants Now Requiring Proof Of Ukraine Support (BBee)

 

 

Inflation while money doesn’t move?

 

 

Tucker rule of law

 

 

Jen Psaki tells the Tik-Tok influencers in her briefing that Russia “of course hacked our election here” in 2016.

 

 

Von Greyerz has good analyses.

• A Global Monetary & Commodity Inferno Of Nuclear Proportions (Von Greyerz)

Russia has the biggest natural resource reserves in the world which include coal, natural gas, oil, gold, timber, rare earth metals etc. In Rubles these reserves will obviously appreciate substantially with the falling currency. In total, the Russian natural resource reserves are estimated at $75 trillion. That is 66% higher than the second country USA and more than twice as much as Saudi Arabia and Canada. Even if the total Russian supply is not lost to the world, it is clear that the West is determined to punish Russia to the furthest extent possible. Therefore, as we have already seen in the major escalation of oil and gas prices, the shortages will put insufferable pressure on the prices of natural resources.

The global market for grains, vegetable oil and fertilisers was already extremely tight before Russia’s attack. What is happening now is a commodity black swan across both energy and agricultural resources. The World Food Programme warned of a catastrophic scarcity for several hundred million people last November. What is happening now will make this exponentially worse. “Everything is going up vertically. The whole production chain is under pressure from every side,” said UN’s ex-head of agricultural markets. Energy and agricultural products are interlinked. Gas is feedstock for fertiliser production in Europe. Russia and Belarus together account for 1/3 of the world’s potash exports.Around 33% of world exports of barley come from Russia and Ukraine together, 30% of wheat, 20% of maize and 80% of sunflower oil. The consequences are unforeseeable.

Goldman Sachs Commodity Index is up 3X since April 2020. The exponential phase of the move has just started. UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation (FOA) are reporting a 43% increase in food price since 2020. And remember, this was before the real problems had started. I have for quite a few years warned about the coming inflation, leading to hyperinflation, based on unlimited money printing. But the dynamite of a global commodity crisis and shortages thrown into the already catastrophic debt and global monetary fire will create an inferno of nuclear proportions. If a miracle doesn’t stop this war very quickly (which is extremely unlikely), the world will soon be entering a hyperinflationary commodity explosion (think both energy, metals and food) combined with a cataclysmic deflationary asset implosion (think debt, stocks and property).

The world will be experiencing totally unknown consequences without the ability to solve any of them for a very long time. All the above would most likely happen even without a global war. But if the war spreads outside Russia and Ukraine, then all bets are off. At this point I am not going to speculate about such an outcome since what is standing in front of us currently certainly is bad enough.

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Well, yes, prices are rising.

• Inflation: SMOKING (Denninger)

The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.8 percent in February on a seasonally adjusted basis after rising 0.6 percent in January, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 7.9 percent before seasonal adjustment. Gasoline was only up 6.6% in the February index. Most of the damage had not yet been taken; that’s in the last two weeks and will be in the next report. Groceries were up 1.4% on the month which annualizes to 18%, a figure that is worse than the early 1980s inflation and will flat-out ruin lower and middle-income Americans. Shelter was the largest non-food and fuel increase, which also monkey-hammers modest-income persons.

Prices for used vehicles dropped, no doubt due to the insanity of large trucks which of course are fuel pigs and most people buy them because they like them, not because they tow or haul something. When the pump shuts off at $100 before the tank is full they suddenly get a lot less attractive, don’t they? The fiction of “owners-equivalent rent” continues. Actual house prices have risen astronomically yet OER is only up 4.3%. Anyone who believes that figure is nuts. Incidentally this intentional distortion was part and parcel of the housing crash in 2008 and why we’ll have another one; rentals have been priced exclusive of capital cost recovery for quite some time and that’s a problem because the owners have thought they’d be “ok” due to capital appreciation in the asset value.

Then Covid hit, the moratoriums came and the rocket-shot in price that “rescued” what was otherwise a flat-out disaster that would have bankrupted basically everyone who owned and rented out single-family residences. The problem is that as with last time this “asset value” addition is a mirage; liquidity will be forced to tighten as when you can’t buy food you riot and a burned house is worth zero. You can’t print chickens, cows, wheat and corn — you have to grow them and when the input costs go up so does the price in the store. Thus these intentional (but transparent and fully-visible) lies in the CPI table, specifically OER, which I’ve outlined for over a decade as the cause of much of bad policy by both The Fed and Government, but which was intentionally put into the computation by the government itself, is going to lead to the same sort of bad outcome.

Insurance is going to take off too. Unfortunately that’s a “sunk cost” for virtually everyone in some form or fashion. If you think car insurance is going to get nasty health insurance was up 1.9% on the month which annualizes to 25.3%. Every single employed person either pays this directly (e.g. Obamacare) or it is a direct deduction from their wage and salary offer if the employer is forced to provide it for him or her with it commonly being $500 a month — so this is $100 per month, or over $1,000 a year that is going to come directly in the form of less money in your pocket or even firings if you no longer are worth the extra $100 a month to the employer! The annualized change in price for goods, both durables and non-durables, are all up double-digits with durable goods approaching 20%.

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“America has gazed into the abyss and apparently decided to sign a lease and move in.”

• Crashin’ and Burnin’ (Kunstler)

Yes, life in the early twenty-first century looks more and more like a bad horror movie. And now the critics are moving in, savaging the production. “A massive murderous fraud,” many are saying of the Covid-19 extravaganza, and the audience, once back out in the blinding, clarifying daylight, are saying to themselves, Yeah, kinda seems like it was. Fraud vitiates liability protection. It is a well-known principle among the artisans of law. Moderna stock is down 70 percent and Pfizer more than 20. Wall Street has sniffed out a motherlode of rot, according to Mr. Edward Dowd, BlackRock investment advisor emeritus, who is saying it loudly over the alt-streams, making a whole lot of public health officials and doctors nervous as roaches when the lights flash on.

Mom impersonator Rochelle Walensky, chief of the CDC, has concealed much dire information about the number of “vaccine” injuries and fatalities of the past year, while still importuning everybody to vaxx-up and boost-up, knowing they might be harmed by it. Does she just skate on that? And then, of course, there is Dr. Fauci, missing in action lately. (Anybody look for him down in Paraguay?) The clock is ticking on when the millions of lawsuits might commence along with prosecutions for crimes against humanity.

Cue “Joe Biden,” then, to crash the global economy and give folks other things to think about — like, how am I going to keep driving sixty miles each way to work with gasoline at $8 a gallon? How, indeed, is anything like an advanced economy going to stagger forward now that nobody in the world will sell each other anything? Well, it probably just won’t. All that’s left is the sound of money being shot out of cannons, and nobody seems to notice that it gets shredded in the process. America has gazed into the abyss and apparently decided to sign a lease and move in.

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“The whole world will be interested to know what exactly the American bio-laboratories in Ukraine were doing.”

• ‘A New Page in the Art of War’ (Escobar)

By now what we may call a Triple Threat has been established as the catalyst anticipating the launch of Operation Z. • Ukraine developing nuclear weapons. Zelensky himself hinted at it in the Munich Security Conference. • U.S. bioweapons labs in Ukraine. Confirmed, tersely, by none other than the Sinister Cookie Distributor neocon wife in the uber-neocon Kaganate of Nulands, who described them as “biological research facilities”. ” • An imminent attack on Donbass with massive civilian deaths. It could have been in March, according to documents seized by the Russian Ministry of Defense. Or even in late February, according to SVR intelligence, which was monitoring the line of contact on a minute-by-minute basis. This is what eventually prompted Operation Z as a Russian version of R2P (“Responsibility to Protect”).

So after years of CIA-instigated shouts of “conspiracy theory!” and less than zero “fact checkers” activity, it turns out “it was all happening in Ukraine”, as divine messenger Maria Zakharova once again pointed out: “We have found your own products. We have found your biological material.” The first-class investigative work of Dilyana Gaytandzhieva on Pentagon bioweapons was fully vindicated. Based on documents received from Ukrainian biolab employees, the Russian ModD revealed that research with samples of bat coronavirus, among other experiments, were conducted in a Pentagon-funded biolab.

The purpose of all this research – which included another Pentagon project to study the transfer of pathogens by wild birds migrating between Ukraine and Russia and other neighboring countries – was “to create a mechanism for the covert spread of deadly pathogens.” In trademark pysop mode, everything was turned upside down by the United States government: those evil Russkies could take control of biological samples, so any “accident” involving biological and chemical weapons in Ukraine would have to be blamed on Russia. The White House, in yet another flagrant display of unredeemable stupidity, accused Russia of “false claims” and China of “endorsing this propaganda”. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov came up with the adult perspective: “The whole world will be interested to know what exactly the American bio-laboratories in Ukraine were doing.”

Read more …

“Keep in mind the U.S. hadn’t uttered a word about Russia using bio or chemical weapons in Ukraine until Nuland opened her mouth.”

• On a Knife’s Edge in Ukraine (Lauria)

Nuland’s answer under oath to Sen. Marco Rubio on Tuesday appeared to confirm the U.S. has biological weapons in Ukrainian labs. Rubio asked her point blank whether Ukraine had biological or chemical weapons. A very uncomfortable Nuland answered that Ukraine was conducting “biological research” and the U.S. was worried “materials” would fall into Russian hands. It is hard to imagine she was worried about Russia seizing experimental vaccines or blood samples. She may be referring to gain-of-function research on pathogens that National Institutes of Health Director Anthony Fauci testified could have a “dual use” purpose — both civilian and military. Here was Nuland apparently twice spilling the beans: the first time speaking on an unsecured telephone about U.S. plans for the 2014 coup in Kiev. And now about U.S.-funded bio research in Ukraine.

Damage control was clearly in order. First the White House scrambled to say Russian charges that the U.S. was running bioweapons research near the Russian border was “absurd” and “preposterous.” Then the Pentagon explained that these may be leftover pathogens from Soviet days and were part of a U.S. program begun 30 years ago to destroy WMD in former Soviet republics. That was the explanation of Robert Pope, the director of the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. He said: “Scientists being scientists, it wouldn’t surprise me if some of these strain collections in some of these laboratories still have pathogen strains that go all the way back to the origins of that program.”

But documents on the website of the U.S. embassy in Kiev show the U.S. paid for and opened new labs in Ukraine as late as 2019. Now the U.S. reaction to Nuland’s revelations has turned more sinister. Keep in mind the U.S. hadn’t uttered a word about Russia using bio or chemical weapons in Ukraine until Nuland opened her mouth. Now the U.S. is putting out the word that these Soviet-era pathogens may be used by Russia in the current conflict. Rubio set that ball rolling when he asked Nuland that if these weapons would be used, was there any doubt Russia would be the side using them. (It was a backhanded admission the U.S. and Ukraine have them too). She said: “There’s no doubt in my mind” it would be Russia.”

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That’s pretty unique. And risky.

• Russia Allows Chinese Banks To Buy Oil Without Letters Of Credit (ZH)

One week ago, Shell quietly purchased Russian seaborne crude (at a record discount of $28.50) amid a self-imposed boycott by most other Western purchasers of Russian energy products, only to spark widespread populist outrage over its indirect funding of the Putin regime and prompting a vow from the largest European energy company to not purchase Russian crude any more. As a result, Moscow has found itself in the crippling position where despite carve outs for its oil exports (Europe has vocally refused to join the US ban of Russian energy exports), not a single western major is willing to buy Russian oil over fears of public backlash, while Chinese banks are reportedly on the fence when it comes to providing letters of credit to shippers seeking to purchase Russian oil, in the process freezing Russia’s entire seaborne oil exporting industry.

So fast forward to today, when in hopes of short circuiting the Chinese quasi-ban, Russian oil giant Surgutneftegaz (Surgut) has allowed Chinese buyers to receive oil without providing guarantees known as letters of credit (LC) in order to bypass Western sanctions, Reuters reported citing three people with knowledge of the matter said. A letter of credit, which allows 30 days for payment and is backed by a bank, is seen as the strongest guarantee for both sides. The change in terms will allow Surgutneftegaz – which will now face a direct monetary risk that “something might happen” to the uninsured cargo but since it has no other choices it will gladly take it – to continue to sell ESPO Blend crude from the port of Kozmino in Russia’s Far East to China, the world’s top oil importer.

As a reminder, Russian ESPO crude exports – of around 750,000 barrels per day in normal times – provide China’s biggest source of spot crude. While China has repeatedly voiced opposition to the sanctions, calling them ineffective and insisting it will maintain normal economic and trade exchanges with Russia, Bloomberg recently reported that Chinese state banks had restricted purchases of Russian commodities and stopped issuing U.S. dollar-denominated letters of credit for purchases of physical Russian commodities ready for export, perhaps out of fear of being seen as violating western sanctions. To get round the restrictions, Chinese companies are using open accounts that allow the customer to buy goods on a deferred payment basis, with a requirement to pay in full up to three days after the cargo is loaded. It was not immediately clear which banks were involved.

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“Why shouldn’t George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden be called war criminals too?”

• In Praise of “Whataboutism” (Kimberley)

The word “whataboutism” is used to silence and insult opponents of U.S. imperialism. It should be embraced as a means of revealing what is too often kept hidden. Anyone who speaks out against imperialism, capitalism, or racism with concrete examples of the terrible harm they do, can expect to be charged with the dreaded term “whataboutism.” Like clockwork, the act of revealing American crimes will result in an accusation that is used to silence dissent. When war propaganda prevails regarding Ukraine or any other place where the hegemon is doing its dirty work, it is reasonable to ask probing questions. Why are the deaths of 14,000 people killed by Ukraine’s civil war swept under the rug? Why is it forbidden to ask about the U.S. destruction of Libya? But once having asked a good question, one will be told that raising the topic is proof of the whataboutism sin.

The word whataboutism is in the dictionary and is defined as, “the act or practice of responding to an accusation of wrongdoing by claiming that an offense committed by another is similar or worse.” That meaning is accurate and also completely defensible. The charge is meant to censor the speaker, excuse U.S. actions, and defend its human rights violations. The denials and apologies are exactly why whataboutism should be defended. It is terrible when lies and crimes are not countered with verifiable information exposing them. The term has gained popularity in part because there is so much hypocrisy to point out and there are so many adherents to American exceptionalism who defend what they should condemn.

