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Debt Rattle November 16 2023

Nov 162023
 
 November 16, 2023  Posted by at 10:17 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  35 Responses »


Jackson Pollock Reflection of the Big Dipper 1947

 

• US Will Take Massive Hit In Global Standing Over Israel (RS)
• Rights Group Sues Biden For ‘Complicity’ In Gaza Genocide (Cradle)
• Why The US Needs This War In Gaza (Pepe Escobar)
• All Telecoms Services In Gaza To Halt In Coming Hours — Russian Envoy (TASS)
• US Secretly Increased Weapons Supplies To Israel – Bloomberg (RT)
• US Sabotaged Balanced UN Security Council Resolution On Mideast – Envoy (TASS)
• Biden Calls Xi a ‘Dictator’ Hours After Meeting (Sp.)
• Washington Raises Stakes On ‘Losing Hand’ In Ukraine – Jeffrey Sachs (RT)
• Ukrainian Officials Embezzled 20%-36% Of All Western Financial Aid (TASS)
• Germany’s Energy Woes Spark ‘Deindustrialization on Considerable Scale’ (Sp.)
• Hunter Biden Asks Judge for Trump, Barr Subpoenas (Sp.)
• Lawyer Admits To Leaking Witness Videos In Georgia Election Case (JTN)
• Michigan Court Rejects Effort to Disqualify Donald Trump (Turley)

 

 

 

 

Erdogan Israel

 

 

Blinken

 

 

 

 

Sachs

 

 

Self defence

 

 

 

 

“..the ongoing war in the Middle East has raised the threat of an attack against Americans in the United States to a whole ‘nother level.”

• US Will Take Massive Hit In Global Standing Over Israel (RS)

This past weekend saw the publication of a disturbing report from Axios, following a phone call between Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his Israeli counterpart. According to unnamed sources, the outlet reports, there are growing fears within the Biden administration that the Israeli government wants to provoke Hezbollah into starting a wider regional war that would envelop Lebanon and other nearby countries, as well as the United States. It’s a powerful reminder that the Biden administration’s current policy of unconditional support for the Israeli government’s war on Gaza carries with it no upsides and only downsides in regards to U.S. interests. Avoiding another Middle Eastern war is a core priority for President Joe Biden, who both campaigned on ending “forever wars,” and has expressed concern about the U.S. capacity for a future military confrontation with China.

In fact, according to Axios, Austin’s weekend phone call was precisely to register his concern over the Israeli attacks in Lebanon and “the need to contain the conflict to Gaza and avoid regional escalation.” U.S.officials have been reportedly trying to prevent this outcome from the start of the conflict. Short of a full-blown war, Washington’s support for the war is already leading to U.S.casualties. As of Monday, U.S. and coalition forces have suffered at least 52 attacks since October 17, injuring 56 troops in Iraq and Syria. In a classic case of tit-for-tat, four of those attacks took place this past Sunday alone in response to U.S. airstrikes on Iran-linked facilities, which were themselves a response to earlier militia attacks on American targets in the region over Washington’s backing for Israel. At one point, a drone launched by an Iran-backed drone crashed into the U.S. barracks at an Iraqi air base, failing to kill U.S.troops only because it was defective.

There are few greater interests of a nation than ensuring the safety and security of its citizens. The Biden administration certainly thinks so, since it has repeatedly invoked the U.S. citizens taken as hostages by Hamas and made clear the importance it places on their safe return. Yet U.S. citizens remain trapped in Gaza, their lives threatened by not just Israel’s relentless bombing campaign, but by the siege that has created a devastating humanitarian crisis in the territory. The longer the war goes on, the bigger the risk to these Americans’ lives. At the same time, administration officials are already warning the war is going to inflame terrorism, the very thing the United States spent the past two decades, thousands of lives, and trillions of dollars trying to combat. The U.S. State Department issued an alert early on in the war that there was an increased “potential for terrorist attacks, demonstrations or violent actions against U.S. citizens and interests.”

A leaked intelligence bulletin around the same time warned that Hezbollah and Al Qaeda affiliates were calling for attacks on U.S. citizens and interests over the conflict, and that the October 17 blast at al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City — responsibility for which is still undetermined — would “likely continue to draw public backlash and organized responses.” (The Israeli military has since repeatedly attacked multiple hospitals in Gaza). Similar warnings abound. The Department of Homeland Security has cautioned that the United States is “in a heightened threat environment” as a result of the war. FBI Director Chris Wray told Congress that “multiple foreign terrorist organizations have called for attacks against Americans and the West,” and that “the ongoing war in the Middle East has raised the threat of an attack against Americans in the United States to a whole ‘nother level.”

We stand with

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“I paid for Israel to kill my cousins and my aunt, there’s no two ways around it..”

• Rights Group Sues Biden For ‘Complicity’ In Gaza Genocide (Cradle)

US President Joe Biden and two of his cabinet members are being sued in a US federal court for aiding and abetting genocide in Gaza, Al-Jazeera reported on 14 November. A federal complaint filed on 13 November against President Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, accuses them of “failure to prevent and complicity in the Israeli government’s unfolding genocide.” Israel, which receives $3.8 billion in military support from the US each year, has killed over 11,200 Palestinians, the majority women and children, since the beginning of its bombing campaign in Gaza on 7 October.

The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) filed the suit on behalf of Palestinian human rights organizations, Palestinians in Gaza and US citizens with relatives trapped in the besieged enclave. The bombing campaign has been accompanied by statements from Israeli military and political leaders claiming that all 2.3 million residents of the Gaza Strip are legitimate targets, rather than just members or fighters of Hamas, the group that attacked Israel on 7 October. “Numerous Israeli government leaders have expressed clear genocidal intentions and deployed dehumanizing characterizations of Palestinians, including ‘human animals’,” the CCR wrote in its complaint. It said those “statements of intent”, when combined with the “mass killing” of Palestinians, reveal “evidence of an unfolding crime of genocide.”

Numerous legal scholars and human rights groups have also called Israel’s actions in Gaza genocide, including Israeli historian and Holocaust scholar Raz Segal, who has called the Israeli bombing campaign, “A textbook case of genocide.” As the Palestinian death toll continues to mount, the Biden White House has escalated its financial and military support to Israel and refused to set limits or redlines on how US weapons may be used in Gaza. “Immediately after the launch of Israel’s unprecedented bombing campaign on Gaza, President Biden offered ‘unwavering’ support for Israel, which he and administration officials have consistently repeated and backed up with military, financial, and political support, even as mass civilian casualties escalated alongside Israeli genocidal rhetoric,” the CCR said.

Because the US is Israel’s closest ally and largest supplier of military assistance, the US could have a “deterrent effect on Israeli officials now pursuing genocidal acts against the Palestinian people,” the complaint said. Instead, the group said, Biden, Blinken, and Austin “have helped advance the gravest of crimes.” Speaking to Al-Jazeera, Astha Sharma Pokharel, a lawyer at the CCR, said: “They have a significant responsibility under customary international law, under federal law, to prevent this genocide, to stop supporting this genocide. At every step of the way, at every opportunity, they have failed. They have continued to provide cover to Israel; they have continued to provide material support to Israel; and currently, they intend to send more money and more weapons to Israel.”

Laila al-Haddad, a US citizen represented by CCR in the complaint, has lost five relatives to Israeli bombing in Gaza since 7 October. “I paid for Israel to kill my cousins and my aunt, there’s no two ways around it,” she told Al-Jazeera. “It was my tax dollars that did that, that sent those bombs to Israel to kill my family. And so I feel I and all other American taxpayers have a very unique responsibility to hold our government and our elected officials responsible.”

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“Wars in Europe and West Asia may be its last chance (it will lose) to subvert the emergence of a prosperous, connected, peaceful Eurasia Century.”

• Why The US Needs This War In Gaza (Pepe Escobar)

The catastrophic debacle of Project Ukraine and the revival of an intractable West Asian war are deeply intertwined. Beyond the fog of Washington’s “worry” about Tel Aviv’s genocidal rampage, the crucial fact is that we are right in the thick of a war against BRICS 11. The Empire does not do strategy; at best, it does tactical business plans on the fly. There are two immediate tactics in play: a US Armada deployed in the Eastern Mediterranean – in a failed effort to intimidate Resistance Axis behemoths Iran and Hezbollah – and a possible Milei election in Argentina tied to his avowed promise to break Brazil-Argentina relations. So this is a simultaneous attack on BRICS 11 on two fronts: West Asia and South America. There will be no American efforts spared to prevent BRICS 11 from getting close to OPEC+.

A key aim is to instill fear in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi – as confirmed by Persian Gulf business sources. Even vassal leaders at the OIC show would have been aware that we are now deep into The Empire Strikes Back. That also largely explains their cowardice. They know that for the Hegemon, multipolarity equals “chaos,” unipolarity equals “order,” and malign actors equal “autocrats” – such as the new Russian-Chinese-Iranian “Axis of Evil” and anyone, especially vassals, that opposes the “rules-based international order.” And that brings us to a tale of two ceasefires. Tens of millions across the Global Majority are asking why the Hegemon is desperate for a ceasefire in Ukraine while flatly refusing a ceasefire in Palestine. Freezing Project Ukraine preserves the Ghost of Hegemony just a little bit longer.

Let’s assume Moscow would take the bait (it won’t). But to freeze Ukraine in Europe, the Hegemon will need an Israeli win in Gaza – perhaps at any and all costs – to maintain even a vestige of its former glory. But can Israel achieve victory any more than Ukraine can? Tel Aviv may have already lost the war on 7 October as it can never regain its facade of invincibility. And if this transforms into a regional war that Israel loses, the US will lose its Arab vassals overnight, who today have a Chinese and Russian option waiting in the wings. The Roar of the Street is getting louder – demanding that the Biden administration, now seen as complicit with Tel Aviv, halt the Israeli genocide that may lead to a World War. But Washington will not comply. Wars in Europe and West Asia may be its last chance (it will lose) to subvert the emergence of a prosperous, connected, peaceful Eurasia Century.

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Good to remember: “..Hamas views its attack as a response to Israeli authorities’ steps against the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem..”

• All Telecoms Services In Gaza To Halt In Coming Hours — Russian Envoy (TASS)

Residents of the Gaza Strip are about to find themselves without any communications to the outside world due to fuel and electricity shortages, Russian Permanent Representative to the UN Vasily Nebenzya told the UN Security Council. “Any humanitarian action requires an immediate cessation of hostilities. One cannot clear the debris and evacuate people when under fire, and also it is impossible to bring in much-needed fuel, without which Gaza’s hospitals are about to run out of energy. Besides, without fuel supplies, in the coming hours (according to UNRWA forecasts on November 16), the residents of Gaza will find themselves without any communications, without Internet and in a complete isolation from the outside world,” the Russian diplomat said, addressing the UN Security Council which has just adopted a resolution on the Middle East.

A total of 12 countries in the 15-member council voted in favor of the document, aimed at helping children in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict zone. The United States, the United Kingdom and Russia abstained. “There will be no telling what happens there at all. The Gaza Strip will be completely plunged into darkness and chaos, and coordination among emergency services will be disrupted,” Nebenzya continued. s”At this very moment, while delegations to the Security Council are exercising in eloquence, the Israeli army is raiding Al-Shifa hospital, bombing UNRWA schools, and there are alarming reports of medical staff being shot, medical equipment and medical depots being destroyed,” he added. “I stress once again: humanitarian pauses are not and cannot be a substitute for a ceasefire or even a truce. It is only a short-time halt, after which hostilities resume with renewed vigor.”

The resolution, obtained by TASS, has seven provisions. It contains a call for establishing extended humanitarian pauses and corridors in the Gaza Strip “for a sufficient number of days to enable, consistent with international humanitarian law, the full, rapid, safe and unhindered humanitarian access” for United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross and other impartial humanitarian organizations enabling them to deliver humanitarian aid, repair essential infrastructure and organize “urgent rescue and recovery efforts, including for missing children in damaged and destroyed buildings.” The humanitarian pause should be long enough to conduct “evacuation of sick or injured children and their care givers.”

Tensions flared up in the Middle East after Hamas militants from the Gaza Strip attacked Israeli territory on October 7, when many Israelis living in the settlements near the border were killed and more than 200 people, including children, women and the elderly, were taken hostage. Hamas views its attack as a response to Israeli authorities’ steps against the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. Israel declared a total blockade of the Gaza Strip and launched bombardments of the enclave and some areas in Lebanon and Syria. Clashes are also reported in the West Bank.

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“..since Gaza is “one of the world’s most densely populated places, 155mm artillery shells are inherently indiscriminate.”

• US Secretly Increased Weapons Supplies To Israel – Bloomberg (RT)

The US Department of Defense has allegedly ramped up weapons deliveries to Israel without making any public announcements, Bloomberg has reported. The media outlet claimed that the deliveries of artillery shells, which supposedly feature prominently on Israel’s wish list, continue despite protests by dozens of relief organizations. The US has for decades been Israel’s closest ally and a major supplier of weapons. Following Hamas’ surprise attack on the country on October 7, Washington quickly came to Israel’s rescue, providing it with Iron Dome air defense missiles and smart bombs. In its report on Wednesday, Bloomberg, citing an internal Defense Department list dated late October, claimed that the Pentagon had been dipping into its stocks at home and in Europe to furnish Israel with 36,000 rounds of 30mm cannon ammunition and approximately 2,000 Hellfire Laser Guided missiles for the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter.

The list also included 57,000 155mm High Explosive artillery shells, as well as mortars, rifles, and night vision devices, among other items. Israel reportedly requested 200 armor-piercing Switchblade 600 strike drones, which the US military does not have in its inventory. When asked for comment, the Defense Department said in a statement that it was “leveraging several avenues — from internal stocks to US industry channels – to ensure Israel has the means to defend itself.” Officials added that “this security assistance continues to arrive on a near-daily basis.” Bloomberg pointed out that the deliveries have apparently continued despite the Biden administration publicly calling on Israel to exercise restraint and try to avoid civilian casualties during its ongoing operation against Hamas in Gaza.

On Monday, thirty relief groups sent a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, urging him to halt the deliveries of 155mm shells in particular. They argued that, since Gaza is “one of the world’s most densely populated places, 155mm artillery shells are inherently indiscriminate.” On Tuesday, the US House of Representatives approved a bill proposed by Speaker Mike Johnson over the weekend to avoid a looming government shutdown this Friday. Aid for Ukraine and Israel is conspicuously absent from the stopgap legislation, which aims to secure funding for US government agencies through mid-January and early February. The Biden administration originally asked Congress last month to approve a massive $106 billion assistance package for Ukraine and Israel. However, Republicans opposed the plan, leading to a political deadlock.

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“The Council does not even demand humanitarian pauses, but only calls for them, which is a mockery of the Council’s prerogative..”

• US Sabotaged Balanced UN Security Council Resolution On Mideast – Envoy (TASS)

Since the Israeli-Palestinian conflict escalated in early October, the United States has been sabotaging a balanced UN Security Council document on the issue, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN Vasily Nebenzya said. “From the very beginning of the current escalation in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict zone, the US delegation has sabotaged any attempt to develop a balanced and depoliticized document aimed at taking real and urgent measures to de-escalate the situation. Our American colleagues on the Council justified the collective punishment and annihilation of the Palestinians, first of all the civilian population, under the slogans about the fight against terrorism and Israel’s right to self-defense, effectively paralyzing the work of the main UN body for the maintenance of international peace and security,” Nebenzya told the UN Security Council after it adopted a resolution on the Middle East.

In his words, Washington has consistently rejected draft resolutions demanding a humanitarian ceasefire. The diplomat expressed his regret over the fact that “under pressure from Washington, the language of the resolution has been emasculated.” “The Council does not even demand humanitarian pauses, but only calls for them, which is a mockery of the Council’s prerogative,” Nebenzya said.

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The Chinese simply do not understand such poor manners.

• Biden Calls Xi a ‘Dictator’ Hours After Meeting (Sp.)

Hours after a meeting designed to restore US-Chinese relations between US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping, Biden called the Chinese leader a dictator during a press conference about the meeting. Biden and Xi met in San Francisco during the APEC Leaders’ Summit on Wednesday. The highly anticipated meeting was hyped as a critical opportunity to restore Chinese-US relations following years of heightened tensions between the two countries. During a press conference following the meeting, Biden touted the progress made, saying that they reached a deal to combat fentanyl precursor chemicals from China entering the United States, resuming direct communications between the world’s two largest militaries and a plan to have experts from both countries meet on the dangers of AI. He said they also discussed Ukraine, Gaza, Taiwan and the South China Sea.

After Biden stated he would take no more questions he started walking towards the exit but then stopped and announced that he would take another question, “Who can holler the loudest?” the President asked the crowd of supporters. The reporter, whose name and outlet were not clearly audible in the video, first asked if Biden could share the evidence he had that Hamas hid a headquarters in Al-Shifa hospital, something Biden said was a “fact” earlier in the press conference. Biden said he was confident in the evidence he saw, but declined to provide it. “No, I can’t tell you. I won’t tell you.” The same reporter then asked if Biden still calls Xi a “dictator” as he did earlier in the year. Biden confirmed that he still does.

“Well look, he is. I mean he is a dictator in the sense that he is a guy who runs a country that is a communist country that is based on a form of government that is totally different from ours,” Biden stated before leaving the press room. The Chinese government has not yet responded to Biden’s latest description of the Chinese President as a “dictator.” In June, one day after Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Beijing in an effort to ease tensions between the countries, Biden harmed those discussions by calling Xi a dictator and implying that he did not know what was going on in his country. “The reason why Xi Jinping got very upset in terms of when I shot that balloon down with two box cars full of spy equipment is he didn’t know it was there,” Biden said at a fundraiser. “That’s a great embarrassment for dictators.”

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“The US has played a losing hand badly for 15 straight years..”

They’ve raised the stakes for 15 years on a losing hand, and they can’t get it,” [..] “And this is our team. They failed.”

• Washington Raises Stakes On ‘Losing Hand’ In Ukraine – Jeffrey Sachs (RT)

Washington has continually escalated a failed foreign policy in Eastern Europe since at least 2008, driving Ukraine to the brink of total destruction by failing to address Russia’s legitimate security concerns in the former Soviet republic, US public policy analyst Jeffrey Sachs has argued. “The US has played a losing hand badly for 15 straight years,” Sachs said on Wednesday in an interview with independent journalist Glenn Greenwald. “This is really important to understand if one wants to learn a little bit about geopolitical poker, which is, we keep raising the stakes on a losing hand.” Sachs, an award-winning economist who advised the Russian and Ukrainian governments following the Soviet Union’s breakup, detailed how at various points in the past two decades, Washington could have forestalled a military conflict without Kiev losing any territory.

He pointed out that Moscow was demanding that NATO not expand onto its doorstep, which US officials refused to concede. When Ukraine’s then-president, Viktor Yanukovych, chose neutrality over aligning with the West and agreed to extend the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s lease of its naval base in Crimea, that wasn’t good enough for US leaders, Sachs said. US State Department official Victoria Nuland “and friends” then helped overthrow Kiev’s democratically elected government in 2014, leading to Ukraine’s loss of Crimea, he said. Even then, Russia wasn’t demanding more territory. Rather, Sachs said, Moscow wanted Ukraine to refrain from shelling ethnic Russians in the breakaway Donbass region and to grant them a degree of autonomy. Those terms were included in the Minsk II agreement, which was unanimously endorsed by the UN Security Council, but US officials told Ukrainian leaders that they didn’t need to comply with the deal, the analyst said.

In December 2021, Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed a security pact pledging no further expansion of NATO and negotiations on placement of US missile systems in Eastern Europe. The US reply came in January 2022. “We don’t have to discuss any of that with you,” Sachs said, summing up Washington’s stance at the time. “That was the reply. We don’t have to discuss NATO with you. It’s none of your business.” Just three days after Russian forces launched a military offensive against Ukraine in February 2022, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky sought to resolve the conflict by pledging neutrality, Sachs said. However, he suggested that, when Zelensky reached a preliminary agreement with the Russians on a peace settlement a few weeks later, US President Joe Biden’s administration torpedoed the deal.

Washington has since approved $113 billion in aid to Ukraine, essentially prolonging the fighting, the analyst argued. Earlier this year, the Biden administration goaded Kiev into a major counteroffensive against Russian forces that was “clearly an impossibility,” Sachs said. “They’ve raised the stakes for 15 years on a losing hand, and they can’t get it,” the economist said. “And this is our team. They failed.” ” We need a new foreign policy team, and we need a new foreign policy approach, and we need to negotiate before Ukraine is completely destroyed.”

Sachs noted that he and other observers predicted the Ukraine debacle in the early days of the conflict. “This one was not very hard to see,” he said. “Like you said, how can you beat Russia? It was very obvious. These people just are not very clever. Biden, Nuland, [National Security Advisor Jake] Sullivan, [Secretary of State Antony] Blinken – they’ve been at this since 2014.” Kiev’s much-anticipated offensive campaign, launched in the summer, failed to achieve any significant victories or win back much territory. Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s top general, said in a recent interview that the fighting has reached “a stalemate.” The Economist reported this week that Western officials “increasingly think” that the conflict could last for another five years.

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“I’m talking about former senior officials of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry.”

So this is just the defense guys. But the rest want their cut, too.

• Ukrainian Officials Embezzled 20%-36% Of All Western Financial Aid (TASS)

Between 20% and 36% of all financial aid, provided to Kiev by the West, has been misappropriated by Ukrainian officials, the Russian Foreign ministry’s official spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said. “Based on our information, between 20% and 36% of all financial aid from the West was misappropriated by Ukrainian officials,” the diplomat said. “I’m talking about former senior officials of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry.” Corruption scandals at various sectors of economy and state governance are a regular occurrence in Ukraine. Former Ukrainian Defense Minister Alexey Reznikov was sacked in September amid numerous corruption scandals. He was succeeded by Rustem Umerov.

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“..two out of three German companies have partially relocated their operations abroad due to ongoing energy issues in Germany..”

• Germany’s Energy Woes Spark ‘Deindustrialization on Considerable Scale’ (Sp.)

Germany’s automotive, mechanical engineering, and industrial goods companies are prioritizing moving less complex processes overseas to secure their business futures. Berlin’s chances of reversing such a trend are in doubt, as companies have expressed disappointment in the current government’s actions to forestall their departure. Consultancy firm Deloitte reports that two out of three German companies have partially relocated their operations abroad due to ongoing energy issues in Germany. Previous reports indicated that nearly half of the country’s small-to-midsized companies were considering moving abroad or ceasing operations. According to Deloitte, 67 percent of German companies have moved some operations abroad, and every third industrial company plans to relocate high-quality areas such as production and preassembly.

Investments in infrastructure, digitalization, and cost-effective energy pricing are essential for securing business locations. The situation is particularly acute in Germany’s mechanical engineering, industrial goods, and automotive sectors, where 69 percent of companies report moderate to large-scale relocation. Currently, companies are primarily moving less complex aspects like component manufacturing abroad. Florian Ploner, a partner at Deloitte and industry sector expert, remarked, “Deindustrialization is already taking place on a considerable scale here. If the general conditions remain the same, it is very likely that more companies will follow and more and more important parts of the value creation will migrate.”

When considering relocation, one-third of respondents focus on high-value areas like general production (33 percent) and preassembly (34 percent). Currently, companies are relocating evenly across the EU, Asia, and the US, with only 10 percent of companies planning to move to other Asian countries and eight percent considering returning to Europe from Asia.

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“Dammit, Mr. President, I am not going to talk to you about Hunter Biden. Period!”

• Hunter Biden Asks Judge for Trump, Barr Subpoenas (Sp.)

Lawyers for Hunter Biden asked a federal judge on Wednesday to issue subpoenas for several federal law enforcement officials, including former Attorney General Bill Barr and former US President Donald Trump, in the case against the first son. According to the recent filing, Biden is seeking the testimony of Trump, Barr, and two other Justice Department officials in an effort to prove that the federal investigation of him was politically motivated. “Mr. Biden seeks specific information from three former DOJ officials and the former President that goes to the heart of his defense that this is, possibly, a vindictive or selective prosecution arising from an unrelenting pressure campaign beginning in the last administration, in violation of Mr. Biden’s Fifth Amendment rights under the Constitution,” Biden’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, wrote in the request to US District Judge Maryellen Noreika.

Hunter, who is the son of US President Joe Biden, is facing a trio of federal gun charges after a plea deal collapsed over the summer that also included misdemeanor tax fraud charges. While it was Hunter’s lawyer who scuttled the deal, he has since tried to argue that the filing of new gun charges since then is part of a political campaign against him and his father, who is standing for reelection next November. “In the lead up to the 2020 election, IRS case files show certain investigative decisions were made ‘as a result of guidance provided’ by, among others, ‘the Deputy Attorney General’s office,’” Lowell’s filing said. Lowell also specifically pointed to a comment by Barr published in his 2022 memoir “One Damn Thing After Another,” in which he said he told Trump in October 2020: “Dammit, Mr. President, I am not going to talk to you about Hunter Biden. Period!”

“These confirmations of communications give more than a mere appearance that President Trump improperly and unrelentingly pressured DOJ to pursue an investigation and prosecution of Mr. Biden to advance President Trump’s partisan ambitions,” Lowell’s note to the judge said. Lowell also claimed that Republican pressure on special counsel David Weiss compelled the attorney into “changing course” to file the indictment against Hunter Biden in September, “charging three felony counts for the same gun and same facts that just a few months prior Mr. Weiss had agreed to divert under a pre-trial diversion agreement.”

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“Miller’s provision of the footage to the media was not illegal..”

• Lawyer Admits To Leaking Witness Videos In Georgia Election Case (JTN)

An attorney representing one of the defendants in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s election case admitted on Wednesday to releasing video footage of several proffer sessions involving defendants who entered plea agreements. A proffer session is a meeting between a defendant and prosecutors to provide information to prosecutors. Footage from those of attorneys Kenneth Chesebro, Jenna Ellis, and Sidney Powell became public this week, along with that of co-defendant Scott Hall. “In being transparent with the court and to make sure that nobody else gets blamed for what happened — and so that I can go to sleep well tonight — Judge, I did release those videos to one outlet,” Attorney Jonathan Miller told Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, according to The Hill. “And in all candor, I need the court to know that.”

Prosecutors ultimately filed a request for a protective order on how defendants may disseminate materials from the case. Miller’s provision of the footage to the media was not illegal. Miller represents defendant Misty Hampton, one of former President Donald Trump’s 18 co-defendants in the case stemming from efforts to challenge the 2020 election results. The original publication of the videos prompted several rounds of finger-pointing within the courtroom, with attorneys for the myriad defendants and Willis’s office denying any involvement until Miller came forward.

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“These challenges are spreading uncertainty on the choices that will be allowed for voters — a dangerous and dysfunctional effort.”

• Michigan Court Rejects Effort to Disqualify Donald Trump (Turley)

We have been discussing the nationwide effort to disqualify former President Donald Trump from ballots in key states under a novel theory using Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. Yesterday, a Michigan judge was the latest to dismiss the effort to prevent voters from being able to vote for Trump. As many of you know, I have been a vocal critic of the theory as unfounded and dangerous. While figures like Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe have assured the public that Trump is clearly disqualified under the theory, it is based on unsustainable historical and legal interpretations in my view. For that reason, I have welcomed rulings to allow these claims to be reviewed on appeal. It has not fared well. While some have misrepresented past rulings, Tribe and others are still seeking a favorable judge.

Trump rally

State Judge James Robert Redford rejected the challenge and found that the courts lack the claimed authority under the theory. Judge Redford also rejected the effort of Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D) under state law to remove candidates from the ballot based on that provision. An appeal is now expected to proceed and the matter could well end up in front of the Supreme Court. Last week, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled in a similar case that Trump could not be removed from the primary ballot in that state. Another ruling is expected soon out of Colorado. I have previously addressed the constitutional basis for this claim. It is, in my view, wildly out of sync with the purpose of the amendment, which followed an actual rebellion, the Civil War.

As previously discussed, the 14th Amendment bars those who took the oath and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same.” It then adds that that disqualification can extend to those who have “given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.” According to these experts, Jan. 6 was an “insurrection” and Trump gave “aid and comfort” to those who engaged in it by spreading election fraud claims and not immediately denouncing the violence. But even the view that it was an “insurrection” is by no means a consensus. Polls have shown that most of the public view Jan. 6 for what it was: a protest that became a riot. One year after the riot, CBS News mostly downplayed and ignored the result of its own poll showing that 76 percent viewed it for what it was, as a “protest gone too far.” The view that it was an actual “insurrection” was far less settled, with almost half rejecting the claim, a division breaking along partisan lines.

Advocates of this theory like Benson are arguing that they are protecting democracy by denying the ability of tens of millions of Americans to vote for their preferred candidate. Nothing says democracy like barring the choice of voters. It is a practice that is common in nations like Iran where the government scrubs the ballots of unacceptable candidates. Hopefully, these courts will expedite these rulings to allow the matter to reach the Supreme Court for a final and definitive ruling. These challenges are spreading uncertainty on the choices that will be allowed for voters — a dangerous and dysfunctional effort.

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Rogan Rock
https://twitter.com/i/status/1724908066829722022

 

 

 

 

Ron Paul

 

 

MTGVaccines

 

 

 

 

McBride

 

 

Split screen sunset

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle November 15 2023

Nov 152023
 
 November 15, 2023  Posted by at 9:20 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  44 Responses »


Piet Mondriaan The Grey Tree 1912

 

• Shift in Focus from Ukraine to Middle East Raises Chances of World War (PCR)
• WH ‘Chaos & Power Vacuum’ is Why Israel Snubs US Advice on Gaza – Sy Hersh (Sp.)
• Israel, Then And Now: ‘Kill, Kill Them All’ (Cradle)
• Netanyahu Warns America: “You’re Next” If IDF Doesn’t Decimate Hamas (ZH)
• Ain’t No ‘Stalemate’: Ukrainian Frontline Breakdown, Revisited (Pepe Escobar)
• New Nord Stream Spin Pushed as US ‘Acutely Aware’ Ukraine Can’t Win (Sp.)
• US Desire to Pay Ukraine’s Way Hits New Low (Sp.)
• West Sees Ukraine Conflict Lasting Five More Years – Media (RT)
• Russia and Ukraine May Never Sign Peace Treaty – Kiev (RT)
• EU Approach To Ukraine ‘Surreal’ – ex-Austrian Foreign Minister (RT)
• A Trump-Tucker T2 Ticket? (Coy)
• FCC Commissioner Sounds Alarms About Coming Biden ‘Takeover’ of Internet (PB)
• Rehabilitated Former UK PM Cameron is ‘Psychopath and War Criminal’ (Tweedie)
• House Funding Bill Passes Thanks To Democrats, Averting Gov’t Shutdown (ZH)
• Gulf Stream Collapse Scare Debunked by Royal Society (DS)

 

 

 

 

John Oliver

 

 

 

 

Matrix

 

 

Orwell

 

 

Dana White

 

 

RFK

 

 

 

 

Pepe

 

 

 

 

“The British press was the most ridiculous in its pronouncements of Russia’s doom. Suddenly, defeated Ukraine is off the headlines.”

• Shift in Focus from Ukraine to Middle East Raises Chances of World War (PCR)

The neoconservative/Netanyahu agenda of reopening the Middle East wars in the interest of Greater Israel has shoved Ukraine off the screen. The possibility of overthrowing Syria and Iran offers a much greater possibility of discomforting Russia. The neocons have wanted revenge on Putin ever since he stopped Obama’s overthrow of Assad, which, with Iraq already overthrown, would leave only Iran in Israel’s way. The shift in focus from Ukraine to the Middle East is made clear by the story planted in the Washington Post, long regarded as a CIA asset, that Ukraine was responsible for blowing up the Nord Sea pipeline. The responsibility is handed to Ukrainian colonel Roman Cherinsky who allegedly led a six-person sabotage team.

Col. Chervinsky denied having any part in the pipeline’s destruction. He said: “All speculations about my involvement in the attack on Nord Stream are being spread by Russian propaganda without any basis.” It is curious that Chervinsky thinks the Washington Post is a Russian asset instead of a CIA/neocon one. The planted story signals Washington’s abandonment of Zelensky. So, again Washington has destroyed a country and its population before moving on to a more promising opportunity. For two years the media was crowded with forecasts of Russia’s imminent defeat in Ukraine. The British press was the most ridiculous in its pronouncements of Russia’s doom. Suddenly, defeated Ukraine is off the headlines.

We await the consequence of the shift in focus. Will Hezbollah and Iran be sucked into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by Israel’s ongoing massacre of Palestinians? If not, will the neoconservatives orchestrate a false flag attack that provides excuse and support for a US/Israeli attack on Syria, Lebanon and Iran? What else is the purpose of the rapidly assembled large US military force in the Middle East? Will Putin stand aside as US/Israeli hegemony is established over the Middle East? Will the Muslim world accept its designation as a dispensable life form and collapse in impotence? Can China afford to be cut off from Iranian oil while Washington makes trouble in Taiwan? Will a third world war breakout? Without proactive responses, things can quickly go too far. The arrogance of neoconservative and Israeli over-confidence, together with Russian, Chinese, and Iranian hesitancy, are ingredients for a world war.

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“It’s chaos in the White House. They are saying the same things over and over. They are doing what they think will get the president re-elected. He is a George the Third. It’s scary, and it is disgraceful.”

• WH ‘Chaos & Power Vacuum’ is Why Israel Snubs US Advice on Gaza – Sy Hersh (Sp.)

Israel has dismissed any advice from the White House regarding its operation in Gaza because “there is a power vacuum in Washington,” Seymour Hersh has cited sources as saying. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not been listening to the “waffling” of the Biden administration, the US investigative journalist wrote on Substack. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have been intensifying their Gaza operation to eliminate Hamas amid global protests over the spiraling Palestinian civilian death toll. Over 11,000 people, many of them children, have already died in the enclave, according to the Gazan Health Ministry. There have been global marches of protest against what is seen as a disproportionate military response on the part of Israel, with similar demonstrations in the US as well. While the US was quick to announce at the start of Israel’s retaliation for the Hamas October 7 attack that it “had its back,” it launched a feeble attempt at shuttle diplomacy.

US President Joe Biden made two trips to Israel, followed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s unsuccessful diplomatic push to the region, and CIA Director Bill Burns’ Middle East foray to allegedly “work on the release of hostages,” Sy Hersh underscored. However, “Netanyahu continues to do as he wishes in Gaza,” the journalist added. When asked of the impact of those visits by Biden officials, an informed US source told Hersh: “Bibi to those three blind mice: ‘Shaddup already.’” The US official elaborated: “There is a power vacuum in Washington. No one is running the show… It’s chaos in the White House. They are saying the same things over and over. They are doing what they think will get the president re-elected. He is a George the Third. It’s scary, and it is disgraceful.”

Earlier on Monday, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) also supported this notion, saying that the United States was calling on Israel to accelerate its operation in the Gaza Strip behind closed doors as it may negatively affect President Joe Biden’s reelection bid in case of prolongation. It should be added that the Biden administration unilaterally blocked calls by dozens of countries at the UN to institute a ceasefire in Gaza last month. President Biden reiterated only last week that there was “no possibility” for a ceasefire in Gaza, while National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Tel Aviv had agreed to set in place four-hour daily “humanitarian pauses” in Gaza’s northern areas to allow for Palestinians to “get out of harm’s way.”

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“..historian Max Hastings writes that Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s current prime minister, told him in the 1970s that, “In the next war, if we do it right, we’ll have the chance to get all the Arabs out … We can clear the West Bank, sort out Jerusalem.”

• Israel, Then And Now: ‘Kill, Kill Them All’ (Cradle)

On 7 October, the armed Palestinian resistance smashed through the Gaza border fence to carry out an unprecedented surprise assault on Israel, in which some 1,200 civilians and security forces were killed.While Israel attributes its entire death toll to the resistance fighters, in particular Hamas and its military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, it has since been suggested that occupation forces may bear responsibility for a significant number of deaths. This discrepancy blows a hole in the narrative pushed by Israeli and western media, which hyperbolically frames the Al-Aqsa Flood operation as the “deadliest single attack on Jews since the Holocaust.” But would Israeli forces willingly kill their own – and why?

The key lies in understanding that the primary goal of the resistance operation was the capture of prisoners of war (POWs)— both soldiers and settlers — to be taken back to Gaza. These captives were intended as leverage to press Israel to meet Hamas’s demands, including ending the 17-year siege on Gaza and releasing thousands of Palestinians held without trial in Israeli prisons. It is equally key to understand that Israel, doctrinally, will go to the most extreme lengths imaginable to prevent the taking of captives – including killing them. In an attempt to thwart Hamas from taking POWs, Israeli forces took drastic measures, including airstrikes on their own military base, firing tank rounds at civilian homes, and using overwhelming firepower to enforce the highly controversial Hannibal Directive.

This infamous military policy – which was altered but not removed in 2016 – allows commanders to sacrifice their own soldiers to prevent them from being captured, aiming to deny the enemy any leverage over the occupation state. A notable case was in 2006, when Hamas captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit on the Gaza border. After holding him captive for five agonizing years, Hamas was able to exchange Shalit for 1,027 Palestinians held prisoner in Israel. The issue of Palestinians targeting Israeli civilians is understandably a controversial talking point, especially in the west. However, Hamas justifies this by claiming all Israelis are settlers living on land stolen from Palestinians in 1948 during what is known as the nakba or “catastrophe.”That year, Zionist militias employed rape and massacre as tools to effect the forcible “transfer” of some 750,000 Palestinians from the land needed to establish Israel.

Future Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion and other Zionist leaders understood that the majority of the indigenous population of British Mandate Palestine, the Christian and Muslim Arabs, needed to be “cleansed” from the land to create a state with a Jewish demographic majority. Today, many Israelis — civilians and politicians alike — are loudly calling for their army to “complete the job,” as Israeli historian Benny Morris described it, by ethnically cleansing and annexing those parts of Palestine they failed to conquer in 1948, namely the entirety of occupied-West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. In his book, “Going to the Wars,” historian Max Hastings writes that Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s current prime minister, told him in the 1970s that, “In the next war, if we do it right, we’ll have the chance to get all the Arabs out … We can clear the West Bank, sort out Jerusalem.”

In contrast, the Palestinians, the indigenous population, have done their utmost to resist the Zionist colonial project and defend their lands, their homes, and their existence as a people. The expectation that they would resist the Zionist occupation is recognized by Israel’s first prime minister David Ben Gurion, himself an immigrant to Palestine from Poland: “Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves … politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves… The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country … Behind the terrorism [by the Arabs] is a movement, which though primitive is not devoid of idealism and self-sacrifice.”

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I though that was Zelensky’s line…

• Netanyahu Warns America: “You’re Next” If IDF Doesn’t Decimate Hamas (ZH)

Israel has been ramping up its global messaging campaign at a moment it faces increased isolation from Global South countries, and amid growing criticism from large powers like China, Russia, and major Latin American countries such as Brazil. But there have been signs of dissent even within the Biden administration as well, with pushback especially coming from the State Department of late, as US officials want to see the White House become more publicly critical of alleged Israeli war crimes, given also the immense death toll, at over 11,200 Gazans killed – with some half of these believed to be women and children. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is now taking his message to the American public, in a Monday night appearance on Fox News’ Sean Hannity, warning that the US will be “next” if his military doesn’t decimate Hamas.

“We have to win not only for our sake, but for the sake of the Middle East, for the sake of our Arab neighbors. You know what, for the sake of Gazans who’ve been held by this dark tyranny that has brutalized and brought them nothing but bloodshed and poverty and misery,” Netanyahu introduced. “We have to win to protect Israel. We have to win to safeguard the Middle East. We have to win for the sake of the civilized world. That’s the battle we’re fighting, and it’s being waged right now. There is no substitute for that victory.” And that’s when he emphasized the potential dire repercussions for the West if Israel fails in its objectives. “If we don’t win now, then Europe is next and you’re next. And we have to win,” he added.

Netanyahu’s words carried a theme of a war between ‘barbarians’ and ‘civilization’, with an intent to make Americans believe what’s happening in the Middle East is “your fight” as well. According to Fox: Netanyahu stressed that “our fight is your fight” and that there is “no substitute for victory.” “We have to have the forces of civilization beat these barbarians because otherwise this barbarism will spread and will endanger the entire world,” Netanyahu said. “Every American, every civilized country will be under peril. We have to win. There is no substitute for victory. Total victory.”

Such messaging filled with a ‘good vs. evil’ motif was also heavily relied upon by the Bush administration and neocons in selling the Iraq War in 2003. Netanyahu has in past years also painted such simple contrasts when speaking about Iran and its supposed ‘nuclear threat’ as well. Netanyahu may have been responding to rare words of restraint issued by President Biden on the same day. “I have not been reluctant in expressing my concerns about what’s going on and it’s my hope and expectation that it will be less intrusive action relative to the hospital,” Biden said Monday regarding the worsening humanitarian crisis at al-Shifa hospital in the center of Gaza City.

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“Medvedev always relishes upping the ante: “The West must admit that not only Donbass and Crimea are not Ukraine, but also Odessa, Nikolaev, Kiev and practically everything else.”

• Ain’t No ‘Stalemate’: Ukrainian Frontline Breakdown, Revisited (Pepe Escobar)

Facts on the ground point to the Russian Armed Forces (RAF) taking the initiative all along the SMO frontlines. This is recognized even by Polish and Estonian intel. Main battles are being fought on the Avdeevka-Marinka line in the DPR and the Kupyansk-Svatovo line in the LPR. RAF has enough manpower and weapons to keep the Ukrainians under a 24/7 state of despair. Objectives remain the same: to capture the whole of DPR and LPR within their administrative borders. In parallel, the ever-unplugged Dmitri Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council, has announced a massive increase in the production of weapons and military equipment. Medvedev constantly stresses that the capabilities of the Russian defense industry have reached an unprecedented level – and much faster than expected.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov, for his part, echoes what Foreign Minister Lavrov has been detailing for months now: Kiev – and its NATO handlers – better realize they cannot and won’t “win” in the battlefield. Medvedev always relishes upping the ante: “The West must admit that not only Donbass and Crimea are not Ukraine, but also Odessa, Nikolaev, Kiev and practically everything else.” That was a sharp response to former NATO Secretary- General Anders “Fogh of War” Rasmussen, who said that Kiev could be accepted into NATO “without lost territories,” referring to Crimea and Donbass. That set Medvedev on a roll: “What then should we admit to NATO, you ask? Well, we can accept the city of Lemberg with its surroundings [the Lviv region] if they really insist there.”

This analysis focuses on “what the Russians are doing with their ongoing ‘mud season offensive’ in Ukraine, really a collection of local attacks across the length of the front line” – with the exception of Kherson. Strategically, Russia has committed none of its own massive reserves while the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) are pressured all along the frontlines – and the Russians silently prepare a surprise knockout blow elsewhere. A Perfect Storm of dwindling financing, weaponizing and Western “support” has darkened Kiev’s horizon, while serial Ukrainian disasters on the ground are so obvious they are even being picked up by Western mainstream media.