When the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced that it would begin investigating “the Situation in Ukraine” corporate media and their political partners gloated and pointed fingers at Russia. They didn’t point out that the U.S., like Russia, is not a signatory of the Treaty of Rome which brought the ICC into existence. Not only is the U.S. not a member state, but in 2002 Congress passed the American Service Members Protection Act , popularly known as the Hague Invasion Act. It gives the U.S. the right to extract any American held at the court in the Hague. The removal part isn’t even necessary because the act prohibits the extradition of Americans to the ICC. The chest thumping about the investigation into Ukraine should surely be followed by a discussion of U.S. hostility to the ICC. It is a clear example of when and how whataboutism should be practiced.

Not mentioning the U.S. relationship or rather lack of relationship with the ICC would be an indication of agreement with exceptionalist doctrine. If Vladimir Putin is described as a war criminal, thug, dictator, and a modern day Hitler, it is appropriate and indeed necessary to ask about American presidents. For brevity’s sake consider only those American presidents who served since 2001. U.S. invasions and interventions in western Asia, North Africa, central Asia and the Horn of Africa have displaced more than 37 million people since the “war on terror” began. Why shouldn’t George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden be called war criminals too? Silence in the face of their criminality gives license and approval to U.S. aggressions.

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Blow up the internet to save propaganda.

• Are You SURE This Is A Good Idea? (Denninger)

What could possibly go wrong with setting an example like this? “Cogent Communications will pull the plug on its connectivity to customers in Russia in response to President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The US-based biz is one of the planet’s largest internet backbones – the freeways of the internet – and says it carries roughly a quarter of global ‘net traffic.” Modern-day “aggregators”, of which Cogent is one, often are the source of address delegations as well. Cogent has confirmed they’re canceling IP addresses delegated out; when you are using an aggregator you don’t actually “own” any delegations you may have as for routing purposes the aggregator has the registration on those. For residential users this is not a major issue, but for commercial places where reverse mapping is a factor it can be at least a moderate hassle.

Much-more ominous, however, is this: “ICANN on Wednesday rebuffed a request from Mykhailo Fedorov, First Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine, to revoke all Russian web domains, shut down Russian DNS root servers, and invalidate associated TLS/SSL certificates in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.” First, ICANN has no ownership of DNS root servers; they’re privately owned and operated. What they could do is remove “undesirable ones” from the “hints” file that is publicly distributed. Actually getting ISPs around the globe to change their hint files is quite-possibly another matter. Again, this is a distributed data set and what is distributed in terms of the root hints are suggestions, not commands. Could ICANN revoke the .RU top-level domain? Yes, but doing so risks a schism. Again there is nothing that can be done to enforce upon ISPs (or for that matter anyone willing to run their own local resolver, such as I do here at my home) what top-level domains exist and who is the delegated authority for them.

[..] ICANN wisely told Ukraine to go blow goats, but what also concerns me is that the people in Ukraine who made the request do not understand how this all works because in addition to asking for imposition of a deliberate schism they also asked for all Russian TLS/SSL certificates to be revoked. ICANN does not issue said certificates nor does it control the issuers, directly or indirectly, that people use as the “root of trust” for said certificates. As just one example ICANN has no operational control over Verisign which is one of the many firms that issues end-entity certificates. If you go to PayPal’s web page their certificate is issued by DigiCert and they, and only they, are the ones who validate that indeed they issued it and PayPal owns it.

The various operating system firms distribute a base “trusted root” list and there’s a consortium that agrees (most of the time) on what goes in and is removed from there; for example Google (Chrome) and Mozilla (Firefox) both have such a list and are part of the consortium that makes such decisions, as does Microsoft, the various Linux distributions, Apple and FreeBSD. Attempts to tamper with this for political reasons are extremely unwise because while they may indeed be a “weapon” that can be used to inflict pain on various entities for political purpose any abuse of this sort risks a schism on the Internet as a whole and evasion of the sanction, if undertaken and it will be by the targeted parties, wildly increases the risk of compromise of the entire trust structure on which secure transactions rest. The impact of such an event will not be localized to the sanctioned parties; by definition if you do that the impact is likely to be global.

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Hunter and Azov.

• One Ukrainian Billionaire Funded Hunter Biden, Zelensky, Azov Battalion (Koa)

The real person who was the benefactor to, and the boss of, Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, at the Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings, was not the CEO of Burisma Holdings, Mykola Zlochevsky, but it was instead Ihor Kolomoysky, who was part of the newly installed Ukrainian Government, which the Obama Administration itself had actually just installed in Ukraine, in what the head of the “private CIA” firm Stratfor correctly called “the most blatant coup in history.” Shortly after the Obama Administration’s Ukrainian coup, on March 2, 2014, Kolomoysky, who supported Yanukovych’s overthrow, was appointed the governor of Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine. Hunter Biden, with no experience in the industry or region, would join Kolomoysky’s Burisma Holdings two months later on May 12, 2014.

A 2012 study of Burisma Holdings done in Ukraine by the AntiCorruption Action Centre (ANTAC), an investigative nonprofit co-funded by American billionaire George Soros and the U.S. State Department, found that the true owner of Burisma Holdings was none other than Ukrainian billionaire-oligarch Ihor Kolomoysky. The study, which was funded to dig up corruption on the Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, instead found that Ihor Kolomoysky “managed to seize the largest reserves of natural gas in Ukraine”. Burisma Holdings changed owners in 2011 when it was taken over by an off-shore Cyprus enterprise called Brociti Investments Ltd, and subsequently, moved addresses under the same roof as Ukrnaftoburinnya and Esko-Pivnich, two Ukrainian gas companies which happened to be also owned by Kolomoysky through off-shore entities in the British Virgin Islands.

Oleh Kanivets, who worked as CEO of Ukrnaftoburinnya, confirmed Kolomoysky as the owner of Burisma Holding in the 2012 report saying, “The Privat Group is the immediate owner. This company was founded by Mykola Zlochevsky some time ago, but he later sold his shares to the Privat Group.” In other words, Hunter Biden’s boss and benefactor at Burisma Holdings is the same Ukrainian billionaire-oligarch who also claimed the position of boss and benefactor over Volodymyr Zelensky before he became Ukraine’s president.

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“1.34ml after 1 hour, 2.34ml after 4 hours, and then 12.3ml after 48 hours.”

• Pfizer Vaccine Accumulates In Ovaries; Ovarian Cancer At All Time High (DE)

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been forced by court order to publish all confidential documents sent to them by Pfizer in regard to emergency use approval of the Pfizer Covid-19 injection. The latest round of documents were published 1st March 22, and one of the documents confirms that the Pfizer Covid-19 injection accumulates in the ovaries over time. What are the consequences of this? Well official UK data shows that cases of Ovarian cancer in 2021 were at an all time high, and the UK Medicine Regulator received over 40,000 reports relating to reproductive and menstrual disorders suspected as adverse reactions to the Covid-19 injections in 2021 alone. The study, which can be found in the long list of confidential Pfizer documents that the FDA have been forced to publish via a court order here, was carried out on Wistar Han rats, 21 of which were female and 21 of which were male.


Each rat received a single intramuscular dose of the Pfizer Covid-19 injection and then the content and concentration of total radioactivity in blood, plasma and tissues were determined at pre-defined points following administration. In other words, the scientists conducting the study measured how much of the Covid-19 injection has spread to other parts of the body such as the skin, liver, spleen, heart etc. But one of the most concerning findings from the study is the fact that the Pfizer injection accumulates in the ovaries over time. An ‘ovary’ is one of a pair of female glands in which the eggs form and the female hormones oestrogen and progesterone are made. In the first 15 minutes following injection of the Pfizer jab, researchers found that the total lipid concentration in the ovaries measured 0.104ml. This then increased to 1.34ml after 1 hour, 2.34ml after 4 hours, and then 12.3ml after 48 hours.

Ed Dowd

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“Forget how health bureaucracies headed by political appointees took over the task of regulating nearly the whole of life, while messaging the country that freedom just doesn’t matter much anymore!”

• Forget About Covid, They Say (Tucker)

Earlier this year, a phrase was trending because Bari Weiss used it on a talk show: “I’m done with Covid.” Many people cheered simply because the subject has been the source of vast oppression for billions of people for two years. There are two ways to be over Covid. One way is to do what the memo from the consultants of the Democratic National Committee suggested: declare the war won and move on. For political reasons. Deaths attributed to Covid nationally are higher now than they were in the summer of 2020 when the whole country was locked down. They are also higher now than during the election of November the same year. But today we are just supposed to treat it for what it is: a seasonal virus with a disparate impact on the aged and frail.

Rationality is back! In that sense, it’s good to forget about Covid if it means living life normally and behaving with clarity about what does and does not work to mitigate a virus. The Democrats decided that the hyper-restrictionist ways were risking political fortunes. Hence, the line and the talking points needed to change. Another way to get over Covid is to forget completely about the last two years, especially the astonishing failures of compulsory pandemic controls. Forget about the school closures that cost a generation two years of learning. Forget that the hospitals were largely closed to people without a Covid-related malady. Forget about the preventable nursing-home deaths. Forget that dentistry was practically abolished for a few months, or that one could not even get a haircut.

Forget the stay-at-home orders, the church and business closures, the playground and gym closures, the bankruptcies, the travel restrictions, the firings, the crazed advice for everyone to mask up and physically separate, the record drug-related deaths, the mass depression, the segregation, the brutalization of small business, the labor-force dropouts, the forced stoppages of art and culture, and the capacity limits on venues that forced weddings and funerals to be on Zoom. Forget about a closer look at the bogus mathematical models, vaccine trials, the circumstances behind the Emergency Use Authorizations, the adverse effects, the inaccuracies of the PCR test, and misclassification of deaths, the billions and trillions of misdirected funds, the division of all workers between essential and nonessential, and the millions who were forced to get jabs they did not want.

Forget about the possibility of a lab leak, the role of China, the deadly use of ventilators, the neglect of therapeutics, the near-banning of all talk of natural immunity, the overselling of the vaccine, the lost religious holidays, the lonely deaths due to the blocking of loved ones from hospitals, the censorship of science, the manipulated and hidden CDC data, the payments to the major media, the symbiotic relationship between government and Big Tech, the demonization of dissent, and the abuse of emergency powers. Forget how health bureaucracies headed by political appointees took over the task of regulating nearly the whole of life, while messaging the country that freedom just doesn’t matter much anymore!

Who precisely benefits from this method of being “over Covid?” The unrepentant hegemon that gave us this disaster to begin with. They want to be in the clear. They don’t just desire to be exonerated; they don’t want to be judged at all. They want to be unaccountable. The best path toward that end is to foster public amnesia.

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No knowledge whatsoever of adverse events?!

• Some Australians Face A Fourth Covid Booster Shot – And One Every Year (DM)

Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt has flagged that older Australians may get a new Covid vaccine booster shot every year. Mr Hunt said the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) has been looking into a potential fourth vaccine shot for weeks. After some significant research he said ATAGI will potentially be ‘going to recommend a second booster’ for people aged 65 and over, and an annual jab is being considered. Mr Hunt said it could be a matter of weeks before older Australians known they can have a second Covid booster Mr Hunt said advice from the nation’s leading vaccine advisory group could come through by the end of the month on whether a fourth dose would be recommended.

So, Australians could find out in a matter of weeks whether they need to receive a second COVID-19 vaccine booster ahead of a predicted winter surge in infections. Mr Hunt said it was more likely than not a fourth dose will be the course of action for some groups ahead of winter, when a spike in both COVID and flu infections is forecast. ‘I can’t pre-empt the decision but … they are potentially going to recommend a second booster, which would be potentially the start of an annual program for people 65 and above,’ Mr Hunt told reporters in Canberra. ‘We’re expecting that advice from ATAGI within the next three weeks, if not earlier.’

The fourth dose plan will be a major topic of discussion when Prime Minister Scott Morrison meets with state and territory leaders at Friday’s national cabinet meeting. It comes as the government announced $2.1 billion to prepare for the months ahead. The plan will involve $1.2 billion to help protect residential aged care and disability care sectors, $356 million to protect vulnerable population groups and a further $571 million for vaccines.

Electronic pill

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“The Ministry of Information thanks you for your good citizenship as we battle against Vladimir Putin’s inflation and gas prices.”

• Google Ministry of Information Announces Zero Tolerance Policy (CTH)

Comrade citizens, after success with the Ministry of Information controlling efforts surrounding the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and public health vaccinations, The Division of Correct Thinking has announced they will also not tolerate any information against their war efforts in Ukraine. All good global citizens will appreciate the Ministry’s effort to protect you from bad Russian influences. Only the approved truth must remain visible to combat any Russian efforts to influence our thinking. The only horrors approved for review must be approved by the compliance division within the Google Ministry of Information. Comrade citizens, as our experience with COVID and the heroic vaccination program has shown us, the Ministry always looks out for our physical and mental health.

The inherent dangers of wrong thoughts could lead to misplaced sympathies, lack of necessary motivation and questions about the altruism within the Ministry for Peace. Further guidance continues…. Comrades, we must also be on guard for dissident agent provocateurs who may surface with unapproved information. The Ministry anticipates subversive efforts against the health of our state that may involve messages from non-reliable sources. The state fact-checking operations have been activated to level red status in anticipation of this problem. Help do your part. If you are concerned you may have been influenced by any information that could potentially be defined as friendly toward the Russian government, you must help deprogram your wrong thoughts by watching replays of Rocky IV or Red Dawn.


These are historically accurate documentaries, provided by brilliant Hollywood research teams, and they outline prior efforts of the Russian government to attack our nation. Any comrade citizen who wishes to donate their monthly chocolate or gasoline ration to the brave Ukranian people should contact their local re-education office using the Tik Tok code: GOOD CITIZEN. You may also text your good citizenship status to 1-800-YesWeCan, and you will receive a link to download a QR code providing you access to the full YouTube library of approved reference material. In the approved library, you will find quality content highlighting the glorious efforts of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the patriotic resistance of the Ukrainian military. The Ministry of Information thanks you for your good citizenship as we battle against Vladimir Putin’s inflation and gas prices.

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“We need to support Ukraine as it is the latest thing we are supposed to support..”

• Restaurants Now Requiring Proof Of Ukraine Support (BBee)

As the war between Russia and Ukraine rages on, restaurants across the country are now requiring proof of Ukraine support in order to eat in their restaurants. Patrons are being asked to produce a photo ID and open up their social media profiles to prove they have been adequately supporting Ukraine by posting flags and sharing the latest wartime propaganda. “We need to support Ukraine as it is the latest thing we are supposed to support,” said the manager of one NYC cafe. “If you aren’t adequately supporting the thing that everyone says we are supposed to be supporting at this time, you don’t deserve to eat in my store!” When asked about whether he would still require vaccine cards due to the pandemic, he stared blankly and said: “The what? I’m not sure what you’re talking about.” Patrons who don’t have adequate evidence of Ukraine support will then have to show adequate evidence of Russia hatred before entering.

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Tom and Jerry

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle June 29 2021

Jun 292021
 
 June 29, 2021  Posted by at 9:01 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  67 Responses »


Rembrandt van Rijn The Adoration of the Magi 1634

 

• Conflict of Interest in WHO Recommendation Against Ivermectin (TSN)
• Evidence of Antibody Dependent Enhancement? (DE)
• Did Pfizer Fail to Perform industry Standard Animal Testing? (TSN)
• More Crazy (Denninger)
• Singapore Doctors Call To Halt Covid Vaccination Of Teens (RT)
• Abu Dhabi To Ban Unvaccinated People From Most Public Places (F.)
• Greece Offers Youngsters 150 Euros To Get Vaccinated (K.)
• Falsehood Rules (Kunstler)
• Google Tumbles As Biden Revives Trump-Era Antitrust Probe (ZH)
• Why Giuliani’s Suspension Should Worry All Lawyers (Turley)
• Manhattan DA Says No Charges For Trump: Lawyer (ZH)
• Biden’s Lawless Bombing of Iraq and Syria (Greenwald)
• Nike Partners WIth CCP With New Slogan ‘Just Obey It’ (BBee)
• Olympics To Kick Off With Ceremonial Lighting Of The American Flag

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trusted News Initiative (TNI).

The WHO is funded by Big Pharma. “Originally funded entirely by member states, the organization now receives less than 20% of its budget from these states and the rest from donors with their own financial and strategic agendas.”

• Conflict of Interest in WHO Recommendation Against Ivermectin (TSN)

All dangerous diseases are best treated early. A major failure of the global COVID-19 strategy has been to wait a week for the disease to become dangerous, when breathing becomes a problem. Early treatment of COVID, even for those with mild symptoms, prevents later hospitalization. There are several early treatment drugs showing promise but ivermectin leads the pack regarding safety, effectiveness and price. Unfortunately, the biggest players in Western mainstream media are members of the Trusted News Initiative (TNI). The TNI is a story for another day but it’s remarkable that big media companies barely report that they have agreed to promote global vaccination and to make sure any “disinformation myths are stopped in their tracks”[i].

Unfortunately, as a result early treatment seems to be seen as a disinformation myth and is not mentioned. Early treatment is vital in treating serious diseases and COVID-19 is no exception. Considering the human and economic cost, the avoidance of early treatment with a very safe, effective and off-patent drug is a criminal tragedy of immense proportions and a winning lottery ticket for some pharmaceutical companies that are designing and selling novel patented drugs that could not compete with ivermectin in a free market. Mercks’ molnupiravir, for instance, is seeking an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) from the FDA and “Merck will receive approximately $1.2 billion to supply approximately 1.7 million courses of molnupiravir to the United States government.”[ii]

Ivermectin doesn’t need an EUA because it passed trials in 1986. It just needs to be recommended to treat COVID-19. However, if ivermectin was officially recognized as an effective treatment, it would legally prevent molnupiravir’s EUA until it passes trials and thus delay or endanger the $1.2 billion deal. An aggravating factor is the fact that molnupiravir (EIDD-2801) could cause harmful genetic mutations. [iii]

In the face of a public health crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic, government authorities and international organizations have traditionally looked to the World Health Organization (WHO) for guidance – trusting that the WHO is free of commercial interests. Originally funded entirely by member states, the organization now receives less than 20% of its budget from these states and the rest from donors[iv] with their own financial and strategic agendas. Margret Chan, the previous Director General of the WHO, said in 2015: “I have to take my hat and go around the world to beg for money and when they give us the money [it is] highly linked to their preferences, what they like. It may not be the priority of the WHO, so if we do not solve this, we are not going to be as great as we were”. [v]

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“Majority of Covid deaths are the fully vaccinated and A&E attendance is breaking records”

• Evidence of Antibody Dependent Enhancement? (DE)

Are we beginning to see evidence of ‘Antibody Dependent Enhancement’ (ADE) due to the Covid-19 vaccines in the United Kingdom? The latest data on hospitalisations and deaths allegedly due to Covid-19 certainly suggests so. ADE can arise in several different ways but the best-known is dubbed the ‘Trojan Horse Pathway’. This occurs when non-neutralizing antibodies generated by past infection or vaccination fail to shut down the pathogen upon re-exposure. Instead, they act as a gateway by allowing the virus to gain entry and replicate in cells that are usually off limits (typically immune cells, like macrophages). That, in turn, can lead to wider dissemination of illness, and over-reactive immune responses that cause more severe illness. Barry Bloom, MD, PhD, of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health explanation of ADE is as follows – “The cause of ADE is having antibodies to a virus that don’t neutralize it. That enables the virus to be gobbled up by cells that have receptors for antibodies, but not the virus. That’s the way of getting virus into cells that it ordinarily would not infect,”.


ADE can also occur when neutralizing antibodies (which bind the virus and stop it from causing infection) are present at low enough levels that they don’t protect against infection. Instead, they can form immune complexes with viral particles, which in turn leads to worse illness. [..] In previous clinical trials of vaccine candidates to combat SARS and MERS, the studies each failed during the animal phase due to ADE also known as pathogenic priming or a cytokine storm. Phase three clinical trials are designed to uncover frequent or severe side effects before a vaccine is approved for use, including ADE. But here in lies the problem, none of the Covid-19 vaccines have completed phase three clinical trials. The Pfizer phase three trial is not due to complete until April 6th 2023.

Neurological issues

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Excellent article. Recommended.

• Did Pfizer Fail to Perform industry Standard Animal Testing? (TSN)

The current mRNA vaccines are theorized to act locally in draining lymphoid tissue. Formulated lipid nanoparticles that contain mRNA able to produce the spike protein are syringe injected into a muscle such as the deltoid (shoulder muscle). Once the injection occurs, the muscle cells near the injection site are impacted by the mRNA-based vaccine (e.g. the lipid nanoparticles), while much of the dose moves into the intracellular fluid surrounding the muscle cells and consequently drains to lymph nodes. According to this theory, a properly functioning mRNA-based vaccine is delivered into and drives production of the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein in muscle and lymph node cells. The cells then produce the Spike protein, which is then moved to the surface of these cells where it becomes attached.

The foreign virus Spike protein then triggers the immune system to recognize and attack any cell in the body that is either infected by SARS-CoV-2 or has Spike protein on its surface. The vaccine was designed so that the Spike protein is affixed via a transmembrane anchor region, so that it cannot circulate around the body via the bloodstream. The same general scenario applies to all mRNA-based vaccines as well as recombinant adenoviral vectored vaccines (such as the J&J vaccine) designed to use gene-therapy technology to express Spike protein in cells and tissues. This general strategy is designed to reduce the risk that any residual vaccine dose that does somehow end up in the bloodstream (or organs and tissues) ends up not being a safety risk due to unintended biologic effects.

Spike protein will remain affixed to cell surfaces, and therefore is not released into the blood where circulating Spike might cause problems by binding to its natural target, ACE-2 receptors. However, any cell that has Spike protein (or protein fragments) anchored on its membrane or displayed on MHC antigen-presenting molecules becomes a target for vaccine-activated immune cells and antibodies, which would then attack, damage or kill those cells in the same way that SARS-CoV-2 virus-infected cells would be attacked. In other words, if very active mRNA delivery particles or recombinant adenoviral-vectored vaccines spread throughout the body, the resulting production of the vaccine antigen (Spike, in this case) will both stimulate immunity and also cause those same cells to be attacked by the immune system. If this actually happens, the resulting “vaccine reactogenicity” could resemble clinical symptoms seen with autoimmune syndromes.

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“A consenting adult has the right to choose to do dangerous things.”

• More Crazy (Denninger)

HCQ, I remind you, is used by millions of people with Lupus and Rheumatoid Arthritis in the United States alone. If it caused heart attacks in one person out of 150 and screwed up the hearts of 10% of the rest not one doctor would prescribe it for either condition as that is wildly dangerous and will kill people outright a decent percentage of the time. Ivermectin, I remind you, has a record across several billion doses administered of one serious adverse event (defined: lands you in the hospital) in roughly every 600,000 people who take it. It is for this reason that it is considered safe enough to buy over the counter in many nations and is handed out by non-medical personnel all over sub-Saharan Africa. Indeed doing that has basically eliminated river blindness, a disease that formerly devastated entire regions.

As for Covid and other viral infections there is plenty of science on multiple mechanisms of action that are likely involved. Yet pharma, the FDA, NIH and CDC all are aligned against it and did not run large, formal studies for early treatment despite being safer to do so than recommending you take Tylenol or aspirin because there’s no money in it; the drug costs pennies. HCQ is similarly cheap and it too was never formally studied by these so-called “agencies” either. Now let’s talk about the shots. We never give a measles shot to someone who had the measles. Why not? The scientific evidence is that they cannot get any benefit from it. While the measles vaccine is extremely safe and definitely safer than getting the measles there is no such thing as a completely safe drug. Ever.

If you cannot get the measles because you’ve already had it and are immune then irrespective of how low the risk is it is unethical and gross malpractice to give you said shot because it is scientifically impossible for you to benefit from it. The question is always one of risk and benefit, both potential since no drug or vaccine is 100% effective and the risk of contracting an illness is never 100% for the person taking the drug. There is never any other evaluation, which is inherently personal to each individual’s medical situation, that is appropriate, ethical, moral or legal – period. For any drug, vaccine or other medical procedure or act where the benefit is statistically zero it is thus never, under any circumstance, acceptable to recommend, cajole or coerce someone into accepting it because if the potential benefit is zero then any amount of risk is unacceptable, no matter how low.

(Incidentally for the religiously-bent about vaccines generally who have been flooding my email inbox you’re wasting your time; I have long since told my spam filter to throw your repeated screaming into the trashcan unread. My objection is with this specific set of shots because the data says they’re wildly dangerous in healthy people compared with the illness itself, even without early treatment and definitely when compared to outcomes with treatment.) For comparison Tylenol kills about 500 people in the US a year. If every person in the US had used Ivermectin for the last year it would have killed fewer people than that. That is what the data says, and we could have easily handed it out to any and all who wanted it and get the natural data resulting from it.

There was no statistically-measurable risk in doing so compared against common over-the-counter medicines that anyone can buy anywhere at any time and thus there was no ethical, moral or legal justification for failing to do so in the face of a pandemic for which there were no approved and known-effective treatments. A consenting adult has the right to choose to do dangerous things. This is why we test drugs on consenting adults first even through we know they might not only fail to work they might harm you. Only after years or even decades of such testing do we contemplate testing them on children and only when we have a reasonably-full understanding of the risks.

Rogan Kory

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“The medics who signed the letter argued that that the CDC should be given “a few weeks to produce robust and convincing data”

• Singapore Doctors Call To Halt Covid Vaccination Of Teens (RT)

A group of medics have penned an “urgent open letter” to Singapore’s expert committee on Covid-19 vaccination, calling for the inoculation of youths to be ceased until the US CDC clarifies why a teenage jab recipient died. Written on “on behalf of many concerned pediatricians, primary care physicians, specialists, surgeons and GPs” and signed by a number of Singaporean medical professionals, the letter was posted on Facebook on Saturday. Its authors urged the authorities to “consider a short delay” in vaccinating youths with messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) jabs in view of the recent incident in the US. Earlier this week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) started an investigation into the death of a 13-year-old from Saginaw, Michigan, which occurred three days after he got his second shot of an unnamed coronavirus vaccine.

Vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson have received emergency approval in the US, and all three of them are also in use in Singapore. The medics who signed the letter argued that that the CDC should be given “a few weeks to produce robust and convincing data” on the teen’s death and the possibility of a link to the inoculation. They insist the issue is urgent because Singapore is pursuing “one of the most aggressive” mRNA programs in the world, in which at least 200,000 teenage boys are expected to be vaccinated. “Certainly, we do not want to see any more suspected vaccine-related deaths in any young persons in the prime of their life,” the letter said.

As concerns spread, Singaporean parents have also launched a petition, asking the authorities of the island city-state to suspend the vaccination of those under 30, especially school kids from 12 to 15 years of age, until the CDC probe is complete. It has so far been signed by some 2,000 people.

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“The UAE has the highest vaccination rate in the world..”

• Abu Dhabi To Ban Unvaccinated People From Most Public Places (F.)

The United Arab Emirates has introduced some of the world’s harshest restrictions for unvaccinated people in its push to encourage uptake of the shot, announcing Monday that residents of its capital city Abu Dhabi who aren’t yet inoculated will be banned from most public places. The emirate’s media office said in a series of tweets that it is introducing the ban to encourage vaccinations and preserve public health, though 93% of target groups have been vaccinated. The ban will go into effect Aug. 20, giving the city’s residents some time to get vaccinated against the virus before the measures are enacted. Once that date rolls around, those without the shot will not be allowed to enter public and private schools, universities, nurseries, shopping centers, restaurants, cafes, gyms, museums, theme parks, resorts and all other retail outlets. The main exceptions are retail outlets selling essential goods, such as supermarkets and pharmacies, which all people will still be allowed to enter regardless of their vaccination status.


The order—which the media office said was approved by the Abu Dhabi Emergency, Crisis and Disaster Committee—will not apply to children under the age of 16 and those who have an official reason to be exempt from vaccination. “The committee stated the decision would enhance safety in areas that have been subject to additional precautionary measures and provide enhanced protection for community members,” the Abu Dhabi Government Media Office said in its statement. The UAE has the highest vaccination rate in the world, boasting a rate of 154 doses administered per 100 people, according to a tracker run by The New York Times. Though it has not shared updated data on how many people have been fully or partially vaccinated, Reuters estimates the number of doses it has administered (over 15 million) means around 77.1% of the country’s population has been fully inoculated.