This ain’t no “stalemate”. The previous analysis is only one among many that matches the breakdown of Ukrainian brigades across the frontlines – consisting “largely of units already mauled in their disastrous Hundred Days Offensive.” The Hundred Days Offensive should rather be qualified as NATO’s Hundred Days Debacle. The debacle is the key reason why the “Biden combo” administration is now desperately trying to impose a ceasefire: a face-saving gambit as crucial as throwing the sweaty sweatshirt in Kiev under a double-decker bus.

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“The counteroffensive has been a bloody failure and the White House is shifting its resources and backing to Israel, which is much more important to policy makers in Washington..”

• New Nord Stream Spin Pushed as US ‘Acutely Aware’ Ukraine Can’t Win (Sp.)

“Washington and some Europeans are becoming acutely aware that the war against Russia cannot be won by Ukraine even with more open support from NATO,” Philip Giraldi, former military intelligence and CIA operations officer with experience in Europe and the Middle East, told Sputnik. This explains the timing of The Washington Post’s new spin on a Ukrainian colonel’s alleged role in the Nord Stream sabotage, the pundit suggested. “The counteroffensive has been a bloody failure and the White House is shifting its resources and backing to Israel, which is much more important to policy makers in Washington,” Giraldi stressed. A Ukrainian colonel by the name of Roman Chervinsky allegedly played a key “coordinating” role in the attack on the Nord Stream gas pipelines last year, The Washington Post reported on Saturday, citing Ukrainian and European officials, as well as other people familiar with details of the operation.

According to the outlet, Chervinsky, currently on trial in Kiev over alleged abuse of power, is a senior Ukrainian military officer with close ties to the country’s intelligence. The outlet added that Chervinsky did not act alone, and, furthermore, had received orders from some senior officials. The latter, in turn, reported to Ukraine’s top general, Valery Zaluzhny, the newspaper wrote, citing people familiar with how the attack was carried out. As for Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, he purportedly had no knowledge of the attack plans. It should be noted that in an article published earlier this year, sources cited by WaPo stated that Zaluzhny denied any connection to the Nord Stream pipeline blasts. Weighing in on the The WaPo story, Russia claimed the US and NATO were trying to find a scapegoat for the Nord Stream sabotage.

“This is an attempt, several moves ahead, to dismiss any trace of culpability for this terrorist act. Of course, Ukrainian services, obviously intelligence, were involved… But it would have been impossible to pull this [attack] off without American and NATO forces’ involvement,” said Russia’s State Duma lawmaker Alexey Chepa. Accusations leveled against the disgraced senior Ukrainian officer in The Washington Post report published over the weekend come against the backdrop of the Kiev regime’s botched counteroffensive. Adding further backdrop to the story is the recent spat between Zaluzhny and President Volodymyr Zelensky over the commander’s comments earlier. Zaluzhny drew flak for saying that Ukraine’s counteroffensive had reached a “stalemate.”

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“It should not be in any way tied to Israel. These should be separate votes to show our districts exactly where we stand..”

• US Desire to Pay Ukraine’s Way Hits New Low (Sp.)

Congress allocated over $113 billion in military, economic, and humanitarian funding to Ukraine in 2022, with more than $46 billion of that constituting arms assistance. Last month, President Joe Biden asked for a new round of supplemental funding to the tune of $61.4 billion. Conservative Republicans have threatened to reject the request. Ukraine is “running out of money and time” and “could get left behind” by Congress as US lawmakers shift their priorities and focus to staving off an imminent government shutdown, and to ramping up funding for Israel and the southern border with Mexico. That’s according to a fresh US media report assessing the mood in Washington at the moment.

“Ukraine funding, I believe, if it’s worth doing, needs to stand on its own,” Republican Representative Mark Alford of Missouri said, addressing recently elected House Speaker Mike Johnson’s commitment to keep funding bills separate to prevent the bundling of a large number of unrelated priorities into a single piece of legislation. “It should not be in any way tied to Israel. These should be separate votes to show our districts exactly where we stand,” Alford said. House Republicans passed a $14 billion aid package for Israel earlier this month, with the money coming from cuts in spending for the Internal Revenue Service. Senate Democrats and many Senate Republicans have rejected the legislation, with President Biden vowing to veto it, demanding that any support for Israel also include money for Ukraine and other spending, including on the border and America’s geostrategic competition with China.

Some Senate Republicans, including lawmakers traditionally known for their hawkish positions on Russia, have joined with their conservative colleagues in the House in questioning further Ukraine assistance. “I want to be frank with you about our problem,” Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida told Biden administration officials at a hearing last week. “People come up to me and say the following: ‘We have five, six thousand people a day crossing our border; we’ve got all these other needs…Why is Ukraine important in that context?’ I hear that constantly,” the senator said. “One of the dangers we face in these three challenges [Ukraine, Israel, the border, ed.] is the trade-offs that are going to have to happen. We’re gonna have to make policy decisions, because one of the risks we run is being overextended,” Rubio added.

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Wishes British intelligence.

• West Sees Ukraine Conflict Lasting Five More Years – Media (RT)

More and more Western leaders have reportedly conceded that the Russia-Ukraine conflict may drag on for another five years in a “stalemate” that neither side is capable of shattering. Neither Russia nor Ukraine is prepared to “give in,” and there is no sign that the conflict will end anytime soon, The Economist reported on Monday. The crisis has already strained the West’s military capacity amid struggles to produce enough artillery shells, the magazine said, and the Israel-Hamas war creates further stress. “As time goes on, there will be trade-offs as certain key systems are diverted to Israel,” Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, wrote last month. “A few systems that Ukraine needs for its counteroffensive may not be available in the numbers that Ukraine would like.” Ukraine’s top general, Valery Zaluzhny, raised eyebrows when he told The Economist earlier this month that the conflict with Russia had reached a stalemate.

Although officials in US President Joe Biden’s administration were troubled by Zaluzhny’s candor, they agreed with his assessment, the New York Times reported last week. The Ukraine crisis has revealed how “meager” Western armories are, The Economist said. Even as the US ramps up its output of 155mm artillery shells, its production in 2025 will be lower than Russia’s in 2024, the magazine added. If the overlapping conflicts in Ukraine and Israel both drag on, Washington and its allies would be hard-pressed to cope with another crisis. “If the war in Ukraine stays an open sore in Europe and the Middle East remains ablaze, the West will struggle gravely should another serious crisis erupt,” the outlet warned. “One risk is that adversaries simply capitalize on chaos elsewhere for their own ends. If America were bogged down in a Pacific war, for instance, Iran would surely feel more confident of getting away with a dash for nuclear weapons.”

The magazine called the situation a “new world disorder” and suggested that Russia and China see “opportunities” in the growing threats. “Even more worrying is the prospect of active collusion. European military planners give weight to the possibility that Russia might conduct menacing maneuvers during a crisis over Taiwan in order to divert American attention and tie down its allies, preventing them from lending a hand in Asia.” Concentrations of crises have occurred in past eras, The Economist said, “but America and its allies cannot intervene as easily or cheaply as they once did.” That’s partly because the Ukraine crisis has “cemented” the partnership between Russia and China, and the two countries are working more closely together, according to the magazine.

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Sore loser.

• Russia and Ukraine May Never Sign Peace Treaty – Kiev (RT)

Russia and Ukraine may never sign a formal peace treaty ending the current conflict, Kirill Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, wrote in an op-ed, excerpts from which were published on Monday. He pointed to Russia and Japan, which never signed a comprehensive peace treaty after World War II due to Tokyo’s claims on several of Russia’s Kuril Islands. “There are cases in history when old wars between the states have not been legally concluded. An obvious example is Russia and Japan. They did not sign a peace agreement after 1945 due to [the dispute] over the Northern Islands, also known as the Kuril Islands in Russia. This territorial problem is now more than 70 years old,” Budanov wrote in an op-ed for NV magazine,

“This is why such a scenario is highly likely in our case, considering that Russia has significant territorial appetite when it comes to Ukraine, and not only pertaining to Crimea.” Budanov’s assessment comes as Kiev’s long-anticipated counteroffensive, launched in the summer, has largely petered out without achieving any significant victories on the ground. Ukrainian troops struggled to break through fortified defense lines and cross thick minefields, losing many NATO-supplied tanks and other armored vehicles in the process. Speaking to the Economist this month, Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s top general, described the situation on the battlefield as “a stalemate.”

The prospects of a peace treaty between Moscow and Kiev remain bleak as both countries ruled out compromising with one another. President Vladimir Zelensky and other top-ranking Ukrainian officials ruled out negotiations unless Russia surrenders its recently acquired territories. Moscow repeatedly said that it would be impossible. Crimea voted to leave Ukraine and join Russia in 2014, following a Western-backed coup in Kiev that year. Four other former Ukrainian territories – the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, as well as the regions of Kherson and Zaporozhye – did the same after holding referendums on the matter in September 2022. At the same time, President Vladimir Putin argued last month that Moscow was aiming not to acquire new lands, but to protect the people of Donbass and maintain its own security. He said that the Ukrainian delegation was close to signing a neutrality pact in March 2022, but has since discarded preliminary agreements.

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“The way [the EU] wants to deal with Ukraine, which is really huge and is a battlefield, is beyond my understanding..”

• EU Approach To Ukraine ‘Surreal’ – ex-Austrian Foreign Minister (RT)

The European Union is making a mistake by insisting on the accession of Ukraine while the country remains locked in a military conflict with Russia, former Austrian foreign minister Karin Kneissl has said. She expressed dismay at the fact that key member states seem to agree with Brussels’ expansion plans, despite the risks. Kneissl’s comments came in response to the European Commission’s decision last week to recommend launching accession talks with Kiev. Its president, Ursula von der Leyen, praised Ukraine for making considerable headway but stopped short of giving a definitive timeline for the country’s admission to the bloc. In an interview with journalist Flavio von Witzleben published on his YouTube channel on Sunday, Kneissl said the “European Union is importing conflicts” by establishing closer ties with the likes of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Ukraine.

“The way [the EU] wants to deal with Ukraine, which is really huge and is a battlefield, is beyond my understanding,” the former Austrian minister added. Kneissl said she could not help but think to herself “It’s all just surreal” when watching excerpts of von der Leyen’s address last week. She lamented that von der Leyen is not alone in promoting Ukraine’s membership, with no visible opposition among other officials working in Brussels. She noted that Germany is actively advocating for the cause, too. The former diplomat cited a report by Die Welt last Monday, which quoted Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba as saying that his German counterpart, Annalena Baerbock, had promised him that Kiev would be admitted to the bloc.

In a statement last Wednesday, von der Leyen described Brussels’ endorsement of accession talks with Ukraine as “historic.” She said Kiev had already completed “well over 90% of the necessary steps” for membership set out by the bloc last year. Kneissl, who criticized the European Commission’s stance, served as Austria’s foreign minister between 2017 and 2019. She later went on to work at Russian oil giant Rosneft and was a contributor for RT. The former diplomat, however, had to resign from the board of the Russian oil giant amid sanctions imposed by the EU on Moscow over the Ukraine conflict. Last year, she left her homeland, claiming to have received death threats. Kneissl has since lived in several countries, including Russia, where she was spotted at a festival in August.

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“..T2 will win by a landslide and they will even dominate in the Purple/Border/Swing States. Fair Elections Matter.

• A Trump-Tucker T2 Ticket? (Coy)

A Trump Tucker ticket for the presidency in 2024. Just imagine it. Wow. Oh my goodness. Praise the Lord. Fantastic. Our prayers are answered. Could it actual happen? The dream ticket is not as far-fetched as previously thought. A Trump Tucker (T2) presidential ticket is beginning to look like a real possibility. A T2 ticket would be putting the Make America Great Again movement and the America First alliance on steroids. As opposed to being a “balanced ticket,” it would be a “double down” on an American exceptionalism ticket. A Trump-Tucker ticket would certainly electrify and energize a base already loaded for bear. A T2 ticket would tell the American citizen, and put the globalist elites, and the Deep State hooligans on notice, that we are right, we are unashamed, we will not be intimated, and we will not apologize.

A Trump-Tucker ticket might possibly be the ticket that saves our democratic republic. A T2 ticket might be the platform that holds off the communists/deep state/globalist elites. A T2 presidency might be the answer to putting the BLM and Antifa criminals in jail. A Trump-Tucker administration might be the only hope for securing the First and Second amendments. An unashamed and without apology Trump-Tucker ticket might just be the political platform and personalities that save the American empire from the dustpan of history. Now, if there is election interference and voter fraud like there was in 2020, it will not matter. If in the toss-up states, they stop counting the votes at 11:30 p.m. and after everyone goes home, start up again at 2:30 in the morning, it won’t matter. If Fulton County, Georgia counts Biden votes multiple times, it won’t matter.

If the upper Midwest states use Zuckerbucks again, it won’t matter. If the management and upper echelons at Fox News appear to be willing participants, it won’t matter. If state election officials in Pennsylvania are once again allowed to purposely ignore their very own state legislated election laws, it won’t matter. If 2024 election tabulations are counted just as they were in the Purple States in 2020, it won’t matter. But, but, but, if the election is run fair and square in the swing states, without cheating, without the Deep State “brownshirts” putting their thumb on the scale; it will matter. Without the FBI/CIA/NSA running cover for the Biden/Harris ticket; Donald Trump and running mate Tucker Carlson will win the 2024 election for the presidency. If only legitimate and legal votes are counted, and they are counted only once, T2 will win by a landslide and they will even dominate in the Purple/Border/Swing States. Fair Elections Matter.

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“President Biden’s plan hands the Administrative State effective control of all Internet services and infrastructure in the country.”

• FCC Commissioner Sounds Alarms About Coming Biden ‘Takeover’ of Internet (PB)

While Americans have been fixated on the Swift-Kelce romance and wondering what really happened to Matthew Perry, the Biden administration has quietly made an audacious move to take over the Internet as we know it and regulate it in the name “Equity.” That’s right: The fate of the Internet as we know it hangs in the balance. And it’s set to come to a vote at the Federal Communications Commission on November 15. FCC Commissioner Brandon Carr earlier lambasted the Biden administration for its attempted Internet “takeover” in a memorandum on the Wednesday meeting.

“So last month, President Biden gave the FCC its marching orders,” Carr said. “The President called on the FCC to implement a one-page section of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (Infrastructure Act) by adopting new rules of breathtaking scope, all in the name of ‘digital equity.’ For the first time ever, those rules would give the federal government a roving mandate to micromanage nearly every aspect of how the Internet functions—from how ISPs allocate capital and where they build, to the services that consumers can purchase; from the profits that ISPs can realize and how they market and advertise services, to the discounts and promotions that consumers can receive. Talk about central planning.”

“Needless to say, Congress never contemplated the sweeping regulatory regime that President Biden asked the FCC to adopt—let alone authorized the agency to implement it,” he added. “Nonetheless, the Commission will vote next week, on November 15th, to put President Biden’s plan in place. A draft of the FCC order implementing President Biden’s plan is available here. I oppose the plan for several reasons.” The FCC Commissioner then laid out the reasons he opposes the Biden Internet takeover, namely, “President Biden’s plan hands the Administrative State effective control of all Internet services and infrastructure in the country.”

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“a disgusting, totally corrupt traitor, mass murdering, psychopath and war criminal.”

Blair: “He’s even more corrupt and more of a psychopath than Cameron,” Shilling stressed. “He’s absolutely terrible. Should’ve been locked up years ago.”

• Rehabilitated Former UK PM Cameron is ‘Psychopath and War Criminal’ (Tweedie)

David Cameron is still unfit to hold office seven years after he resigned as British prime minister, says a political pundit. Current PM Rishi Sunak surprised the nation when he resurrected Cameron’s failed career as part of his cabinet reshuffle on Monday, which began with the sacking of outspoken home secretary Suella Braverman. Cameron was made Foreign Secretary as James Cleverly moved to the Home Office. Cameron must now be granted a peerage in the House of Lords by King Charles III so he can qualify to serve as a minister. That prompted a protest from House of Commons speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle that Cameron would not be answerable to fellow MPs in the elected lower house of Parliament.

Geopolitical analyst Ian Shilling told Sputnik that Cameron was “a disgusting, totally corrupt traitor, mass murdering, psychopath and war criminal.” “He helped Obama and Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, all of them Al Qaida supporting terrorists in Libya to overthrow Gadhafi and also help them to try and overthrow Assad in Syria, use the same Al Qaida type terrorists,” Shilling charged. “And then they created ISIS* in about 2013 to change the regime in Iraq.” “This is the root cause of all these illegal immigrants crossing the channel into the UK and millions of people crossing into Italy from Libya and into France,” he continued. The commentator said that, outside of the European Union, British foreign policy was a “laughing stock” — as was the US under President Joe Biden.

“What they’re doing is completely contrary to national interest because they turn away third world countries, neutral countries in Africa and Asia, South America they turn them away from the West and then turn them towards China,” Shilling said. “the billions in the rest of the world know what a farce it is, and certainly all the Arabs in the Middle East know that the UK and the US support terrorists.” In another blast from the British political past, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly considering his former British counterpart Tony Blair as his “humanitarian coordinator” for the besieged Palestinian enclave of the Gaza Strip — once the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have finished demolishing it in their latest attempt to destroy the Hamas movement.Blair embroiled the UK in former US president George W Bush’s invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. “He’s even more corrupt and more of a psychopath than Cameron,” Shilling stressed. “He’s absolutely terrible. Should’ve been locked up years ago.”

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“..everybody can go home, we can come back, reset, we’re gonna get our group together, we’re gonna map out that plan to fight for those principles.”

• House Funding Bill Passes Thanks To Democrats, Averting Gov’t Shutdown (ZH)

Democrats stepped in to save the day on Tuesday, helping House Speaker Mike Johnson avert a government shutdown despite opposition from Republicans in the Freedom Caucus who opposed the bill due to a lack of offsetting spending cuts. According to Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman, more Democrats voted for it than Republicans.

The legislation now heads to the Senate, where both Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Mitch McConnell (R-KY) gave it their full-throated support as noted earlier. According to a Tuesday statement by Schumer, the Senate will work to pass it “as soon as possible,” after which it will head to President Joe Biden’s desk for a signature. Along the lines of what Sherman said;

“Passage of the legislation marks an early legislative achievement for Johnson, who was elected to the Speakership less than a month ago after three weeks of standstill in the House following former Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) removal from the role. That ouster was caused in large part by McCarthy’s decision to put a “clean” continuing resolution on the floor and pass it with help from Democrats — similar to Johnson’s course of action this week. But hardline conservatives said they would give Johnson some breathing room this time around — despite opposing his stopgap bill — citing his nascent Speakership. “He’s had two weeks to pass it; his predecessor had since January and then he jammed us up against the Sept. 30 deadline,” said Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), one of the eight Republicans who voted to oust McCarthy. Trouble, nonetheless, looms for Johnson and his fractious House GOP conference as they stare down two funding deadlines and try to pass their remaining five appropriations bills, which have run into trouble on the floor and in committee.”

Johnson plans to tackle Ukraine funding next, which has become a contentious issue among Republicans. “I’ve been drinking from Niagara Falls for the last three weeks,” Johnson said on Tuesday. “This will allow everybody to go home for a couple of days for Thanksgiving, everybody cool off — members have been here for, as Leader Scalise said, for 10 weeks, this place is a pressure cooker. And so I think everybody can go home, we can come back, reset, we’re gonna get our group together, we’re gonna map out that plan to fight for those principles.” Good luck with that.

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“The collapse of the AMOC was behind the arrival of a new ice age in the 2004 Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow. It has been a firm favourite of climate alarmists ever since.”

• Gulf Stream Collapse Scare Debunked by Royal Society (DS)

One of the more unforgivable climate scares foisted on the public by green fanatics is the suggestion that the Gulf Stream is about to break down, plunging the northern hemisphere into a new ice age. Last July, both the Guardian and the BBC reported that the Gulf Stream could collapse by 2025, bringing catastrophic climate impacts. All of this fearmongering relies on models, and these have also led the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to forecast it is “very likely” that the entire system of North Atlantic currents will weaken in the near future. Needless to say, these models have an impressively poor track record, and this has been revealed in a recent paper published by the Royal Society. “If these models cannot reproduce past variation, why should we be so confident about their ability to predict the future,” ask the scientific authors.

The Gulf Stream is part of a wider system of currents known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). By bringing warmer waters from the south, it is estimated to increase coastal area temperatures in parts of the northern hemisphere by up to 5°C. The collapse of the AMOC was behind the arrival of a new ice age in the 2004 Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow. It has been a firm favourite of climate alarmists ever since. Of course, the political push towards the collectivist Net Zero project is behind much of the copy. Writing his Gulf Stream collapse nonsense last July, Guardian Environment Editor Damian Carrington said the prospect of an AMOC collapse was extremely concerning, “and should spur rapid cuts in carbon emissions”.

The Royal Society authors find that the climate models that are stuck with an assumption that humans can and do control the AMOC have been wrong for decades. Neither past nor current models are successful in representing actual AMOC observational data. They go on to add: “If it is not possible to reconcile climate models and observations of the AMOC in the historical period, then we believe the statement about future confidence about AMOC evolution should be revised. Low confidence in the past should mean lower confidence in the future.” Many of the scare tactics employed by mainstream media and green activists are given weight by the IPCC’s suggestion that the AMOC will weaken in future as “very likely”.

But the authors note the models cannot reproduce past variations, causing them rightly to ask why we should be confident about their ability to predict the future. The challenge for the AMOC community is either to reconcile the differences between climate models and observations or to better understand the reasons for deviation. “We believe that progress needs to be made in understanding why models do not reproduce past AMOC variability and that this is the key to having confidence in the future evolution of this key climate variable,” they state. Fine words, but in the meantime we are stuck with climate models that are patently unfit for purpose, except, of course, for the vital political work of scaring populations into widespread Net Zero economic and societal compliance.

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Turtle
https://twitter.com/i/status/1724344045235769574

 

 


Kummakivi, situated in Ruokolahti, Finland, is a remarkable geological formation where a massive rock weighing approximately 75 tons or 68,000 kg has delicately balanced on top of another rock for thousands of years.

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle November 14 2023

Nov 142023
 
 November 14, 2023  Posted by at 10:04 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  57 Responses »


Piet Mondriaan The Flowering Apple Tree 1912

 

• State Department Memo Blasts Biden Over ‘Misinformation’ on Gaza War (Sp.)
• The Unspoken Elephant in the Room of Netanyahu’s Intent in Gaza (Crooke)
• Behind Closed Doors US Calls on Israel to Speed Up Gaza Operation (Sp.)
• Pentagon Asks Israel Not to Expand War to Lebanon (Sp.)
• Billionaires Are Teaming Up For Pro-Israel, Anti-Hamas Media Drive (AlJ)
• The War for Greater Israel and US Hegemony Is About to Begin (PCR)
• Zelenskyy Is In Conflict With Ukrainian Military – Arestovych (RT)
• Nord Stream ‘Sideshow’ Conceals Zelensky vs Zaluzhny Infighting (Sp.)
• The Rise of Evil as the Determinant Force in the Western World (PCR)
• Canada Is A Hostage To Nazi Ideology – Moscow (RT)
• Light in the Darkness (Kunstler)
• Suella Braverman Sacked As Home Secretary After Article Criticising Police (G.)
• David Cameron Returns To UK Government As Foreign Secretary (G.)
• The Sacking of the Beltway by Good Intentions (Turley)
• Whistleblower David McBride Declares ‘Today I Serve My Country’ (G.)

 

 


Two Mothers watching over their sons. Same place in the world, 2,000 years apart

 

 

 

 

Galloway

 

 

 

 

Not Borat
https://twitter.com/i/status/1724175188638511544

 

 

 

 

Gaza gas

 

 

 

 

Shamir
https://twitter.com/i/status/1723943189462073730

 

 

 

 

 

 

“..accuses the president of being “complicit in genocide..”

• State Department Memo Blasts Biden Over ‘Misinformation’ on Gaza War (Sp.)

One hundred State Department and USAID employees have signed a memo accusing the Biden administration of “spreading misinformation” about the war in Gaza and charging Israel with carrying out “war crimes” by cutting off electricity to the enclave, limiting aid deliveries and mounting attacks which have displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians.The five-page memo, excerpts of which were obtained by US media, accuses the president of being “complicit in genocide,” attacks him for questioning the number of lives lost in Gaza amid Israel’s campaign, and demands that the US government “advocate for the release of hostages by both Hamas” and by Israel, including “thousands” of Palestinians it says are being held by the Israelis “without charge.”

Accusing the administration of “doubl[ing] down on our unwavering military assistance [to Israel] without clear or actionable redlines,” the memo argues that the White House and members of the National Security Council have “displayed a clear disregard for the lives of Palestinians, a documented unwillingness to de-escalate, and, even prior to October 7, a reckless lack of strategic foresight.” The cutting memo appears to be the second of its kind since the media publication of excerpts from a separate letter by staffers on the Biden administration’s handling of the Gaza crisis last week. “We must publicly criticize Israel’s violations of international norms such as failure to limit offensive operations to legitimate military targets,” the earlier memo, excerpts of which were reported on Saturday, said. “When Israel supports settler violence and illegal land seizures or employs excessive use of force against Palestinians, we must communicate publicly that this goes against our American values so that Israel does not act with impunity,” it added.

The memos are the latest sign of widespread internal dissent in the State Department over the US handling of the Gaza crisis. Last month, Josh Paul, a director at State’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, publicly resigned and warned in a letter that the US is “repeating the same mistakes we have made these past few decades” by “blindly” supporting the Israelis, and saying he would not “be a part of it for longer.” Last week, more than 500 former Biden 2020 campaign staffers signed a letter “imploring” the president to “step up” and “be a leader we can be proud of in the face of injustice” in the Palestinian-Israeli crisis. Expressing “horror” over the October 7 Hamas attacks, the staffers stressed that their violence did not justify what Israel is doing in the Gaza Strip.

Biden Israel

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“For now, the IDF are staying in their tanks. But sooner or later, they will have to engage with Hamas on foot. So, the fight with Hamas has barely begun.”

• The Unspoken Elephant in the Room of Netanyahu’s Intent in Gaza (Crooke)

What is the ‘elephant’ (or elephants) in the room? Blinken’s recent regional diplomacy was ‘a bust’. None of the regional leaders that Blinken met would talk further about Gaza beyond demanding stridently, ‘no Palestinian population displacement into Egypt’ a ‘stop to this madness’ – the carpet bombing of Gazans – and the demand for an immediate ceasefire. And Biden’s calls for a ‘pause’ – softly, at first, and the more strident now – is being bluntly ignored by the Israeli government. The spectre of President Carter’s impotence during the Iran hostage crisis hangs ever more soberly in the backdrop. The truth is that the White House cannot force Israel to do its will – the Israeli lobby holds the more clout in Congress than any White House team. Thus, ‘no exit’ from the Israeli crisis is readily to be seen. Biden ‘made his bed’ with the Netanyahu cabinet and must live with consequences.

Impotence then, as the Democratic Party fractures beyond the simplistic division between centrists versus progressives. The polarisation emanating from the ‘no ceasefire stance’ is having stark destabilising effects on politics, both in the U.S. and Europe. Impotence then, as the shape of the Middle East crystallises into sharp antagonism towards the West’s perceived accommodation of the mass slaughter of Palestinian women, children and civilians. The die may be too far ‘cast’ to brake the ongoing tectonic reset already underway. Western double standards are just too inescapably obvious now to the Global Majority. The large ‘elephant’ is this: Israel has dropped more than 25,000 tons of high explosives since 7 October (the 1945 Hiroshima nuke was 15,000 tons equivalent). What exactly is Netanyahu and his war cabinet’s aim here?

Ostensibly, the earlier military operation in Jabalia Camp was about targeting a Hamas leader suspected of lurking under the camp – but six 2,000 lb bombs for one Hamas ‘target’ in a crowded refugee camp? And why too the attacks on water cisterns, hospital solar energy panels and hospital entrances, roads, schools and bakeries? Bread has almost disappeared in Gaza. The UN says all bakeries in northern Gaza have closed following the bombing of the last bakeries. Clean water is desperately short, and thousands of bodies are slowly decomposing under rubble. Disease and epidemic are appearing, whilst humanitarian supplies are being tightly restricted as a bargaining tool toward further hostage releases.. Editor of Haaretz, Aluf Benn, puts the Israeli strategy very plainly:

“The expulsion of the Palestinian residents, transformation of their homes into piles of construction rubble, and the restriction of the entry of supplies and fuel into Gaza are the “tiebreaking move” employed by Israel in the current conflict, unlike all previous rounds of fighting in the Strip”. Of what are we talking here? This clearly is not about avoiding collateral civilian deaths occurring as the IDF battles with Hamas. There have been no street battles in Jabalia, or in and around the hospitals – as one soldier commented: “All we’ve done is ride around in our armored vehicles. The boots on the ground stuff will come later”. The pretext of a ‘humanitarian evacuation’ therefore is bogus. Hamas’ main forces are sitting deep underground, for the right moment to engage the IDF (i.e. when they are on foot amidst the rubble). For now, the IDF are staying in their tanks. But sooner or later, they will have to engage with Hamas on foot. So, the fight with Hamas has barely begun.

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For Sleepy Joe’s re-election.

• Behind Closed Doors US Calls on Israel to Speed Up Gaza Operation (Sp.)

The United States is calling on Israel to accelerate its operation in the Gaza Strip behind closed doors as it may negatively affect President Joe Biden’s reelection bid in case of prolongation, Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) said on Monday. “The truth, however, is that Americans are having very different conversations behind closed doors with Israeli leadership. The Israelis are being encouraged to speed up the operation in order to prevent it from being delayed, as this would negatively affect Biden’s election positions,” the SVR said in a statement. The US has managed to secure the support of the United Kingdom and Germany in promoting the operation to destroy the Palestinian Hamas movement despite the rising death toll among Gaza Strip residents, the SVR added.

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“.. Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, who wrote on social media late Sunday [..] the “Israeli regime” had “collapsed on October 7 and is now alive” only thanks to “American artificial respiration.”

• Pentagon Asks Israel Not to Expand War to Lebanon (Sp.)

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah stopped short of opening a second front against Israel in a long-anticipated speech last week, saying that tying up substantial numbers of Israeli troops along the border was sufficient, while warning that “all options are on the table” if Israel continues it provocations. Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin ‘expressed concern’ to his Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant about Israeli actions serving to escalate tensions along the Israeli-Lebanese border. That’s according to a report by US media citing three Israeli and American sources briefed on the Austin-Gallant phonecall, which took place Saturday. The unusually blunt request comes amid reports of concerns in Washington that Tel Aviv is deliberately trying to draw Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah militia into the Palestinian-Israeli crisis to drag the United States and other powers into the conflict.

Israel has dismissed such claims. The official readout of the Austin-Gallant call did not mention Lebanon or Hezbollah, paraphrasing Austin as having “reaffirmed Israel’s right to self-defense,” while emphasizing “the need to contain the conflict to Gaza and avoid regional escalation.” But in private, the report indicated, Austin specifically asked Gallant not to take ‘steps that could lead to an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah,’ and for details on Israeli strikes against Lebanon, which Israeli media have indicated have proven increasingly ineffective against Hezbollah’s fighters. Austin’s remarks come amid concerns expressed Monday by Amir-Ali Hajizadeh, a top commander in Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, that Israel’s continued war in Gaza has already spilled over into Lebanon, and threatens to expand further.

“Today, we can see that the war has expanded and Lebanon is embroiled in it. It’s probable that the extent of clashes will grow even further. The future is uncertain, but Iran is prepared for all circumstances,” Hajizadeh said. The brigadier general, who commands the IRGC’s powerful Aerospace Force, went on to stress that Iran is not afraid of the United States, which has parked two aircraft carriers and at least one cruise missile sub in the Middle East and shored up its bases in the region with thousands of additional troops and warplanes. “The US is not threatening Iran…Iran is not in a position where anybody would seek to threaten it, as we are currently at the peak of our military strength,” Hajizadeh assured. The commander’s remarks were preceded by Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, who wrote on social media late Sunday that he had informed his Egyptian counterpart, Sameh Shoukry, that the “Israeli regime” had “collapsed on October 7 and is now alive” only thanks to “American artificial respiration.”

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“We must get ahead of the narrative.”

• Billionaires Are Teaming Up For Pro-Israel, Anti-Hamas Media Drive (AlJ)

A billionaire real estate tycoon in the United States is rallying support for a high-dollar media crusade to boost Israel’s image and demonise the Hamas armed group amid global pro-Palestinian solidarity protests.The media campaign — called Facts for Peace — is seeking million-dollar donations from dozens of the world’s biggest names in media, finance and technology, according to an email seen by news website Semafor. More than 50 individuals are being courted, including former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Dell CEO Michael Dell and financier Michael Milken. They have a combined net worth of around $500bn, Semafor said. Some of the individuals, such as investor Bill Ackman, have publicly threatened to blacklist pro-Palestine students who are critical of Israel.

On October 10, Ackman wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that he and other business executives wanted Ivy League universities to disclose the names of students who are part of organisations that signed open letters criticising Israeli policies in Gaza.US billionaire Barry Sternlicht, who started the project, said the campaign would help Israel “get ahead of the narrative” as the world has reacted to the intensive Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip. “Public opinion will surely shift as scenes, real or fabricated by Hamas, of civilian Palestinian suffering will surely erode [Israel’s] current empathy in the world community”, Sternlicht wrote in an email soliciting contributions from the wealthy figures shortly after Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel, according to Semafor. “We must get ahead of the narrative.”

[..] Sternlicht’s media drive aims to brand Hamas as a “terrorist organisation” that is “not just the enemy of Israel, but of the United States”, he wrote. The goal is to draw $50m in private donations, paired with a matching contribution from a Jewish charity. Hamas is already designated as a “terrorist” organisation by the US and the European Union for its armed resistance against Israeli occupation. It is unclear which figures have donated, but the campaign has raised at least a few million dollars already, Semafor reported, citing “people familiar with the matter”. It is being advised by Josh Vlasto, a communications strategist who previously worked for US Senator Chuck Schumer and former Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo, Semafor reported.

The US is Israel’s strongest global ally, providing it with billions of dollars of aid annually and staunch diplomatic backing. Despite the mounting humanitarian crisis in Gaza, the US government has continuously rebuffed global calls for a ceasefire and reiterated that Washington will not give Israel “red lines” in the war. On November 2, the US Congress passed a $14.3bn emergency military aid package for Israel. However, public support for the US’s position appears to be ebbing, with nearly half of US Democrats disapproving of how Joe Biden has handled the conflict, according to a recent poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Social media giants such as Instagram, X, YouTube and TikTok have been accused of censoring pro-Palestine voices by reducing their reach, a practice known as shadowbanning. Axios reported last month that pro-Palestine posts on TikTok were being viewed four times more than pro-Israel posts. This came as people around the world have reacted with horror to the mounting death toll in Gaza where most of the killed are civilians. Facts For Peace, the media campaign launched by Sternlicht, aims to win back public favour for Israel, posting videos on its social media pages blaming Hamas for the plight of Palestinians and denying claims of Israeli rights violations.

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“How can the extraordinary situation be explained that the US, a country that demonizes its own white population, is led by neoconservatives who assert that the American people are exceptional and indispensable?”

• The War for Greater Israel and US Hegemony Is About to Begin (PCR)

Putin could have prevented the coming world war by quickly dispatching Ukraine in 2014 and by providing air defense systems for Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza against Israel and Washington’s air strikes.I would be more optimistic that we have a future if Russian media and foreign affairs analysts, such as Fyodor Lukyanov, chairman of the Russian Presidium of the Council on Foreign and Defense policy, could dispense with their rose-colored glasses that protect them from reality, and face up to facts. The massive amounts of aircraft, air defense systems, warships, troops and nuclear missile submarines the US is pouring into the vicinity of Israel is not intended for use against Hamas. The intent is to open up the Middle East for Greater Israel and to use Iran as a base from which to cause problems for Russia in Central Asia. If this agenda succeeds, nuclear war is inevitable. An agenda that leads to ashes should be denounced and avoided.

The neoconservatives who control US foreign policy have had their sights on Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah before the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. These countries have been American targets since Norman Podhoretz wrote in Commentary that the US should overthrow the Middle Eastern governments. Prior to the George W. Bush regime’s invasion of Iraq, General Wesley Clark was shown a Pentagon memo that the US intended to overthrow 7 Middle Eastern countries in 5 years. The neoconservatives completely controlled US defense and foreign policy then, as they do today. This project is still the agenda, and it is unfolding before blind Russian and American eyes as I write. I often wonder if Russia, despite its overwhelming nuclear and military superiority over the West, has the ability to survive.

Russian intellectuals, media, and foreign policy analysts seem to be incapable of comprehending that the neoconservatives regard Russia as an enemy to be eliminated. Alienated by the Soviet regime, Russian intellectuals see the West as the touchstone of rationality and freedom. Can Russia survive such a delusion? Fyodor Lukyanov, for example, who is also the director of the Valdai International Discussion Club where Putin always shines, dismisses WW III as “inadmissible” because of nuclear weapons. Perhaps he was influenced by the decades of American propaganda and cannot reconcile his brainwashing with the Wolfowitz doctrine. Indeed, in my many years of being interviewed by Russian media, it is rare to come across a Russian journalist who is even aware of the Wolfowitz doctrine that the principal goal of US foreign policy is to prevent the rise of Russia or any other country capable of constraining US unilateral action.

The entirety of Putin’s travails in Ukraine is due to his inability to comprehend the agenda of the US neoconservatives. He sat there for 8 years while the US built a Ukrainian Army capable of destroying Russian Donbas before he, belatedly, acted. Putin is again sitting on his butt in the Middle East. He does nothing while the US builds up massive military power in the region except aid Washington by preventing Iran and Hezbollah from acting when they had the initiative and would have succeeded. Meanwhile his foreign policy analysts tell him that the Third World War is far off in the future, beyond his life time. How can the extraordinary situation be explained that the US, a country that demonizes its own white population, is led by neoconservatives who assert that the American people are exceptional and indispensable?

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“..the military is not satisfied with the failed counter-offensive, the misuse of Western assistance and the low level of competence in Kyiv..”

• Zelenskyy Is In Conflict With Ukrainian Military – Arestovych (RT)

Oleksiy Arestovych, a former adviser to the head of the office of the Ukrainian president, has said that Volodymyr Zelenskyy is in conflict with the Ukrainian military due to the failure of the counter-offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU). “The president’s speech is becoming increasingly emotional because of the criticism he is receiving,” Arestovych said in an interview with El Mundo According to him, the military is not satisfied with the failed counter-offensive, the misuse of Western assistance and the low level of competence in Kyiv. Arestovych said that the position of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valerii Zaluzhnyi differs from the position of Zelensky. “Now we are faced with a situation where the commander in chief says one thing about the war and the prospects for victory, and the president says something completely different. This is not a normal situation,” the former adviser concluded. Earlier, the head of Zelenskyy’s office, Andrii Yermak, said that the Ukrainian leader and Zaluzhnyi are not in conflict and are united on key issues.

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“..The fact that he was featured in The Economist to me indicates that this is British intelligence signaling that they think this Zaluzhny is their boy..”

• Nord Stream ‘Sideshow’ Conceals Zelensky vs Zaluzhny Infighting (Sp.)

US legacy media has added another layer of obfuscation and complexity to the Nord Stream cover story attempting to take the heat off Washington to blame Ukraine for the September 2022 attacks. Building on reports from earlier this year that an enigmatic “pro-Ukrainian group” rented a sailboat to carry out the attacks, released after Sy Hersh’s bombshell reporting implicating the US Navy for the acts of terrorism, the Washington Post story Saturday indicated that Ukrainian special operations forces colonel Roman Chervinsky coordinated the “brazen sabotage operation.” Chervinsky, WaPo’s story goes, “was the coordinator of the Nord Stream operation,” “managing logistics and support for a six-person team that rented a sailboat under false identities and used deep-sea diving equipment to place explosive charges on the gas pipelines.”

But in a new twist on an old narrative, the newspaper ‘revealed’ that Chervinsky, who is presently rotting in a Kiev jail on abuse of power charges, “took orders from more senior Ukrainian officials” reporting to Ukrainian Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny. The twist, coming amid the very public spat between Zaluzhny and President Volodymyr Zelensky over the commander’s comments earlier this month that Ukraine’s counteroffensive had reached a “stalemate,” differs radically from previous MSM reporting on the Nord Stream attacks, which stressed that the alleged Ukrainian perpetrators had no affiliation whatsoever to Ukraine’s government or military. Sources cited by WaPo in its Saturday piece similarly stressed that “the Nord Stream operation was designed to keep Zelensky out of the loop.”

Russian officials haven’t bought the new take on the story, with Duma lawmaker Alexey Chepa characterizing the newspaper’s story as an attempt by the United States and NATO to whitewash their own culpability for the Nord Stream attacks. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the report’s suggestion that Zelensky was kept out of the loop should be “a very alarming sign” not only for Russia, but for the collective West as well. “Because if the Kiev regime no longer controls the situation in the country, this is alarming and should also be taken account.” Retired CIA intelligence officer and former State Department official Larry Johnson also dismisses the new take on the ‘Ukraine did Nord Stream’ story, stressing that it must be viewed using a much broader lens.

“Since the Washington Post normally is the preferred mouthpiece of the CIA, you have to take this as an example of CIA propaganda to identify this individual, who has zero experience in underwater demolition operations, as sort of the mastermind of an underwater demolition operation, as just silly beyond belief,” Johnson told Sputnik. “All of this has to be viewed in the context of the growing conflict between General Zaluzhny and President Zelensky,” Johnson emphasized. “He basically has been seen as a competitor to Zelensky. The fact that he was featured in The Economist to me indicates that this is British intelligence signaling that they think this Zaluzhny is their boy. And the CIA is pushing back, saying ‘no, no, no, it’s got to be Zelensky.’ So Chervinsky is just a sideshow. When you look at the picture here, there’s nothing at all about him that would suggest an operative with any kind of competence.”

Attempts by Washington to deflect the blame for the Nord Stream attacks onto Ukraine makes sense in the context of Kiev’s gradual “abandonment” by the Biden administration, Johnson believes. “This has happened to Afghanistan. It happened in Vietnam. It’s going to happen to Kiev. They’re not winning the war. The United States is preoccupied with the war in Israel. And the United States does not have the money nor the weapons to keep Ukraine in the fight. So we’re looking for exit strategies. And right now the question is whether or not Zelensky will survive. Will he be replaced by Zaluzhny? Will there be a military coup? I think that we’re into that territory now because Ukraine has experienced absolutely zero success on the battlefield,” the observer explained.

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“Western civilization has to go,” as the students chanted, and it has. In its place evil has risen.”