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Immoral or amoral?

• Greece Offers Youngsters 150 Euros To Get Vaccinated (K.)

The Greek government announced it will offer a pre-paid card with 150 euros to young people aged 18-25 to get at least one shot of a vaccine against Covid-19, as an incentive to increase the number of inoculations in the country. The card, dubbed “freedom-pass” by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, will cover costs in travel and entertainment, such as plane and ferry tickets, hotel bookings, music, theatre and cinema, museums and archaeological sites. Presenting the card at the start of a meeting with ministers on Monday, the prime minister said he acknowledged the toll the long months of lockdown have had on the social life of young people.


“This is a debt to our youth, a gift of gratitude, particularly ahead of the summer. [It is] a ‘thank you’ for their patience and perseverance,” he told the ministers at the televised message. “At the same time, however, it is also an incentive for young people in particular to be vaccinated, who, by their very nature, contribute more to movement. And the more they are shielded [against the virus], the more we will limit the transmission of the virus.” Mitsotakis said this is especially true as countries are facing the more transmissible delta variant of the coronavirus, which targets primarily those who have not been vaccinated “but is threatening everyone.”

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“..a private Chicago-based non-profit called the Center for Tech and Civic Life, which received $350-million from Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg to arrange grants targeted at swing districts in Democratic strongholds such as Milwaukee, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Atlanta, for the purpose of hiring ballot harvesters, among other activities.”

• Falsehood Rules (Kunstler)

Now there is one official forensic audit of the 2020 election underway in Maricopa County, Arizona, (the Phoenix metro area), ordered by the State Senate, and some conclusions from phase one, involving the paper ballots, are due to be released this week, with additional phases to come concerning the Dominion voting machines. Many other state legislatures sent delegations to Arizona to learn the ins-and-outs of conducting a forensic audit, and they are making noises about actually doing it. So, in stepped Attorney General Merrick Garland. At the start of the Arizona audit, he sent a letter to the Arizona State Senate threatening to use the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ to halt the audit on the basis of depriving voters of their civil rights. Arizona responded by promising to jail any federal officials who laid their hands on any ballots. That was the end of that gambit for now — they may try it again in phase two.

In the meantime, a county judge in Georgia (one Brian Amero) has ruled that 147,000-odd ballots alleged to have chain-of-custody problems must be made available for inspection, and also that five members of the Fulton County (Atlanta Metro Area) Board of Elections are now individually parties to the lawsuit brought by nine Georgia voters, and may be subject to deposition (being questioned under oath). That is believed to be the beginning of an effort to conduct a full audit in Georgia. So, again, in steps Attorney General Merrick Garland with his Civil Rights Division, led by political activist Kristen Clarke, bringing a lawsuit against the Georgia election reform act passed earlier this year — a shot over Georgia’s bow, shall we say. Ms. Clarke happens to be a colleague of Georgia activist Stacey Abrams, a former Democratic candidate for governor.

Ms. Abrams is also a part-owner of a company, NOWaccount, that does payroll for a private company called Happy Faces, which furnished dozens of poll workers to tally the 2020 election in Georgia, as well as the 2021 US Senate runoff election that put two Democrats, John Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, in office. Elections are supposed to be conducted by public officials, not by private entities. Supposedly, the Georgia election officials turned to Happy Faces because it was a way to avoid hiring workers for less than 30 hours-a-week, which would have otherwise required providing them with health care under ObamaCare, the ACA Act. Was that legal? It has not been adjudicated.

Nor has the much bigger scandal of a private Chicago-based non-profit called the Center for Tech and Civic Life, which received $350-million from Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg to arrange grants targeted at swing districts in Democratic strongholds such as Milwaukee, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Atlanta, for the purpose of hiring ballot harvesters, among other activities. Mr. Zuckerberg met with Kristen Clarke, Stacey Abrams, Al Sharpton, and other Democratic activists at a dinner in 2019, at which he promised to help. Did his help cross any legal boundaries? It has not been investigated, nor has the use of the company he runs, Facebook, in its campaign to influence public opinion by blocking news and deleting accounts of non-Democrats exclusively.

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it’s the ads again.

• Google Tumbles As Biden Revives Trump-Era Antitrust Probe (ZH)

Minutes after news that a judge had dismiss an FTC anti-monopoly lawsuit against Facebook sent the social-media giant’s market capitalization past the $1 trillion mark, Google has just been hit by some disappointing news on the anti-trust front. Google shares tumbled heading into the close on reports that the Biden Administration was planning to revive a Trump-era investigation into Google’s display ad business. While a judge has granted some relief for Facebook, potentially taking it out of the sights of the FTC, which is now being led by anti-monopoly pioneer Lina Khan, it’s clear the Biden Administration hasn’t given up on scrutinizing American Big Tech.

According to Bloomberg, which broke the news Monday afternoon, antitrust investigators at the DoJ have stepped up scrutiny of Google’s digital advertising practices in recent months, a sign that the Biden administration is “actively pursuing a probe that started under former President Donald Trump.” DoJ sued Google last year over claims the Alphabet-owned company was abusing its dominance in the internet search market, its biggest business. Any additional legal action, including whether to bring a second suit, will likely depend on whoever is chosen as the assistant attorney general overseeing the antitrust division. It will be up to that person to decide whether to proceed, and it’s possible the government will bring no action against the company.

Staffers from the DoJ’s antitrust office have reportedly interviewed several of Google’s competitors about the firm’s practices in the advertising technology market. The probe places a target on the company’s second-most important business, according to people familiar with the action, who asked not to be identified discussing the early stage probe.

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“..the bar becomes “nothing but a continuation of politics by other means.”

• Why Giuliani’s Suspension Should Worry All Lawyers (Turley)

Lawyers often make sensational, false claims that inflame public opinion, such as insisting former Attorney General William Barr violently cleared D.C.’s Lafayette Square last year to arrange for Trump’s controversial photo op outside St. John’s Episcopal Church. The claim outraged many Americans, even though there was no evidence to prove it; several lawyers repeated the photo op myth as fact on TV. An inspector general and a federal court both later debunked the myth, but the damage was done: To this day, many people believe it. Nevertheless, I do not believe any lawyers should be suspended for such claims, which should be protected as free speech. The New York court brushes over the free speech implications of its ruling with a conclusory statement that Giuliani knowingly misrepresented facts, even though it did not afford him a hearing on that or other questions.

It is not enough to declare “Don’t be like Giuliani.” What is missing in this opinion is a clear standard for when the failure to establish a case — as Giuliani failed to do with his election fraud claims — is a disbarring offense. In reality, many cases collapse in court over insufficient evidence. Election challenges are made without access to critical records or data held by election boards or officials — indeed, litigants often go to court to gain such access. Likewise, public interest lawyers often bring cases against the government, which classifies or withholds evidence. When I litigated the Area 51 case, I was suing a base that the government claimed did not exist, and all information about it was classified; we prevailed in establishing environmental violations but only after years of intense litigation and denials.

The concern in this case is that we are seeing a weaponization of bar investigations after a wide (and well-funded) campaign to harass Republican lawyers, their firms and their clients after the 2020 election. And it has worked: Many law firms are unwilling to take on Republican or conservative causes for fear of being targeted. The Giuliani opinion fuels those concerns. Despite a damning account of exaggerations and falsehoods, it often reads more like a venting — rather than a vetting — of grievances against Giuliani. Instead of issuing a well-deserved reprimand, the court declared Giuliani to be a public menace if allowed to continue practicing law, even for the period of his own adjudication. The premature suspension made little sense.

The bar was focused on Giuliani’s public statements, which will continue unabated by any suspension. Nevertheless, the suspension thrilled many in today’s bloodsport politics. Yet while the court seemed to apply a special “Giuliani rule,” it is unlikely to stay that way if — to paraphrase Carl von Clausewitz — the bar becomes “nothing but a continuation of politics by other means.”

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“This is so small that I can’t believe I’m going to have to try a case like this.”

• Manhattan DA Says No Charges For Trump: Lawyer (ZH)

President Trump’s attorney said on Monday that Manhattan DA Cy Vance has indicated that he has no plans to charge the Trump Organization with crimes related to allegations of “hush money” payments or manipulated real estate values, according to Politico. New York attorney Ronald Fischetti said that during a meeting last week he asked Vance’s team for any details related to charges up for consideration, to which Vance’s team replied that while they are considering charges against the Trump Organization and individual employees related to alleged failures to pay taxes on corporate benefits – widely reported to include cars and apartments, the potential charges only involve a small number of executives. “We asked, ‘Is there anything else?” Fischetti told Politico. “They said, ‘No.’”


When asked if the meeting touched on allegations made by Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen and by adult film star and director Stormy Daniels, Fischetti replied, “Nothing. Not a word on that.” Fischetti also said that Vance’s team told him they will not bring charges against Trump himself when the first indictment comes down. “They just said, ‘When this indictment comes down, he won’t be charged. Our investigation is ongoing,’” he said. According to the Washington Post, Vance’s team is set to proceed with the charges unless otherwise persuaded not to. Fischetti says he expects them to drop this week or next. “It’s like the Shakespeare play Much Ado About Nothing,” he said, adding “This is so small that I can’t believe I’m going to have to try a case like this.”

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BAU. Twitter: “Defense stocks took off like a rocket when Biden was elected, now up 40%.”

• Biden’s Lawless Bombing of Iraq and Syria (Greenwald)

For the second time in the five months since he was inaugurated, President Joe Biden on Sunday ordered a U.S. bombing raid on Syria, and for the first time, he also bombed Iraq. The rationale offered was the same as Biden’s first air attack in February: the U.S., in the words of Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, “conducted defensive precision airstrikes against facilities used by Iran-backed militia groups in the Iraq-Syria border region.” He added that “the United States acted pursuant to its right of self-defense.” Embedded in this formulaic Pentagon statement is so much propaganda and so many euphemisms that, by itself, it reveals the fraudulent nature of what was done.

To begin with, how can U.S. airstrikes carried out in Iraq and Syria be “defensive” in nature? How can they be an act of “self-defense”? Nobody suggests that the targets of the bombing campaign have the intent or the capability to strike the U.S. “homeland” itself. Neither Syria nor Iraq is a U.S. colony or American property, nor does the U.S. have any legal right to be fighting wars in either country, rendering the claim that its airstrikes were “defensive” and an “act of self-defense” to be inherently deceitful. The Pentagon’s description of the people bombed by the U.S. — “Iran-backed militias groups” — is intended to obscure the reality. Biden did not bomb Iran or order Iranians to be bombed or killed.

The targets of U.S. aggression were Iraqis in their own country, and Syrians in their own country. Only the U.S. war machine and its subservient media could possibly take seriously the Biden administration’s claim that the bombs they dropped on people in their own countries were “defensive” in nature. Invocation of Iran has no purpose other than to stimulate the emotional opposition to the government of that country among many Americans in the hope that visceral dislike of Iranian leaders will override the rational faculties that would immediately recognize the deceit and illegality embedded in the Pentagon’s arguments.

Beyond the propagandistic justification is the question of legality, though even to call it a question dignifies it beyond what it merits. There is no conceivable Congressional authorization — none, zero — to Biden’s dropping of bombs in Syria. Obama’s deployment of CIA operatives to Syria and years of the use of force to overthrow Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad never had any Congressional approval of any kind, nor did Trump’s bombing of Assad’s forces (urged by Hillary Clinton, who wanted more), nor does Biden’s bombing campaign in Syria now. It was and is purely lawless, illegal.

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“Chief Marketing Officer Bingbong Van Hummus”

• Nike Partners WIth CCP With New Slogan ‘Just Obey It’ (BBee)

On the heels of the CEO proudly declaring Nike is a brand “of China, and for China,” the company has unveiled a new marketing campaign honoring the glorious Chinese Communist Party with the inspiring slogan “Just Obey It.” “The idea of obedience to brutal and murderous regimes really encapsulates the ethos Nike is going for as a brand,” said Chief Marketing Officer Bingbong Van Hummus. “The People’s Republic of China represents our highest ideals, and we hope to inspire athletes around the world to join us in the most important thing any high-performer can do: Just Obey.”


New apparel featuring the “Just Obey It” slogan is already being produced in Uyghur concentration camps by slaves, and Nike is optimistic about having their new products in the hands of progressive American athletes in the next few weeks. “As long as we don’t run into any delays– you know, from our slaves refusing to obey, we’ll be shipping from the beautiful and powerful country of China very soon!” said Van Hummus. Nike also announced they will be releasing a new Uyghur-inspired shoe with built-in iron shackles.

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“..a beloved pastime where American athletes who were given every opportunity to succeed get to show how much they hate America..”

• Olympics To Kick Off With Ceremonial Lighting Of The American Flag

The 2020 Olympic Games will be kicking off next month with the ceremonial lighting of the American flag, a beloved pastime where American athletes who were given every opportunity to succeed get to show how much they hate America. “Before the Games, American athletes will get to show much they hate their country by taking the ceremonial torch and burning the flag,” said one commentator on ESPN. “We always feel the importance and gravity of this moment at every Olympic Games. As the torchbearer approaches the flag and lights it up, solemnly declaring to everyone that the U.S. is a horribly racist and oppressive country, I can’t help but shed a few tears.” “Stunning and, you guessed it, brave.” One Chinese gymnast suggested she would burn her own country’s flag as well, since the government kidnapped her family and forced her to compete at gunpoint, but she has since disappeared.

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“What made medicine fool people for so long was that its successes were prominently displayed and its mistakes (literally) buried.”
– Nassim Nicholas Taleb

 

 

 

 


The most detailed image ever of a human cell. It was made using 3D data from X-rays, nuclear MRI, and cryo-electron microscopy. The wildest part? We have 100 TRILLION of these inside us.

 

 

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Debt Rattle April 28 2021

Apr 282021
 
 April 28, 2021  Posted by at 8:59 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  38 Responses »


Juan de la Corte (1597–1660) Lot And His Daughters Escaping From The Destruction Of Sodom And Gomorrah

 

• COVID Pill That Cures Body At First Signs Of Infection May Come This Year (JTN)
• Single Dose Of Covid Vaccine Can Nearly Halve Transmission Of Virus (G.)
• The BBC & Bloomberg on India: B Stands For Bullshit. (Slog)
• Oxford Jab ‘Could Be Banned For Under-40s’ After Blood Clot Reports Double (Metro)
• A New World Order Brought To You By COVID-19 (Whitehead)
• Scientists “Debunking” The Wuhan Lab Leak Theory Linked to CCP (NP)
• Don’t Look Now (Jim Kunstler)
• Supply Chains Implode As “Price Doesn’t Even Matter Anymore”
• Gundlach Rejects The Fed’s “Inflation Is Transitory” Narrative (ZH)
• CNN’s New “Reporter,” Natasha Bertrand, is a Deranged Conspiracy Theorist (Greenwald)
• The Deep State Targets Matt Gaetz (AG)
• Apple iOS 14.5 Update Includes ‘App Tracking Transparency’ Feature (G.)
• Google Ad Surge Drives Up Profits For Parent Firm Alphabet (Y!)
• Hunter Biden To Guest Teach A Class On “Fake News” This Fall (DM)

 

 

I forget who drew my attention to this UK government report, Covid-19 Response Spring 2021, but it paints a very stark and completely ignored reality: only 66% of people can ever be successfully vaccinated and may be protected.

34% either can’t be jabbed for medical reasons, or the vaccines don’t catch on. And that’s assuming full uptake, which of course you’ll never ever get. So the number of not successfully vaccinated will be higher than 34%, perhaps quite a bit, no matter the PR campaigns and threats.

This should put the entire Covid response on its head, but for some reason it doesn’t. Those 34+% would appear to be ineligible for a “vaccine passport” as well, depriving them of basic human rights.

 

 

 

 

Lemme guess: Pfizer waits until everyone has been vaccinated, and then introduces this pill?

• COVID Pill That Cures Body At First Signs Of Infection May Come This Year (JTN)

The Pfizer pharmaceutical company is conducting trials on an antiviral drug could be ready for public use later this year that is intended to attack the spine of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and result in a cure to the sickness. The oral drug would stop the virus from mutating in the nose, throat and lungs, according to The Telegraph newspaper, ultimately causing the virus to dissipate. The possible home cure is being tested on 60 volunteers ages 18 and 60 at Pfizer facilities in the U.S. and Belgium. “We have designed PF-07321332 as a potential oral therapy that could be prescribed at the first sign of infection, without requiring that patients are hospitalized or in critical care,” said Mikael Dolsten, who leads the company’s worldwide research, development and medical division.


The first phase of the trial looks at the tolerance to the drug including “significant side effects, and how people feel after taking it,” according to documents. The second phase studies the response to several doses, and the third phase looks at food consumption while taking the pill. More trials would be needed to determine how the drug reacts with people who are infected with the virus. Pfizer says if the trials are successful the drug could be available for public use later this year.

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VItamin D can do that too. Ivermectin can do more.

• Single Dose Of Covid Vaccine Can Nearly Halve Transmission Of Virus (G.)

A single dose of a Covid-19 vaccine can slash transmission of the virus by up to half, according to a Public Health England study. The PHE finding offers further hope that the pandemic can be brought under control as it indicates that vaccinated people are far less likely to pass the virus on to others. The study found that people given a single dose of either the Pfizer/BioNTech or Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccines – and who became infected at least three weeks later – were between 38% and 49% less likely to pass the virus on to people living in their homes, compared with those who were unvaccinated. Protection was seen from about 14 days after vaccination, with similar levels regardless of a person’s age. Other studies have already shown that both vaccines are highly effective at stopping people getting sick and ending up in hospital.

Experts will now assess whether two doses of vaccine can cut transmission of the virus even further, and more work is being carried out on transmission in the general population. PHE said similar results could be expected in places where the risk of transmission is like in the home, such as shared accommodation and prisons. The health secretary, Matt Hancock, said: “This is terrific news – we already know vaccines save lives and this study is the most comprehensive real-world data showing they also cut transmission of this deadly virus. “It further reinforces that vaccines are the best way out of this pandemic as they protect you and they may prevent you from unknowingly infecting someone in your household.

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I’m guessing the truth is somewhere in the middle. India is not doing great right now, but it’s also not collapsing.

• The BBC & Bloomberg on India: B Stands For Bullshit. (Slog)

Unless you made an early getaway to Planet Drongo before the lockdown, you will have read pretty much everywhere that “India sees world’s highest daily cases amid oxygen shortage”. In fact, the BBC tells us that “some people” have died waiting for oxygen, the Indian health service is “completely overwhelmed” and the country now has “sixteen million cases”. So it’s a disaster, right? Well actually, no – it isn’t. The Indian health ministry has already made it clear that the Covid19 variant they’re dealing with this year has “a considerably lower death rate than the previous version”. Go to the Worldometer site, and you’ll see that India’s deaths per million is a minute 134: that’s 7% of the US and French figures, 6% of the UK and Italy’s and the lowest by far of any country in the Top 30 for cases.

Virtually no vaccination has been undertaken in India (only 1.3% are fully vaccinated) and the country is not using lockdowns. The Times of India has just denied the BBC’s ‘deaths from oxygen shortage’ fakery. What India IS doing, however, is employing the anti-inflammatory drugs tocilizumab and itolizumab and the antivirals favipiravir and hydroxychloroquine on a very wide scale. Go to Pharma site/accolyte spaces, and you’ll see all four drugs being rubbished: the Pharmafia and their bureaucratic whores don’t want any signs of a success to get out. But the Truth already is out there: India is doing spectacularly well without either vaccines or lockdown. You won’t find that reality expressed anywhere in the Western MSM, but the facts show that its infection management drugs have delivered one of the lowest case to death rates on the planet.

Not that you’d notice, reading Bloomberg: “India saw the world’s biggest one-day jump in coronavirus cases ever as a ferocious new wave grips the country, overwhelming hospitals and crematoriums and prompting frantic cries for help on social media. The South Asian nation reported 314,835 new infections Thursday, topping a peak of 314,312 recorded in the U.S. on Dec. 21. People took to Twitter and Instagram to call for everything from hospital beds to medicine and doorstep Covid-19 tests. The grim milestone shows how the pandemic crisis has shifted firmly to the developing world, where variants and complacency are threatening containment measures and there’s a lack of vaccines, with supplies dominated by richer nations.”

It’s a pack of lies from end to end. India has a population of 1.4 billion people – so overcrowding is almost generic – and being four times more people than the US, the comparison with America is completely ludicrous. Hospitals do not get overwhelmed when 134 folks out of a million get ill. India’s water purity and basic hygiene measures are very Third World. Yet despite all that, it is doing phenomenally well against Covid….by having and doing respectively none of the advantages and policies of the West.

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“..the total number of people in the UK who developed blood clots after getting one dose has gone from 79 to 168 in a fortnight..”

• Oxford Jab ‘Could Be Banned For Under-40s’ After Blood Clot Reports Double (Metro)

Under-40s may be offered an alternative to the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine after blood clot reports doubled, reports claim. The chance of dying from a blood clot after having the jab is about one in one million – with 19 fatalities from around 20 million vaccinations. However, the total number of people in the UK who developed blood clots after getting one dose has gone from 79 to 168 in a fortnight, Medical Healthcare Products and Regulatory Agency (MHRA) data suggests. These new cases have taken the odds of experiencing a blood clot up from one in 250,000 to one in 126,000. The MHRA has reiterated that the benefits of the Oxford-AstraZeneca jab outweigh the risks for most people – but is considering offering under-40s the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine given that younger people are more likely to be affected by blood clots, The Telegraph claims.


It comes after the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) decided that under-30s should be offered an alternative to the Oxford jab. Currently, anyone over the age of 45 can get a jab in England. Over-50s in Scotland and Wales are being offered their doses, while Northern Ireland has already started vaccinating over-35s. Deputy chief medical officer Jonathan Van-Tam said on April 7 that 0.8 per 100,000 30 to 39-year-olds suffered serious blood clots after getting their Oxford/AstraZeneca jab. This was compared to 2.7 in 100,000 who would be kept out of intensive care by taking the vaccine. But these figures were based on fewer cases and the MHRA is yet to release what these odds are now 168 people have had blood clots.

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“The new platinum card of the Covid age is the vaccine certificate.”

• A New World Order Brought To You By COVID-19 (Whitehead)

The COVID-19 pandemic has propelled us into a whole new global frontier. Those hoping to navigate this interconnected and highly technological world of contact tracing, vaccine passports and digital passes will find themselves grappling with issues that touch on deep-seated moral, political, religious and personal questions for which there may be no clear-cut answers. We are about to find our ability to access, engage and move about in the world dependent on which camp we fall into: those who have been vaccinated against COVID-19 and those who have not. “It is the latest status symbol. Flash it at the people, and you can get access to concerts, sports arenas or long-forbidden restaurant tables. Some day, it may even help you cross a border without having to quarantine,” writes Heather Murphy for the New York Times.


“The new platinum card of the Covid age is the vaccine certificate.” This is what M.I.T. professor Ramesh Raskar refers to as the new “currency for health,” an apt moniker given the potentially lucrative role that Big Business (Big Pharma and Big Tech, especially) will play in establishing this pay-to-play marketplace. The airline industry has been working on a Travel Pass. IBM is developing a Digital Health Pass. And the U.S. government has been all-too-happy to allow the corporate sector to take the lead. Spearheaded by the National Security Agency (NSA), which has shown itself to care little for constitutional limits or privacy, the surveillance state has come to dominate our government and our lives. Yet the government does not operate alone. It cannot. It requires an accomplice. Thus, the increasingly complex security needs of our massive federal government, especially in the areas of defense, surveillance and data management, have been met within the corporate sector, which has shown itself to be a powerful ally that both depends on and feeds the growth of governmental bureaucracy.

Read more …

I’m not much into CCP bashing, but also not into too many coincidences.

• Scientists “Debunking” The Wuhan Lab Leak Theory Linked to CCP (NP)

Several researchers used by leading corporate media outlets to debunk claims that COVID-19 originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology have previously attended events or accepted awards from the controversial lab, The National Pulse can reveal. The researchers’ Chinese Communist Party ties – which present a clear conflict of interest – are omitted from the media reports, which instead present the scientists as unbiased adjudicators of COVID-19’s origins. In March 2020, NBC Science Contributor Dr. Joseph Fair called for the Trump administration to “stop blaming China” for the outbreak of the virus, despite mounting evidence – even at the time – that China was hiding information and data, and silencing whistleblowers. Dr. Fair equated called the lab leak theory – now increasingly mainstream – as a “conspiracy.”

Fair spoke at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in 2013, The National Pulse can reveal. “During the visit, he attended “Ge Hong Elite Forum” and gave an excellent academic report named “Biosafety Level 4 Containment Research and Recombinant Biology: How advances in molecular biology can advance in-vitro product design”. Many teachers and students, including Director Chen Xinwen and researchers such as Hu Zhihong and Wei Hongping, listened to the report,” a summary notes. “Dr. Joseph Fair is now engaged in the rapid diagnosis work of virulent viruses for GVFI and looks forward to cooperating with the Institute in the relevant research field in future,” the description adds. Fair’s Twitter account also contains posts describing WIV researchers as “collaborators,” “colleagues” and friends,” adding “I’ve very much enjoyed working with them over the years.”

Fair has praised the labs “openness with regards to sharing data” despite the institute erasing 16,000 virus samples in late 2019 and continuing to do so throughout the pandemic. Dr. Ian Lipkin, who’s seen his claims that there is “no evidence to suggest that [COVID-19] was created in a lab” amplified by outlets such as CBS and USA Today, also spoke at the WIV, in 2015. “He had given an excellent report on “Small game hunting”, which was presided by Professor Zhengli Shi, to the teachers and students in our institute,” a WIV summary revealed. The unearthed visit follows National Pulse reports highlighting Lipkin receiving awards from the Chinese Communist Party and describing himself as a “consultant” for the communist regime.

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“..the supernatural victory on Super Tuesday that rescued his pitiful old ass from the glue factory of broken-down political war-horses.”:

• Don’t Look Now (Jim Kunstler)

This was only one of countless mysteries orbiting around the dimming star that is Joe Biden. The biggest one, the planet Jupiter of all puzzlements, is how the guy managed to get elected occupant of the oval office. Or, more to the point, how did others manage to get him elected? I mean, considering those few embarrassing campaign forays from the basement to a bunch of empty parking lots back in the fall of 2020, not to mention the supernatural victory on Super Tuesday that rescued his pitiful old ass from the glue factory of broken-down political war-horses. We may be about to find out as Arizona’s State Senate finally got around to approving a full audit of the November 3rd vote in Maricopa County, comprising Phoenix and its asteroid belt of suburbs, which amounts to more than two-thirds of the state’s population.

The Democratic Party tried pretty hard to stop the durned thing, sending its gnarliest Lawfare warrior, one Marc Elias from the Clinton-indentured DC firm of Perkins Coie, and a posse of 70 other attorneys, to bury the proceedings in court orders. But all they got was a weekend pause from an Arizona judge who imposed a $1-million-dollar bond payment on the Democrats to cover expenses for the interruption — which would then be forfeited if the audit went forward. The Dems declined to pay up, so the pause was lifted and the audit goes forward today. The usual suspects in the mainstream media attempted to bury the Arizona vote audit story or denigrate it — for instance the The New York Times, which characterized the inquiry in its Saturday lede as “false claims of a stolen election,” and then “a snipe hunt for skullduggery,” before asserting the boilerplate “baseless theories of election theft” to seal the deal with its avidly credulous readership.

Rachel Maddow of MSNBC practically jumped up and down going woo-woo-woo to discredit the audit. What do you suppose they’re afraid of? I’ll tell you: For one thing, if the vote turns out to have been compromised by fraud, Arizona is liable to lose a Democratic senator elected on Mr. Biden’s (possibly) phantom coattails — Mark Kelly (D) who defeated incumbent Martha McSally (R) — which would cancel the Democrats’ current one-vote majority grip on the body. The result of that would be the end of the party’s effort to jam various new laws down America’s craw: DC statehood, the HR-1 voter fraud act, the Supreme Court-packing bill, and, actually, anything else on the party’s Satanic wish-list for disassembling the republic.