• The Rise of Evil as the Determinant Force in the Western World (PCR)

Normally when there is a school shooter, the media goes on and on about the right-wing gun nut who killed the kids. We learn all about him and his politically incorrect ideas and associations. No stone in his life is left unturned. But if the shooter is not a rightwing gun nut, we hear nothing about it. Moreover, as Glenn Greenwald points out, the police and the media suppress the information as it doesn’t fit the narrative. This time the shooter, or rather, murderer, was a trans woman, Audrey Hale, who shot and murdered three teachers and three nine-year olds in a Christian school in Tennessee. Her motives were political, her ideology was left/liberal, and her victims were white in a private Christian school. She left a manifesto, interest in which was non-existent among the presstitutes. The FBI and Tennessee police refused to release the manifesto. When a court ordered the manifesto’s release, the FBI and Tennessee police appealed and the appellate court stayed the court’s order.

Greenwald contrasts this behavior with what happens when the shooter is a white male who can be described as rightwing. Not only are conservative beliefs blamed, but also prominent conservative people who are alleged to have inspired the shooter. Greenwald writes: “Rumble host Steven Crowder announced he had obtained several pages of the manifesto. He published them on Twitter and his online show. The Nashville PD acknowledged their authenticity, expressed rage, and ordered an investigation to find the leaker. The pages published by Crowder of Hale’s writings contained vicious and hateful anti-white and anti-Christian sentiments, prompting the question: who in media or politics radicalized Audrey Hale to go murder people in the name of these bigotries? Yet immediately, Big Tech platforms—including Google’s YouTube and Facebook—censored Crowder’s publications. We know about them—and were able to read them—only because Twitter (X) and Rumble refused as usual to censor, highlighting yet again the vital importance of these free speech platforms.”

For many years I have documented that the overriding purpose of media, universities, the public school system, Hollywood, and the Democrat Party has been to demonize white, traditional Americans as racists, white supremacists, gun nuts, anti-semites, Russian agents, insurrectionists, domestic terrorists, and whatever else. It is extraordinary that the backbone of the United States–the white normal citizen–has been demonized, while sexual perverts and anti-Americans prevail in setting the agendas. The qualities, such as integrity, that comprised the virtues of Americans in my lifetime are no longer passed forward by education, literature, and entertainment. “Western civilization has to go,” as the students chanted, and it has. In its place evil has risen.

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“Neo-Nazi ideology or nationalist ideology, unfortunately, has a very strong influence in Canada. I think this is obvious..”

• Canada Is A Hostage To Nazi Ideology – Moscow (RT)

The recent honoring of a Waffen-SS veteran in Canada’s House of Commons was hardly surprising, given the country’s history of harboring Nazi collaborators after World War II, a senior Russia diplomat told RIA Novosti on Monday. The descendants of these people lobby the government to have their ancestors whitewashed and celebrated, Dmitry Polyansky, Russia’s first deputy permanent representative to the UN, explained, referring to an incident in September involving an elderly Ukrainian-Canadian man named Yaroslav Hunka. “Neo-Nazi ideology or nationalist ideology, unfortunately, has a very strong influence in Canada. I think this is obvious,” the Russian official said. “The [Justin] Trudeau government is somewhat a hostage [to the situation].”

Polyansky noted that the large number of Nazi war criminals that entered Canada after World War II had children and grandchildren in the country, and so the situation in which Hunka, a 98-year-old veteran of the SS Galicia Division, was honored in the Canadian parliament earlier this year was hardly “surprising.” Last September, a scandal erupted when Hunka, who served with the notorious 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, which is known to have committed atrocities against Jews and Poles during World War II, received a standing ovation in the Canadian parliament with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky in attendance. The Waffen SS veteran was introduced as a “hero” who fought “for Ukrainian independence against the Russians” during World War II.

At the time, Canada’s immigration minister, Marc Miller, admitted that the country has “a really dark history with Nazis,” saying that at one point, “it was easier to get in [to Canada] as a Nazi than it was as a Jewish person.” Following backlash from Jewish organizations, House Speaker Anthony Rota, who invited Hunka to the event, accepted full responsibility for the incident and has since resigned. Trudeau offered “unreserved apologies” for applauding the Nazi veteran. In October, Russia’s Investigative Committee charged Hunka in absentia with genocide, claiming that archive documents serve as evidence that he and fellow SS Galicia members killed at least 500 civilians between February 23 and 28, 1944. Russian media outlets later reported that the country’s Interior Ministry placed him on its official database of wanted individuals.

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“..a blatantly corrupt and ignorant attorney general in New York state can get away with bringing a politically-motivated nonsense case against the leading presidential candidate in a courtroom ruled by a judge who acts like a jester in a Shakespeare play..”

• Light in the Darkness (Kunstler)

The sun is low on the horizon all day long now, and darkness creeps in like a home invasion of your mind. Demons descend through a red and black sky and no help is on the way. Our country is so mentally hog-tied trying to unravel the twisted events of just a few years past that it has no mojo left for rationally anticipating the events of just a few years ahead. Have you ever felt more alone? This is the end-process that we’ve been softened up for: the inability to think and plan. The gigantic “intel community” evolved from something intended to act as sensitized antennae for detecting threats against our republic into what is now a remorseless mind-fucking operation against our republic. That word, by the way, derives from the Latin res publica: the public thing, a society that literally belongs to the people, who decide its affairs. Now, so much is mysteriously decided for us, and not in any good way.

It’s no wonder more than half the country can’t think straight, and it’s a whopping irony that this group comprises most of our country’s thinking class —the bureaucratic managers, the professors, the curators, the editors, the reporters lost in mis-reporting. This group used to play a critical role in the res publica: to earnestly determine what is true and what is real, and to present us with a way of understanding all that so we can think and plan. They appear to be captured by malign forces. The scribes are hard at work defending every act of official malice. The dishonesty at work is epic. You need a decoder ring to keep your mind right. You are probably desperate to understand why this is happening — how, for instance, a blatantly corrupt and ignorant attorney general in New York state can get away with bringing a politically-motivated nonsense case against the leading presidential candidate in a courtroom ruled by a judge who acts like a jester in a Shakespeare play. New York AG Letitia James gets away with it because the flagship organ of the thinking class, The New York Times, is in on the gambit. But why?

We struggle to sort this out. One explanation is that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has infiltrated the management of our country at every level so as to eventually conquer our territory for its resources while eliminating or enslaving the population? Surely, the CCP has made significant inroads, starting with the successful bribery and compromise of “Joe Biden,” probably other elected officials, too, in placing many CCP agents in the vast array of university research departments, NGOs, PACs, and lobbying gangs, and extending to the purchase of vital businesses and farmland to prepare the gameboard for eventual takeover. My opinion is they’ve accomplished a good bit of this, but it’s not the answer you’re seeking.

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In UK politics, incompetence is a job requirement.

• Suella Braverman Sacked As Home Secretary After Article Criticising Police (G.)

Rishi Sunak has sacked Suella Braverman as UK home secretary after she was blamed for inflaming tensions over Armistice Day protests, immediately replacing her with James Cleverly, the foreign secretary. A No 10 announcement said Cleverly was becoming home secretary following “the departure from government” of Braverman. A government source earlier said that Sunak “asked Suella Braverman to leave government and she has accepted”. David Cameron, the former prime minister, was later confirmed as replacing Cleverley as foreign secretary. Braverman’s dismissal is being used by Sunak as the trigger for a wider reshuffle, with Thérèse Coffey, the environment secretary, and Steve Barclay, the health secretary, believed to be also likely to go.

Jeremy Hunt, who had been tipped to be moved as chancellor, was also confirmed as staying in post. Two junior ministers, the schools minister Nick Gibb and the health minister Neil O’Brien, announced they were stepping down from their roles. After being sacked, Braverman said “it has been the greatest privilege of my life to serve as home secretary”, adding: “I will have more to say in due course.” Jess Phillips, part of Labour’s shadow home affair team, called Braverman the “worst home secretary in living memory”, adding: “Putting aside obvious ghoulish divisions, she simply didn’t understand her job.” Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader, said: “Suella Braverman was never fit to be home secretary. Rishi Sunak knew this and he still appointed her. It was the prime minister’s sheer cowardice that kept her in the job even for this long.”

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Blair is back, AND Cameron is back. That’s the best Britain can do.

• David Cameron Returns To UK Government As Foreign Secretary (G.)

David Cameron has returned to government as UK foreign secretary, in a stunning comeback for the former prime minister that highlighted Rishi Sunak’s willingness to take risks as he looks to revive his political fortunes. Downing Street announced on Monday that Cameron would join the government, accepting a peerage in order to do so, as part of a wider reshuffle in which Suella Braverman was sacked as home secretary and replaced by the foreign secretary, James Cleverly. A spokesperson also confirmed Jeremy Hunt would remain as chancellor. Cameron posted on X, formerly known as Twitter: “We are facing a daunting set of international challenges, including the war in Ukraine and the crisis in the Middle East. At this time of profound global change, it has rarely been more important for this country to stand by our allies, strengthen our partnerships and make sure our voice is heard.

“While I have been out of front-line politics for the last seven years, I hope that my experience – as Conservative Leader for eleven years and Prime Minister for six – will assist me in helping the Prime Minister to meet these vital challenges.” Cameron stood down in 2016 after losing the Brexit referendum, but reportedly told friends in 2018 he wanted to return to frontline politics, preferably as foreign secretary. Since then he has maintained a relatively low profile, though he became embroiled in scandal two years ago when he lobbied government ministers to provide financing for the now-insolvent financial services company Greensill Capital.

He returned to the headlines last month when he said Sunak’s decision to cancel the HS2 high-speed train line between Birmingham and Manchester was wrong, adding: “We are heading in the wrong direction.” Cameron has also been a strong supporter of the UK retaining its commitment to spending 0.7% of gross national income on international aid, a commitment Sunak has since junked. Cameron said in his online statement: “Though I may have disagreed with some individual decisions, it is clear to me that Rishi Sunak is a strong and capable Prime Minister, who is showing exemplary leadership at a difficult time. I want to help him to deliver the security and prosperity our country needs and be part of the strongest possible team that serves the United Kingdom and that can be presented to the country when the General Election is held.”

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“..the “newly elected Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) does not have a bank account” and apparently “lives paycheck to paycheck.”

• The Sacking of the Beltway by Good Intentions (Turley)

There is a palpable level of panic that seems to have taken hold of Washington this week. Establishment figures are raising the alarm over the rise of dangerous figures as if they are the barbarians at the gate before the sacking of Rome in 410. The threat is coming from both parties in the form of the new Speaker Mike Johnson and Democratic presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. They may be the worst type of barbarians because they came to this city with the best of intentions. For some in Washington, there may be nothing more unnerving than the best of intentions. This is a one-industry town where fortunes are made the old-fashioned way with influence peddling, special dealing, and pork barreling. In that world, the rise of Johnson and Kennedy are about as welcomed as a priest among the Pirates of Penzance.

Johnson is the ultimate buzz kill. Many were aghast that Johnson used his first speech as speaker to thank God and to say that he believes that God has a plan for him. That is a view shared by millions of religious Americans and it is not the first time that a politician has made such public expressions of devotion. Bill Clinton used to invoke God and salvation continually as he set physical records for debauchery. Even after his Monica Lewinsky scandal, Clinton would rally liberals to “politics and political involvement dictated by faith.” The problem is not that Johnson said it but he actually seems to mean it. I likely do not share Johnson’s views on legislating morality or the separation of church and state. However, he has always been viewed as a honest man with deep convictions. Of course, this is a city that can more easily forgive actual convictions than religious convictions.

This is a city where professed socialists and populists unapologetically give their husbands or children huge amounts of campaign funds. Rep. Maxine Waters has reportedly given her daughter over a million dollars. Confronted with millions of dollars in alleged influence peddling by the Biden family, the media has continued to maintain a lack of interest, often excusing the practice as common in Washington. Indeed, this month, NBC compared Hunter Biden tapping shady foreign figures for millions to the controversy over Nikki Haley’s daughter using TikTok. The panic over the appearance of an honest man in Congress was evident in an article by the Daily Beast when senior political reporter Roger Sollenberger declared that the “newly elected Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) does not have a bank account” and apparently “lives paycheck to paycheck.”

Of course, surveys show that over sixty percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and fewer than half of Americans can cover a $1000 emergency expense. However, those are average Americans, not one of us. In this city, hard-working members of Congress plan for the future with gold bars and cash stuffed in a closet or millions transferred from corrupt foreign figures through a labyrinth of shell companies and accounts. In this city, the appearance of Johnson left people dumbfounded like seeing a Triceratops strolling down Pennsylvania Avenue. The Daily Beast’s Mike Fuller noted: “Mike Johnson doesn’t have any retirement savings, own a single stock, or have any assets at all. He has less than $5,000 in his bank account. He’s got a 250-500K mortgage, a home equity loan, and a personal loan. So what’s his retirement plan? To lobby?”

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“Today I serve my country,” he said. “The question I have for you, Anthony Albanese, is who do you serve?”

• Whistleblower David McBride Declares ‘Today I Serve My Country’ (G.)

David McBride has declared “today I serve my country” as he entered an ACT court to face trial for the alleged leaking of material later used to expose Australian war crimes in Afghanistan. McBride faces five charges, including the unauthorised disclosure of information, breaches of the Defence Act and the theft of commonwealth property. His trial started on Monday in the ACT supreme court. The former military lawyer, who is represented by leading criminal law barrister Stephen Odgers SC, has pleaded not guilty. Supporters gathered in front of the court on Monday to hear speeches from the Human Rights Law Centre senior lawyer Kieran Pender, Julian Assange’s Australian lawyer Stephen Kenny and the Medical Association for Prevention of War’s Sue Wareham, among others.

McBride spoke briefly to the crowd as he entered the court with his support dog, Jakey, who will stay beside him during the proceedings. “Today I serve my country,” he said. “The question I have for you, Anthony Albanese, is who do you serve?” McBride allegedly leaked material to the ABC about the investigation of Australian special forces operating in Afghanistan. ABC reporters later used the documents as the basis of a 2017 series on Australian war crimes titled The Afghan Files. The court on Monday was dealing with preliminary legal issues before a jury was to be empanelled later this week. The preliminary arguments related to whether McBride had a duty not to disclose the material. Commonwealth prosecutors, led by Trish McDonald SC, argue McBride’s role within the Australian Defence Force, and the military disciplinary system he was operating within, imposed a duty on him not to disclose the material.

McBride’s defence says he had a separate duty to act in the public interest and that the military disciplinary regime – and any duty it imposed on McBride not to disclose such material – could only be considered by military tribunals, not by courts of criminal law. “If the jury is satisfied that what was done was in the public interest, even though it was in breach of orders, then, in my respectful submission, you’re not in breach of your duty for the purposes of a criminal offence,” Odgers said.

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Spain’s large scale anti-socialism protests are silenced by our media.

 

 

 

 


Capybaras are herbivores, therefore harmless to other animals around them. They’re easy-going semi-aquatic mammals, social, friendly, and gentle, and get along with just about everyone, so it makes sense that other animals would enjoy their company

 

 


A 4-ton orca leaping 4 meters into the air

 

 

Elephants

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle November 13 2023

Nov 132023
 
 November 13, 2023  Posted by at 9:10 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  42 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh Vineyards with a View of Auvers 1890

 

• The End of the Era of Justice (Paul Craig Roberts)
• The Horror, The Horror (Chris Hedges)
• The War According to Hamas (Chris Hedges)
• Israel Seeks To Appoint Tony Blair As Gaza Humanitarian Coordinator (ToI)
• ‘Immoral’ US Warfare ‘Never Sought to Minimize Civilian Deaths’ (Sp.)
• Zelensky May Be Ousted – Ex Presidential Aide (RT)
• Former NATO Chief Suggests Ukraine Joins Bloc Without Lost Territory (TASS)
• Ukraine Should Eye ‘Land-For-Peace’ Deal – Ex-NATO Admiral (Sp.)
• The EU Praises Ukraine’s ‘Achievements,’ But They Are Laughable (Marsden)
• The DC Establishment Thinks RFK Could Win, And They’re Panicking (Hill)
• Trump Lawyers to Mount Counterattack in NY Civil Case (ET)
• Trump’s Veterans Day Message Was Quite Different From Biden’s (ET)
• Moody’s US Credit Warning Will Accelerate Dedollarization (Sp.)
• EU Moves Forward With Digital ID Despite Security Concerns (AmG)

 

 

 

 

Alex Jones on RFK

 

 

 

 

Judaism

 

 

Or Joe Biden.

 

 

Pepe

 

 

The 40th Original Marathon in Athens yesterday was filled with Palestine flags.

 

 

 

 

“..if he had the opportunity to market Mar-a-Lago, it would be sold to someone with “net worths in the multiple billions,” the likes of Elon Musk, kings, emperors, and heads of state..”

• The End of the Era of Justice (Paul Craig Roberts)

In the year 2023 Justice Is Nowhere to be Found in the Western World. Examples are numerous. I have written about the injustices inflicted on Julian Assange, Trump supporters, and those forced to submit to Covid “vaccination.” This time I will illustrate the point with the “fraud case” against Trump for allegedly overstating the value of his real estate holdings and with the entire world standing aside, the genocide of Palestinians under the rubric of Israel’s “self-defense.” The “fraud case” against Trump consists of an unsupported allegation against Trump by George Soros’ disciple NY attorney general Letitia James who is on record as a Trump-hater. It is not a trial. There is no jury. The staged proceeding is only for the judge to determine how big a fine Trump has to pay for allegedly–no proof is supplied, only Letitia’s accusation–overstating the value of his holdings.

The judge, Engoron, in my opinion, is indulging his publicly-avowed hatred of Trump. It is the judge who should be indicted and placed on trial. He is guilty of ignoring an appellate court’s ruling that set a statute of limitations on the case. He granted a summary judgment against Trump of $250,000,000 before the process of determining Trump’s fine began. Engoron and his staff are hardcore Democrats. They have made political contributions to the Democrat Party that are against the rules of conduct for judges and their law clerks. Additionally, the biased judge has ruled against Trump’s ability to speak his mind and has prevented Trump’s attorneys from pointing out the ridiculous nature of the charges. The charge that Trump overstated the value of his real estate holdings is only the unsupported opinion of the biased Trump-hater Letitia James who claims that New York State was damaged by Trump’s alleged overstatement of the value of his holdings.

The judge, who has no qualification as a real estate appraiser, says Trump’s Mar-a-Lago is only worth $18 million. Forbes magazine gives it a minimum value of $350,000,000. Neither New York nor anyone suffered from the alleged and unsupported claim that Trump overstated the value of his holdings. As US Representative Elise Stefanik stated in her ethics compliant filed against judge Engoron in New York, “no evidence was presented on trial to suggest fraud, and in fact material evidence suggested the opposite.” “The defendant paid back the sophisticated Wall Street banks, on time, in full, with interest, as agreed. No insurance company paid a penny. And these banks and insurance companies, allegedly defrauded, continue to do business with the defendant.” “Indeed, two banks had done their own analyses of President Trump’s net worth, as revealed in testimonies, and for some development projects the bank had courted President Trump’s business, not the other way around.”

Trump Organization had valued Mar-a-Lago between $426 million and $612 million in these statements, while Ms. James and the judge valued it at $18 million to $27.6 million, prompting ridicule from prominent real estate brokers who regarded the Trump-hating judge’s claim as “ludicrous.” The judge, who declared Trump to be “a bad man” dismissed from the record exculpatory evidence for Trump in the form of a sworn affidavit from Lawrence Moens, the top Palm Beach luxury broker, who said if he had the opportunity to market Mar-a-Lago, it would be sold to someone with “net worths in the multiple billions,” the likes of Elon Musk, kings, emperors, and heads of state. Engoron called the statement an “unsubstantiated dream,” but admitted testimony from someone on the attorney general’s side who helped come up with the $250 million disgorgement figure, suggesting banks lost out on more than $100 million in interest because the financial statements were inflated. THIS IS ONLY THE JUDGE’S AND LETITIA’S CLAIM, NOT THE BANKS’ CLAIM. THERE ARE NO INJURED PARTIES.

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“Israel and the United States are sending a chilling message to the rest of the world. International and humanitarian law, including the Geneva Convention, are meaningless pieces of paper..”

• The Horror, The Horror (Chris Hedges)

DOHA, Qatar: I am in the studio of Al Jazeera’s Arabic service watching a live feed from Gaza City. The Al Jazeera reporter in northern Gaza, because of the intense Israeli shelling, was forced to evacuate to southern Gaza. He left his camera behind. He trained it on Al-Shifa hospital, Gaza’s largest medical complex. It is night. Israeli tanks fire directly towards the hospital compound. Long horizontal red flashes. A deliberate attack on a hospital. A deliberate war crime. A deliberate massacre of the most helpless civilians, including the very sick and infants. Then the feed goes dead. We sit in front of the monitors. We are silent. We know what this means. No power. No water. No internet. No medical supplies. Every infant in an incubator will die. Every dialysis patient will die. Everyone in the intensive care unit will die. Everyone who needs oxygen will die.

Everyone who needs emergency surgery will die. And what will happen to the 50,000 people who, driven from their homes by the relentless bombing, have taken refuge on the hospital grounds? We know the answer to that as well. Many of them, too, will die. There are no words to express what we are witnessing. In the five weeks of horror this is one of the pinnacles of horror. The indifference of Europe is bad enough. The active complicity by the United States is unfathomable. Nothing justifies this. Nothing. And Joe Biden will go down in history as an accomplice to genocide. May the ghosts of the thousands of children he has participated in murdering haunt him for the rest of his life. Israel and the United States are sending a chilling message to the rest of the world. International and humanitarian law, including the Geneva Convention, are meaningless pieces of paper.

They did not apply in Iraq. They do not apply in Gaza. We will pulverize your neighborhoods and cities with bombs and missiles. We will wantonly murder your women, children, elderly and sick. We will set up blockades to engineer starvation and the spread of infectious diseases. You, the “lesser breeds” of the earth, do not matter. To us you are vermin to be extinguished. We have everything. If you try and take any of it away from us, we will kill you. And we will never be held accountable. We are not hated for our values. We are hated because we have no values. We are hated because rules only apply to others. Not to us. We are hated because we have arrogated to ourselves the right to carry out indiscriminate slaughter. We are hated because we are heartless and cruel. We are hated because we are hypocrites, talking about protecting civilians, the rule of law and humanitarianism while extinguishing the lives of hundreds of people in Gaza a day, including 160 children.

[..] Israel and Washington’s cynicism is breathtaking. There are no differences in intent. Washington only wants it done quickly. Humanitarian corridors? Pauses in the shelling? These are vehicles to facilitate the total depopulation of northern Gaza. The handful of aid trucks allowed through the border at Rafah with Egypt? A public relations gimmick. There is only one goal – kill, kill, kill. The faster the better. All Biden officials talk about is what comes next once Israel has finished its decimation of Gaza. They know Israel’s slaughter will not end until Gazans are living in the open without shelter in the southern part of the strip and dying because of a lack of food, water and medical care.

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“We are far more capable of bearing the costs, so there is no need to compare or be alarmed by the magnitude of the numbers..”

• The War According to Hamas (Chris Hedges)

Basel al-Araj, a Palestinian resistance leader, shortly before Israel’s 2014 invasion of Gaza, laid down the fundamental rules for warfare against the Israel. The rules by al-Araj, not a member of Hamas, provide the Palestinian lens for the incursion by Israeli forces in Gaza. While Israel’s superior firepower — its air force, missiles, tanks, armored personnel carriers, drones, naval forces, mechanized units and artillery — make it possible to inflict huge numbers of Palestinian casualties, most of them civilians, while Israel can level whole neighborhoods and turn hospitals, schools, power stations, water treatment plants, bakeries, mosques and churches into piles of concrete, this does not translate into a defeat of the Palestinian resistance groups.

Al-Araj argued that the fight with Israel cannot be measured with body counts. The Israelis will be able to kill far greater numbers of Palestinians. Resistant movements, he wrote, always suffer disproportionate losses. In the independence war in Algeria, between 1954 and 1962, upwards of 1.5 million Algerians — or around 10 percent of the population — were killed by the French. In the airport in Algiers, the country’s capital, is a huge sign that reads: “Welcome to Algeria. Land of a million Martyrs.” “We are far more capable of bearing the costs, so there is no need to compare or be alarmed by the magnitude of the numbers,” he wrote. Al-Araj, who led hunger strikes while in Palestine Authority prisons, was long a target for Israel. Israel’s counter-terrorism unit, Yamam, pursued him for months before raiding his home on March 6, 2017 in el-Bireh. After a two-hour gun battle, Israeli forces, which fired rockets into the building, burst inside and executed him at close range. He was 31.

The fight with Israel, al-Araj reminded Palestinians, must “follow the logic of guerrilla warfare or hybrid warfare, which Arabs and Muslims have become masters of through our experiences in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Gaza.” Never defend “fixed points and borders.” Draw the enemy into an ambush, accomplished by light resistance and tactical withdrawals. Strike the flanks and the rear. The calculus of asymmetric warfare is very different from conventional war. And what Israel defines as success, including the seizing of territory, numerous deaths and the destruction of infrastructure and buildings, matters little to the resistance fighter.The goal of Palestinian fighters is to remain elusive, to carry out lightning strikes and recede back into the rubble or the vast tunnel network under Gaza.

[..] Israel has banned the foreign press from reporting from Gaza. It has killed over 40 Palestinian journalists and media workers. It also has instituted prolonged blockages of the internet and cell phone service. No doubt, this heavy handed censorship is done to limit the horrific images of civilian casualties. But I suspect it is also intended to block images of a ground offensive that is tougher, more protracted and more costly than Israel anticipated. Israel invests tremendous resources in its propaganda campaign, getting networks such as CNN to repeat back its talking points. Jake Tapper should be an honorary Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman. Al-Araj warned about the attempt by Israel to demoralize fighters by posting photos and videos of Israelis occupying landmarks and public spaces.

A video being shared on social media shows the raising of the Israeli flag on a beach in Gaza. A group of soldiers surround the flag and sing the Israeli national anthem. In October last year, Jewish settlers occupied the Ibrahimi mosque in the West Bank town of Hebron, where a Jewish settler, Barach Goldstein, gunned down 29 Palestinians in 1994 as they prayed. The settlers held a music festival and dance party in the mosque. They hung an Israeli flag from the roof. Videos have circulated that denigrate and ridicule Palestinians.

Read more …

The Undertaker.

• Israel Seeks To Appoint Tony Blair As Gaza Humanitarian Coordinator (ToI)

Israel is seeking to install former British prime minister Tony Blair as a humanitarian coordinator for the Gaza Strip, according to a report Sunday, out of a desire to improve the humanitarian situation inside the Palestinian enclave and reduce international pressure as it continues to wage its war on Hamas. The Ynet news outlet, citing unnamed senior officials, said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hopes to leverage Blair’s experience as former envoy to the region for the Middle East Quartet to temper international concerns over the civilian cost of Israel’s campaign in Gaza. The report indicated Blair has been contacted on the matter and talks have been ongoing in recent weeks. The former British leader’s office told Ynet in response that “he has not been given or offered a position,” but did not directly deny any contact.

Ynet said the exact definition, scope and authority of the proposed role had not yet been clearly defined, adding that there would be an emphasis on “providing medical treatment and medicines, and on the possibility of evacuating the wounded and sick from the Strip.” According to the report, efforts at easing the humanitarian situation in Gaza are being coordinated by Israel’s health and defense ministries, with the former assisting in a number of projects in recent weeks, including efforts by international actors to set up field hospitals in Egypt and the arrival of a hospital ship from France. The Defense Ministry and the IDF also understand that in order to obtain time for the war against Hamas, the military’s actions in Gaza need to be seen as legitimate, and that legitimacy is conditional on the humanitarian situation.

[..] Blair’s office said in a statement to Ynet that “Mr. Blair maintains an office in Israel and he continues to work on matters tied to Israel and the Palestinians. Understandably, he has conversations with people in the region and other places in order to see what can be done, but he was not given or offered the role.” Blair served as British premier from 1997 to 2007 and as envoy for the Quartet from 2007 to 2015. The Middle East Quartet consists of the United Nations, the European Union, the United States and Russia, and was established to help mediate Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. It has been largely inactive in recent years, as Western relations with Russia have soured. On October 11, Blair, who is a longtime member of Labour Friends of Israel, released a statement condemning Hamas’s brutal onslaught in southern Israel, and calling for change.

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“..Washington is “turning the entire planet into an armed madhouse” using taxpayers’ dollars.”

• ‘Immoral’ US Warfare ‘Never Sought to Minimize Civilian Deaths’ (Sp.)

Throughout its history, the United States has never allowed concerns about the civilian death toll to impact its warfare strategy, and current developments in Gaza are yet another glaring example of this, scholar, educator and journalist K.J. Noh told Sputnik. “The fundamental immorality of US warfare… is that it has never sought to minimize the deaths of civilians. We know that US wars recently have been somewhere in the range of 90 percent civilian deaths,” the scholar underscored. Recalling US doctrine implemented in countries like Korea, Vietnam, and elsewhere, it has been “simply to kill anything that moves. You create a free fire zone, you kill anything that moves, and the murder is indiscriminate,” the pundit said. Afterwards, they may use mainstream media to “paste it over” with “PR means and releases.”

Whether it is fuelling weapons to fuel the NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, or sending military assistance to Israel in its fight against Hamas, “fundamentally, the business of the US is war,” K.J. Noh emphasized. “You know, the US is number one supplier of arms to the world. It’s 40 percent of all arms sales… and it sells them to quisling governments and to governments that are involved in the Pacific pivot – this escalation to war against China,” underscored the scholar, adding that Washington is “turning the entire planet into an armed madhouse” using taxpayers’ dollars.

[..] After the Biden administration asked for an additional $14 billion for Israel from Congress, Washington committed to delivering to Tel Aviv Iron Dome air defense missiles, small diameter bombs and Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) kits, besides the earlier agreed weapons deals, as per US media reports. At the same time, unlike the case with Ukraine, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby acknowledged that Washington’s military supplies to Israel were shrouded in secrecy. During an October 23 press briefing, Kirby said that “We’re being careful not to quantify or get into too much detail about what they’re getting — for their own operational security purposes, of course.” “Transparency in war is largely an illusion or at best, selective. You know, war is always deception. Both the published lists and the unpublished lists. The published lists are designed to intimidate, or message, or signal, or posture. And the unpublished lists are… often hiding dirty criminal tactics.”

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Because he refuses to talk.

• Zelensky May Be Ousted – Ex Presidential Aide (RT)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s unwillingness to consider peace talks with Russia might lead him to being ousted to make such negotiations possible, Oleg Soskin, an adviser to two former Ukrainian presidents, said on Saturday. Zelensky, who continues to maintain that victory should be achieved on the battlefield, simply “cannot” enter peace talks with Moscow, Soskin said on his YouTube channel. Such actions, he believes, are pushing Russia and at least some of Ukraine’s Western backers to think that they need someone else to represent Kiev who can “agree on even a temporary truce.” In order to achieve that, the current Ukrainian leadership needs to be “neutralized,” the former presidential aide added.

The idea of peace talks between Russia and Ukraine has become a “prevalent narrative” not only in Russia but in the West as well, Soskin suggested. He noted that French President Emmanuel Macron and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni expressed such ideas not so long ago. Macron told the BBC in an interview this week that although it was France’s “duty” to support Kiev the time might have come for some “fair and good negotiations” with Russia. Meloni recently told a pair of Russian pranksters, Vovan and Lexus, that “there is a lot of fatigue” in the EU over the conflict. “We are near the moment in which everybody understands that we need a way out,” she added at that time.

Soskin, a renowned economist who was the deputy head of the Institute of the World Economics and International Relations of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in the 1990s, said that the EU would also be potentially unable to satisfy Kiev’s needs for military equipment and ammunition, particularly if US military aid decreases. The former official served as a senior adviser to Ukraine’s first president, Leonid Kravchuk, in the early 1990s and was later an economic adviser to the nation’s second leader, Leonid Kuchma, between 1998 and 2000. Kiev has repeatedly ruled out any talks with Moscow and demands a complete withdrawal of Russian troops from all territories Ukraine claims as its own. Zelensky reiterated this demand in an interview with Reuters this week, adding that Kiev would continue the fight even without US aid if need be.

He also denied media reports about Ukraine’s Western backers allegedly encouraging it to engage in peace negotiations with Moscow. “This is not going to happen,” he said last week. Russia has repeatedly signaled its readiness to engage in negotiations with Kiev but has insisted that such talks should take Moscow’s security interests and the “reality on the ground” into account. In the autumn of 2022, four former Ukrainian territories – including the two Donbass republics – officially joined Russia, following a series of referendums. Kiev declared the votes a “sham” and has sought to reclaim control over the four territories, as well as Crimea, which joined Russia in 2014 following another referendum.

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Two ex-NATO guys both apparently want more war with Russia.

“We need a new European security architecture in which Ukraine is in the heart of NATO.”

• Former NATO Chief Suggests Ukraine Joins Bloc Without Lost Territory (TASS)

Former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said NATO should invite Ukraine to join the alliance without the territories it no longer controls, according to an interview published by the Guardian. “The time has come to take the next step and extend an invitation for Ukraine to join NATO,” he told the Guardian. “We need a new European security architecture in which Ukraine is in the heart of NATO.” “The absolute credibility of Article 5 guarantees would deter Russia from mounting attacks inside the Ukrainian territory inside NATO and so free up Ukrainian forces to go to the frontline,” said Rasmussen, who headed the bloc from 2009-2014.

He said the alliance would have to send a “clear message to Russia that any violation of NATO territory would be met by a response.” He added that in some ways the proposal is similar to imposing a no-fly zone over Ukrainian territory. Rasmussen insisted that the move would not freeze the conflict or force Ukraine to cede territory to Russia. The Guardian said Rasmussen worked alongside Andrey Yermak, the chief of staff of the Ukrainian presidency, ahead of the last NATO summit in Vilnius this year that ended with no invitation for Ukraine to join.

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“..As for obtaining security guarantees, that would mean NATO membership for Ukraine, James Stavridis argued..”

• Ukraine Should Eye ‘Land-For-Peace’ Deal – Ex-NATO Admiral (Sp.)

As Kiev seeks to revitalize its failed counteroffensive against the backdrop of increasing “Ukraine fatigue” in the West, Moscow has repeatedly urged the regime to understand that despite promising military successes to its NATO donors, achieving them is growing ever more elusive. Ukraine should hope for a “land-for-peace conclusion to combat,” retired US Admiral and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander James Stavridis has argued. After the Kiev regime’s much-heralded counteroffensive failed, even the delivery of F-16 fighter jets – promised sometime next year – is not likely to pull off a “real game change,” Stavridis wrote for Bloomberg. He urged Ukraine to resign itself to the fact that it will not manage to seize the new Russian territories, such as the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics or the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions.

Accordingly, the former commander drew parallels with the outcome of the Korean War, which ended with an armistice in 1953, and suggested that Ukraine should aim for the “South Korean scenario” as its best bet. “This will probably bog down into a frozen conflict; the sooner large combat operations stop, the sooner the Ukrainians will begin to reconstruct,” Stavridis wrote, and laid out his vision of what steps Kiev ought to aim for: “So three lessons of Korea pertain for Ukraine: find the funds for reconstruction as rapidly as possible; construct real and enduring security guarantees; and be willing to negotiate a land-for-peace conclusion to combat.” “That is a realistic scenario,” claimed Stavridis. According to Stavridis, Western firms are already eying staking out their claims to “postwar construction activities in Ukraine,” in such aspects as “mass communications, electric power facilities, water treatment and new residential development.”

And as to where the money for all of that would come from, the ex-general had a ready answer: “the potential availability of hundreds of billions of dollars in Russian funds that are under sanction in the West.” The overall value of frozen Russian sovereign assets in Europe since the Ukraine conflict escalated is estimated at 211 billion euros ($223 billion). While Brussels has repeatedly warned it intends to tap into these assets for the benefit of Ukraine, the bloc has so far failed to invent a legal mechanism for doing so. Pundits interviewed by Sputnik have explained that this is nothing but “wishful thinking,” adding that “it would be a sheer violation of property rights.” Nevertheless, the ex-commander waxed lyrical in his article, enthusing that a “Korean-style miracle of reconstruction” could be “on the horizon for Ukraine.”

As for obtaining security guarantees, that would mean NATO membership for Ukraine, James Stavridis argued, yet again citing the example of South Korea, which holds Major Non-NATO Ally status with the US.

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“..You’d think that the EU might want to at least wait for an improvement in the public sentiment among Ukrainians..”

• The EU Praises Ukraine’s ‘Achievements,’ But They Are Laughable (Marsden)

The European Commission just released a report card for countries seeking to join the European Union. And while Türkiye has been waiting on the sidelines for years, it now finds itself criticized and moving further away from accession for its unwillingness to drink on command the Kool-Aid that Brussels doles out. Meanwhile, Ukraine is getting kudos for achieving the political equivalent of basic potty training – and even those achievements are debatable. “Ukraine has completed … well over 90% of the necessary steps that we set out last year in our report,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. What kind of dodgy bell curve grading is that? There’s a term for what the EU is doing here. It’s called stringing someone along – in this case, with a participation trophy for effort. Ukraine and other countries, like Moldova and Georgia, want into the bloc.

But the EU can barely afford to run what it has now, particularly with Germany and France – its economic engines – struggling from the EU’s own anti-Russian sanctions blowback on industry. Forget committing outright to taking on any more clown acts. So the European Commission is now issuing these condescending report cards, saying that Ukraine has met four of the seven pre-conditions, not for joining the bloc, but for just opening negotiations. Kiev still needs to de-corrupt, presumably to be more aligned with the rest of the EU’s corruption level, it’s being told – which let’s face it, is a pretty low bar. It also needs to de-oligarchize (because Europe only has one Queen, and that’s Ursula herself). It also needs to learn to play nice with minorities and respect their basic rights – like a preschooler needs to be told to do.

So what did Kiev do right, according to Brussels? It has “established a transparent pre-selection system for the Constitutional Court judges and reformed the judicial governance bodies,” the report says. But just last month, Reuters reported that Kiev was on a hiring spree of 2,000 judges amid a “huge shortfall” and EU pressure. Doesn’t sound like the situation is too stable, or resolved. Sounds instead like it’s cramming for an exam or rushing to be able to just tick a box. Granted, there has been a corruption crackdown documented by the mainstream media over the past several months, including the dismissal of the Supreme Court Chief Justice, but when corruption is so systemic and public trust in the judiciary is estimated to be in the single to low double digits, where’s the concrete proof that the new players are a substantial improvement over the old ones? You’d think that the EU might want to at least wait for an improvement in the public sentiment among Ukrainians before giving its stamp of approval.

“Ukraine has taken positive steps in a wider and systemic effort to address the influence of oligarchs,” the report concludes. But is that really the result of a deliberate cleanup – or just due to circumstances? The Wilson Center has detailed how “war was making an impact on the Ukrainian oligarchy by physically destroying the oligarch-owned industrial complexes.” Some oligarchs have fled Ukraine for places like the South of France, as Le Monde has reported. Does it count for Brussels as “de-oligarchization” efforts if Ukrainian oligarchs have fled to Europe with their considerable assets? Seems like perhaps Kiev is pulling the escalator up by the handrail on this particular “achievement” attributed to it.

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I think RFK has had his peak.

• The DC Establishment Thinks RFK Could Win, And They’re Panicking (Hill)

Making the rounds of opinion-influencer social media and politically oriented podcasts over the last week to gauge the current state of the presidential race, one could be excused for believing that no great shake-up had occurred. In Trump World, all the discussion was about the former president’s highly politicized civil fraud trial in New York and how it would backfire by making Trump a more formidable candidate. Meanwhile, left-leaning outlets were hyping GOP dysfunction in the House and the Republican losses in the off-year elections as an early indicator that Biden will fare better than expected next November. But one development that sent shock waves through the entire class of paid political consultants inside the Beltway went almost unmentioned publicly.

A topic of constant discussion and not a little bit of anxiety on both sides was the extraordinarily strong showing of third-party candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in two recent national polls. Both of the polls showed Kennedy leading both President Biden and former President Trump among the key electoral demographics of independent voters and voters under 45 years of age. Just how disturbing is this development for the uni-party establishment in Washington? Disturbing enough that the New York Times ran a brief story essentially dismissing its own poll results under the interpretive headline, “What’s Behind Kennedy’s Poll Numbers? Voters Dread a Trump-Biden Rematch.” The piece reads almost as a parody of a damage-control exercise.

It included the remarkable disclaimer that the poll of six key presidential battleground states, which found RFK the choice of nearly a quarter of those polled in a three-way matchup with Biden and Trump, “almost surely inflates the support of Mr. Kennedy.” But the argument does not bear scrutiny that Kennedy’s remarkably strong showing is merely a function of dissatisfaction with the prospect of a Biden-Trump rematch. His fundraising haul for the third quarter, $8.7 million, demonstrates robust support for his candidacy, not just dissatisfaction with other choices. Significantly, Kennedy raised millions of dollars from people who didn’t donate at all in the last two presidential elections, a sign that he’s activating new voters. Remarkably, he maintains a 19 percent favorability lead with voters over both Biden and Trump — this despite a concerted effort by almost every mainstream media outlet to dismiss him as a conspiracy theorist and crank.

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“..seeking to block testimony from four expert witnesses set to take the stand during the defense phase. Their testimony would address the accuracy of valuations contained in statements of financial condition submitted to Deutsche Bank and other firms for the purpose of securing favorable terms for loans and insurance. In the view of the attorney general’s office, such testimony is beside the point given that the judge has already ruled that Trump is guilty of fraud.“

• Trump Lawyers to Mount Counterattack in NY Civil Case (ET)

The media and public should brace themselves for the most heated phase of the civil fraud trial of former President Donald Trump when courtroom proceedings resume on Nov. 13—if past interactions among the defense, the judge, and government lawyers are any indication. The defense will begin to make its case on behalf of the 45th president and 2024 candidate, as well as his two sons and daughter, who are no longer defendants in the case yet have faced relentless and acrimonious cross-examination on the witness stand over the past two weeks. President Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., is expected to be the first to testify for the defense. Trump lawyer Christopher Kise and Judge Arthur Engoron feuded throughout the cross-examination of President Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and Ivanka Trump.

The defense attorney has objected constantly, saying that questions posed were irrelevant to the legal issues at hand or that no one could reasonably expect the people on the stand to recall the details of documents, records, meetings, and conversations from as far back as 2012. As if to add further contentiousness to the proceedings, New York Attorney General Letitia James’s office on Nov. 8 sent a letter to Judge Engoron seeking to block testimony from four expert witnesses set to take the stand during the defense phase. Their testimony would address the accuracy of valuations contained in statements of financial condition submitted to Deutsche Bank and other firms for the purpose of securing favorable terms for loans and insurance. In the view of the attorney general’s office, such testimony is beside the point given that the judge has already ruled that Trump is guilty of fraud.