Read more …

“.. it will almost feel like trade is coming to a halt.”

• Supply Chains Implode As “Price Doesn’t Even Matter Anymore”

The number of container ships stuck at anchor off Los Angeles and Long Beach is down to around 20 per day, from 30 a few months ago. Does this mean the capacity crunch in the trans-Pacific market is finally easing? Absolutely not, warned Nerijus Poskus, vice president of global ocean at freight forwarder Flexport. “It’s not getting better. It’s getting worse,” he told American Shipper in an interview on Monday. “What I’m seeing is unprecedented. We are seeing a tsunami of freight,” he reported. “For the month of May, everything on the trans-Pacific is basically sold out. We had one client who needed something loaded in May that was extremely urgent and who was ready to pay $15,000 per container. I couldn’t get it loaded — and we are a growing company that ships a lot of TEUs [twenty-foot equivalent units]. Price doesn’t always even matter anymore.”

Poskus said that trans-Pacific import volumes are still rising. He noted that January trans-Pacific imports were up 10% versus 2019 (comparisons to 2020 numbers are skewed by COVID) and 13.5% in February, then jumped 51% in March. “So, we’re now at 1.5 times pre-pandemic levels.” With imports far outpacing retail sales growth, he attributed volumes to inventory restocking. “The restocking is actually affecting the trade even more than growth in demand. That tells me that this will last even longer. Let’s say U.S. consumer demand slows down in Q3 and Q4. That’s not expected, but even if it does, [capacity availability and rates] shouldn’t improve quickly, simply because of the huge restocking demand.”

Poskus also believes there is a growing export backlog piling up each day in Asia, awaiting available ship slots. If that backlog grows too big, he said, “I honestly don’t know what’s going to happen.” As a result of the backlog and restocking demand, he thinks “prices will remain high and shipping will probably remain difficult for the rest of this year. And then after that, you have the peak for Chinese New Year in 2022.” He said that the situation today is the worst he’s witnessed — and he believes it’s about to get even more severe. “Buckle up. The month of May will be the worst people have ever seen,” he predicted. Because some shippers will have to wait in line behind the growing backlog in Asia, he expects “what’s going to happen soon is that some importers won’t even be able to get on the boat. For them, it will almost feel like trade is coming to a halt.”

Read more …

“.. it really depends on just how much manipulation the authorities are willing to do.”

• Gundlach Rejects The Fed’s “Inflation Is Transitory” Narrative (ZH)

Don’t believe your lying eyes, will be the message tomorrow from The Fed’s Jay Powell as he hypnotizes investors to believe that “inflation is transitory” and they have “the tools” to manage it. ‘Bond King’ Jeff Gundlach is not buying that line and told BNN Bloomberg in an interview this morning. “…more importantly, I’m not sure why they think they know it’s transitory… how do they know that?” “…there’s plenty of money-printing that’s been going on, and we’ve seen commodity prices going up massively… home prices in the US are inflating very substantially… so there’s a lot of inflation that’s already baked in to input prices.” Gundlach does admit that Powell has a point in the very near term as the prints were about to see “which could be as high as 4% [for CPI]” are off of year-ago, very depressed levels.

“…what he means by transitory is that the base effect will lead to problems in the next few months but then the base effect will become less problematic.” But, Gundlach adds, “it’s not clear to me that inflation is going to go back down to around 2 to 2.5%… we don’t know, nobody knows… but we’re most concerned with the fact that The Fed thinks they know.” This is worrisome because The Fed’s track record is anything but inspiring… “when I go back to the global financial crisis, when we almost had a complete meltdown of the financial system, Ben Bernanke completely missed all of the problems that led to the crisis.” Bernanke’s infamous “contained to subprime… and subprime is only a sliver of the market” comments could be about to be trumped by Powell’s “inflation is transitory” comments as Gundlach warns “there’s plenty of indicators that suggest inflation is going to go higher and not just on a transitory basis.”

The Fed is “trying to paint the picture” of control, but Gundlach tries to make clear: “they’re guessing.” So, what does that mean for markets? While some fear “we ain’t seen nothing yet” in terms of yields rising (and multiple contraction), Gundlach notes that “it really depends on just how much manipulation the authorities are willing to do.” The billionaire fund manager notes that yields are “still very low… well below the current inflation rate… so we have negative yields everywhere on the yield curve.” It’s also “hard to figure out who’s going to buy the bonds,” he notes, “as we are about to see issuance like we have never seen before.” Foreigners have been selling bonds for years and domestically there is little demand, so Gundlach notes the only one left to soak up all this extra supply is The Federal Reserve, which has already expanded its balance sheet massively in the last 12 months.

“Who’s going to buy all these many trillions of dollars of bonds? Foreigners have been selling for years and they’ve accelerated their selling in the last several quarters, domestic buyers are not exactly selling, but they’re not adding to their holdings. So what’s left to absorb all of the spawn supply is the Federal Reserve.“ “Left to true, free markets, bond yields at the long-end would obviously be higher than they are now.”

Read more …

“Each month, Bertrand produced dozens of Russiagate articles for the site that were so unhinged that they made Rachel Maddow look sober, cautious and reliable.”

• CNN’s New “Reporter,” Natasha Bertrand, is a Deranged Conspiracy Theorist (Greenwald)

The most important axiom for understanding how the U.S. corporate media functions is that there is never accountability for those who serve as propagandists for the U.S. security state. The opposite is true: the more aggressively and recklessly you spread CIA narratives or pro-war manipulation, the more rewarded you will be in that world. [..] On Monday, CNN made clear that this dynamic still drives the corporate media world. The network proudly announced that it had hired Natasha Bertrand away from Politico. In doing so, they added to their stable of former CIA operatives, NSA spies, Pentagon Generals and FBI agents a reporter who has done as much as anyone, if not more so, to advance the scripts of those agencies.

Bertrand’s career began taking off when, while at Business Insider, she abandoned her obsession with Russia’s role in Syria in 2016 in order to monomaniacally fixate on every last conspiracy theory and gossip item that drove the Russiagate fraud during the 2016 campaign and then into the Trump presidency. Each month, Bertrand produced dozens of Russiagate articles for the site that were so unhinged that they made Rachel Maddow look sober, cautious and reliable. In 2018, it was Jeffrey Goldberg himself — knowing a star CIA propagandist when he sees one — who gave Bertrand her first big break by hiring her away from Business Insider to cover Russiagate for The Atlantic. Shortly thereafter, she joined the Queen of Russiagate conspiracies herself by becoming a national security analyst for MSNBC and NBC News.

From there, it was onto Politico and now CNN: the ideal, rapid career climb that is the dream of every liberal security state servant calling themselves a journalist. Her final conspiratorial article for The Atlantic before moving to Politico is the perfect illustration of who and what she is. CNN’s new national security star was no ordinary Russiagate fanatic. There was no conspiracy theory too unhinged or evidence-free for her to promote. As The Washington Post’s media reporter Erik Wemple documented once the Steele Dossier was debunked, there was arguably nobody in media other than Rachel Maddow who promoted and ratified that hoax as aggressively, uncritically and persistently as Bertrand. She defended it even after the Mueller Report corroborated virtually none of its key claims.

Read more …

Smear sells.

• The Deep State Targets Matt Gaetz (AG)

It’s now been over three weeks since a torrent of sensational headlines about U.S. Representative Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) blared from corporate media newsrooms. It sounded about as bad as it could get for the representative from Florida’s 1st Congressional District; breathless claims that he was “under investigation for underage sex trafficking” touched off a media frenzy. No stranger to controversy, Gaetz’s initial instinct was to confront the allegations live on Fox News with Tucker Carlson. While many saw it as a bizarre interview, it may at least have been the right move in terms of staring down a bloodthirsty establishment. As several weeks have passed, though, the controversy seems to have generated more heat than light. Indeed, this might be the longest running “sex scandal” in the nation’s history without an accuser.

But the media has been busy. Since the original story broke, there’s been a drip of follow-on stories at outlets like the Daily Beast, Politico, the Washington Post, and CNN—all using a shady collection of off-the-record and dubious government sources. Unsurprisingly, given that sourcing, none of the stories have contained anything close to serious detail or evidence. Reporters keep dropping tidbits of evidence likely to be emanating from within the Justice Department, yet none of which confirms any of the headline-grabbing allegations. Few of these articles even attempt to deal with the wild allegations first made about the congressman. Writing in Politico on Tuesday, Betsy Woodruff Swan stated: “[Gaetz] has not been charged with a crime, and no women have publicly accused him of sexual misconduct in the three weeks since the New York Times first reported on the investigation. He has denied any wrongdoing.”

Note how—after making a sensational media splash for maximum public relations damage—the accusations against Gaetz have shifted, from shocking and unsupported claims of underage sex trafficking and pedophilia to the less scurrilous (and still unsupported) accusation that Gaetz had sex at parties. Crucially, there has not been any evidence of payments, prostitution, or underage girls. As Scott Adams recently said, while some may first cringe at hearing too much about the sex life of a politician, deep down, they’re more likely to be indifferent. CNN even had to note in a recent report: “One of the women who spoke to CNN said she did so in part because the picture of Gaetz as potentially connected to sex trafficking that has emerged in recent days does not align with what she saw. Both women said that they never saw anyone at the parties who appeared to be underage.”

Read more …

Seems hard to argue against, but sure enough many are trying.

• Apple iOS 14.5 Update Includes ‘App Tracking Transparency’ Feature (G.)

Users of iPhones can now prevent advertisers tracking them across their apps, after the release of the latest software update from Apple introduced the controversial feature despite the protests of Facebook and the advertising industry. The update, iOS 14.5, includes a setting called “app tracking transparency”, which for the first time requires applications to ask for users’ consent before they are able to track their activity across other apps and websites. If users decline, then applications will not be able to access the unique user ID that they need to follow individuals as they live their digital lives. The prompt, which will say “Allow [app game] to track your activity across other companies’ apps and websites?” will show up for apps that request access to the ID number.

They may be able to use other methods, known as “fingerprinting”, to achieve the same goal, but Apple says that doing so could cause them to be expelled from the App Store. First announced last summer, app tracking transparency led to immediate pushback from the wider advertising industry. Initially slated for release in the autumn, Apple delayed its implementation for six months in order to give the industry time to prepare. But the delay wasn’t enough for some, and in December, Facebook launched an all-out assault on Apple, with the company’s head of ads and business products, Dan Levy, claiming that the setting was actually “about control of the entire internet”. “This is about a long-term view that is anti-personalised advertising and we think is trying to take the world back 10 or 20 years,” he added.

Facebook launched a glossy advertising campaign arguing that the real victim of the changes are “your neighbourhood coffee brewery, your friend who owns their own retail business, your cousin who started an event planning service and the game developers who build the apps you use for free”. Those small businesses, the company said, would lose out if they were no longer able to target customers with personalised adverts. The social network is not alone in its opposition: a group of Germany’s biggest media, tech and advertising companies, led by digital publishing house Axel Springer, have filed a complaint with the German competition regulator arguing that the new rules could lead to a 60% fall in advertising revenues for app developers.

Read more …

Looking at ad reveue here, I can assure you they’re keeping it all for themselves.

• Google Ad Surge Drives Up Profits For Parent Firm Alphabet (Y!)

Google parent Alphabet on Tuesday reported that quarterly profit more than doubled as digital advertising surged with more people relying on the internet during the coronavirus pandemic. Profit in the first quarter leapt to $17.9 billion from $6.8 billion in the same period a year ago while revenues jumped 34 percent to $55.3 billion, led by gains in advertising and cloud computing services. “Over the last year, people have turned to Google Search and many online services to stay informed, connected and entertained,” said Alphabet and Google chief executive Sundar Pichai. The surge in Alphabet’s earnings comes as the tech giant faces increased scrutiny from regulators regarding its power.

“Google essentially manufactures money; they are almost entirely ads,” said analyst Rob Enderle of Enderle Group. “There is not a risk of downturn in revenue, it is that regulatory action strips the revenue from them.” Facebook and Google are the “short list” when it comes to scrutiny by regulators in Europe and the United States because of “their broad impact on the political process and almost complete dominance of ad revenues,” the analyst maintained. Google is among internet giants in the crosshairs of regulators and critics concerned about whether it unfairly wields its power to dominate markets and fend off competition.

[..] Alphabet shares were up nearly five percent in after-market trades that followed release of the earnings figures. “Google had an absolute monster quarter with ads leading the way,” said analyst Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights and Strategy. “YouTube grew an eye-watering 49 percent year-over-year, which I attribute to increased YouTube viewing and increased YouTube TV subscribers.”

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I must admit I didn’t see this coming. Hunter, that is. That fake news producers would teach on fake news is all too predictable.

• Hunter Biden To Guest Teach A Class On “Fake News” This Fall (DM)

Hunter Biden is helping teach a class on fake news at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana this fall. The course titled ‘Media Polarization and Public Policy Impacts’ will include several guest speakers throughout its 10 weeks, including the president’s son. The course description, according to a copy of the syllabus obtained by DailyMail.com, says: ‘America’s rapidly advancing partisan divide is fueled substantially by the growing political polarization increasingly evident in our news media.’ ‘This course will explore the current state of the media landscape in the United States and how media polarization, fake news, and the economics of the news business impact public policymaking in Washington, D.C,’ it continues. Hunter, 51, is a Yale-educated lawyer and has never, in any capacities, worked as a journalist, reporter or in the media world.


‘Hunter Biden has no background in media,’ conservative filmmaker Phelim McAleer said. ‘He has never worked for a newspaper or a media outlet.’ ‘Hunter Biden lecturing a class on fake news is like Harvey Weinstein teaching a course to prevent sexual harassment. It shouldn’t be happening. Period.’ the ‘My Son Hunter’ producer continued. Tulane University confirmed the course in a statement to DailyMail.com and confirmed the list of speaker, including:
Hunter Biden
Dr. Deborah Birx, White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator under President Donald Trump
Juan Williams, political analyst for Fox News Channel
Susan Glasser, columnist for The New Yorker
Margaret Sullivan, Washington Post columnist; Kylie Atwood, national security correspondent for CNN
Margaret Brennan, Face the Nation moderator
Bret Stephens, New York Times columnist
Dr. Michael Fauntroy, a professor in the Political Science Department at Howard University.