Nor has the pro-Trump side been inactive during the run-up to the next phase of the trial. On Nov. 10, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) sent a lengthy letter to the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct, spelling out a litany of complaints about how Judge Engoron has conducted himself and his alleged bias against the respondents in the lawsuit “This judge’s bizarre behavior has no place in our judicial system, where Judge Engoron is not honoring the defendant’s rights to due process and a fair trial. These serious concerns are exacerbated by the fact that the defendant is the leading candidate for President of the United States, and it appears the judicial system is being politicized to affect the outcome of the campaign,” Ms. Stefanik wrote. She then cited the judge’s reference to the former president as “just a bad guy” deserving of prosecution by the attorney general, and his blunt statement to President Trump that “we are not here to listen to what you have to say.”

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“..we pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.”

• Trump’s Veterans Day Message Was Quite Different From Biden’s (ET)

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump released differing messages on Nov. 11, Veterans Day. “Today, we honor the story of our veterans—the story of our nation at its best,” President Biden wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “On Veterans Day, let’s recommit to fulfilling our one sacred obligation as a nation: to prepare those we send into harm’s way and care for them and their families when they come home.” In a Veterans Day speech at the Memorial Amphitheater in Arlington National Cemetery, he highlighted “those who have always, always kept the light of liberty shining bright across the world,” while making reference to his late son, Beau, who was deployed to Iraq about 15 years ago.

“We come together today to once again honor the generations of Americans who stood on the front lines of freedom. … to once again bear witness to the great deeds of a noble few who risked everything, everything, to give us a better future,” President Biden said. During the event, the president was joined by First Lady Jill Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, second gentleman Douglas Emhoff, and several members of his Cabinet. On Nov. 11, President Biden announced that military veterans who were exposed to toxins could be able to enroll in no-cost health care starting next year.

President Trump marked Veterans Day with a message on his Truth Social social media platform that read, “To our heroic veterans, I am grateful for your service to our country and honored to wish you a Happy Veterans Day.” He added that there’s “no greater act of selfless service than defending America’s God-given freedoms and liberty.” Hours later, he wrote a message on the platform noting, “[In] honor of our great veterans on Veterans Day, we pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.” They will “do anything possible, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America, and the American dream,” wrote President Trump, who was later seen at a UFC fight in New York on Nov. 11. “The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave, than the threat from within,” he wrote. “Despite the hatred and anger of the radical left lunatics who want to destroy our country, we will make America great again!”

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The US is set to start paying over $1 trillion in interest on its debt this year.

• Moody’s US Credit Warning Will Accelerate Dedollarization (Sp.)

The New York City-headquartered credit rating giant lowered its outlook of America’s creditworthiness from “stable” to “negative” on Friday, citing the country’s worsening fiscal position. Sputnik reached out to veteran economist and macroeconomics specialist Dr. Sergio Rossi for his take on the implications of Moody’s move. The White House slammed Moody’s over its threat to downgrade the US’s credit rating, with press spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre suggesting that the worsening outlook was “yet another consequence of congressional Republican extremism and dysfunction.” Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo also challenged the decision, emphasizing that “while the statement by Moody’s maintains the United States’ AAA rating, we disagree with the shift to a negative outlook.

The American economy remains strong, and Treasury securities are the world’s preeminent safe and liquid asset,” Adeyemo assured in a statement. “The Biden administration has demonstrated its commitment to fiscal sustainability, including through the more than $1 trillion in deficit reduction included in the June debt limit deal as well as President Biden’s budget proposals that would reduce the deficit by nearly $2.5 trillion over the next decade,” the deputy Treasury chief added. Moody’s decision came just hours after Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s meetings with Chinese counterpart He Lifeng in San Francisco on Friday ahead of the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit this coming week. Yellen, who assured recently that Washington could “certainly afford” to keep pumping tens of billions in taxpayer money to conflicts in Ukraine and Israel, has yet to comment on Moody’s decision.

Moody’s is the last of the big three international credit agencies signaling the possible downgrade of the US’s rating, with Standard and Poor’s already doing so in 2011, citing political polarization after what was then the latest debt ceiling showdown. Fitch downgraded the US to an AA+ rating in August, citing an “expected fiscal deterioration over the next three years,” and the last-minute debt deal reached in June, when the country again teetered on the brink of defaulting on its close to $33 trillion national debt. Yellen “strongly disagreed” with that decision, suggesting it was based on “outdated data.” Sovereign credit ratings are designed to evaluate risks associated with lending money to a country, but also offer signals to financiers on the potential risks involved with investing into a country. The worse the rating, the worse the risk is perceived to be. Moody’s lowest possible rating is a C, which signals that the borrower is in default of some or all of its financial obligations.

The outlook downgrade comes as Washington heads for another shutdown deadline on November 17, with Republicans in the House of Representatives tabling a bill to continue funding the government without new appropriations for Ukraine or Israel. The White House has blasted the stopgap funding bill as an “extreme” and “unserious” proposal, with Jean-Pierre calling it “a recipe for more Republican chaos and more shutdowns – full stop.” Just how “unserious” the House proposal is will be seen this week as lawmakers negotiate to get the stopgap funding through, with recently picked House Speaker Mike Johnson seemingly unlikely to back down on Ukraine after his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, was ousted from the job in October over allegations of proposing “secret side deals” for additional Ukraine cash.

The Moody’s outlook shift, combined with the seemingly never-ending shutdown crisis, inflation, the fallout of the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, and the growing signs of a looming US recession, are all bad news for Washington and the West in general, says Dr. Sergio Rossi, a professor of macroeconomics and monetary policy at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. “The situation for the US public finance is rather worrying indeed, since the US federal government has been accumulating fiscal deficits for a long period of time, and currently the economic outlook is very problematic for a number of stakeholders in this country and beyond it,” Dr. Rossi told Sputnik.

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“..on a voluntary basis, at first..”

“Your access to your financial assets can be denied or stopped if you don’t do what you’re told.”

• EU Moves Forward With Digital ID Despite Security Concerns (AmG)

The European Parliament and the Council of the European Union reached a final agreement this week on the establishment of “European Digital Identity Wallets,” the first central and fully digital identification system for all Europeans. “Under the new law, the EU will offer its citizens so-called ‘digital wallets’—on a voluntary basis, at first—which will contain digital versions of their ID cards, driving licenses, diplomas, medical records, and bank account information,” the European Conservative reported. These documents will be recognized as means to access online services throughout Europe, and citizens will be able to prove their identity or share electronic documents from their wallets “with a click of a button,” the legislators hope. “This marks an important step towards the Digital Decade 2030 targets on the digitalization of public services,” the EU Commission said in a statement Wednesday.

“All EU citizens will be offered the possibility to have an EU Digital Identity Wallet to access public and private online services in full security and protection of personal data all over Europe.” The agreement reached by the co-legislators is now subject to formal approval by the European Parliament and the Council. Once formally adopted, the European Digital Identity framework will enter into force on the 20th day following its publication in the Official Journal. The agreement came just a few weeks after Christine Lagarde, the head of the European Central Bank, announced that the European Union was moving forward with the development of its new central bank digital currency (CBDC)—the digital Euro. Conservative EU lawmakers and cybersecurity experts have opposed these developments, warning that large-scale abuse is inevitable in an all-encompassing digital identity system.

Dutch MEP Rob Roos sounded the alarm on X, Wednesday: “BREAKING: Very bad news. The European Parliament and Member States just reached an agreement on introducing the Digital Identity,” he said. Roos noted that following the agreement, EU Commissioner Thierry Breton said: “‘Now that we have a Digital Identity Wallet, we have to put something in it…’, suggesting a connection between CBDC and eID.” Ahead of the the European Parliament’s decision, over 500 privacy and cybersecurity experts from 39 countries signed a joint letter warning that the legislation “fails to properly respect the right to privacy of citizens and secure online communications.” Roos lamented that most EU lawmakers “ignored all the privacy experts and security specialists. They’re pushing it all through.” The Dutch conservative said that he is not optimistic, but “it is not too late yet.” “Parliament still has to vote about this. Let your MEP know that you oppose the Digital Identity and that you want your MEP to vote against it!” he said.

The Biden White House released a “Comprehensive Framework for Responsible Development of Digital Assets” in September of last year. Catherine Austin Fitts, financial expert and Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development during the H.W. Bush administration, has long been a vocal opponent of CBDC systems. In a recent interview, she warned that a 100 percent digital system would be controlled centrally and that a person’s money could potentially be limited to a particular geographical area. Such a totalitarian system, she argued, could also allow the State to limit people on what they are allowed to buy. “Let’s say I want to mandate a vaccine. Your financial transaction ability can be turned off,” Fitts said. “Your access to your financial assets can be denied or stopped if you don’t do what you’re told.”

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3-day fast

 

 

 

 

Common ground

 

 

Ravens

 

 


An extraordinarily rare glimpse of one of the last Malayan tigers; there are only 150 left on Earth. Their rapid decline is due to deforestation & poaching for body parts. 1400 snares were found in their protected area. So, take a good look, we may not see one again.

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle November 11 2023

Nov 112023
 
 November 11, 2023  Posted by at 9:50 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  50 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Garcon à la Pipe 1905

 

• Ukraine & Gaza Fatally Expose Western Hypocrisy and Moral Bankruptcy (SCF)
• Leaked Cables Warn of Growing Anti-American Rage in Arab World (Sp.)
• US, Israel To Open Second Front In Lebanon (Bhadrakumar)
• Scott Ritter Explains Why Israel Cannot Beat Hezbollah on Its Own (Sp.)
• Killing Children In Gaza ‘Makes Hamas’ – Elon Musk (RT)
• Biden’s ‘Personal Attachment To Israel’ Fuels Its Gaza Massacres (Aaron Maté)
• Israel’s Fight With Hamas Just a Pretext for Ethnic Cleansing – Ex-Marine (Sp.)
• Ukraine Will Fight Without USA – Zelensky (RT)
• Another Snapshot of Kiev’s Military Collapse: It Ain’t Over Yet (Pepe Escobar)
• West Derails Russia’s Proposal On Nord Stream Attacks – Zakharova (TASS)
• Party Party (Kunstler)
• Hunter Biden Rushed To Erase His Delinquent Taxes (JTN)
• The House ‘Concentrates the Mind’ of Hunter Biden (Turley)
• Stefanik Hits “Radical Leftist” Trump Judge With Ethics Complaint (ZH)

 

 

 

 

I will never forget

 

 

Proportionate

 

 

George Galloway: “The foul allegations of rape have been dropped by the Israeli government. The forty beheaded babies has been downscaled to one dead baby, not beheaded, and killed by persons unknown. Two thirds of Israelis killed on October 7 were military personnel. The killers of the remaining one third are definitively revealed to have been in part the Israeli armed forces themselves. Those with influence who spread the propaganda to the contrary stand exposed as War Criminals and now much blood stains their character for ever. It is a spot which will not out.”

 

 

 

 

Nap Mearsheimer

 

 

 

 

The most sanctioned country on Earth

 

 

 

 

“The genocidal crimes of the Western powers cannot be unseen or explained away this time.”

• Ukraine & Gaza Fatally Expose Western Hypocrisy and Moral Bankruptcy (SCF)

The barbarity that is happening in Gaza and the West Bank is shocking. What is all the more repugnant is the explicit guilt of Western states in enabling the genocide. What the crimes are revealing in stark reality is the absolute fiendish nature of Western state power. The crimes of the Israeli regime are the manifestation of Western imperialism; the true and grotesque, putrid nature of Western power. For decades, indeed centuries, the United States and its European partners have conducted a charade of pretending to be paragons of democracy – while at the same time exploiting and debauching the rest of the planet.

Now all their deceptions and corruption are fully on display. These are criminal regimes whose histories of warmongering colonialism and imperialism were all too often obfuscated by preponderant media control and self-appointed allure. It is now crystal clear what the “Collective West” (a global minority elite) really stands for: death and destruction. The big question is how far and where will the huge public anger and contempt lead to. A historic revolt is underway. What comes next? Can it be mobilized constructively to overthrow decadent dictatorships of capitalist oligarchy that have dominated Western states under the guise of democracy?

One thing is evinced. The Western elite systems are damaged beyond repair and rehabilitation. The crucifixion of the Palestinian people has created a Pandora’s Box. Western corruption – deep, systematic, historical corruption – is now out and can’t be stuffed back in again by the elite rulers trying to cover up. The genocidal crimes of the Western powers cannot be unseen or explained away this time. The duplicity and bankruptcy are damaging to the existential core. Ultimately, however, there may be hope for a better, fairer and more just world. But first of all, the old Western-dominated order has to go, despite the immense pain and suffering entailed.

Husseini
https://twitter.com/i/status/1722786666539016223

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And Anti-American Rage in America.

• Leaked Cables Warn of Growing Anti-American Rage in Arab World (Sp.)

American diplomats have warned President Joe Biden that US support for Israel “is losing us Arab publics for a generation.” Two diplomatic cables recently leaked to US media warn that America’s support for Israel’s bloody military campaign in Gaza is causing damage to the country’s image that may never be repaired. “We are losing badly on the messaging battlespace,” says one cable emanating from the US Embassy in Oman on Wednesday. It warns that strong US support for Israel is viewed “as material and moral culpability in what they consider to be possible war crimes.” The cable was addressed to multiple officials at the White House National Security Council, the CIA, and the FBI. Another leaked cable from the US embassy in Egypt quoted a local newspaper editorial saying “President Biden’s cruelty and disregard for Palestinians exceeded all previous US presidents.”

The cables mirror growing global opposition to Israel’s actions as the country has recently been the target of strong criticism from governments throughout the world. But the leaked diplomatic correspondence underscores that criticism in the Arab world extends to the United States as well, as US President Joe Biden has expressed unyielding support for the country’s Middle Eastern ally. The US president recently claimed there was “no possibility” for an Israeli ceasefire in Gaza when asked about the subject at a Thursday news conference. The death toll in Gaza has recently risen to over 11,000 according to the local health ministry, with at least 4,500 of those deaths being people under 18, prompting the head of the United Nations to call the besieged territory a “graveyard for children.” The UN has noted that death tolls released by Gaza’s authorities have proven to be accurate in the past. Recent reports have warned that Gaza’s population of 2.3 million may be on the brink of suffering mass starvation as Israel has only allowed very limited amounts of humanitarian aid to enter amidst a siege of the enclave.

The leaked cables come amidst reporting suggesting a dramatic decline in support for Biden among Muslim Americans. “We told him [Biden] directly, in our personal capacities, that if you do not call for an immediate ceasefire, you will not get our votes in 2024,” said Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). The spokesperson accused Biden of “betraying” Palestinians and allowing a “genocide” to take place in Gaza. “What we see from him is completely one-sided support for the state of Israel,” said Awad. A recent survey by the Arab American Institute (AAI) showed that support for Biden among Arab Americans has declined by 42% since 2020. The poll found that 17% of Arab American voters plan to support Biden’s reelection in 2024, while 40% say they’ll support former US President Donald Trump.

Israel at UN

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“..the Biden Administration is preparing for an escalation of the war into Lebanon to draw out Hezbollah, which may in turn trigger an Iranian reaction.”

• US, Israel To Open Second Front In Lebanon (Bhadrakumar)

The announcement late Sunday night by the US Central Command [CENTCOM] headquartered in Doha about the arrival of a Ohio-class American nuclear submarine in its “area of responsibility” presages a significant escalation of the situation around the Palestine-Israel conflict. It is very rare that the use of these submarines is publicised. The CENTCOM provided no additional details but it posted an image that apparently showed an Ohio-class submarine in Egypt’s Suez Canal Bridge. Interestingly, CENTCOM also separately shared an image of a nuclear-capable B-1 bomber operating in the Middle East.

Taken together, these US deployments, coming on top of the formidable presence of two aircraft carriers and warships hundreds of advanced jet fighters in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Red Sea respectively, are with an eye on “the other side of the equation,” as Secretary of State Antony Blinken quaintly described Hamas, Hezbullah, and Iran during his latest visit to Tel Aviv on Friday. In a related development, perhaps, the CIA director, William Burns arrived in Israel on Sunday for urgent consultations. The New York Times reported that the US is “looking to expand its intelligence sharing with Israel.” Arguably, the most charitable explanation for the deployment of a US nuclear submarine, which forms part of the Pentagon’s “nuclear triad” –Ohio-class boats are the largest submarines ever built for the US Navy — near the war zone is that the Biden Administration is preparing for an escalation of the war into Lebanon to draw out Hezbollah, which may in turn trigger an Iranian reaction.

In his speech on Friday, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrullah seemed to anticipate precisely such a turn of events when he explicitly warned the US of consequences that couldn’t be any different from the catastrophic American involvement in Lebanon’s civil war in the early 1980s. Ironically, this is also the 40th anniversary year of the suicide bombing of the barracks housing US forces in Beirut International Airport in October 1983 in which 220 Marines, 18 sailors and three soldiers were killed forcing a US withdrawal from Lebanon. Clearly, the locus of the US strategy in the present Middle situation may be shifting from diplomacy, which has anyway lost traction. Blinken’s desperate attempts to address the mounting international criticism of Israel’s horrific war crimes by diverting attention to a “humanitarian pause” in the fighting, et al, has been unceremoniously shot down by Netanyahu.

The point is, after pounding Gaza and its people with artillery and bombs, the Israeli army moved in on Friday. So far, it has reportedly advanced to the outskirts of Gaza City but not entered the Hamas stronghold. Fierce urban fighting is expected when it does. Equally, the Biden administration’s hurried attempt to promote a vague outline for a post-war Gaza that might include a combination of a revitalised Palestinian Authority, a peacekeeping force, etc. has been met with a distinct lack of enthusiasm at Blinken’s meeting in the weekend in Amman with the Arab foreign ministers -– from Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates –- who instead demanded an immediate ceasefire, while Blinken said Washington wouldn’t push for one.

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“..the IDF itself, which was considered to be somewhat of an invincible force – not anymore..”

• Scott Ritter Explains Why Israel Cannot Beat Hezbollah on Its Own (Sp.)

The ongoing Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) campaign in the Gaza Strip, which has already alienated Tel Aviv from much of the Arab World, has created a serious risk of the Lebanese Hezbollah movement becoming actively involved in the conflict. IDF forces stationed at the Israeli-Lebanese borders have already been exchanging fire with Hezbollah militants on more than a single occasion in recent days, although it remains to be seen whether these hostilities will escalate. Commenting on this situation, former US Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter expressed his skepticism about Israel’s ability to deal with both Hamas and Hezbollah.

He pointed out that the major military exercises conducted in Israel in the last two years were meant to determine how the Israeli Defense Force would fare if they had to tackle simultaneously attacks from multiple actors – “if Hezbollah came over the border, if Syria went after the Golan Heights, if Iran started firing missiles” – but they yielded rather unpleasant results. “And under that scenario, Israel was not able to prevail, especially with the Iranian aspect of the scenario, without major US military intervention,” Ritter said. He further observed that the Israelis themselves have apparently acknowledged that they do not know the full extent of Hezbollah’s capabilities and that Hezbollah’s sizeable arsenal of rockets may pose a serious threat to Israel.

“Hezbollah can overwhelm the Iron Dome just with its volume alone, the Iron Dome is already going through an ammunition crunch because of what Hamas has done,” Ritter remarked. He added that the IDF previously failed to destroy Hezbollah back in 2006, and that the Islamist organization has become significantly more powerful since then, with many of its fighters gaining valuable combat experience during the Syrian conflict. “So, you know, this is the reality: Israel on its own cannot defeat Hezbollah,” he surmised. Ritter also suggested that the events of October 7, when Hamas militants swiftly punched through the Israeli defenses and even managed to seize control of IDF military facilities, effectively shattered the myth of “Israeli invincibility.” “Not just in terms of the all-seeing nature of Israeli intelligence, which has been proven false, but the IDF itself, which was considered to be somewhat of an invincible force – not anymore,” he argued.

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“For every Hamas member you kill, how many did you create? And if you create more than you kill, you’ve not succeeded.”

“Providing healthcare, food and other relief to civilians while still targeting Hamas leaders and operatives, would thwart the group’s goal and “ultimately fights the broader force of hatred in the region..”

• Killing Children In Gaza ‘Makes Hamas’ – Elon Musk (RT)

Israel’s reaction to the October 7 attack by Hamas has played into the terrorist group’s hands, according to X CEO Elon Musk, who urged West Jerusalem to embrace a “counterintuitive” strategy that would be more beneficial in the long-term. “If you kill somebody’s child in Gaza, you’ve made at least a few Hamas members who will die just to kill Israelis,” Musk said on the Lex Fridman podcast on Thursday. The Tesla, SpaceX and X (formerly Twitter) head argued that the goal of the Palestinian militant group was to “provoke an overreaction” by Israel by committing atrocities and then “leverage that aggressive response to rally Muslims worldwide for the cause of Gaza and Palestine, which they have succeeded in doing.”

“This is one of the most contentious subjects one could possibly discuss, but I think if the ultimate goal is some sort of long-term peace, one has to look at this from the standpoint of, over time, are there more or fewer terrorists being created?” Musk said. “For every Hamas member you kill, how many did you create? And if you create more than you kill, you’ve not succeeded.” The October 7 incursion resulted in the deaths of an estimated 1,400 Israelis, with another 200 or so taken to Gaza as hostages. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has responded by declaring war on the Palestinian enclave, launching weeks of air and artillery strikes and proceeding with a ground invasion in early November. A proposal circulating in the media wants all of Gaza’s Palestinian population forcibly removed. Some Israeli public figures have advocated for leveling the enclave completely.

Others have labeled photojournalists who documented the October 7 attack as accomplices of Hamas that need to be killed. As of Friday, more than 11,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed and 27,490 wounded, according to the local health ministry. While the White House has cast doubt on Palestinian figures, the US State Department believes the true numbers might be even higher. “The counterintuitive thing that should be done here, even though it is very difficult, is that I recommend Israel do the most conspicuous acts of kindness possible,” Musk told Fridman in the podcast interview. Providing healthcare, food and other relief to civilians while still targeting Hamas leaders and operatives, would thwart the group’s goal and “ultimately fights the broader force of hatred in the region,” the billionaire argued.

Elon Hamas

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“..the only constituencies that matter: war profiteers, the pro-Israel lobby, and the bipartisan foreign policy establishment that has used Israel as a client state..”

• Biden’s ‘Personal Attachment To Israel’ Fuels Its Gaza Massacres (Aaron Maté)

As the official death toll passed 10,000 earlier this week, White House spokesperson John Kirby was asked if the US still has “no red lines” when it comes to how many civilians Israel kills. “That is still the case,” Kirby replied. On Thursday, President Biden informed reporters that there is “no possibility” of a ceasefire. Instead, the White House claimed to have secured an Israeli pledge for four-hour daily pauses, which would be announced in advance. Israel immediately rejected even this token gesture. “I’m not going to commit to the exact length of the pauses,” Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy said. Given the free reign offered it by Washington, Israel has no incentive to commit. According to senior Pentagon official Dana Stroul, the US is “working around-the-clock” to send its weaponry to Israel, with deliveries “taking place on a near daily basis.”

Citing White House officials and advisers, the Washington Post reports that US “levers” over Israel, namely “conditioning military aid,” are “nonstarters.” Imposing such constraints would undoubtedly save Palestinian lives. But that is of no importance to the Biden cabinet, which worries that conditions on US support for Israel would be “politically unpopular in any administration.” Moreover, “aides say, Biden himself has a personal attachment to Israel.” By “politically unpopular”, these Biden officials are not referring to public opinion, which supports a ceasefire across party lines. The president’s stance could even cost him re-election in the swing state of Michigan, home to a large Arab-American population. Instead, imposing conditions on US support for Israel would be “politically unpopular” with the only constituencies that matter: war profiteers, the pro-Israel lobby, and the bipartisan foreign policy establishment that has used Israel as a client state since its occupation of Arab lands in June 1967.

As a career operator within this Beltway trifecta, Biden’s “personal attachment to Israel” has detached him from any recognition of Palestinian humanity. Accordingly, when it comes to the fate of Gaza’s civilian population, the Biden administration barely attempts to feign concern. During his most recent trip to Israel, Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivered a message described to Axios by US and Israeli officials as follows: “We don’t want to stop you, but help us help you get more time.” As Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, who has positioned himself as a critic of the Israeli bombing campaign, counseled the White House: “I think they’ve got to be even louder publicly in their concerns about the civilian cost, even while they support Israel’s ability to continue to perpetuate the war.”

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“Israel favoured Hamas over the PLO because the Islamic resistance movement “was utterly opposed to a two state solution..”

• Israel’s Fight With Hamas Just a Pretext for Ethnic Cleansing – Ex-Marine (Sp.)

Tel Aviv is using attacks on Southern Israel by the Hamas movement as an excuse to depopulate the Gaza Strip, says a military expert. The October 7 surprise breakout by the Hamas (also known as Islamic Resistance) and other groups from the besieged territory left almost 300 Israeli soldiers and 1,100 civilians dead, with more than 200 taken back to Gaza as captives. Following weeks of bombing of the densely-populated Palestinian enclave, the Israeli Defense Forces have surrounded Gaza City and are trying to fight their way into its outskirts. The Palestinian Authority’s Health Ministry, based in Ramallah in the West Bank, said on Wednesday that after a month of attacks, Israeli forces and settlers had killed 10,515 Palestinians, including 4,324 children, 2,823 women and 649 elderly people, and injured 2,600 others. It said that 2,550 others, with 1,350 children among them, were still missing under the rubble of bombed buildings in Gaza.

Former US Marine and geopolitical analyst Brian Berletic told Sputnik that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s declaration of “war” on Hamas was “just a pretext” for ethnic cleansing. “Israel is using Hamas as a pretext to erase Gaza,” Berletic said. “This has been an ongoing plan, especially for the Netanyahu administration.” The commentator noted that Hamas was an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood which “has played a role for decades in the region as tools of Western hegemony over the region.” and tried to overthrow secular governments from Egypt to Syria. He said the movement rose to power in the Gaza Strip only with Israel’s help in order to create a rival to the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).

“I know it’s unpopular to point this out, but it is an admitted fact that the Netanyahu administration helped manoeuvre Hamas into power,” Berletic said. “If Israel wanted to eliminate Hamas, they could have started by not putting them into power in the first place.” Israel favoured Hamas over the PLO because the Islamic resistance movement “was utterly opposed to a two state solution” — as was Netanyahu’s hard-line government. “That is that is what is mandated under international law — a two state solution is an Israeli state, a Palestinian state. This occupation has to end,” Berletic said.

Israel has made its intention to force out the 2.3 million Palestinian inhabitants of Gaza since the start of its bombing campaign a month ago, the analyst said, telling civilians to flee to the southern end of the enclave so it could bomb Gaza City in an attempt to destroy Hamas bunkers and tunnels. “In the very beginning, they were quite open. They wanted to just displace the civilian population of Gaza and move in militarily,” Berletic said. “Once it’s erased, they don’t have to worry about a two state solution ever again.”

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Oh you hero!

• Ukraine Will Fight Without USA – Zelensky (RT)

Ukraine will not stop fighting Russia until it takes back all the territories it considers its own, President Vladimir Zelensky told Reuters in an interview this week. Withdrawal of US support would hardly affect Kiev’s policies in this regard, he added. Should Washington halt its military and financial assistance to Kiev, Ukraine would just go on with the conflict without it, Zelensky maintained when asked if he was “worried” about potential changes in US foreign policy in the case of Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential election victory in particular. Earlier, Trump repeatedly vowed that he would have a peace deal between Moscow and Kiev worked out “within 24 hours” if elected in 2024. Speaking to Reuters on Wednesday, Zelensky brushed off such promises as a plan by Trump to “fix” the conflict for himself, with no regard for the “price” Ukraine would supposedly have to pay.

“If it will change your foreign policy, so what can I say? Ok, we will fight without you,” Zelensky said, adding that it was supposedly the will of the Ukrainian people. He went on to say that the only “real way to stop the war” was for Russian forces to withdraw from all the territories claimed by Kiev. He also said he was sure that Moscow’s troops “will do it,” without elaborating. In his interview with Reuters, the Ukrainian leader also said that “any” US president would help Ukraine if they knew “all the challenges and the result and the damage of the war.” Earlier, in a separate interview with broadcaster NBC last Sunday, Zelensky invited Trump to Ukraine, vowing to convince the former American president that he would be unable to strike any deals with Russia in “24 minutes.” Trump rejected the offer in a written statement to US media outlet Newsmax. Such a trip would create “a conflict of interest” at a time when President Joe Biden’s administration was officially dealing with Kiev, he said.

Earlier this week, Zelensky also claimed that Kiev had a “plan” that would help it prevail on the battlefield and show some “results” by the end of the year. His words came as Ukraine’s much-touted summer offensive had barely brought about any changes to the frontlines following months of heavy fighting and massive material and personnel losses on the Ukrainian side. Ukraine’s top commander, General Valery Zaluzhny, told the Economist last week that the conflict between Moscow and Kiev had entered a World War I-style stalemate in which Russia had an upper hand due to larger resources. The Pentagon also said this week that it only had around $1 billion left for military aid to Kiev and would have to ration it from now on.

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“Civilians in Kharkov, for instance, confirm that foreign mercenaries speaking Polish or English are now “almost invisible”..

• Another Snapshot of Kiev’s Military Collapse: It Ain’t Over Yet (Pepe Escobar)

The spectacular “success” of Kiev’s counter-offensive, which echoed throughout the geopolitical galaxy, has predictably engendered what everyone with a brain was expecting: a dogfight. Enter the Zelensky-Zaluzhny Show – especially after the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) admitted on the record that the war has “reached a stalemate” – code for “we’re deeply in trouble”. He also referred to “positional defense” – code for “we’re gonna keep losing more and more territory.” The dogfight comes complete with Mafioso overtones, as in 39-year-old Zaluzhny assistant Gennady Chistyakov “accidentally” detonating a grenade received as a gift, seriously injuring his daughter and duly blowing himself up.

This might be seen at face value as yet another wacky Pulp Fiction-style sketch involving the top dogs (with no Winston Wolf to “solve problems”). But it does carry an ominous message to Zaluzhny: once again, Mafia-style, from now on he’d better beware of friends bearing gifts. As for the “counter-offensive”, the file, for all practical purposes, seems to be closed. There won’t be another one – because there are no more weapons, assets or troops to carry it, except the odd Ukrainian elderly citizens and unsuspecting housewives chased by the “security services” as they exit the supermarket.

[..] The report states that the 116th separate mechanized brigade is “incapable of conducting offensive operations because of high losses and high numbers of soldiers that need psychological and medical assistance.” The 116th brigade has been deeply involved in military operations in the Zaporozhye region for 5 months already. For 3 months it had been part of the 10th Army Corps, “Tavriya”. The report details that the brigade’s losses are 94 soldiers dead; 1122 wounded; and 95 missing. That corresponds to 25% of the total number of personnel. When it comes to the moral-psychological front, at least 153 soldiers are deemed in need of immediate psychological rehabilitation.

This brigade is a quite significant unit; what’s implied is that a moral-psychological debacle is now inbuilt as a System Error at the heart of the Ukrainian military. Consequences, short and middle term, will be dire. All that is happening while the flow of foreign mercenaries to the AFU is drying up. No wonder: enter the Perfect Storm of brigades being thoroughly decimated; unspeakable levels of corruption; and better career opportunities in the rekindled Forever War in Israel/Palestine. Civilians in Kharkov, for instance, confirm that foreign mercenaries speaking Polish or English are now “almost invisible”.

None of the above means that things from now on will be a cakewalk for Russia. For instance, the Russian Army still has not been able to destroy the Ukrainian bridgehead on the Dnieper in Kherson. Further on down the road, it will be increasingly trickier to expel the Ukrainians from the eastern margin of the Dnieper. Russian military media, at the highest level, does its best to sharply focus on serious instances of ineptitude by the Russian Army. That’s their civic duty – and involves creating a groundswell of public opinion, forcing the Russian Army to correct its mistakes and most of all refrain from underestimating the enemy. After all, this is far from over – no matter the dogfight now raging in the corridors of power in Kiev.

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Nobody wants to know.

• West Derails Russia’s Proposal On Nord Stream Attacks – Zakharova (TASS)

Russia was forced to ax work on a draft statement by the UN Security Council President on the investigation into the terrorist attack on the Nord Stream pipeline, as the West blocked this initiative, not wanting the truth to get out, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said. She recalled that on the anniversary of the terrorist attack on the gas pipelines on September 26, Russia announced the preparation of a draft statement by the chairman of the Security Council on the issue. “We were forced to curtail work on the draft statement of the UN Security Council President on the investigation into the terrorist attack on the Nord Stream gas pipelines. It was blocked by the West,” the diplomat said. According to her, Western representatives pointed out that the UN Security Council had no reason to interfere in the national investigations of Germany, Denmark and Sweden.

However, these states have failed to present even preliminary results to the international community and refuse to cooperate with the countries that suffered damage. Zakharova emphasized that this indicates their unwillingness to “identify the organizers and perpetrators of the terrorist attack.” “Or they have already identified them and are covering for them,” she added. The diplomat noted that the Russian side had been negotiating in good faith for a month. “However, during the discussions it became clear that representatives of Western countries are not ready for serious work and are looking for an excuse to let everything go down the drain: their proposal to remove from the text the phrase about bringing to justice the perpetrators and contractors of the terrorist attack speaks for itself,” she concluded. Zakharova said that Russia will continue to draw the attention of the international community to this issue, and the perpetrators of the crime must receive the punishment they deserve.

On September 27, 2022, Nord Stream AG reported “unprecedented damage” on three strings of the offshore gas pipelines of the Nord Stream system. Later, Swedish seismologists said they had identified two explosions on the route of the Nord Stream pipelines on September 26, 2022. Following the incident, the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office initiated a criminal case on charges of international terrorism. Germany, Denmark and Sweden announced national investigations, but refused to involve Russia. Germany, Denmark and Sweden announced national investigations, but refused to involve Russia. On February 8, Hersh wrote in his article that explosive devices were placed under the gas pipelines in June 2022 by US Navy divers with the assistance of Norwegian specialists. According to Hersh, the decision to conduct the operation was made by US President Joe Biden after nine months of discussions with administration officials charged with national security issues.

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“Every day in suburbia will be Halloween, and not in a fun way.”

• Party Party (Kunstler)

Of course, you already sense that the 2024 election will be a freaky event, if it happens at all. If it’s not America’s last election altogether, it may be the last one that follows the traditional format that has signified stability in our country’s high tide as a great power: that is, a contest between Republicans and Democrats. Both parties are likely to crash and burn in the year ahead, along with a whole lot of other things on the tottering scaffold of normal life. Have you lost count yet of the number of things in our country that are broken? The justice system. Public safety. Education. Medicine. Money. Transportation. Housing. The food supply. The border. The News business. The arts. Our relations with other countries. That’s just the big institutional stuff. At the personal scale its an overwhelming plunge in living standards, loss of incomes, careers, chattels, liberties. . . poor health (especially mental health). . . and failing confidence in any plausible future.

The reasons behind all that failure and loss are pretty straightforward. The business model for operating a high-tech industrial economy is broken. That includes especially the business model for affordable energy: oil, gas, nuclear, and the electric grid that runs on all that. We opted out of an economy that produced things of real value. We replaced that with a financial matrix of banking fakery. That racket made a very few people supernaturally wealthy while incrementally dissolving the middle-class. We destroyed local and regional business and scaled up what was left into super-giant predatory companies that can no longer maintain their supply chains. Fragility everywhere in everything. Bad choices all along the way, you could say, but perhaps an inexorable process of nature. Things are born, they grow, they peak, they decline, they die. The difference this time is the scale of everything we do is so enormous that the wreckage is also epic. It’s happening in Western Civ at the moment, led by its biggest nation state, us, the USA, but it will eventually go global, spread to the BRICs and the many countries that will never actually “develop.”

I started writing about the fiasco of suburbia decades ago, and now the endgame of that living arrangement is in view. The dissolving middle class has gotten priced-out of motoring. Motoring is the basis of the suburban living arrangement. No motoring, no suburbia. It’s that simple. There was widespread belief among idealistic reformers that suburbia could just be “retrofitted” for “smarter” daily life, but that dream is over. The capital (money) is not there to fix it, and there’s no prospect that we’ll somehow come up with it as far ahead as we can see. So far, the collapse of suburbia has happened in slow motion, but the pace is quickening now and it’ll get supercharged when the bond markets go down, as they must, considering the country’s catastrophic fiscal circumstances. That will produce exactly the zombie apocalypse telegraphed in all those movies and TV series over recent years: normality overrun by demonic hungry ghosts. Every day in suburbia will be Halloween, and not in a fun way.

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The House Oversight and Accountability Committee just got themselves a new star witness.

• Hunter Biden Rushed To Erase His Delinquent Taxes (JTN)

As Joe Biden marched toward the presidency in 2020 with a promise to force the wealthy to pay their “fair share” of taxes, his son Hunter was scrambling behind closed doors to clean up a trail of his own delinquent taxes before they became an election scandal, according to once-secret IRS memos made public recently by Congress. IRS agents would soon discover that the future first son was continuing to allegedly misrepresent his income and deductions to the very accountant he had hired to help, the memos show. The documents reviewed by Just the News show that Jeffrey Gelfound, an Edward White & Company tax accountant hired by Hunter Biden, was a cooperating witness in the IRS criminal probe of the first son and is likely to be a key witness if the younger Biden is charged with tax crimes by Special Counsel David Weiss.

Gelfound also could become a witness of interest to the House Oversight and Accountability Committee as it digs deeper into the Biden family finances as part of the ongoing impeachment inquiry in Congress. Buried in the mountain of 700 pages of IRS whistleblower documents released in September by the House Ways and Means Committee are interview reports, affidavits and case summary memos chronicling Hunter Biden’s efforts at the height of the 2020 presidential campaign to remedy his delinquent income taxes dating to 2014 and the income he made from the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings. Gelfound told agents the efforts in 2020 to pay off Hunter Biden tax debts became a priority because of fears the IRS and other tax authorities would place liens that would become public, a potential embarrassment for the Biden family.

“Yeah, if there was going to be media attention because they were going to lien,” Gelfound told IRS agents in an April 2021 interview when asked whether erasing the tax debts had become prioritized. In another later interview conducted by IRS agents in November 2021, Gelfound revealed that his firm signed an unusual representation letter with the younger Biden just days after the 2020 election, in which Hunter attested that the information that he provided was truthful. Gelfound told investigators that this was the first time he had ever seen a representation letter like it. “Yeah, when would you typically sign the representation?” the IRS investigators asked Gelfound. “This is- any type of representation, it’s not standard,” Gelfound answered. “When we typically prepare returns, there’s an engagement letter that’s different than this one,” Gelfound said, explaining to investigators why this representation letter was different. “[T]his is a first that I’ve seen and had a client sit down and sign a letter of this type,” he said.

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“Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”

• The House ‘Concentrates the Mind’ of Hunter Biden (Turley)

The great English writer Samuel Johnson once told a friend, “Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” The quote came to mind after reading the response of Abbe Lowell, legal counsel for Hunter Biden, to the issuance of subpoenas for Hunter and other family members by the House Oversight Committee. Lowell said that “Hunter is eager to have the opportunity, in a public forum” — but premised that on the condition that it be “the right time” for Hunter to speak. He also dismissed the committee investigation as a “political stunt.” It appears that further concentration is warranted. A congressional subpoena is really not an invitation for a sit-down at a convenient time. Hunter has spent years relying on denial and delay to fend off inquiries.

With this subpoena, he will now have to choose between cooperation or contempt … on the committee’s schedule. The issuance of subpoenas to Hunter, his uncle, James Biden, and Biden family associate Rob Walker, changes the entire threat — and the range of options — for the Bidens. Attorney General Merrick Garland moved quickly and aggressively to prosecute Trump associates such as Steve Bannon who failed to appear or cooperate with Congress. The public will demand the same vigorous prosecution in the face of any similar contempt by Biden associates. Moreover, Hunter has tried a wide array of approaches to these allegations of influence peddling, from a plea for sympathy to threats of litigation. Too many in the media have been willing enablers of these shifting claims, including figures like Jimmy Kimmel who conducted a softball interview that portrayed Hunter as a hero rather than an alleged influence peddler.

That may now change. If Hunter lies to congressional investigators, he can be charged with a federal crime. While the Justice Department allowed the statutes of limitations to run on various felonies, Hunter would be faced with a new set of charges with years for criminal charges to be brought by prosecutors. The situation is equally serious for the president’s brother, James, who has long been accused by House Republicans of influence peddling. Most recently, House investigators disclosed that, in 2018, James Biden received two loans totaling $600,000 from Americore Health, which they described as “a financially distressed and failing rural hospital operator.” The company has been referenced in past reports of alleged influence peddling by James Biden.

According to the company’s bankruptcy proceedings, it made the loans “based upon representations that his last name, ‘Biden,’ could ‘open doors’” to new overseas investors. On the day he received the second loan transfer, James Biden allegedly sent a check for the same amount — $200,000 — to Joe Biden as a “loan reimbursement.” The House committee also reports finding a $40,000 check from James Biden and his wife to Joe Biden. Again, it was marked as a “loan reimbursement. Congressional interviews can be perilous, but they are far more so when your client’s interview will cover years of transactions and statements. It presents a target-rich environment for investigators and ample opportunities to make misleading or false statements for witnesses.

Hunter and his uncle may soon have company. In addition to a subpoena for Biden family associate Rob Walker, the House committee has requested voluntary transcripted interviews with Sara Biden, Hallie Biden, Elizabeth Secundy, Melissa Cohen and onetime Hunter business associate Tony Bobulinski. Figures like Bobulinski are likely to cooperate. He already has accused President Biden of lying about his lack of knowledge of foreign dealings, including giving detailed accounts of meeting with Joe Biden in a hotel.

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“Judge Engoron’s lawlessness sends an ominous and illegal warning to New York business owners: If New York judges don’t like your politics, they will destroy your business, the livelihood of your employees, and you personally.”

• Stefanik Hits “Radical Leftist” Trump Judge With Ethics Complaint (ZH)

While the jury is still out over whether the wife of Judge Arthur Engoron made anti-Trump posts on X, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) has filed an ethics complaint against judge himself, accusing him of displaying “inappropriate bias and judicial intemperance” towards the former president in his civil fraud trial taking place in New York. “I filed an official judicial complaint against Judge Arthur Engoron for his inappropriate bias and judicial intemperance in New York’s disgraceful lawsuit against President Donald J. Trump and the Trump Organization,” Stefanik told NBC News. “Americans are sick and tired of the blatant corruption by radical Leftist judges in NY. All New Yorkers must speak out against the dangerous weaponized lawfare against President Trump.”