Read more …

 

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Debt Rattle March 24 2021

Mar 242021
 
 March 24, 2021  Posted by at 9:09 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  52 Responses »


Paul Gauguin Farm in Brittany 1894

 

• We Are Living Through a Time of Fear (Cook)
• Covid: £5,000 Fine For People Going On Holiday Abroad (BBC)
• Lockdown One Year On – It Was Never Supposed To Work (OffG)
• CoroNaspresso: A Cheap, Rapid and Simple Home Test (chemrxiv)
• Every Day We Discuss Closure And Then Decide To Keep Going (MENA)
• Top Yale Doctor: ‘Ivermectin Works,’ Including For Long COVID (TSN)
• Logic In Lockdown: The German Corona Policy Is In Ruins (NZZ)
• US Home Sales Fell Nearly 20% In February (F.)
• EU Has ‘Destroyed’ Once Friendly Ties With Russia – Lavrov (RT)
• Welcome To ‘Shocked & Awed’ 21st Century Geopolitics (Escobar)
• H.R.1 – Is It Really “For the People”? (Farrell)
• Leaked Docs Show Obama FTC Gave Google Its Monopoly (Bovard)
• Big Oil Backs Carbon Tax (Reason)
• Minnesota Police Ready For Pipeline Resistance (IC)

 

 

“One must still have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche

 

 

“I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest”.
– Henry David Thoreau, ‘Civil Disobedience’

 

 

UK politics has gone completely bonkers….

• We Are Living Through a Time of Fear (Cook)

Welcome to the age of fear. Nothing is more corrosive of the democratic impulse than fear. Left unaddressed, it festers, eating away at our confidence and empathy. We are now firmly in a time of fear – not only of the virus, but of each other. Fear destroys solidarity. Fear forces us to turn inwards to protect ourselves and our loved ones. Fear refuses to understand or identify with the concerns of others. In fear societies, basic rights become a luxury. They are viewed as a threat, as recklessness, as a distraction that cannot be afforded in this moment of crisis. Once fear takes hold, populations risk agreeing to hand back rights, won over decades or centuries, that were the sole, meagre limit on the power of elites to ransack the common wealth. In calculations based on fear, freedoms must make way for other priorities: being responsible, keeping safe, averting danger.

Worse, rights are surrendered with our consent because we are persuaded that the rights themselves are a threat to social solidarity, to security, to our health. It is therefore far from surprising that the UK’s draconian new Police and Crime Bill – concentrating yet more powers in the police – has arrived at this moment. It means that the police can prevent non-violent protest that is likely to be too noisy or might create “unease” in bystanders. Protesters risk being charged with a crime if they cause “nuisance” or set up protest encampments in public places, as the Occupy movement did a decade ago. And damaging memorials – totems especially prized in a time of fear for their power to ward off danger – could land protesters, like those who toppled a statue to notorious slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol last summer, a 10-year jail sentence.

In other words, this is a bill designed to outlaw the right to conduct any demonstration beyond the most feeble and ineffective kind. It makes permanent current, supposedly extraordinary limitations on protest that were designed, or so it was said, to protect the public from the immediate threat of disease. Protest that demands meaningful change is always noisy and disruptive. Would the suffragettes have won women the vote without causing inconvenience and without offending vested interests that wanted them silent? What constitutes too much noise or public nuisance? In a time of permanent pandemic, it is whatever detracts from the all-consuming effort to extinguish our fear and insecurity. When we are afraid, why should the police not be able to snatch someone off the street for causing “unease”?

The UK bill is far from unusual. Similar legislation – against noisy, inconvenient and disruptive protest – is being passed in states across the United States. Just as free speech is being shut down on the grounds that we must not offend, so protest is being shut down on the grounds that we must not disturb.

Read more …

… and I mean completely.

• Covid: £5,000 Fine For People Going On Holiday Abroad (BBC)

A £5,000 fine for anyone in England trying to travel abroad without good reason is due to come into force next week as part of new coronavirus laws. The penalty is included in legislation that will be voted on by MPs on Thursday. Foreign holidays are currently not allowed under the “stay at home” rule which ends on Monday. But then the ban on leaving the UK at this time will become a specific law backed up by the threat of the fine. Under the current plan for easing restrictions, the earliest date people in England could go abroad for a holiday would be 17 May. However, another surge in Covid cases in continental Europe, as well as the slow rollout of vaccines across Europe, has cast doubt on the resumption of foreign travel.


Health Secretary Matt Hancock said restrictions on travelling abroad were necessary to guard against the importation of large numbers of cases and new variants which might put the vaccine rollout at risk. Shadow Cabinet Office minister Rachel Reeves told BBC Breakfast that Labour supported measures to keep the UK’s borders secure and avoid the importation of new variants but said the government’s “slowness to react” had contributed to the country’s high death rate. Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned on Monday the UK should be “under no illusion” that it will feel the effects of a rising number of cases on the continent. One of his ministers, Lord Bethell, said England might put “all our European neighbours” on the “red list” of countries. However, Mr Hancock told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme there were no plans to do this.

Read more …

A two week lockdown can achieve something. A one year lockdown can only achieve something other than the stated intent.

An entire library on lockdown effectiveness is at The Fat Emperor.

• Lockdown One Year On – It Was Never Supposed To Work (OffG)

And so we come to March 23rd, and lockdown’s first birthday. Or, as we call it here, the longest two weeks in history. 1 year. 12 calendar months. 365 increasingly gruelling days. It’s a long time since “2 weeks to flatten the curve”, became an obvious lie. Sometime in July it turned into a sick joke. The curve was flattened, the NHS protected and the clapping was hearty and meaningful. …and none of it made any difference. This was not a sacrifice for the “greater good”. It was not a hard decision with arguments on both sides. It was not a risk-benefit scenario. The “risks” were in fact certainties, and the “benefits” entirely fictional.Because Lockdowns don’t work. It’s really important to remember that.


Even if you subscribe to the belief that “Sars-Cov-2” is a unique discrete entity (which is far from proven), or that it is incredibly dangerous (which is demonstrably untrue), the lockdown has not worked to, in any way, limit this supposed threat. Lockdowns. Don’t. Work. They don’t make any difference, the curves don’t flatten and the R0 number doesn’t drop and the lives aren’t saved (quite the opposite, as we’ve all seen). Just look at the graphs. This one, comparing “Covid deaths” in the UK (lockdown) and Sweden (no lockdown):

Or this one, comparing “Covid deaths” in California (lockdown) and Florida (no lockdown):

From Belarus to Sweden to Florida to Nicaragua to Tanzania, the evidence is clear. “Covid”, whatever that means in real terms, is not impacted by lockdowns. Putting the entire population under house arrest doesn’t benefit public health. In fact, it’s (rather predictably) incredibly counter-productive. The damage done by shuttering businesses, limiting access to healthcare, postponing treatments and diagnoses, postponed surgeries, increasing depression, soaring unemployment and mass poverty has been discussed to death. The scale of the impact cannot be overstated.


Dr David Nabarro, World Health Organization special envoy for Covid-19, said this of lockdowns back in October: “We in the World Health Organization do not advocate lockdowns as the primary means of control of the virus[…]just look at what’s happened to the tourism industry…look what’s happening to small-holding farmers[…]it seems we may have a doubling of world poverty by next year. We may well have at least a doubling of child malnutrition […] This is a terrible, ghastly global catastrophe.”

Read more …

Haven’t read the whole document yet, but the picture looks intruiging.

• CoroNaspresso: A Cheap, Rapid and Simple Home Test (chemrxiv)

Development of a novel LAMP device which is cheap, reusable, and can be produced in large amounts in a short period of time. The device was designed such not to require chemical exothermic reactions, have limited waste produced and with a minimum cost of the device as a whole. The device was tested for the detection of SARS-CoV2 RNA.

Read more …

In Lebanon, it’s one crisis on top of another crisis on top of another.

• Every Day We Discuss Closure And Then Decide To Keep Going (MENA)

Once bustling with life, Beirut’s famed Gemmayze Street is now deserted. Lined with damaged homes, collapsed buildings and closed businesses, the residential and commercial hub was one of the city’s most vibrant destinations – but not any more. “It’s like a nightmare. We’ve never seen anything like this before,” said Charbel Bassil, owner of renowned Le Chef restaurant, on the first day of reopening after a nationwide lockdown. One of Beirut’s oldest and most popular restaurants, Le Chef, in in Gemmayze, is one of many businesses struggling to stay afloat under the weight of Lebanon’s compounding crises. The family business reopened its doors on March 22, as per the government’s lockdown strategy, but customers were hardly pouring in.

The modest space, which was often full to the brim for lunchtime, now welcomed only three tables after a full day of work, or about 10 customers. The burst of vigor and energy that characterised the dining experience at Le Chef was replaced by a sense of moping and melancholy. “We’re doing our best to keep going, but everything is a mess,” Mr Bassil told The National. Le Chef , founded in 1967, weathered civil wars and crises, but none harmed trade like Lebanon’s current events. “This is our family business. I’ve been working here since I was a child, but nothing we lived through was as bad as this,” Mr Bassil said. After almost losing the restaurant in the Beirut blast, Le Chef was able to rebuild thanks to donations, $5,000 of which came from the actor Russell Crowe.

But what the port explosion could not destroy, the economic crisis shattered. “We can’t work in this crisis. Suppliers won’t give us goods because of the market rate and we don’t know how to price our dishes,” Mr Bassil told The National. “We’re a restaurant for the people. We want to serve high-quality food for affordable prices.” Lebanon’s currency lost more than 80 per cent of its value since the beginning of the economic crisis, declared one of the worst in the country’s history. In one year, the Lebanese pound, which once traded at 1,500 to the US dollar, slumped to 15,000 on the parallel market. The minimum wage shrank from $450 to an average of $50, leaving people with insufficient salaries to cover rising living costs.

[..] Despite the opportunity to be back in business, Lebanon’s hospitality sector is wary about reopening because operational costs now outweigh profits. Fewer than 1,000 restaurants and cafes are expected to reopen this week, said Aref Saade, treasurer at the Syndicate of Owners of Restaurants, Cafes, Night-Clubs and Pastries. Prior to the crisis, Lebanon had about 8,500 tourist institutions in business. The number decreased to 4,500 when Covid-19 struck, and is anticipated to sink below 1,000 due to the soaring and unstable currency exchange rate. “Businesses are refraining from reopening – it’s just not worth it,” Mr Saade told The National.

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“If I can save you,” he said referring to his father, “I can tell you, I save anybody.”

• Top Yale Doctor: ‘Ivermectin Works,’ Including For Long COVID (TSN)

A Yale University professor and renowned cancer researcher has pored over the COVID-19 literature and treated several dozen patients. He can remain silent no longer. Dr. Alessandro Santin, a practicing oncologist and scientist who runs a large laboratory at Yale, believes firmly that ivermectin could vastly cut suffering from COVID-19. Santin joins a growing group of doctors committed to using the safe, generic drug both as an early home treatment to prevent hospitalization and alongside inpatient treatments like steroids and oxygen. “The bottom line is that ivermectin works. I’ve seen that in my patients as well as treating my own family in Italy,” Santin said in an interview, referring to his father, 88, who recently suffered a serious bout of COVID. “We must find a way to administer it on a large scale to a lot of people.”

Santin’s statements carry the prestige of a leadership position at Yale School of Medicine and the gravitas of a top uterine cancer researcher, who has authored more than 250 science journal articles and pioneered treatment, used worldwide, for the most aggressive form of uterine cancer. At Yale, he is an OB/GYN professor, team leader in gynecologic oncology at the Smilow Comprehensive Cancer Center, and co-chief of gynecologic oncology. When COVID came along, Santin began reading about how best he might help his cancer patients, 10 to 20 percent of whom were coming in infected with COVID. He began using ivermectin after the National Institutes of Health changed its advisory in January to allow the drug’s use outside of COVID trials. Santin’s endorsement is not only important but broad.

He said he has seen ivermectin work at every stage of COVID — preventing it, eliminating early infection, quelling the destructive cytokine storm in late infection, and helping about a dozen patients so far who suffered months after COVID. One of them is an athlete and mother of two, 39, who had been disabled by post-COVID chest pain, shortness of breath and fatigue; she confirmed in an email to me her joy at being able to walk up a hill again and breathing better within 72 hours of her first dose. “When you have people that can’t breathe for five, six, eight, nine months and they tried multiple drugs and supplements with no success, and you give them ivermectin,” Dr. Santin said of long-haul patients, “and you see that they start immediately feeling better, this is not placebo. This is real.”

[..] Beyond his outpatients, Santin has treated family members and friends infected with COVID in both his home community in Connecticut and in his native Italy via telemedicine. There, he prescribed ivermectin to more than 15 families, in which parents, children or others had became infected; the goal was both to treat early and prevent severe COVID, as studies have shown ivermectin does. “I have not a single one that right now had to go to the hospital to receive oxygen,” he said. “I have no doubt ivermectin saved my 88-year-old father’s life.” His father survived COVID despite high blood pressure, cardiac disease that led previously to seven stents and open heart surgery, and lung problems. “If I can save you,” he said referring to his father, “I can tell you, I save anybody.”

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Google translate.

• Logic In Lockdown: The German Corona Policy Is In Ruins (NZZ)

Instead of easing concepts, the Chancellor and Prime Minister present the extension and tightening of the lockdown. The citizens have to pay for what the government has missed for months. Chancellor Angela Merkel and the Prime Minister wrestled with each other for twelve hours on Tuesday. Anyone who expected a big hit after this nightly marathon was disappointed: The result of the conference is shameful. Not only that the tentative easing of the corona measures has been discarded. Germany should also go into a tough lockdown at Easter. “We thought again today,” said the Chancellor in the early hours of the morning. In order to “break through” the third corona wave a little bit, April 1st and 3rd at Easter will be “one-off days of rest”, as “extended rest time”.