Scott Adams

According to the complaint, Engoron has exhibited “clear judicial bias” against Trump, including telling Trump’s attorney that the former president is “just a bad guy,” who NY Attorney General Letitia James “should go after.” “Simply put, Judge Engoron has displayed a clear judicial bias against the defendant throughout the case, breaking several rules in the New York Code of Judicial Conduct,” reads the letter. “Judge Engoron entered summary judgment against the defendant before the trial even began, without witnesses, other evidence, and cross-examination,” she continued, noting that this was “despite the fact there’s disputed material evidence–and there’s no victim of the defendant’s supposed fraud. ”

Stefanik also notes that Engoron and his staff are “partisan Democrat donors,” and that Engoron himself, as recently as 2018, “donated to the Manhattan Democrats.” “If Judge Engoron can railroad a billionaire New York businessman, a former President of the United States, and the leading presidential candidate, just imagine what he could do to all New Yorkers,” the letter continues. “Judge Engoron’s lawlessness sends an ominous and illegal warning to New York business owners: If New York judges don’t like your politics, they will destroy your business, the livelihood of your employees, and you personally. This Commission cannot let this continue.” “Section 100.2(A) states: ‘A judge shall respect and comply with the law and shall act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.’ Judge Engoron has grossly failed to do this,” she wrote.

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Meryl Nass

 

 

 

 

James Taylor

 

 

 

 

Farage

 

 

Dog stairs

 

 

Kookaburra
https://twitter.com/i/status/1722901256610381932

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle November 10 2023

Nov 102023
 
 November 10, 2023  Posted by at 9:45 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  60 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Femme à la Montre 1932
Sold for $139 million on November 8

 

• Letter to the Children of Gaza (Chris Hedges)
• Biden’s Frankenstein (Patrick Lawrence)
• Ceasefire in Gaza Depends on US as It ‘Fully Controls’ Conflict – Hamas (Sp.)
• Hamas Not Interested in Keeping Civilians Hostage – Erdogan (Sp.)
• Turkey Ready To Act As Guarantor In Resolving Gaza Crisis – Erdogan (TASS)
• Russia Can’t Be Defeated On Battlefield – Kremlin (RT)
• West Preparing for Military Coup Against Zelensky – Larry Johnson (Sp.)
• Ukraine ‘Has No Russian Minority’ – Deputy PM (RT)
• US Aiming To ‘Kill’ Major Russian Energy Project – Pyatt (RT)
• Russia May Downgrade Diplomatic Relations With US – Deputy FM (TASS)
• Polls In Key States ‘Scary’ – Top-Ranking Biden Diplomat (RT)
• Hillary Clinton Likens Trump To Hitler And Warns He Would End Democracy (G.)
• Trump Is ‘Toast’ In New York Fraud Trial – Former Watergate Prosecutor (G.)
• Claimed ‘99% Consensus’ on Climate Change Demolished by New Report (DS)
• US Congress Members Call for Biden to Drop Assange Extradition Request (Sp.)

 

 

“Most people die at 25 and aren’t buried until they’re 75” – Benjamin Franklin

 

 


Elon Musk: “Best economist ever”

 

 

Iversen Ritter

 

 

 

 

Nap/Crooke

 

 

 

 

Belgium Petra De Sutter

 

 

 

 

 

 

“I am a reporter. It is my job to see this. You are a child. You should never see this.”

• Letter to the Children of Gaza (Chris Hedges)

Dear child. It is past midnight. I am flying at hundreds of miles an hour in the darkness, thousands of feet over the Atlantic Ocean. I am traveling to Egypt. I will go to the border of Gaza at Rafah. I go because of you. You have never been in a plane. You have never left Gaza. You know only the densely packed streets and alleys. The concrete hovels. You know only the security barriers and fences patrolled by soldiers that surround Gaza. Planes, for you, are terrifying. Fighter jets. Attack helicopters. Drones. They circle above you. They drop missiles and bombs. Deafening explosions. The ground shakes. Buildings fall. The dead. The screams. The muffled calls for help from beneath the rubble. It does not stop. Night and day. Trapped under the piles of smashed concrete. Your playmates. Your schoolmates. Your neighbors. Gone in seconds. You see the chalky faces and limp bodies when they are dug out. I am a reporter. It is my job to see this. You are a child. You should never see this.

The stench of death. Rotting corpses under broken concrete. You hold your breath. You cover your mouth with cloth. You walk faster. Your neighborhood has become a graveyard. All that was familiar is gone. You stare in amazement. You wonder where you are. You are afraid. Explosion after explosion. You cry. You cling to your mother or father. You cover your ears. You see the white light of the missile and wait for the blast. Why do they kill children? What did you do? Why can’t anyone protect you? Will you be wounded? Will you lose a leg or an arm? Will you go blind or be in a wheelchair? Why were you born? Was it for something good? Or was it for this? Will you grow up? Will you be happy? What will it be like without your friends? Who will die next? Your mother? Your father? Your brothers and sisters? Someone you know will be injured. Soon. Someone you know will die. Soon.

At night you lie in the dark on the cold cement floor. The phones are cut. The internet is off. You do not know what is happening. There are flashes of light. There are waves of blast concussions. There are screams. It does not stop. When your father or mother hunts for food or water you wait. That terrible feeling in your stomach. Will they come back? Will you see them again? Will your tiny home be next? Will the bombs find you? Are these your last moments on Earth? You drink salty, dirty water. It makes you very sick. Your stomach hurts. You are hungry. The bakeries are destroyed. There is no bread. You eat one meal a day. Pasta. A cucumber. Soon this will seem like a feast.

You have seen foreign reporters. We wear flak jackets with the word PRESS written on it. We have helmets. We have cameras. We drive jeeps. We appear after a bombing or a shooting. We sit over coffee for a long time and talk to the adults. Then we disappear. We do not usually interview children. But I have done interviews when groups of you crowded around us. Laughing. Pointing. Asking us to take your picture. I have been bombed by jets in Gaza. I have been bombed in other wars, wars that happened before you were born. I too was very, very scared. I still have dreams about it. When I see the pictures of Gaza these wars return to me with the force of thunder and lightning. I think of you. All of us who have been to war hate war most of all because of what it does to children.

Safe place

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“..Biden, Blinken and the rest of the regime’s national security crew are now aware that Biden’s open-door, open-wallet support for Bibi’s frenzied violence against Palestinians has turned into a political disaster from which it will be difficult to recover.”

• Biden’s Frankenstein (Patrick Lawrence)

The new wave of violence in Israel and Gaza now enters its second month. More than 10,000 people have been killed, The Associated Press reports, 40 percent of them children. Where is this catastrophe going? What are the limits of Israel’s inhumanity? Does the Biden regime, in its unforgivable support and encouragement of this ethnic-cleansing operation, have another Frankenstein on its hands—a monster it cannot control? There is the Ukraine case, a contrast as we consider this question. Volodymyr Zelensky is pure cartoon creation—the greatest put-up job of our century, posing as a defender of democratic freedom while running a crypto–Nazi regime and, along with his generals and ministers, stealing hundreds of millions of dollars. But Ukraine—weak, broke, and losing the proxy war against Russia—is easily managed. Biden could unplug the electrodes from Zelensky’s temples any time he chose to do so. He won’t, but he could.

It starts to look as if Biden and his foreign policy people have lost what control they may have had over Bibi Netanyahu and the fanatical regime he directs. Last week Antony Blinken, on his second trip to Israel since the Hamas assault on southern Israel October 7, asked the Israeli prime minister to “pause”—we must not propose a ceasefire—Israel’s daily bombing campaign up and down the Gaza Strip. Netanyahu refused the American secretary of state more or less point blank. Ask yourself: Who was in charge of that meeting, who was running the show? I have to say, Blinken does come over as a diplomatic pipsqueak time and time again, as he did last summer in Beijing, when the Chinese leadership actually scolded him before sending him home with nothing but lectures to show for his effort.

The Biden White House has been making sotto voce requests such as Blinken’s for the past couple of weeks, all to very little avail. Dim and wanting in all subtlety, even Biden, Blinken and the rest of the regime’s national security crew are now aware that Biden’s open-door, open-wallet support for Bibi’s frenzied violence against Palestinians has turned into a political disaster from which it will be difficult to recover. West Asian nations may not stand with Palestinians to the extent one would like to see, but the old client relationships with Washington appear to have been altered more or less permanently. It all looks so very bad. Last week the Latin Americans began recalling their ambassadors to Tel Aviv, Bolivia going so far as to sever relations, and bravo for the Bolivians.

This week Jordan, Bahrain, Turkey, Chad and South Africa followed suit. The Israelis show no sign of giving a damn, but look at the names: America has traditionally counted these nations among its friends (or clients). Now they stand among those treating apartheid Israel as the pariah state it deserves to be called. Think about where this will leave Washington out in the middle distance. It will be another case of U.S. support for South Africa before the apartheid regime gave up the ghost in 1990, or for Rhodesia before it became Zimbabwe 10 years earlier. It will be embarrassing and costly. There are cracks in the façade at home, too. There are murmurs in Congress that the Israelis have gone too far, although very few have made the daring leap from ineffectually suggesting a “temporary pause” in the bombing to demanding a ceasefire.

Unnamed officials now acknowledge that Israel’s hysterical violence has nothing to do with self-defense and everything to do with preserving the Israeli Defense Force’s reputation for merciless retribution. I read these sorts of admissions as indications of dissatisfaction and disapproval, if not disgust. The Pentagon appears to be especially restive as the Israeli campaign to ethnic-cleanse Gaza proceeds. Two weeks ago it dispatched senior officers to advise the IDF to reconsider the deadliness of urban combat—the street-to-street, door-to-door stuff. The New York Times has since quoted a senior Defense Department official saying “the operations so far have not come close to destroying Hamas’s senior and middle leadership ranks.”

Ehud Barak (ex-Israel PM) has resurfaced. He collected his frequent flyer points on the Lolita Express.

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“..If the US administration wanted the ceasefire, it would have been reached by now..”

• Ceasefire in Gaza Depends on US as It ‘Fully Controls’ Conflict – Hamas (Sp.)

A ceasefire in Gaza depends on the United States as it “fully controls” the Middle East conflict, Hamas Political Bureau member Mousa Abu Marzouq said on Thursday. “The ceasefire depends on the US. The US is the main supporter of Israel: American drones are in the skies over Gaza, military ships are off the Palestinian coast. They supply both arms and money. They also provide political cover for the process. All the states in the region are under pressure to save Israel. That is why the ceasefire depends on the US. If the US administration wanted the ceasefire, it would have been reached by now,” Marzouq said in an interview with Turkish newspaper.

The official added that Hamas expected Islamic countries to take practical measures in the crisis, up to and including cutting off oil supplies to Israel. At the same time, the US is threatening regional countries so they do not impose sanctions on Israel, Marzouq said. “We are well aware of the fact that in the past, during the wars in the Middle East, an oil embargo was imposed to support the Arab actions. Today, it is possible to cut off oil supplies to those who help this Zionist structure. The Arab and Muslim states can take more steps towards a ceasefire. The Islamic states should not stop with statements and condemnations. Practical steps must be taken,” he added.

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“..20-30 trucks pass through Turkiye [to Gaza] every day, as of now. Of course, this is not humanitarian aid. It was proposed to increase this figure to at least 500 trucks.”

• Hamas Not Interested in Keeping Civilians Hostage – Erdogan (Sp.)

The Hamas movement is not interested in keeping civilian hostages, and a mutual process on freeing Israelis and Palestinians is necessary, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday. “On the issue of hostages, Hamas is not interested in holding civilians hostage. On the contrary, there must be a release of Palestinians held by Israel. If we, as Turkiye, intervene, then Israel must immediately release the Palestinians, and on the other hand, the Israelis held by Hamas must be released immediately,” Erdogan told reporters on his way back from Tashkent. Hamas does not have a “determination” to not release hostages, and the movement said that they are ready to free them, Erdogan added. “Of course there are [also] soldiers there [in Hamas’ captivity]. Among these soldiers there are also high ranks. But the lack of principles of Israel, which takes … children hostage, is also obvious. If positive steps are taken, we will take any risk and try to contribute to resolving this issue,” Erdogan said.

Turkiye has proposed to the United States to increase passage of trucks with humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip to 500 per day during talks with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday. Earlier this week, Blinken visited Turkiye where he held talks with Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan. “Recently, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Turkiye and held discussions with Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan. During the negotiations, surely, the foreign minister made some proposals. For example, 20-30 trucks pass through Turkiye [to Gaza] every day, as of now. Of course, this is not humanitarian aid. It was proposed to increase this figure to at least 500 trucks. I was told by Hakan Fidan … that he [Blinken] also reacted positively to this,” Erdogan told media. Turkiye aims to open a corridor for the transfer of injured people out of the Gaza Strip and receives positive signals on this issue, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan added.

“Our desire here is not only a corridor for humanitarian aid to pass through. We also want to increase pressure on Israel to ensure the transfer of wounded, oppressed Palestinians. Our goal is to ensure the passage of all these people from Gaza to areas where we can provide medical assistance … We have completed preparations for this, some positive signals are coming … If we can really take them to our hospitals, we will fulfill our humanitarian and Islamic duty,” Erdogan told reporters. Turkiye has received some positive signals regarding its diplomatic efforts for the Gaza Strip, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday. “There is no such thing as hopelessness. Of course, we have hope [for a ceasefire in Gaza]. We hold these events because we have hope … We seem to be getting some positive signals in our diplomatic attacks,” Erdogan told reporters on his way back from Tashkent.

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“..The Muslim world needs to take a united stance and increase pressure on Israel..”

• Turkey Ready To Act As Guarantor In Resolving Gaza Crisis – Erdogan (TASS)

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has confirmed that Ankara is ready to act as a guarantor in resolving the Gaza crisis. At a meeting with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi on the sidelines of the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) summit in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent, Erdogan called on the Muslim world to come together and put pressure on Israel, the Turkish presidential office said in a statement. “President Erdogan pointed out that Turkey was ready to contribute to resolving the issue, taking responsibility as a guarantor. The Muslim world needs to take a united stance and increase pressure on Israel,” the statement reads.

The Turkish and Iranian presidents discussed the humanitarian crisis caused by Israel’s operation in the Gaza Strip and the steps that should be taken to resolve it, as well as bilateral and regional issues. “President Erdogan said at the meeting that an end to Israel’s violence would facilitate efforts to ensure peace in the region and the world in general. According to him, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) needs to make efforts at its extraordinary summit to find a fair solution,” the statement added. The OIC is expected to hold a summit in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on November 12.

Disparity

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“..Ukraine’s hopes of defeating Russia had been “absurd” right from the outset..”

• Russia Can’t Be Defeated On Battlefield – Kremlin (RT)

There is no way the Russian military can be defeated, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has insisted. His comments follow recent claims by President Vladimir Putin that Western governments were lowering their expectations regarding the outcome of the Ukraine conflict. Speaking to Russian journalist Pavel Zarubin on Thursday, Peskov stated “it is high time that everyone in Kiev and Washington realized: it’s impossible to defeat Russia on the battlefield.” Putin claimed on Friday that Western powers were “changing their tune now [and] saying different things” compared to their previous insistence on inflicting a military defeat on Russia.

Also last week, Ukraine’s top military commander, General Valery Zaluzhny, admitted in an article published by The Economist that Kiev’s troops were unlikely to pull off a “deep and beautiful breakthrough” in the conflict with Russia, unless provided with more advanced weapons by the West. He suggested that the fighting was deadlocked and could “drag on for years,” although Peskov responded to that assessment by insisting that Moscow’s forces were not at a stalemate. He further claimed that Ukraine’s hopes of defeating Russia had been “absurd” right from the outset. Citing anonymous US officials, NBC reported last week that behind closed doors Washington had been pushing Kiev toward negotiations with Moscow. The outlet also claimed that the US had been conducting “delicate” unofficial discussions with Kiev regarding concessions Ukraine would be willing to make in potential peace talks.

A State Department spokesperson denied the claims, while Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky repeated that his government would not negotiate unless Russia withdraws its troops from territory within Ukraine’s 1991 borders. According to NBC, Western officials are increasingly concerned that Ukraine is “running out of forces,” and also harbor fears about their own ability to shore up Kiev with weapons shipments in the long run amid the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Media speculation has recently intensified after Ukraine failed to make any notable gains despite a months-long counteroffensive. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, Kiev has lost more than 90,000 troops in the operation, which began in early June.

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“..It’s not just calling each other names and maybe hurting someone’s feelings. This is becoming a blood match.”

• West Preparing for Military Coup Against Zelensky – Larry Johnson (Sp.)

The writing is on the wall for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as the Western elite seemingly seek someone else to fill his shoes, retired CIA intelligence officer and State Department official Larry Johnson told Sputnik’s New Rules podcast. Signs of a behind-the-scenes struggle in Ukraine have recently manifested themselves in Commander-in-Chief Gen. Valery Zaluzhny’s open defiance of Volodymyr Zelensky’s non-stop war plans; a mysterious death of Zaluzhny’s close aide; and the Ukrainian president’s refusal to hold elections next year. CIA veteran Larry Johnson believes that the “invisible hand” of the West is orchestrating what may end up in regime change in Ukraine. Per him, Zaluzhny’s extensive “stalemate” interview to the British press, which prompted so much ire on Bankovaya Street – a Ukrainian presidential residence – was by no means coincidental.

“It’s always important to pay close attention to what’s going on in the media because these stories don’t just appear out of nowhere,” Johnson told Sputnik. “It’s not like some intrepid Economist’s reporter is saying, ‘Hey, you know, I think it’d be a pretty nifty if I could go interview General Zaluzhny.’ Because I think that that entire arrangement was made possible through the intervention of MI6 to get Zaluzhny’s profile raised in the West. And remember in that Economist magazine, he was interviewed, he then wrote an op-ed and they gave him a longer piece online, the ‘Economist online’. So Zaluzhny got three hits. And he was seen as undermining the message that had been coming out of Ukraine.”

Likewise, the death of Gennady Chastyakov, an assistant to the commander-in-chief, reeks of a potential sabotage from the Ukrainian infamous security service, according to the former CIA analyst. “This grenade that went off… I’ve seen in a couple of different accounts that someone gave him a live grenade and then his son was playing with it and accidentally pulled the pin and it went off. But it sure seems like sabotage. And Zelensky still has support within the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and it would not be at all beyond the SBU for Zelensky to think it’s a good idea to send a message like this to try to intimidate Zaluzhny.” However, it’s not Zaluzhny who is Zelensky’s major problem, but the Ukrainian president’s fading support in the West, both in the UK and the US, according to Johnson:

“Remember a week ago, Time magazine – who had featured Zelensky on its front cover in 2022 as Man of the Year, they described him as like ‘the reincarnation of Winston Churchill’, and ‘this great military strategist’. He now was put on the front cover of Time and decried as basically like Adolf Hitler in his last days, delusional, out of touch with reality, crazy. So when I see those kinds of articles appear from both British sources and American sources, it’s telling me that the political establishments in both places are preparing the exit ramp for Zelensky. And Zaluzhny may be seen as someone that they want to replace Zelensky with. So we’re at the stage now in this entire affair where the infighting is now becoming lethal. It’s not just calling each other names and maybe hurting someone’s feelings. This is becoming a blood match.”

Johnson drew attention to the fact that in addition, NBC News broke on November 4 that US and European officials have begun “quietly talking” to the Kiev regime about possible “peace negotiations with Russia” to end the stalemate. It seems Western decision-makers have zero illusions about Zelensky: they know that he had zero qualifications to take on the presidency, but was “a comedian notorious for his ability to use his genitalia to play the piano,” per the CIA veteran. For his part, Zaluzhny appears to be someone “who could negotiate with Russia, because Zaluzhny back in the day at least had contacts with and trained with members of the Russian military before the split when Ukraine sort of went in its own direction,” Johnson stressed.

Larry Johnson

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Problem too big for you? Just ignore and deny it..

“..the use of the Russian language is not something that the European Commission will pay attention to..”

• Ukraine ‘Has No Russian Minority’ – Deputy PM (RT)

The European Commission cannot have complaints about discrimination against the ethnic Russian minority in Ukraine because there is no such section of the population, Kiev’s deputy prime minister for European integration, Olga Stefanishina, has claimed. Some EU members have raised concerns over Ukraine’s treatment of ethnic minorities under laws adopted since the 2014 armed coup in Kiev, including the government pushing the use of the Ukrainian language through education and media regulations. However, speaking at a press conference on Thursday, Stefanishina insisted that “there is no Russian minority in Ukraine. It does not exist. There is not a single judicially defined community identifying itself as a Russian minority.”

She added that “when I want to, I speak Ukrainian, and when I want otherwise, I speak Russian.” Stefanishina claimed she did not need permission to do that from the EU or “Moskals” – a pejorative term used by some Ukrainians to describe Russians. The politician further stated that officials in Brussels shared her stance. On Wednesday, the European Commission recommended that talks should begin on Ukraine’s accession to the EU. The commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, argued that Kiev had made strides on implementing certain reforms on minority issues. Stefanishina’s remarks apparently confirm reports in the Russian media on Wednesday, which claimed that Brussels had chosen to ignore allegations of anti-Russian discrimination in Ukraine. “Let me be absolutely clear: the use of the Russian language is not something that the European Commission will pay attention to,” an EU source was quoted by RIA Novosti as saying.

EU recommendations regarding language policy will only apply to Hungarians, Romanians, and Bulgarians, the source claimed, adding that Kiev was moving forward on meeting those demands. In a recent example of a language row, a Russian-speaking driver in Kiev was banned by a rideshare service operator after he rejected demands by two passengers to speak Ukrainian. A video of the incident went viral in late October and drew the attention of language ombudsman Tarask Kremen, who vowed that the defiant driver “will not escape punishment.” In a survey conducted in September by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology at the EU’s request, respondents cited language discrimination as the most common type of prejudice in Ukraine, with 45% saying it was a problem.

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Pyatt is the ultimate tool. He was US envoy to Ukraine in 2014, known for phone calls with Victoria Nuland. Now he’s “US assistant secretary of state for energy resources”.

• US Aiming To ‘Kill’ Major Russian Energy Project – Pyatt (RT)

The White House is aiming to “kill” Russia’s Arctic LNG 2 energy project, according to US assistant secretary of state for energy resources, Geoffrey Pyatt. The project in the northern Gydan Peninsula is operated by independent Russian LNG producer Novatek. It will feature three LNG trains, with a total annual production capacity of 19.8 million tons. The first train was launched in July, while the remaining two are scheduled for 2024 and 2025. Speaking at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on US national security interests in Ukraine on Wednesday, Pyatt stated: “Last week, for instance, we levelled new sanctions against the Arctic LNG 2, which is Novatek’s flagship project”.

“Our objective is to kill that project,” he stressed, claiming that the project had been set up with the aim of turning Russia into the world’s largest LNG exporter.According to Pyatt, Russia’s plans are being stifled by sanctions imposed through cooperation between the US and its allies in the G7 and beyond. The US official also said the White House is “working with the countries [that] historically have depended on Russian energy, and [are] paying in to the Kremlin’s resources.” Pyatt claimed that this has been done “quite successfully” in the EU. “We need to keep focusing on the Asian front,” he added, stressing that the current price cap coalition would help to achieve that objective.

According to Pyatt, the $60 per-barrel price ceiling on Russian seaborne oil exports imposed by EU and G7 countries in December has managed to cut Moscow’s energy revenues, while keeping Russian crude on global markets and avoiding further destabilization. Earlier this week, Japanese Economy Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura said that sanctions on the Arctic LNG 2 project could have a major negative impact on business in Japan, adding that Tokyo would work with the G7 to maintain stable energy supplies. Japan had previously exempted Russian LNG projects in Sakhalin and the Arctic from sanctions and continued to provide architectural and engineering services to the country.

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“..we have seen the Americans take a series of irresponsible and escalatory steps with regard to Ukraine, and not only there..”

• Russia May Downgrade Diplomatic Relations With US – Deputy FM (TASS)

Washington’s behavior may compel Moscow to downgrade diplomatic relations or even cut ties, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said. “We are indeed going through an acute crisis in relations, the likes of which we have never seen before. We need to carefully calibrate and verify the steps we are taking to prevent further escalation. Our leadership encourages the Foreign Ministry and other federal government agencies to act this way, which is what we are guided by. However, we have seen the Americans take a series of irresponsible and escalatory steps with regard to Ukraine, and not only there,” the senior diplomat said in an interview with RTVI.

“That is why, if we look at Washington’s current behavior model from this perspective, I don’t rule out anything at all. The level [of diplomatic ties] may be lowered; and the severance of diplomatic relations is also possible,” he added. Still, the deputy foreign minister stressed that Russia did not plan to initiate the severance of diplomatic relations with the US. “We believe that diplomatic relations are an element of international affairs that need to be taken care of because otherwise we will lose all that’s left of civilized channels for sending messages to each other,” Ryabkov said. In this regard, he pointed out that November 16 would mark 90 years since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and the United States.

“Our relations have been through various phases; there was even a period of allied ties and brotherhood in arms in the fight against a common enemy, Hitlerite Germany, that was waging a war against us and our allies, which included the US back then. Later, there were the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis and a period of detente. We’ve seen many things,” the Russian deputy foreign minister noted. The senior diplomat also pointed out that Russia would always respond to any US challenges and provocations. “I think the Americans know us by now, watching how firmly and consistently we defend our interests in all areas,” Ryabkov emphasized.

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“Voters, by a 59% to 37% percent margin, said they trusted Trump more than Biden when it comes to the economy – the largest gap of any issue…”

• Polls In Key States ‘Scary’ – Top-Ranking Biden Diplomat (RT)

US Ambassador to Canada David Cohen has recently revealed that fresh polling in key swing states paint quite a grim picture for incumbent President Joe Biden, who leads in only one key state out of six for the 2024 presidential election. “For people in Canada or the United States who are concerned or troubled by a prospective second term for Donald Trump, those polling results are sobering and scary,” Cohen told a conference of manufacturers and exporters in Canada’s capital, Ottawa, on Tuesday. He then said that this information just means there’s a lot of work that needs to be done over the next year and that no one should panic. “I am certainly not looking at the current state of play and saying, ‘Oh, my God, it’s all over. There’s no way Joe Biden can get re-elected’,” Cohen added. “Anyone who has that attitude is probably making a big mistake.”

According to Politico, his comments represent “an unusual swerve into domestic US politics by a sitting ambassador and a striking admission of Biden’s vulnerability by one of his most loyal political allies.” The Biden campaign has spent much of the past few days trying not avoid “fretting” – as they said in a statement – about the latest wave of grim polling on the 2024 election, which showed that former President and current candidate Donald Trump is leading Biden significantly in five of the six most important battleground states. A survey by The New York Times and Siena College published on Sunday indicated Trump is holding an 11-point lead in Nevada and smaller margins across Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Only Wisconsin favored Biden – and only by a two-point margin.

The 3,662 polled voters were mostly concerned about the age of Biden – who turns 81 later this month, making him the oldest president in American history – and expressed dissatisfaction over his handling of the economy. Voters, by a 59% to 37% percent margin, said they trusted Trump more than Biden when it comes to the economy – the largest gap of any issue. That result bodes particularly poorly for Biden, given that nearly twice as many voters said economic issues would determine their 2024 vote compared to social issues, such as abortion or gun laws. And those economic voters favored Trump by a landslide 60 percent to 32 percent. The survey also showed that, for the most part, Trump is so far politically surviving the 91 felony charges he is currently facing.

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He’s more Hitler than Hitler himself was. And he can live rent-free in her head until the end of time.

• Hillary Clinton Likens Trump To Hitler And Warns He Would End Democracy (G.)

Former senator and secretary of state says Nazi leader was initially elected and that ‘Trump is telling us what he intends to do’ Hillary Clinton has compared Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler as she offered a blunt warning about the dangers of a second Trump presidency. Trump back in the White House, Clinton said during an appearance on ABC’s daytime talkshow The View on Wednesday, “would be the end of our country as we know it, and I don’t say that lightly”. The former first lady, senator and secretary of state said: “When I was secretary of state, I used to talk about ‘one and done’. What I meant by that is that people would get legitimately elected and then they would try to do away with elections, and do away with opposition, and do away with a free press.”

Then Clinton added: “Hitler was duly elected. All of a sudden somebody with those tendencies, dictatorial, authoritarian tendencies, would be like ‘OK we’re gonna shut this down, we’re gonna throw these people in jail.’ And they didn’t usually telegraph that. Trump is telling us what he intends to do.” Clinton’s comments came days after a Washington Post report detailing how Trump is discussing how to use the justice department to investigate political rivals and former allies who have been critical of him should he return to the White House. He is also discussing invoking the Insurrection Act on his first day in office, which would allow him to use the US military domestically to quell protests and dissent, something he was talked out of by military leaders during his one-term presidency.

Trump’s team is also preparing to staff a potential administration with more radical rightwing lawyers who are less likely to stymie efforts to get in his way as he pushes the bounds of presidential power, the New York Times reported. A New York Times/Siena poll released on Sunday shows Trump leading Joe Biden in several key battleground states. Trump faces criminal charges in four different cases, set to go to trial next year. Winning the presidency is widely understood to be Trump’s best chance of escaping liability. And the poll shows that many voters who were asked would switch back to Biden if Trump is convicted. But Clinton gave a clear warning. “Trump is telling us what he intends to do,” Clinton said on The View. “Take him at his word.”

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Don’t worry, it’s just the Guardian.

“In New York, a judge can draw an adverse inference from a decision to invoke the fifth amendment in a civil case. “You’ve got contradictory testimony. You can use his assertion of the fifth amendment against him. To basically find that he’s lying..”

• Trump Is ‘Toast’ In New York Fraud Trial – Former Watergate Prosecutor (G.)

Donald Trump is “toast” in the civil fraud trial involving his business empire and put himself in an incredibly bad position when he agreed to testify in person after previously invoking his fifth amendment rights against self-incrimination, Nick Akerman, a former Watergate prosecutor, told CNN on Wednesday. “Basically at this point, Donald Trump is toast,” said Akerman, who was an assistant special prosecutor on the 1970s team that investigated President Richard Nixon and top aides for their involvement in the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate hotel and subsequent revelation of other nefarious political activities. “I mean he is basically going to be found to be a liar by the judge.”

Trump testified on Monday as part of an ongoing trial in which the New York attorney general, Letitia James, is suing the former president for fraudulently inflating the value of business assets to secure more favorable terms on loans and insurance contracts. The judge overseeing the case, Arthur Engoron, already ruled Trump and the family company, the Trump Organization, did in fact commit fraud – the trial taking place in Manhattan is to determine what penalty they will pay. James is seeking $250m and to bar the former president from conducting real estate business in the state of New York. Trump sat for a deposition in the case in August 2022 and invoked the fifth amendment more than 400 times. Despite that, he testified in court last week that he did not commit fraud.

Trump used his appearance on the stand to rail against the judge and what he said was unfair treatment in the trial, bringing sharp rebuke from the bench. In New York, a judge can draw an adverse inference from a decision to invoke the fifth amendment in a civil case. “You’ve got contradictory testimony. You can use his assertion of the fifth amendment against him. To basically find that he’s lying,” Akerman said. “I just don’t see how this judge, at the end of the day, is not gonna find with respect to Donald Trump ‘liar, liar, pants on fire’.” Akerman added that in the 40 years he had been practicing civil law, a handful of his clients had taken the fifth amendment, but had “never seen somebody do such a stupid move as to suddenly start testifying after you’ve taken the fifth”.

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“..work not supporting the political narrative on climate is now almost impossible to get published in the major science journals..”

“..only about 0.5% of the papers explicitly stated that recent warming was mostly human caused..”

• Claimed ‘99% Consensus’ on Climate Change Demolished by New Report (DS)

The invented political notion that 99% of climate scientists believe humans have caused all or most recent global warming has been dealt another significant blow. A group of Israeli scientists has examined the widely-publicised claim by the climate activist Mark Lynas that there is a 99% ‘consensus’ that humans cause most warming. Led by Yonatan Dubi, Professor of Chemistry and Physics at Ben Gurion University, the scientists found that massive flaws and biases riddled the Lynas work, implying the conclusions of the study do not follow from the data. This work matters. The claims of a 99% consensus, along with an earlier 97% figure, are widely used in political and media circles to shut down debate over anthropogenic global warming (AGW). Sceptical scientists – even those as distinguished as last year’s Nobel Physics Prize winner Dr. John Clauser – can be dismissed as cranks and deniers.

Of course consensus is not proof, which is notably lacking in the model-driven climate science field. However the Israeli authors observe a consensus claim is “influential in bolstering the reception of a particular thesis within the broader public sphere”. This leads to “less quantifiable statements”, such as humanity is facing an imminent climate crisis, and is followed by global calls for action. Not to put too fine a point on it, the collectivist Net Zero project relies on a fake scientific consensus that crumbles when exposed to the most basic scrutiny. The Lynas et al. paper, which examined the ‘abstracts’ of 3,000 papers, is riddled with errors. It assumes that all papers taking ‘no position’ on AGW are in support of the hypothesis.

The Israeli authors note that sceptical scientists tend not to emphasise scepticism in the opening abstract as work not supporting the political narrative on climate is now almost impossible to get published in the major science journals. Careful analysis of how sceptical papers diplomatically “fit the consensus” suggests the actual number of scientists agreeing with AGW may be on the “low side”, conclude the examining authors. The dictionary definition of consensus is a “general agreement” or “the judgement arrived at by most of those concerned”. The authors are clear in their judgement: “No claim for consensus can be made from the data presented in Lynas et al.” This is not the first time such outlandish ‘consensus’ claims have been critically examined. In 2013, John Cook asserted that 97% of 11,944 peer-reviewed science papers explicitly endorsed the opinion that humans had caused the majority of the warming over the last 150 years.

But, 7,930 of those papers took no position on anthropogenic change and were excluded from the 97% claim. It was subsequently revealed that only about 0.5% of the papers explicitly stated that recent warming was mostly human caused. At the time, a former IPCC author Professor Richard Tol said that Cook’s nonsense paper showed the climate community still had a long way to go in weeding out bad research and bad behaviour. For their part, the Israeli scientists note that their criticisms also apply in general to earlier consensus studies based on abstract scanning, and it is to be regretted that they were “not taken into consideration” by Lynas et al. “It is thus crucially important to understand the limitations of, and the good practices required of, these types of consensus studies”. The matter is said to be too important to be left “blurry and subjective”.

Read more …

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Marjorie Taylor Greene are an odd couple. There’s not much they agree on.

• US Congress Members Call for Biden to Drop Assange Extradition Request (Sp.)

Sixteen Democratic and Republican members of US Congress have called for US President Joe Biden to withdraw the extradition request by the United States against Australian journalist and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, a document published by Assange’s wife, Stella Assange, showed Thursday. “As Members of Congress deeply committed to the principles of free speech and freedom of the press, we write to strongly encourage your Administration to withdraw the U.S. extradition request currently pending against Australian publisher Julian Assange and halt all prosecutorial proceedings against him as soon as possible,” the document, published by Stella Assange on X (formerly known as Twitter), read.

The Members of Congress, namely James McGovern, Thomas Massie, Rashida Tlaib, Eric Burlison, Ilhan Omar, Paul Gosar, Ayanna Pressley, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Pramila Jayapal, Matthew Rosendale, Greg Casar, Cori Bush, Jamaal Bowman, Jesus Garcia, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as well as Senator Rand Paul, said in the document that “deep concerns about this case have been repeatedly expressed by international media outlets, human right and press freedom advocates, and Members of Congress, among others.” The Members of Congress said they believe the US Department of Justice “acted correctly in 2013 … when it declined to pursue charges against Mr. Assange for publishing the classified documents because it recognized that the prosecution would set a dangerous precedent.” They added that “it is the duty of journalists to seek out sources, including documentary evidence, in order to report to the public on the activities of government.”

“The United States must not pursue an unnecessary prosecution that risks criminalizing common journalistic practices and thus chilling the work of the press. We urge you to ensure that this case be brought to a close in as timely a manner as possible,” the document read. Since April 2019, Assange has been held in London’s high-security Belmarsh prison while he faces prosecution in the United States under the Espionage Act. If convicted, the WikiLeaks founder could face 175 years in prison. In December 2022, he appealed to the European Court of Human Rights to fight his extradition. WikiLeaks was founded by Assange in 2006 but rose to prominence in 2010 when it began publishing large-scale leaks of classified government information, including from the US.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Ed Dowd CBDCs

 

 

 

 

Tucker Mackey

 

 

Choir

 

 


Compared to other bears, polar bears are huge. The largest polar bear, reportedly weighing 1,002 kg, was a male shot at Kotzebue Sound in Alaska in 1960. This specimen, when mounted, stood 3.39 m (11 feet) tall on its hindlegs.

 

 

Chase

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle November 9 2023

Nov 092023
 
 November 9, 2023  Posted by at 9:41 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  71 Responses »


Hieronymus Bosch Adoration of the Magi c1472

 

• Another Interview With Dominique De Villepin On The Conflict In Palestine (MoA)
• ‘Catastrophic’ Mistake for US to be Drawn Into War With Hezbollah and Iran (Sp.)
• The Nothingness of a War Consciousness (Dennis Kucinich)
• Russia’s Public Pivot To Palestine (Pepe Escobar)
• Israel Attempt To Destroy Hamas Will Breed More Radicalisation – UN Expert (G.)
• The Incredible Lightness of Barack Obama (Victor Davis Hanson)
• ‘Open War’ May Break Out Within Kiev Regime Leadership – Analyst (Sp.)
• Ukrainian Women to Be Zelensky’s New Cannon Fodder (Sp.)
• ‘We Have A Plan’ – Zelensky (RT)
• Ukraine Will Bring War To EU – Hungary (RT)
• Wife of NY Judge In Case Against Trump Attacking Him On Social Media (PM)
• US House Panel Subpoenas Hunter & James Biden (Sp.)
• AstraZeneca Taken to Court Over “Defective” Covid Jab in Landmark Case (DS)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trump Tucker

 

 

Tucker Greenwald

 

 

 

 

Watters CIA
https://twitter.com/i/status/1722081720797675523

Election theft

 

 

 

 

Translated By Arnaud Bertrand, who says: “Another masterful interview on Gaza of Dominique De Villepin, former Prime Minister of France, who IMHO is the best diplomat the West has produced in decades.”

“The wounds of history are awakening.”

• Another Interview With Dominique De Villepin On The Conflict In Palestine (MoA)

We are essentially dealing with a policy of vengeance from the Netanyahu government. Israel has the right to self-defense, but self-defense does not give an indiscriminate right to kill civilian populations. When you target an ambulance, you can always imagine that there was a terrorist in one of the ambulances, or not. But the result is that there are children, women who die. Every child, every woman killed, that’s more terrorists. Therefore, Israel’s objective, what Israel achieves, is exactly the opposite of what they wish. So, it is essential today to change this logic and return to a strategy that is sound. Hostages, everything must be done to secure their release. But let’s not forget: the Palestinian people are also taken hostage, by Hamas and by Israel.

And Hamas, we all know, cares little for the Palestinian people. So telling Hamas: “we will not lift the siege, we will not have a humanitarian truce until the hostages are released,” is a dialogue of the deaf. Benjamin Netanyahu is waging a war to do everything so that the political solution does not come to the table. And this is where the international community, Europe, the United States, must tell Benjamin Netanyahu that this war is not acceptable. It is not acceptable because it leads us directly [to escalation] – because we can see it well, from Hamas we will move to Iran, from Iran we will move to other targets, and we then enter into the logic of a clash of civilizations. When Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu says that on one side there is the people of light and on the other the people of darkness, we can see the kind of spiral we are getting into.

All the wars that have been going on for the past twenty years are wars that begin and do not end. These are frozen conflicts. We know how to start a war; we do not know how to end it. And Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu could control Gaza, it would change nothing. There will continue to be terrorist attacks, Israelis will continue to live in fear. We must get out of this. The second reason why this is yesterday’s war is that the war against terrorism has never been won anywhere. Force is not the answer, once again. Vengeance is not the answer. The answer is justice, and that is what all the peoples of the world, all those who today watch what is happening, call for justice. Today the direction we must follow is to prevent Benjamin Netanyahu from continuing his suicidal logic that will make Israel a besieged state. They can besiege Gaza, but they will be besieged. And do not think that tomorrow we will again have a pacified discourse with Saudi Arabia, with the Arab states that will normalize the situation: no! The wounds of history are awakening.

Israel’s interest is to have a responsible state at its side. And this responsible state, let’s stop splitting hairs, must clearly be the West Bank, all of the West Bank. It must be Gaza, with access between the two territories, and East Jerusalem. The problem, and this is the whole point of Benjamin Netanyahu’s escalation, is that Benjamin Netanyahu does not want it. And the policy of separation must be dignified. That is, it must confer to the Palestinians a state where they can live, a viable state, a true state, which can build itself and which will be all the more at peace… [Host: “Does that mean that the settlements in the West Bank have to be removed?”] Well, when we left Algeria, there were a million French who left Algeria. Today there are 500,000 Israelis colonizing the West Bank, and there are 200,000 in East Jerusalem. [Host: “They must leave the West Bank?”] Yes. Yes, that is history, that is responsibility, that is the price! I tell you solemnly, it is the price of security for Israel! And all those who today consider that it will never be enough are pursuing the worst policy.”

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“Netanyahu has asked three successive American presidents to either attack Iran or to join with Israel to attack Iran, and the answer has been ‘no’ three times.”

• ‘Catastrophic’ Mistake for US to be Drawn Into War With Hezbollah and Iran (Sp.)

In an article for Al-Mayadeen earlier this week, former US Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter argued that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Natanyahu is trying to escalate the situation in Lebanon in order to draw the US into a multi-front war against Hezbollah and ultimately Iran. However, Ritter also argued that such a maneuver would not succeed, because Hezbollah won’t be goaded into a conflict that will put it at a disadvantage on the global stage. Ritter said if Hezbollah takes the initiative and launches a full-scale attack on Israel, “people will stop talking about Palestine. People will stop talking about Israel’s aggression, and they will now focus on a new front that will probably include Iran.”

“This is again why [Hezbollah leader] Hassan Nasrallah speaks of perseverance. Perseverance means that you have to struggle through the difficult times to ensure that you are not distracted from the strategic vision,” Ritter said, adding that “Hamas is winning this fight. Israel cannot prevail. Israel cannot defeat Hamas on the ground. Israel has lost the propaganda battle globally; they have lost in the United States.” John Kiriakou, a former CIA officer and whistleblower about the US torture program, told Radio Sputnik’s “The Critical Hour” on Tuesday that Ritter and Nasrallah are right: the US cannot win a war against Hezbollah and should not get involved in such a fight.

“I think Scott Ritter is right. And, you know, I would remind everybody, too, if you recall a month ago, in the immediate aftermath, just in 24 or 48 hours after the Hamas attack on Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu said – and he said it definitively at the time – that the Iranians were behind it all, that that Iran was supplying weapons to Hamas, that Hamas couldn’t have pulled this off by itself, this had to be an Iranian operation. And it wasn’t an Iranian operation. But that was very consistent with Netanyahu’s thinking over the past two decades,” said Kiriakou, who is also the co-host of “Political Misfits” on Radio Sputnik. “Netanyahu has asked three successive American presidents to either attack Iran or to join with Israel to attack Iran, and the answer has been ‘no’ three times. And so now he sees this as an opportunity to bring the Americans in, to either help defeat Hezbollah while the Israelis focus on Hamas, or to defeat Iran, while the Israelis focus on Hamas. Because the truth of the matter is: Israel cannot fight a two-front war. It’s just not equipped,” Kiriakou said.