Rethought? With these resolutions, Germany’s government surrenders to the principles of reason. If you wanted to avoid hamster purchases and crowds in supermarkets until now, the opposite is now the case: the closing of supermarkets over Easter is forcing citizens to replenish their supplies. You don’t need a crystal ball to predict the resulting overcrowding of the shops on Holy Saturday. Is that still wanton or already deliberate bad planning? Either way, it lacks any logic. Religious freedom could also be a victim of the comfortably formulated “extended rest period at Easter” – for all those for whom five months of rest are not enough – there should be no Easter services with an audience in attendance, according to the will of the conference.

So while in the past few days 700 Hansa Rostock football fans were allowed to go to the stadium with a negative quick test and 1,000 classical music fans who also tested negative were allowed to go back to the Berlin Philharmonic, is it not possible to organize a gathering of Christians at their highest festival? Not if you leave it to this government, that’s for sure. Local politicians such as Tübingen’s Mayor Boris Palmer show that there is another way. With test stations he enables the citizens of his city to live a little and the business people to survive.

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“..the lowest reported inventory since the Realtors association began tracking it in 1982..”

• US Home Sales Fell Nearly 20% In February (F.)

Single-family home sales dropped 18.2% from January to February, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, even as annualized sales remain much higher than pre-pandemic rates. 775,000 (at a seasonally adjusted annual rate) new single-family homes were sold in Feb. 2021—that’s a large drop from the 958,000 homes sold rate in Jan. 2021. Adjusted home sale rates are still far higher than they were pre-pandemic: 716,000 new single family homes were sold in Feb. 2020. The median price of new homes sold in February was $349,000 and the average sale price was $416,000. The National Association of Realtors said the decline from January was due to “historically-low inventory”, and said home sales are ahead of total 2020 sales. At the end of December 2020, there were just 1.07 million homes for sale—the lowest reported inventory since the Realtors association began tracking it in 1982.

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“Brussels “has consistently destroyed all mechanisms without exception that existed on the basis of an agreement on partnership and cooperation.”

• EU Has ‘Destroyed’ Once Friendly Ties With Russia – Lavrov (RT)

Months of political tension and a wave of new sanctions have severed all links between the EU and Russia, Moscow’s top diplomat has said, adding that his country is ready to resume cooperation if Brussels decides it is interested. Speaking at a press conference alongside his Chinese counterpart on Tuesday, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that currently, “there are no relations with the EU as an organization. The entire infrastructure of these relations has been destroyed by unilateral decisions made from Brussels.” Some individual European countries, he argued, are still seeking closer ties with Moscow, “guided by their national interests.” However, these are being fast outpaced by growing partnerships with China, Lavrov told journalists.

“If and when Europeans decide to eliminate these anomalies in contacts with their largest neighbor, of course, we will be ready to build up these relations based on equality,” the diplomat confirmed, “while in the East, in my opinion, we have a very intensive agenda, which is becoming more diverse every year.” In February, the foreign minister stated that Moscow’s relations with the bloc had taken a tumble in 2014, after the EU “blamed the Russian Federation for everything that is happening” in Ukraine following the Maidan. Since then, he argued, Brussels “has consistently destroyed all mechanisms without exception that existed on the basis of an agreement on partnership and cooperation.”

As part of a fiery broadcast interview, Lavrov warned that if the bloc’s leadership sought to impose sanctions on Russia that hit sensitive areas of the economy, Moscow could break off diplomatic contact altogether as a last resort. “Of course, we do not want to isolate ourselves from living in the world, but we must be ready for this. If you want peace, prepare for war,” he stressed. Earlier this month, the EU unveiled a new package of sanctions against four Russian officials it claimed were responsible for the detention of opposition figure Alexey Navalny, and “human rights violations” during the policing of subsequent protests held in his support. At the time, the Foreign Ministry in Moscow said the bloc had “missed yet another opportunity to review its … approach to relations with Russia.”

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“The United States is not qualified to talk to China in a condescending manner. The Chinese people will not accept that.”

• Welcome To ‘Shocked & Awed’ 21st Century Geopolitics (Escobar)

With a Russia-China-Iran triple bitch slap on the hegemon, we now have a brand new geopolitical chessboard… It took 18 years after Shock and Awe unleashed on Iraq for the Hegemon to be mercilessly shocked and awed by a virtually simultaneous, diplomatic Russia-China one-two. How this is a real game-changing moment cannot be emphasized enough; 21st century geopolitics will never be the same again. Yet it was the Hegemon who first crossed the diplomatic Rubicon. The handlers behind hologram Joe “I’ll do whatever you want me to do, Nance” Biden had whispered in his earpiece to brand Russian President Vladimir Putin as a soulless “killer” in the middle of a softball interview.

Not even at the height of the Cold War the superpowers resorted to ad hominem attacks. The result of such an astonishing blunder was to regiment virtually the whole Russian population behind Putin – because that was perceived as an attack against the Russian state. Then came Putin’s cool, calm, collected – and quite diplomatic – response, which needs to be carefully pondered. These sharp as a dagger words are arguably the most devastatingly powerful five minutes in the history of post-truth international relations. In For Leviathan, it’s so cold in Alaska, we forecasted what could take place in the US-China 2+2 summit at a shabby hotel in Anchorage, with cheap bowls of instant noodles thrown in as extra bonus.

China’s millennial diplomatic protocol establishes that discussions start around common ground – which are then extolled as being more important than disagreements between negotiating parties. That’s at the heart of the concept of “no loss of face”. Only afterwards the parties discuss their differences. Yet it was totally predictable that a bunch of amateurish, tactless and clueless Americans would smash those basic diplomatic rules to show “strength” to their home crowd, distilling the proverbial litany on Taiwan, Hong Kong, South China Sea, “genocide” of Uighurs. Oh dear. There was not a single State Dept. hack with minimal knowledge of East Asia to warn the amateurs you don’t mess with the formidable head of the Foreign Affairs Commission at the CCP’s Central Committee, Yang Jiechi, with impunity.

Visibly startled, but controlling his exasperation, Yang Jiechi struck back. And the rhetorical shots were heard around the whole Global South. They had to include a basic lesson in manners: “If you want to deal with us properly, let’s have some mutual respect and do things the right way”. But what stood out was a stinging, concise diagnostic blending history and politics: “The United States is not qualified to talk to China in a condescending manner. The Chinese people will not accept that. It must be based on mutual respect to deal with China, and history will prove that those who seek to strangle China will suffer in the end.”

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It is a weird piece of legislation.

• H.R.1 – Is It Really “For the People”? (Farrell)

A lot has been written about H.R.1 — the so-called “For the People Act of 2021.” Former Vice President Mike Pence has opined on the bill. The Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal sounded the alarm back in January. The editors of National Review come right out and call it a “partisan assault on American democracy.” H.R.1 purports to, “expand Americans’ access to the ballot box, reduce the influence of big money in politics, strengthen ethics rules for public servants, and implement other anti-corruption measures for the purpose of fortifying our democracy, and for other purposes.” The Bill is 791 pages long. Here are just a few of the more egregious federal power grabs in H.R.1 concocted against the 50 states that run elections under the U.S. Constitution:

• Ban voter ID laws and allow ballot harvesting; • Expand Election Day to “election season” by mandating mail-in ballots be counted 10 days after the election would normally be over; • Automatic voter registration of people who apply for unemployment, Medicaid, Obamacare and college, or who are coming out of prison. There is a lot more, and it gets worse. Substantially worse. There are First Amendment restrictions on political speech and on the support or opposition of a bill and/or a candidate. Remember: This is supposed to be “fortifying our democracy.” If you are interested in a “through the looking glass” annotated analysis of H.R.1 — then head over to the Brennan Center for Justice. They are happy to explain how those pesky constitutional rights can be whittled down to something more “fair” for everyone.

For example, the Brennan Center analysis confidently assures readers about how H.R.1 “affirms Congress’ power to protect the right to vote, regulate federal elections, and defend the democratic process in the United States.” It seeks to airbrush Article I, Section 4 — The Elections Clause — from history and practice. The Clause directs and empowers states to determine the “Times, Places, and Manner” of congressional elections. H.R.1 would federally strangle the Elections Clause. In order to find our way out, it is helpful to know how we got into this terrible predicament. The foundation for the madness of H.R.1 is legal positivism, a thesis, according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which states “that the existence and content of law depends on social facts and not on its merits.” H.R.1 is nearly 800 pages of meritless, militant, social engineering targeting the foundations of the U.S. Constitution, voting rights and political free speech — all dressed-up as being “for the people.”

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Too late now.

• Leaked Docs Show Obama FTC Gave Google Its Monopoly (Bovard)

Eight years ago, the Federal Trade Commission had the chance to face down Google — the giant of Silicon Valley whose power now alters the free flow of information at a global scale, distorts market access for businesses large and small, and changes the nature of independent thought in ways the world has never experienced. Instead, the FTC blinked — and blinked hard, choosing to close the investigation in early 2013. A remarkable leak to Politico of agency documents about the 2012 Google investigation reveals that, despite ample evidence of market distortions and threats to competition presented by the agency’s lawyers, the five commissioners of the FTC deferred instead to speculative claims by their economists.

Records and reporting about the 2012 investigation suggest the FTC did so while bending to political pressure from the Obama White House — which was, in turn, bending to political pressure from Google. William Kovacic, a former FTC chair under President George W. Bush, reviewed the more than 300 pages of documents leaked to Politico and concluded the agency overlooked “what many experts and regulators would consider clear antitrust violations,” calling the specificity of issues outlined “breathtaking.” In short, where we find ourselves today — with Google as the primary filter of the world’s information, engaging in a network of exclusionary contracts and anti-competitive conduct, and subject to an antitrust lawsuit led by the Department of Justice and joined by 48 state attorneys general — could have, and should have, been avoided.

That it wasn’t, however, provides key takeaways about where we are now with Big Tech, and, in particular, the method of enforcement of our antitrust laws, whose application has become too tightly wrapped around the axle of price, and captured by the speculative science of economic forecasting. It also reveals just how politicized antitrust enforcement has become — influenced by the siren song of internet exceptionalism and the powerful tug of Google, one of the world’s richest companies. Perhaps the most stunning takeaway in the 2012 documents is the extent to which the recommendations of the FTC’s lawyers sharply differed from those of the agency’s economists, on whose judgment the FTC commissioners ultimately relied in their decision to drop the investigation into Google.

The FTC’s antitrust attorneys concluded that Google was breaking the law by “banishing potential competitors” with a series of exclusionary contracts on mobile phones — much of which forms the basis for the lawsuit brought nearly a decade later by the Trump Department of Justice. The FTC’s economists, however, demurred, insisting that claims of Google’s market dominance were unfounded and would soon give way to competition. This required a markedly un-curious treatment of key facts.

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Whatever Big Oil backs can never be good.

• Big Oil Backs Carbon Tax (Reason)

Executives from leading oil companies, including ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and the American Petroleum Institute (API), met virtually with Biden administration officials to discuss policies aimed at addressing the problem of man-made climate change. The Wall Street Journal reported that company leaders said that “they wanted to work with the administration and pledged support for policies that would make it more expensive to emit the gases that contribute to climate change.” In a statement issued after the virtual meeting, API CEO Mike Sommers declared, “We are committed to working with the White House to develop effective government policies that help meet the ambitions of the Paris Agreement and support a cleaner future.” The API is rumored to be considering coming out in support of carbon emissions pricing.

ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips previously endorsed the bipartisan Climate Leadership Council’s (CLC) revenue neutral carbon tax and dividend proposal in which escalating taxes collected on oil and natural gas at the wellhead and on coal at the minehead would be entirely rebated in equal sums to each American as an annual payment. The CLC cites a 2018 study that finds that 70 percent of American households would receive more in dividend payments then they would pay in increased energy prices. Once the CLC’s carbon tax plan is adopted, all other regulations and subsidies aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions, such as automobile fuel efficiency and renewable portfolio standards, are supposed to be permanently repealed.

However, lots of climate activists oppose carbon taxes. Why? InsideClimateNews offered the example of Matto Mildenberger, a political scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who has argued that carbon taxes make climate action unpopular because they front load the costs immediately onto consumers while the eventual benefits of lower temperatures, less fierce storms, and lower sea levels stretch into the future. As InsideClimateNews explained: “In the view of Mildenberger and others who’ve studied climate politics around the world, subsidies, regulation, and other policies that provide more immediate and visible benefits—like jobs creation—are a better way to jump-start climate policy, even if they cost more in the short run. That’s because they stimulate investment to help lower the cost of alternative energy, and at the same time help broaden political support for stronger climate policy. New actors with real investments they want to protect and advance will want more aggressive action, and politicians will respond.”

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Drilling under the Mississippi. Leave it be.

• Minnesota Police Ready For Pipeline Resistance (IC)

As you drive toward the Mississippi River’s headwaters from the east, the lakes that open up on either side of the highway are still white-blue with ice. The Mississippi River, however, is flowing. The open water — a trickle compared to the expanse it will become farther south — is a hopeful sign of the end of another long Minnesota winter, but it also has opponents of pipeline construction in the area on edge. Enbridge, the Canadian energy-transport firm, is planning to route its Line 3 pipeline under the Mississippi, near where it crosses Highway 40. In winter, a pollution-control rule bars drilling under the frozen waters. As the ice melts away, so do the restrictions. Those organizing against the project worry that Enbridge could begin tunneling under the Mississippi and other local rivers any day — and the pipeline-resistance movement is getting ready for it.

“They got a lot of money, they got a lot of equipment, but we got a lot of people,” said Anishinaabe water protector Winona LaDuke at an event last week with actor and activist Jane Fonda, which took place in front of the flowing Crow Wing River, not far from where Enbridge seeks to drill under its shores. “Spring is coming. Let’s be outdoorsy.” Enbridge’s Line 3 project began construction four months ago. It was designed to replace a decaying pipeline of the same name; however, a large portion of its 338-mile Minnesota section, which makes up most of the U.S. route, plows through new land and waters. The project would double Line 3’s capacity for carrying tar sands oil, one of the most carbon-intensive fossil fuels in the world, at a moment when a rapid shift away from fossil fuels has become critical to address the climate crisis.

The delicate waterway ecosystems through which the pipeline passes have become the central organizing point of the anti-pipeline, or water protector, movement. Hundreds of rivers, streams, and wetlands face the specter of a tar sands leak after the replacement Line 3 begins operating. And the particularly intensive form of drilling required to tunnel the pipeline under rivers holds its own set of risks during construction.

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