“Now, we heard from Netanyahu’s office today that the IDF is – their words – ‘deep in the heart of Gaza’. Well, good luck with that. Good luck with miles and miles of tunnels, good luck finding an enemy that is intertwined with the civilian population. Good luck. That doesn’t mean that the United States should be dragged into it. We have our own problems now with Ukraine and with what seems to be an overwhelming national desire to jump in on the side of the Israelis from a distance – but that doesn’t mean that we have to send American troops to help Israel fight its war.”

Read more …

“The America that could be, our own hopes and dreams for a prosperous and secure nation, lie alongside the bodies of the men, women and children in those ruins.”

• The Nothingness of a War Consciousness (Dennis Kucinich)

We are now being presented, several times a day, with media examples of the effect of extreme violence visited on the captive people of Gaza. The images are heartbreaking. The reality unbearable. Bodies of Palestinian families strewn like refuse along a road that they had trekked as a path to safety. A car turns around at a checkpoint in Gaza, its occupants are hit with a shot from behind, from a tank and everything, the car and its occupants, disappear in a puff. A Palestinian journalist mourns his colleague, who only a half hour earlier, was reporting on air. After work, he went home, a bomb hit, killing him and his 11-member family. The video of his ruined house shows several children’s party dresses that lie amidst the rubble. The human family is in the rubble.

An ambulance convoy, filled with injured Gazans, under the supervision of medical authorities, headed to the Rafah border crossing, was struck by the Israeli air force with the stated suspicion that the vehicle, which was headed away from the battle, carried Hamas fighters. War reduces all nothingness. It is as if 10,000 Palestinians and more had never existed. But they did, just as the 1,400 Israelis killed on October 7 existed. They had birthdates, names, fragile exchanges of human emotion, of love of family, private moments in everyday life that confirmed their existence. Obliterated. Nothingness. Whatever media we consume, we see only a fraction of the massive display of inhumanity occurring in Gaza, the reduction of living, breathing, feeling people to objects. This is heartless. This is soulless. This reduces all of existence to the nothingness of smoke, human smoke.

The violence it is calculated. It is rooted in power politics, in racism, in apartheid, in twisted history, opportunism disguised as vengeance, statecraft as slaughter. We in America, are paying for the extermination of our fellow humans. Our weapons are creating carnage against helpless people. Our aircraft, our ships, our troops have entered the fray, greatly outnumbered. But we are not helpless. We must demand, now, that our government take a new direction, and soon, not only for a cease fire, but a ceasing of war, the end of arms sales to fuel war, the end of 800 military bases around the world; the end of the theft of our tax dollars for killing; the end of policies that pit people against each other, the end of the destructive psychology justifying violence to maintain “strategic balance,” the end of the false justifications for sending our troops into harm’s way.

It is an unfathomable, beyond the Orwellian, to commit ethnic cleansing and call it defense, to preach democratic values while practicing apartheid, to claim wholesale theft of property a right, to take Palestinians, their homes, kill their children, destroy their family, their culture, their history and deem it the fulfillment of a prophecy ordained by God. That this genocide is being visited upon the Palestinians by the descendants of those who suffered the utterly condemnable, indelible inhumanity of the Holocaust is incomprehensible. After all, who has suffered more than the Jews during the Holocaust? Entire families wiped out in a racist elimination plan. [..] Do not assume that it is only the artifacts of the humble, daily lives of Palestinians that lay buried in bomb craters. The America that could be, our own hopes and dreams for a prosperous and secure nation, lie alongside the bodies of the men, women and children in those ruins.

Leaving Gaza

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“This is not about Gaza, but about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The State of Palestine is an integral part of that solution.”

• Russia’s Public Pivot To Palestine (Pepe Escobar)

The Russian president made a direct connection between the American drive to extend “its global dictatorship” and the policy obsession with promoting non-stop chaos: “This chaos will help it contain and destabilize its rivals or, as they put it, their geopolitical opponents, among which they also rank our country, which in reality are new global growth centers and sovereign independent countries who are unwilling to kowtow and play the role of servants.” Crucially, Putin made a point to “repeat again” to both his internal and Global South audiences that, “the ruling elites of the United States and its satellites are behind the tragedy of the Palestinians, the massacre in the Middle East in general, the conflict in Ukraine, and many other conflicts in the world – in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and so on.”

It is a vitally important point. By conflating the perpetrators of the Ukraine conflict and the war on Gaza – “the United States and its satellites” – the Russian president has effectively lumped Israel in with the western Hegemon and its agenda of “chaos.” Essentially, what this tells us is that the Russian Federation unequivocally aligns itself with the overwhelming majority of Global South/Global Majority public opinion – from the Arab world to all the lands of Islam and beyond, in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Interestingly, Moscow aligns with the analyses by Iranian Leader Ayatollah Khamenei – a strategic partner of Russia – and Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah, in his searing, sophisticated, Sun-Tzu tinged address this past Friday, on “the spider that is trying to entangle the entire planet and the whole world in its cobweb.”

Exhibit B on Russia’s official position, specifically on Israel-Palestine, came from Russia’s permanent representative to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, at a special UN General Assembly session on Palestine two days after Putin’s address. Nebenzya made it abundantly clear that Israel, as an occupying power, does not have “the right for self-defense” – a fact supported by a UN International Court consultative ruling way back in 2004. At the time, the court also established, in a 14 out of 15 judicial vote, that Israel’s construction of a massive wall in occupied Palestine, including East Jerusalem, was against international law. Nebenzya, in legal terms, nullified the endlessly evoked “right to self-defense” argument brandished by Tel Aviv and the whole NATO galaxy. The Hegemon, Tel Aviv’s protector, recently vetoed Brazil’s draft humanitarian UN Security Council just because it did not mention Israel’s “right to self-defense.”

Even as he underscored that Moscow does recognize Israel’s right to ensure its security, Nebenzya stressed this right “could be fully guaranteed only in case of a fair resolution of the Palestinian problem based on recognized UN Security Council resolutions.” The record shows that Israel does not respect any UN Security Council resolution on Palestine. Exhibit C on Russia’s stand regarding Israel/Palestine was provided by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in a press conference with Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sabah Al-Sabah, two days after Nebenzya’s intervention at the UN. Lavrov reiterated Moscow’s priorities already stressed by Putin and Nebenzya: an urgent ceasefire, humanitarian corridors, and a return to the table to negotiate “an independent Palestinian state, as envisaged by the UN Security Council within the 1967 borders, which would coexist in peace and security with Israel.”

Lavrov stressed once again that several US-Israeli diversionary tactics are being employed “aimed at delaying (if not burying) the UN Security Council’s decision to establish a Palestinian state.” This, says the Russian foreign minister, implies condemning the Palestinians “to an eternal existence without rights. This will ensure neither peace nor security in the region, it will only drive the conflict deeper. And you won’t be able to drive it deep. The next ‘grapes of wrath’ will be sown, which will quickly ‘sprout.’” Lavrov’s analysis, as much as Putin’s, converges with Khamenei’s and Nasrallah’s: “This is not about Gaza, but about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The State of Palestine is an integral part of that solution.”

Russia is sowing the seeds to exercise the role of trusted mediator for all parties in Israel/Palestine – a role totally unsuitable for the Hegemon, especially after the tacit approval of the current Israeli ethnic cleansing of Gaza. It’s all here, clearly formulated by Lavrov: “It will be fundamentally important for us to know the unanimous opinion of the Arab world.” That is a message specifically targeting Sunni regimes vassalized by Washington. Then, when they get their act together, “we will support the Arab solution to this very difficult issue.”

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”They live with fear, and their major fear is not to see their mother and father any more, either because they are killed or because the children themselves get killed..”

• Israel Attempt To Destroy Hamas Will Breed More Radicalisation – UN Expert (G.)

Israel’s attempt to wipe out Hamas in response to the attacks of 7 October is likely to breed only further radicalisation, besides being unlawful, the UN special rapporteur on theoccupied Palestinian territories has said. In an interview with the Guardian, Francesca Albanese also said the international community was “reaping the whirlwind” of failing to heed the concerns of those, including herself, who had criticised Israel’s “systematic repression of Palestinian human rights”. “We raised the alarm in the international community, the human rights community, but no one has really listened,” Albanese said. “Now it has reached a dangerous point of no return where the chances of peaceful coexistence have dropped vertically off a cliff. In fact, we are staring into an abyss.” Albanese, an Italian academic, has often been accused by Israel of displaying pro-Palestinian bias, a charge she denies.

She challenged Israel to consider what is in its own self-interest. “Half the infrastructure of Gaza has been destroyed. 9,000 people have been killed, 3,500 of them are reported to be children, over 1,000 of them are still under the rubble. How on earth is that going to lead to peace?” She doubted it was possible to eradicate Hamas, which she described as “not just a military presence but a political reality”. “Even if it was possible to eradicate Hamas, if [Israel] was to exterminate everyone, everyone, so not just the militants, but anyone who works for Hamas including service providers, even if that was possible, but Israel’s occupation remained in place, all the grievances would continue to grow and another resistance will emerge. It’s natural, it’s almost a law of physics. History confirms that.” Her most recent report as UN special rapporteur was on children in the occupied territories, and she said she fears for the further psychological damage inflicted over the last month.

“When you see children there, a profound trauma has gone across their tiny bodies,” she said. “They can speak like adults, they speak of the rights, they speak of the world they know and the world they want. They live with fear, and their major fear is not to see their mother and father any more, either because they are killed or because the children themselves get killed. “The parents of these kids say that they’re scared because they see what it is like for them, that there are fewer alternatives to armed resistance. And it’s difficult to keep the kids away from that path because so many hopes have been destroyed. … When they resist peacefully, and use international law such as the International criminal court or the international court of justice, the international community has been deaf. People feel left with nothing and this is a huge responsibility for the international community to reflect upon.”

Read more …

X thread.

• The Incredible Lightness of Barack Obama (Victor Davis Hanson)

Joe Biden is caught in a quadfecta of corruption, cognitive decline, a failed agenda, and eroding polls. Amid this apparent vacuum, an opportunistic Barack Obama — who used to be more discreet in managing his third term—is reentering the arena. Last week, he came out as the overseer of the Biden administration’s AI agenda, even as his foundation’s “Democracy Forum” was warning Americans about the need for “inclusive capitalism” and the pathologies of “material consumption”—all this from a multi-mansioned multimillionaire. Now, Obama is weighing in on the Gaza war by undercutting his third-term presidential proxy.

Yet just as he seems somewhat clueless about the contradictions of an erstwhile “community organizer” turned into a hyper-capitalist, consumption-addicted elite, so too Obama has little self-awareness about how much of Biden’s unpopularity derives from his continuation of Obama’s own agendas on the economy, border, crime, race, foreign policy, and energy. His apparent obliviousness continues with his most recent odd assertion that, “The occupation and what’s happening to Palestinians is [sic] unbearable.” But Obama surely concedes that Gaza has been autonomous and free of Israelis since 2005, and governed by a “one man, one vote, once” Hamas clique since January 2006. Obama added that, “If you want to solve the problem, then you have to take in the whole truth, and you then have to admit nobody’s hands are clean – that all of us are complicit to some degree.”

In truth, Obama’s blanket accusation is absurd. Over the last 17 years, an autonomous Hamas has managed to create both a hierarchy of billionaires ensconced in luxury Qatari hotels, and the most sophisticated subterranean tunnel city in the world—but little else except corruption, poverty, and violence for all concerned. Obama again seemed unaware of his own confession when he lectured, “nobody’s hands are clean” and “all of us are complicit”. Not quite, Barack.

Those most culpable for the current catastrophe are Obama and his team, who invited in Robert Malley to be their point man on Hamas; cooked up the “Shiite crescent” misadventure; snubbed the grass-roots Green Movement that sought to overthrow the Iranian theocracy; invited the Russians back into the Middle East after a 40-year hiatus; fled Iraq and fueled the ISIS caliphate; lifted sanctions on Iran, giving it a multibillion-dollar war chest that armed to the teeth Hezbollah and Hamas; estranged the U.S. from Israel; and created the media echo chamber that empowered the disastrous Iran Deal.

Read more …

“What we can hear from what he’s saying and when he is giving some interviews, it’s seems the guy is losing his footing and he knows it.”

• ‘Open War’ May Break Out Within Kiev Regime Leadership – Analyst (Sp.)

The prospects of the 2024 presidential election in Ukraine taking place as intended seemed rather unlikely since the escalation of the Ukrainian conflict in February 2022, since the martial law imposed in the country around that time effectively bars elections. This week, the Kiev regime boss Volodymyr Zelensky has also announced that he thinks “the time is not right” for elections in Ukraine. Commenting on this development, independent journalist Sonja Van Den Ende suggested that Zelensky appears “freaked out all the time” as of late, seeing how his army suffers defeat after defeat on the battlefield and his Western backers seem skeptical about Kiev’s odds of winning the Ukrainian conflict. “He is desperate,” Van Den Ende said, arguing that in this situation, elections are the last thing Zelensky wants. “He doesn’t want it because he knows he will be out.”

She argued that Kiev’s inability to defeat the Russian military has become increasingly apparent today, and Ukrainian forces’ attempts to pretend otherwise by launching drone strikes against Russia’s Crimean Peninsula cannot change that. “When countries lose the war, like Hitler did, in the end they get desperate and more radicalized,” van den Ende remarked. “And I think Zelensky is more radicalized now. What we can hear from what he’s saying and when he is giving some interviews, it’s seems the guy is losing his footing and he knows it.” Meanwhile, international relations security analyst Mark Sleboda noted that the United States seems to be “pushing” for Ukraine to hold next year’s presidential election, “even though, according to Ukraine’s constitution, they should not be held” under the martial law.

“But then why is the US pushing for elections, especially since all the real opposition is banned in the country?” Sleboda inquired. According to him, there are hints that the US government wants to “switch horses”, so to speak, by replacing Zelensky with one of Kiev regime’s top generals Valery Zaluzhny, “without going through the embarrassment of another US backed coup in the country to replace the leader so quickly after the last one.” Sleboda also observed that there seems to have been a falling out between Zelensky and Zaluzhny after the latter recently told British media that the much-hyped Ukrainian counteroffensive turned out to be anything but a success.

Noting how one of Zaluzhny’s aides, Gennady Chistyakov, got killed by an explosion while celebrating his birthday earlier this week, Sleboda remarked that Ukrainian social media channels are just “full of speculation that this was a political hit. They also allege that this was a warning to Zaluzhny and taking one of his pieces off the board by Zelensky’s Chief of Staff Yermak who is seen as kind of a gray cardinal manipulating a lot of things within the regime.” “This seems a fairly credible version to me, considering the way they’re trying to cover this up and wash it away and the embarrassing feature of the whole thing. And that would indicate that we’re pretty much on the brink of open war between the Kiev regime’s political and military leadership,” Sleboda added.

Macgregor

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“..”a step towards equality”..

“.. It also raised the age limit for women eligible for conscription from 40 to 60…”

• Ukrainian Women to Be Zelensky’s New Cannon Fodder (Sp.)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky submitted legislation to the country’s Verkhovna Rada – the parliament – extending martial law and general mobilization in the country for another 90 days starting from November 16 this Tuesday. The move comes as the Kiev regime is struggling to increase the number of troops in the nation’s army after the botched summer counteroffensive claimed the lives of over 90,000 soldiers. A general mobilization in Ukraine was announced immediately after the beginning of Russia’s special military operation on February 24, 2022. Under the law, military reservists between the ages of 18 and 60 have been eligible for conscription. In September 2023, Kiev called upon EU member states to deport alleged Ukrainian “draft dodgers” – something which European countries have largely refused to do so far – while in August, Zelensky ordered a full review of all mobilization exemptions granted by Military Medical Commissions (MMCs) starting from February 24, 2022.

It was earlier reported that those Ukrainians who did not want to fight gave hefty bribes to MMC officials to get fraudulent passes. In the course of the conflict, reports and video-evidence have emerged showing Ukrainian men being forcibly grabbed by conscription officers in various part of the country. Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs) report that morale is low and that many conscripts are pushed to the frontline as “cannon fodder”, without proper training, protection or ammo. Meanwhile, a US newspaper has drawn attention to the Kiev regime’s effort to fill its soldier gap by mobilizing more Ukrainian women. According to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, roughly 43,000 women now serve in the nation’s armed forces which constitute a staggering 40% increase since 2021. Accordingly, the Ukrainian military canceled restrictions which prevented female recruits from serving as machine gunners, tank commanders, snipers and truck drivers. It also raised the age limit for women eligible for conscription from 40 to 60.

The newspaper noted that while the Ukrainian Army’s decision to draw more women and lift restrictions is “a step towards equality”, it “also reflects the tremendous toll” the Ukraine conflict has exacted. In fact, female recruits are no news for modern armies. Around 40,000 Russian women serve in the country’s Armed Forces. Of these, roughly 5,000 are officers, including 44 colonels. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, 1,100 Russian military servicewomen are directly involved in the special military operation in Ukraine; a third of whom have received state awards. When it comes to Israel Defense Forces (IDF), women make up 33% of soldiers and 51% of its currently serving officers. Prior to Israel’s massive operation against Gaza, which brought together around 360,000 reservists of both genders, around 10,000 women served in the IDF in permanent service.

Per the US Department of Defense, women make up 17.3% of the active-duty forces in the US Armed Forces (231,741 servicewomen) and women also constitute 21.4% of the National Guard and reserves (171,000). However, the problem with Ukrainian female recruits is not the quantitative increase in the number to fill the existing gaps, but the dire situation at the front that may quickly turn them into cannon fodder.

Read more …

Go away.

• ‘We Have A Plan’ – Zelensky (RT)

Ukraine has a strategy to continue its stalled counteroffensive push against Russia and will try to yield victories shortly, President Vladimir Zelensky has claimed. The president made the remarks on Wednesday as he appeared at the Reuters NEXT conference via a video link. “We have a plan. We have very concrete cities, very [concrete] directions where we go. I can’t share all the details but we have some slow steps forward on the south, also we have steps on the east,” Zelensky stated. While largely avoiding naming any exact locations where such activities are expected to happen, Zelensky promised certain “good steps near Kherson Region,”without elaborating further. Ukrainian forces have a plan for next year, but will “try” to show “battlefield results” by the end of 2023, Zelensky insisted.

“I am sure we’ll have success. It’s difficult,” he added. Zelensky’s remarks contrasted with the assessment given by his top general, Valery Zaluzhny, in an interview with The Economist published last week. The top military commander claimed the conflict between Moscow and Kiev had reached a WWI-style stalemate, with Russia having better chances given its far larger population and vast resources. This may “drag on for years” and“wear down” the country, with a“deep and beautiful breakthrough”unlikely, he warned. Zelensky has previously acknowledged the slow progress of the long-heralded counteroffensive launched by Kiev in early June.

While “some people”expected quick success, the drive ran into “certain difficulties,” Zelensky admitted. However, he somewhat shifted the blame for the lack of progress to Kiev’s Western backers, stating the country received less weaponry from abroad than it had originally hoped for. The botched counteroffensive has resulted in little to no territorial gains for the Ukrainian military, which sustained heavy personnel and material losses. According to Russian estimates, Kiev lost more than 90,000 soldiers in the push, with hundreds of military hardware pieces – including assorted Western-supplied vehicles – damaged and destroyed.

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It already has. Billions worth of it.

• Ukraine Will Bring War To EU – Hungary (RT)

Conditions are simply not right for the European Union to consider membership for Ukraine, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Wednesday. His words came in response to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s enlargement proposal earlier that day in Lisbon. She had said that that the EU should commence “accession negotiations” with both Ukraine and Moldova, while upgrading the former Soviet republic of Georgia to official candidate status. “By admitting Ukraine, the EU would also get war, which obviously no one wants to happen,” Szijjarto said, according to Hungarian media. “Enlargement should serve to spread peace, not to bring war into the EU.” He said it would be “absurd” for Brussels to assess Ukraine’s progress in implementing reforms or rule of law or any other membership criteria, given the ongoing conflict.

“Right, there is a war in Ukraine, so we can see that neither media freedom nor freedom of speech is enforced, we can see that elections are not held either,”Szijjarto noted. Budapest’s standing position is that Ukraine needs to restore the rights of the Transcarpathian Hungarian community to the level they had in 2015, before Kiev’s drive to disenfranchise the Russian-speaking population. “Since, according to the European Commission, Ukraine has not met the conditions set for membership, we do not consider any further steps to be timely with regard to the accession negotiations with Ukraine,” the foreign minister concluded. According to Szijjarto, the bloc is facing serious security and economic challenges and is getting weaker, so if it’s looking to admit new members as a way of regaining strength, it should look to the Western Balkans, first and foremost Serbia, instead.

According to an EC report, the talks with Ukraine should begin once Kiev satisfies the remaining demands involving the fight against corruption, adopting an EU-compliant law on lobbying and “strengthening safeguards” for ethnic minorities. The EU has not admitted any new members since Croatia in 2013. Earlier this year, Brussels outlined a vague plan to expand by 2030, eyeing the rest of the former Yugoslavia, Albania, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.

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“This is incredible bias,” Loomer wrote. “Less than 24 hours ago she posted tweets in which she said ‘F*CK TRUMP.’ ”

The judge must recuse himself but seems to enjoy the attention too much.

• Wife of NY Judge In Case Against Trump Attacking Him On Social Media (PM)

It has been revealed that the wife of the judge overseeing the civil case against Donald Trump in New York has been attacking the former president and his lawyer on social media. Dawn Marie Engoron’s posts came just days after her husband, Arthur, expanded a gag order against Trump and his legal team in order to prevent them from speaking publicly against anyone involved in the case. Screenshots obtained by investigative journalist Laura Loomer showed that Mrs. Engoron created, liked, and shared a number of anti-Trump posts, many of which were directly related to the trial. One post included an AI-generated image of Trump bald in an orange prison jumpsuit next to one of an old lady scrawling “F*ck Trump” on a brick wall. Another was simply the latter.

In another series of posts, Mrs. Engoron took aim at Trump lawyer Alina Habba, retweeting someone who described her as someone who “doesn’t know how to act in front of a judge,” and replying to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) with a story about The View’s Whoopi Goldberg mocking Habba as a “whiny baby.”Loomer became aware of Mrs. Engoron’s online behavior after the judge’s wife posted about her interview with Rep. George Santos (R-NY), which focused largely on the trial. After being exposed, Mrs. Engoron locked her account. “This is incredible bias,” Loomer wrote. “Less than 24 hours ago she posted tweets in which she said ‘F*CK TRUMP.’

She posted photoshopped pics of President Trump in an orange jump suit, she attacked me during my Live show last night for exposing her husband, and she is openly attacking President Trump’s lawyer [Alina Habba].” Loomer’s sentiments were shared by many who called on Engoron to recuse himself or “dismiss this nonsensical case.” “Where are all of the leftists asking Justices to recuse themselves over the political leanings of their spouses?” one user asked, referring to the backlash Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas faced over his wife’s views. Engoron has already fined Trump for violating the strict gag order after the former president went after the judge’s clerk on Truth Social.

Loomer

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“The House Oversight Committee has followed the money and built a record of evidence revealing how Joe Biden knew, was involved, and benefited from his family’s influence peddling schemes..”

• US House Panel Subpoenas Hunter & James Biden (Sp.)

The US House Oversight Committee announced Wednesday that Chairman James Comer issued subpoenas for Hunter and James Biden, Rob Walker and others to appear for interviews as part of the investigation into the Biden family’s business dealings. “House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-KY) today issued subpoenas to President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, brother, James Biden, and Biden family associate, Rob Walker, to appear for depositions,” the release said. Comer also requested additional members of the Biden family and their associates appear for transcribed interviews, including the US president’s daughter-in-law Hallie Biden and sister-in-law Sara Biden, the release said.

The Kentucky lawmaker plans to send additional subpoenas and transcribed interview requests later this week. “The House Oversight Committee has followed the money and built a record of evidence revealing how Joe Biden knew, was involved, and benefited from his family’s influence peddling schemes,” Comer said. “Now, the House Oversight Committee is going to bring in members of the Biden family and their associates to question them on this record of evidence.”In September, Comer issued subpoenas for Hunter and James Biden seeking to obtain their personal and business records. The Oversight Committee has disclosed since January that the Bidens and their associates had established more than 20 shell companies, amassing more than $24 million from sources in China and other countries.

Earlier this week, Comer said Joe Biden received a personal check for $40,000 in allegedly laundered money from China involving Hunter Biden’s companies. The latest comes after the top prosecutor in the Hunter Biden case told the House Judiciary Committee during a closed-door meeting on Tuesday that politics did not play a factor in filing charges against Hunter Biden. The meeting marked the first time a special counsel answered questions during an active probe before congressional lawmakers. Hunter Biden pleaded not guilty in October to three charges related to the possession of a firearm while he was under the influence of illicit drugs. The charges date back to gun forms from 2018.

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“Victims of VITT – a new condition identified by specialists – question the Government’s monitoring of the vaccine’s rollout and its efficacy”

• AstraZeneca Taken to Court Over “Defective” Covid Jab in Landmark Case (DS)

The Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine has been branded “defective” in a multi-million pound landmark legal action that will suggest claims over its efficacy were “vastly overstated”. The Telegraph has the story. The pharmaceutical giant is being sued in the High Court in a test case by Jamie Scott, a father-of-two who suffered a significant permanent brain injury that has left him unable to work as a result of a blood clot after receiving the jab in April 2021. A second claim is being brought by the widower and two young children of 35-year-old Alpa Tailor, who died after having the jab made by AstraZeneca, the U.K.-based pharmaceutical giant. The test cases could pave the way for as many as 80 damages claims worth an estimated £80 million over a new condition known as Vaccine-induced Immune Thrombocytopenia and Thrombosis (VITT) that was identified by specialists in the wake of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine rollout. …

The vaccine, which was heralded at its launch by Boris Johnson as a “triumph for British science“, is no longer used in the U.K. The Government recommends three other vaccines for its autumn booster programme. In the months following the rollout, the serious side-effect of the AstraZeneca jab was identified by scientists. Following this, it was recommend it no longer be given to the under-40s in the U.K. because the risk of receiving the jab outweighed the serious harm posed by Covid. AstraZeneca last night told the Telegraph that patient safety was its “highest priority”, that its vaccine, called Vaxzevria, had “continuously been shown to have an acceptable safety profile”, and that regulators around the world “consistently state that the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks of extremely rare potential side-effects”. It is understood AstraZeneca, in its legal response, denies causing Mr. Scott’s injuries.

Official figures from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) show at least 81 deaths in the U.K. are suspected to have been linked to the adverse reaction that caused clotting in people who also had low blood platelets. In total, almost one in five people who suffered from the condition died as a result, according to the MHRA’s own figures. … As many as 80 claimants could lodge legal cases with the High Court by the end of the year in a class action that threatens to undermine faith in the rollout of the AstraZeneca vaccine that was developed jointly with Oxford University. In Mr. Scott’s claim, his lawyers argue that he suffered “personal injuries and consequential losses arising out of his sustaining Vaccine Induced Immune Thrombosis with Thrombocytopenia (VITT) as a result of his vaccination on April 23rd 2021, with the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccination”, which the legal claim alleges was “defective”.

They also argue that no warning of the risk of VITT was included in the product information on the date of supply of the vaccine. AstraZeneca issued press releases following clinical trials saying the vaccine – known as Vaxzevria – was between 62% and 90% effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 depending on dosages, with an average of 70%. The legal claim states: “In fact, the absolute risk reduction concerning COVID-19 prevention was only 1.2%.” An absolute risk reduction measures how much the vaccine reduces an individual’s baseline risk of getting ill from Covid at a particular time. If Covid levels are low, the absolute risk reduction rate will be much lower too. This is different from a relative risk reduction, which compares the numbers of vaccinated people getting ill with those getting ill who did not receive the jab.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

CO2

 

 

 

 

Massie Kerry

 

 

 

 

Bigger boat

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle November 7 2023

Nov 072023
 
 November 7, 2023  Posted by at 9:52 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  70 Responses »


Hieronymus Bosch St. John on Patmos 1489

 

• Hamas Political Wing Offered ‘Clemency’ for Hostage Release – Sy Hersh (Sp.)
• US to Transfer $320 Million in Precision Bomb Kits to Israel (Antiwar)
• US Diplomats Condemn Israel Policy – Politico (RT)
• Israel To Take Over ‘Security’ In Gaza – Netanyahu (RT)
• The ICC Must Investigate The Crime Of Genocide In Gaza (Jeremy Corbyn)
• Arab States Condemn Israeli Minister’s ‘Nuke Gaza’ Threat (RT)
• The Four Wars (Jim Kunstler)
• Trump: “I’m The Only One That Will Prevent World War Three” (SN)
• Judge Tells Trump’s Lawyers To ‘Control Him’ (RT)
• Jack Smith Could Be on Shaky Ground in Trump Charge (ET)
• Legacy Media Readies American Public for Ukraine’s Defeat (Sp.)
• ‘Rational Actors’ Ready To Take Power In Ukraine – Moscow (RT)
• Ukrainian Army Has ‘Run Out of Cannon Fodder’ – Former US Envoy (Sp.)
• Demographics Is Destiny (Denninger)

 

 

 

 

Habba

Alina Habba response to the Judge saying I’m not here to hear what he has to say: “Then why exactly am I being paid as an attorney and why exactly are taxpayers dollars being used in this court room. The answer is very clear. Because Ms. James… ‘wants to’ make a name for herself. She said this morning that the numbers don’t lie and it won’t lie in this case. Ms. James I have a message for you. The number didn’t lie when you ran for Governor and that’s why you dropped out. And the numbers don’t lie when President Trump runs for office in 2024 and those numbers are loud and clear. This country is falling apart and if we don’t stop corruption in court rooms, where attorneys are gagged. Where attorneys are not allowed to say what they need to say to protect their clients interest. It doesn’t matter what your politics are. Everyone has a right in this country to get up and put a defense. “

 

 

 

 

Right to defend
https://twitter.com/i/status/1721516768659714477

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“We’re holding out clemency for the Hamas political leadership – giving them a chance to surrender the hostages and cling to life by moving them to the hospital..”

• Hamas Political Wing Offered ‘Clemency’ for Hostage Release – Sy Hersh (Sp.)

Israel, whose military claimed it has encircled Gaza City, and was poised to press on with its attack on Hamas despite widespread calls for a ceasefire or temporary pauses, has estimated that over 240 hostages are being held by the militant group. In secret talks with Israel, the political leadership of Hamas has been offered “clemency” in return for a release of the Gaza-held hostages, US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh wrote in an article on Substack. The offer was extended to the group’s political wing, who claim to have not been directly involved in the planning for the October 7 Hamas attack, sources told the journalist. “The thought was that if they agree to try their own people and order them executed, they will be given their lives while also exonerating Israel for the war,” an American official was quoted as saying.

As the Israeli military and political leadership hunt down members of the Hamas military “in the tunnels and rubble of Gaza City,” they have “orders are to shoot to kill on sight,” wrote the journalist. At the same time, the fate of the remaining hostages in Gaza has prompted Israel to come up with incentive for the Hamas political leaders to “save their own lives by arranging for Israeli hostages to be transferred to a basement in the besieged al-Shifa hospital.” Israeli military has insisted that the largest medical complex in the Gaza Strip is a stronghold of Hamas. It earlier released 3D-rendered footage showing the alleged extent of a Hamas headquarters it says is burrowed deep underneath the Al-Shifa Hospital. Some Israeli officials “fear that time is running out” amid lack of understanding as to “how long the air in the tunnels will be breathable,” wrote the journalist, adding that there were hopes Israeli hostages could be moved to “safer, drier, and healthier quarters below ground in Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital.” “I was told that water and food would be available,” added Hersh.

“We’re holding out clemency for the Hamas political leadership – giving them a chance to surrender the hostages and cling to life by moving them to the hospital,” a source told the Pulitzer Prize-winner. In a “significant stage” in Israel’s war against Hamas, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have claimed it has encircled Gaza City, and divided the besieged enclave into two. It touted its looming operation to destroy the tunnels and Hamas’ military and civilian institutions. At the same time, it is estimated that militants are holding hostage over 248 soldiers and civilians, including foreign nationals. “Thirty-one of the hostages are seventy years and older—one is said to be a Holocaust survivor, and two are infants, aged four months and eight months, with no mother or father, and twenty-three under eighteen years of age,” an Israeli was cited as telling Hersh. The source added that the International Committee of the Red Cross “has not been pressuring Hamas to grant them access to the hostages, although it did seek almost immediate access to the two hundred Hamas prisoners in Israeli custody.”

Sy Hersh recalled that “a possible breakthrough” concerning the hostages “emerged in secret talks between Israel and Yahya Sinwar, a onetime prisoner of Israel who now directs the political wing of Hamas.” Sinwar issued a statement on October 28, that said: “We are ready to conduct an immediate prisoner exchange deal that includes the release of all Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails in exchange for all prisoners held by the Palestinian resistance.” Since then, the Hamas leader and his colleagues have been informed by Israel that if they want to survive, they must “release the Israeli hostages and agree to begin holding immediate war-crime tribunals.” Sy Hersh underscored that the Israelis were seeking the death penalty “for those Hamas combat leaders who encouraged and then did nothing to stop the war crimes of their fighters.”

There has been growing global condemnation of Israel’s retaliatory bombing of Gaza, with the Palestinian Health Ministry saying 10,022 people have been killed since October 7, including 4,104 children and 2,641 women. Hundreds of thousands of protesters have flooded the streets of Washington, London, Berlin, Rome, Santiago, other cities, demanding an immediate ceasefire, with many perceiving Israel’s actions as a “war crime.” While the “concept of an Israeli-instigated war-crimes tribunal amid a bombing campaign that has flattened much of Gaza may seem out of a bad novel,” wrote Seymour Hersh, he cited an Israeli expert with insider knowledge of the hostage talks as insisting that Yahya Sinwar “could be open to a deal.” “He is a fanatic and an ascetic… Dedicated to the cause. No family, very religious but got very friendly with Shin Bet [Israeli internal security] guys while in prison and was seen as not irrational. He will want a chance to give service to the cause. He will be open to a door,” the expert said. It was added that Sinwar and some Hamas officials “now in Qatar,” would hold out for a deal “to include a commitment that Israel would not come after them if a deal is made.”

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“..the Pentagon has refused to say how much weaponry, equipment, and other types of aid it has provided Israel since October 7..”

• US to Transfer $320 Million in Precision Bomb Kits to Israel (Antiwar)

The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that the Biden administration is planning a $320 million transfer of precision-guided bomb kits to Israel, a show of support for the Israeli onslaught despite the growing civilian death toll. The report said the administration notified congressional leaders on October 31 that it intended to transfer Spice Family Gliding Bomb Assemblies, which turn unguided bombs into precision-guided munitions that can be fired by Israeli warplanes. The bombs will be transferred from weapons manufacturer Rafael USA to its Israeli parent company, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. It’s unclear what funds will be used for the transfer or if Israel is purchasing the equipment.

Israel receives $3.8 billion in annual military aid from the US, and the Biden administration is looking to provide another $14 billion to support the Gaza campaign. In the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel, the US began immediately shipping new military equipment to Israel. According to the Journal, the Pentagon has refused to say how much weaponry, equipment, and other types of aid it has provided Israel since October 7. Besides the material support, the US is flying drones over Gaza, has special operations forces in Israel, and has deployed an enormous amount of firepower to the region. The news of the $320 million bomb transfer came as the death toll in Gaza surpassed 10,000, including over 4,000 children. US officials claim they are pressing Israel about the civilian casualties, but the administration refuses to condition military aid or use other leverage it has.

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“When Israel supports settler violence and illegal land seizures or employs excessive use of force against Palestinians, we must communicate publicly that this goes against our American values..”

• US Diplomats Condemn Israel Policy – Politico (RT)

Lower- and mid-level diplomats at the US State Department have called on the administration of President Joe Biden to condemn Israel’s bombing of civilians and demand a ceasefire in Gaza, according to a leaked memo seen by Politico. The memo is the latest sign of division within the department over Israel. The memo calls on Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other senior diplomats to publicly demand that Israel agree to a ceasefire, and to align their public and private statements on the conflict, Politico reported on Monday. Criticizing Israel in private but not in public “contributes to regional public perceptions that the United States is a biased and dishonest actor, which at best does not advance, and at worst harms, US interests worldwide,” the memo reportedly states.

“We must publicly criticize Israel’s violations of international norms such as failure to limit offensive operations to legitimate military targets,” the message continues. “When Israel supports settler violence and illegal land seizures or employs excessive use of force against Palestinians, we must communicate publicly that this goes against our American values so that Israel does not act with impunity.” The memo was marked “sensitive but unclassified,” Politico noted, adding that it is unclear how many people signed it, and whether it was submitted to the department’s ‘Dissent Channel,’ which functions as a soapbox for employees to question policy decisions.

Several similar memos have been circulated since the Israel-Hamas war began on October 7, and Blinken met with a group of dissenting staffers late last month, the Huffington Post reported. A week before the alleged meeting, the State Department’s arms-transfer chief quit his job in protest, writing in his resignation letter that Washington’s rush to arm Israel was “shortsighted, destructive, unjust, and contradictory to the very values that we publicly espouse.” While Blinken has criticized incidents of violence against Palestinians by Jewish settlers, he has spoken more vaguely about the mounting civilian death toll in Gaza. “We’ve engaged the Israelis on steps that they can take to minimize civilian casualties,” he said on Monday, after the Gaza Health Ministry reported that more than 10,000 people had died in the enclave since Israel’s bombing campaign began a month ago.

Despite an overwhelming vote in favor of a ceasefire at the UN General Assembly late last month, Blinken has repeatedly rejected calls for a halt to the Israeli operation. Any pause in the fighting, he argued last week, would give Hamas time to “regroup and repeat what it did on October 7,” referring to the group’s assault on Israel that left around 1,400 people dead. Blinken’s aversion to a ceasefire was echoed in a memo sent to US diplomats at the outset of the conflict. The State Department email urged diplomats and communications staffers to steer clear of phrases such as “restoring calm,” “end to violence/bloodshed,” or “de-escalation/ceasefire,” and instead to emphasize the Jewish state’s right to “self-defense.”

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“President Joe Biden said the move would be a “big mistake.” “It would be a mistake… for Israel to occupy… Gaza again..”

• Israel To Take Over ‘Security’ In Gaza – Netanyahu (RT)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said his country will have to manage “overall security” in Gaza for an “indefinite” period of time after the current war with Hamas ends. Speaking to ABC News for an interview published on Monday, Netanyahu was asked about Israel’s long-term plans for the territory should it succeed in dismantling Hamas, suggesting the need for a lengthy deployment. “I think Israel will, for an indefinite period, have the overall security responsibility [in Gaza] because we’ve seen what happens when we don’t have it,” he said. “When we don’t have that security responsibility, what we have is the eruption of Hamas terror on a scale that we couldn’t imagine.” The comments appear to contradict past statements from senior Israeli officials.

In announcing a major ground assault on the Palestinian enclave last month, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant emphasized that Israeli troops must not be responsible for “day-to-day life in the Gaza Strip.” While the official said Israel would establish a new “security reality” in the area after the current war, he suggested it would seek to hand off post-conflict governance to a third party. Even while vocally supporting Israel’s military operation against Hamas, Washington has warned of the perils of another Gaza occupation. During a recent interview with CBS, President Joe Biden said the move would be a “big mistake.” “It would be a mistake… for Israel to occupy… Gaza again,” he said. “But going in… but taking out the extremists, the Hezbollah is up north but Hamas down south, is a necessary requirement.”

Israel first occupied Gaza during the 1967 Six-Day War with Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, and only withdrew its troops and settlers nearly 40 years later. It has maintained a tight blockade over the enclave in the years since, and has launched periodic bombing campaigns against Hamas since the group took control of Gaza in 2006. The latest round of fighting erupted last month on the heels of a Hamas terrorist attack which killed around 1,400 Israelis. The IDF has launched weeks of retaliatory airstrikes and gradually escalated a ground attack on Gaza, leaving more than 10,000 Palestinians dead, according to local officials.

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No Jeremy. The ICC lost all credit when it charged Putin for kidnapping children.

• The ICC Must Investigate The Crime Of Genocide In Gaza (Jeremy Corbyn)

My last visit to Al-Shati refugee camp was early 2013. Located on the Mediterranean coast in the north of Gaza, Al-Shati was otherwise known as “Beach Camp”. Vendors sold fruit under multi-coloured parasols. Cats slept in the middle of narrow alleys. Children jostled over skipping rope in the shade. Beach Camp was established in 1948 after 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced in the Nakba. Initially, the camp accommodated around 23,000 refugees. In the following seven decades, that number grew to 90,000, cramped inside 0.5 square kilometres (0.2 square miles) of land – 70 times more populated than London’s city centre. People in Gaza have been living under a blockade for the past 16 years and the Israeli occupation controls most of what goes in and out of Gaza.

Beach Camp was no different – and people there largely relied on aid and services from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) to survive, including a health centre, a food distribution centre and several school buildings. Beach Camp Primary School was beautifully maintained. I was allowed up onto the roof, where I could see the fence with Israel on one side. Out to sea were several Israeli patrol boats keeping Palestinian fishermen from sailing more than six nautical miles out. The school was run by inspiring and hard-working teachers, whose philosophy was to create a calm atmosphere for discovery, music, theatre and art. Some of the students showed me their work. Many were drawings of planes, fences and bombs. But there were other drawings too: of their parents, their brothers, their sisters and their friends.

All of the children, obviously, had underlying trauma, but they also had a desire to learn, share and play. On October 9, two days after the deplorable attack by Hamas in southern Israel, there were reports of an Israeli air strike on Beach Camp. This wasn’t the first strike on the camp. In May 2021, at least 10 Palestinians, eight of whom were children, were killed in an air strike. Nor was it the last. Beach Camp has been repeatedly targeted in the past three weeks. When I hear news of bombardment in Gaza, I think about that school at Beach Camp. I don’t know if it is still there. I don’t know if those children and teachers are still alive. I don’t know.

The Israeli army has dropped 25,000 tonnes of bombs onto a tiny strip of land, populated by 2.3 million people. There is no meaningful sense whatsoever that they are trying to avoid civilian deaths. More than 9,900 people in Gaza have been killed, including more than 4,800 children. Survivors still under siege are running out of the basic means of survival: water, fuel, food and medical supplies. Doctors are performing surgery without anaesthesia. Mothers are watching their babies fight for survival in incubators running out of electricity. People are being forced to drink seawater. More than 1 million people have been displaced from their homes.

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“The Israeli military has dropped more than 25,000 tons of explosives on Gaza since October 7, equivalent in power to two of the nuclear bombs used on Hiroshima..“

• Arab States Condemn Israeli Minister’s ‘Nuke Gaza’ Threat (RT)

Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and other Arab states have all denounced Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu for suggesting that his country drop a nuclear bomb on Gaza. Eliyahu was suspended, but not fired, for his remarks. Speaking to Radio Kol Berama on Sunday, Eliyahu said that using nuclear weapons against the Palestinian enclave “is one of the possibilities,” after his interviewer said that this would “flatten” the area and “eliminate everybody there.” Eliyahu, a member of the far-right Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party, was indefinitely suspended by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later on Sunday. The minister’s comments “show to what extent extremism and brutality have penetrated the Israeli government,” the Saudi Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The fact that Eliyahu was not outright fired, the ministry continued, “reflects the Israeli government’s disregard for all values of humanity, morality, religion and law.” “These statements constitute a violation of international law, as well as incitement to commit grave violations of International Humanitarian Law, such as war crimes, and raise grave concerns of an intent to commit genocide,” the UAE said. Jordan released a similar statement describing Eliyahu’s comments as a “call for genocide and a hate crime that cannot be ignored,” while the Qatari Foreign Ministry said that it “strongly condemns the threat made by an Israeli minister to strike Gaza with a nuclear bomb and considers it a serious incitement to a war crime.” Eliyahu’s remarks revealed that “Israel possesses nuclear weapons, which is an open secret,” Arab League Secretary General Ahmed Aboul Gheit declared.

The comments also “confirm the truth of the racist view Israelis hold against Palestinians,” he added. “This is the true face of the occupation government.” Despite Eliyahu defending his comments as “metaphorical,” he faced heavy criticism within Israel. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant condemned his “baseless and irresponsible words,” while opposition leader Yair Lapid called on Netanyahu to fire the minister for causing “harm to the families of the hostages, Israeli society, and our international standing.” The Israeli military has dropped more than 25,000 tons of explosives on Gaza since October 7, equivalent in power to two of the nuclear bombs used on Hiroshima, the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor NGO said in a press release on Thursday. More than 10,000 people have been killed and 25,000 injured in the strip as a result of the Israeli bombardment and ground offensive, according to the latest figures from the Gaza Health Ministry.

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“..We emerge from this catastrophe a nearly medievalized society with a steeply-reduced population, unable to resist China’s attempt to colonize us. Pretty scary, huh? Just let’s keep doing what we’re doing.”

• The Four Wars (Jim Kunstler)

Bringing us to War No. 3: The US Government’s war against its own citizens. This has been going on since Mr. Trump stepped onto the scene, and has included a semi-successful war against Mr. Trump personally — except that not only has it failed to put him out of business as a politician, it has substantiated many of the claims he made about corrupt and perfidious government that resulted in his election in 2016. All of that has only enhanced his polling numbers. And the lawless, bad faith court cases lodged against him have demonstrated the US government’s grievous fall into willful malfeasance that has the DOJ arresting and unfairly persecuting hundreds of innocent Americans that support Mr. Trump.

A big part of the government’s war against US citizens has been the bizarre Covid-19 episode and the long-running effort by public officials to deceive the population about it, including lockdowns and destruction of small businesses, the dishonest suppression of viable treatments, gross censorship about the harms of the mRNA vaccines, and trickery around the origins of the vaccines in the back rooms of our Department of Defense. Another front of this war is the wide-open Mexican border, a lawless state of affairs created as deliberate policy by our cabinet secretaries, and done at a time when there is tremendous animus against the US from many other nations who send thousands of sketchy young men into our country with no attempt by our border officials to determine who they are.

It looks like “Joe Biden’s” hash will be settled shortly when the House, reorganized under a young and vital new speaker, reveals the Biden family’s bank records and begins the process of impeaching the president for bribery. “Joe Biden’s” party pretends that this is not happening and appears to have no plan to deal with consequences. For the moment, they still stupidly tout him as their candidate for the 2024 election, another arrant falsehood you can add to the thousand-and one affronts against the public that this party has tried to put over. Many Americans suspect there will not be a 2024 election, specifically that whoever is president in the coming year will invoke yet another national emergency order to postpone it on spurious grounds. Many are also far from persuaded that the 2020 election that installed “Joe Biden” was honest and legitimate.

Which brings us to War No. 4: The American peoples’ war against a government gone rogue. Obviously, it is not underway yet, but it’s easy to see how it might develop. I think it could commence in the aftermath of a financial calamity that is visibly brewing in the debt markets. The net result will be a collapsed standard-of-living for everyone in the USA, the breakdown of supply lines and daily business, and a very sharp loss of legitimacy for the people who have been in charge of anything in this country. We emerge from this catastrophe a nearly medievalized society with a steeply-reduced population, unable to resist China’s attempt to colonize us. Pretty scary, huh? Just let’s keep doing what we’re doing.

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“..we have unbelievable technology. It can shoot a needle out of the air, it is incredible.”

• Trump: “I’m The Only One That Will Prevent World War Three” (SN)

During a speech at the Florida Republican Party’s “Freedom Summit” in Kissimmee Saturday, Donald Trump declared that he is the only candidate who can prevent World War Three, warning that “we are closer than anyone understands” to “obliteration.” Trump also told the crowd that “When you think of it, how important elections are, you’d have millions of people alive right now if the 2020 election was not rigged. They would be alive. Ukraine, Israel. The attack would have never been made. All of these people would be alive, the cities would be thriving.” Trump pointed to the global chaos that is now further unfolding, noting “For four straight years, under the Trump administration, I kept America safe, I kept Israel safe, and I kept the entire world safe.”

“I kept my promise and recognized Israel’s eternal capital and opened the American embassy in Jerusalem,” Trump continued, adding “I also recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and really, probably most importantly, but they did nothing with it, I withdrew from the disastrous Iran nuclear deal, but they were supposed to do something with it. And you could have because Iran did not have any money.” “What is going on. What is going on now is shocking,” Trump urged, adding “All over the planet our enemies knew that if you tried to kill our citizens we will kill you. If you spill a drop of American blood, we will spill a gallon of your blood. That is what it was, and it was not a threat, that was just the way it was going to have to be. And we do it because we want to make sure we are not starting wars. We did not have to start wars.” Trump further noted, “In the debate with beautiful Hillary Clinton, she said, ‘Look at him. Look at the way he talks. He is going to get us into wars. He is going to start World War III.’

And I said, ‘No, no, it is the way I talked that will keep you out of World War III.’” He continued, “To every American is petrified that Joe Biden’s catastrophic weakness will bring our country to ruin, which he has a great chance of doing, he is close to that anyway. He’s close to economic ruin, I make you this promise, as your president, and nobody else can say it, I will restore peace through strength, and, yes, I am the only one that will prevent World War III, because we are very close to World War III.” Trump further warned, “this will not be a First World War or a Second World War. This will be obliteration, because the level of power, of weaponry of power you have never seen anything — you do not want to see it. When they talk about global warming, because in 250 years our ocean will be one inch higher, and they never mention the power of nuclear weapons, where one madman can do damage the likes of which nobody has ever seen before. It is just crazy. It is crazy to see it, it is crazy to talk about it.”

“But I will stop it, and it will happen very quickly. There will not be a World War III, and we are closer than anyone understands. To protect our citizens from foreign threats, I will build a state-of-the-art missile defense shield. We will build that. We will build that,” Trump vowed. He continued, “And it will be jobs for America. It will be built in America. We developed the technology, nobody else, by the way. A lot of people said we developed the technology. The technology was developed by us, and it works. You see it. Ronald Reagan wanted to do it, but at that time they did not have the technology. The concept was good, but we have unbelievable technology. It can shoot a needle out of the air, it is incredible. Would you feel a little safer, a little more comfortable if we can do that? And it is jobs, jobs in America.”

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“When another Trump lawyer stood up to argue that Trump should be allowed to answer the questions in his own way, the judge shouted, “Sit down already. Sit down.”

• Judge Tells Trump’s Lawyers To ‘Control Him’ (RT)

Former US President Donald Trump has taken the stand in the New York civil fraud case against him, angering the judge by criticizing the court and arguing that he is being attacked by politically motivated prosecutors around the country. The trial resumed on Monday with Trump testifying for the first time to rebut allegations by New York Attorney General Letitia James that he and other executives in his real estate organization fraudulently inflated the value of key properties to get favorable loan terms. James is seeking $250 million in damages in her lawsuit, which comes at a time when the ex-president also faces felony charges in four separate criminal cases against him. While being questioned by state attorney Kevin Wallace, Trump said, “You and every other Democratic district attorney, AG, US attorney were coming after me from 15 different sides – all Democrats, all Trump haters.”

He accused James of perpetrating a “political witch hunt” and claimed that Judge Arthur Engoron was biased against him. The judge repeatedly interrupted Trump’s testimony to complain that his answers were not directly responsive to the questions and veered off into political speeches. “This is not a political rally,” Engoron told Trump’s lawyers, suggesting that they “need to have a talk with him right now.” As the ex-president continued to offer his opinions on the case, the judge said, “I beseech you to control him if you can. If you can’t, I will. I will excuse him and draw every negative inference that I can.” At stake is the future of Trump’s real estate empire. The judge, who has already found Trump and his co-defendants liable for “persistent and repeated” fraud, will decide on penalties at the end of the trial.

He has said that he will dissolve some of Trump’s companies, which could result in the ex-president losing some of his most prominent New York properties. Trump, who is polling as the leading Republican candidate in the 2024 presidential race, has called Engoron a “deranged, Trump-hating judge.” The loans related to the disputed property valuations have already been repaid. Trump testified on Monday that although he lowered the valuations on two of his properties, his holdings were actually worth more overall than claimed on the financial statements given to lenders. “The most valuable asset was the brand value,” he said. “I became president because of my brand.”

Christopher Kise, one of Trump’s lawyers, told Engoron that it was only fair for the American people to hear the ex-president’s views on the case. “This is a situation where you have on the stand a candidate for president of the United States,”Kise said. “The court needs to hear what he has to say about these statements.” Engoron shot back, “No, I am not here to hear what he has to say.”When another Trump lawyer stood up to argue that Trump should be allowed to answer the questions in his own way, the judge shouted, “Sit down already. Sit down.” Undeterred by the judge’s interjections, Trump said, “This is a very, very unfair trial – very — and I hope the public is watching it.”

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“..everyone in this election is going to be talking about these cases,” the law professor said, “except one person under this gag order and that is Donald Trump.”

• Jack Smith Could Be on Shaky Ground in Trump Charge (ET)

Two analysts have noted that special counsel Jack Smith might be on shaky legal ground in his federal election-related case against former President Donald Trump. Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor, said that the Trump charge of corruptly obstructing an official proceeding hasn’t been “extensively litigated” over the past several decades, adding that a ruling could come on whether it is appropriate in the former president’s case. Multiple defendants who were charged in connection to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach have “argued that Congress certifying the electoral votes was not an ‘official proceeding’ and courts have universally rejected that argument,” she told Newsweek last week.

“This bigger question is, what satisfies the ‘corruptly’ requirement? Is it any criminal conduct, such as trespassing in the Capitol building or submitting fake electors? Or does the corrupt conduct have to relate to the other subsections of 1512, which prohibit destroying or concealing evidence?” she asked. She continued: “If the corruption requires consciousness of guilt, then Trump can argue that he genuinely believed the election was stolen. Either way, this issue will likely end up before the United States Supreme Court because it is a novel issue that affects hundreds of criminal defendants, including the former president.” Lawfare’s Roger Parloff wrote in a recent article that the Department of Justice (DOJ) recently won two “fragile” victories in two cases involving Jan. 6 defendants, and Mr. Smith has “relied on [a] statute” that was used by other prosecutors to charge at least 317 individuals in the Jan. 6 case.

“Smith has relied on that statute and its conspiracy equivalent, 18 U.S.C. § 1512(k), for two of the four counts in his indictment against former President Donald Trump for allegedly conspiring to overthrow the 2020 election,” Mr. Parloff wrote. “Those counts, whose legal sufficiency Trump challenged in a motion to dismiss this week, are the most serious leveled against Trump in that case, carrying a maximum 20-year term of imprisonment.” Three appellants in a Jan. 6 case are now petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to review a recent appeals court ruling that favored the DOJ, he noted, but he said that the D.C. appeals court judges “can’t agree about its holdings, and its holdings determine the viability of a 20-year felony that an ex-president and major presidential candidate now stands charged with violating.”

“Moreover, at the appeals court level, judges’ acceptance of the Justice Department’s interpretations of that law have been 100 percent correlated with the political party of the judge’s appointer,” he wrote. “If that trend continues, and if either case climbs one more rung up the appellate ladder, the department (and Mr. Smith) faces bleak prospects indeed.” The comments come as constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley warned that the gag order targeting President Donald Trump is “unconstitutional” and said that an appeals court ruling to rescind the order last week was a “quite significant” development. Several weeks ago, District of Columbia Judge Tanya Chutkan placed a gag order on the former president in the Jan. 6-related case, saying President Trump cannot speak about potential witnesses, court staff, or prosecutors. An appeals court in the district froze Judge Chutkan’s order late last week, with oral arguments being set for Nov. 20.

“They could have left it to continue, to continue while they reviewed it, but they decided perhaps in an abundance of caution to order this stoppage until they can give it a full review,” Mr. Turley, a professor for George Washington University, said on Fox News on Nov. 3. “The reason I think this could be quite significant is because I think the order is unconstitutional.” He added that it is “very odd” to issue the order because the same court “insisted on having this trial before the election, sort of shoehorned it in before Super Tuesday,” referring to the key GOP presidential nominating date. “And everyone in this election is going to be talking about these cases,” the law professor said, “except one person under this gag order and that is Donald Trump.”

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“Russian victory in Ukraine would be a terrible blow to US interests, but not terrible enough to risk nuclear war.. ”

• Legacy Media Readies American Public for Ukraine’s Defeat (Sp.)

A visibly agitated President Volodymyr Zelensky defiantly denied on Sunday that the NATO-Russia proxy war in Ukraine had entered a “stalemate,” assuring in an extensive interview with US media that Moscow has not “checkmated” Kiev, and that Ukraine still has many “different plans” to maintain the initiative. “Our military are coming up with different plans, with different operations in order to move forward faster and to strike the Russian Federation unexpectedly,” Zelensky said, in stark contradiction to Zaluzhnyi’s comments about the counteroffensive’s utter failure to penetrate Russian defenses. “As far as the situation on the front is concerned, of course I cannot provide all the details to you but nevertheless we are holding the initiative in our hands. You can imagine what over two years of a full-scale war is like.

Everybody gets tired. Even the iron gets tired,” Zelensky said. “I don’t think that this is a stalemate…We have done a lot,” he assured. Zelensky stressed that Ukraine could not proceed with its operations “barehanded,” “without relevant, proper weapons,” calling for more aid and assuring that money sent to Ukraine is “not aid to Ukraine,” but support for the US and the EU themselves, because Kiev is “defending our joint values.” The Ukrainian president rejected any possibility of negotiations with Russia, saying he didn’t “want to make any dialogue with terrorists,” and dismissing former President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to end the conflict in “24 hours.” Instead, the Ukrainian leader suggested, it would take him “24 minutes to explain [to] President Trump that he can’t manage this war.”

Western media have taken note of Zelensky’s shift in rhetoric, with one outlet pointing out that while the Ukrainian leader once assured the West of a speedy victory, now the message seems to be geared toward asking for more support to prevent the conflict from dragging on indefinitely, playing on the West’s fears of a protracted conflict with Moscow that cannot be won. But some observers have come out ahead of Zelensky, kicking off what seems like a carefully crafted campaign to prepare Western publics for defeat, or a least a “rethink” of what “victory” in Ukraine looks like. “Ukraine today finds itself worse off than it was last November. Its troops are exhausted and depleted, its weapons stocks are running low, and Western publics are more polarized over further support,” one pundit writing in a major US newspaper wrote.

“Ukraine’s counteroffensive was supposed to sustain political support for Kiev by proving that it could reconquer lost territory. Now, supporters of Ukraine might need to make the inverse argument: Ukraine is not reconquering substantial territory, and aid is needed indefinitely to forestall a devastating defeat.” Washington “might need to pivot from dreaming of victory to preparing to live with a stalemate,” since “there is virtually no appetite in the United States for direct war with Russia. Russian victory in Ukraine would be a terrible blow to US interests, but not terrible enough to risk nuclear war,” the observer stressed.

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“The government in Kiev treats its own people as something “alien”..

• ‘Rational Actors’ Ready To Take Power In Ukraine – Moscow (RT)

Not all Ukrainian elites and politicians agree with Kiev’s current belligerent stance against Moscow, Nikolay Patrushev, the secretary of Russia’s Security Council, said on Sunday while speaking at the ‘Russia’ exhibition in Moscow. “Rational actors” do exist in Ukraine but are currently “suppressed” by the Kiev government, he added. These forces are already “standing in the wings” and are ready to take power when the time is right, the former Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) chief said, without elaborating who exactly he may be referring to. Patrushev also said that the Ukrainian governments after the Maidan coup, including the current one led by President Vladimir Zelensky, are “bound to answer” for all the atrocities committed in Ukraine since 2014, including the years-long persecution of the Russian-speaking minority and the people of Donbass, as well as the attacks on Russian civilians, public figures, journalists, and infrastructure.

“They will not be able to hide from a just people’s court like the former SS member Yaroslav Hunka,” Patrushev said, referring to a Ukrainian SS veteran hailed by Canada’s parliament during a visit by Zelensky in September. The incident sparked an angry reaction from Poland, Russia, and several Jewish organizations, and led to the resignation of Canadian House of Commons Speaker Anthony Rota, who claimed that he was unaware of Hunka’s past. Russia has made it clear that it is not waging war against the Ukrainian people. President Vladimir Putin has said that Ukrainians have become the victims of Western political games and their own government’s policies. The government in Kiev treats its own people as something “alien,” Putin said during his annual address to the Russian parliament in February.

Ukrainians have been turned into “cannon fodder,” he argued, adding that the country had been pushed towards war with Russia since 2014, when Kiev sent military forces to confront the Donbass militias in the wake of the Maidan coup. “Responsibility for the incitement of the Ukrainian conflict, for its escalation and an increasing number of its victims rests fully with the Western elites and with the current Kiev regime,” he stated at the time. Earlier this week, Zelensky once again declared that Kiev will not talk to Moscow or make any concessions to Russia. He also denied reports that Western nations are pushing Ukraine towards peace talks with Russia. He did admit, though, that the country’s media and Ukrainians themselves were speculating about the idea of talks with Russia, adding that he was “surprised” by such sentiments.

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“..Putin said that the West no longer has enough Ukrainian cannon fodder and they are thinking about Lithuanians and Poles.”

• Ukrainian Army Has ‘Run Out of Cannon Fodder’ – Former US Envoy (Sp.)

The Ukrainian Army has run out of cannon fodder for an offensive, former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Chas Freeman said in an interview with the YouTube channel Dialogue works. “Ukraine is out of cannon fodder, and so NATO is out of cannon fodder too. If the whole program was to fight to the last Ukrainian, and you are running out of Ukrainians, you don’t have a policy,” he said. In his view, Ukraine “could lose” even more territory. As Freeman noted, the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ failures on the battlefield have exposed “serious disagreements” within NATO. Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the West no longer has enough Ukrainian cannon fodder and they are thinking about Lithuanians and Poles. In early October, Putin said that Kiev’s offensive had failed, that the enemy’s attempts to advance had failed, and that the Ukrainian military had been halted and pushed back to its original positions, with Ukraine suffering an estimated 90,000-plus casualties.

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“Run those fiscal deficits and you’ve told all the thinking adults that child’s standard of living, when they reach adulthood, will be one quarter of yours today assuming your children are as competent and intelligent as you are.”

• Demographics Is Destiny (Denninger)

Let’s face facts folks: Nobody who you want to have children will bring said children into a world where they believe said kids will get screwed. That doesn’t mean kids won’t come anyway; they will, for some. Some adults don’t care what happens to their offspring, some actually use them as meal tickets and more. Some people are also always going to be eternally optimistic and therefore none of this will factor into their decisions. And some will have “accidents” and for personal or religious reasons decide to bear and attempt to raise said kids. But none of that changes the basic facts: People who are of decently-competent intellect and of good character, in a world of technology where one can choose when and whether to reproduce, will only do so voluntarily if they believe it makes sense AND their offspring will get a fair shake.

Destroying the fiscal health of the nation by emitting 8% of GDP in unbacked credit via deficit spending is the exact opposite of such. Simple mathematics tells us that this results in you losing half your standard of living in less than ten years and it takes about 20 years to decide to have a kid, have said kid and raise him or her to adulthood. Run those fiscal deficits and you’ve told all the thinking adults that child’s standard of living, when they reach adulthood, will be one quarter of yours today assuming your children are as competent and intelligent as you are. Would anyone who has two IQ points to rub together have children in that situation, when the options facing said kid 20 years hence are privation to this degree or civil war (and the attendant risk of being dead!) to overthrow said government? NO.

Importing millions of unskilled workers who then drop kids who have parents with no skills, and thus no realistic means of learning much from said parents yet are citizens in the gambit to cheapen labor screws the next two generations sequentially. Oh sure, in two generations or so those kids having their own kids will “outgrow” that but then they are able to compute the same odds and they won’t have children either! Think I’m wrong? The data says I’m not; within two generations those who were the children of illegals stop having lots of babies too and its for the same reason, I’ll wager: They’re convinced their children will get screwed and have one quarter of THEIR standard of living — and they remember living eight to a one bedroom apartment!

You think all those glorious “vacation venues” bringing in H2 workers, and all those “tech” places with H1bs, mean parents have a great experience for their kids at lower cost? Maybe, but in addition they have seen the destruction it wreaks on said kids. Please explain how many of Americans you saw of college age working scooping ice cream or similar this summer to make enough money to go to college in the fall. Zero — or nearly so — right? That’s what I saw all over the country. Now if I’m 20, and thinking about making some kids, where are my kids going to be in 20 years? Unable to get a summer job and unable to afford college too. Many see this, keep their pants on and both Trojan and the birth control pill companies keep having decent quarterly reports.

Good jobs with nice pay tend to be concentrated around cities. How’s Chicago doing these days? Yeah, getting mugged while walking around North Michigan Avenue (assuming you don’t get shot, which is of course even worse) is great. Do you want to expose children you might have to that risk? Hmmmm….. probably not. Oh, and speaking of which how are you going to afford a place to live with said kids when the cost of housing and property taxes have skyrocketed by more than double over the last decade or so — and there’s a new round of screwing headed for you in this upcoming year’s bill, all so you can be a “sanctuary” for a bunch of Venezuelan fighting-age men who illegally came to the US! All of this is very conducive to choosing to bear children, right? I mean its not like you’re going to have to pay those property taxes at an ever-escalating rate for the next 20 years if you choose to have kids, right? Oh, wait…. you are!

Read more …

 

 

 

 


“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” – Michelangelo

 

 

Cashew

 

 


The Olive tree of Vouveson on the island of Crete, Greece, is one of the oldest olive trees in the world. Scientists from the University of Crete have estimated it to be 4,000 years old, which means that, when it sprouted, the last mammoths were still walking on Earth, someone in China was discovering bronze casting and the seventh Egyptian dinasty was declining.

The Minoan civilization was thriving and its monumental architecture was adorning the island of Crete. The first stones of the Palace of Minos at Knossos which inspired the myth of the Minotaur were laid. This tree saw the humans deeds for thousands of years, from the Bronze Age to the artificial intelligence and, possibly the most amazing thing, it continues to produce olives at every season.

 

 


Rangers discovered a one-year-old hippo, whom they have named Owen, alone and dehydrated near Kenya’s Indian Ocean coast after he became separated from his herd in 2004. They took him to a wildlife sanctuary in Mombasa, where he soon found a male tortoise with the same dark grey coloring as adult hippos. The tortoise initially hissed at Owen, warning him to stay away, but according to park officials the pair have since become inseparable.

The Aldabran tortoise, called Mzee, or “Old Man” in Swahili, now eats and sleeps beside Owen. Rangers say they could not have placed Owen with another herd of hippos as he would have been killed by an adult male. The park’s tourism manager, Pauline Kimoto, told reporters: “Since Owen arrived on 27 December, the tortoise behaves like a mother to him. The hippo follows the tortoise around and licks his face.”

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle November 3 2023

Nov 032023
 
 November 3, 2023  Posted by at 9:00 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  49 Responses »


Hieronymus Bosch The Conjurer 1502

 

• Russia’s UN Envoy: Israel Doesn’t Have Right to Self-Defense (Sp.)
• Israel Already Lost Gaza Battle Even Before Eviction Plan Leaked – Journo (Sp.)
• Russia Calls To Immediately Stop Bloodshed In Middle East — UN Envoy (TASS)
• Biden Ignores Rabbi’s Call For Gaza Ceasefire (RT)
• Israel-Hamas Conflict May Cost Global Economy $2 Trillion – Ernst & Young (RT)
• Netanyahu Ordered To Track, Kill All Hamas Leaders 2 Weeks Ago – Hersh (TASS)
• Red Cross ‘Has No Right To Exist’ If It Can’t Reach Hostages – Israel (RT)
• Global Anti-Hamas Coalition Pushed By Macron Is A Bad Idea (Marsden)
• House Passes Resolution That Suggests Using Force Against Iran (Antiwar)
• Russians Have Never Had More Confidence In The Army Since World War II (Helmer)
• Ex-Wagner Fighters Create Detachment Within Chechen Special Forces (Az.)
• Ukraine’s Top General Admits Russia Has The Advantage (RT)
• Zelensky Lies About Mass Support For His “Peace Formula” – Russian FM (TASS)
• Judge Hints at Possible Delay in Trump’s Classified Documents Case (Sp.)
• Sam Bankman-Fried Found Guilty On All Counts (ZH)

 

 

 

 

KidsKilled

 

 

 

 

Che daughter
https://twitter.com/i/status/1720047358111777082

 

 

Meloni

 

 

 

 

Trump

 

 

 

 

Nebenzia says Israel is an “occupying power” in Gaza and as such has no right to self-defense.

Israel says it’s not an “occupying power,” “given that the State of Palestine is a partially-recognized state and is classified as a “non-member observer state” by the United Nations..”

Is that why the two-state solution was never implemented? To deny them their rights?

“We do not deny Israel the right to fight terrorism. But fight terrorists, not civilians..”

• Russia’s UN Envoy: Israel Doesn’t Have Right to Self-Defense (Sp.)

Vassily Nebenzia called the US and its allies out for utter hypocrisy on Wednesday. According to the Russian ambassador, in crisis situations, Western countries are quick to lecture others to comply with humanitarian law and establish investigative commissions; they also rush to “impose sanctions against those who use force only as an extreme measure to stop the years-long violence.” However, in the case of Gaza, the US stayed mum about “the horrifying destruction in Gaza, which exceeds everything that they criticize in other regional contexts multifold – strikes on civilian facilities, the death of thousands of children and the horrifying suffering of civilians amid a total blockade.” The only focus of the US and its satellites is Israel’s right to self-defense, Nebenzia pointed out.

Still, there is the legal rub, according to him: under the international law Israel “does not have the right to self-defense” as an “occupying power” as per the International Court consultative ruling of 2004. Nebenzia then clarified that Russia recognizes “Israel’s right to ensure its security”, emphasizing the necessity of “a fair resolution of the Palestinian problem based on recognized UN Security Council resolutions.” “Ambassador Vasily Nebenzia is correct in stating that Israel is an occupying state, whose occupation of Palestine has been declared illegal in countless United Nations resolutions,” Professor Alfred de Zayas, a former UN Independent Expert on International Order, told Sputnik. “Israel’s obligation under Security Council Resolution 242 of 22 November 1967 is to withdraw from the occupied territories and to allow the practical implementation of the right of self-determination of the Palestine People, an inalienable right anchored in articles 1,55, Chapters XI and XII of the UN Charter as well as in Article 1 common to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).”

“It is important to recall the ruling of the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) of 9 July 2004 reaffirming the right of self-determination of the Palestinian people and documenting the serial violations of the UN Charter and international law perpetrated by Israel. Notwithstanding the clear language of the ICJ, Israel has not implemented any of the specific ICJ rulings, and has been able to flout the UN again and again because the United States has abused its veto right in the Security Council (approximately 80 times!) to shield Israel from condemnation and UN sanctions,” the retired UN independent expert continued. De Zayas observed that within the framework of the court’s rulings, Israel doesn’t have the right to self-defense, but should be guided by international regulations for an “occupying power.” The issue has repeatedly been raised at the UN by Palestinian diplomats.

On May 21, 2021, UN Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine Riyad Mansour insisted in his letter to the international body that “the principle of self-defense cannot be applied by Israel to itself in the occupied territory of the State of Palestine.” “As reaffirmed by the Security Council in its resolution 1860 (2009), the Gaza Strip is an integral part of the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, occupied by Israel since 1967,” the letter read. Mansour argued that as an “occupying power” Israel is “bound by the relevant provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention and all other relevant provisions of international law, including United Nations resolutions.” International law stipulates that “occupying states” have increased responsibilities to protect local populations and are obliged to provide them with the basic health and safety supplies.

However, from Israel’s viewpoint, it’s not an “occupying power,” given that the State of Palestine is a partially-recognized state and is classified as a “non-member observer state” by the United Nations. Tel Aviv does not agree with the concept that it has “occupied” the Gaza Strip since 1967, arguing that it had completely withdrawn from the region in 2005 and that the region has been ruled by Palestinian factions since then.

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“..yesterday President Putin made a statement that I think is the most severe statement that we’ve heard from a Russian president ever, when he said that the Palestinians are fighting and the reason the Palestinians are being killed is because [of] the governments that are behind Israel, and that Russia is fighting those people in Ukraine right now.”

• Israel Already Lost Gaza Battle Even Before Eviction Plan Leaked – Journo (Sp.)

On Tuesday, Israeli media reported that the Israeli Ministry of Intelligence, which is equivalent to the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), had drawn up a plan to completely relocate all 2.3 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip to Egypt. The proposal, created on October 13, suggests pushing all Gaza residents across the border into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, where tent cities will be established, followed by the construction of permanent cities. It would create a “humanitarian corridor” of an undefined nature, as well as a security zone on the Israeli side of the border to prevent Palestinians from returning to Israeli territory. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dismissed the outrage over the report, saying it was nothing more than a “concept paper” or hypothetical exercise and that the ministry has no power to suggest policy in Jerusalem.

However, the Israeli Defense Ministry has already ordered more than 1 million Gazans to leave the northern half of the Gaza Strip as it prepares for an all-out attack on Gaza City, where it expects to meet Hamas in a decisive battle that will destroy the organization. Hamas has governed the Gaza Strip since it won elections in 2006, and its militants helped carry out a cross-border raid on October 7 that killed more than 1,300 Israelis. In response to the news, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova urged that “we are talking about millions of civilians.” “Everyone is exhausted: Israelis, Palestinians, neighbors in the region, sympathizers of both around the world,” she said. “And why? But because one country judged itself as having the right to decide the destinies of millions according to its own plans. And when such an approach led absolutely everyone to a dead end, it turned out that the United States did not bear any responsibility for what it had done. It’s Halloween for them.”

“It’s clear that it is an intentional leak,” Laith Marouf, award-winning broadcaster and journalist based in Beirut, Lebanon, told Radio Sputnik’s The Critical Hour on Tuesday. “It is trying to normalize, within the Western audience, this concept of ethnically cleansing Palestinians from their land. So we have to sometimes be wary when these leaks come out and understand that they were intentionally released.” “Until now, without removing the Palestinians of Gaza, out of Gaza, the Israelis have already killed upwards of 12,000 – because there’s 2,000 people under the rubble – and have displaced a million-and-a-half people inside Gaza. So the number of displaced Palestinians in this war has surpassed the number of displaced Palestinians in 1948 – because in 1948, the Israelis expelled, removed 800,000 Palestinians. Now, we’re past that number and we’re approaching very fast the number of Palestinians that the Israelis massacred in 1948: 15,000 dead.”

“So you have to understand that this is already a second ‘Nakba’, a second catastrophe, for the Palestinians that could be bigger than the first one. And people are seeing this happening live on television this time, so there is no way anybody can deny that this has happened. And there is nobody in the West – in terms of authorities, regimes, governments, institutions – that wants to even stop this, they are all actually finding reasons to allow more of this to happen. Therefore, the only thing that the Palestinian people can do is the same thing that they’ve always had to do: stand up for their rights and fight back the oppressor, the genocider, the occupier or the colonizer and who is behind them.” “You see, yesterday President Putin made a statement that I think is the most severe statement that we’ve heard from a Russian president ever, when he said that the Palestinians are fighting and the reason the Palestinians are being killed is because [of] the governments that are behind Israel, and that Russia is fighting those people in Ukraine right now. So this is aligning, right now, Russia’s future and its battle [in Ukraine] with the battle of the Palestinian people against the Zionists and the imperialists behind them,” Marouf said.

“And, you know, we are entering right now a stage that is different. And of course, everybody’s waiting for Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s speech, the secretary-general of Hezbollah, on Friday, to show us what’s the next chapter in this battle. But nothing’s going to stop, no war is going to stop, the Americans are not going to stop the Zionists from committing this genocide and therefore, be prepared for what’s next.” Recently in an interview with US-based media, Vijay Prashad, the executive director of the Tricontinental Institute think tank, said that soon, the outrage across the Middle East over Israel’s war in Gaza would reach such great heights that their own governments “will not be able to contain their population.”

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Russia calls for a ceasefire, the US does not.

• Russia Calls To Immediately Stop Bloodshed In Middle East — UN Envoy (TASS)

The bloodshed in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict must be stopped immediately to prevent the conflict from spreading to the entire Middle East, Russian Permanent Representative to the UN Vasily Nebenzya said during the General Assembly special session on Palestine. “First of all, it is necessary to stop the bloodshed and to prevent the crisis from engulfing the entire region. Otherwise, the conflict will never be stopped,” he said. Nebenzya also called to “let the mediators work on a diplomatic solution, including the prompt liberation of hostages.”

“One will have to walk down this path sooner or later; the only question is how many innocent people will die in the meantime,” he noted. The situation in the Middle East has escalated abruptly after an armed infiltration of HAMAS militants from the Gaza Strip into Israel. The HAMAS movement considers this attack a response to the actions of Israeli authorities towards the Al Aqsa Mosque at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Israel announced a complete blockade of the Gaza Strip and started carrying out strikes on the enclave and certain areas in Lebanon and Syria. Clashes are also taking place in the West Bank.

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“.. instead proposing a temporary humanitarian pause..”

So Hamas will free the hostages and Israel can move in unhindered.

• Biden Ignores Rabbi’s Call For Gaza Ceasefire (RT)

US President Joe Biden has refused to call for a ceasefire in the Israeli-Hamas conflict, instead proposing a temporary humanitarian pause. Biden was speaking to an audience of some 200 people when a woman, who later identified herself as rabbi Jessica Rosenberg, shouted, “If you care about Jewish people, as a rabbi, I need you to call for a cease-fire right now.” The incident was captured on video and shared by the Jewish Voice for Peace account on X (formerly Twitter), claiming that Rosenberg was speaking on behalf of thousands of Jewish Americans who “refuse to allow a genocide to be carried out in [their] name” The president responded by stating that he believes “we need a pause” and explained that it means to “give time to get the prisoners out,” apparently referring to the foreign nationals currently stuck in Gaza.

Rabbi Rosenberg was then escorted off the premises, after which the president said he understood her emotions and acknowledged that “this is incredibly complicated” for Israelis and the Muslim world. “I supported a two-state solution; I have from the very beginning,” he said. He added, however, that “the fact of the matter is that Hamas is a terrorist organization. A flat-out terrorist organization.” In an earlier speech in Minnesota on Wednesday, Biden reiterated Washington’s support for Israel’s right to “defend itself” following the October 7 Hamas attack, which took the lives of over 1,400 Israelis. Previously, the president repeatedly insisted that the US would stand by Israel “no matter what.” At the same time, the US State Department has continuously rejected calls for a ceasefire, arguing that it would only benefit Hamas.

Washington’s unconditional support for the Jewish State has, in turn, sparked growing criticism and accusations of disregarding the atrocities being committed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) against the civilian population of Gaza. According to the latest estimates by local health officials, as many as 9,000 people have so far been killed in IDF strikes on Gaza over the past three weeks. Meanwhile, Russia’s permanent representative to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, has dismissed Washington’s argument about Israel’s right to self-defense, explaining that “as an occupying power, it does not have such a right” as per the advisory ruling of the International Court of Justice in 2004. He stressed, however, that Russia nevertheless recognizes Israel’s right to ensure its security.

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Wait till OPEC closes the taps.

• Israel-Hamas Conflict May Cost Global Economy $2 Trillion – Ernst & Young (RT)

The global economy could be doomed to take a major hit if the conflict between Hamas and Israel escalates, the New York Times reported on Wednesday, citing a top economist at Ernst & Young, one of the world’s leading consulting and accounting services firms. Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY-Parthenon, Ernst & Young’s global strategy consulting arm, told the NYT that in the “worst-case scenario,” the expansion of military action in the Middle East would entail “severe”consequences for the world economy, such as a moderate recession, a plunge in stock prices and a loss of $2 trillion.

Oil prices are likely to rise to $150 per barrel from the current $85, Daco added. Last month the World Trade Organization (WTO) warned that global GDP could drop 5% in the longer term if the world splits into two trading blocs as a result of the escalating conflict between Israel and Hamas. The WTO also slashed its 2023 forecast for global trade growth to 0.8% from the previously estimated 1.7%, citing a deepening manufacturing slowdown.

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“..including their wives, brothers, sisters, children and parents.”

• Netanyahu Ordered To Track, Kill All Hamas Leaders 2 Weeks Ago – Hersh (TASS)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered Israeli intelligence agencies to track and assassinate all political and military Hamas leaders two weeks ago, US journalist Seymour Hersh said in his blog at the Substack website citing unnamed sources. Citing one “well-informed Israeli,” Hersh claims that Netanyahu tasked both the overseas intelligence agency and the internal security agency with this mission. According to the source, Israel persecutes families of Hamas political and military leaders, including their wives, brothers, sisters, children and parents.

The situation in the Middle East has escalated abruptly after an armed infiltration of HAMAS militants from the Gaza Strip into Israel. The HAMAS movement considers this attack a response to the actions of Israeli authorities towards the Al Aqsa Mosque at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Israel announced a complete blockade of the Gaza Strip and started carrying out strikes on the enclave and certain areas in Lebanon and Syria. Clashes are also taking place in the West Bank.

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Want to use Red Cross to find the hostages?

• Red Cross ‘Has No Right To Exist’ If It Can’t Reach Hostages – Israel (RT)

Israel’s Foreign Minister Eli Cohen has criticized what he called the “unbalanced focus” of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), amid the IDF’s offensive in Gaza. He also blasted the Geneva-based aid group for failing to rescue Israeli hostages being held by Hamas. “The Red Cross has no right to exist if it does not succeed in visiting the hostages being held captive by the Hamas,” Cohen said in a telephone conversation on Wednesday with ICRC director Miriana Spolijaric, according to a summary released by Israel’s Foreign Ministry. Israel has said that about 240 of its citizens were seized by Hamas in its October 7 cross-border raid, most of whom remain unaccounted for in the besieged Palestinian enclave, which has been targeted with massive retaliatory strikes by the IDF for several weeks.

“The Red Cross must act decisively and with a clear voice and utilize all leverage it has to push for a visit to the hostages as soon as possible,” Cohen said, according to the transcript, noting that “children, women and Holocaust survivors” are among the captives. Cohen accused the aid organization of showing an “unbalanced focus” on Israel throughout the conflict. “The Red Cross’ reputation is at stake if it cannot secure a visit to those being held captive by Hamas,” he said. The Red Cross defended its work on Thursday, with spokesperson Alyona Synenko telling NPR that “when the bombs continue to fall, it is also impossible for our teams to do their jobs.” “For us it is a priority to get access and to visit all the hostages. The amount of suffering they endure is also unimaginable. We have been constantly calling on the Hamas authorities to give us access so that we can provide medicine, that we can give news to the families of the hostages.”

“We cannot do that unless we are given the needed humanitarian space and the access to be able to do our job,” Synenko said. “We cannot force our way through bombs. We just need all the parties to show goodwill and also to respect their obligation under the international humanitarian law.” The Red Cross, which has been involved in supplying humanitarian aid to Gaza, has also cautioned Israel over civilian casualties – however, Cohen claimed that Israel “is bound by international law and acts in accordance with it.” Palestinian officials say that more than 9,000 people have so far been killed by Israeli air strikes on Gaza, and that about 70% of those killed are children, women and the elderly.

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“..It’s doubtful these nations will now be keen to embark on yet another counterterrorism mission alongside the same forces that they just expelled..”

• Global Anti-Hamas Coalition Pushed By Macron Is A Bad Idea (Marsden)

Last week, standing beside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a visit to Jerusalem, French President Emmanuel Macron suggested recycling the global coalition of 86 nations against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) to focus on Hamas. “Hamas is a terrorist group, whose objective is the destruction of the state of Israel. This is also the case of ISIS, of Al-Qaeda, of all those associated with them, either by actions or by intentions,” Macron said, betraying a short and selective memory. The stated goal of IS wasn’t to eradicate Israel – it was to establish a caliphate in Syria and Iraq, then broaden it into Arab countries. IS was first and foremost a threat to the stability of Syria – the same country whose government the US and its Western allies actively hindered in its fight against terrorism by making a failed attempt at overthrowing President Bashar Assad through Pentagon and CIA-backed training and equipping of “Syrian rebel” jihadists.

As for Al-Qaeda, Israel was even reportedly at one point helping treat wounded militants from the group who were fighting their common enemy, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah, in Syria – in turn effectively hindering the fight against IS, as Syria and Hezbollah worked to destroy it. The Global Coalition against Daesh (another name for IS), founded in 2014, explicitly excluded Russia, whose invitation by Damascus to help it eradicate the terrorist threat can be largely credited for Syria’s stabilization, and the fact that it’s rare to even hear any talk of IS anymore. Russia’s involvement in neutralizing the terrorist group, coupled with former US President Donald Trump’s refusal to continue funding Washington’s incursion into Syria, beyond hunkering down in the oil-rich Kurdish part, was the ultimate key to IS’ defeat. So with apparently little left for it to do now, Macron recommends that the coalition that mostly sat and watched – while Russia, Iran, and Syria did the heavy lifting – take on Hamas.

Who does he think is going to do the work this time? Russia, which is still excluded from the coalition? Syria, which has recently taken incoming missile fire from Israel? Iran’s Hezbollah allies, who lost 1,000 men fighting IS in Syria – and whom Netanyahu has placed in the same basket as Hamas as an enemy of Israel? Good luck with that. So with the most effective anti-IS fighters excluded from fighting Hamas, who’s left in Macron’s proposed coalition? There’s the Global South, including some African countries that just kicked out French troops for their own failed counterterrorism missions which had led to multiple coups and the flourishing of jihadism. It’s doubtful these nations will now be keen to embark on yet another counterterrorism mission alongside the same forces that they just expelled.

Then there are all those members of the international community who are quietly thinking what United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres dared to say aloud last week – that Hamas’ brutal attack on October 7, which left close to a thousand civilians and hundreds of military and security personnel dead, “did not happen in a vacuum.” He was, of course, hinting at Israel’s longstanding, UN-recognized oppression of civilians in Gaza. His statement begs yet another question: Is Hamas really a global threat? Or is it just Israel’s problem?

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“Seems like a call for war on Iran. I voted No.”

• House Passes Resolution That Suggests Using Force Against Iran (Antiwar)

The House on Wednesday passed a resolution that suggested the US would use force against Iran in the future in the name of preventing the country from acquiring nuclear weapons. The resolution says a nuclear-armed Iran is “unacceptable” and declares that it’s the policy of the US to “use all means necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.” A US intelligence report recently affirmed that Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons, but reality doesn’t stop Iran hawks in the US and Israel from constantly hyping up the threat of a non-existent Iranian nuclear weapons program. The same officials do not officially recognize that Israel possesses a nuclear arsenal.

The resolution passed in a vote of 354-53, with 50 Democrats and three Republicans voting against the measure. Explaining his opposition, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) because it seemed like a call for war. “Yesterday Congress passed a resolution (354 to 53) that claims Iran possesses all it needs for a nuclear weapon,” Massie wrote on X. “The same resolution says the US should ‘use all means necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.’ Seems like a call for war on Iran. I voted No.” The resolution pointed to Iran’s uranium enrichment at 60% and its stockpiles of enriched uranium as evidence it could make a bomb. But in order to make a nuclear weapon, uranium needs to be enriched at 90%, and there’s no sign Tehran is considering taking that step.

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If The Army Says Fight The War, Russians Agree – If The Kremlin Says Stop, Russians Agree On Conditions The Army Decides.

• Russians Have Never Had More Confidence In The Army Since World War II (Helmer)

Russians have never had a higher level of confidence in the Army since the end of World War II, according to a national poll just published by the independent Levada Centre of Moscow. This also means a record level of confidence in the General Staff to outwit the principal enemy of the country, the United States, and defeat it and its allies on the Ukrainian battlefield. Most Russians now believe this war will take the Russian Army at least another six months, and more likely a year to finish. This new poll signals that most Russians believe it prudent not to fight the US with the same intensity in two long wars at the same time – in the Ukraine and in the Middle East — because the Army has decided so. This is despite the overwhelming Russian support for the Palestinians in their fight for survival against Israel. No poll is allowed to measure and publish this support, and the emotional reaction the majority of Russians feels towards the operations of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the US military to destroy the population of Gaza.

“We should not, we have no right and we cannot allow ourselves to be carried away by emotions,” President Vladimir Putin announced on October 30. “We must clearly understand who in reality is behind the tragedy of peoples in the Middle East and in other regions around the world, who has been organising this lethal chaos and who benefits from it. In my opinion, it has already become clear to everyone, as the masterminds brazenly act in the open. These are the current ruling elites in the United States and its satellites who are the main beneficiaries of the global instability that they use to extract their bloody rent. Their strategy is also clear. The United States as a global superpower is becoming weaker and is losing its position, and everyone sees and understands this.”

This is the president running for re-election in five months’ time, speaking directly to Russian voters, reflecting what the polls on his desk tell him they already believe. The Levada pollsters report there is a small increase in war weariness across the country, with 56% now saying they favour the start of peace talks soon, compared with 48% measured a year ago, in September 2022. This, however, reflects public belief in the success of the Army in defeating the Ukrainian-NATO counteroffensive, and in advancing Russian control of the new Donbass territories and along the front line from Kharkov to Odessa. “In October 2023,” Levada reports, “62% of Russians across the country believe that the special military operation is progressing successfully (12% very successfully, 50% rather successfully), over the past 5 months their number has increased slightly. The opposite point of view is held by 21%.”

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“The crews of the armored groups are 100% former employees of the Wagner PMC..”

• Ex-Wagner Fighters Create Detachment Within Chechen Special Forces (Az.)

Kamerton unit has been created from among former Wagner PMC fighters within the Chechen special forces named Akhmat, said the deputy commander of the detachment with the call sign “011”, Report informs via Russian media. The unit is said to include PMC commanders, an armored group, artillerymen and assault groups. The crews of the armored groups are 100% former employees of the Wagner PMC. Approximately 60% of the assault units consist of former Wagner employees, including commanders, said the deputy detachment commander.

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Ukraine keeps talking about a stalemate, and Russia keeps saying there’s no such thing.

• Ukraine’s Top General Admits Russia Has The Advantage (RT)

Ukraine will not make any progress in its fight against Russia unless some new technology emerges to give it a decisive advantage, the country’s top military commander, General Valery Zaluzny, told The Economist this week. He conceded, without the appearance of a ‘wunderwaffe,’ that Moscow is in the better position, given its larger population and greater resources. “Just like in the First World War, we have reached the level of technology that puts us into a stalemate,” he said of the ongoing conflict, as quoted by the British magazine on Wednesday. Despite the hopes of Kiev supporters and Ukrainian officials, “there will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough,” he predicted. The conflict may “drag on for years” and “wear down” the country.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov disagreed with Zaluzhny on Thursday, stating that Russia was not in a stalemate and would keep pursuing its “special military operation” against Ukraine. Kiev should have long acknowledged that expecting a Russian defeat was “absurd,” he added. The situational awareness that both sides have thanks to the use of drones makes surprise concentration of forces impossible, Zaluzhny believes. NATO textbooks and predictive models, which were used to plan the summer counteroffensive, have been proven wrong, the general claimed. “Four months should have been enough time for us to have reached Crimea, to have fought in Crimea, to return from Crimea, and to have gone back in and out again,” he said, referring to optimistic forecasts.

The commander has found that an old Soviet military textbook on how to deal with entrenched enemy forces had offered a better explanation of why both sides are now “in stupor,” he said. Zaluzhny’s office shared with The Economist a nine-page essay, in which he makes suggestions on how Ukraine could get into a better position against Russia and possibly avoid attrition warfare. His proposed technological solutions include using drones with trap nets to catch Russian UAVs, ground GPS signal stations to counter Russian jamming, and robotic vehicles armed with plasma torches for demining. The general, who is an outspoken advocate of drone warfare, was “enthused” by recent conversations with Eric Schmidt on the issue, the report said. The former CEO of Google has been advising the US government on how advanced digital technology could improve military capabilities.

This week, Time exposed a disconnect between Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s push to keep fighting and the realities on the ground. Some frontline commanders have been defying orders to advance and “just want to sit in the trenches and hold the line,” a presidential aide told the magazine. A report in The Times last Sunday suggested that Zaluzhny may share this sentiment. A rumor circulating among Ukrainian security sources claimed the general had called for the counteroffensive to be stopped, but Zelensky refused.

“[Zelensky] knows that Western patience is limited for his maximalist demands that Ukraine must recover all territory” that it has lost since 2014, the British newspaper claimed. According to Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu, Kiev’s troops have suffered over 90,000 casualties since June 4, the day the counteroffensive started. The Ukrainian Army has also lost some 600 tanks and nearly 1,900 armored vehicles over the same period, he said during a security conference in China on Monday. Moscow sees the hostilities as part of a US proxy war against Russia, in which Ukrainian troops are being used as “cannon fodder.” It blames the West for derailing a negotiated resolution in the early months of the conflict, and instead choosing to push Kiev to fight “to the last Ukrainian.”

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“New participants are first involved in discussions on such seemingly neutral issues as food, energy, nuclear and environmental security, and then they [the supporters of Ukraine] pass it off as support for the whole ‘formula,’ the central element of which is the defeat and punishment of Russia..”

• Zelensky Lies About Mass Support For His “Peace Formula” – Russian FM (TASS)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s statements that his so-called peace formula is supported by more than 140 countries are another lie, a senior Russian diplomat told TASS. “Speaking at the UN General Assembly in September, Zelensky said that his ‘peace formula’ is supposedly already supported by more than 140 countries. Of course, this is another lie,” Alexey Polishchuk, director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Second CIS Department, pointed out. He added that Ukraine and the US are attempting to use “deception and blackmail” to get the countries of the Global South to support the “formula.”

According to Polishchuk, Kiev and Washington are “trying to lure new countries into their anti-Russian club, and at the same time to kill really constructive proposals, peace and humanitarian initiatives of other states.” Kiev is actively trying to promote a settlement plan proposed by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, which does not take into account Moscow’s position. Relevant international consultations, to which Russia was not invited, were held on June 24 in Copenhagen, Denmark, and on August 5-6 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The most recent meeting at the level of national security advisors took place on October 28-29 in Malta. “There is no practical point in such meetings,” the diplomat stressed.

“The so-called Copenhagen format is a mechanism invented by Kiev and the West to impose Ukrainian ultimatums. It is incapable of leading to peace,” he pointed out. Polishchuk recalled that the Malta meeting was the third after Copenhagen and Jeddah. “Their added value is close to zero,” he stressed. At the same time, the senior diplomat pointed to the fact that at such meetings “unscrupulous techniques are used.” “New participants are first involved in discussions on such seemingly neutral issues as food, energy, nuclear and environmental security, and then they [the supporters of Ukraine] pass it off as support for the whole ‘formula,’ the central element of which is the defeat and punishment of Russia,” he concluded.

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Lawyers can do one case at a time.

• Judge Hints at Possible Delay in Trump’s Classified Documents Case (Sp.)

The Florida federal judge presiding over former US President Donald Trump’s classified documents case hinted that she is open to a delay in the case, a move that prosecutors have been arguing against. Judge Aileen Cannon set the trial’s schedule in July, with a start date set for May 20. But at a hearing on Thursday, she floated the possibility of delaying portions of the pre-trial process, which could push back the actual trial date. It’s believed it could be likely postponed until after the 2024 election, a result Trump’s lawyers have been attempting to achieve. “I’m just having a hard time seeing how realistically this work can be accomplished in this compressed period of time, given the realities that we’re facing,” Cannon said during the hearing. Trump’s lawyers argued they needed more time to prepare for the trial due to Trump’s several other pending legal cases, two others of which are focused on alleged attempts to interfere in the 2020 presidential election.

Officials have raised concerns that cases may potentially overlap and make it much more difficult for the Trump camp to properly handle the list of cases. Cannon did not mention moving the trial date back, but any delay in the pre-trial process could cascade to the trial date, pushing that back as well. “It’s very difficult to be trying to work with a client in one trial and simultaneously try to prepare that client for another trial,” Trump lawyer Chris Kise said. “This has been a struggle and a challenge.” Prosecutors working for special counsel Jack Smith, who is heading both the Jan. 6 and classified documents case, have argued against Cannon delaying the Florida case because the Washington, DC, case focusing on Trump’s role in attempting to overturn the 2020 results may likewise be delayed.

“The court really cannot let and should not let the DC trial drive the schedule here,” veteran Justice Department national security prosecutor Jay Bratt argued in front of Cannon. “We don’t know what is going to happen in this case. We don’t know what’s going to happen in the DC case. That trial could disappear.” But Cannon noted she cannot predict what a different judge is going to do and does not want to put her trial on a track that could potentially interfere with another case. The Florida judge added that she will set a new timeline for the case “as soon as possible.”

Trump is accused of mishandling classified documents after leaving the White House in 2021, as well as trying to conceal the number of those documents from prosecutors. He has decried the trial and all of the legal cases filed against him as being part of political witch hunts. In addition to the two federal cases, Trump is also facing an election-interference case at the state level in Georgia and a state-level case in New York centering around hush money payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels. He and his company are also facing numerous civil suits.

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Biden’s second-biggest donor.

• Sam Bankman-Fried Found Guilty On All Counts (ZH)

After 15 days of testimony and about four and a half hours of deliberations, jurors found FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried has been found guilty on all seven counts related to fraud and money laundering, in a lower Manhattan courtroom. He is scheduled to be sentenced March 28, when he faces more than 100 years in prison if he receives the maximum on all counts. Bankman-Fried has indicated that he will appeal the verdict. The case was handed to the jury at approximately 3:15 p.m. on Thursday after US District Judge Lewis Kaplan read the jury roughly 60 pages of instructions. Bankman-Fried, also known as SBF, founded FTX in 2019, two years after forming sister hedge fund Alameda Research. He was charged with seven counts, including wire fraud, money laundering, and securities fraud in connection with FTX’s spectacular implosion last year.

The trial, which progressed far more quickly than the anticipated run through Thanksgiving, has presented a stark transformation of the FTX founder from a “crypto genius” to an alleged criminal mastermind, as prosecutors and defense attorneys spar over the truth behind FTX’s collapse. The 31-year-old MIT graduate and son of two Stanford legal scholars had pleaded not guilty to all charges. “Every movie needs a villain,” proclaimed Mark Cohen, Bankman-Fried’s defense attorney, in a narrative-bending final plea that painted the prosecution’s portrayal of his client as grossly mischaracterized. Cohen argued fervently against the government’s claims, insisting that the FTX saga, while marred by a lack of risk management, does not equate to criminal conduct.

The courtroom, under the guidance of Judge Kaplan, saw a relentless pace, with days stretching past the usual hours in a concerted effort to wrap up proceedings. Jurors, now faced with the weighty task of determining Bankman-Fried’s fate, were reminded that the urgency from the bench wasn’t an attempt to rush judgment but rather an efficient approach to justice. The crux of the trial hinged on intent — did Bankman-Fried knowingly orchestrate a grand scheme to defraud? According to Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicolas Roos, the answer lies in a “pyramid of deceit,” with $10 billion in customer funds vanishing into a black hole of personal indulgences and opaque financial maneuvers. “The defendant schemed and lied to get money, which he spent,” Roos told the court, dismantling the image of an earnest entrepreneur caught in a misstep.

Cohen’s defense strategy leaned heavily on the sworn testimony of Bankman-Fried himself, who took to the stand in what former prosecutor Renato Mariotti described as a deliberate attempt to downplay his involvement. “Meant to reduce his role,” Mariotti said, noting the pointed references to a youthful lack of experience and the burdens of leadership. The prosecution, meanwhile, painted a picture of a deliberate and cunning exploitation of trust, they left the jury with a resonating thought — Bankman-Fried “had the arrogance to think he could get away with it.” The litany of expenses paid for with customer money, from a $30 million Bahamian penthouse to a lavish $16 million for his parents’ home, stood as testament to a lifestyle funded by the alleged pyramid scheme.

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Ant hill

 

 

Now and Then

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle October 29 2023

Oct 292023
 
 October 29, 2023  Posted by at 9:15 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  44 Responses »


Paul Klee Girl in Mourning 1939

 

• Biden Must Call a Ceasefire in Gaza – If Only to Save Himself (Jay)
• Iran-Russia Set A Western Trap In Palestine (Pepe Escobar)
• US Neocons ‘Slow-Walking America Into War’ (Sp.)
• Netanyahu Refuses To Order Wide-Scale Ground Operation In Gaza – NYT (TASS)
• Netanyahu Tells Israelis To Prepare For ‘Long And Difficult’ War (RT)
• Lavrov Cautions World Against Crisis For ‘Decades, If Not Ages’ In Gaza (TASS)
• US Aid to Ukraine May Fade Slowly and Then All at Once (Sp.)
• Musk To Provide Starlink Access To Gaza (RT)
• Israel Threatens To Destroy Musk’s Starlink (RT)
• Erdogan Accuses Israel Of ‘War Crimes’ (RT)
• 5,000 US Troops Involved In Gaza Offensive – Iran Media (RT)
• US Denies American Troops Took Part in Israeli Ground Offensive (Sp.)
• Ukraine ‘One Of The Most Corrupt Countries In The World’ – Fico (RT)

 

 

 

 

Douglas Macgregor: We Are On the Brink of Total War

 

 

Amalek

 

 

Bibi1980s

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bibi needs a war to save himself, and Biden needs a ceasefire…

• Biden Must Call a Ceasefire in Gaza – If Only to Save Himself (Jay)

The Biden administration is becoming increasingly edgy about the crisis in Gaza and what the objectives are for the Netanyahu war camp. Most of all, it’s worried that it is being carefully coaxed into a war between Israel and Iran which even the hapless U.S. president knows is not somewhere he wants to go, regardless of how far he is away from his re-election campaign. Netanyahu, for his part, is not even sure himself if he actually wants to launch a ground offensive and a number of top analysts are even predicting that he even won’t go ahead with it, given what’s at stake and the history of such initiatives in the past. Politically, he is not at all in a good place right now and the attack on October 7th in many ways, while buying him time in office and allowing him freedom from corruption investigations, is a double-edged sword which will dismember him when Israelis’ patience runs out. Most blame him for the attacks and kidnappings in the first place so he has a limited amount of political bandwidth to work with.

His strategy seems to be more about playing it cool and letting time take its toll. Even though he doesn’t have too much time himself, Biden has much less. The stranglehold that Netanyahu has on Biden tightens each day, when it is clear that Biden doesn’t have the patent ability to invoke a ceasefire and do what most U.S. presidents should do: behave like a superpower. This, apparently will have to be left to the two real superpowers who tend to do more and talk less: China and Russia. For the moment both Biden and Netanyahu are both waiting for a miracle to happen which allows for a ceasefire to happen without Netanyahu losing face. Biden could simply insist that Netanyahu stops the campaign and then at least Bibi could say to the world “this is what the U.S. has asked us to do”. But even in this setup, there would be a price to pay for Biden and his administration elsewhere.

As more and more Iranian militias build up on the Syrian-Israel border and the narrative heats up between Hezbollah and Israel, everyone in fact is looking for a stroke of luck to throw the entire gruesome slaughter out of sync. Biden could do this. He could be bold and courageous and show real élan on the world stage. But that’s just not what he does. Despite being an old school neocon and being a huge advocate for NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, these days he has lost his mojo. He simply doesn’t know what he wants with Israel, a country which he always professed to being a great supporter of, but whose present administration is not where Biden wants U.S. foreign policy to be. Many experts question what actually is at the heart of the U.S.-Israel relationship and the 3bn dollars it hands to Israel each year in military aid? For a long time, it was the special relationship that Israel cherished while it, Israel, acted on behalf of the U.S. in the region and was there just in case Arab countries lost their way in their token allegiance to U.S. hegemony. At the very least it was an outpost.

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Financial war.

• Iran-Russia Set A Western Trap In Palestine (Pepe Escobar)

Hamas has called on the millions of Palestinians in the diaspora, as well as the whole Arab world and all lands of Islam, to unite. Slowly but surely, a pattern may be discerned: could the Arab world – and great swathes of Islam – be on the verge of significantly uniting to avenge their own “century of humiliation” – much as the Chinese did after WWII with Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping? Beijing, via its sophisticated diplomacy, is certainly hinting at it to key players, even before the ground-breaking, Russia-China brokered Iran-Saudi rapprochement was struck earlier this year. That by itself won’t thwart the perpetual US neocon obsession to bomb critical infrastructure in Iran. Worth less than zero when it comes to military science, these neocons ignore how Iranian retaliation would – accurately – target each and every US base in Iraq and Syria, with the Persian Gulf an open case.

Peerless Russian military analyst Andrei Martyanov has shown what could happen to those expensive American iron bathtubs in the Eastern Mediterranean in case of an Israeli-threatened attack on Iran. Moreover, there are at least 1,000 US troops in northern Syria stealing the country’s oil – which would also become an instant target. Ali Fadavi, IRGC’s deputy commander-in-chief, cut to the chase: “We have technologies in the military field that no one knows about, and the Americans will know about them when we use them.” Cue to Iranian hypersonic Fattah missiles – cousins to the Khinzal and the DF-27 – traveling at Mach 15, and able to reach any target in Israel in 400 seconds. And add to it sophisticated Russian electronic warfare (EW). As confirmed in Moscow six months ago, when it comes to military interconnection, the Iranians told the Russians at the same table, “whatever you need, just ask.”

The same applies vice-versa, because the mutual enemy is one and the same. The heart of the matter in any Russian-Iran strategy is the Strait of Hormuz, through which transits at least 20 percent of the world’s oil (nearly 17 million barrels a day) plus 18 percent of liquified natural gas (LNG), which amounts to at least 3.5 billion cubic feet a day. Iran is able to block the Strait of Hormuz in a flash. For starters, that would be some sort of poetic justice retribution for Israel aiming to gobble up, illegally, all the multibillion-dollar natural gas discovered offshore Gaza: this is, incidentally, one of the absolutely key reasons for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Yet the real deal will be to bring down the Wall Street-engineered $618 trillion derivative structure, as confirmed for years by analysts at Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, as well as independent Persian Gulf energy traders.

So when push comes to shove – and way beyond the defense of Palestine and in a scenario of Total War – not only Russia-Iran but key players of the Arab world about to become members of BRICS 11 – such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE – do have what it takes to bring down the US financial system anytime they choose. As an old school Deep State higher up, now in business in Central Europe, stresses: “The Islamic nations have the economic advantage. They can blow up the international financial system by cutting off the oil. They do not have to fire a single shot. Iran and Saudi Arabia are allying together. The 2008 crisis took 29 trillion dollars to solve but this one, should it happen, could not be solved even with 100 trillion dollars of fiat instruments.” As Persian Gulf traders told me, one possible scenario is OPEC starting to sanction Europe, first from Kuwait and then spreading from one OPEC country to another and to all countries that are treating the Muslim world as enemies and war fodder.

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“.. this one, I think, should get a gold star for its most hypocritical reasoning in history.”

• US Neocons ‘Slow-Walking America Into War’ (Sp.)

As Islamic resistance continues to grow amid the ongoing bombardment and siege of Gaza by Tel Aviv, and especially if the Israeli military proceeds with a ground assault on the enclave, the world could witness a regional escalation “the likes of which we haven’t seen in quite a long time,” Christopher Helali, an independent investigative journalist, told Sputnik. Furthermore, as hawkish politicians in the US sign off on covert attempts to use the latest Palestine-Israel conflagration to “put the squeeze on Iran”, the pundit added, this further “raises the specter” that Tehran, for Israel – a US non-NATO ally – “remains the main target, even though they talk about Hamas.” Chris Helali pointed to the recent Israeli incursion, using tanks, armored personnel carriers, and other military vehicles, into northern Gaza as signaling that there are preparations for a larger ground assault.

Taking stock of the spiraling death toll in Gaza, pounded by Israeli retaliatory strikes since Hamas’ surprise attack earlier in October, the analyst said: “I think that the longer this goes on, the more Palestinians are arrested, killed, and wounded, and the more families are affected by this, I think we could definitely see an escalation in the occupied West Bank and in East Jerusalem.” The Israeli military, which has so far held off from a much-touted ground offensive on Gaza, recently said it had conducted a raid with tanks into the northern part of the enclave in preparation for the next stage of fighting. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also confirmed that a ground incursion was coming, reiterating that the goal is to destroy Hamas’ military and governance capabilities.

Chris Helali mentioned Netanyahu’s speech, which echoed the rhetoric of other Israeli officials, trying to liken Hamas to terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and Daesh to justify the pummeling that Gaza was receiving. Emphasizing that Israel was doing so to try to “rebuild the international coalition that helped to defeat the Islamic State in Syria, in Iraq and elsewhere,” the analyst nevertheless voiced the opinion that Tel Aviv would need to “tread very carefully, given all the destruction they’ve brought.” “It looks like Armageddon,” Chris Helali said, referring to the current situation in Gaza. President Joe Biden, who rushed to dramatically beef up the US presence in the Middle East after the situation escalated by sending two carrier strike groups along with thousands of Marines and more warplanes to the region, responded to a reporter’s question about the Palestinian death count, saying that at the White House: “What they say to me is I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed… I have no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using.”

“How reprehensible it is that the president would say something like this, and that many so-called independent media personalities and mainstream media outlets are toeing this line, that somehow these numbers are inflated. This is as reprehensible as when people deny the numbers of the Holocaust… the fact that somehow one Israeli life is worth more than a Palestinian life – an ongoing theme that we’ve seen throughout the decades – is horrific for me… It shows this double standard, this level of hypocrisy,” Helali said. “Anyone with eyes can look at what the Israelis have done to Gaza. They have flattened it… Hospitals are blown up, churches… I mean, the idea that they’re lying about these deaths, when you can see it very clearly with your own eyes, it’s the height of cynicism,” agreed Daniel McAdams, executive director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. The hypocrisy is “astonishing,” he said, adding: “This is always astonishing in every administration. But this one, I think, should get a gold star for its most hypocritical reasoning in history.”

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US?

• Netanyahu Refuses To Order Wide-Scale Ground Operation In Gaza – NYT (TASS)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused to sign the order on beginning of a wide-scale ground operation in the Gaza Strip out of fear of losing trust of the people, should the operation fail, the New York Times reported citing sources in the Israeli government. According to two sources, who were present during meetings of the emergency cabinet, Netanyahu “outraged senior officers by refusing to sign the plan” of the. His refusal, the sources note, was partially motivated by the Prime Minister’s desire to obtain a unanimous approval of this step from the emergency cabinet, established jointly with the opposition after the October 7 attacks.

The NYT claims that Netanyahu’s refusal indicates disagreements within the cabinet, with some ministers considering a less ambitious invasion plan, which includes several operations covering a small portion of the enclave instead of a single wide-scale one. Analysts say that the Prime Minister is unwilling to approve the action plan out of concerns that he will be blamed for the operation’s potential failure amid the falling public trust. On October 25, Axios reported citing US officials that Netanyahu is skeptical about the armed forces’ command plans and intends to postpone the beginning of the ground operation in the Gaza Strip. According to Axios sources, the Prime Minister needs time to listen to different points of view and to provide the negotiators with more options to liberate hostages while the army prepares for the operation.

On October 24, the Times of Israel said that the Israeli ground operation in Gaza may be postponed for a long term or even not take place at all. Meanwhile, the IDF reported full readiness for a ground operation after over 550 rocket strikes, carried out within 16 days. According to CNN, Washington pressured Israel, urging it to postpone the operation and to release the hostages held in the enclave. However, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told NBC that the Jewish state must make an independent decision in this regard, and the US can only advise.

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“..ground operations in Gaza will continue “until new orders are given.”

Who gives the orders?

• Netanyahu Tells Israelis To Prepare For ‘Long And Difficult’ War (RT)

The Israeli military has launched the “second stage” of war against Hamas militants in Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a televised address on Saturday night, while warning citizens to prepare for a long struggle ahead. “In the initial weeks of the war, we launched massive airstrikes that dealt a severe blow to the enemy… We eliminated many terrorists,” the PM said in his address to the Israelis. In three weeks of Israeli air raids, the death toll in Gaza has exceeded 8,000 people, “half of whom are children,” the health ministry in the Hamas-controlled Palestinian enclave told AFP early Sunday. It remains unclear how many of the casualties were actual combatants.

“However, we are only at the beginning of the road. The battle within the Gaza Strip will be difficult and long,” Netanyahu warned, while stressing that “this is our second War of Independence. This is our mission, our purpose in life, and together we will prevail.” The IDF’s expansion of its operation comes almost three weeks after Hamas militants launched a surprise attack on the Jewish state, hammering Israeli towns and cities with rockets and raiding settlements near the Gaza border. Around 1,400 Israelis have been killed since the war began, and over 200 taken hostage, according to Israeli officials. “Last night, additional ground forces entered Gaza, marking the beginning of the second stage of the war, whose goal is to destroy the military and political capabilities of Hamas and to bring our kidnapped citizens back,” Netanyahu declared.

Israeli warplanes pounded Gaza with airstrikes throughout Friday and Saturday nights, as ground troops and armor were launched in a significant incursion into the Palestinian enclave. It is unclear, however, whether the ongoing “expanded” ground operations will be followed by a larger invasion. There are concerns that a full-scale invasion may result in heavy Israeli casualties and trigger an escalation with other regional players, such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant also said on Saturday that Israel has “moved on to a new phase in the war,” and said that ground operations in Gaza will continue “until new orders are given.”

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“..the US veto showed “that their task includes supporting Israel in any of its actions..”

• Lavrov Cautions World Against Crisis For ‘Decades, If Not Ages’ In Gaza (TASS)

Destroying the Gaza Strip or expelling 2 mln residents from the Palestinian enclave risks causing a crisis that may last decades, if not ages, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told BelTA in an interview. “If Gaza is destroyed or if 2 mln people are expelled from there <…>, this would cause a crisis for decades, if not ages,” Lavrov said as he urged humanitarian efforts to rescue the Gaza population. According to Russia’s top diplomat, the resolution at the United Nations Security Council drafted by Russia jointly with China and Arab countries was aimed at achieving exactly these goals, as he referred to the provision of food and thermal power to people in Gaza. However, the US veto showed “that their task includes supporting Israel in any of its actions,” Lavrov lamented.

Tensions in the Middle East flared up again on October 7 when Hamas militants launched a surprise incursion into Israeli territory from the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian movement described its attack as a response to the aggressive actions of Israeli authorities against the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City. Israel declared a total siege of Gaza and started carrying out strikes on the Palestinian enclave, as well as on certain areas in Lebanon and Syria. Clashes are also taking place in the West Bank.

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Use Israel to cut off Ukraine.

• US Aid to Ukraine May Fade Slowly and Then All at Once (Sp.)

Republicans are inclined to place Israel’s needs above those of Ukraine for a number of reasons, as per Professor David Woodard, Clemson University political scientist and former political consultant for Republican congressmen. “The US was the first nation to recognize Israel as a nation-state in 1948 and both parties have supported it,” Woodard told Sputnik. “Two Republican presidents, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush conducted successful Middle East military campaigns and it was always said that the operations were to ‘protect the state of Israel.’ The Democrats have a painful memory of the Iranian Rescue Mission by the US when Jimmy Carter was president to rescue American hostages as a failed policy. Conservatives have closer ties to the Judeo-Christian legacy than the secular Democrats. The GOP candidates have a natural conservative allegiance to Israel, it goes very deep.”

In addition to that, the Ukraine war “presents a problem the longer it continues,” according to the political scientist. The Kiev regime’s summer offensive has failed to meet the West’s expectations with the Ukrainians making zero progress on the ground and sustaining tremendous losses in terms of both manpower and equipment. The continuation of Kiev’s counteroffensive attempt in the fall has yet to show any results either. Moreover, the Biden administration has recently acknowledged that it expects Russia to make new tactical gains on the ground in the near future. Given Ukraine’s inability to show progress, funding may become more controversial, per the political scientist. “American history shows that protracted wars are costly for presidents and their party,” explained Woodard.

“Abraham Lincoln had to have a Union victory in Atlanta to survive the 1864 election to a second term. Truman in Korea and Lyndon Johnson in Vietnam found that as military losses mount over time, the public becomes weary and they stepped aside for the next election. George W. Bush is the latest president to endure such criticism over time, so much so that he was hamstrung to act. If the fall military campaign is successful, I suspect that the US will stay involved, but you should remember that the Tet Offensive (1968) in Vietnam turned American public opinion against the war.” 53% of American respondents to say that sending US troops to fight in Vietnam was a mistake, with just 35% believing that it wasn’t in August 1968. Earlier, in March 1968, then US President Lyndon Johnson announced that he would not seek a second term. US historians agree that the Tet Offensive was the beginning of the end of Washington’s Vietnam military adventure.

Likewise, an October Ipsos poll concerning Washington’s aid to Kiev indicated that US public support for arming Ukraine is continuing to decline. Currently, around 52% of Democrats support arming Ukraine, down from 61% in May. The majority of Republicans are opposed to sending weapons to Kiev, with the number of those supporting aid to Ukraine falling from 39% in May to 35%. On top of that, 56% of Republicans and 34% of Democrats believe that Ukraine’s problems “are none of our business and we should not interfere.” Still, Woodard believes that the White House won’t cut Ukraine’s aid abruptly: Team Biden does not want to look weak and susceptible to the GOP’s pressure. “For a time the US will try to fund both [Ukraine and Israel], but only for a short time. The withdrawal from Afghanistan by the Biden administration was a catastrophe for the president, he doesn’t want to be seen as being weak after that incident and cutting from Kiev would be a public relations disaster,” the political scientist concluded.

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“It is not clear who has authority for ground links in Gaza, but do we know that no terminal has requested a connection in that area..”

• Musk To Provide Starlink Access To Gaza (RT)

Tech billionaire Elon Musk has said that he will provide satellite internet access to “internationally recognized aid organizations” in Gaza via his Starlink network. Phone and internet lines went down in the enclave after a heavy Israeli bombardment on Friday. Musk made his announcement on X (formerly Twitter) on Saturday, stating that SpaceX’s Starlink division would “support connectivity” with the besieged strip. There are apparently a number of Starlink terminals in Gaza, but in a separate post on Saturday, Musk said that none of these devices had attempted to communicate with the satellite network. “It is not clear who has authority for ground links in Gaza, but do we know that no terminal has requested a connection in that area,” he wrote on X.

Internet and cell phone services stopped working in Gaza on Friday night after a wave of Israeli airstrikes. Gaza’s largest telecommunications operator, Paltel, announced that its infrastructure had been totally destroyed in the bombing, which preceded the deployment of Israeli ground troops to the enclave. “The intense bombing in the last hour caused the destruction of all remaining international routes linking Gaza to the outside world,” the company said. The outage left news organizations and aid groups unable to reach their workers, with the UN children’s agency and Doctors Without Borders both reporting no contact from their employees. RT Arabic was also temporarily unable to contact its correspondents and photographers in Gaza.

Musk’s announcement marks the second time that he has deployed Starlink to a combat zone. Shortly after the start of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, the tech tycoon announced that he would deliver Starlink terminals to the Ukrainian side and pay for their upkeep. However, he fell out of favor with Kiev when he barred the Ukrainian military from using the network to guide drone strikes on Russian ships in the Black Sea. “If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation,” he explained last month. The Pentagon has since announced a deal to lease Starlink satellites for military use.

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They want zero info coming out.

• Israel Threatens To Destroy Musk’s Starlink (RT)

Israeli Communications Minister Shlomo Kahri has vowed that “Israel will use all means at its disposal to fight” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s planned provision of Starlink internet access to Gaza. “Hamas will use it for terrorist activities,” Kahri claimed in a post on X (formerly Twitter), adding that “there is no doubt about it, we know it, and Musk knows it.” In response, the tech billionaire said he is “not so naive,” explaining how the proposed scheme would work, while promising to “do a security check with both the US and Israeli governments before turning on even a single terminal.” “Per my post, no Starlink terminal has attempted to connect from Gaza. If one does, we will take extraordinary measures to confirm that it is used *only* for purely humanitarian reasons,” Musk said.

Earlier on Saturday, Musk said that he would open the Starlink satellite network to “internationally recognized aid organizations” working in Gaza, after a wave of Israeli airstrikes severed the enclave’s last phone and internet connections with the outside world. Internet and cell phone services stopped working in Gaza on Friday night after a wave of Israeli airstrikes. The outage left news organizations and aid groups unable to reach their workers, with the UN children’s agency UNICEF, the World Health Organization, Doctors Without Borders, Red Cross and Red Crescent all reporting no contact from their employees. RT Arabic was also temporarily unable to contact its correspondents and photographers in Gaza.

Musk’s plan would mark the second time that he has deployed Starlink to a combat zone. Shortly after the start of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, the tech tycoon supplied Kiev with Starlink terminals. However, he fell out of favor when he barred the Ukrainian military from using the network to guide drone strikes on Russian ships in the Black Sea.

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He’s waking up. Israel withdrew envoys in reaction.

• Erdogan Accuses Israel Of ‘War Crimes’ (RT)

Türkiye will present evidence of Israeli war crimes in Gaza to the world, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at a rally on Saturday. While Erdogan initially positioned himself as a potential mediator between the Israelis and Palestinians, he has since sided with the “freedom fighters” in Hamas.Israel’s operation in Gaza is “not defense, but an open, vicious massacre,” Erdogan told thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators in Istanbul. “Israel has been openly committing war crimes for exactly 22 days, but Western leaders have not even called for a ceasefire,” he declared, adding that Türkiye is gathering information to “present Israel to the world as a war criminal.”

More than 7,000 Palestinians, including nearly 3,000 children, have been killed in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza since the current conflict began, according to the latest figures from the Gaza Health Ministry. Israeli forces dramatically ramped up their bombardment of the strip on Friday night, before sending troops and tanks into the strip. The Israeli air campaign began immediately after Hamas fighters raided Israeli towns and villages near the Gaza border on October 7, killing around 1,400 people and capturing around 250 hostages. Within days of the attack, Erdogan announced that he was “ready for all kinds of mediation, including prisoner exchange, if the parties request it.” Erdogan called on both sides to show restraint, but in the weeks that followed, his focus shifted almost exclusively to Israel.

The Turkish president declared that Israel’s siege of Gaza – which prevented food, water, medicine, and electricity from reaching the enclave – was “against the laws of war,” and accused Israel last week of committing “genocide” against the Palestinians.In a speech to lawmakers on Wednesday, he said that “Hamas is not a terrorist organization, it is a group of freedom fighters, ‘mujahideen’ [holy warriors] waging a battle to protect its lands and people.” Erdogan also said that he had canceled plans to visit Israel over the bombardment of Gaza.

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Wonder where the info comes from.

• 5,000 US Troops Involved In Gaza Offensive – Iran Media (RT)

Several thousand US troops have taken part in Israel’s ground operation in Gaza, the Iran-based Tasnim news agency reported on Saturday. The Pentagon has recently announced plans to significantly reinforce its military presence in the Middle East amid the Israel-Hamas conflict and tensions with Iran. According to the agency’s security sources, Israel’s assault on Gaza involved three divisions and several brigades and was also underpinned by 5,000 US military personnel. The outlet, however, did not provide any details about which troops took part in the offensive or what functions they performed. Tasmin said that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) attempted to enter the enclave from several areas in the north, west, and southwest “to split the Gaza Strip into two or three sections and cut off the connection among the Palestinian resistance forces before launching the next stage of the war.”

The agency did not specify what results the Israeli military had achieved so far. However, Hamas said on Saturday that it had managed to thwart Israel’s assault, claiming to have repelled it with heavy losses. Meanwhile, the IDF stated that it was “advancing through the stages of the war” in Gaza, with fighting still ongoing. It noted that no soldiers had been injured in the “expanded” ground operations. After Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel on October 7, the US military scrambled to reinforce its presence in the region. The Pentagon has sent two aircraft carriers with supporting vessels to the area, as well as “activated the deployment” of THAAD and Patriot air defense systems.

Last week, it also said it had ordered more than 2,000 additional troops to prepare to deploy in support of Israel in its conflict with Hamas. On Thursday, it said that it would deploy 900 soldiers to the Middle East. US officials, however, insisted, that none of the troops would go to Israel, and are rather “intended to support regional deterrence efforts and further bolster US force protection capabilities.” The decision to send reinforcements also came as the US conducted airstrikes on two facilities in eastern Syria allegedly used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and affiliated groups. US President Joe Biden said it was a response to recurring attacks on US forces in Iraq and Syria. Tehran maintains that militant groups in those countries are acting independently.

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“We are open for an immediate swap deal that would guarantee the release of all prisoners held in occupation prisons in return for the release of all hostages held by the resistance forc..”

There are 1000s of such prisoners.

• US Denies American Troops Took Part in Israeli Ground Offensive (Sp.)

The US Special Operations Command has denied media reports that alleged US forces have been involved in Israel’s ongoing ground operation in the Gaza Strip. “Definitely misinformation,” a US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) spokesperson told Sputnik on Saturday. The spokesperson’s response came in light of reports by Iranian media that some 5,000 US military personnel were taking part in the Gaza ground expansion. It was also noted American troops had largely taken control of ongoing operations, and that Israeli officials had “lost trust in the management abilities and loyalty of a number of army personnel.” Iranian media further outlined that Israeli military were working to divide their offensive in the Gaza Strip into at least two zones before launching an all-out effort to clamp down on the militant Palestinian group Hamas.

It was earlier reported by US media that Israel kicked up its military operations in light of unfruitful talks to gain the release of hostages taken by Hamas. However, media reports elsewhere offered a much different picture, with some reporting that “significant progress” had been made in ongoing talks Hamas representatives have repeatedly voiced its openness to release hostages as part of a ceasefire exchange; in fact, Yahya Sinwar, the head of the Palestinian group’s political bureau in Gaza, said on Saturday that the group was open for an “immediate swap.” “We are open for an immediate swap deal that would guarantee the release of all prisoners held in occupation prisons in return for the release of all hostages held by the resistance force,” Yahya Sinwar said.

At present, more than 200 people – believed to be both soldiers and civilians – have been taken into the group’s custody and reportedly kept in underground passageways. Earlier concerns were raised that a potential move to flood Hamas’ tunnel system would claim the lives of said hostages.

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“If the strategy is to continue to pour money there, €1.5 billion per month without any result, and we have to cut our own resources?”

• Ukraine ‘One Of The Most Corrupt Countries In The World’ – Fico (RT)

Ukraine is “one of the most corrupt countries in the world,” Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico told reporters on Friday following an EU summit in Brussels, raising doubts about the bloc’s unprecedented funding to Kiev. In particular, Fico questioned the wisdom of an additional €50 billion ($52.9 billion) earmarked for Ukraine in the EU’s proposed budget, asking rhetorically, “Did the financing of Ukraine change the outcome of this war? So let’s invest another 50 billion, and it doesn’t matter what happens?” The prime minister agreed to increase Slovakia’s contribution to the EU by about €400 million over the next four years, but only if the EU could promise it would not be stolen by Kiev. “Ukraine is among the most corrupt countries in the world and we are conditioning what is excessive financial support on guarantees that European money (including Slovak) not be embezzled,” Fico told assembled journalists.

Noting that the EU had no “peace plan” and that the leaders of several member countries had been “driven into a dead end” due to a lack of coherence on how to move forward, he said that a blank check to Ukraine would be a hard sell back home in Slovakia. “If the strategy is to continue to pour money there, €1.5 billion per month without any result, and we have to cut our own resources? After all, we have huge problems, and public money is in a difficult state,” Fico explained. In return for Slovakia’s increased contribution, Fico also required that there be no cuts to funds intended to support farmers, that the increased budget would be used to fight illegal immigration and increase EU competitiveness, that Slovak companies receive some of the contracts to rebuild Ukraine, and that the restoration of border infrastructure between the two nations be prioritized.

The Slovak PM is not the only EU leader who has balked at the bloc’s continuing efforts to bolster Kiev financially. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban declared at the summit on Friday that the strategy of sending billions in aid had failed. “The Ukrainians will not win on the battlefield,” he said, vowing not to endorse the budget revision allocating another €50 billion. Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto earlier this week condemned what he described as the EU’s “war psychosis,” accusing Brussels of planning for four years of conflict with massive arms spending, including possible military investment in Ukraine, without any funding or effort put toward resolving hostilities.

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Octopus

 

 

Neo
https://twitter.com/i/status/1718335875694678434

 

 

 

 

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